A WINTER SCENE IN “THE LAND OF THE REINDEER”—A LAPP MAGNATE MAKING THE ROUND OF HIS ESTATE.
From a Photograph.
An article dealing with a strange and little-known people—the Lapps. Living in a country where practically nothing grows, their whole lives are occupied with the reindeer, the one product of Lapland. A man’s wealth is reckoned in reindeer; he eats its flesh and drinks its blood for food, and his clothes are made of its skin. Small wonder, therefore, that the moss on which the animals live is more important to him than cereal crops, and that the highest form of Lapp art finds expression in the carving of reindeer bones. Photographs by the Author.
Some little time ago I was in Sweden, and was strongly advised by my friends to take the opportunity of visiting Lapland, that strange country of reindeer and semi-savages. I was given a letter of introduction to a certain Lapp magnate, who, I was assured, was the most educated and advanced person in the country, and who would see that I saw everything worth seeing. “Go and interview him,” said my informant, “though I cannot promise that you will be able to get him to talk. The Lapps are very reticent; they will never tell you, for instance, how many reindeer they possess. Mickel Nilsson Nia, to whom I am giving you this letter of recommendation, is wealthy and educated, yet he covers himself with reindeer skins like the humblest of his herdsmen, drinks the warm blood of the animal he kills, and thinks no dish more succulent than a sort of cake made of reindeer blood mixed with flour! He is a splendid specimen of a people who have at once assimilated and resisted civilization.”
I began to think it might be worth my while to visit these curious folk, and in pursuit of information sought out another acquaintance, a colonel in the Swedish army.
He told me that the Lapps are very fond of stimulating drinks; they think nothing of drinking fifteen or twenty cups of coffee a day, while their consumption of punch is on a vast scale. It is no uncommon thing to see numbers of helplessly drunk natives in the streets of Tromsö, especially when the sale of reindeer flesh has been profitable. Yet robbery and, indeed, crime in general are practically unknown among them; the innate honesty of the people is quite extraordinary. The colonel gave me an example. “As, perhaps, you may have heard,” he said, “I am very keen on hunting both the wolf and the bear. On one occasion, accompanied by a Laplander, I was out after an enormous she-wolf, but the animal succeeded in completely baffling us. Finally, despairing of success, I abandoned the pursuit. A few days subsequently I was much surprised to receive a visit from my Lapp. With him he brought the wolf’s skin, which he insisted on my accepting; he had come up with the creature and killed it after a long, weary chase of many hours. I told him that the skin belonged to him, but he would listen to no argument. ‘You must be paid back for the trouble you have had,’ he kept repeating, with a smile. ‘It would not be fair for me to keep all the advantage for myself.’
A LAPP MOTHER AND CHILD IN HOLIDAY ATTIRE—SO TIGHTLY SWATHED IS THE INFANT IN ITS CURIOUS “CASE” THAT IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE POOR LITTLE MITE TO GROW.
From a Photograph.
“But go to the country and see things for yourself,” concluded my friend. “Try and speak with Mickel Nilsson Nia; but, above all things, make up your mind to practise patience. Nobody in Lapland appreciates the value of time in the slightest degree; a Lapp thinks nothing of turning up at an appointment six hours too soon or six hours too late. You must also be careful to be invariably most scrupulously polite to them. Their pride is boundless; they are persuaded they are almost divine. Their account of their origin is that, God having decided to submerge the world in the Deluge, everything living was drowned by the heavy rain, with the exception of two Laplanders, a man and a woman. These two God took under his charge and led to Vasso-Varra, where the couple separated, the man proceeding in one direction, the woman in another. For three years they pursued their respective paths, and at the end of that time found themselves again at Vasso Varra. On their travels neither had encountered a living soul. Three separate times did they repeat the experience. When nine years had elapsed they came to the conclusion that in the whole world they were the only inhabitants, and consequently they decided to marry one another. They had a very large family, and to-day the whole earth is peopled with their children; those who do not live in Lapland are degenerates!”