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Updated: June 3, 2025
I had provided myself with two pairs of these, while at Haparanda on my way to "The Land of the Long Night," for my return journey, a short pair, of the shape of the winter shoes, and a pair of boots coming as high as my knees. One of the Lapps smeared them with a preparation of tar and fat that he used for his own shoes.
We found it impossible, however, to procure milk or anything to eat, and as the cold was not to be borne else, we were obliged to resort to a bottle of cognac and our Haparanda bread. The old woman sat by the fire smoking, and gave not the least attention to our demands. I paid our postilions in Norwegian orts, which they laid upon a chair and counted, with the assistance of the whole family.
May your shadow never be less; and may your invaluable little dog Brusa live to profit by your wise counsel and judicious administration of the rod. The Arcturus had been delayed in discharging freight by a series of storms which prevailed at the bay, and was now down at Haparanda Fjord taking in ballast. The probability was that she would not leave for several days.
On first coming among them, the Finns impressed me as a less frank and open hearted, but more original and picturesque, race than the Swedes. It is exceedingly curious and interesting to find such a flavour of the Orient on the borders of the Frigid Zone. The roads were very bad, and our drivers and horses provokingly slow, but we determined to push on to Haparanda the same night.
At Haparanda I had driven about seven hundred and forty miles from Stockholm, and over twenty-five hundred miles since I had left the mountains of Norway. I was only forty-one miles south of the Arctic Circle, which is the most southerly part of "The Land of the Long Night." I had hardly arrived in Haparanda, when the leading people of the place came to welcome me.
It is no wonder, therefore, that the Finn knows very little except about what happened during his own life, or, at best, his father's. I never heard the Kalewala spoken of, and doubt very much whether it is known to the natives of this region. The only songs we heard, north of Haparanda, were hymns devout, but dismal.
But it was a wonderful night all the same, the air was thin and intoxicating like champagne, and the stars up in these northern latitudes more dazzlingly brilliant than anything I have seen before. We had to get out at Haparanda and walk over the long bridge which led to Torneo, where the Finnish Custom House was, and where our luggage and passports had to be examined.
How beautiful it was! Onward we went, sleeping one day in the tent of a nomadic Lapp, another day in our bags, at other times in the gamme of a river Lapp. The weather was very changeable; one day it was clear, the next day the sky was gray. Snowy days were not uncommon. Midway between Nordkyn and Haparanda the snow was of great depth.
The landlord, a sallow, watery-eyed Finn, who knew a few words of Swedish, gave us a room in an adjoining house, and furnished a dinner of boiled fish and barley mush, to which was added a bottle labelled "Dry Madeira," brought from Haparanda for the occasion. At a shop adjoining, Braisted found a serviceable pipe, so that nothing was wanting to complete our jubilee.
Soon after this we were out of Haparanda and on the highroad leading to Pajala, which was about one hundred and ten miles further north, there being ten or twelve post stations between the two places. Sleighing was fine, the road had been used much, so we went on at a very fast pace. It was just the weather people, horses, dogs, and reindeer liked.
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