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Updated: May 3, 2025
It is full day by the time he gets within sight of his own place up on the hillside, and it cheers him somewhat, weary and exhausted as he is after forty-eight hours on the road. The house and buildings, there they stand, smoke curling up from the chimney; both the little ones are out, and come down to meet him as he appears. He goes into the house, and finds a couple of Lapps sitting down.
The Lapps themselves would be entirely at a loss for any indication as to where this food should be sought when covered by the deep snow. The reindeer will carry, lashed to its back, a hundred and thirty pounds, or drag upon the snow, when harnessed to a sledge, two hundred and fifty pounds, travelling ten miles an hour for several consecutive hours, without apparent fatigue.
In the winter season the Lapps retire far inland, where they build temporary huts of the branches of the trees, plastered with clay and banked up with snow, leaving a hole at the top as a chimney for the smoke, the fire being always built upon a broad, flat stone in the centre of the hut.
We had at last seen the Polar night, the day without a sunrise; we had driven our reindeer under the arches of the aurora borealis; we had learned enough of the Lapps to convince us that further acquaintance would be of little profit; and it now seemed time to attempt an escape from the limbo of Death into which we had ventured.
The latter they are very fond of, but few families can afford to drink it often; so also with spirits, which, however, they only manage to obtain in the towns. Thus live the Mountain Lapps year in year out.
Few of the Lapps, however, confine themselves to this characteristic type of Lapp costume, but wear whatever comes to their hands, hats, caps, clothes "made in Germany" and so on. Among the women, especially the younger ones, some fairly pretty faces may be met with. Their dress is usually a calico sarafan, and generally speaking, there is nothing specially distinguishing about their apparel.
Of the tundra it is enough to say that all depends on the reindeer. This animal is the be-all and end-all of Lapp existence. When Nansen, after crossing Greenland, sailed home with his two Lapps, he called their attention to the crowds of people assembled to welcome them at the harbour. "Ah," said the elder and more thoughtful of the pair, "if they were only reindeer!"
To take a Northern people: In his 'History of the Lapps' Scheffer describes mechanical modes of divination practised by that race, who use a drum and other objects for the purpose. These modes depend on more traditional rules for interpreting the accidental combinations of lots.
By ten o'clock it was light enough to read; the southern sky was a broad sea of golden orange, dotted with a few crimson cloud-islands, and we set ourselves to watch with some anxiety the gradual approach of the exiled god. But for this circumstance, and two other drawbacks, I should have gone to church to witness the Lapps at their religious exercises.
When the Lapps had succeeded in killing a bear with impunity, they thanked him for not hurting them and for not breaking the clubs and spears which had given him his death wounds; and they prayed that he would not visit his death upon them by sending storms or in any other way. His flesh then furnished a feast.
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