The Land of the Long Night Part 14

After two hours, and a drive of nearly fifty miles, we alighted before a Lapp tent. The dogs, and there were many, announced our arrival by fierce barking, and the inmates of the tent came out to see who the strangers were. They recognized my friends and received them with demonstrations of joy, which was the more remarkable as the Lapps are far from being demonstrative.

The next day in the afternoon we returned to our tent, the reindeer as frisky as the day before and running as fast. I have never forgotten those two glorious rides, and I shall remember them as long as I live.

Bidding my Lapp friends good-bye I came one day to Lake Givijarvi and further on to Lake Aitijarvi. There I saw a lonely farm with a comfortable dwelling-house of logs. How pleasant this habitation seemed in that snow land. The smoke curling over the chimney told that there were people there, and soon after we were in front of the house, and I entered a large room, and saw a man with long black s.h.a.ggy hair tinged with grey. His name was Adam Triump. Then a woman, his wife, came in, also with loose s.h.a.ggy black hair falling over her shoulders. My guide and I were made welcome.

From there I travelled once more eastward, driving over the Ivalajoki, which falls into the Enarejarvi. If I had been travelling alone I should certainly have perished, for I did not know where to find the people of the thinly inhabited country.

CHAPTER XX

THE LAPP HAMLET OF KAUTOKEINO.--A BATH IN A BIG IRON POT.--AN ARCTIC WAY OF WASHING CLOTHES.--DRESS AND ORNAMENTS OF THE LAPPS.--APPEARANCE AND HEIGHT OF THE LAPPS.--GIVIJaRVI.--KARASJOK.

A few days after the events I have just related to you, I found myself in the Lapp hamlet of Kautokeino, with its Lutheran church, near lat.i.tude 69 degrees. Here and there were queer-looking storehouses which belonged to the nomadic Lapps. I alighted before the post station, and entered the house and was welcomed by the station master. The dwelling was composed of two rooms, one for the use of the family, the other for guests or travellers. The place was full of Lapp men and women who had come to rest, go to church on the following Sunday, or see their children who were at school; or to get coffee, sugar, and other provisions stored in their own houses.

On the opposite side of the post station was the cow house, and between it and the house was the old-fashioned wooden-bucket well with its long, swinging pole, surrounded by a thick ma.s.s of ice made of the dripping water from the bucket. I did not wonder when I saw the ice, for it was 43 degrees below zero that day, and sometimes it is colder still.

I went into the cow-house. It was, as usual, a very low building, lower than most of those I had seen before. The two long windows admitted a dim light. At the further end was the usual big iron pot seen in almost every cow-house, for soaking the gra.s.s in boiling water, as the coa.r.s.e marsh gra.s.s is so hard to chew that it has to be thus prepared. The daughter of the house, a girl about twenty years old, said to me, "I am going to prepare a meal for the cows and the sheep."

The huge iron pot was filled with reindeer moss and gra.s.s and warm water. "This food is for the cows and sheep," she said. "The horse is fed on fine fragrant hay, gathered during the short summer; horses will not eat the food we give to the cows and sheep; they are very particular."

I was very much in need of a good wash and of a warm bath, for I had only used snow to wash my hands and face for many days. As I looked at the big iron pot I said to myself, "This pot will make a good wash-tub."

I went to the mistress of the house and asked her if I could take a warm bath in the big iron pot. "Certainly," she replied. Then she called her daughter, and both went to the cow-house. They cleaned the iron pot thoroughly; then filled it about two thirds full with water from the trough communicating with the well, which the old station master drew for them. They lighted a fire under the pot, and cleaned the surroundings, and laid down a reindeer skin for my feet, and a chair for me to sit on.

When the water was warm, and the fire under it extinguished, the wife said that my bath was ready.

How good I felt when I was in the big iron pot filled with warm water. I gave grunts of satisfaction. I put my head under water and thought "How good; how good the water feels."

Suddenly one of the family appeared, and before I had time to say "What do you want?" had jumped into the water all dressed and got hold of one of my legs and rubbed it with soap. Then came the turn of the other leg, then the body, head and all. I was rubbed with a brush as hard as if I had been a piece of wood that had no feelings, and as if my skin had been the bark of a tree. Two or three times I screamed out, but my attendant only laughed. After the rubbing I was switched with birch twigs till I fairly glowed, and then I was left alone. When I looked at my body my skin was as red as a tomato. The blood was in full circulation and I felt fine, for it was such a long time since I had taken a real bath that I had almost forgotten that there was such a thing.

How nice it was to put clean underwear on. How comfortable it felt. I put on a new pair of reindeer trousers, that were lent to me and that had never been worn before, and a new "kapta." Here was a good occasion to have my underwear washed, and my fur garments cleansed of everything, for it was over 40 degrees below zero. This wearing of the same clothes for a long time is the greatest hardship of travelling in winter in the Arctic regions; for in the course of time obnoxious things swarm in the fur and also in the woollen underwear. When these become unendurable the following way of washing has to be performed without soap or water.

After a person has changed his fur garments and underwear, he hangs them outside when the temperature is from 20 to 50 degrees below zero. The colder it is, the better for the clothes that are to be cleansed. These are left hanging for several days, during which time all the noxious things are killed by the intense cold. After this the underwear and the fur garments are well shaken and beaten, and then they return from this kind of laundry clean, according to the views of the Arctic regions, and are ready to be worn again. I often had my clothing washed in that manner, and also my sleeping-bags.

On Sunday many Lapps attended the Lutheran church from different parts of the country, coming either on skees or with their sleighs; those who lived far away starting the day before. Some had come even so far as one hundred and fifty miles. I was present at the religious services; the church was crowded. The clergyman was not in his clerical robes, but dressed in furs--like the rest of the congregation, for the churches are not heated.

On my return from church, the Lapps asked me where I was going. I replied I wanted to go as far as the land went north of me, as far as Nordkyn. They all wondered why I wanted to go there. They asked me if I was a merchant and bought fish. I told them I was not, but that I travelled to see the country and its people. They thought I was a very strange man, and they wondered at my ways.

This hamlet was composed of about twelve homesteads. The dwelling-houses were built of logs, those for beasts of turf or stones. By the church was the schoolhouse, and there was a large store very much like our country stores at home.

The inhabitants owned about sixty cows,--such small cows! they were about three feet in height--one hundred and seventy sheep and a few oxen as small as the cows.

Kautokeino was full of nomadic Lapps, and we had a good time together, for the Lapps are very friendly and I had learned to love them. "We come here," they said, "to meet our friends, to see our children who are in school, to get some of the provisions kept in our storehouses and other things we want; and we bring with us skins of reindeer and the garments and shoes that have been made in our tents."

In this church hamlet were a number of very old Lapps, men and women who could no longer follow their reindeer and endure a hard, wandering life.

Thither also the sick or the lame come, to stay until they get well or die. Two Lapps were pointed out to me who were nearly one hundred years old.

The inhabitants of these Lapp hamlets are not nomadic; they live on the produce of their farms, the increase of their reindeer, by catching salmon, and in employing themselves as sailors on the fishing-boats of the Arctic Sea, which they reach by descending the rivers.

The Lapp women wore queer-fitting little caps of bright colors, and when in holiday dress wore a number of large showy silk handkerchiefs.

Sometimes they had as many as four, on the top of one another, over their fur dresses; they wore necklaces of large gla.s.s beads, round their waists were silver belts, and their fingers were ornamented with rings.

They wore trousers of reindeer skin, as the Lapp women do universally.

The men wore peaked caps.

These people were short of stature, compactly but slightly built, with strong limbs, their light weight allowing them to climb, jump, and run quickly. There are no heavy men with big stomachs among them. Quite a number of Lapps have fair hair and blue eyes. They are unlike the Esquimaux, and in a crowd at home, dressed like ourselves, would pa.s.s unnoticed. There are a number of Lapps in the North-west of our own county. The tallest woman that I saw was 5 feet 1/2 inch, the tallest man 5 feet 4-1/2 inches; the smallest woman 4 feet 4-1/4 inches, the smallest man 4 feet 7 inches. There were more women averaging 4 feet 10 inches than men of that size, men averaging generally above five feet.

I left Kautokeino, and that same day I came to Lake Givijarvi. I had to be told that it was a lake, for it was a continuous snow-land. Here was a farm, the owner of which kept a small store and sold sugar, coffee, salt, flour, tobacco, matches, some woollen underwear, etc., to the Lapps; and bought from them skins, shoes, and gloves, in summer smoked tongue and reindeer meat, reindeer cheese, etc., and every year went with these to some of the Norwegian towns on the Arctic Sea to sell them and buy groceries and other goods.

Here I had a clean room and bed. The place was a great rendezvous for nomadic Lapps, and I found many of them. The farmer extended to them unbounded hospitality, and spread as many reindeer skins on the floor at night as the room could hold, for them to sleep on.

The Lapps liked the place very much, and came there to rest for a few days, bringing their food with them. Their wives and children would also come, and were sure to be welcome at the farm. I could not drink sufficient milk or coffee, or eat enough reindeer meat, cheese, or b.u.t.ter that had been churned in summer, to please the good-hearted farmer. He wanted no pay. He even insisted on accompanying me to Karasjok.

The sleighing was fine, and the snow was six and seven feet deep on a level. Our arrival at Karasjok, after a hundred miles' journey from Givijarvi, was announced by the fierce barking of the dogs of the place, and twice I was almost overtaken by one more fierce than the others.

"They only bark," shouted my guide. I was now in lat.i.tude 69 35', and within a few miles of the longitude of Nordkyn. The hamlet was situated on the sh.o.r.es of the Karasjoki river. Some of the fir trees of the forests near Karasjok measured twenty inches in diameter; but once cut they do not grow again. I saw very few young trees.

The hamlet was composed of eighteen or twenty homesteads, with about one hundred and thirty inhabitants. There were over twenty horses, besides cows, sheep, and reindeer. The horses were so plentiful because they are used to haul timber. I reflected that the horse is a wonderful animal, and can live like man in many kinds of climate.

All the houses at Karasjok were built of logs. The finest residence was that of the merchant of the place. The Karasjok Lapps, and others in the neighborhood, were very unlike those I had seen before. They were tall; some of them six feet in height. The women were also tall, most of them having dark hair. The fair complexion and blue eyes were uncommon. Men and women wore strange-looking head-dresses. The men wore square caps of red or blue flannel, filled up with eider down. The women put on a wooden framework of very peculiar shape, appearing more or less like a casque or the helmet of a dragoon.

I only stopped the night in Karasjok, and after getting new reindeer at the post station and a new guide, started north.

CHAPTER XXI

LEAVE KARASJOK STILL TRAVELLING NORTHWARD.--THE RIVER TANA.--RIVER LAPPS.--FILTHY DWELLINGS.--ON THE WAY TO NORDKYN.--THE MOST NORTHERN LAND IN EUROPE.

On leaving Karasjok I travelled northward, over the frozen Karasjoki, until I came to a broad stream called the Tana. As we drove on the river I saw here and there solitary farms and strange little hamlets inhabited by river Lapps.

The occupation of the river Lapps is largely salmon catching in summer.

These fish are very abundant in the rivers. Many, during the codfish season, engage themselves as sailors on the Arctic Sea. Almost every family has a small farm, stocked with diminutive cows; besides they have sheep and goats. During the summer their reindeer are taken care of by the nomadic Lapps. These reindeer have to go to the mountains near the Arctic Sea, on account of the mosquitoes.

Now travelling was becoming very hard,--not on account of the snow, but because the inhabitants and their dwellings were so dirty.

But I had one comfort. All over that far northern land I felt so safe; it never came into my head that these people would rob me, though they knew I had plenty of money with me, according to their ways of thinking, to pay for reindeer and other travelling expenses; but the Finns and the Lapps are a G.o.d-fearing people.

The first day, I came to a place occupied by a single man. The house was so filthy, and vermin apparently so plentiful, that I whispered to my Lapp guide, "Let us go on." The Lapp was so tired that he looked at me with astonishment, and seemed to say: "Are not these comfortable quarters?"

We got into our sleighs, however, and further on we stopped and tied our reindeer together. The Lapp slept in his sleigh covered with a reindeer skin, and I in my bag.

The next day we halted before a farm. It was dark. There we intended to spend the night. The people do not lock their doors, neither do they knock to obtain admittance. So we entered. The family were all in bed. A man lighted a light. Such filth I thought I had never seen. The beds were filled with dirty hay that had been there all winter. The sheepskin blankets with the wool on were almost as black as soot. The people who slept between them were without a particle of clothes. "What a place for vermin!" I whispered to myself.

At this sight, I again said in a low voice to my Lapp, "Let us go on."