1888-89.] A sporting Tour in Norway. 219 



I could tell by my nasal organ that we were now getting near 

 the village. It was situated on an elevated position in a birch 

 wood, and, with the exception of seeing smoke issuing from 

 among the trees, there were no indications of people in the 

 district. The objects in having their camp on a knoll are, in 

 order that they may have a view of their deer, and to avoid 

 being drifted up with snow. As we approached we heard a 

 peculiar snorting, like the grunting of pigs, and soon discovered 

 this was caused by about a thousand deer being milked in a kraal. 

 The kraal, which was fenced with birch trees about six feet 

 high, covered an area nearly the size of Eoyal Circus Gardens, 

 in Edinburgh. When the wood had been cleared off it, stumps 

 were left three and four feet high, to which the deer are tethered 

 while being milked. It is a popular notion that the deer are 

 tame, and that they are milked like cows in this country. This 

 is not so. The men throw a lasso over their antlers, and drag 

 them to one of the stumps referred to. They then put a twitch 

 on their nose, which in many cases cuts into the flesh, causing 

 the blood to trickle down. Were such cruelty practised in 

 this country, the perpetrators would very soon have a visit 

 from the officers of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 

 to Animals. The women then milk the deer with one hand, 

 while with the other they hold the most primitive wooden 

 bowl, in which they catch the milk. Each deer, I observed, 

 gives only a small quantity. They strain the milk through 

 a sieve made of rushes or dried grass. They make cheese 

 of the mUk, but not butter — for the reason, I presume, that 

 they have no bread to put it on ! Their staple food is all got 

 from the deer — flesh, blood, milk, and cheese. Most of the 

 other necessaries of life — and even death — are derived from 

 the same source. Their clothes, their beds, their blankets, 

 their cradles, and their cofiins are all made of deer-skins. 

 One of our party, who had visited the encampment a few days 

 previous, informed me that a sick child was lying in a small 

 deer's skin, suspended by the four corners from the rafters 

 of the wigwam. On my visit I found that the child was 

 dead, wrapped in a skin, and stuck up in a tree. This, of 

 course, was only a temporary arrangement till the body was 

 buried. 



When the grass and reindeer-moss become scarce in a 



