REPORT OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION 



keep tame deer where the wild animals are in abundance. The wild reindeer 

 in many ways spoil the tame, and further, very often the antagonism between 

 the hunters and reindeer owners causes great difficulties. 



In Sweden the reindeer nomads live in all the parishes along the boundary 

 between Sweden and Norway, from Finland in the north to Id re in the provinces 

 of Darlecarlie — a distance of al)out 600 English miles, or more than half the 

 whole length of the country. 



Lapland, the northermost of the Swedish provinces, reaches from latitude 

 64 degrees to nearly 69 degrees, and comprises about one-fourth of the total 

 area of Sweden, which area is about 173,000 square miles. Most of the Lapps 

 live in this province, but even in the provinces Vesterbotton, Jamtland, Har- 

 jelalon and Darlecarlia there are some Lapps. 



In all the provinces the Lapps are, of course, in a great minority; only in 

 one parish, in the northernmost part of Sweden, do they amount to more than 

 half of the whole population. 



The mountain Lapps, or nomads, do not live in any particular place, but 

 divide into tribes migrating in certain districts. For instance, in the two 

 northernmost parishes in Sweden, where the Lapps are most numerous, they 

 migrate in the forest region south of the Norwegian border the whole winter; 

 in the spring they move over the frontier and continue slowly down from the 

 high mountains to the Norwegian coast, from where some of the reindeer herds, 

 amounting to many thousands of animals, swim over the fjords out to some of 

 the big islands where they are pastured the whole summer. In the fall they 

 move back to the high mountains, and from there down again to the forest 

 region. The distance which some of the Lapps move twice a year is in certain 

 cases 100 to 150 miles, and in this way they have gone on moving for hundreds 

 or perhaps for thousands of years. 



From the southern part of Lapland, the Lapps only move twenty to thirty 

 miles into Norway, but there, and in the provinces south of Lapland, they 

 usually go down into the forest region in Sweden, sometimes as far as to the 

 coast of the Baltic sea. Thus the whole northern half of Sweden is inhabited by 

 migratory Lapps during a part of the year. 



The forest Lapps are found chiefly in some small districts situated between 

 the Baltic and up to 100 miles therefrom. 



The Nomads, as a rule, live in huts all the year round, moving with the 

 reindeer herds. This, especially in the winter, makes an extremely hard life, 

 but still, it is very healthful. In later years there has been a certain tendency 

 among some of them to build houses or more substantial huts of wood, and to 

 keep their families there. This has a very bad influence upon the reindeer 

 service as well as on the health of the Lapps. It has been observed that tuber- 

 culosis is much more prevalent among the families that live in houses than among 

 those who keep to their old mode of living in huts made of cloth. 



The Swedish Lapps, however, as mentioned before, have many difficulties 

 to deal with. The farming settlers in Sweden have gradually gone farther north 

 in the district where the Lapps formerly were alone, and as the reindeer some- 

 times spoil the hay belonging to the farmers, conflicts very often arise in which 

 the Lapps, who commonly are held responsible for the damage, are the sufi^erers. 

 Still worse is it in Norway, where both the officials and pri\ate people to a certain 

 degree work against the Lapps. 



86 



