222 NUMEROUS. 



herds from the Norwegian fjalls, has excited some specu- 

 lation. Many imagine, and with a show of reason, that it 

 was mainly in consequence of the peasantry from the neigh- 

 bouring valleys making too free with stragglers from the 

 herds, that the Lapps were necessitated to retreat to their 

 own country. 



What the number of tame rein-deer may be in Lapland is 

 hard to say, but it is very considerable. Less than two to 

 three hundred are not supposed sufficient to support even a 

 single family in comfort ; and there are men who have one 

 thousand or more. I have indeed heard of individuals 

 reputed to be possessed of two thousand and upwards. When 

 I was at the hamlet of Muonioniska, in Tornea Lapmark, 

 about twenty years since, they told me that in the winter 

 time some ten thousand head of deer were usually scattered 

 in the surrounding woods. And we read that in the year 

 1770, the two hundred Lapp-families inhabiting the parish 

 of Jockmock, owned amongst them no fewer than twenty 

 thousand head of those animals. Putting all things together 

 therefore, I should imagine the number of tame rein-deer in 

 Lapland, may be estimated at from fifty to one hundred 

 thousand. 



There are, so to speak, two kinds of tame rein-deer : the 

 so-called Fjall-Ren, or mountain rein-deer, which for the 

 greater part of the year are herded on such elevated regions 

 as to be destitute, or nearly so, of arboreal vegetation ; and 

 the Skogs-Ren, or forest rein-deer, that all the year round 

 are pastured in the forests. The Skogs-Ren is the larger 

 of the two ; but even he is much inferior in size and 

 nobility of appearance to the wild rein-deer. The latter is 

 occasionally killed weighing about three hundred and fifty 



