51)4 



LAPLAND. 



Ltpland.^ bitterness, is mixed for use with the meal of bark or 

 *^"Y""^ barley. In times of great scarcity, bread is sometimes 

 made from the ground seeds of the Spergula arvensis, 

 or spurrey. The Laplanders are exceedingly fond of 

 the Angelica sylvestris, which grows abundantly in every 

 part of woody Lapland, and which they eat, either fresh 

 or dried, or boiled in milk, with great avidity, as at once 

 8 delicious sallad, and an antiscorbutic medicine. They 

 use, in like manner, the Sonchus alpimts, a kind of small 

 sow thistle, which has a milky stem of a very bitter taste. 

 Among their dainties may be enumerated the inner bark 

 of the fir-tree, fresh, smoked, or steeped in train oil ; the 

 different berries found upon the melting of the snow, 

 thoroughly ripened 'in this winter repository ; and, 

 above all, tobacco, which they chew or smoke, as the 

 highest luxury, and when they can procure no more, 

 will even masticate slips of the bag or chips of the cask 

 in which it has been kept They are greatly delighted 

 with pepper, ginger, and other spices ; and peculiarly 

 gratified by a present of ardent spirits, of which they 

 prepare none themselves, but procure a little brandy 

 from Sweden or Norway. Before swallowing the li- 

 quor, they rub a little of it upon their foreheads or bo- 

 soms, in the persuasion that it will thus be prevented 

 from injuring their head or breast. Their sole beve- 

 rage, in ordinary use, is water, procured in winter by 

 dissolving the snow ; and for this purpose a quantity is 

 kept always standing in a copper vessel in their huts. 

 All the cookery is performed by the men, and in the 

 dirtiest manner possible. The dishes and spoons are 

 seldom washed, or, at most, only by squirting water up- 

 on them from their mouths, and rubbing them with 

 their fingers. 



Biteaws. The Laplanders are said to live to a great age; and 

 it has even been affirmed, that some of them have com- 

 pleted a century and a half. But, as they are little 

 skilled in the exact computation of time, much depend, 

 ence cannot be placed on their own testimony ; and 

 their premature looks of old age, and general wretched 

 tenor of life, are not very consistent with such accounts 

 of their longevity. Their long endurance of intense 

 cold their coarse and precarious food their close and 

 smoky habitations, and their neglect of personal clean- 

 linessare not likely to prove conducive to vigorous 

 health and long life. But, on the other hand, their 

 roaming disposition their employment in hunting, 

 fishing, and tending the rein-deer, which habituate 

 them to air and exercise their partiality to various pre- 

 parations of milk as an article of subsistence their 

 warm clothing, and careful precautions against damp 

 or cold feet not to mention their exemption from the 

 dissipations of more refined states of society are doubt- 

 less favourable to the prevention of disease, and give 

 credibility to the statements of their being a healthy 

 race. At the same time, as in the case of most savage 

 tribea, it is highly probable that the great proportion 

 of vigorous constitutions among them, may be ascribed 

 to the circumstance of those who are of a weakly habit 

 dying in infancy. Fevers, agues, and dropsies, are 

 rare ; chilblains, not more common than in other coun- 

 tries ; the stone, gout, and jaundice, entirely unknown. 

 Even coughs and colds, notwithstanding the severity 

 of the climate, are very uncommon ; though a few cases 

 of consumption now and then occur. Swelled necks, 

 or goitres, similar to those in Switzerland sore, or 

 blear eyes, frequently inducing total blindness as old 

 age advances a swelling, or falling down of the uvula, 

 fared by cutting off the affected part colics, and other 

 disorders of the stomach and bowels; pleurisies, and 



cases of hoarseness in spring and autumn lumbago Lapland 

 and rheumatic pains, epilepsy and headaches, scurvy v "Y"" 1 

 and St. Antony's fire, deafirtss and asthma among old Discttliee 

 people, are the most frequent diseases in Lapland. The 

 great remedy employed in most of their diseases, espe- 

 cially for all aches and pains, head-ache, tooth-ache, 

 pleurisy, lumbago, &c. is the actual cautery, which 

 they apply by burning a piece of fine fungus, about the 

 size of a pea, on the place affected, and thus producing 

 a sore, by way of issue, which is allowed to remain 

 open till it heals spontaneously. In hard imposthumes, 

 &c. they apply a kind of plaster made from the loose 

 scaly bark of the birch, scorched, chewed, mixed with 

 fresh turpentine from the spruce fir, and kneaded by 

 the hands into an uniform paste, which brings forward 

 the suppuration, and promotes its discharge without 

 much pain. As an ointment for burns, they boil fresh 

 cream to a thick "consistence. Most of their other me- 

 dicines are mere nostrums, or charms. They pretend 

 to cure inward complaints by swallowing the blood of 

 the seal, or the rein-deer, as warm as possible. They 

 touch a diseased tooth with a splinter from a tree 

 which has been struck by lightning ; and, in order to 

 rub off the speck in a commencing cataract of the 

 eye, they introduce a common louse within the eye- 

 lids. Before reducing a dislocated or fractured bone, 

 they cause the patient to swallow, in a drink, a little 

 powdered silver or brass. As a remedy for sprained 

 ancles, or other sprains, they bind the suffering part 

 with the sinew of the rein-deer's fore legs ; but, at the 

 same time, reckon it essential to the cure, that a female 

 patient must use the sinews of the buck, and a male 

 those of the doe. 



During the winter time, and especially from the be- Manners 

 ginning of December to the end of January, a sort of and mode 

 apathy, congenial to the season, creeps over the natives, of lift> 

 and they spend in sleep more than one-half of the 24 

 hours. Their principal care is to keep themselves 

 warm ; and little employment of any kind is carried 

 on. 



The maritime Laplanders change their habitations 

 only twice in the year, namely, in spring and autumn ; 

 and in this case they leave their huts standing until 

 their return. Those, also, who inhabit the woody re- 

 gion are more stationary. But the mountain, or wan- 

 dering Laplanders, are continually moving from place 

 to place, to procure food for their rein-deer. About 

 the middle of summer they move with their families 

 and herds towards the sea coast, seldom travelling above 

 four English miles a day. They spend great part of 

 the summer in fishing ; and, as the rivers abound in 

 fish, they find no difficulty in catching as many as they 

 desire, which they hang up and dry for future use. In 

 this employment they are often attended on the lakes 

 by large flocks of sea swallows, which direct them to 

 the places where the shoals of fish are most abundant ; 

 and are rewarded with the small fishes, which are cast 

 on the shore, or left for them in the boats. They come 

 duly at the same hour in the morning, as if to inform 

 the fishermen that it is time to begin their work, and 

 set off with the boats as guides, ready, by their cries 

 and plunging into the water, to point out the most 

 proper places for casting the nets. On the approach 

 of autumn they return to the mountains, where they 

 move about, as occasion requires, from one wood or hill 

 to another. On their way from the coast in autumn, 

 as the rein-deer are particularly fat in that season, they 

 generally kill a sufficient number of them, which they 

 deposit by the way in a kind of hovel or storehouse, 



