120 scandina^t:a. 



dependent for his sustenance as well as his clotliing on the herd, the Lapp who 

 owns no more than a hundred animals is regarded as poor, and obliged to attach 

 himself to some more fortunate grazer. Excluding the fishers and agriculturists, 

 Yon Diiben calculates the average number of reindeer per head at thirteen or 

 fourteen only, and this number tends to diminish with the growth of settlements. 

 The owner of three hundred is already regarded as wealthy, and some are said to 

 possess as many as two thousand, valued at about £2,400. But rich and poor live 

 all alike in wretched, dank, and squalid dens, free, however, from fleas, which do 

 not thrive in Lapland. But in summer the gnats are a terrible scourge, at least 

 for the stranger, if not for the natives, who are protected by smearing themselves 

 with a fatty substance, and who then live mostly in districts where the winged 

 pests are dispersed by sea breezes. 



Since the middle of the seventeenth century all the Lapps have been calling 

 themselves Christians. They already possess a small religious literature, and 

 follow the rites prescribed in the several local governments. Thus in Scandinavia 

 they are all Lutherans, in Ptussia Orthodox Greeks; but beneath it all there 

 survive traces of old pagan customs analogous to the shamanism of the Mongolians. 

 The magic drum played a great part in their ceremonies, as did also the pine or 

 birch bark on which the wizards had figured instruments, animals, men, or gods. 

 This bark, or "rune-tree," as the Norwegians called it, was consulted on all 

 important occasions, and the interpretation of the mysterious signs was the great 

 art and highest wisdom. The last of the "rune-trees" is said to have been 

 destroyed about the middle of the past century. The seifch, curiously shaped 

 stones, sometimes rudely carved, round which the rites were celebrated, were 

 thrown into the lakes by the Lapps themselves, or else preserved in the Swedish 

 museums. But if the fetishes have disappeared, many of the old ceremonies sur- 

 vive. The dog, the Lapp's best friend, without which he could not rule his herds, 

 is no longer buried with his master ; but certain shells, the " souls of the dogs," 

 are still thrown into the grave. The feast of the summer solstice also is here, as 

 elsewhere in Europe, celebrated with bonfires kindled on the hill-tops. 



The Lapps are supposed to be yearly diminishing in numbers ; but at least in 

 Finmark, or Norwegian Lapland, they have increased sevenfold since the sixteenth 

 century, and elsewhere apparently threefold on the coasts. But this is largely due 

 to the pressure of the Nijhuggarc, or " New Boors," Swedish and Finnish colonists 

 slowly encroaching on the domain of the nomads, and driving them seawards. At 

 the end of the eighteenth century these strangers were already more numerous 

 than the Sameh in Swedish Norbotten. The Eussian Lapps also, and the Quiins, 

 descendants of old Quainolaiset Finns, who appeared west of the Torneâ River 

 during the wars of Charles XII., are leaving their camping grounds and settling 

 in large numbers on the coast, where they find more constant and abundant 

 supplies of food and other comforts. 



But if the Lapps are not actually disappearing, they are becoming more and 

 more assimilated to the surrounding peoples, w^ith whom they are gradually blend- 

 ing into one nation. The fusion began two centuries ago, when they accepted 



