308 The Lapps or Finns. [CHAP. XVII. 
accustomed to live along the sea-shore, or to frequent it 
when food failed them in the interior, and live upon 
mollusks and fish. That they ventured out to sea in canoes 
hollowed out of the trunk of a single tree (such as are oc- 
casionally found in Danish peat-bogs) is obvious, from the 
fact that the bony relics of deep-sea fish, such as the cod, 
the herring, and the skate, are occasionally found in the 
shell-heaps. No remains of any agricultural produce, nor 
of domesticated animals (excepting the dog), have been 
found in them; so that it is probable that the people who 
then occupied the land were exclusively hunters and fish- 
ers, and that they knew nothing of pastoral or agricultural 
pursuits. 
Who these ancient people were has been the subject of 
much conjecture. It is not improbable that they were 
Lapps or Esquimaux. The most ancient skulls which have 
been found in Denmark, near the shell-mounds, are small 
and round, indicating the small stature of the people. Sir 
Charles Lyell says that they bear a considerable resemblance 
to those of the modern Laplanders. It is probable that a 
great part of Europe was originally peopled by Lapps, and 
that they were driven north by the incoming of a more civ- 
ilized race from the east. There are still remnants of the 
Lapps in the island of Malmén, off the coast of Sweden; 
in North Connaught, and the island of Arran in Ireland; in 
the island of Lewis, off the western coast of Scotland; and 
in several of the Shetland Islands.* 
When the discoveries in Denmark came to light, and 
were republished in this country, investigations began to 
be made as to the existence of similar shell-mounds on the 
* Dr. Beddoes, in his “Stature and Bulk of Man in the British 
Isles,” says, “The black-haired Shetlanders are of low stature, with 
features approaching the Finnish type, and of a melancholic tempera- 
ment” (p. 13), The island of Lewis also, in the Hebrides, indicates 
an aboriginal substratum of population of Finnish type and short 
stature, 
