Hardly Had We Taken Off Our Hats, And Bowed A Thousand
Apologies For Our Unintentional Rudeness To The Fair
Inhabitant Of The Green Trousers, Before A Couple Of Lapp
Gentlemen Hove In Sight.
They were dressed pretty much
like their companion, except that an ordinary red night-cap
replaced the queer helmet worn by the lady; and the knife
and sporran fastened to their belts, instead of being
suspended in front as hers were, hung down against their
hips.
Their tunics, too, may have been a trifle shorter.
None of the three were beautiful. High cheek-bones, short
noses, oblique Mongol eyes, no eyelashes, and enormous
mouths, composed a cast of features which their burnt-sienna
complexion, and hair like ill-got-in hay did not much
enhance. The expression of their countenances was not
unintelligent; and there was a merry, half-timid,
half-cunning twinkle in their eyes, which reminded me a
little of faces I had met with in the more neglected
districts of Ireland. Some ethnologists, indeed, are
inclined to reckon the Laplanders as a branch of the
Celtic family. Others, again, maintain them to be Ugrians;
while a few pretend to discover a relationship between
the Lapp language and the dialects of the Australian
savages, and similar outsiders of the human family;
alleging that as successive stocks bubbled up from the
central birthplace of mankind in Asia, the earlier and
inferior races were gradually driven outwards in concentric
circles, like the rings produced by the throwing of a
stone into a pond; and that consequently, those who dwell
in the uttermost ends of the earth are, ipso facto, first
cousins.
This relationship with the Polynesian Niggers, the native
genealogists would probably scout with indignation, being
perfectly persuaded of the extreme gentility of their
descent. Their only knowledge of the patriarch Noah is
as a personage who derives his principal claim to notoriety
from having been the first Lapp. Their acquaintance with
any sacred history - nay, with Christianity at all - is
very limited. It was not until after the thirteenth
century that an attempt was made to convert them; and
although Charles the Fourth and Gustavus ordered portions
of Scripture to be translated in Lappish, to this very
day a great proportion of the race are pagans; and even
the most illuminated amongst them remain slaves to the
grossest superstition. When a couple is to be married,
if a priest happens to be in the way, they will send for
him perhaps out of complaisance; but otherwise, the young
lady's papa merely strikes a flint and steel together,
and the ceremony is not less irrevocably completed. When
they die, a hatchet and a flint and steel are invariably
buried with the defunct, in case he should find himself
chilly on his long journey - an unnecessary precaution,
many of the orthodox would consider, on the part of such
lax religionists. When they go boar-hunting - the most
important business in their lives - it is a sorcerer, with
no other defence than his incantations, who marches at
the head of the procession. In the internal arrangements
of their tents, it is not a room to themselves, but a
door to themselves, that they assign to their womankind;
for woe betide the hunter if a woman has crossed the
threshold over which he sallies to the chase; and for
three days after the slaughter of his prey he must live
apart from the female portion of his family in order to
appease the evil deity whose familiar he is supposed to
have destroyed. It would be endless to recount the
innumerable occasions upon which the ancient rites of
Jumala are still interpolated among the Christian
observances they profess to have adopted.
Their manner of life I had scarcely any opportunities of
observing. Our Consul kindly undertook to take us to one
of their encampments; but they flit so often from place
to place, it is very difficult to light upon them. Here
and there, as we cruised about among the fiords, blue
wreaths of smoke rising from some little green nook among
the rocks would betray their temporary place of abode;
but I never got a near view of a regular settlement.
In the summer-time they live in canvas tents: during
winter, when the snow is on the ground, the forest Lapps
build huts in the branches of trees, and so roost like
birds. The principal tent is of an hexagonal form, with
a fire in the centre, whose smoke rises through a hole
in the roof. The gentlemen and ladies occupy different
sides of the same apartment; but a long pole laid along
the ground midway between them symbolizes an ideal
partition, which I dare say is in the end as effectual
a defence as lath and plaster prove in more civilized
countries. At all events, the ladies have a doorway quite
to themselves, which, doubtless, they consider a far
greater privilege than the seclusion of a separate boudoir.
Hunting and fishing are the principal employments of the
Lapp tribes; and to slay a bear is the most honourable
exploit a Lapp hero can achieve. The flesh of the
slaughtered beast becomes the property - not of the man
who killed him, but of him who discovered his trail, and
the skin is hung up on a pole, for the wives of all who
took part in the expedition to shoot at with their eyes
bandaged. Fortunate is she whose arrow pierces the
trophy, - not only does it become her prize, but, in the
eyes of the whole settlement, her husband is looked upon
thence forth as the most fortunate of men. As long as
the chase is going on, the women are not allowed to stir
abroad; but as soon as the party have safely brought home
their booty, the whole female population issue from the
tents, and having deliberately chewed some bark of a
species of alder, they spit the red juice into their
husband's faces, typifying thereby the bear's blood which
has been shed in the honourable encounter.
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