12th. The forests are of birch or of spruce mixed with pine. Juniper is uncommon. The plants in the forest flourish and reach a great height.
Berries are plentiful on ‘Labrusca’ [Stone Bramble], ‘Vaccinium’ [blaeberry etc.], ‘Mesomora’ [Dwarf Cornel], ‘Empetrum’ [Crowberry] and ‘Chamaemorus’ [Cloudberry].
‘Sceptrum C.’ [Moor-king] was growing everywhere along the king’s highway.
Most of the fences here are made of poles set on the diagonal or horizontal.
The houses are smoky cottages- called “pörten”, in which there is no hearth, only a stove. There is, admittedly, a sort of wooden pipe in the ceiling but it is rarely opened as they think it will be warmer if the smoke goes out of the door. They think they would freeze if they had chimneys – which seems to me to be somewhat erroneous reasoning. Would it not be better to have chimneys and reasonable warmth rather than the heat of a bath-house and blind and weeping eyes, a black and sooty cottage and the necessity of lying on the floor – and even making the beds on the floor – since smoke is blowing all around? It seems likely that just as much cold comes in through the door as through the chimney. They are, in fact, so afraid of losing the heat that they will not risk having windows and have small apertures instead. Thus, like owls, they love the darkness. I looked in through one of these window holes and it was utterly black inside the house although there were both adults and children within. I could see nothing but 2 eyes glowing like a devil in a jug but, when I looked more closely, it was just a jug. I was tempted to classify them as one of those species that give off their own light. I know that when the farmers in Småland light their stoves they get such a heat that they roast in spite of the chimney. Sticks are burnt here, as in Småland. I can never believe that such excessive heat in the winter here, where it is so extremely cold, can be good for the health. The Christmas poles here are 4 feet long.1 There is no bed since they lie on the floor and they usually sleep in the outhouses in summer. There are benches around the inside of the cottages, the table is in the corner, the stove in the opposite corner.
Since it would be hazardous to light fires in such houses during the summer, they have a separate building in which they cook. This is built of stone and is like a Lapp “kåta” except that it is 3 times as high and twice as wide. It does not, however, have a roof, though it is covered with straw and split fence posts like a wood-stack. In this they cook and distil their spirits. They build their brewing houses like those to be seen at some inns: that is to say, with a curbed roof, high but not particularly wide and supported by a beam.
The people suffered a severe crop failure last year so they chop the chaff and the top of the straw as finely as they can, grind it and bake bread from it. Some bake the bark of pine trees.
The fields in which rye was sown this autumn were all green but the winter rye sown last year was still uncut.
They do not put the sheaves on frames but stand 10 of them together leaning at an angle with the ears of one sheaf covering those of the next. Afterwards they take them into drying kilns which have stone-slab ovens and look exactly like bath-houses.
The stops or latches to hold the doors open or closed are quite different from those used in Småland. There they rest on the floor and move backwards and forwards, here they are fixed to the edge of the door at mid-height and twist around.
The cookhouses here have built-in cauldrons for the boiling of horse dung for use as cattle fodder; also to heat the water they use to pour on the reindeer moss they give the cattle. Pork and salmon are smoked high up inside. But the milk takes on a repulsive taste.
In winter they work in the “pörten” with the window-holes open. So that it will still stay warm even with the windows open, they close the doors. They keep fires going unless the weather is overcast.
In Torneå they turn the earth with a spade and never use a plough. Likewise in Kemi, where only the ground intended for rye is worked with a plough.
In Kemi a whole dinner service of 5 or 6 plates with spoons, napkins etc. is laid for just 1 or 2 people, – for such is their custom. The inn provides a fixed-price meal.
I found ‘Salicaria foliis alternis, gradualibus, floribus in alis singulis’ [Purple Loosestrife] at the dean’s house in Kemi.
I had intended to travel around Österbotten a little but when I arrived at the inn I could get neither horse nor food since they did not understand me – nor did they want to understand me. I therefore travelled back from…[gap in manuscript] on the 12th August.