‘Agaricus pedis eqvini facie’ [bracket fungus] grew on walls like pin-cushions.
As protection against the rain the people used a collar made of birch-bark fastened around their necks with a pin.
The womenfolk washed the floors by placing their right foot on a brush made of dry spruce-twigs and scrubbing back and forth with it.
I was given “missne”, which is ‘Trifolium aquaticum’ [Bogbean]. They grind it and mix it in with dough for bread or boil it with berries into a pure, but it is bitter. The root of the plant is the part they use.
I went in a Lapp boat part of the way and I shall describe it farther on.
When they are short of tobacco, the farmers smoke hop-buds, juniper berries or juniper bark. For snuff, they use ashes mixed together with just a little snuff.
The women sieve the milk through flat mats made from the hair from cows’ tails.
I arrived at TEGSNӒSET in the evening. It belongs to the parish of Umeå, so the people have a considerable journey of 45 miles to get to church. To get there, they have to set off on Friday morning and are thus unable to attend except on the days of obligation and sometimes at Whitsun, Christmas and Easter. What would it cost to build a small church? The authorities have a responsibility before God in this matter! Timber for the purpose was provided in the days of the late Abraham Lidelius but has now rotted, for the clergy sometimes have their difficulties – not that they are particularly great.
28th. I journeyed from Tegsnäset to GRANÖN but, as I was to go by boat from there to Lycksele and it was very windy, I had to wait until the following day. I did not get here, in any case, until 9 o’clock and then had to wait until 11 o’clock as the people had gathered for prayers and homilies. I could not set off as it was a good 35 miles to Lycksele and there was no farm to rest at on the way.
The farmer here had shot a small beaver and I questioned him as to what beavers eat. The answer was the bark of birch, pine and rowan but, for preference, aspen bark. If the beaver can get a plentiful supply of this, its castor gland grows bigger. This fact is confirmed by Assessor Rothman, who had earlier expressed the opinion that the substance from which beaver castor is produced is the middle layer of the bark of the aspen tree and that the latter has the same smell though it is not so strong. A decoction of that bark ought, therefore, to have the same effect, if a large enough dose is taken.
Beaver meat is eaten like that of hare or squirrel, which are, indeed, of the same family. The Romans in ancient times ate mice as a great delicacy, see Munday. Beaver is boiled, rarely roasted. The tail is thrown away, the feet are eaten and the skin is taken off and stretched. It is worth 12 daler. Beaver castor costs half a daler per mark. I was given a piece of cooked beaver but I did not find it to my taste since it had not even been slightly salted.
The beaver is capable of chopping down even the biggest aspen tree with its teeth and I know of no other animal that can do that: it is thus superior to all other animals with regard to the power of its bite.
29th. I left Granön very early in a “håp”, that is, a small boat, which I shall describe below, on the western branch of the Ume river, for the Ume river is composed of two branches which join up at GRESILE 13 miles from Umeå. One branch comes from Lycksele and the other from Sorsele (NB. so they claim). We travelled on the western branch to Lycksele.
It was a great joy in the sunrise to look into the still waters of the river undisturbed as they were either by the currents of the naiads or by the wheezing of Aeolus, and to see how the forest on both sides was reflected back to the traveller as a subterranean realm in the water. Great heaths, ornamented with shrubbery, lay on both sides, dipping steeply to the river bank and revealing a landscape in the water – a landscape that was steep and sloped away from us like some subterranean earth. The tall pines that still defied Neptune cast deceptive shadows in the water, though he and his brother Aeolus had already triumphed over many of them: Neptune had eaten away their roots and Aeolus thrown down their crowns.17
There were a number of small islands here – KALNӒSHOLMEN etc. – that the current had cut off from the shore.
A number of ‘Charadrii’ [Little Ringed Plovers], ‘Hiaticulae’ [Ringed Plovers] and ‘Tringae’ [Sandpipers] were running around close to the river-bank and an attempt was made to shoot one with ball. We succeeded to the extent that we were left with a wing and a foot, the rest being so smashed and dismembered that I found it impossible to tell the species.