Linnaeus' Lapland Journey (1732)

A little further on I saw 2 young owls hanging up and I asked the reason why. The farmers showed me hollow wooden cylinders fixed right at the top of the tallest pines. These had both ends covered and a hole in the side. They were intended for ducks to lay eggs in so that the farmers could take the eggs. In this case they had got young owls instead of ducklings.

I was given breast of ‘capercaillie’ to eat but without the keel bone that the last one had. It had been shot in the spring and dried in the sun without being cooked. It was meant to be eaten uncooked.

Farther on we saw 7 or 8 large white swans calling and snapping as they swam on the water. There are also cranes here and the oarsman had shot one and nailed it up on the wall with all its flesh and feathers still on. What a stupid thing to do.

My oarsman – a farmer – had nets set out along the whole route and he had caught plenty of pike. He had as many as 30 small nets and his prime source of taxable income came from fishing. 18 lbs of dried pike sells for 1 silver daler and 5 öre.

In one net he had caught a male goosander.

Lycksele Lappmark

The river, which we had soon been following for 20 miles and which had been easily navigable, had occasionally provided us with the challenge of small rapids. Finally, however, we came to 3 sets of rapids quite close together and impossible to pass by boat. The farmer handed me my things, put his knapsack on his back and, placing the oars across the thwarts so that they could rest on his arms, turned the boat upside down over his head and ran with it thus over hill and dale so fast that the devil himself would have been hard pressed to keep up. One of these sets of rapids was called TUKENFORS.

Ice lay on the ground here and there, though there was no great quantity of it.

The forest was resplendent with beautiful birch foliage. Because of the rain last Saturday and also because of the wonderful sunshine yesterday and today, the foliage was more advanced than anywhere I had seen so far.

The river bank was composed of sand or pebbles. The pebbles contained spar and were completely blackened by the water.

1 3/4 miles before we reached the church, we came to the fourth set of rapids, more violent than any of the earlier ones because it plunged over a cliff. On one side the parson had …. [gap in manuscript] … there was a mill set into the actual hillside. There had been no need to build either a dam or a channel since nature had been kind enough to provide them. The hill was composed of mixed spar. Over to the right, the hill closed in and at one place it became very high, forming a vertical precipice that faced the water like the wall of a very tall castle.

As we approached the rapids a number of largish islands came into sight out in the torrent.

30th. At 8 o’clock in the evening I arrived at the home of Ola Gran the parson in Lycksele who, with his wife, received me kindly and was solicitous about my well-being. They also persuaded me to remain with them until the next day of obligation, since the Lapps were not to be relied on and are likely enough to resort to the gun if anyone comes to them without prior warning. But, fearing the arrival of the spring spate (and perhaps the expense), they changed their minds in the morning.

There were numerous small fish close to the river bank in Lycksele. The river is divided into “selar”, i.e. navigable sections between “forsar”, i.e. rapids or narrows. Starting from Granön and counting the length of them in miles, these are:

The pasture-land at the parsonage was rather poor though it was excellent only 1 3/4 miles away where, it is worth noting, the butter is yellower than in other places – it is quite reddish, in fact, or saffron yellow. I asked which plant was the most common among those that grow there and they described and named it. From their description I sketched ‘Melampyrum’ [Common Cow-wheat]. They said that that was the very plant and that it grows abundantly in the forest thereabouts.