There are no settlers beyond this point.
We landed in order to rest for a while at a cabin. A father killed his daughter here a year ago to prevent his son-in-law from inheriting.
There was a very cold wind from the north today.
More than 12 sets of bull-reindeer antlers were hanging in a tree beside a hut.
Among the diseases of the Lapps is “ullem” or colic, as I mentioned earlier. They use soot, tobacco, powdered salt and various other things against it but it often afflicts them so badly that they crawl around.
Some of them suffer from asthma and epilepsy. One woman had a prolapse of the uvula, from which her husband cut away a piece but it grew back after a year. Prolapse of the uterus.
Many of them have sharp pains or rheumatic aches in the back around the hips both summer and winter, and these pains often move from the upper parts down into the leg-bones.
Eventually we had to leave the main course of the Ume river and follow a different one called the Jukta that branched off on the right about 27 miles from Lycksele church. It is impossible to determine measurements with certainty as the Lapps know nothing of them.
The Lapps no longer shoot with the bow but with rifle and ball; not, however, with buckshot.
I saw that the cowberry bushes were larger up here than farther south whereas juniper, which grows here mainly in bogs and waterlogged places, was smaller. Crowberries are the same size as blaeberries.
Dried fish, cheese, clothes, utensils, pots etc. are hung outside the “kåta”, under a roof but without walls and consequently without locks.
They do not use stockings but their trousers, which taper down the leg, reach right down to the foot and are fitted around the boot and tied with thongs. Their trousers are made of woollen homespun.
Finally we came to a long set of rapids and had to leave the boat and go overland in search of a Lapp who lived 7 miles away. We walked over hills and past springs, along paths and through valleys. ‘Empetrum’ [Crowberry] and heather covered the hillsides and snared our feet, as did the trees fallen lengthwise and crosswise – that we had to scramble over. In the bogs we were hindered by bog moss that gave way underfoot and by ‘Betula nana’ [Dwarf Birch] that tripped us up.
Some of the pine trees had witch’s broomsticks in their topmost branches.
Eventually we came to a creek that branched off the river. We had to wade across this up to our navels in cold water. When we reached the middle, there was a section so deep that our longest pole scarcely reached the bottom. We had to lay a pole across underwater and walk along it in mortal danger. I was in no doubt that I was involved in a dangerous undertaking at that moment.
There was shaly rock, grey and brittle and containing much loess, on the hill nearby.