The weather was pleasant, which foretells a good harvest according to the common people.
25th. At the end of the church service on Sunday I left Luleå for Luleå Lappmark. The LULE river.
The salmon is said to spend the winter in the Western Sea and then to ascend gradually up-river each spring to spawn. It starts at the river mouth no earlier than the middle of May and is here by Midsummer etc. I was shown hooks that had been found in them that resemble those in use over in the west.
I found ‘Subularia’ [Awlwort], ‘Melampyrum novum’ [Common Cow-wheat] and ‘Pedicularis alba’ [Marsh Lousewort] in SUNDERBY.
The white moss from the bogs is pulverised for use on children with raw skin.
From a sandbank in the Lule river I got a piece of sandstone containing 3 percent iron.
26th. ‘Gramen paleac.’ [Mountain Melick], ‘Tetrahit’ [Common Hempnettle] called “dån” in Västerbotten, ‘Geranium flore pallide’ [Wood Cranesbill] at Bredåker, ‘Conyza’ [Blue Fleabane], ‘Millefol. purp.’ [Yarrow], ‘Cirsium’ [Melancholy Thistle].
The Lapps cook all their food well, feast on fat which they eat with a spoon, milk their reindeer twice a day, though each of them gives no more than 1/2 pint per milking at most.
The Lapps use birch bark for tanning. NB. They buy the hides from the farmers and tan them themselves. This leather is much wtter and softer than that which the farmers tan, but the farmers will not give up their old habits.
Various species of willow that I have already described were growing on the banks of the river and ornamenting it most beautifully. The forests were of pine and birch, smaller here than in Umeå Lappmark and mixed together, particularly in the hollows.
Dyers use a soaking solution of bearberry leaves, by which means they save a great deal of alum – many barrels of which are sold in Stockholm annually.
The Lapps and the people of Västerbotten boil the unripe fruits of alder – 10 to 12 of them, the dose depending on the age -and give the decoction to their children as a purgative.
There are a number of varieties of fox up here in Lappmark, the farther north the better.
- Black, the most valuable: 60 to 200 copper daler each. It is the headgear for State Counsellors in Russia and all the counsellors there own black fox hats.
- Fire Foxes, grey on the legs, sell at 60 daler.
- Cross Foxes, 18 to 24 daler, black across the hindquarters and shoulders and along the spine.
- Blue Foxes, 6 to 10 daler.
- Red Foxes, yellow in colour.
- White Foxes, 3 daler.
The biting gnat is a little mosquito, far smaller than any other mosquito, being about the size of a large flea and whitish grey or smoke coloured. It bites viciously and leaves behind a black patch the size of a big fleabite.
Just as in Umeä Lappmark, I saw here high sandy heaths sloping steeply down to the river. They were divided into sections, so to speak, by ditches that cut across them. The river had eaten away the sides so that the edge was often vertical and revealed strata of light-coloured sandy soil which, since it lies horizontally, I assume to have been scoured from the rocks in the mountains during the Flood. Now that the water has begun to subside, the main stream is following its usual course and the water in the secondary channel has dried up leaving small residual streams with gaps between them.