Some people make rennet by removing the rennet stomachs from reindeer calves that die in winter. Milk is then poured into them and they are hung up to dry ready for use.
Lapp Medicines:
Their “moxa” is a fine, crumbling wood-powder taken from the south side of birch trees. An amount the size of a pea is placed on the sore place, ignited with a birch twig and allowed to burn away gradually. It is placed where the pain is worst and the treatment is often repeated two or three times. This causes sores which often remain open for six months but which must not be treated, being left instead to heal of their own accord. It is used against all pains; headaches, stings, stomach aches, gouty and rheumatic pains etc. It is the universal remedy among the Lapps, which is why they call it “the little doctor”.
“Kattie” is a poultice or drawing plaster. Good, soft birch bark is burned, placed immediately in water, and then chewed just as is done when they intend to use it for glueing stoneware pots. Then it is mixed with fresh spruce resin and worked with the hands into a black plaster. It is excellent for putting on hard boils etc., which then open very quickly and become soft quite painlessly.
They tie their glazed pots together with string when they get broken and then boil them in fresh milk, after which they hold together again.
The grass they use in their shoes is ‘Carex Pseudocyperus spicis plurimis angustis. dependentibus’ [Bottle Sedge].
Ointment for bums. Fresh cream is boiled until it thickens and then it is spread on the wound. It takes away all the pain and heals excellently.
Dog fat is also used against backache. It is applied close to the fire.
Against toothache: the Lappish “moxa”.
The Lapps do not use razors, just scissors. They never have their hair cut but they do trim it a little sometimes. No washerwomen. Beaver castor is a panacea for them, as is bear gall.
5th. We travelled to KVIKKJOKK and on the way there we had to make a portage (called “mörker” by the people of Umeå, “murki” by the Lapps), during which I saw an abundance of ‘Thalactrum minimum’ [Alpine Meadow-rue] on the shore. ‘Sceptrum Carolinum’ [Moor-king] was in flower on the bank, as was ‘Aconitum luridum’ [Northern Wolfsbane], ‘Juncus palustris calamo trifido’ [Three-leaved Rush] and ‘Viola lutea florens’ [Yellow Wood-violet].
Immediately after that I saw a long and fairly high mountain on the right-hand side. It was called KASSEVARE and was composed of dirty schistose rock on which there lay pure alum; see Bromell.6
In the immediate vicinity lay TAWEVARE, a mountain with two streams that descended all the way down from the summit.
“Kappa-tialmas” or “kappi” is a Lappish dish. When the reindeer milk that is to be made into cheese gets warm and before the rennet is added, a skin forms on it. This is skimmed off with a spoon, put into a reindeer bladder or into a psalterium, hung up on the wall to dry, and then eaten. This is a delicacy to them and berries are often mixed into it.
Cloudberries, mashed up and mixed with reindeer milk, is another of their dishes and it tastes good.
Reindeer milk gives twice as much cheese as any other milk, if not more. Butter is rarely made and, when they do make it, they do not use the cream as it does not set well. They use the milk itself, whisked in a bowl. It goes white.