Jokkmokk [2]

A very fatty sort of sausage is made, usually without any meal in it. “Marfi” in Lappish. The liver, which is large, is boiled and eaten at once. The lungs are dried and salted a little and then eaten bit by bit; or they are simply dried and given to the dogs. The fatty intestines are split open, washed and cooked while still fresh; they taste good. The Lapps do not eat udders or testicles. The leg is skinned right down to the fetlock but they cannot get the hair off below that whatever methods they use or however hard they scrub, since the skin just comes off with it. Even when the foot is boiled the hair will not come out without taking the skin too. This is why the reindeer can kick through the snow. The hooves are thrown away.

The droppings are like small cow droppings in summer and like goat droppings in winter.

Reindeer get “korm”-maggots both in the nose and in the gums and when the animals begin to pant in spring the maggots come out through the nostrils. The ripe maggots on their backs are squeezed out to stop them eating the deer and irritating too much. The maggots do not actually live in the flesh but between the skin and the connective tissue; in spring they leave open holes just as they do on cows.

The Lapp never goes barefoot and never wears stockings; instead, he uses hay. He buys his leather from farmers.

Meat is boiled in water without anything added and the juice is then drunk.

Jumo-milk is delicious all the year round.

Berries of all sorts are boiled in milk, though some are stored uncooked in small casks and tubs.

They make an excellent job of cooking powan over a low fire so that it does not become tasteless, and they drink the juice. Fresh fish are roasted and some (rarely) are salted and dried. (Meat is not cooked so well; it does not come off the bone.)

Meat is hung in the chimney and thus dried simultaneously by the wind, sun, fire and smoke.

They never eat more than one course, see 5th July.

Lapp women who want something delicious to eat mix “kappi” and soft whey-cheese (which is whey boiled until it goes as thick as porridge) and mix it with cream.

Soft whey-cheese is sold by the pan in Medelpad. In Dalarna and Medelpad some people keep their cattle 80 to 100 miles away in the mountains because there are wasps and mat-grass low down. They have milking booths up there. When cheese is being made, the whey is boiled and rendered down by 2/3 until it goes like porridge. This is sometimes eaten as butter, sometimes a little of it is mixed in with dough, sometimes it is used in other ways.

The wind in the mountains is often so strong that it is impossible to stand and both people and sledges are blown over. A whole window was blown in onto the floor at the manse.

The Lappish spear is a staff with a ferrule and a 4-sided spike fixed to the wood at the bottom end. When the Lapp is tired he leans his arms and nose on it and rests.

The Forest Lapps shoot well, the Mountain Lapps less so, though they get a fair number of squirrels with their bows in winter.

In winter they go hunting for their most bitter enemy, the wolf. The wolf kills a considerable number of reindeer – as many as 20 or 30 – if they come within his reach (it depends on how far the reindeer roam away from the “kåta”). The Lapp flees unless he is able to shoot. Bears rarely take reindeer for the latter are able to run away unless the bear creeps up on them. But the bear does a good deal of damage to the Lapps’ storehouses and to the rock-crevices where they keep many of their things, for he hurls everything all over the place.