Jokkmokk [2]
The wolverine is even worse for the storehouses but is no trouble to reindeer.
Men’s work. Making sledges and other wooden items for travelling. Chopping wood in the forest to make the charcoal which the Lapps take with them to the mountains.
The womenfolk make clothes for the whole household.
Games. The children make pretend antlers from dwarf-birch twigs and butt each other with them. Build huts and small “kåtor” with stones. Adults hit a good ball but do it too rarely; play blind man’s buff; finger wrestle.
The Mountain Lapps are much more jolly and good-natured than the Forest Lapps who are wilder, roguish, taught by townspeople etc. and deceitful. The Mountain Lapps live in villages, the Forest Lapps do not.
They have no musical instruments apart from horns and rowan-bark whistles.
They do not sing in church, apart from those who have been taught.
A reindeer does not have identical horns every year. The points are often deformed, which is caused by them scratching them with their feet when they itch, for the antlers are as soft as fresh fish while they are growing.
The Lapps do not suffer from frostbite any more than anyone else; their cheeks are inured to frost.
The women wear embroidered headbands whereas the men have a detachable brim which they pull down around the crown of their caps.
“Spetto” is a game played among the Lapps by both men and women. They take 30 or 50 or 60 sticks, each about a hand’s breadth long, and spread them on a reindeer hide. Then one person takes a stone or marble ball the size of a jewstone and throws it 2 feet or so into the air. While it is in the air he picks up a stick from the hide, but he must catch the ball as it falls in the same hand that is holding the stick. In his other hand he now collects 8 more sticks as his winnings. When he misses, the other person takes the ball and throws it in the same way and his opponent has to hand over sticks until he has none left. The winner is the one who gets all the sticks.
Rules:
- If a player catches the ball but does not pick up a stick or vice versa then the turn passes to the other.
- Anyone who picks up more than one stick must pass the turn to the other.
- When a losing player has to lay out the sticks he has in his hand, he may lay out as many as he likes and how he likes. The most common and difficult way is to lay them on top of each other, for then the other player has to knock them apart or spread them out with his hand as well as pick one up – and that is difficult.
- At the end, when all the sticks are won, the losing player lays out the last 2 sticks far apart and the leader has to pick up both with his last throw or pass the turn over to the other. Thus, the game is often lost because of the last 2 sticks.
- When a player makes a mistake, the person who has just laid out keeps all the sticks which are lying on the playing area, even those he lost and laid out himself. The sticks that are in a player’s hand should immediately be laid out so that they may be won again by skill, but those that are already laid out may be taken by the rules of the game and do not have to be won again by skill.
They chew the middle layer of the bark of alder and rub the spittle into hides.
White woollen homespun from Russia, or pale-grey if need be.
The Lapp does his tanning with birch-bark but does not tan for too long as he says that that makes the leather fragile. Nor does he have sufficient time.
“Missne”-bread is not used as much as bark-bread.