Luleå Lappmark [2]

28th. Today I found ‘Pseudo-helleborina’ [Creeping Lady’s Tresses].

The fire kindled by Thor some days ago was now running wild in the Lappland forest, especially since it has been so dry.10 In many places – 9 or 10 – we saw how the forest fire had travelled many miles. I traversed an area where it had burnt for 5 miles and I observed how Flora bore black raiment in place of her green and luxuriant garb. It seemed to me crueller than the white of winter for, though the latter destroys the stem, it leaves the root unharmed – which the fire does not. We walked where the fire had almost died out except in the ant-hills and dry tree-trunks. After we had walked 3/4 of a mile, a slight breeze rose and all at once there was a cracking and crashing in the forest as though from the troops of some great army when the enemy opens fire. We did not know which way to turn: because of the smoke we could not stay where we were, but nor did we dare go back. We thought that by going on we should soon come to the end of it, but there we were mistaken. We leaped around trees that we could see were about to fall in our path. A couple of times they fell in an instant and we came to a startled stop and placed ourselves in the hands of the Being of Beings. On one occasion a large tree crashed down between myself and my companion who was walking no more than 2 yards behind me, hut by the providence of Almighty God both of us escaped unharmed. How happy we were when, free as birds, we were released from this terror of Cain!

Earlier we had been badly attacked by mosquitoes but now a very small kind of fly appeared in great numbers.

They were particularly troublesome because they crawled all over the face and entered the nose, mouth and eyes. When they were about to bite they did not budge however hard one blew at them. “Mockere” in Lappish, very small head. Called “knort” by the Swedes. They covered linen clothes in such enormous numbers that they made them completely black and it was impossible to brush them off.

I visited LAXHOLMEN, where they were still catching salmon – barbed salmon among them. I asked whether barbed salmon were a distinct species or merely differed in age. Both were denied. They showed me quite small salmon which, in proportion, had barbs just as big as the largest, so Bonge was wrong in that respect in his dissertation on salmon.11 I asked whether barbed salmon had roe or milt. They replied that it was always milt, whereas the unbarbed fish always have roe not milt. I had 7 barbed salmon opened and all had milt whereas 4 non-barbed salmon all had roe.

The salmon fishermen come up here about a fortnight before Midsummer and remain here until St Bartholomew’s Day. That is how long the salmon are running up-river and after that the fishermen leave. Few salmon return down-river since few of them are able to escape. The fishermen come back at Michaelmas when a smaller sort of salmon arrives.

Today I saw them cutting barley that was sown a few days before Midsummer, it now being ripe. The spring rye was not yet being cut as it is not ripe. Winter rye, however, ripens a little before the barley. Barley, therefore, grows and ripens up here in 60 days.

I picked the berries of ‘Rubus fragariae folio’ [Arctic Bramble] and they were delicious; they tasted like blackberries though rather more pleasing. They do not shed their calyx like other brambles. The berries are somewhere halfway between stone brambles and raspberries, composite, dark purple-red in colour and the size of stone bramble.

Here and there there was ‘Erica’ [Heather] looking as if it had been clipped; very handsome and beautiful.

The water in the watercourses was beginning to fall or diminish and, as it became clearer, the fish became more difficult to catch.

This year there was hardly any ‘Carex’ [sedge] to be found that did not have fungus disease on the ears: i.e. small, black, globular corpuscules that crumble into dust.