Lycksele Lappmark

Some of them suffer from asthma and epilepsy. One woman had a prolapse of the uvula, from which her husband cut away a piece but it grew back after a year. Prolapse of the uterus.

Many of them have sharp pains or rheumatic aches in the back around the hips both summer and winter, and these pains often move from the upper parts down into the leg-bones.

Eventually we had to leave the main course of the Ume river and follow a different one called the Jukta that branched off on the right about 27 miles from Lycksele church. It is impossible to determine measurements with certainty as the Lapps know nothing of them.

The Lapps no longer shoot with the bow but with rifle and ball; not, however, with buckshot.

I saw that the cowberry bushes were larger up here than farther south whereas juniper, which grows here mainly in bogs and waterlogged places, was smaller. Crowberries are the same size as blaeberries.

Dried fish, cheese, clothes, utensils, pots etc. are hung outside the “kåta”, under a roof but without walls and consequently without locks.

They do not use stockings but their trousers, which taper down the leg, reach right down to the foot and are fitted around the boot and tied with thongs. Their trousers are made of woollen homespun.

Finally we came to a long set of rapids and had to leave the boat and go overland in search of a Lapp who lived 7 miles away. We walked over hills and past springs, along paths and through valleys. ‘Empetrum’ [Crowberry] and heather covered the hillsides and snared our feet, as did the trees fallen lengthwise and crosswise – that we had to scramble over. In the bogs we were hindered by bog moss that gave way underfoot and by ‘Betula nana’ [Dwarf Birch] that tripped us up.

Some of the pine trees had witch’s broomsticks in their topmost branches.

Eventually we came to a creek that branched off the river. We had to wade across this up to our navels in cold water. When we reached the middle, there was a section so deep that our longest pole scarcely reached the bottom. We had to lay a pole across underwater and walk along it in mortal danger. I was in no doubt that I was involved in a dangerous undertaking at that moment.

There was shaly rock, grey and brittle and containing much loess, on the hill nearby.

Immediately after that the bogs began, most of them covered with water. Imagine the toil of walking through that for 7 miles! At every step the water reached our knees, even higher if we were unable to step on tussocks. Sometimes the depth was bottonaless and we had to make a diversion round the whole area. Our boots were full of cold water, for there was still frost in the ground in some places. If I had been enduring all this for the sake of some mortal sin, the punishment would still have been harsh – so what can I say in this case? I wished I had never undertaken this journey. Worse still, all the elements were against us, for it was raining and it was windy. I was amazed that I survived that journey, and I was utterly exhausted. After we had searched everywhere in vain for the new Lapp, we sat down, it being 6 o’clock in the morning, wrung out our wet clothes and dried our bodies, though the cold north wind hurt us as much on one side as the fire burned us on the other, while mosquitoes bit us on both sides. Now I had had my fill of travelling. The whole of this Lapp country was bog, which is why I called it the Styx.9 No priest has ever painted Hell so vile that this does not exceed it, no poet described a Styx so foul that this does not eclipse it. I have reached the Styx. We were travelling into wild territory, without knowing whither. The Lapp who lived closest to this place – and he had not visited this district for 20 years – set off to seek out the local Lapp while I rested by the fire. There was nothing I desired more than to be able to travel back down the river, but the route back to the boat filled me with fear for I knew that my body was not made of iron and steel. I wished it had been possible to walk back to the boat, even as much as 60 or 70 miles as long as it was dry road, but there was no chance of that. The Lapps, who are born to hardship as birds are to flight, complained that they had never been in such a bad way, and I commiserated with them.

There was a bog (called Lycksmire since a stream flows from there to Lycksele – why not call it Bad Lycksmire?) which was full of ochre and had a film on the water. There should, therefore, be bog-ore present there for iron.

3rd June. We waited well into the day, until almost 2 o’clock in the afternoon, for the Lapp we had sent out. He returned at last quite exhausted from having visited so many habitations in vain. With him came a person, whether it was a naan or a woman I could not tell. I do not believe that any poet has depicted a Fury so precisely as to compete with this one; there was good reason to believe that she had come from the Styx. She seemed very small, her face was blackish brown from smoke, her eyes were brown and shining, her eyebrows black, her hair pitch-black and hanging down round her head, on which there sat a red, flat cap. She wore a grey kirtle and long, limp, brown paps hung from her chest where the skin resembled that of a frog. But she wore brass bangles, a belt around her waist and Lapp boots on her feet. At my first sight of her I was terrified.

The Fury herself, however, spoke to me gently and with compassion.

“O you poor man! What harsh circumstances of fate have driven you where no one has ventured hitherto and where I have never before seen strangers? You poor man, how did you come here and what do you want? Do you not see the dwellings we have? Do you not see what toil it is for us to go to church?”