Lycksele Lappmark

They lay their children in oblong leather cradles without a thread of linen around them. Instead, they place dried ‘Sphagnum, molle. palustre’ [moss] around them and, inside that, reindeer hair.13 This protects them against the most extreme cold.

It is noteworthy that ‘Tormentilla’ [Tormentil] always grew in boggy ground here. The people chew its roots together with the inner bark of alder and then rub the spittle into hides; this makes the red dye with which their harness, straps, belts, gloves etc. are coloured.

Great forests of pine stand desolate and purposeless because, since no one needs the timber, it simply falls down and rots away. It is worth asking whether it would be worthwhile making tar and pitch from it. The answer is that the great distance involved would render the effort unprofitable, but this matter should be decided by an expert. More could be produced here than in the whole of the rest of Sweden. Would it not be possible to transport it the 130 miles in winter?

They have no idea how to take advantage of juiuper berries in the way Munday describes, though junipers only grow here in a small way and, interestingly, always in waterlogged ground.

They thought it incredible when I showed them how pine brushwood could be used to produce a schnaps they could wash their water down with. Nor do they produce any liquor from birch sap; water alone is sufficient for them.

Night was not the least bit darker than day as far as I could see; it was just that the sun was absent.

The unfortunate Lapps complained about the day of compulsory church attendance in the spring. They often had to cross the river at risk to their lives, even wading half-dead and up to their arms in water at a time of year when the ice was neither safe to cross nor broken up, otherwise they would be fined 10 silver daler and have to do 3 Sundays penance. This is far too harsh.

The Lapps only eat twice a day, often only once, and then niostly in the evening.

On the river banks, where traces are to be found of everything that exists up in the mountains, I found silver ore.

5th June. On the hills by the edge of the river I found a plant that has not been observed in Sweden before. The flowers were not yet in bloom but were ready to come out in a few days. I opened them and found that the flowers were butterfly-like, the tip of the standard was reddish, as was also the keel, which (it should be noted) was forked. Its whole appearance told me that it was an Astragalus and I was confirmed in this by last year’s pods that were very similar to that. I therefore called it ‘Liquiritis minor’ [Alpine Milk-vetch].

At last, after having starved so cruelly, I reached the parson’s house and got some food. I had been without bread and drink for 4 days, without cooked food, without liquid food, with nothing but a little salted reindeer, which my stomach could neither tolerate nor digest, and fish, which I could not eat to save my life as it was riddled with maggots.

The parson here had caught powan that were 5 hands in length, which is remarkable. The powan is interesting in that it spawns at Michaelmas at Lycksele church, at Christmas up in the mountains, and step by step at intervals up the river between. Up there the little powan spawns under the ice at Christmas whereas in Småland it spawns at Michaelmas.

Reindeer milk is excellent for cheese since a large quantity of cheese can be got from one churn of reindeer milk. For that reason, those who own cows often mix it together with cow’s milk and that way they get much more cheese than they would otherwise.

It is very harmful to the reindeer if autumn snow falls, melts and then re-freezes so that the reindeer moss gets frozen. They get their winter feeding almost exclusively from ‘Coralloides montium’ [Reindeer Moss] and, if they cannot get it, they die since they do not eat hay. The Lapps chop down trees so that the reindeer can eat ‘Usnea arborea’ [beard moss] but this is not particularly suited to their stomachs.14 I was amazed at how the reindeer are able to reach their food through the deep snow that falls here.

Reindeer eat frogs, snakes and even Lemures [Lemmings], which they will often chase so far that the deer are unable to find their way home again. This happened some years ago when lemmings came down from the mountains in large numbers.

The pike spawn here as soon as the ice breaks up.