The Mountains [1]

Whenever I gave my host a 2 foot twist of tobacco I received a cheese in exchange, ie. 6 fo 3 in terms of value.

In the mountains I saw a great deal of black, shattered stone containing alum.

The snow was furrowed, like a rippling stretch of water or a large bowl of white liquid disturbed by the wind.

All the people here were wearing coats made of reindeer fur.

Found 8 plants today.

All over the hillsides there were holes dug by red mice. Lemmings.

There are hares on the mountains and they are grey in summer.

No plant or tree is more than 6 inches tall up on the mountain tops, and scarcely 2 to 3 feet tall even down in the valleys.

Birch trees, which are however rare, creep under the earth and only show the tips of their branches above ground to a height of no more than 6 inches. Sometimes they also have a fragile, gnarled trunk, likewise bent low.

Throughout the evening and late into the night we searched for a “kåta” (“Gotti”) without finding one. All over the bog we saw reindeer tracks leading hither and thither. I had reached the stage where I could scarcely stand and was on the point of fainting away, so I lay down and was quite prepared to endure the cold of the storm rather than to walk any further. By and by, the Lapp who was guiding my servant and me happened to find reindeer droppings, which he took in his hands, squeezed, smelled and gave to the other to hold and smell – indeed, he even wanted to give them to me – and from these droppings he divined that the local Lapp had moved (ie. shifted his dwelling place), so we followed the tracks that showed up here and there in the snow. At last, 3 1/2 miles from there, we came upon the Lapp who had moved yesterday and I was able to rest.

9th. Tired by the previous journey, I remained there the next day, not daring to cross the ice while tired. It was also the Sabbath.

The ice in the lake near to this ice mountain freezes to the depth of a fathom.

I was told that fungi grow abundantly on the mountains in autumn.

There are no fish in the lake apart from char (“raudi”).

This fish is plentiful in these Lapp lakes. The flesh is red and tastes fine. They caught 50 of them in a couple of sweeps of the net and prepared a meal for me and for themselves:

a. the char was boiled fresh, but I could not eat it with any great relish as it was not sufficiently salted.