The Prefecture of Luleå [1]
The Lapps cook all their food well, feast on fat which they eat with a spoon, milk their reindeer twice a day, though each of them gives no more than 1/2 pint per milking at most.
The Lapps use birch bark for tanning. NB. They buy the hides from the farmers and tan them themselves. This leather is much wtter and softer than that which the farmers tan, but the farmers will not give up their old habits.
Various species of willow that I have already described were growing on the banks of the river and ornamenting it most beautifully. The forests were of pine and birch, smaller here than in Umeå Lappmark and mixed together, particularly in the hollows.
Dyers use a soaking solution of bearberry leaves, by which means they save a great deal of alum – many barrels of which are sold in Stockholm annually.
The Lapps and the people of Västerbotten boil the unripe fruits of alder – 10 to 12 of them, the dose depending on the age -and give the decoction to their children as a purgative.
There are a number of varieties of fox up here in Lappmark, the farther north the better.
- Black, the most valuable: 60 to 200 copper daler each. It is the headgear for State Counsellors in Russia and all the counsellors there own black fox hats.
- Fire Foxes, grey on the legs, sell at 60 daler.
- Cross Foxes, 18 to 24 daler, black across the hindquarters and shoulders and along the spine.
- Blue Foxes, 6 to 10 daler.
- Red Foxes, yellow in colour.
- White Foxes, 3 daler.
The biting gnat is a little mosquito, far smaller than any other mosquito, being about the size of a large flea and whitish grey or smoke coloured. It bites viciously and leaves behind a black patch the size of a big fleabite.
Just as in Umeä Lappmark, I saw here high sandy heaths sloping steeply down to the river. They were divided into sections, so to speak, by ditches that cut across them. The river had eaten away the sides so that the edge was often vertical and revealed strata of light-coloured sandy soil which, since it lies horizontally, I assume to have been scoured from the rocks in the mountains during the Flood. Now that the water has begun to subside, the main stream is following its usual course and the water in the secondary channel has dried up leaving small residual streams with gaps between them.
Halfway between SVARTLÅ and HARADS I once again came upon ‘Sceptrum Carol.’ [Moor-king], which was first discovered by Professor Rudbeck. It was growing in dry soil but had not flowered yet. Also ‘Ranunculus palustris novus’ [celandine].3
27th. There was excellent clay at Harads: blue and fairly fireproof. Also, not far from there, a rare iron-ore. In the arable land there was ‘Echoide’ [Bugloss] and ‘Equisetum tenuissimum in sylvis’ [Wood Horsetail].
On the bank at LAXEDE there was ‘Acetosa folio in medio deliquium patiente’ [Scottish Dock], but not in flower.
Straight across the river there was a pine which had markings to show how high the river reached each year and how, year by year, its height is diminishing. For example, in 1669 it rose 8 feet of vertical height more than this year, but in 1667 it was a foot higher still and has decreased annually since.
A short distance from here there was a mineral spring that carried a greater quantity of ochre than any of the others I had seen. Its taste was very astringent and a few people had used it to some small effect.
There was ‘Pingvicula’ [Common Butterwort] on the shore and ‘Juncus bombycinus, minimus’ [club-rush] everywhere.4
A black sand containing iron had been washed up on the banks.