Västerbotten [1]

The governor gave me a very curious piece of information about the clay among the sandhills. He said that it increases along with the waxing moon and decreases with the waning moon, so that if you dig while the moon is waxing you get clay, whereas when the moon is waning you get sand.

He said that the aurora borealis may be seen during the day and that, even in the day, it moves quickly in front of the clouds, expanding at one moment and contracting at the next.

25th. I found an ‘Ephemera cauda biseta’ [Mayfly] down by the shore.

As soon as I entered Vasterbotten, I noticed that all the people had a kind of short boot called “kängor” on their feet. At first I was convinced that they were clumsy but soon discovered that it was much easier to walk in them than in any other kind. What’s more, they do not let in water even if you wade in up to the ankle. Furthermore, unlike other boots, they do not have seams that burst and no buckles are necessary. They are suitable both as boots and as shoes, so that a ploughman does not need to buy boots for his work. The price of ordinary boots is at least 9 daler.

Norwegian boots are 5 daler, but these can be bought for only 2 daler. In fact, all the leather that is cut up to make boot-soles is saved here, since a thick sole of 3 or 4 layers of leather is unnecessary. Heels are not needed since nature, which no one has yet managed to improve on, has not given human beings high heels. And it is quite apparent that people here walk as lightly and nimbly in these “kängor” as they do in bare feet.

There were hundreds of common gulls – sky-blue in colour on the arable fields.

26th. I departed from Umeå in rainy weather that lasted all day, and I turned off west from the high road aiming for Lycksele Lappmark. I now lost the convenience I had had earlier of being able to requisition horses at the posthouses – a system that has to be reckoned as no small advantage to the travelling stranger here in Sweden. I was compelled to coax and beg for horses. The road became more and more horrible and I rode in mortal danger on a horse that stumbled over stones at every second step. I was travelling along by-ways where the devil himself could not have located me. I began to wish that I had a companion or, at least, had been on an ordinary highway, where the horse would have been welcome to bounce the heart out of my body. The people spoke a distinctly broken dialect and always dropped something off the adjective with which they ended their speech.

I did not see anything particularly interesting today except some sand by the river at GUBBÖLE, which is close to BRATTBY. The sand would be excellent for making casting-moulds.

In the evening I came to JӒMTEBÖLE where a number of women were sitting cutting the bark of aspen trees into thin strips. The bark is stripped when the tree is coming into leaf and stored under cover until the autunrm or the following spring, when it is cut up. It is then given to the cows, goats and sheep instead of hay, of which there is a great shortage since meadows here are, for the most part, bog. It is fed to the animals dry.

When I requested food in the evening, they set before me the breast of a capercaillie, shot last autumn and roasted then. It did not look particularly good and I did not expect it to taste any better, but I found quite the reverse, for it tasted delicious. I wondered at the foolishness of all those people who, when they have more fowl than they need, let it go bad – as often happens in Stockholm. I observed with pleasure how poverty is the best teacher of all when it comes to knowing how to use God’s good gifts. After the breast has been plucked, cleaned and separated from the the other parts, it is cut lengthwise on each side of the keel of the breastbone. Then it is salted with a little salt for a few days, after which the underside is sprinkled with some flour to prevent it sticking. Next, after they have been baking, they put it in the oven to dry slowly, and after that it is hung up under cover in an outhouse to dry. It is left there and keeps perfectly well even if it is stored for 3 years.

It rained so excessively that I could travel no further and was compelled to remain here for the night. The pillows on the bed were filled with reindeer hair instead of hay. On top of the sheet lay a reindeer skin with the hair still on it and facing upwards. I should lie very soft on this.

27th. In the morning I was delayed by rain until almost midday. I saw here ‘Salices arboreae glabrae’ [Goat Willow], the outer, smooth bark of which they peel off and use for tanning their leather. The rough bark lower down the trunk is unsuitable.

I set off on my way about noon and I must admit that, all the elements being against me, I have never met anything to equal it for difficulty. The road consisted of nothing but stone upon stone with great tree-roots tangled among them. There were deep holes between them, which both the rain and the frost that was thawing out of the ground were doing their best to fill. The twigs on the trees were laden with raindrops and hung in my eyes whichever way I turned. Wherever there were slender birch trees, they were bent so low that progress became utterly laborious. Long-lived pines that had towered over the other trees for any number of years had been cast hither and thither across the road by the fury of Juno.6 The bums that sometimes crossed my path were very deep and the bridges over them so rotten that crossing them on a stumbling horse put me in mortal peril. The road seemed beyond repair unless Bielke in Gävle was put in charge.7 Many people had earlier sought to persuade me that the journey to Lycksele was impossible in summer but I had comforted myself with Solomon’s words that nothing under the sun is impossible; now if ever, however, I found that my patience was in short supply. To add to these difficulties, I was sitting on a horse without a padded saddle and with a rope tied around its lower jawbone in place of a bridle.

Thus I rode to the mountains. At a number of places in the forest I came upon areas of heathland – RACKHEDEN, for instance – which were as flat as if laid out with a spirit level. They consisted of sandy soil on which pines grew rather patchily among ‘Erica’ [Heather] that covered the ground equally patchily.

In between there was ‘Muscus coralloides perforatus’ [Reindeer Moss], which the local inhabitants rake together into great piles in rainy weather when the moss is tough and carry home in winter as cattle fodder. These heaths were surrounded by something akin to ramparts, as steep as could be and 30 to 40 feet high, and getting up and down them along the course of the road was very heavy work. They seemed to have a good deal in common with the mountain that Alexander the Great climbed with such difficulty. On such heaths there often lay a second heath, equally barren and similarly shaped in every way. They seemed very like glacial ridges except that they had an even surface on top. They also differed in scale and in teing free from stones. These heaths were from 5 to 7 miles in extent.

The depressions between them were filled with water, rocks and bog etc. and full of spruce trees mixed with a few birches, all cloaked in ‘Usnea alba et nigra’ [beard mosses].