IV
sharply outlined in all this thick vapor, like an oasis in hell. Hell came to mind since it was near sunset and clouds took on a burning glow from the sun.They glided over and under and behind each other, changing from black and gray to the wildest fire red. It was as if you looked out over an endless swamp and down into a bottomless abyss and the fire was everywhere. It could make you grow uneasy, standing on your small patch of ground—as if you inhabited an extinct world, where, at the same time, evil was on the move. IV Not until July was the tent moved to a more sheltered spot. You had to be prepared well in advance for the autumn storms.In particular,everyone built a hedge of birch trees around their tent, a couple of meters off, a sort of fence of trunks and branches almost as tall as the tent itself. Although the fence gave protection, it had been prettier to see the gray tent up against the mountains.The clumsy rough fence hid the tent, with the exception of a wide entrance in front of the door. The fence was also used to hang all manner of things upon. When it wasn’t raining, they set out their bedding there every morning and took it in every evening before sunset. The Lapps air out their bedding every day year round, when it’s not actually storming. In the winter you often have to knock the snow off the bedclothes before you bring them in.The bedding is therefore always fresh, which the Lapps greatly value (in addition, the winter airing is also helpful in that the prospective“inhabitant,” that is, a flea or louse, freezes to death). All during their youth they sleep as reindeer herders out in the open air, and in the tent the ventilation is excellent. Their sense of smell is fine, and bad smells bother them a great deal. This sounds perhaps like an odd assertion when you’re always hearing about “Lapp smell,” and how the air is poisoned wherever they enter.What they smell of is train oil, boiled down from whale or seal blubber, which they smear on their furs, and the coal tar oil they use on their shoes. In the tent you don’t notice that oily smell as much because the air is steadily replaced, but in a closed room it can become quickly unpleasant, so that even the Lapps themselves are bothered by it. One day I heard a Lapp woman saying she couldn’t eat boiled herring, because the smell reminded her far too vividly of the grease used on skins. Nor is it correct when it’s said Lapps are dirty, both in terms of their person or their food.The biggest complaint about their food is that you find reindeer With the Lapps in the High Mountains hair in everything you’re served in a Lapp tent, in bread and coffee, not to mention meat, blood sausage, and the like. But those who know a little about the conditions know how unavoidable reindeer hair is. Everyone is dressed in fur, and reindeer hair sheds easily; you find hair everywhere. On that point there’s nothing else to do but say, as do the Lapps:“Reindeer hair isn’t dirty; everything about a reindeer is clean.”8 The Lapps find dog or human hair in food just as distasteful as we do. If a Lapp housewife goes to knead dough, she always washes her hands first. To compare their cleanliness with ours obviously doesn’t do; it’s considered clean, for example, each time you’ve finished eating to rinse the wooden bowl with a crooked index finger and lick it clean, so no bit of food remains. This is similar to our peasants licking their spoons after meals and placing them up on the leather strap on the wall.The Lapp tucks his licked spoon in his chest pocket. The stew pot is cleaned, however, in boiling water before everyday use, and in summer the cups and so on are washed in warm water. In winter, when it’s many degrees below zero and water freezes between your fingers, you can understand skimping on a wash more often than the usual sense of hygiene finds advisable. Personal cleanliness is also greatest in summer, yet no one neglects it— summer or winter—as much as most people...
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