VI
In the meantime the dogs took advantage of the general preoccupation to steal into the kitchen space, something they couldn’t otherwise do when there were people in the tent. But naturally they didn’t agree about the spoils and began to fight viciously. Since the fight took place at the edge of big fire, this would no doubt have ended with singed fur and burns, if I hadn’t taken a firm hold with just my hands and a stick. The scene was grotesque: the crying and shrieking of many people,the wild barking and fighting of the dogs, the steaming pot that boiled over, since no one was watching it. The tent itself shook from the loud noise and vigorous movements. Piety can manifest itself in many remarkable ways. VI The Lapps often had errands at the storehouses in Kattuvuoma, and when there was good weather, the young people gladly kept one another company. Once, returning home, we filled two boats. Things grew lively on the lake in the still, light evening. The long elegant boats left a frothing wake as they raced each other—one boat oared by girls, with a male coxswain; the other with two male rowers, while a girl took the steering oar.White furs, blue tunics, and many colors of red in caps and scarves, the happy brown faces and dark eyes gleaning in the evening sunlight, every movement and color shimmering in the mirror of the water. Courting was in full swing; among the Lapps it was quite noticeable. The girls’ coxswain was dragged away from them over to the second boat. They rowed so near to each other that only the outside pair of oars could be used. They wrestled over the gunwale, where they battled with oars and water, so the spray was high. The dogs jumped, barking, back and forth from one boat to the other; the echoes rang between the mountains,the boats collided with a crunch,then swerved off. Then suddenly they darted far away from each other, and racing began again.A young housewife was also along; she had the cradle at her side, and while she gestured animatedly and lifted her voice to join in the merriment , she sat nursing her baby. After which the baby was held out over the water, its lower half quite naked. Over at the small waterfall, where the lake was shallow but the current strong among the rocks, the boats didn’t do so well—vuoi, vuoi—they hit the rocks with a crunch. But the last half hour, where you could possibly be seen With the Lapps in the High Mountains from the tents, the hilarity grew more restrained. We glided nicely through the small stone islands, back to the gray tents with smoke rising from them, under the mountains. The sun had long been succeeded by the moon; across the lake lay a broad golden band in the black water, and behind Ripanen a gleam flickered up over the sky, the faint northern lights. The evening began to darken. Autumn wasn’t far off. But now, with the herd nearby, the siida was full of life, busy with work. One day Nilsa came running, flung the door open, and cried, Eallu boahtá, čana beatnagiid gitta!“The herd is coming, tie up the dogs!” The whole camp sprang to life.You heard the tent doors continuously flapping open, then falling back against the tent as the children and adults hurried off. In the neighbor tent they were sitting and eating, but when they heard the call, everyone ran out and away. The oldest of the children, a seven-year-old boy, snatched up his lasso and said,“Food is good, but the herd is better,” after which he shot like an arrow through the forest. It was only a smaller separating of the herd, which was being gathered in an open field in the forest for a couple of hours. Still, the usual tasks would be carried out: milking, castrating, and butchering. The corral itself lay half a dozen kilometers away.12 For several days the women went up in vain with their milk pails. The herders hadn’t succeeded in getting the reindeer down to the corral, but finally the herd came down inside it for some days in a row. We started off from the tents at seven in the morning, but when we got up there, we couldn’t hear either people or reindeer . A...
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