CHAPTER 20
INTO THE HEART OF THE ARCTIC LAPLAND WHERE THE MYSTERIES ARE ATTUNED TO THE MUFFLED FOOTFALLS OF SILENCE
ONE WINTER near the close of the last century, I found myself alone in Europe engaged in visiting iron ore fields. I started in the United Kingdom and then proceeded to Spain, where I found the old Bilbao district of consuming interest. I did not tarry long in Italy but proceeded into Germany and on into Russia, and over the Urals. Doubling back I went into Finland at Helsingfors. North to Uleaborg I found good enough railroad conveniences, with women for sleeping car attendants. At Uleaborg I decided to travel on north to Tornea, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, and around the gulf to Lulea in Sweden. As usual, not two persons told me the same distance. The map route measured about three hundred miles, but there was no road, and all the way until we reached Haparanda a direct course would be impossible. My destination was the Gellivare, Kirunavaara and Luosavaara iron districts in Lapland, all within the Arctic zone. It would have been easier and quicker to have doubled back to Abö, thence to have gone across the Baltic through the beautiful Aäland Islands to Stockholm, and north through Upsala to Lulea and Gellivare by rail. But I had a chance to go among the Lapps and traverse an Arctic region that is visited almost never in the winter, and seldom enough in the summer. It was middle February. The weather was below zero all the time, and some of the time far below. There was plenty of snow. I engaged several Lapps and enough reindeer to draw me and them, having at the time no idea how many would be required. To my complete surprise I learned that men, women and children would all go with me. It was interesting. Rarely will Lapp families permit themselves to be separated. When they get down to brass tacks the women are the rulers. I made all of my arrangements with a squat, fat, little head man or chief, but I noticed that he engaged in frequent consultations with his wife. The greater number of them are Lutherans and good and kindly, but an exceedingly independent people. Resembling the Esquimo in physique they possess a better intellect, and temperamentally are more like the Kachins of Upper Burma or the Thibetans. I am just about six feet tall. There was not a Lapp in my party that could not walk erect under my arm extended horizontally.
Men, women and children are fat and greasy, and as they seldom bathe they are, in a sense, dirty. Such habits of life as they have could not endure in a land less clean and wholesome. In all Lapland there is not an unclean thing except the Lapps, and really I soon forgot to think of them as being dirty, even with the contrast they made to the sweet air and the immaculate snow. As a people they are rich and independent. Their government is tribal, and to a considerable extent it is communal.
There had been a famine in the north Baltic and Bothnian regions, and zealous persons, who too often make it their profession, had been collecting money from liberal countries for their relief. None of this was desired by the Lapps or accepted by them. There was no poverty among them, and while their standards of living are not high, they never are in want of necessaries. Property is not held in common exactly, but may be used in common in case of need. I saw one chief Lapp of whom it was said that he owned twenty thousand reindeer. He was a Lapp millionaire but did not conduct a reindeer trust.
Wealth in Lapland is measured in reindeer. They are everything, and when compared with gold they take on a warmth of value that is appealing. The Lapp drinks the milk of the reindeer, eats its flesh, makes clothing of its skin; weapons, implements, furniture and harness of its bone. He even uses its hair for many purposes and the sinews and viscera are very valuable. Fancy being able to do this with a chunk of gold. A drink of milk of gold would be a mockery, and if you do not believe it just take a swallow of the delusive German goldwasser beverage. The yellow metal is only a convenience. It has no real value and is only a measure of or representative of value. It is a necessity, no doubt, but it is also concentrated selfishness, and gives people an incurable disease that permits a few to control the wealth of the world to an extent greater than is for the good of mankind. Robinson Crusoe could do nothing with gold, but he could have done famously with a reindeer.
The Lapps almost worship them, but do not treat them with the demonstrations of endearment that a Bedouin lavishes upon his she-camel, only because that is not their nature. In the winter they feed their working reindeer on rock lichens or reindeer moss. They are kept in the lowlands and valleys in the winter. During the short season of summer they are herded at an elevation that insures cool, if not cold weather and even snow, for they die off if subjected to warmth. In this respect they are like the llama that will not thrive in most of the Andean lands below an altitude of two or three thousand feet. The Lapps themselves fare better in the highlands in summer and there they go.
Christmas is their great feast day. It is also their funeral season. They bury their dead once a year. Preserved in snow and ice during the year, corpses are disinterred from their frigid temporary mausoleum at Christmas and given a ceremonial, final burial.
A reindeer sledge is quite exactly like a Hoosier hog trough. It is hollowed out of a log about four feet, sometimes four and a half feet, long and rounding, log-shaped on the bottom. This causes the thing to roll over if given any kind of a chance. To acquire the art of riding in one is a similar experience to learning to ride a bicycle, and something like learning to swim. A six-foot body crumpled into a four-foot sledge and calked with furs is at first a clumsy arrangement, but it is possible for it, as I found, to become a part of the sledge when the feat of balancing comes to one. It does come, for all of a sudden your mental gyroscope is automatic, and you do not know how you have done it.
A sledge may be drawn by one, two or three reindeer with spare and bare animals trotting behind or alongside. There was never less than two hitched to my sledge. This was done by fastening a reindeer thong, a Boer would call it a riem, to the bow of the sledge, passing it between the legs of the reindeer and tying it to a hames at the breast of the base of the neck and below. These hames were made of reindeer ribs and fitted snugly. They never seemed to gall. The second reindeer was attached tandem by fastening the single tug to the first one, just behind the hames. And so on the third would be tandem also. Headmen at ceremonies sometimes have fifty or even more reindeer in a tandem team, and then it is not uncommon for several sledges to be tied together, one behind the other.
The food and its preparation was very interesting. The head-man had several pots of iron and tin. Pot hooks of bone and bone spoons were common to all. Quite a few of them, both women and men, carried crude, home-made knives; there were also skinning knives of bone. My headman had a little, solid silver, homemade pipe, not much bigger than the Japanese use. He kept this going with a mixture of coffee and tobacco. Everybody smoked, mostly bone pipes, if they had the “makings.” These pipes, and particularly the silver ones would get very hot, but the Lapps seemingly were unmindful of this. The chief’s cooking was all done in pots. Fuel had to be carried and was scant.
Some of the others cooked, or rather heated their meat, by placing hot stones in birch-bark buckets containing water. No stop of any kind was made without boiling the coffee pot. It was carried by hand, and as its contents were water and milk and coffee, it was handled carefully. For seasoning the coffee, the Lapps use salt and pepper instead of sugar; not much salt, but plenty of pepper. All hands drank out of the coffee pot, using it as a loving cup. There was always plenty of hair in the coffee. This kept it from slopping out as it was carried, and also compelled one to strain it through his teeth in order to drink with comfort. The Paraguayans have a better way in taking their yerba maté. They suck it through a stem to which a little woven wicker sieve is attached.
We also had raw, frozen fish for a delicacy. The raw fish made me sick finally and I gave it up, since which time I have been unfriendly even to sardellen and kindred preparations. I do not like to be finicky about eating, because I have always thought that it is a measure of mental breadth and elasticity. Notwithstanding, I do not like raw fish. Bah!
For bread we had unleavened cakes made from flour and the ground bark of the dwarfed popple and birch. I thought I could tell the popple cakes from the birchen cakes by their greater bitterness. These cakes had been baked for a long time; weeks, months or years before, I do not know which.
At night they would erect skin tepees if it was stormy; in fact, almost always we put them up. If the wind blew hard, snow would be piled around the bottom. I have only occupied an igloo a few times, but I have an idea that they are warmer than the reindeer skin house used by the Lapp. Sometimes I tried to sleep in my sledge, but I would get cramps and would have to dig out and stretch. During the day I often walked for a change. Always while so doing I would be chagrined because I had to make an extra effort to keep up with the stride of the reindeer, and the goose waddle of the Lapps. There were seventeen in the party, including me. The Lapps were of all sizes and sexes. There was no sex false delicacy, but social morals are rigidly observed.
The snow-covered wastes were like almost level plains and the hardened surface made walking easy. We had fourteen sledges and ninety-one reindeer. Some of the animals were too young to work and some of them were used only as milk cows. Forage made up the most of the cargo. Fuel too. We had no vegetables of any kind. The Lapps and Eskimos seemed to be immune to scorbutical attacks.
We met with no unsurmountable obstructions. Making short cuts across fjords brought us up against wind-rows of ice and snow sometimes which forced detours, or made negotiation more or less exacting. The weather much of the time was clear and cold, and in morning and evening and at night the air would contain fine ice particles. I had seen the same conditions in the Lake Superior and Hudson Bay regions. We were following the Arctic Circle at about 66° north, varying. Our course was at first north, then northwest, then west and then south. In the middle of the day the sun was warm and dazzling, and I had to protect my eyes from snow blindness. The Lapps were not bothered with anything.
We had a few pairs of skis, but had no use for them until we reached a Lapp town or winter encampment between Haukipudas and Pudasjarvi. They were preparing for a big hunt on skis for wolverines, the great enemy of the young reindeer and the subject of intense dislike by the Lapps. If I could have done so, and I could not, I would not have told them that they call the people Wolverines where I lived. Probably they would have dumped me in a snow cave and speared me with a dull bone spear and left me.
I wonder why they call Michigan folk Wolverines? They are not gluttons, and that animal was never numerous in the State.
My party joined the wolverine hunt. A great circle was formed and the contraction of it was achieved in good order, with much guttural yelling. A lot of wolverines were rounded up, some of which escaped the steel and also bone pointed spears. Twenty-nine were killed. This was enough to warrant a celebration and feast. Much peppered coffee was drunk and reindeer meat consumed. There were ski races, reindeer races and spear-throwing contests.
It was good to note the complete absence of alcoholics. Not even the headmen had guns or pistols. I noticed that a good many of the Lapps from farther north had a dangerous-looking weapon made from a stone tied with a thong like a sling. The rock was not supposed to leave the sling when thrown. They use it in capturing ptarmigan and for several hunting purposes.
I could not tell very nearly how far we traveled each day. Some days we seemed to make good marches and upon others we would not go as far. I think the least distance covered in a day was ten miles and the greatest probably thirty, with an average perhaps of sixteen. We did not go into Haukipudas where I had expected to check up. There were several camps en route but they were movable and temporary. I managed to recognize Simo and also Kemi and I estimated that we should soon arrive in Tornea. In this I was mistaken, and the first thing I knew we had passed it and arrived in Haparanda, from which point there is a marked road to Lulea by way of Nederkalix and Tornea.
Tornea is at the mouth of the Torne Elf, which flows out of the arctic lake Torne Trask, and I had hoped to see it. At Tornea our road, much of it so drifted as to be totally unrecognizable, intersected a road between Lulea and Gellivare.
We had crossed a number of rivers, called johi in Finland and elf in Swedish. They are considerable streams, as the Bothnian drainage basin extends eight-tenths of the way to the Arctic Ocean, leaving only a comparatively narrow strip between the height of land and the ocean. There are low mountains between the rivers, and thinly interspersed are fringes of scraggy, dwarfed trees, mostly birches, none of them exceeding a height of ten or twelve feet. Their crooked, gnarled, scarred boles suggested gnomes or little, old, dried-up Japanese men and the dwarfed trees they delight in cultivating.
I did not see much evidence of life, but there was more than I expected to find inland. There are Arctic hares, foxes, wolverines, polar bear (not many), wild reindeer or caribou, ptarmigan and two large gallinae, something like blackgame. The bigger one of these edible game birds weighs ten to twelve pounds. They are not plentiful.
The only hardship I suffered worth considering was the food, and I think that I would not have minded that much if I had not been made sick by the raw fish. At first I did not know a word of Lappish, and not one of my Lapps knew a word of English. It took forty-one days to make the trip. Every day I learned several words, and it was not long before I could get along very well. One also becomes an expert pantomimist.
I was glad to reach Lulea. After an inspection of the successful electrical concentration works that refine the Gellivare magnetite, I was ready to proceed to the source of the ore at Malmberg, near Gellivare. A railroad built to haul this iron ore to the sea offered a very good passenger service. I think it was the first railroad to be built in the Arctic zone anywhere in the world.
At Gellivare I found the manager of the mines a most engaging and hospitable gentleman, who had visited the Michigan iron mines. He was gracious in every way and made my visit to Gellivare pleasant and memorable. I studied the ore and iron formations there for a few days and went on to Kirunavaara and Luosavaara. The railroad was being continued by the Swedish government to these great ore fields, and in conjunction with Norway across the Riksgransen to an Arctic open seaport, now called Narvik, on Ofoten Fjord.
Before leaving for Kirunavaara I climbed the Dundret, a famous mountain near Gellivare, to see the midnight sun. It is scarcely worth while to do this if one is to remain long in the “Land of the Midnight Sun,” because no special trip is necessary to see it.
I stopped for a day at Boden, where I witnessed the work of construction upon quite a formidable fort Sweden was building to protect that portion of the boundary, and especially the new railroad, from the dreaded Russians. Wherever I went in Northern Sweden I found a shadowy fear of the bear’s claws, and well-informed Swedes seemed to be certain that in the long run the new Arctic railroad would fall into the hands of the Russians.
In the more populous portions of Sweden the political topic most discussed was the strained relations between Norway and Sweden. There was more agitation in Norway over this than in Sweden. It was freely predicted that Norway would secede from the Scandinavian Union with Sweden, and that perhaps there would be war. Upon my return to the United States I was roundly abused by Swedish-American newspapers for a statement of my belief that the union would not endure much longer. The only thing that prevented actual hostilities when the break came was the courage and preparedness of Norway, the Norse reputation for valor, and the conviction on the part of Sweden that Norway could neither be conquered nor coerced.
