LAPLANDERS
A HEAVY snow fell during the night. After they had had breakfast, Juhani
and the driver found two _pulkas_ (boat shaped sleighs) awaiting them.
To each of these there was harnessed reindeer of a dark gray color, with
huge branching antlers. There was only one rein for each of those in the
_pulkas_ to hold.
"Notice the reindeer's foot," Juhani's companion bade him. "See how
broad and flexible it is. It is divided, too, and so spreads when it
touches the snow."
"How can I get the reindeer to stop?" asked Juhani anxiously.
"Well, if you really need to stop and he refuses," replied the driver,
"all you have to do is to fall out."
Their host wrapped furs around them as each took his place in one of the
sleds hardly big enough to hold even one person. Then while his wife
held the deer, the farmer showed Juhani how to wrap the rein properly
around his wrist. This being managed, the wife let go, and they were
off.
The country through which they now passed was tiresomely flat and
covered with small birch and fir trees. After they had gone some
distance it began to snow in thick cloud-like masses and the wind began
to blow the snow about as if in violent play. Juhani did very well
considering that this was his first reindeer ride. He managed to stay in
the sled even when the reindeer bumped it hard against the trees.
Fortunately the deep furrows in the road helped steady the sleighs, and
Juhani began to feel proud of himself when finally the Lapp settlement
came into view. Whether it was the sight of it or something else, Juhani
did not know, but just then the reindeer suddenly swerved in such a way
that Juhani was pitched out. He arose quickly and called to the reindeer
to stop, but in vain. His companion was far ahead and so, somewhat angry
and mortified, he made his way as best he could on foot the short
distance still remaining.
These Lapp settlements in Northern Finland are few in number. It is said
that there are not more than two thousand Lapps in Finland. The Finnish
word Lapp or Lappu means Land-End folk. The Lapps use another name for
themselves; it is Samelats and for their country, Same. Many of the
Lapps are fishermen, but there are also forest and mountain Lapps.
One wonders how they could get along without the reindeer, which
furnishes them with milk, meat, and even clothing, besides drawing their
sledges. Because of these animals the Lapps prefer the open country
where reindeer moss is plentiful. When it is not found, the spruce tree
serves as a substitute, and a very extravagant one, for nearly a hundred
trees are needed yearly for one reindeer.
When Juhani came up, he found the whole village surrounding his friend,
who laughing, advanced with a muscular, well-proportioned Lapp to him.
The Lapp shook his hand and assured him gravely that no one thought the
worse of him for the mishap.
This Lapp was dressed in a loose reindeer costume reaching below the
knees and fitting closely about the throat. It was adorned with gay
trimmings of blue and scarlet and yellow. On his feet were soft, pliable
skin boots.
He led them to the largest hut. Juhani noticed the quarters of frozen
reindeer meat hanging from the branches of the trees near it and also
the buckets full of frozen reindeer milk.
When they had entered, they seated themselves on the floor on skins and
waited while snow was brought in, placed in a kettle over the fire,
melted, and coffee made. This and food was soon placed before them. The
latter consisted of reindeer meat, a kind of rye and barley bread, milk
and a strong oily cheese. It tasted very good to Juhani after his cold
walk. When he had eaten enough to satisfy himself as well as his
hospitable hosts, he was shyly invited to join in an outside game with a
group of dark-skinned children with straight silky brown hair, broad
flat faces and noses, and very round eyes compared to their elders.
These children looked like funny little bears, wrapped as they were in
fur.
Two of the boys carried wooden sticks which they drove into the snow.
These were made so that a stone could rest on the top. Each child tried
his best to see how many of these he could knock off with snowballs in a
given time.
Juhani found himself far behind his little friends. He was not so good a
shot, and he lacked their quickness in making the balls. But he kept on
trying.
In the afternoon when it grew too dark and cold to remain longer out of
doors (it was thirty degrees below zero), two of the children went with
Juhani into the unventilated hut, and sitting down near the fire took
out their knives and began to carve. Juhani watched the older of the
two, a boy about his own age, and soon saw that he was making a running
reindeer on the handle of a knife. Great was his surprise next morning
to have this presented him. The mother, in the meantime, had just laid
down some reindeer intestines that she was making into gloves.
"How many reindeer have you?" Juhani asked the Lapp boy.
"Oh, nearly a thousand," the latter answered carelessly.
"What a number of uses you put them to! I wish you would tell me all of
them."
[Illustration: "JUHANI WAS LISTENING TO THE MOST MARVELOUS TALES"]
The Lapp boy smiled. "To tell all would take me all day. I will tell you
a few though. We make butter and cheese from their milk, eat their flesh
as food, make our beds and tents, of their skins; their tendons give us
our thread and many of our eating utensils are made out of their
antlers."
"It must be much trouble to milk the reindeer every day," Juhani
remarked.
"But we don't milk them every day," the Lapp boy quickly put in. "Only
about twice a week. Oftener it would certainly be much trouble."
Juhani wanted to know still more. "Since the reindeer are loose, how can
they find food when the ground is covered with snow several feet deep?"
he asked.
"They can smell it," returned the Lapp. "They never make a mistake. As
soon as they smell it, they scrape at the snow with their feet and
nose until they get to it."
After another meal all gathered still closer to the log fire to listen
to news of the outside world. For a long time the woodman talked, and
then, growing tired, he begged the Lapp mother to tell some stories.
This she did in the Finnish language, which, like all the rest of her
family, she spoke well. Soon Juhani was listening to the most marvelous
tales, of giants as big as mountains with one enormous eye, of ugly
witches that fly about like bats at night, and of frightful goblins that
do much harm. Then, changing her tone, she softly told the story of the
goddess, _Nyavvinna_, the kindly daughter of the Sun, a being who first
caught and tamed the reindeer and gave them to the Lapps for their
comfort and joy.
"Will you tell our fortune?" asked the woodman driver, eying her
somewhat askance, when she had stopped. She smiled good naturedly at
him, and going to a rude cabinet took from it a kind of drum by means of
which she foretold a pleasant return journey on the morrow.
Juhani watched her with simple curiosity; his companion, however, was
plainly uneasy, and when they were alone for a minute before lying down
to sleep, he whispered, "Awfully uncanny folks, these Lapps are."
The next morning, too, despite the kindly parting, it was plain to
Juhani that he was glad to get away. They had another exhilarating ride
behind the reindeer. It had a delightful tang to it, a trace of
wildness, to which something, even in Juhani's stolid nature, responded.
When they had left their sleds at the home of their Finnish friends the
driver grew talkative and told Juhani many stories of other trips to
Lapland, one the summer before to this same family. He laughed when he
thought of the children. "They would have had a pleasant time gathering
berries," he said, "had it not been for the mosquitoes. There were so
many of these that they had to wear a sort of mosquito net fastened
around the waist. When they tore these or objected too much, their
mother rubbed tar all over their hands and faces. My! but they did look
funny then," and he laughed so heartily that Juhani could not help but
join him.
The man had many other interesting things to tell, for his experiences
had been varied. Among other things he explained the old system still in
use in parts of Finland of getting tar, an important Finnish industry.
"Those are fine tar trees," he said, when they had come to a clump of
fir and larch. "Nothing better. Do you know how they work the thing?
Well, the wood, after being cut, is piled high on a big platform that
slopes from all sides to the center where there is an opening into a vat
underneath. This pile is covered over with a thick layer of earth and
grass and then lit from below. It smolders for several days until the
pile sinks and a flame springs up. When the tar begins to flow it is
caught in barrels. Shafts are afterwards attached to these barrels and
they are then drawn by horses to the nearest water and loaded on boats
for the coast.
"These boats are built to shoot the rapids. There is no iron used in
them, the fir planks being bound together with wooden fibers. They don't
weigh much so that they give in to slight shocks. Wood only
three-fourths of an inch thick separates one from the water. The boats
are about thirty by three feet, very long and narrow, you see, yet big
enough to hold about twenty barrels, with high sides to keep out the
foam.
"I tell you it takes skill and nerve to steer one of these boats. The
pilots have to have a license. Besides the pilot, the crew generally
consists of two men or a man and a woman. I wasn't much older than you
are now when I first went in one. We started at Kajana on the Ulea
River. My! how the boat did skim along! It seemed as free as a bird. I
held my breath most of the time. And what a shock it was when it went
plunk into the rapids which extend many miles! I'll never forget that
first ride and the peculiar joy I felt at the danger. The last rapids
are the Pyhakoski or Sacred Rapids. They are twelve miles long, but the
trip over them took us barely twenty minutes. Here you can see the slope
of the stream. Every second you go faster. Now you have to avoid a
whirlpool, now a rock; sometimes both. I thought I'd just go deaf from
the roar of the waters. When we reached smooth water again I thought I
really was deaf, the silence was so overpowering."
"What causes the rapids?" asked Juhani.
"It's the enormous bowlders," responded his companion. "The rapids are
mighty pretty. I've seen our largest waterfall, too. It's in a narrow
gorge at Imatra and is sixty feet high. How many lakes make it, do you
think? They say it is a thousand! There are always lots of tourists
gazing at it and listening to its hissing and sputtering and roaring.
When you first hear it you think there is a storm brewing. The spray is
tossed thirty feet into the air and looks like a mass of rainbows."