stuck in the ground in a circle of about six or eight
feet in diameter,—not more than the latter,—with
the ends brought to a point, so as to take a conical
shape. The centre of the hut, or highest p art under
the apex, is not more than six feet. Grassy turf or
sods are piled up outside the poles, and secured by a
few branches of birch, which rest against them ; and
several large stones laid outside all around the bottom
of the hut add to its support. The entrance
is through an opening about three feet high, which,
numbed with cold, I found it somewhat difficult to
stoop under ; but the Laplanders jumped in and
out with the greatest facility. A reindeer’s skin,
hung loosely over the opening, serves every purpose
of a door. In the centre of the hut burns the fire,
and a little opening left at the top allows the smoke
to escape. The heat inside, contrary to my expectation,
was so oppressive, and the smell so
overpowering, that I was compelled to decline
taking my seat round the fire, to which I was
strongly invited, as well by the occupants as by the
bad state of the weather. These dwellings are so
small that the owners are unable even to keep their
provisions within them ; but a sort of light platform
or shelf of birch twigs, placed outside the hut and
raised six or seven feet from the ground, is used as
a kind of store-room for their milk and cheese, over
which is placed a skin cover to preserve them from
the weather. The old lady’s husband had perched
himself upon this to arrange his provender, and I
I
expected momentarily to see both him and it fall
through the slender and tottering fabric.
I had the good fortune to arrive at the moment
when the rein-deer were going out of a large fold
inclosed with hurdles, into which they are driven
in the morning to be milked. There could not have
been less than some hundred and fifty in all, but
the Laplanders either did not know or would not
tell the number of deer they possessed. I understand
that they invariably refuse to let the amount
of their riches be known. The possessor of these
I saw is considered the wealthiest of the neioO-libouring
families, which gives him an importance
in the eyes of the rest.
There are not many Lapland families established
so fiir to the southward as this, and those few
spread themselves widely, and are dispersed at the
distance of five, ten, or fifteen miles from one another,
to afford a greater extent of pasturage for their
flocks of rein-deer; but in the winter they draw
closer together. I noticed among these deer a very
considerable difference in their size and shape, and
in the magnitude of their fine branching horns :
some were noble animals, and many of them carried
most magnificent horns, little if at all inferior to
those of the Wapiti.
The family I visited consisted of the chief, who
called himself Nils Andersen, and said he was
sixty-five years of age; his wife, who owned to sixty;
their daughter, a girl of twenty, who, it appeared.
D