IN LAPLAND. BY JAN GORDON (AND CORA J. GORDON). THE tourist shelter was a stoutly-built little house, half of stone, half of wood, with two large dormitories on the upper floor, and the kitchen, storerooms and dining-room on the lower. Rather higher up the hill was the turf hut for guides or bearers, and on the top of the hill itself, where once the old Lapps had laid offerings to their nature gods; the elder man, the mother spirit, the reindeer master, the old woman of the hearth, the butter cat, Beive (the sun) with his maiden, old man Thor, the world man, Beigga-galles (an ancient wind man), who used to drive out the winds with a club, and who scooped them back again with a shovel when it had blown enough, or to the great Bear spirit, possibly the most ancient of their pagan deities; there where formerly the Lapps had worshipped now the Swedish yellow-and-blue flag was flapping. A wash and a change and a meal were the first essentials. We were served by a maid, who was costumed half Lappishly, half Swedishly, another offspring, we learned, of the Sarri family. The ancient grandmother also dwelt, in the summer, a little lower down the valley, pasturing a cow VI. for the tourist hut here. At last, cleaned, warmed, and replete, we had to think of the arrangements for the morrow. We clambered to the turf hut with the girl in charge, in order to consult the guide. He was seated at his door, a lean boyish fellow, whittling a stick with his sheath-knife. His Kåtor was match-boarded within, the top was closed over, and warmed by a tiny iron stove with a pipe. We commented on the cosy look, but the guide made a gesture of disgust. "I don't like it," he said. "Much better if the top were open, as it is with our Kåtors. This one becomes so stuffy." The Fröken, or girl in charge, now began to question the guide, whose name was Petter Svakko, about the possibility of our trip. We had come at an awkward moment. The tourist season was now almost at an end. The Fröken herself had wanted to climb to the top of Kebnekaise before new snow should make the ascent impossible, but the new snow might be expected at any time. The question was then whether Svakko could take us to Saltoluokta across the mountains, and return in time to conduct the Fröken up Kebnekaise. For him our trip would take five days three going, two returning. Was there any danger of the snow falling before Svakko could get back? The guide whittled his stick, and, after a long pause, answered that the thing could be done. We suspect that the Fröken had been had been showing off with her proteids, carbohydrates, and fats, for it was surely not the first time that Petter Svakko had led tourists across to Saltoluokta; nor when we came to make an actual choice of the foods to be selected for the journey was there any means of regulating the chemistry of our diet. The Fröken was indeed surprised at the little amount that we considered sufficient; we were astonished at what Svakko considered necessary. Swedish "I am glad," said the Fröken, always addressing the guide in the extreme Swedish courtesy of the third person, "that Svakko can take the English travellers over the Saltoluokta. Now will Svakko consider the question of food. How much food will Svakko require? The best authorities assure us that a man doing touring club regulations ormoderate work will need about 120 grammes of protein, 500 grammes of carbohydrates, and 50 grammes of fat, so that if we say 200 grammes a day of meat each, that will be enough to begin with." dained that Svakko should carry twenty pounds of our property on his back before anything of his own, but he had no hesitation in piling up additionally a large bone of dried reindeer meat, a small Two hundred grammes of wooden tub of butter, a tin meat?" cried Svakko. of coffee, a ponderous box of corned beef weighing pounds, some cheese, two or "Yes." six "For a whole day? "Precisely. So the best three pounds of hard bread, authorities say." Svakko made a gesture of the most expressive contempt for the best authorities, and the conversation fell to a less scientific level, very much interrupted by two large horses, which continually thrust themselves in upon us seeking for bread. Indeed, in the environs of that tourist shelter these intrusive bread-seeking horses were a positive nuisance. Two attempts at making drawings were ruined by their nudg and a small tent. Little wonder, then, that his rucksack turned the scale at fifty pounds as we set out on the morrow. The Fröken was amazed that we refused such complex delicacies as macaroni, haricot beans, and dried apricots or prunes, contenting ourselves with cheese, raisins, chocolate, malted milk lozenges, a couple of small tins of sjöman's bif, and a few rounds of hard bread. One would have thought that we were preparing a Polar "There will be little chance of starting now," he said. "Even if the clouds do lift, it might be dangerous. If we were caught by the mists in a mountain hut, we might be held up for a week without power of getting backwards or forwards, and we would starve." After having breakfasted on pancakes and jam, we set about trying to persuade the little Lapp maidservant to allow herself to be sketched. But at the mere suggestion she sprang the scandalised expression of a young lady to whom something improper had been said. What did we think of her ? Pose for a drawing, indeed? The Fröken, coming to our aid, modified drawing into photograph. Oh no! She couldn't even pose for a photo VOL. CCXVII.-NO. MCCCXV. graph, but she squirmed with the shameful joy of a girl who is reading a French novel in secret. "It's a dreadful sin," she said. We gave her an instructive lecture on comparative religions; she could laugh at the Mohammedans for hiding their faces in a veil, but she couldn't see how that affected herself. Nevertheless, she was softening, and at last, with a whole scale of giggles and titters, she consented to be photographed if the Fröken would sit with her. So off they hurried to tidy themselves, and the picture was taken. "Now," said the Fröken when all was over, "wasn't that a jolly little sin?" As red as a turkey-cock with shame, the Lapp maidservant admitted that though it had been a sin, nevertheless it had been an awfully rolig sin to commit. The Fröken then invited us to coffee and shortbread cakes, of which we all partook. Jo showed the drawings that she had slyly made of our fellowtravellers in the motor-boat. We may usually take it for granted that the disuse of a power gradually deteriorates the senses used in the accomplishment. For instance, Miss Nordström found that, owing to the religious ban on singing, the Lapp children are now quite incapable of pitching a note, in spite of the fact that the old Lapp music was So strange that it would have baffled many a modern musician, and did in fact quite disconcert 2 B Acerbi. But the Lapp maiden's been unaware that they were eye had not suffered from the posing. The Fröken added ban on art. She recognised that if we would pay the girl the originals of every one of a good fee-£3 or so-she could Jo's sketches. She was greatly then pose without sinning, for shocked at Captain Haugli for that could be counted as work. allowing himself to be drawn, Only pleasure posing was a but said that the other Lapps great sin; photography was committed no sin if they had considered as a far lesser sin. At twelve o'clock, Svakko, who had been watching the clouds with an expert eye, said that we might risk the journey. And so, with much waving, off we started down the slope from the tourist shelter. We We are now convinced that Svakko's start had been half in bluff. He thought that he had taken our measure. were possibly unlike any other voyagers that he had hitherto met. The Swedish traveller rightly makes great preparations for a Lapland tour. He or she goes in waterproof khaki, with trench - boots over the calves, alpenstocks, maps, and patent rucksacks. We had started in any old clothes that were handy, and Jo had on low shoes, and carried an umbrella. I feel convinced that her's is the first umbrella to go through Lapland. So when after a couple of miles we reached a broad spate of water running in a deepish channel, Svakko turned to Jo and said VII. problems of Lapland travel presented themselves in succession. The first was a broad stretch of bog covered with the white fluffy flower of the Myrull grass, through which we slopped, picking our tracks carefully behind our guide, for a divergence entailed plunging in up to the calf, which we did once or twice. When Jo had first perceived these patches of Myrull grass from the train, she had exclaimed, "Oh, look at that lovely white fluffy flower"; but with experience we grew to hate the appearance of this Arctic herb. It always presaged another stretch of bog wading, and in these circumstances soon lost its charm. Beauty, after all, is largely subjective. With thoroughly soaked stockings and boots we might then have a succession of moraines to clamber across. Svakko, with his Lapp shoes and high leggings of soft leather quite waterproof, held on the same pace through bog or across the rocks, boulders, and loose stones of the moraines, "Well, will you go through it, or shall we turn back? Kebnekaise's Rubicon. After that preliminary the and we were forced to do our best to keep up with him. Numerous torrents crossed our road, and over these we either sprang from stone to stone, praying fortune to keep us from a false step, or else waded in ice-cold water, which now and again came almost up to the knees, for the rivers had been swollen by recent rains. In one or two the current ran so heavily that Svakko was compelled to throw Jo his alpenstock for her support. Precisely at the end of the first hour, to our surprise Svakko stopped, and dropped his rucksack to the ground. He walked down to a little stream near by, knelt down, and drank long from the icecold water. Then he sat still for ten minutes. Off we set once more, turning into the valley between Singitjokko and Kebnekaise, and for two hours more plodded a varying way upwards. It was uninteresting walking, as the clouds still clung close above our heads, for though they were rising gradually, we were rising also. At the end of the second hour and at the end of the third our guide took his precise rest, and, whenever water was near, he drank. It was now three o'clock. We had breakfasted at eight on pancakes and jam, and at eleven had had a cup of coffee and a few shortbread biscuits. We were naturally feeling hungry, and so took the opportunity of getting out some cheese and hard bread in order to make a short meal. Svakko considered us with undisguised consternation. At the end of his conventional ten minutes' repose he grew restive. We were near the top of a pass, and had imagined that we were to go over the crest and down the other side, otherwise perhaps we might have hardly ventured to eat. But his impatience having made us bolt down our food, Svakko set off once more, and, turning sharply to the left, he went straight up the side of a mountain, climbing even faster than he had walked before, as if to make up for lost time. Had he only warned us. With the cheese sitting very positively in the pit of our stomachs, we did our best to keep up with him, but he revengefully walked clear out of our ken, and left us clambering up, up, up the slope, which seemed never-ending. In the Tyrol the guides had often reproached us for climbing too fast, but here we put on a spurt and still were more than outdistanced. At the end of the hour we caught up with our runaway guide. He was sitting on a stone, and staring gloomily at the landscape. These mountain places of Lapland are, on the whole, hardly picturesque. Rounded and ground down under the glaciers of the ice age, covered with an ever-present growth of dull-green moss, they present few noble lines, little transition of colour; there are no trees, and the shrubs are not more |