The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

118 SCANDINAVIA.and idioms ; but certain remote valleys still cherish the old Xorse, forming withIcelandic a distinct linguistic group. Some Xorwegian patriots have endeavouredto re-establish the supremacy of their ancestral tongue, and thus create a newliterary language. Societies have been founded, journals and books published inold Norwegian, but the undertaking has not met with general encouragement.Certain writers have, on the other hand, essayed to assimilate the current forms ofspeech, and thus restore the unity that prevailed in the ninth century. In 1869several Danish, Swedish, and Xorwegian men of letters met at Stockholm to adopta common orthography, but national rivalry has hitherto prevented any concertamong the grammarians.The Lapps.By the side of these Scandinavian peoples, who are amongst tha most homogeneousin Europe, there live tribes still of a quasi- Asiatic character, few innumbers, but exceedingly interesting for their physical aspect, origin, and mannerof life.These are the Lapps, like the Rouminisiil, or Swedish gipsies, partly nomad,and thinly scattered over a vast area, estimated at 80,000 square miles, in thenorthern extremity of the peninsula, along the upper course of the Swedish riversflowing to the Gulf of Bothnia, in the Finnish territory ceded by Sweden to Russia,and in the Kola peninsula. They number scarcely 30,000 altogether, or about1 to every 1,700 acres.It is certain that the Lapps formerly reached much farther south than atpresent. Traces of their language are detected in Swedish, and several southerngeographical terms have been referred to them.Some are still found in the heartof Jemtland about the sixty-third parallel, where their domain is clearly limited bythe lichens supplying the sustenance of their reindeer herds. But they have beencontinually pressed northwards by the Norse immigrants, and the legends ofdvergar, or " dwarfs," troll, or "magicians," bergfolk, or " highlanders," are mythicalrecords of the internecine strife that raged between the conflicting elements.Universally known by their Swedish appellation Lapps, variously interpreted as" Nomads " or " Cave-dwellers," these Sameh, or Samelats, speak a Finnish languagesaid to be more akin to the Mordvinian than any other member of the Ural-Altaicfamily, and preserving archaic roots and forms that have disappeared from modernFinnish.But though officially designated as Fin in Xorwegian Finmark, they areclearly distinguished from the Finns proper not only by the contrasts produced bythe different cultures, but also by their physical features and form of their crania.Hence some anthropologists have regarded them as of a distinct stock, on whomthe Finns have imposed their language. Thus, while Virchow considers them tobe a branch of the Finns, Schaafhausen takes them for the descendants of Mongoliantribes driven northwards, and migrating westwards along the shores of theFrozen Ocean. Till recently the Sameh were also supposed to differ from therest of mankind by an absolute ignorance of song. But the statement of Fetis,that " the Lapps are the only people who do not sing," is erroneous, and althoughincapable of uttering notes pleasing to the Swedish ear, they are quite capable of