The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

120 SCANDINAVIA.dependent for his sustenance as well as his clothing on the herd, the Lapp whoowns no more than a hundred animals is regarded as poor, and ohliged to attachhimself to some more fortunate grazer. Excluding the fishers and agriculturists,Yon Diiben calculates the average number of reindeer per head at thirteen orfourteen only, and this number tends to diminish with the growth of settlements.The owner of three hundred is already regarded as wealthy, and some are said t:>possess as many as two thousand, valued at about £'2,400. But rich and poor liveall alike in wretched, dank, and squalid dens, free, however, from fleas, which donot thrive in Lapland. But in summer the gnats are a terrible scourge, at leastfor the stranger, if not for the natives, who are protected by smearing themselveswith a fatty substance, and who then live mostly in districts where the wingedpests are dispersed by sea breezes.Since the middle of the seventeenth century all the Lapps have been callingthemselves Christians. They already possess a small religious literature, andfollow the rites prescribed in the several local governments. Thus in Scandinaviathey are all Lutherans, in Russia Orthodox Greeks; but beneath it all theresurvive traces of old pagan customs analogous to the shamanism of the Mongolians.The magic drum played a great part in their ceremonies, as did also the pine orbirch bark on which the wizards had figured instruments, animals, men, or gods.This bark, or "rune-tree," as the Norwegians called it, was consulted on allimportant occasions, and the interpretation of the mysterious signs was the greatart and highest wisdom. The last of the "rune-trees" is said to have beendestroyed about the middle of the past century. The seiteh, curiously shapedstones, sometimes rudely carved, round which the rites were celebrated, werethrown into the lakes by the Lapps themselves, or else preserved in the Swedishmuseums. But if the fetishes have disappeared, many of the old ceremonies survive.The dog, the Lapp's best friend, without which he could not rule his herds,is no longer buried with his master; but certain shells, the "souls of the dogs,"are still thrown into the grave. The feast of the summer solstice also is here, aselsewhere in Europe, celebrated with bonfires kindled on the hill-tops.The Lapps are supposed to be yearly diminishing in numbers ; but at least inFinmark, or Norwegian Lapland, they have increased sevenfold since the sixteenthcentury, and elsewhere apparently threefold on the coasts.But this is largely dueto the pressure of the Nybyggare, or " New Boors," Swedish and Finnish colonistsslowly encroaching on the domain of the nomads, and driving them seawards. Atthe end of the eighteenth century these strangers were already more numerousthan the Sameh in Swedish Norbotten. The Russian Lapps also, and the Quiins,descendants of old Quainolaiset Finns, who appeared west of the Tornea Riverduring the wars of Charles NIL, are leaving their camping grounds and settlingin large numbers on the coast, where they find more constant and abundantsupplies of food and other comforts.But if the Lapps are not actually disappearing, they are becoming more andmore assimilated to the surrounding peoples, with whom they are gradually blendinginto one nation. The fusion began two centuries ago, when they accepted