306 LAPLAND
attracted by the sound. Should the summer be very cool and the mosquitoes few, the Lapp finds it next to impossible to bring the creatures together. About the end of August they are again let loose, but they are once more collected in October, the forest Lapp during winter pursuing the same course of life as the mountain Lapp.
In Norway there are three classes – the sea Lapps, the river Lapps, and the mountain Lapps, the first two settled, the third nomadic. The mountain Lapps have, on the whole, a rather ruder and harder life than the same class in Sweden. About Christmas those of Kautokeino and Karasjokk are usually settled in the neighbourhood of the churches; in summer they visit the coast, and in autumn they return inland. Previous to 1852, when they were forbidden by imperial decree, they were wont in winter to move south across the Russian frontiers. It is seldom possible for them to remain more than three or four days in one spot. Flesh is their favourite, in winter almost their only, food, though they also use reindeer milk, cheese, and rye or barley cakes. The sea Lapps are in some respects hardly to be distinguished from the other coast dwellers of Finmark. Their food consists mainly of cooked fish. The river Lapps, many of whom, however, are descendants of Quains or Finns proper, breed cattle, attempt a little tillage, and entrust their reindeer to the care of mountain Lapps.
In Finland there are comparatively few Laplanders, and the great bulk of them belong to the fisher class. Many of them are settled in the neighbourhood of the Enare Lake. In the spring they go down to the Norwegian coast and take part in the sea fisheries, returning to the lake about midsummer. Formerly they found the capture of wild reindeer a profitable occupation, using for this purpose a palisaded avenue gradually narrowing towards a pitfall.
The Russian Lapps are also for the most part fishers, as is natural in a district with such an extent of coast and such a number of lakes, not to mention the advantage which the fisher has over the reindeer keeper in connexion with the many fasts of the Greek Church. They maintain a half nomadic kind of life, very few of them having become regular settlers in the Russian villages. It is usual to distinguish them according to the district of the coast which they frequent, as Murman (Murmanski) and Terian (Terski) Lapps. A separate tribe, the Filmans, i.e., Finnmans, nomadize about the Pazyets, Motoff, and Petchenga tundras, and retain the peculiar dialect and the Lutheran creed which they owe to a former connexion with Sweden. They were formerly known as the "twice and thrice tributary" Lapps, because they paid to two or even three states – Russia, Denmark, and Sweden.
The ethnographical position of the Lapps has not been clearly determined, though it is evident they can no longer be classified with the Finns. They are, as has been seen, far from a numerous people, and within the historical period they have considerably recruited themselves from neighbouring races. Shortness of stature[1] is their most obvious characteristic, though in regard to this much exaggeration has prevailed. Düben (p. 167) found an average of 4.9 feet for males and a little less for females; Mantegazza, who made a number of anthropological observations in Norway in 1879, gives 5 feet and 4.75 feet respectively (Archivio per l'antrop., 1880). Individuals much above or much below the average are rare. The body is usually of fair proportions, but the legs are rather short, and in many cases somewhat bandy. Dark, swarthy, yellow, copper-coloured are all adjectives employed by competent observers to describe their complexion, – the truth being that their habits of life do not conduce either to the preservation or display of their natural colour of skin, and that some of them are really fair, and others, perhaps the majority, really dark. The colour of the hair, too, ranges from blonde and reddish to a bluish or greyish black; and the eyes are black, hazel, blue, or grey. The shape of the skull is the most striking peculiarity of the Lapp. He is the most brachycephalous type of man in Europe, perhaps in the world.[2] According to Virchow, the women in width of face are more Mongolian-like than the men, but neither in men nor women does the opening of the eye show any true obliquity. In children the eye is large, open, and round. The nose is always low and broad, more markedly retroussé among the females than the males. Wrinkled and puckered by exposure to the weather, the faces even of the younger Lapps assume an appearance of old age. The muscular system is usually well developed, but there is deficiency of fatty tissue, which affects the features (particularly by giving relative prominence to the eyes) and the general character of the skin. The thinness of the skin, indeed, can but rarely be paralleled among other Europeans. Among the Lapps, as among other lower races, the index is shorter than the ring finger.[3]
The Lapps are a quiet, inoffensive people. Crimes of violence are almost unknown among them, and the only common breach of law is the killing of tame reindeer belonging to other owners. In Russia, however, they have a bad reputation for lying and general untrustworthiness, and drunkenness is well-nigh a universal vice. In Scandinavia laws have been directed against the importation of intoxicating liquors into the Lapp country since 1723.
Superficially at least the great bulk of the Lapps have been Christianized, – those of the Scandinavian countries being Protestants, those of Russia members of the Greek Church. In education the Scandinavian Lapps are far ahead of their Russian brethren, to whom reading and writing are arts as unfamiliar as they were to their pagan ancestors. The general manner of life is patriarchal. The father of the family has complete authority over all its affairs; and on his death this authority passes to the eldest son. Parents are free to disinherit their children; and, if a son separates from the family without his father's permission, he receives no share of the property except a gun and his wife's dowry.[4]
By the very circumstances of their position the Lapps are of necessity conservative in most of their habits, many of which can hardly have altered since the first taming of the reindeer. But the strong current of mercantile enterprise has carried a few important products of southern civilization into their huts. The lines in which Thomson describes their simple life –
The reindeer form their riches: these their tents,
Their robes, their beds, and all their homely wealth
Supply; their wholesome fare and cheerful cups –
are still applicable in the main to the mountain Lapps; but even they have learned to use coffee as an ordinary beverage, and to wear stout Norwegian cloth (vadmal).
Linguistically the Laps belong to the great Uralo-Altaic family; the similarity of their speech to Finnish is evident on the surface. It is broken up into very distinct and even mutually unintelligible dialects, the origin of several of which is, however, easily found in
2 Bertillon found in one instance a cephalic index of 94. The average obtained by Pruner Bey was 84.7, by Virchow 82.5.
3 See Retzius, Finska Kranier (Stockholm, 1878); Virchow, in Arch. für Anthrop., tom, iv., 1870; papers by Virchow (1874), Hagenbeck and Europeus (1875), and Van der Horck (1876), in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie; and by Guérault (1863) and Pruner Bey (1864), in Mémoires de la Soc. d'Anthrop. Bertillon, in Broca's Revue d'Anthrop., has given a comparison of the craniology of the Lapps with that of Parisians, Kaffres, and New Caledonians.
4 A valuable paper by Ephimenko, on "The Legal Customs of the Lapps, especially in Russian Lapland," appears in vol. viii. of the Mem. of Russ. Geog. Soc., Ethnog. Section, 1878.
