THE LAPPS OF THE ARCTIC.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 247, 17 October 1936, Page 35 (Supplement)

THE LAPPS OF THE ARCTIC.

Untouched By World Strife.

REINDEER THEIR FOOD AND SHELTER.

WARS, revolutions, political upheavals and economic crises are hardly even the faintest whispers to the Lapps. They live to-day as they did a century ago. The world may move and the human race progress, but not for these people of the Far North. The travellers who come to see them from North Cape cruises, after a railway journey through the heart of Sweden, or by bud over Finland's novel highway to the Arctic Ocean will lind them living as they have for generations past. The men wear a long, blue blouse, gathered at the waist with a belt and slashed with red and yellow, tight blue trousers, and caps 011 which are huge red pompoms. Their shoes are a moccasin of reindeet hide, bound at the ankle with red and yellow woollen bands and turned up at the toes. The Essential Reindeer. Lapps sometimes place a certain type °f grass, which they call shoegrass, in their moccasins, and so protected, their feet go unharmed 011 the roughest ground and keep warm in the coldest weather. Just as they have for centuries, the Lapps still depend on their reindeer herds for both food and shelter. The ■filk is made into cheese, the flesh used for meat, the skins for clothing, tents and cooking . utensils. Even the bones

are utilised for needles in sewing and for the liondo, which prevents the knot of a lassoo from pulling too tight. At Abisko, Sweden, the Lapp settlement is just across Lake Torne Trask at Palnoviken, but while travellers always And Lapps there during the summer, "they seldom see a reindeer, for at

that time the animals visually migrate to Norway. The Lapp owner has no choice other than to migrate with them, packing his belongings and food and journeying day or night, sometimes for weeks, with the reindeer until they find the food they are searching for. A herd of 200 or 300 reindeer is ample for a family, but wealthier Lapps may own 2000 or 3000. In Norway, Lapp settlements usually are visited either from Tromso or from Hammerfest. The whole province of Finnmark—"Finn" in Norwegian means Lapp—is theirs, and visitors to the fiords of that region will sometimes see one of their herds of reindeer swimming out to some fiord island for food. At times, when it is too warm in the valleys, the deer stay up on snow-covered mountain plateaus all day, coming down only at night to graze. Wild reindeer in Norway sometimes mix with herds of tame ones and lure a few away to wild life. Then the patient Lapp herder may have to go a hundred

miles or so before lie finds liis straying animals and brings them back to the herd. The Lapps of Finland. "Travellers who visit the Lapps of Finland usually take a bus at Rovanienii for the trip over the only road to the Arctic Ocean. A few minutes after leaving this city one crosses the Arctic Circle, and then for two days the bus continues on into the world of the north.■ Travellers on this Arctic road sometimes will see a reindeer or two on the route, but those who expect to see L&pps are disappointed, for these people live away from the highway. Unlike the Lapps of Norway and Sweden, they are not nomads, but have. small houses, a potato patch, a domestic animal or two. They turn their reindeer loose at the end of May, for the animals do not wander far from home in this region, and then when the first snow falls a round-up is held, and each Lapp takes hlfe own deer.