THE LAPPS The Last Nomads of Europe NGA_RAAPE: NGA IWI MOHOAO WHAKAMUTUNGA O IUROPI He tangata ahau i rite ki nga taitamariki tane katoa o Wiwi, te ngakaunui te korero i nga pukapuka o nga korero-paki mo nga haere me nga takanga whenua, i mua ke atu i taku mohiotanga, tera ahau a tetahi ra e tae ki nga whenua o tauiwi. No te tau 1951, ka whiwhi ahau ki tetahi Cradles are important to the Lapps. Made of a wood frame covered with skins, they are carried on the back by women. During the summer migration, reindeer carry them. The cradles can float and mothers push them when crossing the innumerable mountain streams. (Unesco—Photo by Jean Hardy.) Like every young Frenchman, I had been a voracious reader of tales of travel and exploration, long before I ever dreamed that I would some day be able to visit foreign lands. My chance came in 1951, when I received one of the Zellidja Scholarships, which permit 250 teen-age boys every year to undertake voyages of adventure. The Scholarship had made it possible for me to visit the United States and Canada. After my return, I was lucky enough to meet the famous Greenland explorer, Paul Emile Victor, and to have him autograph one of his books for me. He wrote, ‘To Jean Hardy, hoping his wishes will soon come true’. The wishes did come true, when my second Zellidja Scholarship permitted me to undertake a trip to the European Arctic—to visit the people of Lapland. It was a real exploration, for nothing had been written in France about the Lapps. I chose a district, worked out a route, with the help of a few sparse maps and started off with a friend. Gerard Coppell, one morning in July 1952. The real adventure came later, after we had walked for hundreds of exhausting miles across the tundra and over mountains, when we were accepted as members of a Lapp family, adopted as sons, by one of those households which seem so closed to strangers. We took part in the Lapps'