Traditional Sami Arts
"Not only the dress, but also all sorts of household goods and small articles, testify to the craftsman's talent and sense of esthetic necessity."
From: 1910 C.E. To: 1910 C.E.
Images from book, by Charles Holme.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Peasant Art in Sweden, Lapland, and Iceland by Charles Holme, 1910
Lapp fingers are certainly skilful, and the divine gift of the sense of the beautiful has been distributed in that far north country. Not only the dress, but also all sorts of household goods and small articles, testify to the craftsman's talent and sense of esthetic necessity.
Drinking ladles, wood with reindeer-horn.
The Laplanders use the skin of the reindeer and other furs for their garments, gloves, boots, shoes and caps, and they often adorn these possessions with charming embroideries. The coast Lapps also look very picturesque in snow-white or grey woollen frocks, ornamented with red or blue braid, girt with a coloured sash.
The men. mostly wear blue caps and the women red ones, and the gayness of colouration is often quite striking in those snowy regions. The bridal costume, with its crown and ribbons, displays real rainbow glories, in some parts ot the country, and this triumphal colour symphony betrays nothing ot the prosaic customs which precede the business of coupling two young souls. In fact bride and bridegroom are entirely left out of the question at first, their two families meeting and settling the bargain, with great consumption of brandy.
The Laplanders possess an instinct for decorating their persons with metal finery. Generally they keep such goods stored away in chests within their tents or shanties, but, especially on festive occasions, they love to make a display of their riches, quite like the peasants do in other parts of Europe.
Carved reindeer-horn spoons.
The Lapps wear broad belts, embroidered in silver, from which hangs a silver-adorned bag, containing a complete tinder-box, silver knives and spoons for the men; while the women also carry knives, a bag for the fire utensils, another bag for spoons, and a large kind of scrip which contains needles, reindeer thread, scissors and thimbles for sewing.
Their vestments have costly parts, glittering fillets, girdles, spangles, buttons and rings showing off the owner's wealth, as do the silver cups and tobacco boxes on their tables. On gala days even the sledges and the trappings for their reindeer bear remarkable adornments.
The men, who are very intent upon their trade, and who are responsible for the cooking and dressing of the food, are clever in several handicrafts. This knowledge is not acquired from masters of the trade, but handed down directly from father to son as a heritage. They make two or four-oared boats, and their skill is the greater as they can only fasten the deal or pine parts together with roots, twigs or reindeer-nerves.
Spoons and a bowl.
They construct sledges in the form of boats, without wheels and with a sort of keel. These vehicles, drawn by the reindeer, are said to go lightly and rapidly, but rather jerkily. Lapp sliding-shoes are famous for their practicableness, and help the wanderer to move nimbly over the snowy deserts.
The men also execute boxes and chests, preferring to give them an oval shape, like their boats, for they can thus hide pegs or twigs. Often they inlay such articles with pretty patterns of reindeer bone.
Their cradles are very amusing; they consist of a kind of case made of birch-bark, into which the little parcel of humanity is pushed. A hole is left on the top for the child's head, and the whole is covered with leather and lined with hairy reindeer skin. The child is wrapped up in very soft skins and packed so tightly that the custom of hanging up such precious parcels on sledges or reindeer-saddles, on a nail in the tent in summer, or on the branch of a tree, appears quite natural. Such appendages often look like strange fruits in the garden of Boreas.
The Lapps are excellent rope-makers, and they can plait baskets of tree-roots, especially the birch, so firmly that water does not run through them. These baskets are of different shapes, round, square, or oblong, with or without a handle, and their exportation carries the fame of the Lapps' dexterity into distant parts.
Also all sorts of useful things are executed in wood or bone by the Laplander. He makes the cards for his play in alder-bark, and paints the figures on them with blood. He makes the moulds for tin-ware and bullets. We come upon weaving implements, shuttles, and combs, which tell us that this glory of the Scandinavian world has found a modest echo even here. But Lapp craftsmen are especially ingenious in making hornspoons, and it is remarkable how clever they are in trimming them and their small boxes with different pendants and rings.
Knives and flasks.
Tools in these regions are utterly primitive, yet we often find excellent decorations of ornamental designs, floral and animal forms, executed by engraving or carving.
The Lapp women, who are used to working hard with the children and the cattle, do all the tailoring and shoemaking. As flax does not grow in their country, they prepare a thread of reindeer sinew, which can only be of a limited length. They can also spin wool from hares' fur, and can knit gloves, caps and stockings with it ; and wc are sometimes astonished at the nicety of these articles, their softness, elegance, and the pretty ornamental figures which the women know how to work into them.
A traveller compared a Lapp woman, whom he saw sitting on a log of birch in her smoky hut, spinning, whilst the fire was smouldering in the gloom, to some mysterious witch working the thread of fate. But, above all, Lapp women are brilliant in embroidery, for which they have to prepare their own tin-threads. With these they get quite the effect of our silver-thread.
They have also to draw the wire themselves, and accomplish this by pulling the metal with their teeth through holes in horn. By the help of the spindle these wires are twisted so tightly and evenly round the reindeer sinew, that each thread appears to be tin throughout. With these materials they embroider the different parts of their vestments, as well as the harness for their reindeer.
The designs of Laplandish carvings and engravings do not show the " horror vacui " of primitive people, nor do they betray the strange northern propensity for interlacings and fantastic combinations. Rather are they marked by reticence and simplicity.
Most frequently we meet plaited motives of all kinds, which either extend over the whole object or only fill a part of it. Also a kind of chessboard pattern occurs, fish scales, or graceful ornamental figures and borderings, even floral forms, like delicate tendrils. The spirit of Christianity, which has gradually taken hold of the people, shows itself by the appearance of the cross. Varieties in shape are more numerous than varieties in design, and these we can study in the illustrations which accompany this article.
It was the opinion of Tacitus that only a native could like Lapland; but the more we penetrate the darkness which is massed around our arctic brethren, the clearer we understand the injustice of applying to them our customary epithet "primitive."
Holme, Charles. Peasant Art in Sweden, Lapland and Iceland. "The Studio" LTD, 1910.
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