Sami Homes in the 17th Century
The Laplanders lived in tents or sheds, fashioned differently according as their inmates belonged to mountain or forest. The former erected four posts at four corners, placing three rafters on…
From: 1600 C.E. To: 1700 C.E.
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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.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 Through Lapland With Skis and Reindeer by Frank Hedges Butler, 1917.
Dwellings
The Laplanders lived in tents or sheds, fashioned differently according as their inmates belonged to mountain or forest. The former erected four posts at four corners, placing three rafters on top of them, so that there should be one on each side and one at the back. Long poles were then placed on the rafters so that their tops might rest upon and support one another. The poles were covered with coarse woollen cloths. These tents they took away with them when they left the place.
But the forest-dwellers made sheds of board and posts that met at the top in a cone, which they covered with the boughs of fir and pine, or with the bark of those trees, and sometimes with turf. There were two doors; that at the front was the larger and more generally used; that at the back smaller and used for bringing in provisions and the prey obtained by hunting.
In the centre was the hearth, surrounded by stones, in which there was continual fire except at midnight. The cooking-pot hung over it, the smoke going out through a hole in the roof. The interior was divided into spaces by means of logs laid along the ground; some of the divisions served as sleeping-rooms, others as a kitchen and an apartment in which to keep the men's hunting implements. The floor was strewn with branches of birch-trees, covered with reindeer skins to keep out the damp, and on the skins the occupants were used to sit and lie. The master, his wife, children, and servants all sit in the same hut.
Near at hand a storehouse for their goods and provisions was erected. They cut off the upper part of a tree to about 15 or 18 ft. from the ground, and placed on it two rafters crosswise, and built their repository on them of boards, making the door in the bottom, so that when the man left it, "the door falls-to like a trapdoor and all things are safe." They went up by ladders made of the trunks of trees in which notches were cut like stairs. They were built high up in this fashion in order to prevent bears and other wild beasts from getting at the contents.
Butler, Frank Hedges. Through Lapland with Skis and Reindeer. T. Fisher Unwin LTD., 1917.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
