Sami Life Events in the 17th Century
From Through Lapland With Skis and Reindeer by Frank Hedges Butler, 1917.
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 It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.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.
Customs
Nothing perhaps more marks the difference between earlier times and our own than the views concerning large families. Sheffer records with a suspicion of reproach that, much as the Laplanders desire "fruitful matrimony, eight children is the largest number they can produce," and usually they beget but one, two, or three." Their barrenness was accounted for in three ways: poor diet, the extreme cold, and God's anger incurred by their "obstinateness in maintaining their ancient impieties."
As soon as the child was born it was washed, but first in cold water or snow, and then dipped, the head excepted, in hot water. The newborn infant was wrapped in a hare's skin by way of swaddling-clothes. Baptism took place a fortnight after birth, when the mother would "undertake a most tedious journey over the tops of mountains through wide marshes and high woods with her infant to the priest; for the women of this country are naturally hardy and able to endure anything without trouble, and therefore, though they feed upon coarse food in their sickness, and drink nothing else but water, yet they recover again quickly."
In winter the infant was placed in a sledge, and in summer the cradle, made of the trunk of a tree hollowed out like a boat and covered with leather, was fastened, with the infant inside, to the pack-saddle of the reindeer. The mother nursed her child, sometimes for years, but if for any reason she could not suckle the child herself, it was nourished on reindeer milk administered in a bottle. But almost directly after birth pieces of reindeer flesh are thrust into the babe's mouth so that it may suck the gravy out of it.
As regards education, the father instructed the boys and the mother the girls "in all necessary arts." There were few or no schools or school-masters. The boys were taught to shoot, and received rewards for skill in the art. The father made provision for his daughter by bestowing on her, soon after birth, a female reindeer, whose horns were engraved with "her mark so as to prevent all controversies or quarrels that may arise concerning her right." Another was given her when she cut her first tooth. Those beasts with their progeny were preserved for the future use of the girl, whose parents often added gifts of others.
Thus when a young man purposed to marry, he looked out for a girl "well stocked with reindeer." He cared nothing for "good-breeding or beauty or the other common allurements of wooers." When he had decided upon the maiden, he went to her parents, taking with him his own father and one or two others likely to be welcome to the family he desired to enter, and especially one to be spokesman, and so win the favour of the bride's parents.
That personage, in making the demand, in order to achieve more success, "honours the father with the greatest titles and names of renown that he can devise, at everyone bowing the knee as if he were treating with a prince. He styles him the High and Mighty Father, the Worshipful Father, as if he were one of the patriarchs, the Best and Most Illustrious Father, and no doubt, if they were acquainted with the Royal title of His Majesty, he would not scruple to call him the Most Majestic Father." Not until everything was settled by the parents was the suitor allowed to approach the girl, who was invariably sent away upon some errand while the negotiations were going forward.
Then he saluted her with a kiss, "in which that they mainly aim at is, that each not only apply his mouth to the other's, but also that both their noses touch, for otherwise it goes not for a true salute." Then after more ceremonies the girl consented and the couple were engaged. The wedding was often deferred for two or three years, because during the time of courtship the suitor was compelled continually to make handsome presents to the girl's parents and friends, without whose consent he could not marry her, and to travel backwards and forwards to visit her. He solaced his journey with the singing of Lappish love songs, of which the following serves as an example:—
Kulnasatz, my reindeer,
We have a long journey to go;
The moors are vast,
And we must haste,
Our strength, I fear,
Will fail if we are slow
And so Our songs will do.
Kaige, the watery moor
Is pleasant unto me,
Though long it be;
Since it doth to my mistress lead,
Whom I adore,
The Kilwa moor,
I ne'er again will tread.
Thoughts fill'd my mind
Whilst I thro' Kaige past,
Swift as the wind,
And my desire
Winged with impatient fire.
My reindeer, let us haste.
So shall we quickly end our pleasing pain:
Behold my mistress there,
With decent motion walking o'er the plain Kulnasatz, my reindeer,
Look yonder, where
She washes in the lake.
See while she swims,
The waters from her purer limbs
New clearness take.
The day before the wedding the bridegroom had to make handsome presents to the bride's parents, brothers and sisters, and near relations. The marriage was celebrated in church. In the bridal procession the men walked first and the women followed. The bride was led between a man and a woman, and the etiquette was for her to allow herself to be dragged along, to simulate "great unwillingness and reluctancy" to be wed, "and therefore in her countenance made show of extraordinary sadness and dejection."
After the ceremony came the wedding feast, to which "each of the persons invited contributed his share of the victuals." Those who could not find room in the small hut—the boys and girls, for instance—climbed up on the roof of the hut "and from thence let down threads with hooks tied to them, to which they fasten pieces of meat and the like, so that they also enjoy their share of the banquet." The bridegroom's tribulations were not yet over. He had to wait still a year before he was allowed to carry away his wife and her goods and fortune.
In spite of the hard life, the Laplanders enjoyed good health and were singularly immune from the diseases that afflicted other European peoples. Fever and the plague were almost unknown. Sore eyes were common, and not seldom produced blindness in old age. The trouble was to be attributed to the smoke which habitually filled their huts. Their internal medicines were the root of a kind of moss and the stalk of angelica; for external application for wounds or frostbite, resin or cheese was used.
They lived to a good old age, reaching seventy, eighty, and ninety years, and even then "many of them are still sufficiently brisk and lively, able to manage their business with expedition, to take a journey, to course through woods and mountains, and to perform other such labour."
When any one was dying, if any persons present were versed in the Christian religion, "they exhort him in his agonies to think of God and Christ." If they were regardless of religion, they instantly abandoned the sick person, careful only about the funeral banquet, which they sometimes began to celebrate before the dying person was quite dead.
If a church chanced to be not too far off, the coffin was taken thither for burial in the churchyard. But if it was at some considerable distance, the coffin was carried on a sledge to some convenient spot and there interred. At the funeral they always wore their oldest and shabbiest clothes. The funeral ceremonies abounded in superstitions, for Christian doctrines penetrated very slowly into Lapland and were only gradually accepted.
Some of the beliefs as to the life after death were almost as concrete as those of the Egyptians. The Laplanders would sometimes "bury with their deceased first a hatchet and next a flint and steel, so that if ever they shall come to rise again in that darkness they shall have great need of springing a light; to which the flint and steel may help them, as likewise there will be occasion for a ready way, wherein they may travel to Heaven, to which purpose their hatchet may stand them in stead, them especially that are buried among thick woods, that if any trees obstruct their passage they may cut them down."
The hatchet was the principal weapon in use among the seventeenth-century Laplanders, and the long period of darkness rendered it most necessary to have the means of artificial light at hand, and believing "that after the resurrection they shall take the same course of life they led before, for that reason they furnish them with the same utensils."
Butler, Frank Hedges. Through Lapland with Skis and Reindeer. T. Fisher Unwin LTD., 1917.
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