- Project Runeberg -  Through Norway with a Knapsack /
122

(1859) [MARC] Author: W. Mattieu Williams
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122 THROUGH NORWAY WITII A KNAPSACK.

There are two classes of Lapps—the Fjeld Lapp,
and the Fisher Lapp; the former I have spoken of at
Tromsö. The Lapps at Hammerfest are all fishers.
Their boats are not larger than the smallest
rowing-boats we have on our coast, and far less strongly built.
These are not only their fishing-smacks, but also their
family residences; serving them " for kitchen and
parlour and all." They live for the most part afloat, the
boats moored to the rude quay; and it is an odd sight
to see a row of these floating families going to bed
publicly, in the open air, on a fine sunny midnight.
After a supper of dried fish, which they pull to threads
with their fingers, they say their prayers, and then the
husband and wife tuck themselves up together under
a reindeer skin at one end of the boat; the baby, in
its " egg," is deposited near to them, and the elder
children are concealed somewhere at the other end.
An hour after, as I walked along the shore, when the
pairs of sleeping faces alone were visible, and the
silence was complete, the scene wakened in my mind
quaint reminiscences of childish fancies of clolls’-houses,
toy-boats, Noah’s-arks, and the little old woman that
lived in a shoe. The next day, as the little people
walked about in couples, liand-in-hand, all so silently
and gently, speaking in a "soft murmur if they spoke at
all, and with an expression both in face and gait of
such utter harmlessness and amiability, the idea of a
colony of living dolls was still more strongly suggested.
From a little distance their dress has a becoming and
rather gay appearance; the cap, or bonnet, of the

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