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468 ACCOUNT OF DANISH LAPLAND BY LEEMS.
garment, on pafling, they take it off with veneration. "Women pafled by with averted
eyes, and there faces covered. As often as the men were difpofed to go to the Paffe-
Vaerre or facred mountain for the fake of worfhip, it was forbidden that they fhould
approach in the garment the woman wore before, left the fanctity of the place fhould
be violated, and it was further fubjoined that they fhould not wear the fhoes, which
were made up together with the woman’s.
And as the Laplanders, during times of ignorance worfhipped certain mountains
as the facred habitations of their gods by a principal ceremony, fo did they per-
form the fame honour alfo to their rivers and lakes, which from the names, which are
annexed to them, Ailekes Jauvre, that is facred lake; Paffe-Jok, that is facred river,
is fufficiently clear.
‘The facrifices were performed commonly in thofe places, which the Noaaid that is
the magician or prieft affigned to them, yet fo that they might be offered elfewhere, if the
occafion called for it. A certain Laplander from Porfanger bay, by name Melle
Olfon, aman of charaéter, and well deferving of belief, told me, that a neighbour of
his in the fame place, very well known to him, had after hunting of feals, on his return,
drank of a cold fpring, and was feifed with {fo violent a diforder as to lie danger-
oufly ill for fome weeks, but on his recovery, that he had facrificed an ox in the
place where he was feized with illnefs. The Laplander confumed himfelf the meat of
the ox that was flain, and covering the bones with branches and boughs of wood, he
left them as the cuftom with them is, carelefsly about, for the deity of the place.
In certain places it was formerly received as @ cuftom, that the prieft who performed
the facrifice, fhould come to the rite, clothed in a hood, inftead of a fillet, and a chap-
let of leaves, fuch as was put on the animal that was facrificed. The fame was obliged
to wear a white apron let down over his fhoulders, in the act of facrifice. This orna-
ment, differed but little from thofe ufed by the ancient Romans, as well as the priefts of
other nations: for it is well known that the priefts of the heathens had always come to
the facrifices bound with fillets and chaplets, and that the victims, efpecially fuch as
were facrificed to Saturn and Jupiter, were crowned in the fame manner.
Befides that foul and abominable idolatry to which the Laplanders were of old ad-
dicted, they wifhed to feem to worfhip alfo the true God of the Trinity, in whofe name
they were baptized, whofe word they heard, whofe facraments they made ule of, not
unlike the Samaritans of old, who adored conjointly and together the God of Ifrael, and
the feigned gods of the neighbouring nations.
But there is no doubt, that the Laplanders from the moft remote times back,
had at leaft fome knowledge, though defective and mangled, of the true God in the
Trinity. What earneft and folicitous care Louis the Pious, had taken for propagating
the chriftian religion through the norrh, is clearly and fully manifefted from his not only
baptizing Harald Klak, King of Denmark, together with the Queen in the temple
of Moguntia, but from his fending alfo Anfgarius, amonk of Corbey of France, into
Denmark, together with Ambertus the affociate of his holy labours, whence afterwards
they went into Sweden, publicly to preach the Gofpel in that kingdom, with permiffion
granted by Biorno the kingin 828. Anfgarius, on his return from Denmark and
Sweden, that he fhould be nearer the northern countries, was appointed Bifhop of Ham-
burgh by the faid emperor Louis the Pious, with injunction that he fhould carefully
fee that the knowledge of the true God, was not only carefully propagated among the
people of the north in general, but alfo among the Skrit Fins, that is the Laplanders.
‘Lhe patent bears date in the year 834.
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