Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Lapland
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Now and then we lost sight of him but we heard
him singing to himself the whole time. Now and
then he stopped to wait for us by a steep rock or a
fallen tree to rush away again faster than ever
to make up for lost time. A moment later there
was no longer any fear he might lose his way in
the gloom for the night had already fled on swift
goblin feet deeper into the forest. A flame of
golden light quivered in the tree-tops.
“Piavi!” said Ristin, “the sun is rising!”
Through the mist of the valley at our feet a
mountain lake opened its eyelid.
I approached the lake with uneasy forebodings
of another ice-cold bath. Luckily I was
mistaken. Ristin stopped short before a small eka,
a flat-bottomed boat, half-hidden under a fallen
fir-tree. It belonged to nobody and to
everybody, it was used by the Lapps on their rare
visits to the nearest church-village to exchange
their reindeer skins for coffee, sugar and tobacco,
the three luxuries of their lives. The water of
the lake was cobalt blue, even more beautiful
than the sapphire blue of the Blue Grotto in
Capri. It was so transparent that I thought I
almost could see the hole the terrible Stalo had
knocked in its bottom. Half across the lake we
met two stately travellers swimming side by side,
their superb antlers high out of the water.
Luckily they mistook me for a Lapp so we could
come up so close to them that I could see their
soft beautiful eyes looking fearlessly at us.
There is something very strange about the eyes
of the elk as about those of the reindeer, they
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