Near the Top of the World: Stories of Norway, Sweden & Denmark — John Shaqi
Near the Top of the World: Stories of Norway, Sweden & DenmarkMoore, Nelle E.
General
Near the Top of the World: Stories of Norway, Sweden & Denmark
Moore, Nelle E.
Readers -- Geography; Scandinavia -- Juvenile literature
The Lapps and their dogs sleep together in the huts on beds which are
heaps of brush covered with reindeer skins. Getting ready for bed is a
simple task for these people. They merely take off their moccasins and
lie down to sleep in their clothes. They wear the same clothes, too, for
months and months and very seldom take a bath.
A kettle of reindeer meat is always boiling over coals on rocks in the
center of the hut. The Lapps get food from the kettle whenever they feel
hungry and eat it with spoons made of reindeer horn from rude bowls or
plates of wood or bone.
[Illustration: LAPPS TRAVELING WITH REINDEER]
Day and night some Lapp and his dogs watch the herd of reindeer as they
wander on the mountains. A few reindeer are kept near the hut to furnish
milk for the camp.
The reindeer not only furnish the skins for clothes and covers and milk
and meat for food, they are also the Lapps’ horses. The Lapp children
like to go sleigh riding behind a reindeer. But sometimes the ride is
rough. The children may be thrown out into the snow. The reindeer wears
but little harness, so the driver cannot hold him if he cares to run.
Several families of Lapps go every summer from Sweden across a body of
water to a place in Norway where the moss on the mountains is very good.
The reindeer swim across the water. The Lapps go in boats and join the
reindeer on the other side.
One Lapp family that crosses the water from Sweden has built a hut of
timber for its summer home in Norway. It is no larger than the skin or
sod huts. Both the mother and the father have to stoop to enter the
house. But the little Lapp girl and her dogs can run in and out easily.
But, even though the Lapps move about from place to place, the Lapp
girls and boys go to school. The law of Sweden requires these children
to go to school for six years. They begin their lessons when they are
seven years old and go to school until they are thirteen. Each
settlement has its own school. The schoolhouse is just another Lapp hut.
In the summer the children study their lessons sitting on the ground in
front of or in the hut. The teacher lives in the hut and moves when the
camp moves. Many of the teachers are Lapps who have been educated to
teach; but some of the teachers are Swedes or Norwegians.
[Illustration: A LAPP HUT]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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