The Lapps were also acquainted with the ‘rotten month’ (_mieska manno_, Swedish _rötmånad_)[1038]. A Lapp woman mentioned by Wiklund gave this month the position of the ninth in the series, and explained it as the month in which the grass begins to fade and rot. On the strength of this Wiklund assumes a thirteen-month year, but the statement is inconclusive, the ‘rotten month’ having certainly been placed erroneously as a separate month in the series. That this is so is supported not only by Qvigstad but also by Högström in his description of Lapland of the year 1746, in which he speaks of thirteen week-months of the Lapps. According to this authority the Lapps drew their rune-calendar on seven discs of reindeer-horn, but only one side of the seventh was written on, so that there were 13 sides of four weeks each, which they called a month, and so their reckoning was 13 months, he says. Wiklund has accepted this four-week month. It is quite possible that the Lapps called a period of four weeks a month: we also often do the same when an approximation will serve; but that the names of months mean periods of four weeks seems very questionable. It would be a quite isolated case: everywhere else the months are either the Julian or lunar months, with which last the Lapps were acquainted, at least in ancient times. The statement that on the basis of the reckoning by weeks a four-week month could have arisen is certainly not absolutely to be denied,--if this is so, it must be a secondary and late development--but the fluctuation of the names of months is no evidence for this. It is only the fluctuation found everywhere when names of seasons are transformed into names of months. Only the names of the first two months are quite fixed, and these are either essentially or literally loan-words: the Latin name even appears in one instance for March. There is consequently borrowing in the case of the three names which alone, as also among the Scandinavians, have become really popular. If the Lapps really had thirteen months, it might then be supposed that these, as in Denmark and Finland, were lunar months which began at the first new moon of the new year. But we find no trace of lunar months in Lapland in historical times. We must therefore content ourselves with the fact that the Lapp names of months shew the same fluctuation as is shewn by all names taken from natural objects or phenomena and applied to the months.