LAPLAND, an extensive territory in the north of Europe, between lat. 64° and 66° N., and from the shores of Norway east to those of the White Sea; area, about 150,000 square miles, of which more than a half belongs to Russia; and the remainder is shared in nearly equal proportions between Sweden and Nor way. Both from its geographical position and its physical conformation Lapland, or the country of the Lapps, is one of the most for bidding regions of the globe, consisting either of rugged mountains, some of them covered with perpetual snow, and many of them only for a short period free from it, or of vast monotonous tracts of moorland wastes. This extensive territory appears to have been at one time wholly occupied by the people to whom it owes its name; but its southern and better portions have been gradually encroached upon by Norwegians, Swedes and Finlanders., The Lapps call themselves Sabme or Saba meladsjak (the Norwegians call them Finns), belong to the Ural-Altaic stock, and are con sequently closely related to the Finns (Suomi). As a race they are the shortest people in Europe (four or five feet in height). They are spare of body, with dark, bristly hair and scanty beard, and short, often handy legs. Though not very muscular, they are capable of great exertion and fatigue, and frequently live to a great age. The mouth is large, the lips thick and the eyes small and -piercing.
The Lapps are usually distinguished as Mountain, Sea, Forest and River Lapps. The Mountain Lapps, the backbone of the race, are nomads; they move constantly from place to place in order to find sustenance for their reindeer herds, their only source of wealth. In summer they go down to the fiords and coasts, but spend the rest of the year in the mountains and on, the plains of the interior. The Sea Lapps, mostly impoverished Mountain Lapps, or their descendants, dwell in scattered hamlets along the coast, and live by fishing. The Forest and River Lapps are nomads who have taken to a settled mode of life; they not only keep domesticated reindeer, but hunt and fish. The nomad Lapps live all the year round in tents. The reindeer supplies nearly all their wants, except coffee, tobacco and sugar. They live on its flesh and milk; they clothe.them selves in its skin, and use it as a beast of burden. It is computed that there are 400,000 reindeer in Lapland, for the most part semi wild. In his personal habits and in his clothing the Lapp is the reverse of cleanly: he gets his last bath when two years old. He is rather prone to self-indulgence, is good natured, but sad-featured and melancholy, miserly and selfish; he is passionately attached to his country. He is opposed to everything that has an appearance of frivolity or pleasure, especially dancing; although the nation is rich in folklore, hymns are preferred to the weird old national songs. The Lapps all pro fess Christianity; but there still. lingers
among them vestiges of the old pagan super stitions. Their imagination is easily excited, and they are readily susceptible to religious impressions of a sensational type; a notable °epidemic° of this kind occurred at Kouto keino in Norwegian Lapland in 1848-51. Cli matic conditions make their attendance at church infrequent; but the Lapp goes at least once a year, when the burials, christeniitgs, marriages and communions follow each other in succession. It is regarded as a degradation for a Lapp to marry a non-Lapp.
Valuable beds of iron ore have been found within recent years in the southern part of Swedish Lapland, at Gillivari and Kiruna, re spectively 44 and 100 miles north of the Arctic circle, and these are being developed by the Swedes with rapidity and thoroughness. At Kiruna in 1886 there was not a .single house; in 1914 there was a population of 10,000, with, shows, a Salvation Army band and a trolley car system (the most northerly in the world) and other marks of an advanced civil ization. On the opposite side of Luossajaryi there is a great mountain of iron ore (7 per cent pure metal), the largest deposit in the world, yielding over 3,000,000 tons a year. The Lapps themselves will not work in mines, regarding it as devil's work, and in conse quence the mines are operated by a motley crowd of cosmopolitans.
The Lapps of Norway and Sweden belong to the Lutheran Church, those of Russia to the Greek Church. The Norsemen treated the Lapps as a subject race as early as the 9th century, but had to reconquer them in the 14th; the Russians followed in the 1 1 th, and the Swedes in the 16th. From the 13th to the 17th century the Lapps were kept in a state little better than slavery by Swedish adventurers known as Birkarlians. But at the present day both the Scandinavian governments bestow on them every consideration; they pay no taxes of any kind; they have an organized system of local government; stationary and ambulatory schools are maintained for the benefit of their children; and they are exempt from military service. The number of Laplanders is not supposed to exceed 30,000 of all descriptions, of whom Norway has nearly 15,000, Sweden about 7,000, the rest belonging to Russia. Prob ably one-third of them are nomadic. Consult Acerbi, G., 'Travels through Sweden, Fin land, and Lapland . . . in 1798 and 1799' (2 vols., 1882); Du Chaillu, P. B., 'Land of the Midnight Sun' (New York 1882) • and 'Land of the Long Night' (ib. 1899) ; Fulton, j. W. H., 'With Ski in Norway and Lapland' (ib. 1912) ; Rae, Ed., 'The Land of the North Wind' (London 1875) ; and 'The White Sea Peninsula' (ib. 1882); Tromholt, S., 'Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis' (2 vols., Lon don 1885) ; Walter, L. E., 'Norse and Lapp' (New York 1913) ; and 'Lapland, Sweden's America,' in 'The American-Scandinavian Review' (Vol. II, 1914).