The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1925-10-30
SWEDISH LAPPS
ARE BECOMING
CIVILIZED
Many Deserving Tribal Ways
to Enter Schools and
Factories
By international News Service

AA1SNAA@@-SAOAA~@A
ABISKKO, Sweden, Oct. 3d.
Like the American Indians, the
Swedish Lapps, who roam through
the northern parts OF the country.
are beginning to heed the call of
civilization and ignore the call of
the wild. This is revealed by a
survey of Lapp life just completed
here. AS railroads and motor cars
and mining enterprises advance
further North many of them aban-
don their habits as mysterious
nomads OF the North and adopt the
ways of the Swedish civilization.
They are the last primitives of
Europe and sometimes the trains
of the Swedish state railways,
which, north of the Arctic Circle
run by electricity, massacre their
reindeer herds. Late this summer,
a Iapp family, infected with ty-
plus, was rescued by an aeroplane
ambulance, attached to the Swed-
ish border fortress at Boden.
Attending Schools.
Lured by these modern contriv-
ances the more enterprising Lapp
youths forsake the occupations OF
their ancestors and attend the
Swedish, speciality schools, where
they are trained for the skilled
trades, as well as the learned pro-
LESSONS, and once they have be-
come used to civilized methods of
living they seem unable to go back.
Several young Lapps have secured
admission to the Swedish univers-
tiles and a few bright Iapp girls
attend normal schools for teachers.
In recent years Lapps have be-
come preachers and others are
school masters. In one OF the
Swedish mines up here a Lapp is
one of the foremen and he manages
the Swedish workmen under him
with success. In the Lapland sum-
mer hotels there are Lapp walters
and they handle the 'smorgasbord'
trays with speed and Skill
Wealth i'm Reindeer
But for those who remain with
their tribes and tend reindeer for
q living the contact with civilian
ton has not been beneficial. While
adopting some of the white mans
self indulgences, the Lapps not the
means to offset these softening in
Huences.
On the whole their race has been
injured by learning the ways of
the rest of Europe, just as the
American Indians were, but, while
Il was the white mans whiskey
that did most to undermine the
noble American red man, it is the
Inilder stimulants of tobacco and
coffee that have been adopted by
the Lapps and the process of their
deterloration is correspondingly
slower.
Among the Lapps both men and
women smoke, and over the open
tire in the center of their reindeer
skin tents the coffee pot is Kept
forever simmering. Without his
coffee the Lapp becomes gIum end
Wobbly. but once the craving is
satisfied he again fits lightly over
the hill and dale in a zigzag course
that seems bewildering to outsiders.
Race Pride Great
Like the American Indians the
4Apps also have their racial pride
and this summer a Lap woman
who had married a tramp from the
south was dispossessed by the
Swedish authorities at their re.
quest. Their antagonfsm to the
husband was further increased by
the fact that he had once been
convicted of reindeer stealing, a
crime as heinous in their eyes as
horse stealing used to be in the
American far West.
Reindeer are their only property
and means Of support and against
wolves, as well as against thieves,
their primitive fury rises. In the
dead of the winter nights, when
the restlessness of the reindeer
herd indicates that wolves are
skull1ing about, the Lapp will rise
from his bed of fir boughs and
armed only vita knife, pursue
the beast Of prey on skis until he
gets a chance to plunge the knife
through its heart