At last, after much pressing, it was admitted that we might possibly find carriers for our transport at the other side of the Varanger fjord, but at the same time it was pointed out that we probably should not. At any rate the route from Puolnak was utterly impracticable. Our only chance was to start from the Neiden Elv, cross from there to Enare See, boat that, and then trust to luck. Provisions, we were told plainly, it was most unlikely we should find, but (so absolutely ignorant were these Vardö people of the interior of Lapland) the prospects of sport were said to be extremely rosy. There were few bear or other big game, to be sure, but the gun would provide us with fowl in all abundance for the pot. And, anyway, it was entirely useless to further recruit our slender stock of tins. It was vastly improbable that we should be able to get carriers for the few we had got. It was more than likely that we should have to desert them, and press on alone with merely cartridges as personal luggage, if we were fools enough to try and travel through country at that season where it was not intended by Nature that man should go.
Now this information was none of it very encouraging, and none of it very definite. It was most of it frankly given as depending on mere hearsay. And although we advertised our want largely, and tramped up and down the fish-strewn streets to see countless likely people, nowhere could we find a man who knew Lapland personally, much less one who would (for a fee) act as guide, much less one who could serve as guide and interpreter both. For here was another difficulty: the Lapps spoke Quivnsk (or Finnish), and we did not. We possessed a slender vocabulary of Russian and Norsk between us, and this, it appeared, would be of as much value in Lapland as Spanish or Fijian. French, German, and English were equally useless, and, as it turned out, our remaining rags of schoolboy dog-Latin, made the only language which we brought into that country which we were able to turn to any practical use within its marches.
Finally, came the question of money. Finland is a Grand Duchy of Russia, conquered by that power from Sweden in 1809; but the Russian rouble has never become acclimatised there. The standard coin is the "mark," which equals a franc, and which contains ten "pennis." The mark has overflowed into Lapland; and so that country, peopled though it may be by the oldest tribe in Europe, and far behindhand in other matters, is still ahead of England in having the one civilised requisite of a decimal coinage.