The Scandinavian farmer, however, who has the Lapp reindeer-herder for an occasional neighbour, does not agree with the enthusiastic theorists who in Stockholm and Christiania make the laws for his preservation. Socially he regards the Lapp as though he were some noxious kind of ape, the which is quite understandable, because the spirit which fosters Aborigines' Protection Societies can only exist at a considerable distance from the aboriginal. He sees the Lapp and his doings personally, and (being somewhat unread) does not regard him from the point of view of an interesting relic of the past. He merely looks upon him in the light of the present, and finds him a thorn in the flesh.
In the old viking days the Scandinavian would yield to no one in his appetite for thieving; but with advancing civilisation he has grown to be a staunch anti-pilferer. He has had game-laws set up above his head, and he respects them. He is allowed to shoot one elk on his own estate, and only one elk, per annum, and he must shoot it in a certain fixed month; and it is not pleasant for him to see the Lapp (who knows no law except the rule of appetite) gaily slaying the great deer whenever they come within range of a rifle-bullet. It annoys him, too, to have his cows milked on the mountains, and his rivers and lakes poached with system and industry. Moreover, it is his custom to leave all his worldly goods unlocked and unguarded, and he expects that no one will steal them; so that when the mountain Lapp comes out of the forest like a quiet ghost, and annexes any trifle, from a sheep to a parcel of smoked salmon which may strike his fancy, the farmer rages, and makes no allowance for the neglect of education. It is tolerably useless to apply to the Government for redress, because governments move slowly, and a Lapp moving on the fjeld, if not tackled at once, is hard to catch; and so he takes the law (and a Remington rifle) into his own most capable hands.
Then begins the trouble. The mountain Lapp, according to his instincts, has stolen; and although under pressure he might peaceably give up the transferred goods, he has a strong dislike to indiscriminate retaliation--when applied to himself. So when he comes across the rotting carcasses of first one, then another, then a dozen, then a score of his cherished deer, ruthlessly shot down and left in their wallows, he accepts the _vendetta_, and prepares to carry it into bloody effect. He owns a rifle, this nomad herder of to-day, who rears the __rensdyr__ amongst the rugged mountains of the Scandinavian peninsula; and though it is an early breech-loader, cast from the army in the early seventies, it is a deadly enough weapon when the butt is cuddled by a vengeful shoulder. And he goes down to the valley-farms and puts lead into beast or man, whichever comes in his way. Upon which the farmers, still saying no word to the Government, arm and organise a Lapp-hunt; and the mountains swallow the tale of what is done; and those who come back to the farms sit down assured that at least some of the aborigines will pester them no more.