Man at the timberline: life on the Kola Peninsula in the 1880's

Abstract

A description is provided of the life of the Lapp population of the northern Kola Peninsula in the late 1880's from notes made by Finnish natural scien­tists visiting the area. The inhabitants of the Lapp villages moved on a seasonal basis between their winter villages and their summer and autumn encampments. Three major patterns of migration are noted: (1) all dwelling sites in the interior, typical of the inhabitants of the more isolated villages, (2) the most common type, in which the winter village and autumn camp were inland and the summer site on the coast, and (3) dispersal of the people of the coastal villages along the coast during the summer to fish.

The most permanent form of habitation was the winter village, where all the inhabitants assembled to spend the coldest months of the year. The minimum requirement for the site of such a village was the availability of firewood, and consequently the inland villages were located in the transi­tion zone between the forest and the tundra. The villages would exhaust the timber resources of their immediate surroundings completely within about 15‑20 years, after which a change of site was essential. With the low rate of forest regeneration in the region, the old village sites would remain treeless for substantial lengths of time, and in places the timberline could shift further south as a consequence. On the coast, too, where the forests had extended down the river banks to the sea at one time, these eventually became denuded in the immediate vicinity of villages.