Gerda in Sweden

ne of the posting-stations a few miles from Gellivare, waiting for fresh horses to be put into the carts. "I have been r

his father's reindeer may wander away any day to find a place where t

they go?"

een Norway and Sweden,

rovides that Swedish Lap

rwegian Lapps can go inl

Ekman told

topping to ask permission. Perhaps we have been in camp a week, perhaps a month, just as it happens; but when we hear their joints snapping

were seated in the light carts and were once more on their journey. "If I could take such good pictures my

he children listened to the music of a mountain stream not far away. Mingled with the sound of the rushing water was the whirr of a bu

Lapland forest; their road bordered with green ferns and bright blossom

for such a road, isn't it?" said Gerda, a

nt; but many of them are only trails, and are rough and rocky. If the cart were not s

t such a good horse and cart up he

ations, and guarantees the pay of the keepers for providing travellers with fresh horses," her father explained. "The

shall be caught in a thunder-storm," said Gerda, looking up th

ment Erik looked back and shouted, "We must hurry. Perha

louds, he said to Birger, "We shall so

ow about the old Norse g

scarcely an English mile before they were in the midst of a thunder-storm. Over rocks and rills, under low-hanging boughs of pine and birch trees rattled the carts

ik that they must stop. As he spoke, a second flash of lightning showed a great boulder besi

a lake. The arrival of the carts, or k?rra, as they are called in Sweden, had brought the whole family of Lapps to the door of the tent

arms, coat and all, and ran toward the tent. Birger f

way for the strangers to enter, and when Gerda had shaken herself out o

s covered with a coarse woolen cloth which is made by the Lapps and is very strong. A cross-pole wa

e to escape. Birger had often made such a tent of poles and canva

stood up and began to growl, but Erik's father, who was a short, thick-set man with black eyes and a skin which was red and wrinkled from e

e water into the kettle to boil, and grinding some coffee. As she moved about

Gerda's. She opened her blue eyes wide at the sight of the strangers, but

y, and was poured into c

d sisters drank theirs

uld speak Swedish; but the children were all silent, and the dogs lay still

o small packages from her pocket and put them into her father's hand. "They a

urself?" he asked; but Gerda shook her head as if she had sudde

t, a knife and a cheap watch for the older children; a box of matches and some t

ve nothing in the world except our reindeer. If we should give you one of them y

kman. "Erik is a good lad. He can read well, and has studied while he has been working in the mine

n he rose and opened the door of the tent, motioni