Burial
Death
The book says disease was rare, and that a plague lost its force in the cold. The ordinary trouble was the eyes, from the smoke in the hut, and old age often ended in blindness. Also a pleurisy, and sometimes the smallpox. For a medicine the book names the root of a moss, which it calls Jereh, and angelica, Fadno, boiled with reindeer whey. A wound was dressed with resin. A limb numbed by cold was anointed with reindeer cheese. Rheen says some lived above a hundred years, and that most reached seventy, eighty, and ninety. The book tells elsewhere of asking the drum. That is not repeated here. (Schefferus 1674)
The grave
When someone died, the book says the hut was left. A rich person was wrapped in linen, a poor one in worn wool, the head covered as well. Some were laid in a cave, and the mouth stopped with stones. The claim that the body was buried under the hearth the book rejects. A hatchet, and a flint and steel, were buried with those who, in the book’s words, were less observant of Christian rites. The reason given is their own: a light, and a way through the woods, if they rise. Schefferus takes the custom for an older one. A grave was not willingly dug. A poor man was paid, or a Swede was got to do it. At the churchyard the burial was by the Christian rite. The mourning clothes were the worst they had. The sledge that brought the dead, and the clothes of the sickness, were left at the grave. The feast was on the third day. The food was the flesh of the reindeer that had drawn the dead. The bones were gathered into a coffer and buried. A wooden image of the person was fastened to the coffer. The brandy the book calls Saligawiin, the wine of the blessed. Some of the richer sort repeated the feast every year. (Schefferus 1674)