Some Books of the Week fr is a long time
since we have read so fascinating a book as Tent Folk of the Far North,: by_ Ester Blenda Nordstrom (Jenkins, 12s. 6d.), and let us say at once that the translation by Miss Gee Nash is singularly happy. Miss' Nordstrom was a teacher under the Swedish Government and was sent among the nomad Lapps, whom she. here ,describes with much charm and intimacy. It is really an account of her journey with them to their summer quarters and the summer she spent among them as their not too conventional teacher. Through her seeing eyes, her wit and sympathy, we are privileged to to see the Lapps as they are, cheerful in the face of adversity, buffeted by nature, often faint yet always pursuing, very weatherwise and indomitably young. " Aren't you tired ? " asked the author, after as wild a journey as could be imagined ; " I'm not so old as all that," laughed an old lady of seventy- two. We are admitted to, their ritual of hospitality : almost we-drink the two cups of coffee which ceremony prescribes : the birch bough warns us to avoid an untenanted tent : we share their domesticity, their loves, and quarrels : we follow the reindeer on the march and to their distant grazing grounds. But, alas, we feel that the end is not far off. The fate of the herdsman and the nomad has already cast its shadow over the Lapps. Norway demands tribute for her farmers, who claim, not too modestly, that reindeer damage their crops--7 and they have to sell their reindeer. They are taught in Swedish, not in their own language (and write in Finnish !) : but no Swedish hotel will let them a room, should they be so imprudent as to venture into a civilization which has hard standards of hospitality. Their old songs are of the devil and and they are taught that " Christians must not sing "—a dreary future for the children of song. They will need all their courage to face the charity of an alien people, for there can be few teachers so sympathetic as Miss Nordstrom, whose courage and: humanity shine through her pages despite her resolute
self-effacement. * * * *
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