SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

222 Saga-Book of the Viking Society
called Lap(p)ians, Lappones, Lappies. Anthony Jenkinson's
map of 1562 shows Lappia to be Finno-Russian
Lapland, the Norwegian and Swedish territory being
called Biarmias" Other names include the curious
Pilapilanter of Roger Barlow's A Brief Summe of
Geographie, written in 1540-1.21 This name is taken from
Barlow's Spanish original, but there are parallel forms in
early Danish maps." Michael Lock, writing in 1575, says
that "The countrie of Russia stretchethe to the North Sea,
where the sea-coast extendethe from the Lappe est wards
to Dwena".23 This is presumably a case of the name of
the people being used for the territory, and is the first
example I have found of the word Lapp in English.
The records of the Muscovy Company were destroyed
in the Great Fire of London, but a good deal of original
material concerning the venture survives. Some of this,
including accounts of the pioneerexploration of Willoughby
and Chancellor and of later travels by such people as
Richard Johnson, Stephen Burrough and Anthony
Jenkinson, is preserved in Hakluyt. Other sources are
official documents - examinations of the High Court of
Admiralty, State Papers on foreign affairs, and the like -,
private records, and independent contemporary publications.
Many ot these give quite detailed descriptions of
the inhabitants of Lapland, the Laplanders as they are
called at least as early as r609.24 We read of their
material condition, their appalling poverty, the goods they
trade in, the tribute they pay the kings of Denmark and
Sweden and the Russian emperor, but there is seldom
mention of their magical skills. This contrasts with the
treatment of the Samoyeds farther to the east. They are
rarely spoken of without a discourse, often lengthy and
20 E. D. Morgan and C. H. Coote, Early Voyages and Travels to Russia and
Persia (r886), cxx.
21 E. G. R. Taylor, A Brief Summe of Geographic by Roger Barlow (r932), 45.
22 F. Nansen, In Northern Mists (r9II), I 226 and refs.
23 Bond, op, cit., viii.
24 W. Phillip, A True and Perfect Description of Three Voyages . . . , reprinted
in C. T. Beke, A True Description of Three Voyages by the North-East . . . (r853),
243·