Nilsson briefly "sketches the outline of his parallel" as follows:—
(1) "The Laplanders are ugly and short, just as the dwarfs of the Sagas are represented to be." (He might have added that the Lapps and the dwarfs are each described as having disproportionately long arms.)[1]
(2) "The Laplanders are clothed in a gray reindeer kirtle, and they wear a blue or a red cap. The pigmies are also so identified in the Sagas."
(3) "The Laplanders, for instance,—in Norway,—speak the language of the country very badly. "When the Norwegians imitate the Laplanders it is done nearly in the same way as when the Danish peasant imitates the pigmy."
(4 & 5) Lapps and Dwarfs, alike, are represented as cowardly, cunning and deceitful.
(6) Lapps and Dwarfs are skilful craftsmen.
(7) Lapps and Dwarfs delight to hoard up glittering metals, especially silver. (Both are, also, noted for burying their hoards).
(8) "It was thought that the Dwarfs were skilled in sorcery, the same was believed of the Laplanders."
(9 & 10) " The Lapland race is considered inferior . . . The Laplanders, therefore, marry and hold feasts only amongst themselves as was the case with the mountain-pigmies. (As regards intermarriage, however, there are many exceptions to this rule, both in the case of the modern Lapps and of traditional Dwarfs.)
These, then, are the chief points of Professor Nilsson's argument; which receives scant justice when set forth in this very condensed form. And it appears to me, as it has
- ↑ See a paper read by Dr. J. G. Garson at a meeting of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, June 9th, 1885.
