Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1883 — BABIES IN SCANDINAVIA. [ARTICLE]

BABIES IN SCANDINAVIA.

The peasants like grand names for their little ones, such as Adolph, Adricin, Gotfried, Gustavus, for boys; and Josephina, Thora, Ingeborg, for girls; and if they have no name prepared they seek one in the almanac for the particular day of baby’s birth. It is baptized the next Sunday and taken to church by the godmother, who provides the christening garments, which are often trimmed with colored bows, while the infant has beads round its neck and wears a cap with very little border. The clergyman holds it well over the font and pours water over the back of the head three times, then wipes with a towel. As the baby is swathed in six-inch-wide bandages so that it cannot move its legs and sometimes not even its arms, it is obliged to lie very passive during this ceremonial. The peasants have their reasons for this swathing, the first of which is that they* think it makes the limbs grow straight; the second that it turns baby into a compact bundle to carry. When swathed thus, infants have been said to resemble the tail of a lobster, or even its whole body. In the north they are often hung from a long, springy pole, stuck in the wall, to be out of the way; and, being by nature quiet, they are supposed not to mind it. Their cradles, which are very primitive, are frequently suspended by a spiral spring from the roof, which must be more comfortable than the pole. Both in Swedish and Norwegian Lapland, people take these' “swaddlings” to church. But instead of carrying them into clfurch they make a hole in the snow outside in the churchyard and bury them in it, leaving a small aperture for breathing purposes. The babies are kept splendidly warm, while their friends within the sacred building have beards frozen to their fur coats by the freezing of their own breaths. As soon as a peasant boy can walk, he is put into trousers, buttoned outside his jacket; these are so baggy behind that it is often amusing to see him. This bagginess is frequently due to the fact that the trousers originally belonged to his father, and were cut off at the legs and simply drawn round the boy’s waist without reducing their size. Add to this that the feet are shod either with little jack-boots or wooden shoes, and we have a strange picture. Their stockings either have leather heels or no heels at all, so that the mother is spared the trouble of mending them. Neither has she much labor with their heads, the hair of which is cropped as close as a convict’s. The girls also wear wooden shoes, but they have gingham kerchiefs or caps on their heads, frocks down to their heels, and quaint pinafores.— Young Folk’s Magazine.