WIRE of Lapland. The inhabitants of Lapland have a sort of shining slender substance in use among them on several occasions, which is much of the thickness and appearance of our silver wire, and is therefore called, by those who do not examine its structure or substance, Lapland wire. It is made of the sinews of the rein deer, which being carefully separated in the eating, are, by the women, after soaking in water and beating, spun into a sort of thread, of admirable fineness and strength, when wrought to the smallest filaments; but when larger, is very strong, and fit for the purposes of strength and force. Their wire, as it is called, is made of the finest of these threads covered with tin. The women do this business; and the way they take is to melt a piece of tin, and placing at the edge of it a horn, with a hole through it, they draw these sinewy threads, covered with the tin, through the hole, which prevents their coming out too thick covered. This drawing is performed with their teeth; and there is a small piece of bone placed at the top of the hole, where the wire is made flat; so that we always find it rounded on all sides but one, where it is flat.
This wire they use in embroidering their clothes, as we do gold and silver; they often sell it to strangers, under the notion of its having certain magical virtues.