Caught on camera ... a teenager outside a gåhtie in the tiny church village of Lappstaden.
I am having to school myself in the ways of structured society again. The bus driver takes a slow meander along the calm shores of the Saggat lake, but I find I am resenting the imposed passivity of the bus, and wish I were hiking on my own terms along this 100km road to Jokkmokk.

Jokkmokk is a gentle shock to my system - a quiet, small town, the centre of Sami culture and trading, with its famous winter market. I have come here to find some answers to the questions about Sami life which have been interesting me along my hikes, and I find these answers in the superb Ájtte museum. I discover the Sami have a different approach to the sacred. Entire lakes or mountains can have religious significance. But I don't find answers to my specific questions on the meaning of the holy places I've encountered near Aktse, save that the cave was probably a sacrificial place, and the huge boulder (my rain refuge), a site commemorating a killing involving nine bears.

The bear is a mystical, semi-spiritual figure in Sami religion. The sacred bear, Skogsfar, the Forest Father, had a human wife who bore a son. The woman's brothers killed the bear, and to atone, ceremonial rites were created to restore connection between animals and humans. It's a link still celebrated today in the three-day Bear Feast - bear meat is ritually eaten, and men and women are kept apart, and at the end of the three days, men ritually wash themselves before rejoining the women - which makes a change from the Judeo-Christian tradition, where it is the women who are considered unclean and have to ritually purify themselves! Let's hear it for the Sami women!!

Then onwards again, south to the village of Arvidsjaur, to stay with Nils, a Sami who transports himself around the village on skis mounted on small wheels. He explains Sami symbols to me, and tells me the difference between the mountain and the forest Sami: primarily hunters and fishermen, with only a small, domesticated herd of reindeer.

I discover the Lappstaden, a church village of about 100 dwellings around a church, where Sami gather from across the country on the three traditional feast days (spring prayer day, All Saints day and autumn prayer day - an eclectic, modern-day mix of the traditional Shaman and later Christian religions), for a week-long festival. These kota (now spelt gåhtie) are square with pyramid roofs, and timbered. As in the mountain kota, there is no furniture, just shelving planks, hooks and poles. There are separate storage gåhtie (raised on poles to protect food from marauding beasts) shared by several families. I notice laundry flapping around the trees and discover some of the gåhtie are not just used at festival time, but are in continuous use. A couple of teenagers are lounging with attitude by a store gåhtie and I stow my camera - of course I wasn't going to use it - would I be that crass? They stare me out of the compound. I tramp into the woods for a couple of hours, but I'm back later for my revenge, sweeter still when I get a shot of one of them!