the mild Atlantic winds and commands no alternative industries like dairy farming, fisheries, and maritime trade.[1441] Hence Leroy-Beaulieu attributes the unsystematic, desultory habits of work prevailing among the northern peasants to the long intermission of labor in winter, and to the alternation of a short period of intense activity with a long period of enforced idleness.  He finds them resembling southern peoples in their capacity for sudden spurts of energy rather than sustained effort, thinks them benumbed by the sloth of the far north, which is not unlike the sloth of the south.[1442]

The dominant continental and central location of Russia enables its climatic extremes to operate with little check.  The peripheral location of Scandinavia in the path of the Atlantic winds modifies its climate to a mild oceanic type, and its dominant maritime situation gives its people the manifold resources of a typical coast land.  Hence Buckle’s estimate of national character in the Scandinavian Peninsula has little basis as to fact or cause.  Irregularity of agricultural labor does not mean here cessation of all labor, and hence does not produce the far-reaching effect ascribed to it.  Only about one-third of the Norwegian population is engaged in agriculture.  The restriction of its arable and meadow land to 3 per cent. of the whole territory, and the fact that a large proportion of the people are employed in shipping and the fisheries,[1443] are due to several geographic factors besides climate.  The same thing is true of Sweden in a modified degree.

[Sidenote:  Complexity of climatic effects.]

Caution should be exercised in drawing conclusions from climate alone or from only one phase of its influence.  The duration and intensity of the seasons affects not only the manner of work, but the whole mode of life of a people.  On the Yukon, in Iceland, and the high mountain valleys of the Alps, winter puts a check not only upon out-of-door labor, but upon all public or community life.  Intercourse stops or is greatly restricted.  The outside world drops away.  In Iceland, the law courts are in session only in summer when the roads by sea and land are open.  In the Kentucky mountains the district schools close before Christmas, when the roads become impassable from rain and snow; the summer is the gala time for funeral services, for only then can the preacher or “circuit-rider” reach the graves made in the winter.  Therefore the funerals in one community accumulate, so to speak, and finally, when leisure comes after the August harvest, they make the occasion for important social gatherings.  Much of the influence of winter lies in its power to isolate.