Sketches of the past and contemporary common day life of Russian Lapps were the result of an expedition to the Russian North made by Kh. in the summer of 1877. The purpose of his research trip was to collect ethnographic data on the customs of the population of the Olonets and Arkhangelsk Provinces, as well as the Lapps of the Kola Peninsula.
The material collected and theoretically comprehended by Kh. was published in 1890; it became the first detailed ethnographic study of the history, life, material and spiritual culture of Russian Lapps. Pointing to the historical division into the Scandinavian and Russian ethnic group of Lapps, the author used in his study a wide range of foreign sources devoted mainly to the Swedish and Norwegian groups of Lapps, while the data on Russian Lapps in other studies of that time were quite insignificant. In the ‘Essays…’ the problem of the origin and geography of Lapps' settlement is considered, an anthropological analysis of each ethnic group is given, a description of life, economic and family structure and folk art. Kh. pays special attention to the issues of the evolution of religious beliefs from Shamanism and Animistic concepts of ancient Lapps up to the period of Christianization of the ethnic group living in Russia, which retained the features of the beliefs of the past. In a similar way, a description of the wedding, baptismal and funeral rituals, which most vividly reflect the remnants of Lappish Animism, is given.
The ‘Essays…’ were completed with four appendices: there were records of a legal nature, as well as Lappish tales.