Through Finland in Carts Part 29

Sledges convey the hay crop in the summer along the roadways, where wheels would be dragged from their axles by the stones and rocks.

A year or two ago, when hay was very scarce in England, quant.i.ties were sent over from Finland, and excellent it was, full of clover and sweet flowers, for although only grown in patches--sometimes even sc.r.a.ps by the roadside--the quality of the crop repays the enormous patience and labour necessary to produce it.

Finland's wild flowers are renowned, and the hay is full of sweet-scented blossoms.

The peasant farmer at whose _majatalo_ we halted was a rich man, and had let out some of his farms to people in a smaller way, who in return had to give him fourteen days' labour in the year whenever he demanded them, also many bags of rye--in regular old feudal style--for money did not pa.s.s between them. Just as well, perhaps, considering that Finnish money a couple of hundred years ago weighed several pounds--indeed its unwieldiness may have been the origin of this exchange of labour for land. We actually saw an old coin over two feet long and one foot wide in the _Sordavala_ Museum. It is made of copper about one-eighth of an inch thick, with uneven edges as though it had been rolled out like a piece of pastry, and bears the name Kristina 1624-1654, with one coin stamped in the middle about the size of a florin, and one at each of the corners. How delightfully easy travelling must have been in those days with a hundred such useful little coins in one's possession. Paper money now takes their place.

There were many more coins half that size, the earliest being a Carl XI.

All through the year the peasant farmer recently referred to employed six hands, and he told us that the men earned a hundred and twenty marks a year (5), and a woman fifty or sixty (2), with clothes, board, and lodging. It did not seem to be very grand pay; but then the labourers had no expenses, and were, judging from their appearance, well cared for.

Later, when wandering round the homestead, we found a shed full of sledges, filled with hay and covered by coa.r.s.e woven sheets, made by the family (for every decent house spins and weaves for itself), and in these the hired labourers slept. It was all very primitive, but wondrously clean.

In truly Finnish fas.h.i.+on the family was varied. First we saw an aged mother, a delightful old soul, whose husband was dead and whose eldest son therefore worked the farm. He had a wife and five children, the latter being all much of an age. He also had a sister with her invalid husband, and his younger brother and one child--so that there were several relations.h.i.+ps under the same roof, let us hope proving "Union is Strength," although we hardly think the English temperament would care for such family gatherings.

In the kitchen-dining-room was a baby in a cradle, and another sort of crib was hanging from the ceiling by cords, the infant lying in a kind of linen pocket on a pillow.

We were much amazed to see a patent process by which the infant in the cradle was being fed. It was a wooden bed, in shape like an old German one, and at one side of it projected an arm of wood curved round in such a way that it came up from the side of the cradle and bent almost over the child's face. Great was our amazement to find that a cow horn was fixed into this wooden arm, so that the thin part of the horn reached the baby's mouth, while the thick part stood up three or four inches above the hole in the wood in which it was resting. Was it a toy, we marvelled, because, if so, it seemed remarkably dangerous to have anything so hard in such near proximity to a baby's face, but great was our surprise on closer examination to find it was a feeding-bottle.

The horn was hollow, and on the thin end was a primitive teat of linen, through which the baby was drawing the milk poured in at the top of this novel feeding-bottle.

In a corner of the same room was a wonderful frame on rollers to teach a child to walk. There was a small round hole through which the infant was pulled, so that the polished ring supported it under the armpits, from that rim four wooden pillars slanted outwards, being bound together at the bottom by other pieces of wood securely fixed to four rolling castors. In this the child could move; and the little brat rolled about from side to side of the uneven flooring, securely held up in its wooden cage. A small child of five was peeling potatoes, specially dug up in our honour, beside a wooden bucket, while a cat played with a kitten, and a servant girl--for well-to-do farmers have servants--made black bread in a huge tub, the dough being so heavy and solid that she could not turn it over at all, and only managed to knead it by doubling her fists and regularly plunging them to the bottom with all her strength.

Her sunburnt arms disappeared far above her elbow, and judging by the way the meal stuck to her she found bread-making very hard work.

Finlanders only bake every few weeks, so the bread is often made with a hole and hung up in rows from the ceiling, or, if not, is placed on the kitchen rafters till wanted. This bread is invariably sour--the natives like it so--and to get it rightly flavoured they always leave a little in the tub, that it may taste the next batch, as sour cream turns the new cream for b.u.t.ter. She was not a bad-looking girl; Dame Nature had been kinder to her than to most of her s.e.x in Finland.

Somehow that scene did not look real--it had a kind of theatrical effect. The surroundings were too like a museum; the entry of the labourers after the chiming of the bell closely resembled a stage effect--the old grandmother, the children, the bright cotton s.h.i.+rts and skirts, the wondrous fireplace, the spinning-wheel and weaving-frame--yes, it all seemed too picturesque, too full of colour, and too well grouped to be an event in our commonplace every-day life.

Yet this was merely a peep at a Finnish home, in which just such a scene is enacted every day--a home but little off the beaten tracks, and only a short distance from steamboats and trains. The way to understand anything of a land or its people is to leave the tourist route and peep into its homes for one's self.

In Finland there are always post-stations about every eight or twelve miles, according to requirements or capabilities of the peasantry, where horses and beds can be procured. They are called _majatalo_ in Finnish, or _gastgivferi_ in Swedish. Well-to-do farmers are chosen for the post, because they can afford better accommodation to strangers, and generally there are one or two who apply for the honour, more than for the hundred (or two hundred marks in some instances) subsidy they get for keeping up the _majatalo_.

The Governor of the Province then has to choose the most suitable applicant, settles the charge for food and beds, according to the cla.s.s of accommodation, and writes them out officially (in three languages) on cards, to be hung up in the rooms, provides the farmer with a _Paivakirja_, or Daybook, in which it says: "Two horses must always be ready, and two carts, or if an extra turnout be required, double fare may be charged." Fourteen penni the kilometre (or about twopence halfpenny a mile) is the ordinary charge for a horse and trap, a room and a bed are sixty penni, an ordinary meal sixty, coffee ten, and so on; so that the prices are not ruinous. Indeed, travelling in the interior of Finland is altogether moderate, when done as the Finns do it by posting, but a private carriage is an enormous expense, and, on the whole, it is just as dear to travel in _Suomi_ as in Normandy, Brittany, or the Tyrol. Of course it is not so expensive as London, Paris, or Vienna. How could it be, where there are none of the luxuries of these vast cities? Every one has to sign the _Paivakirja_, stating from whence he came, whither he goes, and how many horses he had. Complaints are also entered, and the book has to go periodically to the Governor for inspection. So the whole posting arrangement is well looked after.

We fared very well at our first _majatalo_, but of course we had to wait over an hour before we got anything to eat. One always must in Finland, and, although a trial to the temper at first, it is a good lesson in restraint, and by degrees we grew accustomed to it. One can get accustomed to anything--man is as adaptable as the trees.

We had black bread--nothing else can be got in peasant homes--and any one who cannot accept its sourness, and one might add hardness, must provide himself with white bread from the towns. We got excellent b.u.t.ter of course--the smallest home has good b.u.t.ter and milk in Finland, where the little native cows can be bought for sixty or a hundred marks. They live on what they can find in the summer, and dried birch leaves, moss, or an occasional "delikatess" of hay in the winter. We had also deliciously cold fresh milk, that and coffee being the only drinks procurable, as a rule, and a small fish with a pink skin like a mullet, fresh out of the water, was served nicely fried in b.u.t.ter, the farmer having sent a man to catch it on our arrival.

There was cold bacon, too poisonous in appearance to touch, and hot eggs, but no egg-cups, of course. We b.u.mped the round heavy end of the eggs, and stood them up on our plates, native fas.h.i.+on, and felt we had learnt a trick that might be useful when egg-cups fell short in England.

In fact, before we left our peasant homes, we had begun to look upon an egg-cup as a totally unnecessary luxury, and to find ourselves so capable of managing without one, that the egg no longer ran out at the wrong end, as it did at first in our inexperienced hands, but behaved as every well-behaved egg ought to do--that is to say, sit up on its end and appear as if it liked it.

One terrible-looking dish adorned our table on this and many occasions.

It was pike--caught, cleaned, opened, salted, and kept till wanted; a piece, being laid flat on a plate to be served, is cut in thin slices and spread on bread and b.u.t.ter by those who care to eat the luxury. At the bone it was red, and gradually tapered away to a white gelatinous-looking stuff. We never dared venture upon this choice raw dish. It had a particularly distasteful appearance. As there was no _filbunke_, made of sour unskimmed milk, which we had learnt to enjoy, we had to content ourselves with _piimaa_, the skimmed milk curdled; but as we were visitors, and not peasants, tumblers of fresh cream had been poured over it, and with sugar it tasted really excellent. It was a primitive dinner, but with fresh fish and eggs, milk and cream, no one need starve, and we only paid fivepence each for our mid-day meal, such a sum being fixed on the tariff. Our dear comfortable old hostess was fascinated by our presence, and sat smiling and blinking beside us all the time, her hands, folded over her portly form below the short straight cotton jacket she wore, were raised occasionally to retie her black silk head-covering. Again and again she murmured--"_Englantilaiset_" (Englishwoman), and nodded approval.

Poor Baron George, our kindly cicerone, had to answer all her questions about England, our age, size, weight, height, the price of our clothing, why our hair was so dark--an endless subject of inquiry among the peasantry--and to ply her with questions from us in return.

It was with real regret we left these folk, they were so honest and simple, so far removed from civilisation and its corrupting influences on their thoughts, that they and their life seemed to take us back a couple of centuries at least.

The family came out and shook hands with us on leaving; but not before they had one and all sat down in our grand carriage, just to see what it was like. Individually, we thought it a ramshackle old chaise, but further acquaintance with the springless native carts made us look back at that victoria as if it were the Lord Mayor's Coach!

It is no uncommon thing for the roofs of the houses in _Savolax_ to be thatched with thin strips of wood an inch or so wide, similar to our old s.h.i.+ngle roofs in the west of England. At _Wiborg_ we were shown, among the curiosities of the town, a red-tiled roof, which Finlanders thought as wonderful as we thought their wooden thatch. These were quite common formerly, but are now condemned by the Insurance Companies.

Such is life. What we eat, others despise; what we think beautiful, others find hideous; what we call virtue, other lands consider vice; what to us is novel and interesting is to others mere commonplace; the more we travel, and the more we read, the less we find we know; except that there may be good and use in all things, and that other men and women, with whom we have not one idea in common, are quite as clever or good as ourselves--more so, perhaps.

"Why, what is that? Three stone chimneys without any house," we exclaimed, seeing three brick erections standing bleak and alone in the midst of a dreary waste.

"Ah," replied Baron George, "that is one of the sad sides of Finnish life. Those three stone chimneys are the only remains of what was once a three-roomed house. All the dwellings, as you know, are entirely built of wood, except for the brick chimneys. These three great gaunt towers mean fire, and perhaps starvation. One of those little houses will burn to the ground in an hour, on a dry windy night, and all the toil of years, all the wealth of its proprietor, the home of his family, be reduced to the few ashes you see on the ground, while the clock marks one short hour."

It seemed horrible. Those three chimneys looked so gaunt and sad. Where were the folk who had lived beside them, cooked beneath them, and spent their lives of grief or joy?

Outside every house in Finland stands a large wooden ladder, tall enough to reach to the top of the roof, for fire is very common, and generally ends in everything being demolished by the flames. Buckets of water, pa.s.sed on by hand, can do little to avert disaster, when the old wooden home is dry as tinder and often rotten to the core.

Again our attention was arrested as we jogged along by the earth mounds; those queer green mounds that look like graves in a country church-yard, which are so common in Iceland, where they grow so close together, there is often hardly room for a pony's feet to pa.s.s between, but on the origin of which scientists disagree. The gra.s.s-grown sand--sand as beautiful and silvery as the sand of Iona, but here was no sea, although it had left its deposits in ages long gone by--was beautifully fresh and green.

Iceland moss, too, grows in profusion--a very useful commodity for the peasants, who plug out the draughts between the wooden walls of their houses with it, or make it into a kind of medicinal drink, as the Buckinghams.h.i.+re peasant makes her nettle tea from the wondrous stinging nettles that grow five feet high in some of the lovely lanes of wooded Bucks.

Iceland moss, indeed, has taken the place of bread in times of famine, for that or the bark of the pine tree has been ground down many times into flour and mixed with a little rye for the half-starved peasants'

only sustenance.

With all their sufferings and their hards.h.i.+ps, can one be surprised that they take life seriously?

That evening at ten o'clock--but it might have been seven judging by the brilliancy of the sunset--we rowed on the lake, accompanied by a grandson of Finland's greatest poet, _Runeberg_.

It really was a wonderful night; we English have no idea of the gorgeousness of long July sunsets in Finland, just as we little dream of the heat of the day, or the length and beauty of the evenings. It is in these wondrous sunny glows, which spread themselves like a mantle, that the hundreds of miles of lakes and thousands and thousands of islands look their best. And there are many such evenings. Evenings when one feels at peace with all the world, and one's thoughts soar higher than the busy turmoil of the crowded city.

It is these wonderful nights that impress the stranger most of all in Finland. There is something to make even the most prosaic feel poetical.

There is a dull dreariness, a sombre sadness in the scene, and at the same time a rich warmth of colouring, a strength of Nature that makes even the least artistic feel the wonders of the picture spread out before them, and, withal, a peacefulness, for these vast tracts of uninhabited land mean repose. Those numerous pine forests, denoting quiet, and the wide, wide canopy of Heaven, unbroken by mountain or hill, give one an idea of vast extent and wild expanse.

Finland is reposeful; and has a charm about it which is particularly its own.

It was on such an evening as this that we rowed over the wide deep waters of _Maaninka_, as still as a mirror, to the little white church, with its tower soaring out of the pines, on the other side. We had been joined by several new friends, all anxious to show us their church; but, individually, our happiness was a little spoilt by the fact that the boat was leaking badly, and we could positively see the water rising in her bottom. Up--up--up--the water crept.

We had been in many curious boats before, and had become quite accustomed to folding our petticoats neatly up on our laps, but this boat filled more rapidly than usual, and we did not run for the bank till six or eight inches of water actually covered her bottom. It rose apace, and before we reached the sh.o.r.e our feet and our skirts were well up on our seats for safety, and, verily, we were well-nigh swamped.

Out we scrambled; the men immediately beached the frail bark, and as they did so the water all ran away. "What an extraordinary thing," we thought, and when they pulled her right on to sh.o.r.e we saw the last drops disappearing from the boat.

"Why, the plug is out," one of them exclaimed, and, sure enough, the plug was out! In the bottom of every Finnish boat they have a round hole, and this round hole contains a large cork or plug, so that when the craft fills with water, as she invariably does from a leak, or spray, or other causes, they merely pull her up on to the sh.o.r.e, take out the plug, and let the water run away. But in this particular case the plug had never been put in, or had somehow got lost, and we actually rowed across a lake with the water rising at the rate of about half an inch a minute.

We scrambled up over the slippery pine needles to the crest of the little eminence on which the church stood, and found ourselves in the most primitive of churchyards. There was no attempt at law or order, for the graves had just been put down between the trees wherever there was room for them. We noticed a painted clock on several of the wooden tombstones, evidently intended to indicate the exact hour at which the person lying under the sod had died. For instance, it would stand at twenty-two minutes to four o'clock, which was the precise moment the dead man expired, carefully noted by the exact.i.tude of the Finns, who are very particular about such matters. In the newspapers, for example, it is stated, "Johanson died, aged 46 years 11 months and 4 days," and this record of the number of days is by no means uncommon. They are a most exact nation.

The _Maaninka_ church, like so many others in Finland, has its important-looking bell-tower standing quite a distance away from the main building. We climbed to the top after some persuasion, and certainly our trouble was repaid by a glorious view.

But, alas! every Finlander has a hobby, and that hobby is that at every point where there is a view of any sort or description, in fact, one might say where there is no view at all, he erects an _Aussichtsturm_.

These outlook towers are a bane of existence to a stranger. One goes out to dinner and is taken for a walk round the island. At every conceivable point is an outlook tower, generally only a summer-house, but, alas, there are usually some steps leading to the top which one toils up, and has the fatigue of doing so without any reward, as they are not high enough to afford any better view at the summit than one has at the base.

To go to the top of St. Peter's in Rome, St. Paul's in London, the Isaak Church in Petersburg, the Citadel at Quebec, or the Castle of Chapultepec in Mexico, is worth the fatigue, but to toil up twenty steps on a hot summer's day and clamber down again, to repeat the operation a quarter of a mile farther on, and so _ad lib._, becomes somewhat monotonous, and one begins to wish that every outlook tower in Finland might be banished from the country. Stop, once we ascended an outlook tower that more than rewarded our labour. It was at _Kuopio_, which town we had just left--perhaps the most beautifully situated in all Finland--and as the night when we arrived chanced to be particularly brilliant, the view from the top of that outlook tower will be long treasured in remembrance.

To many of us the recollection of the past is a storehouse of precious gems; the realisation of the present is often without sparkle; yet the antic.i.p.ation of the future is fraught with glitter, and the crown of happiness is ever before our eyes.