Part 29 (1/2)

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!