Through Finland in Carts Part 1

Through Finland in Carts.

by Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie.

PREFACE

When I was first approached by Messrs. Nelson and Sons for permission to publish _Through Finland in Carts_ in their shilling series, I felt surprised. So many books and papers have jostled one another along my path since my first journey to Finland, I had almost forgotten the volume.

Turning to an old notebook, I see it was published in 1897 at sixteen shillings. It appeared in a second edition. The demand still continued, so a third edition, entirely revised and reprinted, was published at a cheaper rate. Others followed, and it now appears on the market at the reduced price of one shilling. Cheapness generally means deterioration of goods, but cheapness in books spells popularity.

Since the last revise appeared, a few years ago, I had not opened the pages of this volume; and strange though it may seem, I took it up to correct with almost as much novelty as if it had been a new book by some one else. An author lives with his work. He sees every page, every paragraph, by day and by night. He cannot get away from it, it haunts him; yet once the bark is launched on the waters of Fate, other things fill his mind, and in a year or two he forgets which book contains some special reference, or describes some particular thought. This is not imagination but fact. The slate of memory would become too full and confused were such not the case.

Finland has been progressing, and yet in the main Finland remains the same. It is steeped in tradition and romance. There are more trains, more hotels, larger towns; but that bright little land is still bravely fighting her own battles, still forging ahead; small, contented, well educated, self-reliant, and full of hopes for the future.

Finland has Home Rule under Russia, and her Parliament was the first to admit women members.

For those interested in the political position of Finland, an appendix, which has been brought up to date in every way possible, will be found at the end of this volume.

E. ALEC TWEEDIE.

LONDON, _Easter 1913_.

THROUGH FINLAND IN CARTS

CHAPTER I

OUR FIRST PEEP AT FINLAND

It is worth the journey to Finland to enjoy a bath; then and not till then does one know what it is to be _really_ clean.

Finland is famous for its baths and its beauties; its sky effects and its waterways; its quaint customs and its poetry; its people and their pluck. Finland will repay a visit.

Foreign travel fills the mind even if it empties the pocket. Amus.e.m.e.nt is absolutely essential for a healthy mind.

Finland, or, as the natives call it in Finnish, _Suomi_, is a country of lakes and islands. It is a vast continent about which strangers until lately hardly knew anything, beyond such rude facts as are learnt at school, viz., that "Finland is surrounded by the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia on the South and West, and bordered by Russia and Lapland on the East and North," and yet Finland is larger than our own England, Scotland, Ireland, aye, and the Netherlands, all put together.

When we first thought of going to _Suomi_, we naturally tried to procure a Finnish guide-book and map; but no guide-book was to be obtained in all London, except one small pamphlet about a dozen pages long; while at our best-known map shop the only thing we could find was an enormous cardboard chart costing thirty shillings. No one ever dreamed of going to Finland. Nevertheless, Finland is not the home of barbarians, as some folk then imagined; neither do Polar bears walk continually about the streets, nor reindeer pull sledges in summer--items that have several times been suggested to the writer.

Nothing daunted by want of information, however, we packed up our traps and started.

We were three women, my sister, Frau von Lilly--a born Finlander--and the writer of the following pages. That was the beginning of the party, but it increased in numbers as we went along--a young man here, a young girl there, an old man, or an old woman, joined us at different times, and, alas, left us again.

Having made charming friends in that far-away land, and picked their brains for information as diligently as the epicure does the back of a grouse for succulent morsels, we finally--my sister and I--jogged home again alone.

This looks bad in print! The reader will say, "Oh, how disagreeable they must have been, those two, that every one should have deserted them!"

but this would be a mistake, for we flatter ourselves that we really are rather nice, and only "adverse circ.u.mstances" deprived us of our friends one by one.

Love and Friendship are the finest a.s.sets in the Bank of Life.

Grave trouble had fallen at my door. Life had been a happy bounteous chain; the links had snapped suddenly and unexpectedly, and solace and substance could only be found in work.

'Tis often harder to live than to die.

Immediate and constant work lay before me. The cuckoo's note trilled forth in England, that sad, sad note that seemed to haunt me and speed me on life's way. No sooner had I landed in _Suomi_ than the cuckoos came to greet me. The same sad tone had followed me across the ocean to remind me hourly of all the trouble I had gone through. The cuckoo would not let me rest or forget; he sang a song of sympathy and encouragement.

It was on a brilliant sunny morning early in June that the trim little ship _Urania_ steamed between the many islands round the coast to enter, after four and a half days' pa.s.sage from Hull, the port of _Helsingfors_. How many thousands of posts, growing apparently out of the sea, are to be met with round the sh.o.r.es of Finland! Millions, we might say; for not only the coast line, which is some eight hundred miles in length, but all the lakes and fjords through which steamers pa.s.s are marked out most carefully by wooden stakes, or near the large towns by stony banks and painted signs upon the rocks of the islands.

Sometimes the channels are so dangerous that the little steamers have to proceed at half-speed, carefully threading their way in and out of the posts, as a drag at Hurlingham winds its course between barrels at the four-in-hand compet.i.tions.

Many places, we learnt, are highly dangerous to attempt at night, on account of these stakes, which are put down by Government boats in the spring after the ice has gone, and are taken up in November before it forms again, because for about seven months all sea traffic is impossible. Sometimes the channels are so narrow and shallow that the screw of the steamer has to be stopped while the vessel glides through between the rocks, the very revolutions of the screw drawing more water than can be allowed in that particular _skar_ of tiny islands and rocks.

At other times we have seen the steamer kept off some rocky promontory where it was necessary for her to turn sharply, by the sailors jumping on to the bank and easing her along by the aid of stout poles; or again, in the ca.n.a.ls we have known her towed round particular points by the aid of ropes. In fact, the navigation of Finland is one continual source of surprise and amazement.

Finland is still rising out of the sea. Rocks that were marked with paint one hundred and fifty years ago at the water's edge, now show that the sea has gone down four or five feet. This is particularly noticeable in the north: where large ships once sailed, a rowing boat hardly finds waterway. Seaports have had to be moved. Slowly and gradually Finland is emerging from the waters, just as slowly and gradually the people are making their voice heard among other nations.

Few people in Great Britain realize the beauties of Finland. It is flat, but it is fascinating. It is a land of waterways, interspersed with forests. The winter is very cold, the summer very hot; the winter very dark, the summer eternal light. _Helsingfors_ is one of the most picturesque harbours in the world. It is not like anywhere else, although it resembles Stockholm somewhat. It is so sunny and bright in the summer, so delicious in colourings and reflections, that the primary thought of the intricate watery entrance to the chief capital is one of delight.

The first impressions on entering the Finnish harbour of _Helsingfors_ were very pleasing; there was a certain indefinable charm about the scene as we pa.s.sed in and out among the thickly-wooded islands, or dived between those strong but almost hidden fortifications of which the Russians are so proud. Once having pa.s.sed these impregnable mysteries, we found ourselves in more open water, and before us lay the town with its fine Russian church of red brick with rounded dome, the Finnish church of white stone, and several other handsome buildings denoting a place of importance and considerable beauty. We were hardly alongside the quay before a dozen Finnish officials swarmed on board to examine the luggage, but no one seemed to have to pay anything; a small ticket stuck on the baggage saving all further trouble.

Swedish, Finnish, and Russian, the three languages of the country, were being spoken on every side, and actually the names of the streets, with all necessary information, are displayed in these three different forms of speech, though Russian is not acknowledged as a language of Finland, the two native and official languages being Swedish and Finnish. Only those who have travelled in Russia proper can have any idea of the joy this means to a stranger; it is bad enough to be in any land where one cannot speak the language, but it is a hundred times worse to be in a country where one cannot read a word, and yet once over the border of Russia the visitor is helpless. Vs becomes Bs, and such general hieroglyphics prevail that although one sees charming tram-cars everywhere, one cannot form the remotest idea where they are going, so as to verify them on the map--indeed, cannot even tell from the written lettering whether the buildings are churches or museums, or only music halls.

Finnish is generally written with German lettering, Swedish with Latin, and the Russian in its own queer upside down fashion, so that even in a primitive place like Finland every one can understand one or other of the placards, notices, and signs.

Not being in any particular hurry, we lingered on the steamer's bridge as the clock was striking the hour of noon--Finnish time, by the way, being a hundred minutes in advance of English time--and surveyed the strange scene. Somehow _Helsingfors_ did not look like a Northern capital, and it seemed hard to believe, in that brilliant sunshine, that for two or three months during every year the harbour is solidly ice-bound.

Yet the little carriages, a sort of droschky, savouring of Petersburg, and the coachmen (_Isvoschtschik_) certainly did not come from any Southern or Western clime. These small vehicles, which barely hold a couple of occupants and have no back rest, are rather like large perambulators, in front of which sits the driver, whose headgear was then of beaver, like a squashed top hat, very broad at the top, narrowing sharply to a wide curly brim, which curious head-covering, well forced down over his ears, is generally ornamented with a black velvet band, and a buckle, sometimes of silver, stuck right in the front.

Perhaps, however, the most wonderful part of the _Suomi_ Jehu's attire was his petticoat. He had a double-breasted blue-cloth coat fastening down the side, which at the waist was pleated on to the upper part in great fat folds more than an inch wide, so that from behind he almost looked like a Scheveningen fishwife; while, if he was not fat enough for fashionable requirements, he wore an additional pillow before and behind, and tied a light girdle round his waist to keep his dress in place.

All this strange beauty could be admired at a very cheap rate, for pa.s.sengers are able to drive to any part of the town for fifty _pennia_, equal to fivepence in English money. These coachmen, about eighty inches in girth, fascinated us; they were so fat and so round, so packed in padding that on hot days they went to sleep sitting bolt upright on their box, their inside pillows and outside pleats forming their only and sufficient support. It was a funny sight to see half a dozen _Isvoschtschiks_ in a row, the men sound asleep, their arms folded, and their heads resting on their manly chests, in this case cuira.s.sed with a feathery pillow.

Drawing these Finnish carriages, are those strange wooden hoops over the horses' withers so familiar on the Russian droschky, but perhaps most extraordinary of all are the strong shafts fixed inside the wheels, while the traces from the collar are secured to the axle itself outside the wheel. That seemed a novelty to our mind any way, and reminded us of the old riddle, "What is the difference between an inside Irish car and an outside Irish car?" "The former has the wheels outside, the latter has the wheels inside."

At the present day much of this picturesqueness has pa.s.sed away, and coachmen and chauffeurs in Western livery and the motor taxi-cab have largely replaced them.

Queer carts on two wheels were drawn up along the quay to bear the pa.s.sengers' luggage to its destination, but stop--do not imagine every one rushes and tears about in Finland, and that a few minutes sufficed to clear the decks and quay. Far from it; we were among a Northern people proverbially as dilatory and slow as any Southern nation, for in the extreme North as in the extreme South time is _not_ money--nay, more than that, time waits on _every_ man.

Therefore from the bridge of our steamer we heard much talking in strange tongues, we saw much movement of queerly-dressed folk, but we did not see much expedition, and before we left Finland we found that the boasted hour and forty minutes advance on the clock really meant much the same thing as our own time, for about this period was always wasted in preparations, so that in the end England and Finland were about quits with the great enemy. Three delightful Finnish proverbs tell us, "Time is always before one," "G.o.d did not create hurry," "There is nothing in this world so abundant as time," and, as a nation, Finns gratefully accept the fact.

Every one seemed to be met by friends, showing how rarely strangers visited the land. Indeed the arrival of the Hull boat, once a week, was one of the great events of _Helsingfors_ life, and every one who could went down to see her come in.

A delightful lady--a Finlander--who had travelled with us, and had told us about her home in Boston, where she holds cla.s.ses for Swedish gymnastics, was all excitement when her friends came on board. She travels to _Suomi_ every year, spending nearly three weeks _en route_, to enjoy a couple of months' holiday in the summer at her father's parsonage, near _Hango_. That remarkably fine specimen of his race, Herr S----, was met by wife, and brother, and a host of students--for he returned from Malmo, victorious, with the Finnish flag. He, with twenty-three friends, had just been to Sweden for a gymnastic compet.i.tion, in which Finland had won great honours, and no wonder, if the rest of the twenty-three were as well-made and well-built as this hardy descendant of a Viking race.

Then again a Finnish gentleman had to be transhipped with his family, his horses, his groom, and his dogs, to wait for the next vessel to convey them nearer to his country seat, with its excellent fishing close to Imatra. He was said to be one of the wealthiest men in Finland, although he really lived in England, and merely returned to his native country in the summer months to catch salmon, trout, or grayling.