Through Finland in Carts Part 5

"You like me--you love me?"

"Yes," she softly murmured.

"Will you be my wife?"

"I will, _Pekka_."

Overjoyed, _Pekka_ almost hugged the wooden box that brought him such glad tidings.

"When may I come to see you, darling--my little wife?"

"Come, _Pekka_--come for dinner at three o'clock."

A few more sweet nothings, and, quite enraptured, he returned to his dull office routine. At three o'clock, spick and span, with a golden ring in his pocket, he presented himself at the house of the _Heikkilas_.

In the salon stood the mother. He went towards her to receive her motherly congratulations. She rushed forward to meet him, as all good mothers-in-law should, and, throwing herself into his arms, she cried--

"Take me, _Pekka_, dearest _Pekka_; I am yours till death."

"Mine?"

"Yes. I have loved you long, darling _Pekka_, and I am ready whenever you can fix a day for our marriage!"

Tableau!

_Moral_--beware of telephones!

Matrimony generally expects too much and gets too little. Courtship proved the same in this case.

The first thing that strikes a stranger on entering a Finnish country-house is the mats, placed at the foot of every staircase and outside every door. They are made of the loose branches of the pine-tree neatly laid on the top of one another to form an even round mat, these branches being so constantly renewed that they always give off a delicious fresh smell. The next surprise is the enormous white porcelain stove or oven found in every room; so enormous are these _kakelugn_ that they reach the ceiling, and are sometimes four feet long and three or four feet deep. The floors of all the rooms are painted raw-sienna colour, and very brightly polished. To our mind it seems a pity not to stain the natural wood instead of thus spoiling its beauty, but yellow paint is at present the fashion, and fashion is always beautiful, some folk say. In winter carpets and rugs are put down, but during summer the rooms are swept daily (at all events in the country) with a broom made of a bundle of fresh, green birch leaves--somewhat primitive, but very efficacious, for when the leaves are a little damp they lick up dust in a wonderful manner. These little brooms are constantly renewed, being literally nothing more than a bundle of birch boughs tied tightly together. They cost nothing in a land where trees grow so fast that it is difficult for a peasant to keep the ground near his house free from their encroachments.

In truth, Finland is utterly charming. Its lakes, its ca.n.a.ls, its rivers, its forests, are beautiful, and its customs are interesting. It is primitive and picturesque, and its people are most kind and hospitable, but--and oh! it is a very big _but_ indeed, there exists a Finnish pest.

Strolling through those beautiful dark pines and silver birch woods, he is ever by one's side; sailing or rowing over the lakes, that Finnish demon intrudes himself. Sitting quietly at meals, we know the fiend is under the table, while, as we rest on the balcony in the evening, watching a glorious sun sinking to rest an hour before midnight, he whispers in our ears or peeps into our eyes. He is here, there, and everywhere; he is omnipresent--this curse of Finland. He is very small, his colour is such that he is hardly visible, and he is sly and crafty, so that the unwary stranger little guesses that his constant and almost unseen companion will speedily bring havoc to his comfort and dismay into his life. The little wretch is called _Mygga_ in Swedish or _Itikainen_ in Finnish, the Finnish words being p.r.o.nounced exactly as they are written, in the German style of calling i, e, etc.

In English he is a mosquito of a very virulent description, and in Finland he is a peculiarly knowing little brute, and shows a hideous partiality for strangers, not apparently caring much for the taste of Finnish blood.

He loves Englishwomen as inordinately as they loathe him, and, personally, the writer suffered such tortures that her ankles became hot and swollen, and at last, in spite of lavender oil, ammonia and camphor baths, grew so stiff that walking became positively painful, and her ears and eyes mere distorted lumps of inflamed flesh! Therefore, dear lady reader, be prepared when you visit Midgeland to become absolutely hideous and unrecognisable. When a kindly servant brings a rug to wind round your legs under the dinner-table on the balcony, gladly accept that rug.

There are not merely mosquitoes but--but--that awful experience must be told in another chapter.

As a town _Wiborg_ is nothing to boast of. There is nothing very remarkable about any ordinary Finnish town, with the exception of the capital, _Helsingfors_, where all the best buildings are centered and built of stone. Most of the towns are modern and generally ugly, because, being of wood, they are so apt to be burnt down, that architects give neither time nor thought to their structural beauty, or, even when not so destroyed, the original houses--which seldom last over a hundred years--have fallen out of repair and been replaced by undecorative wooden structures. Stone houses are few and far between, and, as a rule, the wooden dwellings are only one storey high, because fires in such low buildings are more easily extinguished, and, land not being of much value, the s.p.a.ce required for such edifices can easily be afforded. These wooden dwellings are usually painted dark red in the smaller towns, and lighter shades in the larger, while here and there on the walls are to be seen iron rosettes and other queer sort of ornaments, really used as a means of keeping the house together. No one, not even a Finn, could call the average native town beautiful, although some excellent stone educational buildings are springing up here and there.

The capital is charmingly situated and has several very nice buildings, and is therefore an exception, but even in the case of _Wiborg_ the shop windows are small and uninviting, the streets are shockingly laid with enormous boulder stones and sometimes even bits of rock, while pavements, according to our ideas, hardly exist.

The religion being Lutheran there are no beautiful churches, only simple whitewashed edifices, extremely plain inside, with an organ at one end, an altar and perhaps one picture at the other. In the case of _Kuopio_ (which town possesses a Bishop) the cathedral is only lighted by candles, and, during the service, a man goes round continually putting out those that have burnt too low with a wet sponge tied to the end of a stick!

One of the chief characteristics of the towns, most noticeable to a stranger, is that none of the windows are ever open. The Finn dreads fresh air as much as he dreads _daily_ ablutions, and therefore any room a stranger enters at any hour is certain to be stuffy and oppressive.

One day in _Wiborg_, overcome with the intense heat, we went into a confectioner's where ices were provided, to get cool. Imagine our horror to find that the double windows were hermetically sealed, although the cafe invited the patronage of strangers by placards stating "ices were for sale." What irony! To eat an ice in a hothouse as a means of getting cool.

_Wiborg_ has a big market, and every day a grand trade is done in that large open s.p.a.ce, and as we wandered from one cart of meat to another of vegetables or black bread, or peeped at the quaint pottery or marvellous baskets made from shavings of wood neatly plaited, our attention was arrested by fish tartlets. We paused to look; yes, a sort of pasty the shape of a saucer was adorned in the middle with a number of small fish about the size of sardines. They were made of _suola kala_ (salted fish), eaten raw by the peasants; we now saw them in _Wiborg_ for the first time, though, unhappily, not for the last, since these fish tartlets haunted us at every stage of our journey up country.

What weird and wonderful foods one eats and often enjoys when travelling.

Strange dishes, different languages, quaint customs, and unexpected characteristics all add to the charms of a new land; but it requires brains to admire anything new.

Fools are always stubborn, even in their appreciation of the beautiful.

CHAPTER III

FINNISH BATHS

No one can be many days in Finland without hearing murmurs of the bath-house.

A Finnish bath once taken by man or woman can never be forgotten!

A real native bath is one of the specialities of the country. Even in the old songs of the _Kalevala_ they speak of the "cleansing and healing vapours of the heated bath-room."

Poets have described the bath in verse, artists have drawn it on canvas, and singers have warbled forth its charms; nevertheless, it is not every traveller who has penetrated the strange mystery. Most strange and most mysterious it is. But I antic.i.p.ate.

Every house in the country, however humble that house may be, boasts its _bastu_, or bath-house, called in Finnish _Sauna_. As we pa.s.sed along the country roads, noting the hay piled up on a sort of tent erection made of pine trunks, to dry in the sun before being stowed away into small wooden houses for protection during the winter, or nearly drove over one of those strange long-haired pigs, the bristles on whose backs reminded one of a hog-maned polo pony, one saw these _bastus_ continually. Among the cl.u.s.ter of little buildings that form the farm, the bath-house, indeed, stands forth alone, and is easily recognisable, one of its walls, against which the stove stands, being usually black, even on the outside, from smoke.

Every Sat.u.r.day, year in, year out, that stove is heated, and the whole family have a bath--not singly, oh dear, no, but altogether, men, women, and children; farmer, wife, brothers, sisters, labourers, friends, and the dogs too, if they have a mind; so that once in each week the entire population of Finland is clean, although few of them know what daily ablutions, even of the most primitive kind, mean, while hot water is almost as difficult to procure in _Suomi_ as a great auk's egg in England.

Naturally any inst.i.tution so purely national as the Finnish _bastu_ was worth investigating--in fact, could not be omitted from our programme.

Bathing with the peasants themselves, however, being impossible, we arranged to enjoy the extraordinary pleasure at a friend's house, where we could be duly washed by one of her own servants; for, be it understood, there is always one servant in every better-cla.s.s establishment who understands the _bastu_, and can, and does wash the family.

When _she_ is washed, we unfortunately omitted to inquire. In towns, such as _Helsingfors_, there are professional women-washers, who go from house to house to bathe and ma.s.sage men and women alike. Theirs is a regular trade, and as the higher cla.s.s of the profession receive about a shilling for "attending" each bath given at a private house, the employment is not one to be despised. Neither is it, as proved by the fact that there are over 300 public bathing-women in little Finland.

On the eventful night of our initiation, supper was over, the house-party and guests were all a.s.sembled on the balcony, the women engaged in needlework, and the men smoking cigarettes, when _Saima_, the Finnish servant, arrived to solemnly announce in a loud tone that the English lady's bath was ready. Taking a fond farewell of the family, I marched solemnly behind the flaxen-haired _Saima_, who had thoroughly entered into the spirit of the joke of giving an English lady a Finnish bath, neither the bather nor attendant being able to understand one word of what the other spoke. Down an avenue overshadowed by trees we proceeded, getting a peep of a perfectly glorious sunset which bathed one side of the lake in yellow hues, while the other was lighted by an enormous blood-red moon, for in those Northern climes there are many strange natural effects far more beautiful than in the South. It was a wonderful evening, and I paused to consider which was the more beautiful, the departing day or the coming night, both of which were fighting for supremacy.

_Saima_ would brook no delay, however, so I had to hurry on. Immediately before us was the _bastu_--a wee wooden house like a small Swiss chalet, the outer room, where I undressed, containing a large oven. The inner room boasted only one small window, through which the departing day did not shine very brilliantly, luckily for my modesty. Its furniture was only a large-sized tin bath filled with cold water, opposite to which were seven very wide wooden steps like a staircase, twelve feet wide perhaps, the top step forming a kind of platform where there was just room to sit without one's head touching the tarred ceiling above. The steps and the platform were covered with straw--Finnish fashion--for the great occasion.

I wondered what next, but had not much time for speculation, for _Saima_--who only took off her outer dress--grasped me by the hand, her face aglow with the intense heat, led me up the wooden staircase, and signed her will that I should sit on the straw-strewn platform afore honourably mentioned.

Oh, the heat! Many of us know Turkish baths; but then we take them gradually, whereas in the _bastu_ one plunges into volcanic fires at once. Blinking in the dim light, I found that beside us was a brick-built stove, for which the fire, as I had noticed while disrobing, is in the outer chamber, and when the washing-woman threw a pail of water upon the surface of the great heated stones, placed for the purpose inside the stove, the steam ascended in volumes, and the temperature went up, until I exclaimed, in one of the few Swedish sentences I knew, "_Mycket hett_" (very hot), at which agonised remark _Saima_ laughed uproariously, and, nodding and smiling, fetched another pail of water from the cold bath, and threw its contents on the brick furnace in order that more steaming fumes might ascend. Almost stifled I blinked, and gasped, and groaned by turns, repeating again and again, "_Mycket hett_," "_alltfor hett_" (too hot), "_Tack s mycket_" (thank you), in tones of anguish. Much amused, _Saima_--who, be it understood, was a Swedish-speaking Finn--stood smiling cheerfully at my discomfiture; but, happily, at last she seemed to think I might have had enough, for, after waving my hands hopelessly to the accompaniment of "_Nej tack, nej tack_" (no thank you), she apparently understood and desisted.

A moment later, through the steam, her smiling face ascended the stairs, with a pail of hot water in one hand, and a lump of soft soap in the other, on which was a large bundle of white fibre, something like hemp.

Dipping this in the pail, she soon made a lather with the soap, and, taking up limb after limb, scrubbed hard and long--scrubbed until my skin tingled, and in the damp mysterious heat I began to wonder how much of my body would emerge from the ordeal. This scrubbing was a long process, and if the Finns wash one another as industriously as _Saima_ washed me, no one in Finland should ever be dirty, although most of them must lose several skins a year. Pails of water were then thrown over me, over the straw, over everything, and I heard the soapy water gurgling away into the lake below, which was covered with yellow and white water-lilies. Lilies cannot object to soap, or they would never bloom in Finland as they do.

"_Mycket bra_" (very good), I called again and again, hoping that appreciation might perhaps make _Saima_ desist, as the exclamations at the heat did not seem to alarm her. More water was thrown on to the steaming bricks, and _Saima_ retired, returning immediately with a great bundle of birch leaves, tied up with a string, such as I had often seen her on former occasions sweeping the floors with. Dipping the branches of the birch into a pail of hot water she proceeded to beat her victim all over! Yes, beat me, beat me hard. She laughed, and I laughed; but the more I laughed the harder she thumped, till the sharp edges of the leaves left almost a sting, while the strong healthy _Saima_ beat me harder and harder, dipping the leaves into hot water continually, and grinning cheerily all the time.

The peasantry in Finland are occasionally good enough to wash one another, and stories are told of a dozen of them sitting in rows on the wooden steps, each man vigorously beating his neighbour with birch boughs.