Chapter VI: Part II: Aylmer Writes of Norway and Denmark 175 (5)

To the market place in the center of Åbo come the farmers and their wives from all the surrounding country, some with large loads and some with little loads, but all ready to sell to any customer an infinitesimal quantity of their produce for an infinitesimal price. You can buy a single egg, or one carrot, or three or four potatoes, or a pat of butter that would not weigh an eighth of a pound, and you pay only what a single carrot is worth, or the price of an eighth of a pound of butter.

Interior of a Finnish Cottage.]

The lady of the house, even if she be a lady of high degree, does not consider it beneath her dignity to go to market herself, though she may often send her maid, or take her along to carry the market basket. In this sort of marketing you do not have to pay two or three middlemen’s profits, nor do you have to pay your grocer or butcher for the salary of several high-priced attendants and for an automobile, or a two-horse team to deliver the goods.

The most curious thing I saw in the Åbo market was the bread, which was being peddled by many an old woman from the back of her cart. The cheaper kinds are made of rye meal, and are as hard as the nether millstone. The loaves are flat and about the size of a dinner plate, with a large round hole in the middle. They would make admirable quoits, which you know is my favorite game, and if my Finnish friends would not have considered it altogether too frivolous I should have bought some of these loaves and inaugurated a quoit tournament on the spot.

In some places the bread is baked only once in six months, and the older the bread the harder to masticate.

Some edibles are “not as nahsty as they look,” as our English friends say of certain of our American dishes, but to the uninitiated this Finnish black bread is quite as nasty as it looks, for it is sour as well as hard, and in the back districts, when harvests are poor, chopped straw and bark are mixed with the meal.

I would not have you imagine, however, for a moment, that in the well-to-do families, or in the comfortable hotels and restaurants, we are reduced to such fare as this. In fact, I know of no country in the world, unless it be Sweden, where food is so abundant, so varied, and so deliciously cooked.

As I wandered in and out among the stalls of meat and vegetables and bread and cheese, woolen stockings and aprons, and butter and sausages, where one could find almost anything he might want to eat or drink or wear, I was most interested in the faces of these rugged, weather-beaten peasants.

Ernest Young has well described the character of the Finnish people when he says: “Nature, fate, and tradition have stamped a common mark on the Finnish type of character, which, indeed, varies considerably in the country, but is easily recognized by the foreigner. The general traits of character are hardened, patient, passive strength; resignation; perseverance, allied to a certain obstinacy; a slow, contemplative way of thinking; an unwillingness to become angry and a tendency, when anger has been aroused, to indulge in unmeasured wrath; coolness in deadly peril, but caution afterwards; … adherence to the old and well known; attention to duty; a law-abiding habit of mind; love of liberty, hospitality, honesty; a predilection for religious meditation, revealing itself in true piety, which, however, is apt to have too much respect for the mere letter.”

My own briefer acquaintance with the Finns has confirmed Mr. Young’s study of their traits of character, and I could imagine that even in the market place, as I walked back and forth, I could discover in the faces many of these admirable traits.

When one meets the upper, I will not say better classes, one is sure to be charmed with his Finnish friends. Their abundant hospitality, which always presses upon us two cups of coffee (delicious coffee at that) when you really only want one; their deferential courtesy, shown not only in words, but in a multitude of kind and thoughtful actions; their intelligence; their intimate knowledge of the great world outside their own boundaries; their pleasing vivacity (for in this respect they differ from the quiet stolidness of the less educated peasantry) all these qualities combine to make them the most charming of hosts and companions.

The cathedral of Åbo stands not far from the market place, across the little river that runs through the town, and on a sightly eminence of its own. It was begun in 1229, and was not finished until the year 1400. How patient these old builders were! They did not run up their jerry-built houses and churches in a month, but when they were built they stood for centuries.

This cathedral is of purely Gothic architecture, much like the cathedral in Upsala, and it dates from about the same period. It has not been renovated out of all resemblance to its original self, however, like the Upsala dome, and on that account is more interesting, in my opinion. The lofty brick walls are scarred by the storms of the centuries and eaten out here and there by the tooth of time, but the church is well preserved in spite of its nearly seven hundred years, and is filled, Sunday after Sunday, with a throng of honest worshipers.

The mural paintings about the altar, though of modern date, are well worth studying, one of them, especially, which represents the first baptism in Finland at a spot very near to Åbo by Bishop Henrik, an English missionary, who in 1157 undertook the perilous task of converting the heathen Finns. The good bishop died in Finland, and was buried in this old church, where his bones rested in peace until 1720, when the Russians, for some unexplained reason, dug them up and carried them off. No man in these days knows his sepulchre. In some of the side chapels are buried heroes of the Thirty Years’ War, famous generals—whose suits of armor, scarred and dented by the enemy’s bullets, still stand beside their tombs.

The most famous tomb of all in the old Dom Church is that of Queen Katherine of Sweden, wife of Eric XIV, the oldest son of Gustavus Vasa. Eric had a checkered career, both politically and matrimonially. He was finally deposed from the throne, but while he occupied it his hand had been refused by Queen Elizabeth, by Mary Queen of Scots, and by two German princesses. He seems to have been very cosmopolitan in his love affairs, wooing Protestant and Catholic, Anglo-Saxon and Teuton with equal avidity. At length, having apparently no luck in court circles, he turned to a beautiful girl among his own people, and married a peasant’s daughter named Karin (or Katherine) Månsdotter. The following is the story which one often hears in Finland:

“One day King Eric was strolling through the market place at Stockholm, when his attention was attracted by a singularly fair and graceful child, the daughter of a common soldier, who was selling nuts. He sent her to his palace to be educated, and when she was old enough he asked her to marry him. All kinds of objections were raised by his nobles and his relatives, and accusations of witchcraft were made against Karin, but the wild and passionate monarch took his way and married the little nut-seller. Then a brother prince, who felt deeply the disgrace that had been brought upon the royal order by this unseemly match, sent Eric a present of a handsome cloak in the back of which was sewed a patch of rough, homespun cloth. Eric accepted the gift, had the patch of homespun embroidered with gold and studded with jewels until it was the most brilliant and valuable part of the garment, and then returned it to the donor.”[5]

The peasant queen well repaid his love and devotion. She was buried in Åbo Cathedral, where her great black marble sarcophagus reminds every visitor of the little nut-seller who became a queen and who showed her queenly qualities in adversity and exile. A stained-glass window in the cathedral shows her dressed in white robes, with a crown upon her head, stepping down from her throne on the arm of a Finnish page.

The country round about Åbo is, for Finland, fertile and productive, and in this region is made much of the delicious butter that is sent to England, and often much farther afield, but which on its way through Denmark often gets labeled “Danish butter.”

It is interesting for those who butter their bread with the Finnish product to know that in the many steam creameries “the dairymaids in spotless white linen dresses and aprons receive, weigh, and sterilize the milk before it is made into butter, while all the churning, scalding, and butter-packing rooms are models of cleanliness.” It is always a wonder to me why countries that make such delicious butter seem to be so fond of margarine, for everywhere on the railway stations, in the tramcars and in the newspapers in Scandinavia one sees “Pellerin’s Margarine” advertised. But there are some questions which polite travelers must not be too inquisitive about, and this is one of them.

Butter would naturally lead us to cows (unless the suspicions excited by these advertisements turn us aside), and cows lead into the country, but I have not room in this letter to tell you of country life in Finland, a fascinating theme, which must be reserved for another letter.

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

FOURTEENTH LETTER

Wherein something is told of the charming lakes of Finland
and the canals that link them together; of the “Kalevala,”
the great Finnish epic; of the Finnish farmhouse, without and
within; of the inevitable bathhouse; of a melancholy Finnish
wedding and the more cheerful Finnish funeral.

IN FINNISH LAKELAND, July 10.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

If you will study for a moment your _Universal Atlas_ you will see that “Lakeland” is a most appropriate name for Finland, for, if the land in your atlas is represented as white and the water as blue, you will find Finland more than a quarter blue. In the southern and most populous part of the peninsula there is more lake than land in many sections.

The country has been called, poetically, the “Land of a Thousand Lakes,” but this title has “the power of an understatement.” To call it the “Land of Ten Thousand Lakes” would still be below the truth. Why could not the geographers, while they were about it, have given this romantic country a more romantic name? “Finland” or Fen-land, as the word means, suggests bogs and swamps and impassable morasses. The name “Suomi,” by which the Finns designate their beloved country, is no better in its implications, for that, too, means “Swamp-land.”

However, since we cannot change the name we must take out of it all suggestions of miasmatic swamps and read into it suggestions of sparkling waters, cold and limpid; of birch-bordered lakes, studded with emerald islands; of quiet thoroughfares of water that lead from one lovely piece of water to another; a country where you can journey for three days through a constant succession of beautiful lakes without retracing your steps.

Man has assisted nature in making this waterway, and it is especially interesting to Americans to know that the great Saima Canal, which links together the longest stretch of lakes, was built by Nils Ericsson, the brother of the immortal engineer who built the _Monitor_, and who invented the screw which to-day drives every ship across the Atlantic.

None need ask for a more delightful trip than on these lake-linked canals, where one is continually passing from one lovely sheet of water to another, which now expand into a little wave-lashed sea, now narrow to the dimensions of a river. Again our boat twists around a granite headland, stern and precipitous; then skirts a tree-clad shore, or a meadow spangled with flowers of many colors, and again threads a narrow, tortuous passage for a mile or two, or is hoisted by a convenient lock to a higher level and another equally beautiful lake. The scenery is wilder but no less beautiful than in Swedish lakeland, which I have before described.

Though our vessel is driven by steam and not by wind, one can appreciate the lines of the ancient Finnish poet who wrote:

“Pleasant ’tis in boat on water,
Swaying as the boat glides onward,
Gliding o’er the sparkling water,
Driving o’er its shiny surface,
While the wind the boat is rocking,
And the waves drive on the vessel,
While the west-wind rocks it gently,
And the south-wind drives it onward.”

What poem do these lines remind you of, Judicia? I know that you will promptly respond _Hiawatha_. But the Finns would put it the other way about, and tell us that _Hiawatha_ reminded them of the _Kalevala_, and they would be right, for Longfellow learned this meter from a German translation of _Kalevala_, a meter in which all varieties of Finnish verse are written. _Kalevala_ means the “Land of Heroes,” and is a long poem describing every phase of Finnish life, animate and inanimate. It is a collection of the folk lore and ancient runes of the people, gathered together with infinite pains and put into modern rhyme and meter by Elias Lönnrot, a poor country doctor, who spent all his life in an inland village but yet made the greatest of all contributions to Finnish literature. We must take the _Kalevala_ along with us as we travel through Finnish lakeland.

This unknown old poet of the folk songs, who wrote before the recorded history of Finland began, serves as a pretty good botanical guide to the trees and shrubs along the banks of this great waterway when he tells us that Sampsa, the good and all-powerful genius of the older time, planted the trees which delight us in these later days.

“On the hills he sowed the pine-trees,
On the knolls he sowed the fir-trees,
And in sandy places heather;
Leafy saplings in the valley.
In the dales he sowed the birch-trees,
In the loose earth sowed the alders,
Where the ground was damp, the cherries,
Likewise in the marshes, sallows.
Rowan-trees in holy places,
Willows in the fenny regions,
Juniper in stony districts,
Oaks upon the banks of rivers.”

When we think of the way in which a noble birch tree is often stripped and scarified by the boys who covet its bark, and the deer that love its leaves, and the winter frosts that make its gaunt boughs shiver in the cold winds, what can be prettier than the “Birch Tree’s Lament,” as described in this ancient poem:

“Often unto me defenceless,
Oft to me unhappy creature,
In the short spring come the children,
Quickly to the spot they hurry,
And with sharpened knives they score me,
Draw my sap from out my body,
Strip from me my white bark-girdle,
Cups and plates therefrom constructing,
Baskets too for holding berries.”

…

“And the wind brought ills upon me,
And the frost brought bitter sorrows,
Tore the wind the green cloak from me,
Frost my pretty dress tore off me,
Thus am I of all the poorest,
And a most unhappy birch-tree,
Standing stripped of all my clothing,
As a naked trunk I stand here,
And in cold I shake and tremble,
And in frost I stand lamenting.”

In the course of our lake journey we pass countless farmhouses, all of which have common characteristics. Many are painted red and make vivid spots of color on the landscape, either in the midst of the green of summer or the white of winter. One large corner of the living room is devoted to a huge fireplace, in which great logs glow and cheerily crackle throughout the long, cold winter. On the rafters overhead dried vegetables are strung in festoons, or hoes, rakes, and fishing tackle adorn the ceiling.

The one piece of furniture of distinction and honor is the long sofa which graces one side of the room. What the throne is to the king’s palace, the sofa is to the peasant’s home. Says Paul Wainemann in his _Summer Tour in Finland_: “The right-hand corner of the sofa is the Holy of Holies and is always reserved for the governor’s wife, if she graces an assembly with her presence. Beside her would sit the wife of the official next highest in rank. An unmarried lady under no provocation would be tempted to seat herself on the sofa, it being considered the height of indecorum to do so, as well as being a sure and certain sign that she would remain a spinster to the end of her days. Needless to say, a mere man would be hounded out of the room if he even attempted to commit such an appalling breach of etiquette.”

I must say that in the last respect, though a mere man myself, my experience has been different from that of Mr. Wainemann, for I have frequently been urged and sometimes almost compelled by my Finnish hostesses to take the honored seat on the sofa, a seat which I could not refuse without an undue struggle to show humility and politeness.

An interesting and admirable addition to almost every Finnish home in the country is the bathhouse, which is usually built separate from the dwelling house. The Finns and the Japanese are the only two peoples whom I know who realize the virtue of a hot bath and almost daily indulge in it. The Englishman enjoys his cold tub, and carries his absurd bathtub with him, whether he is going to Timbuctoo or to the next town in his own country. The modern American can hardly exist in a house that does not contain one or more set bathtubs with hot and cold water, but the Finn and the Jap are the only peoples who believe in the hottest kind of a hot bath, though the Russians and Turks indulge in them occasionally.

In the country bathhouse unhewn pine logs often form the walls. A big, inclosed fireplace or stove of rough stones is built in the middle or on one side. When the stones are sizzling hot, an abundance of water is poured upon them, and in the steam, which seems almost scalding, the Finn lies down and enjoys the moist relaxation to his heart’s content. When he has enjoyed this sufficiently, he beats himself or his next neighbor with bunches of fragrant birch twigs, while his neighbor returns the favor. When he has been sufficiently soaped and rubbed and flogged with twigs, he jumps into the cold lake, if it be summertime, or rolls in the snow in winter. I have never seen it myself, but I am told on good authority that in the evening it is no uncommon sight in the country to see a row of naked men sitting outside the house, having just completed their cold plunge.

That this Finnish bath is an immemorial custom is shown by the fact that in one of the folk songs of the _Kalevala_, Anniki, the little sister of Ilmarinen, “the great primeval craftsman,” says to him:

“Now the bath-room’s filled with vapor,
And the vapor-bath I’ve heated,
And have steeped the bath-whisks nicely,
Choosing out the best among them.
Bathe, O Brother, at your pleasure,
Pouring water as you need it,
Wash your head to flaxen color,
Till your eyes shine out like snow-flakes.”

In these pleasant farmhouses by which we glide so rapidly in our little steamer how many human comedies and tragedies must have been enacted; how many joys and sorrows have found place beneath these roofs? Births and betrothals, weddings and funerals, each has brought as much ecstasy or grief as the same events bring to the noble chateau or lordly palace.

You remember, Judicia, how we have sometimes been amused at the profound melancholy which occasionally invests a wedding at home. Do you remember how we have seen the weeping mother of the bride or groom sobbing out her congratulations, and how sometimes the whole assembly was almost dissolved in tears.

Well, in the olden times the Finns carried the mournful wedding to the nth degree of melancholy. As late as 1899 a writer in a popular magazine, speaking of a Russian wedding just across the Finnish border, says: “Such a thing as a radiant bride is unknown in those regions, and the chief idea seems to be to make as great a show of grief as possible, and to make the function as dismal as a funeral.”

A weeping wedding is not now known in Finland except in the remotest districts, but I am told that not long ago a company of professional wedding weepers were brought to Helsingfors from the far north to show how they could enliven marriage festivities and to remind a modern bride of the customs of long ago.

The _Kalevala_, that thesaurus of rhythmical information concerning ancient customs, tells us what was said to the bride before she left for her new home, to make her thoroughly appreciate the old homstead, and also the way in which she replied to the jeremiad. I will quote for you a few more lines:

“Hast thou never, youthful maiden,
On both sides surveyed the question,
Looked beyond the present moment,
When the bargain was concluded?
All thy life must thou be weeping,
And for many years lamenting,
How thou left’st thy father’s household,
And thy native land abandoned,
From beside thy tender mother,
From the home of her who bore thee.”

And the lugubrious maiden replies,

“Blackest trouble rests upon me,
Black as coal my heart within me,
Coal-black trouble weighs upon me.”

A funeral could hardly by any possibility have been more solemn in the ancient times than a wedding. Indeed often it must have been a more joyous occasion, for I am told that in some sections, even to this day, after the relatives have kissed the corpse, all the guests present shake him by the hand, and that the friends usually speak of him not as dead, but as one “whom it hath pleased God to take.”

You can see what a delightful experience a voyage through lakeland must be, in the midst of such charming and ever-changing scenery, the human interest constantly kept alive, not only by the abundant life along the shore, but by the unforgotten customs of the past which the _Kalevala_ has so beautifully preserved for us.

There are other and more thrilling voyages through the “Land of a Thousand Lakes” than the one I have taken you upon to-day. The trip, for instance, down the rapids of Uleå, which is made every day of the tourist season in long, narrow rowboats, under the care of skillful licensed pilots. The canoe trip from Moosehead Lake in Maine to the St. John River in New Brunswick through the Allegash waters is not unlike this journey down the Uleå River, though the passage of the many rapids is usually less thrilling. But in Finland, as in Maine, it takes a cool and skillful hand to pilot the frail craft down these ripping, roaring rapids. Now it looks as though the way was blocked up by a jutting headland; again it seems as if our craft would be dashed to pieces against a gigantic boulder in mid-stream, but always in the Uleå, as in the Allegash, the turn of a paddle avoids the threatened danger, and our boat floats out into smooth waters to the peaceful thoroughfare below the rapids.

But it is hopeless to attempt to describe all the interesting matters that cluster around country life in Finland. Here is a country as big as all Great Britain, with the Low Countries across the Channel thrown in. Who would have the nerve to attempt to describe country life in Belgium, Holland, Ireland, Scotland, and England in one letter? The very magnitude of the task must be my excuse for the fragmentary incompleteness of my attempt.

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

FIFTEENTH LETTER

Which has to do with Tammerfors, the “Manchester” of Finland,
and the railway which takes one thither; its remarkable church;
the Wounded Angel and the Garden of Death; also something about
the church boats of the country districts, and the strange
notice given from the pulpit.

TAMMERFORS, FINLAND, July 15.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

Tammerfors is an inland city on the edge of the great lake region of which I wrote you in my last letter. I had to come here by rail, and perhaps you will be interested to know something about the railways of Finland. I must confess that as means of communication they cannot rival the steamers on the lakes and canals, but, as in most other countries, they are a very necessary evil, and, since in Finland they run on well-ballasted roads for the most part and burn fragrant wood instead of ill-smelling coal, their nuisance as smoke and dust producers is reduced to a minimum.

They are practically all owned by the State, and as the State is in no hurry to get its inhabitants from one place to another, or to get them out of the country, should they be bound to emigrate, the average rate of speed is not more than fifteen miles an hour. Even the express trains between Helsingfors and St. Petersburg are no cannon balls or “Flying Yankees,” for a mile in three minutes and ten seconds is the best they attempt to do for the whole journey.

Still if you have time enough at your disposal you can travel a surprisingly long distance in Finland for a surprisingly small amount of money. The third-class fares (and the third class is patronized by the great majority of people) costs less than a cent a mile, and you can go clear around the east coast of the Gulf of Bothnia to its northern tip, if you are so disposed, and at Haparanda can almost shake hands with our Swedish friends, whom I visited in Luleå a few months ago.

I would not advise you to take a third-class car if you intend to take a long journey in Finland, for the hard, yellow, wooden seats get decidedly tiresome before you have jolted over a hundred miles of Finnish scenery. The second-class cars are entirely comfortable and even luxurious on the principal lines, and you can settle down happily in your plush, springy comfort, usually having a whole seat to yourself.

The first-class accommodations, as in Sweden, are only distinguished from the second by the placard on the door or the window and by your own inner consciousness that you have paid considerably more than your neighbors for the same accommodations. Most of the cars are more like our American cars than the ordinary European coaches, with an aisle down the middle and seats on either side, though the same car may be divided into two or three compartments with doors between.

The stations are modest, wooden buildings, and, except for the numerous signs of margarine, beer, and other comestibles with which they are decorated, I could readily mistake them for railway stations in northern New Hampshire or western Dakota.

One could never, however, mistake a Finnish railway restaurant for a similar institution in America. Here one sees no quick-lunch counter, no aged sandwiches made the day before yesterday, no greasy doughnuts or any impossible concoction misnamed “coffee.” Here everything is neat, nice, and orderly. The coffee is sure to be delicious, for in the meanest Finnish hut, even in far Lapland, the proprietor would be ashamed to give you anything but a steaming and fragrant cup of their national beverage. With the coffee, and for the same price, you get an unlimited supply of little cakes or sweetbread, while if you want a full dinner of three or four courses, superbly cooked and elegantly served, it will cost you only two and a half Finnish _marks_, or about fifty cents, for a Finnish _mark_ differs from a German _mark_ in being of the same value as a _franc_.

Outside the station, in rows along the platform, I often see old women with baskets of apples or plates of fried meat or cakes, or loaves of coarse bread and bottles of milk, just as we saw them in that long journey across Siberia in the early days of the Trans-Siberian Railway. You remember how eagerly we used to race for the bread and milk stalls to get our supply before the little tables were swept bare by the hungry travelers? In Finland one does not have to be a sprinter in order to get his share of the food, for there is always an abundant supply at the restaurants. The old women on the outside, because of the cheapness of their wares, are largely patronized by the poorer people.

The notices in the stations and in the cars about smoking, spitting, putting your head out of the window, standing on the platform, and so on, are printed in six languages: Finnish, Swedish, Russian, German, French, and English, and the maps and diagrams and time-tables are so full of helpful information that no wayfaring man need go astray.

In one respect the Finnish railways differ from the Swedish, though they are such near neighbors. The Swedish trains glide away like the Arab when he has folded his tents, without making any fuss about it. No bell is rung, no whistle blown, no word of command given. The station master simply waves his hand when the exact second for departure has come, and unless you keep your eyes wide open, and your watch exactly with railway time, you are likely to see the rear car of the train vanishing in the distance while you make frantic but unavailing attempts to catch it. In Finland, on the contrary, there is no danger of your being left, for first the station bell rings, then it rings again, then the conductor blows his whistle, then the engineer answers him with the locomotive whistle, and by that time, everything being good and ready, the train will slowly get under way.

Tammerfors might well be called “Grand Rapids,” a name indeed which is not far from its Finnish significance, for through the center of the city rushes a tremendous stream of water, over rapids that make it swirl and eddy and shoot its spray high in the air. This river Tam affords a splendid water power for the principal manufacturing city in Finland, and is lined with great cotton and woolen mills and paper factories, which rightly give the city the nickname, even among its own inhabitants, of the “Manchester” of Finland.

In size, however, the Finnish Manchester is nearer the New Hampshire than the English Manchester, and its river rushes and tumbles through the city much as the Merrimac throws itself with mighty force against the water wheels of the New England city.

But neither Manchester, New Hampshire, nor Manchester, England, can boast such a remarkable church as the “Manchester” of Finland. Indeed, I doubt if such a church can be found in any one of the five continents. It is a very expensive church, built of solid granite, with enormous pillars that would not be put to the blush by the ruins of Baalbec, or the ancient temple of Sardis. In this church a great Christian Endeavor meeting was held which completely filled the audience room, as has been the case in the other cathedral churches of Finland, and I must say that it was rather a unique experience as I spoke to the living audience to see also a painted audience of naked men and half-clothed women coming out of their graves forming the great altar piece, representing the Resurrection morning.

Around the huge gallery, supported by enormous stone pillars, is a row of naked boys carrying a large garland which completely surrounds the gallery. This garland is supposed to signify the “Burden of Life,” and is composed of roses and thorns. Some of the boys are carrying it lightly, and others are staggering under its weight.

In other parts of the church are two remarkable frescoes, one representing two boys carrying a wounded angel on a kind of litter between them. The angel’s drooping wings, spotted with blood, and her sweet, patient expression contrast strangely with the rugged little Finnish boys who are carrying her. One of them has a resentful expression on his face, as though he were deadly tired of his burden. Did the artist mean to tell us that every boy carries an angel with him, though he often resents her presence and would be glad to get rid of her?

The other mural painting represents the “Garden of Death,” and shows us three grinning skeletons with watering-pots in their hands, sprinkling flowers of various kinds as they wander through their garden. One writer calls this a “perfectly hideous piece of symbolism,” but it did not so strike me. Though unpleasant in some of its features, it is not nearly so hideous as the pictures of the Last Judgment depicted by many of the old masters, and it teaches the worth-while lesson that “life evermore is fed by death.”

This church is characteristic of the new and audacious architecture of Finland. Ernest Young well describes it when he says: “Without a mass of photographs it is difficult to convey to the reader any idea of the curious character of this modern work. One man calls it “hideous”; another “lovely.” The choice of the epithet probably depends on your education, your prejudices, and your ability to seek sympathetically for the meaning of the builder. It falls into no category of known style; hence if you be but of the schools it will probably appal you.”

“To me,” he continues, “it is an intense joy, even when it is ugliest and least effective, for it is _daring_. It is only a man of courage who dares to do the things that these men do. It is full of the spirit of youth, and though it be not Gothic, nor Moorish, nor anything but Finnish, I could wander all day amongst the houses and streets where it is prevalent, feeling as though I were once more in the presence of an age when men dared to be original in defiance of all accepted traditions.”

I ought to tell you, perhaps, before I get through with this remarkable church that there was strong opposition, especially on the part of the clergy, to the extreme nudity of the decorations, but the persistence of the artists, and the pride of the people in their original productions, prevailed over all objections, and the paintings remain there, naked and unashamed.

Tammerfors, or the Rapids of the Tam, affords a good point of departure for the more remote interior of Finland, and here we should find churches and churchgoers of a different type from those which the large cities afford. The churches, like the houses of the people, are of wood, and some of them are enormous buildings in which the peasants from many miles around gather to worship and to be instructed by their honored pastors. With some families, as with our Puritan ancestors, Sunday begins on Saturday afternoon. This is perhaps a matter of necessity rather than of conscience, because not a few live at such a distance that they have to start on Saturday afternoon in order to get to church in season for the Sunday service. No sight in Finland is more unique than the great “church boats” that leave the remote villages on Saturday evenings for a journey through the long summer twilight to the distant church. These boats sometimes contain twenty or thirty worshipers, and the rhythm of the splashing oars is accentuated by the sweet voices of the maidens as they sing the psalms and hymns of ancient Finland. Practically all the people are Lutherans, though there are Free Church Lutherans and State Church Lutherans, and you may be sure that Luther’s famous hymn, “A Mighty Stronghold is our God,” often resounds along the peaceful waterways and is echoed from the pine-clad hills as the “church boat” makes its way to the sanctuary. In these days the “church boat” is often a steamer of considerable size, which starts early Sunday morning and collects three or four hundred worshipers from the different hamlets and farms within its circuit.

If we should attend church in one of these remote districts in the winter we would very likely hear the minister give out a singular notice from the pulpit. It would not be concerning a “Ladies’ Sewing-circle,” or a “Men’s Club,” or a “Turkey Supper,” or a “Strawberry Festival,” but, strangest of all strange pulpit “intimations,” as our Scotch friends would call it, it would relate to a _bear hunt_.

To be more specific, the minister would announce that a certain farmer had found a “ring,” and that no one must trespass upon his “ring.” This would mean that a certain member of the church had been lucky enough to track a bear to its lair, and that, without disturbing him, he had drawn a wide circle around him in the snow. Henceforward that bear is his property, either to kill or to sell to some sportsman who wants the excitement of a bear hunt.

Bruin himself, it seems, is not very particular about his winter quarters. When he is ready for his winter’s nap he lies down and lets the snow cover him up as it will. It often makes a large heap over his improvised bedroom, and his breath, escaping like steam from a hole in the snow which it has melted, often reveals his hiding place to the sharp-eyed farmer, who is always on the lookout for it.

The discoverer rarely disturbs Bruin himself, but he sends word to the Tourist Association of Helsingfors that he has a “ring” for sale, and there are many keen hunters, some of whom come from Russia and some from England, who are glad to pay from seventy-five to eighty dollars for the ring. When the huntsman reaches the bear’s winter quarters, the dogs and the beaters rout out the bear, who usually puts up a very stiff fight, and not altogether a one-sided one before he is dispatched by the hunter.

I must say it seems to me something like burglary, if not highway robbery and murder, to drive inoffensive Bruin in the dead of his long winter night out of his cozy sleeping apartment. Especially I am sorry for the mother bear, who always keeps her cubs with her during the long night, while the father bear keeps a bedroom of his own. As a result of these bear hunts, it is said that “in Viborg and other towns it is not uncommon to see young bears which have been caught in this manner acting as playmates for the children, and running at large in the gardens and on the hills.”

I suppose that Aylmer told you all about skiing when he wrote you of his winter in Norway, and I will simply remind you, and Aylmer, too, if you will communicate the fact to him, that the “ski is a _Finnish_ invention, and was known here many years before it was introduced into Norway.” So that fact counts at least one point for my side of Scandinavia.

Faithfully yours,

PHILLIPS.

SIXTEENTH LETTER

Deals with Helsingfors, the capital of the Grand Duchy, and
its strongly fortified islands; with Woman’s Suffrage in
progressive Finland; with universal education; with the folk
schools and the extreme attention given to them; with the
university and its degrees; with the literature of the Finns
and the more interesting Finn himself.

HELSINGFORS, FINLAND, July 20.

MY DEAR JUDICIA,

Helsingfors is the best place in the world from which to write you my last letter about greater Scandinavia, for it is not only the capital and chief city of the Grand Duchy of Finland, but it is the best point of departure from the country for one whose pleasant tasks in these northern lands are nearly finished. From here I can go by rail to St. Petersburg, and thence to any other desirable spot on the earth’s surface; or I can sail to Riga, to Stockholm, to a number of places on the German coast, or to Hull in England, and, with only one change of steamer, can get back to our best-loved America.

But I cannot leave Scandinavia without telling you something of this interesting city, the center not only of the political life but of the educational, literary, and artistic life of Finland.

The Russians have taken pains to make Helsingfors’ strong, strategic position, impregnable from the military point of view. The entrance to the inner harbor is so narrow that only one ship at a time can pass between the frowning rocks, and the murderous guns of the forts are so mounted that they can be turned against the foe, whether he approach by land or sea.

A little way out from the inner harbor is a scattered group of frowning, rocky islands fortified with the latest type of death-dealing cannon. At the time of the Crimean War both France and England mustered their fleets to take one of these islands, but found it impossible. To-day it would be a still more difficult task.

If poverty makes strange bedfellows, international complications and affiances make still stranger chums. Here are the bitter enemies of sixty years ago hobnobbing together in these days of the _Entente cordiale_. Republican France, constitutional Britain, and autocratic, reactionary Russia, “as thick as thieves” (no opprobrious implication intended), and working together with all the wiles and all the might of diplomacy to offset and hold in check the Triple Alliance.

Speaking of politics and government, I would modestly recommend both the suffragettes and the anti-suffragettes of England to study the experience of Finland in regard to this burning subject. Here is the only European country that totally ignores the word “male” in its suffrage regulations. Every adult has a vote, and, as fifty-three per cent of the inhabitants are women, they hold the much-dreaded balance of power which is such a bugbear to the “antis” of Great Britain.

Here is a country that is theoretically ruled by women, and yet there has been no tremendous cataclysm of the forces of nature. The sun rises and sets in Finland just as it used to do. People buy and sell and get gain, fall in love, are married and given in marriage, die and are buried, just as in the olden days. Theoretically the women could tip every man out of his parliamentary seat and run the government to suit themselves, but, strange to say, there are only seventeen women in the Finnish Diet. Less than one tenth of all the members belong to the terrible window-smashing sex, and one writer says of these seventeen: “They are mostly of middle age, grave, and even portentously solemn. They are apparently proof against all temptations of vanity. They dress with Quakerish simplicity and are completely absorbed in their duties.”

Whether it is due to the influence of woman or not, Finland is an exceedingly orderly and well-governed country, and it would be ruled still better did not the medieval government at St. Petersburg veto various measures relating to education and morals which would be for the welfare of the country. For instance, as I told you before, the Diet wants a larger measure of the prohibition of intoxicants, which the Czar has forbidden. The Diet has voted for compulsory education, which the imperial Romanoff, “with and by the consent of his ministers,” has also disallowed.

Nevertheless, in spite of this handicap Finland is in many respects the most progressive and best educated nation in Europe. Let the woman suffragists get what comfort they can from these facts, and let the suffragettes remember that in getting “votes for women” in Finland not a single bomb was exploded, or a house burned to the ground, or a single window broken by a wild and whirling female.

Until very recently there have been four estates in the Diet of Finland: Nobles, Clergy, Burghers, and Peasants. In the last-named house Finland was entirely unique. I have never heard of another nation that had a “House of Peasants” to legislate for it, but it must be remembered that many of these so-called peasants are very substantial farmers, and that their power in a country like Finland is paramount, as it ought to be.

In 1906 the four estates were abolished, and now there is only one legislative chamber, where representatives of all the people meet together to legislate for the welfare of their beloved fatherland.

You may have thought that I was drawing a “long bow” when I said that Finland was the best educated nation in the world, but I am prepared to defend the proposition. I do not mean to say that classical or technical education for the few has been carried to so high a point as in Germany, though in this respect Finland is not lacking. But in the rudiments of a sound education she is unsurpassed. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that every man, woman, and child of school age in Finland knows the three “R’s”—“readin’, ’ritin’ and ’rithmetic”—and he can pursue his education as much further as his time and inclination allow.

Think of the black belts of illiteracy in our own southland, of the “Crackers” who have never tried to learn their letters, of the hordes of newcomers to our shores, who could never get in if the reading test were applied to them! I acknowledge that America has a far different educational problem to deal with than compact, homogeneous Finland, but it nevertheless remains true that from the standpoint of elementary education Finland stands at the head of the class in the school of the nations.

Most exemplary and commendable care is taken to provide for the physical as well as the intellectual health of the children. I have not visited many of these schools myself, and am indebted to Mr. Ernest Young for the following facts. In the folk schools, which correspond to our public primary and grammar schools, manual work and gymnastics are required, as rigidly as study hours and recitations.

The General Architectural Council of Finland draws the plans for the schoolhouses. These plans provide for such minute affairs as the decorations of the rooms. In rooms facing the north, which will receive little sunlight, especially in the long winter days, warm reds, yellows, and greens are the prevailing tints; in the warmer rooms that face the south colder tones are used. There are no square corners for the accumulation of dust. The boys and girls have separate dressing rooms, and the newer buildings are provided with shower baths. Overcoats are hung up in the cloakrooms or corridors, and there is not only a separate place for each class, but a little closet for each pupil. Each of these is provided with a peg, a shelf for caps and bags, a stand for the umbrella, and a pigeonhole for the indispensable goloshes. Accommodations for snowshoes, sledges, skis, and bicycles are also provided. Every folk school in the country must have a playground and enough free land connected with it to furnish a garden plot for the teacher and pupils. The government is so fatherly, not to say motherly, as to ordain that the girls’ desks shall be provided with a pincushion.

Coeducation has no terror for the Finns, and boys and girls are educated together from the primary school to the time of their graduation at the university. Parents who are afraid of the effects of “calf love” from coeducation may perhaps be reassured by a remark quoted from a Finnish schoolgirl: “We may fall in love when we are at school,” she said, “but never with a boy in the same school as ourselves. You see, we know them too well.” You may be permitted, Judicia, if you desire to do so, to doubt the sweeping generalization of this young lady.

Finland must be a perfect paradise in summertime for poor and sickly children. They are not left to the occasional ministrations of some benevolent individual or voluntary society for a glimpse of the country, but, if they need an out-of-door holiday, they are sent by the municipality of Helsingfors into the country for a week, or a month, or three months, as the case may be, to recover health and strength in the holiday camps. That there is nothing haphazard about this municipal benevolence is shown by the fact that a public medical officer sends these poor children into the country and weighs and measures them before each holiday to know how much they have profited by it.

The morals of the children are looked after as well as their physical and mental training. Children who wish to go to any place of public amusement must ask permission of the head master of the school, unless they have distinct permission from their parents, and in many schools, even where parents give permission, the head master must be informed of it before the pupil goes to any public show. Every encouragement is given to poor and ambitious children who desire to pursue their education through the university. Free food, free clothes, and school books are provided for those whose parents absolutely cannot furnish them.

Helsingfors is the center of educational Finland, for here is the great college called the Alexander University, in grateful remembrance of Finland’s first Russian Grand Duke, the well-beloved Alexander I. When graduation time comes, each faculty in the schools of theology, law, medicine, and philosophy confers separate degrees. When the degrees are conferred, a cannon booms from the parapet near by in honor of each graduate, and the band welcomes him to his new honors with stately music. Instead of the gorgeous hoods displaying as many colors as Joseph’s coat, with which our own degrees are conferred, the Masters of Arts in Finland receive a gold ring, and the Doctors a silk-covered hat.

A beautiful motto is set over the door of _Studentshuset_, or “Students’ House,” the common meeting place of the students of both sexes. This was built by subscriptions voluntarily given by people in all parts of the country, and the motto over the door is, “Given by the Fatherland to its Hope.” No motto could better tell the ardent love of Finland for the higher education of its youth.

But you ask me, Judicia, “What of Helsingfors itself?” the city from which I have dated my letter. Well, it does not differ greatly from other European cities, when you look upon it superficially, for in its present aspect it is distinctively modern. Like all large Finnish towns, it has been burned down more than once, and after its last great conflagration, less than a century ago, its architects seem to have copied for the most part the models set them by other cities, for that was before a distinctive type of Finnish architecture began to make its appearance. Many of the streets are broad and lined with handsome houses and business blocks and public buildings. The University and the Art Museum are substantial but not imposing buildings, while the inadequate Diet House, as I told you, would soon be replaced by another if only Czar Nicholas would give his imperial permission.

In the center of one of the principal squares is a splendid statue of Alexander II, which a grateful people often decorate with wreaths to this day, as they remember the man who gave them back their liberties. One would think that no Russian bureaucrat to-day, intent upon taking away the liberties of the people, could look on this statue without a glow of inward shame.

The great church which dominates Helsingfors is St. Nicholas, which stands on a sightly eminence near the center of the city, and is a fine specimen of the Greek style of architecture. Here the state functions are observed, and here during my stay a great Christian Endeavor meeting was held which gave me an opportunity to see as fine a congregation of men and women, young and old, as one could see in any land beneath the sun.

Though the St. Nicholas is the largest and most popular church in the city, there is another whose architecture is far more remarkable, for it is the latest Finnish word in church building. It has the most massive and stately granite tower that I have seen on any church in Europe. It, too, stands upon a hill, and half a dozen streets seem to converge to it, so that whenever you lift up your eyes from almost any quarter of the city there is this magnificent tower, solemn, imposing, majestic, a conception which only a Finnish architect would dare to execute. The tower quite dwarfs the rest of the church, and from some points of view it seems to be all tower.