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.