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.
In Finnish Lakeland.
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.”
In Eastern Finland.
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.