TWELFTH LETTER
Relates to Finland; why it should be included in Scandinavia; its earlier and later history; its degradation by Russia; the charming journey from Stockholm to Åbo; and tells of a winter adventure in the Gulf of Bothnia.
Åbo, Finland, July 1.
My dear Judicia,
I wonder if you are asking why I include Finland in the letters which we submit to you in regard to the relative merits of the different parts of Scandinavia. Do I hear you say that Finland is a part of Russia, and that the Finns are not even of Aryan stock like the Swedes, but are descendants of Turanian tribes, “first cousins to the Hungarians, and forty-second cousins to the Turks”?
Nevertheless, in spite of all this, I must maintain that Finland is more a part of Scandinavia and more nearly related to the Swedes in customs, temperament, and manner of life than to any other nation. The Swedes were the people who found the Finns in barbaric heathenism, who Christianized and civilized them, though it must be acknowledged that, in doing this, they conquered and sometimes exploited them at the same time. For four hundred and fifty years after this conquest by Sweden the Finns constituted a loyal and devoted part of the Swedish kingdom, speaking the Swedish language almost as freely as their own, adopting Swedish laws and customs, and equal in political and social rights to their neighbors across the Gulf of Bothnia.
It was only about a hundred years ago that they were conquered by the Russians, when, after centuries of struggle, Sweden’s domains were rent in twain.
To prove my contention that to all intents and purposes Finland should be considered a part of Scandinavia, I must remind you that long before the Finns came to Finland the southern part of their country was doubtless inhabited by Scandinavians. One writer tells us that they were there “thousands of years before the Finns arrived.” But way off beyond Persia were some Turanian tribes, related to the Mongols and the Manchus, who started on that everlasting trek toward the west, which, since the days of the Pharaohs, seems to have urged the Eastern peoples on toward the setting sun.
They seem to have tarried in Persia for awhile and to have brought with them some Persian coins, which to this day are occasionally unearthed in Finland. On and on they pressed, the first of the Eastern hordes to cross the Ural mountains, until they came, some to the banks of the Danube and others to the shores of the Baltic. The tribes who settled the fertile plains of Hungary are the Magyars of to-day; those who pushed on to the Baltic Sea are the Finns.
Eric XI of Sweden was the first king to turn his attention particularly toward Finland. He seems to have desired not only the conquest of the Finns but their conversion to Christianity, and so he is known both as King Eric and St. Eric. It was no easy job, however, to conquer this slow, obstinate, patient race, and it was one hundred and fifty years, or, to be exact, in 1293, that Sweden’s conquest was complete. She soon set an example to all future conquerors, an example by which Great Britain has so well profited in these later days by giving perfect liberty to the conquered peoples and confirming their liberties by an irrevocable law.
Nothing better ever happened to the Finns than this conquest by the Swedes. Christianity, civilization, education, and an invaluable training in liberty under law was the result, until the descendants of those wild tribes from the steppes of Asia have become one of the most civilized, enlightened, and perhaps the best educated nation in the world.
Says Ernest Young, in his interesting book on Finland: “It is a remarkable fact that the Finnish and Swedish populations of Finland, though running like two different streams beside each other without blending, never rose against each other, but, on the contrary, always stood side by side in the same rank whenever sword was drawn at home or abroad. There was rivalry between them, but no oppression.… The laws and social order of Sweden were introduced without resistance into a country where law and society did not exist before. The people grew into these new forms, applied them according to their characters, and became familiar with them as their own.”
Would that Russia could have learned a lesson that Sweden taught to all the world, concerning conquered provinces. At first it seemed as though she had done so, and no one ever spoke fairer words to a conquered people than Czar Alexander I spoke to the Finns through the Governor-general in the “Act of Assurance,” given to the first Finnish Diet that convened after the cession of Finland to Russia by the Swedes.
At first it seemed as though these fair promises would be fulfilled, and for a time, doubtless, Finland was better off under Russian rule than she had been during the hundreds of years previously when she had been the battleground, continually tramped over by Swedish and Russian soldiers, and reddened with their blood as well as by that of her own citizens.
Each succeeding Czar seems to have treated Finland according to his own whims, or those of his prime minister, and with little consideration to the fundamental laws of the land so solemnly guaranteed and sworn to by each Czar as he came to the throne.
Little by little the Russians have been filching away the liberties of the Finns, depriving them of one boon after another, and ever threatening them with still direr evils. Finnish soldiers are no longer allowed to enlist for the defense of their fatherland, but instead they must pay a tribute to Russia and allow uncleanly Russian soldiers to be quartered in the beautiful barracks built for their own troops. Finnish stamps are no longer good for letters that go outside of Finland, and the marks and pennys in which they have reckoned their currency from time immemorial must give way to the more awkward ruble and kopeck with which they would prefer to have nothing to do.
In mean and picayunish ways the government interferes with their liberties. For instance, the people voted not long ago for the prohibition of alcoholic drinks, but the Czar, in his superior wisdom, doubtless absolutely inspired by his ministers, decreed that prohibition was not good for the Finns (and very likely not good for the Russian revenues), and so vetoed the law which had met with universal favor.
The Finnish Diet meets in a rather shabby and antequated building, but the people have obtained a good site for a new parliament house and have raised the money for the construction of a splendid building that would ornament the fine city of Helsingfors. Now the Czar tells them that they cannot afford a new building, and withholds his approval, so that they cannot do what they please with their own money. Some think that since he has had no use for a Finnish parliament, and soon intends to suppress it altogether, he sees no use for a parliament house.
The Finns number only three millions of people, and the Russians on their very borders, people of an alien race and an alien religion, who have scarcely yet emerged from barbarism, are more than a hundred million strong, and that tells the whole story.
The trek that was begun by the Finns before the Christian Era has been again taken up since Russia began to stamp out their liberties. More than three hundred thousand of them have come to our shores, and no people should receive a heartier welcome in Yankee land than they.
“In 1894 a statue to their beloved Czar, Alexander II, was unveiled at Helsingfors, a statue which is one of the noblest works of art in the capital and which is still often decorated with wreaths and flowers by the grateful Finns. It is almost unbelievable that when this statue was unveiled the Governor-general forbade the singing of an ode written for that occasion, because he took the phrase ‘The Father of Finnish liberties’ to imply a condemnation of his less enlightened successor.”
Perhaps you would like to read a translation of one verse of this ode, which tells of the gratitude of the Finnish people to the one who restored their liberties, while at the same time it shows how far removed from such praise is a government which could prohibit the singing of such a hymn. Here is the first verse:
“Hail noble prince! From town and land
Our greetings come, from isle and strand,
From forest, hill and dale.
Wherever Finland’s folks may rest,
Their debt for all they value best,
In love to thee they pay.”
This excursion into Swedish history is longer than I intended, and has prevented me from telling you before that I left Stockholm last night on one of the delightful little steamers that ply across the Gulf of Bothnia from Sweden’s capital to Åbo, the ancient capital of Finland.
It is a charming sail. Much of the time we were within sight of land, and some of the most picturesque land in the world. A perfect swarm of islands of all sizes and shapes guard the coasts both of Finland and Sweden. Some of these islands are tree-clad down to the water’s edge; others are bare, gaunt, smooth rocks, whose surface has been washed by ten thousand storms—I was about to say ten thousand tides when I remembered that the Baltic is almost a tideless sea. It is a sea, too, that is being constantly conquered by the land, for, through some unexplained action of mighty subterranean forces, without volcanic shock or earthquake tremor, the land both of the Swedish and Finnish shores is gradually rising. On the northern end of the Baltic the land gains on the water at the rate of about four feet in a hundred years, and that the sea is at a very different level from what it was some thousands of years ago is shown by the fact that the remains of viking ships are found on the tops of very considerable hills at some distance from the shores.
After sailing across a strip of clear water free from islands, between which we thread our way for three hours after leaving Stockholm, we come to Mariehamn, about halfway between the two shores. Then comes another little stretch of clear water, and then another great archipelago like the one on the Swedish shore, and between hundreds of little islands and great islands our steamer makes its way to its berth in the port of Åbo.
Very much like its neighboring shore on the opposite side is the approach to Åbo. Some of the islands are mere bare rocks, sticking their heads only a few feet above the surface of the sea, while others contain farms and forests and a considerable population. Many beautiful villas adorn some of these islands, and a rare place they afford for a holiday or a summer residence.
But the Finnish shore can boast islands enough to furnish one for every day of a decade, and before the next decade is over very likely some new ones will arise above the surface of the water, like the one which had almost come to the surface in 1907, but not near enough to be charted, or to prevent the wreckage of the Czar’s yacht upon it.
Sweden and Finland rest upon the same submerged plateau of solid rock, which adds another proof to my contention that, for all practical and descriptive purposes at least, Finland must still be considered a part of Scandinavia.
Though one crosses the Gulf of Bothnia in the night, he does not cross in the dark, for at this midsummer season there is no real darkness in this fairyland of midnight dawn. I was reminded very forcibly by contrast of the last time I crossed this bit of blue sea, for it was then a white sea. As far as the eye could reach, it could rest upon nothing but ice, solid fields of it, to the north and south, to the east and west.
Soon after we started it grew dark, for it was midwinter then. A blinding snowstorm came on; the road-way between the ice floes was a narrow one, and, that we might keep a straight course, a powerful searchlight rigged to the foremast was set blazing, and its blinding white light, far out over the expanse of ice and snow, showed the narrow line of blue through which we must steer. Sometimes we would pass a steamer with a searchlight of her own, dazzling us for a moment with her radiance, while we returned the compliment by throwing our searchlight into her eyes.
Men with lanterns and sledges came from the towns on the shore, far out from the land, to get the cargo meant for their port, and could come right up to the steamer’s side, for the ice made a continual wharf forty miles long to the sea.
When we struck the ice on the Finnish shore we found a different “proposition,” which the little Wellamo attacked right bravely, and for six hours or more we made good headway. When the ice was only three or four inches thick she would go through it as a cat would go through a pan of cream; when it was six or eight inches thick it was like plowing through soft butter; when it grew to be a foot thick it was like cutting our way through a stiff old cheese; and when the ice became two feet thick or more it was too much for the Wellamo, powerful as her engines were.
She would fall back and butt the ice again and again and again, but it was of no use. She would crunch it under her forefoot, and would almost rise on top of it, but it would always pile itself up in resistless masses in front of her.
Another ice-breaker came out from the Finnish shore to help us, but she proved of no avail, and was soon fast and tight in the ice two hundred yards from us. All day long the captain and crew worked to get us free. A dozen men with ice picks and axes hewed away at the frosty enemy that held us fast, but why the captain let them wear out their muscles in attempting the impossible I could not understand, for a tribe of Brownies might just as well attempt to level the Andes.
Families of seals came up through their breathing holes to look at us. They usually consisted of the old father and mother seal and one or two white, shaggy little babies, that looked like little polar bears. They were very tame and would let me go within twenty feet of them, when I left the steamer to pay them a visit. Then they would waddle off into the water. Sometimes a mother seal would poke her baby off the ice floe into the water out of harm’s way, which the little fellow apparently resented, for he would shake his shaggy head and scramble up on the ice again.
Surrounded by these interesting and novel scenes, we spent thirty hours ice-bound in the Baltic. Then the biggest ice-breaker of all, the Sampo, came to our rescue and landed us safely in Finland, after two nights and a day in the ice floe.
I was forcibly reminded of this memorable journey, because last night we sailed on the same stanch little steamer, the Wellamo, across smiling waters and between charming islands, with the sun to light our way for the most part instead of the electric lights, and when we reached the harbor there was that same benevolent old Sampo, the ice-breaker, that released us from our imprisonment, lying at the wharf. Her occupation is gone for the present, for, until next winter at least, she will not have to relieve any smaller steamers in distress, but can shove her ugly but useful nose in and out among the islands, whose people doubtless welcome her coming as we so gladly welcomed her on that January night which I have described.
The interesting sights and peoples whom I found on my arrival in Åbo I must describe in another letter.
Faithfully yours,
Phillips.