What a scene met our eyes! An enormous kitchen, a wooden-floored, ceilinged and walled room about thirty feet square, boasting five windows—large and airy, I was about to say, but it just missed being airy because no fresh breeze was ever allowed to enter except by the door. At one end was the usual enormous fireplace, with its large chimney and small cooking stove, into which wood had continually to be piled, coal being as unknown to the inland Finn as the sea-serpent itself. At the other end of the room, opposite the fireplace, was a large wooden table with benches arranged along two sides, at which the labourers were feeding, for the one o'clock bell hanging above the roof had just been rung by the farmer, and they had all come in for their mid-day meal. It was really a wonderful scene; five men wearing coloured shirts, and four women, with white handkerchiefs over their heads, were sitting round the table, and between each couple was a small wooden, long-handled pail, from which the pair, each duly provided with a wooden spoon, were helping themselves. Finnish peasants—and until lately even Finnish town servants—all feed from one pot and drink from one bowl in truly Eastern fashion. The small wooden receptacle, which really served as a basin, contained piimää or skimmed milk that had gone sour, a composition somewhat allied to skyr, on which peasants live in Iceland, only that skyr is sheep's milk often months old, and piimää is cow's milk fairly fresh. This piimää with sour black bread and salted but uncooked small fish (suolo-kala) is the peasant's fare, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, almost always the same! These people never taste meat, unless it be for a treat salted, while fresh vegetables are unknown, cabbage even being a luxury. Each labourer pulled his puukko (knife) from its sheath at his waist—alas, too frequently pulled in anger—and cutting hunks of brown bread, dragged a fish like a sardine (only it was dry and salt) from another wooden tub, and cutting off bits ate them together, after the fashion of a sandwich, helping himself every now and then with a wooden spoon to a lump of the sour milk, or, when his companion was not doing the same, raising the pail—the wooden walls of which were half an inch thick—to his lips and drinking the more watery part of his harmless liquor.
Haili also haunted us in every peasant home. It is another species of small fish which the peasants eat raw, a little salt being its only preparation. They seem to buy or catch haili by the ton, and then keep them for months in the cellar. We were always seeing them eat these haili, which looked something like sprats, and tasted ineffably nasty. On high days and holidays they partake of them accompanied with baked potatoes; but potatoes are somewhat rare, and therefore the fish on black bread alone constitutes the usual meal. Sometimes better-class folk eat haili, but then they have them grilled on charcoal; these are rich people, for coal is as great a luxury to them even as potatoes to the poor.
They seemed very happy, those men and women who had been up and hard at work in the fields since three or four in the morning, and would not have finished their day's labour till between eight and nine P.M., for the summer is short, and while it lasts the peasant gets little or no sleep, his entire livelihood depending upon almost incessant work during the light warm days. I believe many people only sleep for a couple of hours during the summer light, and make up for it in the provinces in winter when it is dark. It was the 10th of July; the hay was cut everywhere, and thrown up on the wooden palings erected for that purpose, or the old pine trees stuck here and there, to dry before being piled up on little sledges that were to convey it to the nearest wooden shanty, to be stacked for winter use.
Sledges convey the hay crop in the summer along the roadways, where wheels would be dragged from their axles by the stones and rocks.
A year or two ago, when hay was very scarce in England, quantities were sent over from Finland, and excellent it was, full of clover and sweet flowers, for although only grown in patches—sometimes even scraps by the roadside—the quality of the crop repays the enormous patience and labour necessary to produce it.
Finland's wild flowers are renowned, and the hay is full of sweet-scented blossoms.
The peasant farmer at whose majatalo we halted was a rich man, and had let out some of his farms to people in a smaller way, who in return had to give him fourteen days' labour in the year whenever he demanded them, also many bags of rye—in regular old feudal style—for money did not pass between them. Just as well, perhaps, considering that Finnish money a couple of hundred years ago weighed several pounds—indeed its unwieldiness may have been the origin of this exchange of labour for land. We actually saw an old coin over two feet long and one foot wide in the Sordavala Museum. It is made of copper about one-eighth of an inch thick, with uneven edges as though it had been rolled out like a piece of pastry, and bears the name Kristina 1624-1654, with one coin stamped in the middle about the size of a florin, and one at each of the corners. How delightfully easy travelling must have been in those days with a hundred such useful little coins in one's possession. Paper money now takes their place.
There were many more coins half that size, the earliest being a Carl XI.
All through the year the peasant farmer recently referred to employed six hands, and he told us that the men earned a hundred and twenty marks a year (£5), and a woman fifty or sixty (£2), with clothes, board, and lodging. It did not seem to be very grand pay; but then the labourers had no expenses, and were, judging from their appearance, well cared for.
Later, when wandering round the homestead, we found a shed full of sledges, filled with hay and covered by coarse woven sheets, made by the family (for every decent house spins and weaves for itself), and in these the hired labourers slept. It was all very primitive, but wondrously clean.