In truly Finnish fashion the family was varied. First we saw an aged mother, a delightful old soul, whose husband was dead and whose eldest son therefore worked the farm. He had a wife and five children, the latter being all much of an age. He also had a sister with her invalid husband, and his younger brother and one child—so that there were several relationships under the same roof, let us hope proving "Union is Strength," although we hardly think the English temperament would care for such family gatherings.
In the kitchen-dining-room was a baby in a cradle, and another sort of crib was hanging from the ceiling by cords, the infant lying in a kind of linen pocket on a pillow.
We were much amazed to see a patent process by which the infant in the cradle was being fed. It was a wooden bed, in shape like an old German one, and at one side of it projected an arm of wood curved round in such a way that it came up from the side of the cradle and bent almost over the child's face. Great was our amazement to find that a cow horn was fixed into this wooden arm, so that the thin part of the horn reached the baby's mouth, while the thick part stood up three or four inches above the hole in the wood in which it was resting. Was it a toy, we marvelled, because, if so, it seemed remarkably dangerous to have anything so hard in such near proximity to a baby's face, but great was our surprise on closer examination to find it was a feeding-bottle.
The horn was hollow, and on the thin end was a primitive teat of linen, through which the baby was drawing the milk poured in at the top of this novel feeding-bottle.
In a corner of the same room was a wonderful frame on rollers to teach a child to walk. There was a small round hole through which the infant was pulled, so that the polished ring supported it under the armpits, from that rim four wooden pillars slanted outwards, being bound together at the bottom by other pieces of wood securely fixed to four rolling castors. In this the child could move; and the little brat rolled about from side to side of the uneven flooring, securely held up in its wooden cage. A small child of five was peeling potatoes, specially dug up in our honour, beside a wooden bucket, while a cat played with a kitten, and a servant girl—for well-to-do farmers have servants—made black bread in a huge tub, the dough being so heavy and solid that she could not turn it over at all, and only managed to knead it by doubling her fists and regularly plunging them to the bottom with all her strength. Her sunburnt arms disappeared far above her elbow, and judging by the way the meal stuck to her she found bread-making very hard work. Finlanders only bake every few weeks, so the bread is often made with a hole and hung up in rows from the ceiling, or, if not, is placed on the kitchen rafters till wanted. This bread is invariably sour—the natives like it so—and to get it rightly flavoured they always leave a little in the tub, that it may taste the next batch, as sour cream turns the new cream for butter. She was not a bad-looking girl; Dame Nature had been kinder to her than to most of her sex in Finland.
Somehow that scene did not look real—it had a kind of theatrical effect. The surroundings were too like a museum; the entry of the labourers after the chiming of the bell closely resembled a stage effect—the old grandmother, the children, the bright cotton shirts and skirts, the wondrous fireplace, the spinning-wheel and weaving-frame—yes, it all seemed too picturesque, too full of colour, and too well grouped to be an event in our commonplace every-day life. Yet this was merely a peep at a Finnish home, in which just such a scene is enacted every day—a home but little off the beaten tracks, and only a short distance from steamboats and trains. The way to understand anything of a land or its people is to leave the tourist route and peep into its homes for one's self.
In Finland there are always post-stations about every eight or twelve miles, according to requirements or capabilities of the peasantry, where horses and beds can be procured. They are called majatalo in Finnish, or gästgivferi in Swedish. Well-to-do farmers are chosen for the post, because they can afford better accommodation to strangers, and generally there are one or two who apply for the honour, more than for the hundred (or two hundred marks in some instances) subsidy they get for keeping up the majatalo.
The Governor of the Province then has to choose the most suitable applicant, settles the charge for food and beds, according to the class of accommodation, and writes them out officially (in three languages) on cards, to be hung up in the rooms, provides the farmer with a Päiväkirja, or Daybook, in which it says: "Two horses must always be ready, and two carts, or if an extra turnout be required, double fare may be charged." Fourteen penni the kilometre (or about twopence halfpenny a mile) is the ordinary charge for a horse and trap, a room and a bed are sixty penni, an ordinary meal sixty, coffee ten, and so on; so that the prices are not ruinous. Indeed, travelling in the interior of Finland is altogether moderate, when done as the Finns do it by posting, but a private carriage is an enormous expense, and, on the whole, it is just as dear to travel in Suomi as in Normandy, Brittany, or the Tyrol. Of course it is not so expensive as London, Paris, or Vienna. How could it be, where there are none of the luxuries of these vast cities? Every one has to sign the Päiväkirja, stating from whence he came, whither he goes, and how many horses he had. Complaints are also entered, and the book has to go periodically to the Governor for inspection. So the whole posting arrangement is well looked after.
We fared very well at our first majatalo, but of course we had to wait over an hour before we got anything to eat. One always must in Finland, and, although a trial to the temper at first, it is a good lesson in restraint, and by degrees we grew accustomed to it. One can get accustomed to anything—man is as adaptable as the trees.
We had black bread—nothing else can be got in peasant homes—and any one who cannot accept its sourness, and one might add hardness, must provide himself with white bread from the towns. We got excellent butter of course—the smallest home has good butter and milk in Finland, where the little native cows can be bought for sixty or a hundred marks. They live on what they can find in the summer, and dried birch leaves, moss, or an occasional "delikatess" of hay in the winter. We had also deliciously cold fresh milk, that and coffee being the only drinks procurable, as a rule, and a small fish with a pink skin like a mullet, fresh out of the water, was served nicely fried in butter, the farmer having sent a man to catch it on our arrival.