We were immensely surprised. Who could have expected to find in the interior of Finland a peasant landlord who was also an English linguist? He seemed even more delighted to see us, than we were to have an opportunity of learning something concerning the country from one speaking our own tongue so perfectly, for it is a little difficult to unravel intricate matters when the intermediary is a Swedish-speaking Finlander, who has to translate what the peasant says into French or German for your information, you again retranslating it into English for your own purposes.
Our host spoke English fluently, and it turned out that, having been a sailor like so many of the Finns, he had spent sixteen years of his life on board English vessels. He preferred them, he said, as the pay was twice as good as on the Finnish boats.
He told us that many of his countrymen went away to sea for a few years and saved money, the wise ones bringing it home and investing it in a plot of land; "but," he added, "they do not all succeed, for many of them have become so accustomed to a roving life, and know so little of farming, that they cannot manage to make it pay. I have worked very hard myself, and am getting along all right;" and, looking at his surroundings, we certainly thought he must be doing very well indeed.
The most remarkable rocking-chair we had ever seen in our lives stood in his sitting-room. The Finlanders love rocking-chairs as dearly as the Americans do, but it is not often that they are double; our host's, however, was more than double—it was big enough for two fat Finlanders, or three ordinary persons to sit in a row at the same time, and it afforded us some amusement.
As there is hardly a house in Finland without its rocking-chair, so there is seldom a house which is not decorated somewhere or other with elk horns. The elk, like deer, shed their horns every year, and as Finland is crowded with these Arctic beasts, the horns are picked up in large quantities. They are handsome, but heavy, for the ordinary elk horn is far more ponderous in shape and weight and equal in width to a Scotch Royal. The ingenuity of the Finlander is great in making these handsome horns into hat-stands, umbrella-holders, stools, newspaper-racks, and portfolio-stands, or interlacing them in such a manner as to form a frieze round the top of the entrance hall in their homes. A really good pair will cost as much as twenty-five shillings, but when less well-grown, or in any way chipped or damaged, they can be bought for a couple of shillings.
A Finnish hall, besides its elk-horn decorations, is somewhat of a curiosity. For instance, at one of the Governor's houses where we chanced to dine, we saw for the first time with surprise what we repeatedly saw again in Finland. Along either wall was a wooden stand with rows and rows of pegs upon it for holding hats and coats. There were two pegs, one below the other, so that the coat might go beneath, while the hat resting over it did not get hurt. But below each of these pegs, a few inches from the floor, was a little wooden box with an open side. They really looked like forty or fifty small nests for hens to lay their eggs in, and we were very much interested to know what they could be for. What was our surprise to learn they were for goloshes.
In winter the younger guests arrive on snow-shoes (skidor), but during wet weather or when the road is muddy, during the thaws of spring, they always wear goloshes, and as it is considered the worst of taste to enter a room with dirty boots, the goloshes are left behind with the coat in the hall. This reminded us of Henrik Ibsen's home in Christiania, where the hall was strewn with goloshes. So much is this the fashion that we actually saw people walking about in indiarubber "gummies," as our American friends call them, during almost tropical weather. Habit becomes second nature.
Whether that meal at Lapinlahti, with its English-speaking landlord, was specially prepared for our honour or whether it was always excellent at that majatalo we cannot say, but it lingers in remembrance as one of the most luxurious feasts we had in the wilds of Suomi.
The heat was so great that afternoon as we drove towards Iisalmi—two or three inches of dust covering the roadways—that we determined to drive no more in the daytime, and that our future expeditions should be at night; a plan which we carried out most successfully. On future occasions we started at six in the afternoon, drove till midnight, and perhaps did a couple or three hours more at four or five in the morning; think of it!
After peeping into some well-arranged Free Schools, looking at a college for technical education, being invited with true Finnish hospitality to stay and sleep at every house we entered, we drew up at the next majatalo to Lapinlahti. It was the post-house, and at the same time a farm; but the first thing that arrested our attention was the smoke—it really seemed as if we were never to get away from smoke for forest-burning or cow-milking. This time volumes were ascending from the sauna or bath-house, for it was Saturday night, and it appeared as if the population were about to have their weekly cleansing. The sauna door was very small, and the person about to enter had to step up over a foot of boarding to effect his object, just as we were compelled to do on Fridtjof Nansen's ship the Fram,[E] when she lay in Christiania dock a week or two before leaving for her ice-drift. In the case of the Fram the doors were high up and small, to keep out the snow, as they are likewise in the Finnish peasants' homes, excepting when they arrange a snow-guard or sort of fore-chamber of loose pine trees, laid wigwam fashion on the top of one another, to keep back the drifts. We had hardly settled down to our evening meal—in the bedroom of course, everything is done in bedrooms in Finland, visitors received, etc.—before we saw a number of men and women hurrying to the sauna, where, in true native fashion, after undressing outside, all disappeared en masse into that tremendous hot vapour room, where they beat one another with birch branches dipped in hot water, as described in the chapter on Finnish baths. In Kalevala we read of these mixed baths thus—