"Where are they going?" we asked on one occasion; "how can so few families require so much milk?"
"They are going to the creamery," was the reply. "This neighbourhood could not use the milk, which is all made into cheese, and the cream into butter, to be exported to England."
Being much interested in the subject, having written a pamphlet Danish versus English Buttermaking, we of course stopped to see the creamery, and were amazed to find it conducted on the latest scientific Danish principles, and, although established little over a year, in full working order.
The proprietor only owned sixty cows, but he had the milk sent in from a hundred more, and exactly as they return the skim milk in Denmark, so they return it in Finland. By a careful process of autumn calving, the Finnish dairymen manage to have most milk in the winter, when they make butter, which they send seventy miles by sledge to the nearest railway train, to be borne hence to Hangö, the only port in Finland that is open during the winter months. There it meets a steamer which conveys it to England.
In 1874, there were exported about 5,159,885 kilograms (about 2 lbs.).
In 1909, this quantity had doubled itself, the amount exported being 11,632,200 kilograms.
Of this, Great Britain took the larger share, her import of Finnish butter being of the value of twenty-four million marks, while Russia's only reached four million marks.
Formerly all the butter was sent to Russia; but Russia, like every other country, except England, woke up and began making her own butter. Finland, however, does not suffer, she merely ships to England direct, or through Denmark to England instead, and the trade in ten years has trebled itself.
Few of us in England realise what a large sum goes out of this country every day for butter consumed by a people unable to make it for themselves. England imports vast quantities of butter from Normandy, Brittany, Australia, and the Argentine, and much comes from Denmark, to which country Finland is a fair rival.
We stayed at the Mejeri late into the night, for we were always making mistakes as to time in that bewilderingly everlasting daylight. After weeks of eternal light, one begins to long for the peace of darkness.