By half-past six, however, matters were amicably settled, and the patient little ponies, which had stood perfectly still throughout the squabble, feeling us mount into our places, started off at a full gallop out of the town almost before we had caught the reins. Sheer bravado on the part of the ponies, or one might perhaps better say training, for it is the habit of the country to go out of towns with a dash, and enter after the same fashion.
As a rule, the coachman sits on the floor at the feet of the off-side occupant of the kärra, holding the reins immediately over the splash-board, and dangling his feet somewhere above the step. If he does not do this, he hangs on by his eyelashes behind, balanced on the top of the luggage.
Our men, or rather lads, afforded us much amusement before we parted with them two days later, for their interest in us was quite wonderful, and, finding that we were surprised at many things to which they were quite accustomed, they began showing off every trifle with the air of princes. When they came to a friend's house on the route they invited us to enter, consequently we drank milk with many queer folk, and patted the heads of numerous native children.
After our gentlemen friends had finally paid these coachmen and given them their tips at Kajana, some days later our sitting-room door burst open, and in the three solemnly filed, cap in hand, looking somewhat shy, and formally went through the process of handshaking with us all in turn. If the warmth of their affections was meant to be conveyed by the strength of their grip, they must have loved us very much indeed, for our fingers tingled for an hour afterwards; but the funniest part of all, perhaps, was the whisper of one in my ear. Finnish was his language; I did not understand a word and shook my head; when, putting his mouth still closer to my ear, he murmured the words again. Alas! I could not understand, and he knew it; yet his anxiety was so great he tried and tried again to make me comprehend. "Take me to England," at last I understood was the translation of the words the nervous youth, with many blushes and much twirling of his cap, kept repeating. But firmly and decisively I declined the honour, and he left quite crestfallen.
The tenant farmer, who often pays his rent in labour, is called a torppari, and his house a torp. He can only be likened to the crofters in the poorer parts of Scotland; but where the crofter builds his house of stone, the torppari erects his of wood; where the crofter burns peat and blackens his homestead absolutely, the torppari uses wood, and therefore the peat reek is missing, and the ceilings and walls merely browned; where the crofter sometimes has only earth for his flooring, the torp is floored neatly with wood, although that wood is often very much out of repair, the walls shaky with age, extra lumps of Iceland moss being poked in everywhere to keep out the snow and rain.
Before the door was a sort of half wigwam made of tree trunks, standing outwards with the top end leaning against the house; this was to protect the door from the winter snows, to make a sort of screen in fact, so that it need not be dug out every day as is sometimes necessary. The door itself was only about three feet high, and began a foot from the ground,—another plan to keep back the encroaching snow. Yet these torps are very superior, and the inhabitants much richer than those wretched folk who dwell in the Savupirtti, a house without a chimney.
There are many such queer abodes in Finland, more especially in the Savo or Savolax districts there yet remain a large number of these Savupirtti, the name given to a chimneyless house in the nominative singular in Finnish, famous as we know for its sixteen cases, which so alter the original that to a stranger the word becomes unrecognisable.
To a foreigner these Savupirtti are particularly interesting, and as we drove through the country we peeped into several of such curious homesteads, all more or less alike, and all absolutely identical in their poverty, homes which in 1912 only exist in the most remote districts.
Seeing a queer tumbledown little hovel without a chimney by the wayside, we called "bur-r-r" to the pony, which, like all good Scandinavian horses, immediately drew up, and, throwing down the knotted blue cotton reins, we hopped out, our student friend proceeding to take the top rail off the gate to admit of our clambering over the remaining bars. These strange loose fences are a speciality of Finland, and although they look so shaky and tumbledown, they withstand the winter storms, which is no slight matter. The same loose fences are to be found in the United States or Canada, but there they are made zig-zag, and called snake-fences. In Finland, the gates do not open; they are simply small pine trunks laid from one fence to the other, or any chance projecting bough, and when the peasant wants to open them, he pulls them out and wrecks the whole fragile construction. It saves locks and hinges, even nails, or, the native equivalent, tying with silver-birch twigs; but it is a ramshackle sort of contrivance nevertheless.
In we went to see a chimneyless cot. See, did we say? Nay, we could not see anything until our eyes became accustomed to the dim light. It was a tiny room, the stove occupying almost half the available space; there was no proper chimney; the hole at the top did not always accomplish the purpose for which it was intended, consequently the place was black with ancient smoke, and suffocating with modern fumes. The floor was carpeted with whole birch boughs, the leaves of which were drying in the atmosphere as winter fodder for the one treasured cow. For the cow is a greater possession to the Finn than his pig to the Irishman. The other quarter of the room contained a loom, and the space left was so limited we were not surprised that the dame found her little outside kitchen of much use. Two very small windows (not made to open) lighted the apartment; so how those folk saw during the long dark winter days was a mystery to us, for they made their own candles, they said, just as English folks formerly made dips, and we all know the illumination from dips is uncertain and not brilliant. Still smoke, want of ventilation, and scarcity of light did not seem to have made them blind, although it had certainly rendered them prematurely old.