Through Finland in Carts

by Mrs. Alec-Tweedie

After leaving Kuopio, as we had travelled Northwards towards Lapland, the aspect of the country altered every twenty miles. It became far more hilly, for Finland, as a whole, is flat. The vegetation had changed likewise, and we suddenly found ourselves among tracts of dwarf birch so familiar to travellers in Iceland.

As we had driven on towards Kajana we had repeatedly passed pine-trees from which part of the bark was cut away, and, not realising we were now in tar-land, wondered at such destruction.

The history of the tar, with which we are so familiar, is very strange, and not unmixed with dangers. Pine-trees, growing in great forests where the bear, wolf, and elk are not unknown, are chosen for its production. The first year the bark is carefully cut away from the ground as high as a man can reach, except on the northern side of the tree, where a strip two inches wide is left intact. Now this strip is always the strongest part of the bark because it faces northwards, and it is, therefore, left to keep the tree alive and to prevent it from drying. All the rest of the trunk remains bare, shining white and silvery in the sunlight, and forms a thick yellow juice, which oozes out of the tree, and smells strongly of turpentine. This ultimately makes the tar.

The next year the same process is repeated, except that then the bark is peeled higher up the tree, the strip on the northern side always being left as before to keep the sap alive. The tenacity of the life of bark is wonderful, as may be seen at a place like Burnham Beeches, where, in many cases, all the inside of the tree has practically gone, and yet the bark lives and the tree produces leaves.

This treatment goes on for four, and sometimes five, years, until most of the tree is stripped. It was in this naked condition the pines first attracted our attention, for a barkless tree covered with a thick yellow sap, to the uninitiated, is an unusual sight. In October, or early in November, of each year the selected pines are duly cut down, and later, by the aid of sledges, they are dragged over the snow through the forests to the nearest tervahauta (kiln), there to be burnt into tar.

So cold is it in this part of the world during winter that the thermometer often drops to 30° or 40° Fahr. below freezing-point, and then the hard-worked little horses look like balls of snow, the heat from their bodies forming drops at the end of their manes, tails, and even their long coats, for their hair grows to an even greater length than the Shetland ponies. At last their coats become so stiff they are not able to move, so they often have to be taken indoors and thawed by the oven's friendly warmth.

These sturdy little beasts gallop over the hardened forest track, dragging their wood behind them—for without the aid of snow to level the roads, or ice to enable the peasants to make short cuts across the lakes, little trade could be done. The winter comes as a boon and a blessing to man in those Northern realms; all transport is performed by its aid, sledges travel over snow more easily than wheels over roadless ways, and sukset or ski and snowshoes traverse snow or ice more rapidly than the ordinary summer pedestrian.

Suffocated with heat and dust, we were ourselves bumping along in a springless kärra, when our attention was first arrested by—what? let us say a huge basin built on piles. This was a tervahauta or tar-kiln, which looked like an enormous mushroom turned upside down, standing on a thick stem of wooden piles, only in this case the mushroom was ninety or a hundred feet in circumference, and the stem at least fifteen feet wide.

As we have nothing at all like it in England, it is difficult to describe its appearance. Think of a flattened basin or soup-plate made of pine-trees and covered over with cement, so that an enormous fire may burn for days upon it. In the middle, which slopes downwards like a wine funnel, is a hole for the tar to run through into a wooden pipe, which carries it to the base of the kiln; passing along to the outside, the wooden pipe is arranged in such a way that a barrel can be put at the end to receive the tar. This vast basin has to be very solidly built in order to withstand the weight of wood—sometimes over a hundred trees at a time—and also the ravages of fire, therefore it is securely fastened and supported at the edges by whole trunks of trees bound together with cement. Once built, however, it lasts for years, and, therefore, most tar-farmers have a tervahauta of their own.

The felled timber, having been sawn into pieces about a yard long in order that they may be conveniently packed on the sledges, arrive at the kiln before spring, so that by June all is ready for the actual manufacture of the tar itself. The tervahauta basin is then packed as full as it is possible to stack the wood, which is always laid round the middle in order to leave a hole in the centre free to receive the tar. By the time the mass is ready it looks like a small hillock, and is made even more so in appearance by being thickly covered over with turf, that it may be quite air-tight, and that a sort of dry distillation may go on. Fires are then lighted at different points round the edge, to the end that the interior may catch fire, the process being aided by a train of old tar which runs from the burning point to the centre, as dynamite is laid prior to an explosion. By this means the whole huge bonfire shortly begins to smoulder.