Finland has much to learn in the way of sanitation, and yet more as to the advisability of a daily bath, for while even in hotels they give one an enormous carafe, which might be called a giraffe, its neck is so long, filled with drinking water surrounded by endless tumblers, the basin is scarcely bigger than a sugar bowl, while the jug is about the size of a cream ewer.
Very, very tired one night we arrived at a little inn. The beds were not made, and, knowing how long it took a Finn to accomplish anything of the kind, we begged her to be as quick as possible, as we were dead beat. She pulled out the wooden bed, she thumped the mattress, and at last she went away, we hoped and believed to fetch the sheets. She remained absent for some time, but when she returned it was not with the sheets; it was with what to her mind was far more important, viz., a tin tray on which were arranged four glass tumblers and a huge glass bottle full of fresh water, which she had been to the bottom of the garden to pump from a deep well!
We often pondered over that water subject, and wondered whether Finns had nightly carousals with the innocent bottle, or whether drinking aqua pura is a part of their religion, as the housemaid had thought sleeping with our heads the wrong way was a part of ours!
Our minds were greatly exercised also as to why the pillows were so hard and often gave forth such a strange smell, but that mystery was one day solved. When driving along a pretty road, we saw masses of soft white cotton flower waving in the wind, the silvery sheen catching the sunlight and making it look like fluffy snow. This we were told was luikku, the Latin name of which is Eriophorum angustifolium. Women were gathering it and packing it into a sack.
"That," explained our Finnish friend, "is used for stuffing the pillows and sometimes even beds."
"Really?" we returned; "then that is why they are so hard and lumpy."
"Oh, but there is another plant even less soft than the luikku, which is employed for the same purpose. It grows at the water's edge and is a kind of rush."
This plant turned out to be ruoko (Phragmites communis), a common species of water shrub in Finland; after its dark red flowers have turned silvery gray, they look beautiful swaying with the wind, the long reed-like leaves making a pretty swish at the water's edge as they bend. Going up the canals it is quite strange to notice how, when the steamer sucks the water from the sides to her screw, the ruoko sways and bows its head down to her, and, as she passes on, it lifts its majestic head again, and gently sways down the other side as though to bid the ship farewell.
In the summer months, when things often have to be done in a hurry, getting in the hay or reaping the harvest, for instance, since the moment the weather is propitious and the crop ripe no time must be lost, or a night's frost may prove destructive to all the crops, it is very common to have a talkko.
A talkko is a sort of popular amusement at which a great deal of work is done. The farmer invites all his friends to help him clear a rye field, for example. They all come in eager haste, and generally have a sort of picnic. Work proceeds much quicker in company than alone, and while they reap with old-fashioned sickles, they chat and laugh and sing their national songs, eat and make merry on small beer, that terrible concoction which we explained before is called Kalja, which they drink out of the same spoon, regardless of disease germs.