Beyond the fertile plains of Germany a wild sea extends itself towards the north, whose shores are annually covered with the ice of winter, and whose straits have sometimes borne entire armies on their ice-bridges. For ages the surrounding nations have fought for the possession of this sea; but at the time of our story the greatest power in the north triumphed over nine-tenths of its wide shores, the Baltic had almost become a Swedish lake; stretching its mighty blue arms north and east, it folded in its embrace a daughter of the sea, a land which had arisen from its bosom, and elevated its granite rocks high above its mother's heart. Finland is the most favoured child of the Baltic; she empties her treasures into the lap of her mother, and the great sea does not disdain the offering, but withdraws lovingly and tenderly like an indulgent mother, that her daughter may develop, and every season clothes the shores with grass and flowers. Fortunate the land which lulls to sleep in its bosom the waters of a thousand lakes, and stretches one hundred and forty Swedish miles along the shore. The sea bears power, freedom, and enlightenment; the ocean is an active civilising element in the world; and a sea communicating nation can never stagnate in need and under oppression except by its own fault.
Far away in the north of Finland a region exists which more than any other is the fostered child of the sea, for from time unknown it has risen with a gentle slope from the waters. Numerous green isles rise along this coast. "In my youth," says the grey-haired old salt, "fine ships floated where now the water is quite shallow, and in a few years the cattle will graze on the former sea-bottom. The playing child launches its little boat from the beach; look around you, little one, and see well the point where the waters trace their edges; when you become a man, you will look in vain for your present strand—beyond the green fields you will hear their distant murmur; and when you are an old man, a village may appear on the spot once occupied by the waves." A strange region, where the towns built hard by deep sounds and tributaries, are twelve miles from the waters in two hundred years, while the keels and anchors of vessels are drawn up from the bogs fifty miles inland.
This region is East Bothnia; greater than many kingdoms, and extending to the verge of Lapland in the north, where the sun never sets at midsummer, and never rises during the Christmas darkness.
Nature is awake for three months of the year in an unbroken day, and then at midnight you can read the finest print; three months of night, but a night of moonlight and glittering snow—clear, cold, and solemn. The flower's beauty perishes sooner there than human joy; for seven months the plains are covered with snow and the lakes with solid ice; but never is spring more delightful than such a winter; still a melancholy mingles with this joy, which the heart well understands.
Two races live on the coasts of this land, unmixed and unlike; a variegated picture of national and local peculiarities of language and habits; one parish sharply contrasting with another. Certain common traits exist, however, which all present. It is not a historical accident that the greatest and bloodiest battles of Finland have been fought on the soil of East Bothnia.
Twenty-five miles east of Vasa, on the banks of Kyro River, is the rich Storkyro parish—the granary of East Bothnia. Here grows the well-known rye-seed, which is exported in large quantities to Sweden. The parish presents a plain of waving grain-fields, from which arose the saying, "that Storkyro fields and Limingo meadows have no equals in length and breadth." The people are Finns, of Tavastlandish origin in remote times. Their old church, built in 1304, is one of the oldest in the country.
We now ask our reader to follow us there. At the time of our story this region was badly cultivated, compared with later times. The ravages of the Peasants' War had retarded its growth, so that for a generation traces of this disastrous struggle were visible, whilst other wars, with heavy conscriptions, prevented time from healing these wounds. Hence, in the summer of 1632, many farmhouses still stood empty; the grain-fields did not spread far from the river banks, and unhealthy fogs covered the country when the nights were cool. The forests, then already thinned, still yielded fuel for the tar pits; part of the peasantry fished among the Michel Islands, and the worthy pastor, Herr Georgius Thomoe Patur, had not then, like his present successor, a yearly income of 4,000 silver roubles. Therefore the eye lingered with delight on Bertila's farmhouse close to the church, finer and better built than any of the others, and surrounded by the most fertile fields.
The summer had advanced to the middle of August, and the harvesting had just begun. More than sixty persons, men, women, and children—for the East Bothnian peasant women work the whole summer out of doors—were busily cutting the golden rye, which they gathered into sheaves and placed with skilful hands in high, handsome ricks. The day was hot, and the stooping posture of the work wearisome; so it often happened that the petted boys amongst the reapers threw longing glances at the soft grass round the edge of the field, which evidently seemed intended for a resting-place. At the same time they did not forget to look for the overseer, an old man in a loose, grey homespun jacket. Whenever anyone stopped, he heard his neighbour whisper, "Larsson is coming!" which had an instantaneous effect, like the stroke of a whip.
But Larsson, a small man, between whose bushy head and eyebrows a good-hearted look glanced forth, was now concerned with one of the women, who, on account of the heat and work, had sunk to the ground.
Judging from her features this woman was no longer young; perhaps about thirty-six; but to look at her slender figure, and the mild sympathetic expression of her blue eyes, she seemed no more than twenty. She exhibited a rare but prematurely faded beauty, with much suffering and resignation. She wore a fine white flannel jacket, which being thrown aside on account of the sun, showed sleeves of the finest linen, a red bodice, like the peasantry wore, with a short striped woollen skirt, and a little plaid handkerchief tied around her head, to support her long flaxen hair. She had worked hard, but her strength was insufficient; she had fallen with her scythe in her hand, and those nearest to her, with respect and love, had carried her to the soft turf, and tried with fresh water from the spring to bring her back to life.