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FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR READE 
 
 Lecturer in English at the University 
 of Helsingfors 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1917 
 

 Copyright, 1917 
 By Dodd, Mead and Company, Ihc. 
 
PEEFACE 
 
 npHE present book is written from the Stand- 
 •*■ point of one who has made his home in Fin- 
 land, and the writer hopes that what he may have 
 lost in the freshness of first impressions may prove 
 to be more than counterbalanced by increased inti- 
 macy with the land and people described. 
 
 As Finland, in spite of the excellent books that 
 have been written by thoughtful and observant trav- 
 ellers, is still but little known, it has seemed best 
 to concentrate attention on the leading features of 
 Finnish life, and not to go too much into details 
 which, in the absence of a conception of the country 
 as a whole, might easily prove wearisome or confus- 
 ing. The general ignorance of Finland has also 
 made a small amount of repetition unavoidable, as 
 it has been necessary to summarize in the Introduc- 
 tion matters which are treated at greater length 
 in subsequent chapters. 
 
 It may be as well to point out that the term 
 **Finn" is sometimes used to denote any citizen of 
 Finland, and sometimes, in a narrower sense, to dis- 
 tinguish the Finnish-speaking from the Swedish- 
 speaking population of the country. Similarly 
 ** Swede" sometimes signifies an inhabitant of 
 Sweden, and sometimes is used to distinguish the 
 Swedish-speaking from the Finnish-speaking popu- 
 lation of Finland. It will be clear from the con- 
 
 .376179 
 
vi PEEFACE 
 
 text whether these terms are used in the narrower 
 or the wider sense. 
 
 The translations in the book are the author's, 
 except when it is stated to the contrary. 
 
 The hearty thanks of the author are due to the 
 many friends who have assisted him either by ob- 
 taining information or by criticism and discussion. 
 Also to the editors of the Dial, for permission to 
 reproduce (in the course of Chapter XV) the 
 greater part of an article which appeared in their 
 periodical last year. 
 
 Helsingfors 
 
 July 19U 
 
Finnish Money 
 
 100 penni = 1 Finnish mark. 
 The Finnish mark is equal in value to the 
 French franc. 
 
 Measures 
 
 The metric system prevails throughout 
 
 Finland. 
 1 metre = 3 feet 3.37 inches. 
 1 kilometre = 1,093 yards 2 feet. 
 8 kilometres — 5 English miles. 
 1 hectar = 10,000 square metres. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 Pbeface V 
 
 I. Introductory . 1 
 
 II. The National Movement .... 23 
 
 III. The Racial Struggle 47 
 
 IV. Life in Helsingfors 65 
 
 V. The Country-side 83 
 
 VI. Some Country-side Manners, Cus- 
 toms AND Beliefs 105 
 
 VII. The World of the Ancient Finns . 122 
 
 VIII. The Landmarks of Finnish Litera- 
 ture Since Runeberg .... 142 
 
 IX. Painting and Music 174 
 
 X. Education . . . ... . . 188 
 
 XI. The Diet and Parties 206 
 
 XII. Finland's World-industry . . . 219 
 
 XIII. Other Industries 231 
 
 XIV. The Labour Movement .... 241 
 
 XV. The Rights of Women .... 249 
 
 XVI. The Position of Finland in the Rus- 
 sian Empire 273 
 
 XVII. The First Period of Russianization 283 
 
 XVIII. The Second Period of Russianiza- 
 tion 306 
 
 XIX. Finland and the War 326 
 
 Index 333 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 View from Fire Station Tower, Helsingfoes 
 
 Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 FAOE 
 
 The Statue of Elias Lonnrot, Helsingfoes . 38 
 
 Helsingfors, Finland 90 
 
 A Market Place, Helsingfors 134 
 
 Fine Residence, Helsingfors 180 
 
 Part of Esplanade and National Theatre, Hels- 
 ingfors 224 
 
 Castle at Turku, Linna. Built About 1200 . 256 
 
 St. Anne Restaurant, Wiborg 290 
 
FINLAND 
 
 AND THE FINNS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 ^HE war of 1808-9, by which Finland passed 
 ^ from Sweden to the Empire of Russia, has 
 hardly received from the outside world the atten- 
 tion it deserves. It was, perhaps, not unnatural 
 that Europe should have given it but little heed. 
 The eyes of most men were fixed upon events nearer 
 home, for it was at this time that Napoleon's mar- 
 shals were conducting the bloody wars against 
 Wellington in the Peninsula and agaist the heroic 
 Hofer and his fellow-peasants in Tyrol. Words- 
 worth's prophecy of two years earlier seemed near 
 fulfilment : — 
 
 Another year! — another deadly blow! 
 Another mighty Empire overthrown I 
 And we are left, or shall be left, alone, 
 The last that dare to struggle with the foe. 
 
 Nevertheless, the war between Sweden and Rus- 
 sia was an intrinsic part of the great European 
 struggle. It was of Napoleon's making. In order 
 
 1 
 
2 . FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 to distract Russia from Turkey, he incited her to 
 attack Sweden, the ally of Great Britain. Eussia 
 was to recoup herself by the acquisition of the east- 
 ern part of the kingdom of Sweden, namely Fin- 
 land, which had been for centuries the battle-field 
 of Russians and Swedes. The Russian Emperors 
 had long wanted the country, and Alexander I 
 searched for a pretext to declare war. He de- 
 manded that Sweden should join the Continental 
 System and exclude British goods. When Gustavus 
 IV foolishly enough refused, a Russian army crossed 
 the Finnish frontier and the long struggle com- 
 menced. This is not the place to describe the strat- 
 egy of the campaign in any detail. The Finnish 
 army was left to defend itself as best it could. It 
 consisted of about 20,000 troops, of whom some 
 8,000 were shut up in the fortresses of Sveaborg, 
 Svartholm and Hangoudd on the south coast. The 
 field force of 12,000 had to confront a Russian army 
 of 24,000 under Buxhoevden, whose strength was 
 subsequently increased by reinforcements. The 
 Finnish army, moreover, was hampered by wretched 
 leadership. Klingspor, the Commander-in-Chief 
 sent over by King Gustavus, caused his troops to 
 retreat when they wished to fight, and the Russians 
 advanced when and how they pleased. They had 
 crossed the frontier on February 21, 1808, and had 
 taken Svartholm by March 10th and Hangoudd by 
 March 21st. Klingspor retreated continually in a 
 northwesterly direction until he neared Uleaborg, 
 on the north of the Gulf of Bothnia. Here the tide 
 turned. The Finns, whose anger at the retreat had 
 
INTEODUCTORY 3 
 
 been growing from day to day, at last took things 
 into their own hands and disobeyed orders. Klings- 
 por had gone on to Uleaborg, leaving Adlercreutz 
 to superintend the general retreat thither. Adler- 
 creutz did so, in bitterness of heart. But his own 
 former regiment could not stand it and refused 
 to budge. The Russians came to the attack, and 
 the other Finnish regiments, who had not gone far, 
 hurried back to the rescue. In the battle that fol- 
 lowed the Finns won a complete victory against a 
 force that outnumbered them by two to one. Hav- 
 ing begun, they continued. The army won noble 
 victories, and, though it failed to follow them up, 
 this was at least better than retreating. The^ peas- 
 ants took an active part in the war. Thus, in Aland, 
 under the leadership of two of their Lutheran 
 clergy, they attacked the Russians and took several 
 hundreds of prisoners, and elsewhere they assisted 
 the regular troops or carried on guerilla fighting. 
 In a sense it was all in vain. Sveaborg, **the Gibral- 
 tar of the North," lying on some islands by Hels- 
 ingfors and regarded as impregnable, was shame- 
 fully surrendered on May 3rd, and after winning 
 battle after battle against heavy odds the Finns 
 were finally broken at Orivais on September 29th. 
 But the gallant resistance bore splendid fruit. It 
 was largely due to this, as we shall see in a later 
 chapter, that Alexander I guaranteed to Finland the 
 preservation of the Swedish constitution — an ines- 
 timable gain, which rendered all her subsequent 
 progress possible. Having realized the fighting ca- 
 pacity of the Finnish peasant, Alexander was not 
 
4 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 anxious to impose such conditions as might lead to 
 a Finnish rising in favour of Swedish rule, more 
 especially as the incapable Gustavus IV had been 
 replaced on the throne by one of Napoleon's great- 
 est generals, Bernadotte. 
 
 But the resistance of the Finns did more for them 
 than this. It caused them to become more deeply 
 conscious of themselves as a nation, it quickened to 
 life the national soul. The men of 1808-9 grew in ' 
 imagination to the dimensions of national heroes, em- 
 bodying the nation's greatest deeds and aspirations. 
 They took on something of the light that clings about 
 the heroes of the saga. They lived a new life in the 
 people's mind, of which they have become more and 
 more a definite part through their projection in 
 Euneberg's poetry. Every one in Finland has seen 
 in imagination the heroic campaign, waged in the 
 darkness of a northern winter amid the frozen lakes 
 and snow-covered forests and white, silent moors. 
 
 The country in which this great struggle was 
 fought out is a land of strong contrasts, and the 
 visitor to it will get a very different impression ac- 
 cording to the season at which he arrives. In the 
 summer he will at once be struck by the intense 
 blueness and clarity of the sky, and will find these 
 attributes mirrored in thie smooth waters of the tide- 
 less Baltic, which embraces Finland with its two 
 arms, the Gulfs of Finland and Bothnia. As he 
 approaches the coast he will notice with pleasure 
 the innumerable small rocky islands, mostly pine- 
 clad, which form a belt round the greater part of 
 the Finnish coast and are dotted here and there 
 
INTEODUCTORY 5 
 
 with summer villas. He will gather that navigation 
 through this maze of rocks and islands is an art 
 only to be acquired by long apprenticeship, and that 
 a people living so much 'twixt land and sea must 
 produce a hardy breed of sailors. 
 
 The most lasting impression of all, however, may 
 be the lightness of the summer nights, when, for 
 several weeks in succession, neither streets nor 
 houses require artificial light, and one might be ex- 
 cused for supposing that here was a land where it 
 is always summer, where one could remain unmen- 
 aced — 
 
 Beside a sea that could not eease to smile; 
 On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 
 
 If the visitor arrive in winter, this fairy picture will 
 have dissolved as if it had never been there. Long 
 before he sees land his steamer may have crunched 
 its way through loose ice, and for miles around the 
 coast he will find an iron sea. Instead of arriving 
 at Helsingf ors, as he would probably do in summer, 
 he will have to land at Abo or Hango, the only ports 
 kept open throughout the winter by ice-breakers. 
 If he is fortunate, he may, indeed, see glorious sun- 
 shine converting the snow-covered land to a glitter- 
 ing plain and turning each separate tree into a 
 spiritual presence. But in midwinter it will not be 
 for long. The sun rises late and sets early, and all 
 the light is crowded into a few short hours, upon 
 which darkness falls; yet not black darkness, for 
 light is thrown up by the snow. In bad weather 
 
6 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the sun may not be visible for weeks on end and a 
 great gloom lies over everything. It seems like a 
 land where it is always winter. But already in 
 February and March, when the days have grown 
 longer again, one may see sunlit snow for weeks. 
 
 It is, of course, in summer that most foreigners 
 visit the country. Some come for the sake of the 
 voyage, others are drawn by the prospect of good 
 fishing, others again by a desire to become ac- 
 quainted with the scenery and people of this still 
 unknown land. The scenery may be briefly de- 
 scribed as forest, rock and water. Dark pine for- 
 ests stand out sharply against the sky; next to the 
 pine, the silver birch is the most common tree. 
 Apart from the water, this unending forest scenery 
 becomes a little monotonous, even depressing, but 
 the two combined form some of the loveliest land- 
 scape imaginable, and Finland, the land of a thou- 
 sand lakes, is peculiarly rich in water. You may 
 travel for days on the lake steamers into the very 
 heart of the country, nor weary of the changes rung 
 by ever new combinations of lake, forest and rocky 
 island. In all Europe there is nothing to equal the 
 Saima chain of lakes ; one has to go to North Amer- 
 ica for a parallel. 
 
 To the geologist Finland is of unusual interest, 
 differing in important respects from most other 
 European countries. It is the glacial period that 
 accounts for many peculiar traits in the geography 
 of the country. During its continuance Finland 
 was completely covered with ice, which, as can be 
 seen from the striation of the rocks, moved in a 
 
INTRODUCTORY 7 
 
 south or south-east direction. When these vast ice- 
 fields melted, there followed a rise in the sea-level 
 which resulted in Finland being completely sub- 
 merged. The soil rests on a huge substructure of 
 crystalline rocks, such as granite, gneiss and schist, 
 which contain no trace of the animal or plant life 
 of the period in which they were formed. On this 
 foundation lies a thin covering of sand, clays or 
 gravels, through which the rock frequently peeps. 
 On the coasts are chiefly found the richer clay lands, 
 while in the interior of the country gravels predom- 
 inate. 
 
 Finland has no great mountain ranges. Nor is it 
 completely a plain, however. It is rather a land 
 of little hills. The majority of these are formed of 
 solid rock, and are often impressive for their abrupt- 
 ness, if not for their height. Long low sandhills 
 are also common in most parts of the country. 
 North of the Polar Circle a certain number of hills 
 reach a height of from 600 to 1,100 metres, but 
 south of this no hill exceeds 600 metres, the general 
 level being from 100 to 150 metres. The coast land 
 is the lowest, and barely rises to 50 metres above 
 sea-level. 
 
 Finland lies between the 60th and 70th degrees 
 of latitude and between the 21st and 33rd degrees 
 of longitude, reckoned from Greenwich. The south 
 coast is thus about on a level with the Shetland Isl- 
 ands, and it may be worth pointing out that Hels- 
 ingfors, the Finnish capital, is almost on the same 
 level with three other Northern capitals — Peters- 
 burg, Stockholm and Christiana. A glance at the 
 
8 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 map shows Eussia on tlie long eastern frontier, Nor- 
 way on the north just cutting Finland off from the 
 Arctic Ocean, and Sweden on the west, running 
 from Tornea, at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, 
 up to the critical point where Norway, Sweden and 
 the Russian Empire meet. In this region Finland 
 extends a finger, as it were, across Sweden and 
 Norway, the frontier reaching to within some 20 
 miles of one of the Norwegian fjords, a fact which 
 causes considerable uneasiness to those who believe 
 that Russia intends to secure for herself an ice-free 
 outlet on the Atlantic coast. The Swedish frontier 
 was determined in 1809 at the Peace of Fredrik- 
 shamn, when Finland passed from Sweden into the 
 Russian Empire. For the rest, Finland is bounded 
 by water, which tends to soften the severity of the 
 climate. The west coast fronts the Gulf of Bothnia, 
 while on the south is the Gulf of Finland, which is 
 separated by a comparatively narrow stretch of 
 land from the great inland sea of Ladoga, about 
 half of whose shores are Finnish. 
 
 Other factors which modify the harshness of the 
 climate are the great lakes, the influence of the Gulf 
 Stream, which makes itself felt even in Finland, 
 and the fact that the prevailing winds come from 
 the south and west, bringing warmth with them. 
 The difference of climate between north and south 
 is very great. The winter lasts for about eight 
 months in the north and five in the south. At Hels- 
 ingf ors the longest day is of about I8I/2 hours, while 
 in the far north of Finland the summer sun does not 
 set for two or three months. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 9 
 
 Passing from the land to the people, the first 
 point to be apprehended is that Finland is a coun- 
 try with two distinct races. The Swedes entered 
 from the west, the Finns from the east. The latter 
 were the more numerous, the former the more highly- 
 civilized. Of the inhabitants to-day 86.7 speak Fin- 
 nish, 12.9 speak Swedish, the remaining fraction 
 being Russians, Germans and Lapps. 
 
 The origins of the Finnish race are still not clear, 
 though much light has been thrown upon the subject 
 since Matthias Castren undertook his remarkable 
 journeys of exploration in the eighteen-f orties. Cas- 
 tren was the son of a pastor in the northern town 
 of Kemi, and was early fired by the desire to learn 
 as much as possible about the peoples related to 
 the Finns. Accordingly, he visited a great number 
 of remote and forgotten tribes in North Europe and 
 Siberia, which had originally formed component 
 parts of the Finnish race. It was a life of the ut- 
 most hardship. To reach the different tribes he 
 had to cross deserts and snowfields, sleep out in the 
 open or in miserable hovels, and be content with 
 the scantiest food. He lived among the Samoyedes 
 and other savage peoples, learned their language, 
 joined them in their hunting and fishing and daily 
 occupations, and entirely won their confidence. He 
 was thus able to lay the foundations of a scientific 
 study of Finnish origins which has been proceed- 
 ing steadily ever since. He became professor at the 
 University of Helsingf ors, where his memory is hon- 
 oured as one of its most distinguished investigators, 
 but died in 1852, at the early age of thirty-eight. 
 
10 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 The Finnish tribes of North Asia are still much the 
 same as when Castren visited them — simple, kindly 
 folk, struggling to maintain an existence in the face 
 of ruthless Nature. But in the South of Europe is 
 another race, connected with the Finns, which has 
 left these primitive conditions far behind, namely 
 the Magyars of Hungary, who succeeded in pene- 
 trating to a kindlier region than any of their fel- 
 lows and making some considerable stir in Euro- 
 pean history. The Finns thus belong to the Finnish- 
 Ugrian stock. They are related to the Esthonians 
 and Livs, and more distantly to the Finnish tribes 
 on the Volga and in the Urals. They are supposed 
 to have come to Finland in different detachments 
 about the end of the seventh century, from the re- 
 gion about the Volga. Two main subdivisions are 
 usually distinguished among them, namely, the Ka- 
 relians and the Tavasts, inhabiting the east and west 
 of Finland respectively. The Tavasts are the 
 tougher race, the Karelians the more sociable and 
 artistic. It is among the latter that the old Fin- 
 nish runes have been preserved. 
 
 The language of the Finns has neither a Latin nor 
 a Germanic nor a Slavic origin, but belongs to a group 
 which includes Hungarian, Esthonian, Lappish, and 
 a great many dialects spoken by Finnish tribes in 
 Russia. In Finland a distinction is drawn between 
 West Finnish and East Finnish, the former of which 
 has been a little influenced by Swedish, the latter by 
 Eussian. West Finnish has the place of honour. 
 The Bible was translated into it some three hun- 
 dred years ago, and this stamped it as the founda- 
 
INTRODUCTORY 11 
 
 tion of the written language. Even to-day the lan- 
 guage may be regarded as still in course of con- 
 struction and as not having assumed its final 
 form (if, for the sake of comparison, we may 
 use the word ** final" of so changing a thing as lan- 
 guage). 
 
 It is an extremely difficult tongue for a foreigner 
 to learn, but if well spoken it is a beautiful one. 
 The structure is complex but regular. There are 
 fifteen cases, with a corresponding paucity of prepo- 
 sitions. The accent always falls on the first syllable. 
 Finnish resembles Italian in having a large number 
 of open vowel sounds, which makes it a beautiful 
 language to sing. It is capable of expressing accu- 
 rately a great many different shades of meaning. 
 To hear it spoken at its best one must go into the 
 interior of the country. 
 
 The Swedish-speaking inhabitants, although found 
 in small numbers in most parts of the country, are 
 mainly situated in the south, along the Gulf of Fin- 
 land, in the Aland Islands and in the southern part 
 of Osterbotten, on the Gulf of Bothnia. The lan- 
 guage they speak differs somewhat in pronunciation 
 from the Swedish of Sweden. The intonation is 
 more like that of English people, and to a Swedish 
 Finn the Swedes proper appear to sing their words. 
 The vocabulary also differs to some extent, some 
 Finnish expressions having found their way into the 
 language and some old Swedish terms having 
 been conserved in Finland though now obsolete in 
 Sweden. This difference, though very slight, ap- 
 pears in literature also. 
 
12 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 It should be borne in mind that there has been a 
 considerable mixture of races in Finland and that 
 many of the original distinctions between Karelian, 
 Tavast and Swede have been blurred. The two 
 sections of the Finnish race have not only inter- 
 married largely with each other but also with the 
 Swedes. There must, moreover, be a fair sprink- 
 ling of Russian blood in the country, owing both 
 to the proximity of Eussia and to the perpetual 
 wars with her. It is very remarkable, however, how 
 few persons there are in Finland who speak Rus- 
 sian as their mother tongue. They only number 
 some eight thousand, exclusive, of course, of the 
 Russian military and naval forces stationed in the 
 country. Until recently many educated Russians 
 sent their children to Swedish-speaking schools, and 
 the children have often forgotten the Russian lan- 
 guage. The same thing has happened in the case 
 of several German merchant families. 
 
 Civilization came to Finland from Sweden. It is 
 probable that even before the Christian era there 
 had been Swedish settlements in Finland, but the 
 real colonization came later. During the period of 
 the Crusades, probably in 1157, King Eric of Swe- 
 den led the first missionary expedition against the 
 heathen Finns, whom, seeing that they would not 
 be influenced by argument, he converted at the 
 sword's point. He left behind him in the neighbour- 
 hood of Abo some Swedish colonists, including 
 Bishop Henry, an Englishman by birth, who was 
 shortly afterwards murdered and has since been 
 
INTRODUCTORY 13 
 
 revered as Finland's patron saint. Henry was a 
 man of great courage and did not fear to make ex- 
 peditions on his horse or in his sleigh into the very 
 heart of heathendom. In the absence of churches 
 he preached in barns and kilns, and there is still 
 preserved near Bjorneborg a ruined barn in which 
 he is said to have held a service. After his murder 
 by a Jb'inn who attacked him on the ice with an axe, 
 his body became a very precious relic. It was even- 
 tually taken to Abo and placed in the cathedral. 
 Many stories are told of the martyr. According to 
 one of them, he used to wear a valuable ring on his 
 thumb. His assassin cut off the thumb in order to 
 get the ring, but both thumb and ring fell into the 
 snow and could not be found. In the early spring 
 a blind old man and his son rowed over the 
 lake and the boy saw a raven poking about with 
 its bill on a piece of floating ice. Rowing up to 
 the place, the boy found the Bishop's thumb and 
 ring, and when the old man applied the former to 
 his eye he recovered his sight. The Chapter at 
 Abo has a thumb and ring on its seal to this 
 day. 
 
 The colonists grouped round the fortress and 
 
 o 
 
 bishopric of Abo maintained themselves with diffi- 
 culty against the attacks of Finns and Russians 
 until 1249, when the famous Birger Jarl led the so- 
 called Second Crusade to Finland, penetrated into 
 Tavastland and founded the fortress of Tavastehus 
 to protect the conquered territory. This expedition 
 consolidated the Swedish rule in the districts called 
 Abo, Nyland and Tavastland. In 1293 Torgils 
 
14 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Knutsson extended Sweden's power still farther 
 eastwards and founded the fortress of Viborg, 
 where he came into conflict with the Russians. In 
 a second campaign he penetrated as far as Lake 
 Ladoga and the Neva, but was not able to main- 
 tain his hold on this region, and only Western 
 Karelia remained in his hands. The ancient for- 
 tresses of Tavastehus and Viborg still stand to mark 
 the successful advance of Swedish arms. From the 
 middle of the fourteenth century Finland became 
 an integral part of the kingdom of Sweden, the Fin- 
 nish provinces enjoying the same legislative rights 
 as those of Sweden, and the Finns enjoying the 
 same common law (the code of Magnus Eriksen, 
 c, 1350, and of King Christopher, 1442). In 1623 
 a Court of Appeal for Finland was founded in Abo, 
 and in 1640 a University. During centuries the Law 
 and the Church educated the Finnish people to take 
 a place among the nations of West Europe. As in 
 Sweden, the law was, and is, administered by courts 
 composed of a learned judge, as chairman, and a 
 body of peasants — the ndmnd. These peasants de- 
 cide not only the question of fact, but also the ques- 
 tion of law, and have, when unanimous, the casting 
 vote if they differ from the judge. Thus every ses- 
 sion has been, and is, a popular legal education. 
 The influence of the Lutheran Church has, until 
 quite recent times, been very great. Up to the 
 middle of the nineteenth century the clergy were 
 recruited from many of the best teachers of the 
 University and the higher schools, and have really 
 been the spiritual shepherds of their flock. The 
 
INTRODUCTORY 15 
 
 Finnisli language was, of course, used in preaching 
 to Finnish-speaking congregations. 
 
 Thus the Finns received from Sweden Christian- 
 ity and West European culture, together with the 
 principles of personal and political freedom. Fin- 
 nish continued to be spoken by the vast majority of 
 the population, however, and the defence of the 
 country was mainly entrusted to troops consisting 
 chiefly of Finns. In the course of centuries the 
 Finns and the Swedes have, as we saw, considerably 
 intermixed. Swedes who settled in Finland mar- 
 ried Finnish wives, and the resulting fusion of races 
 was furthered by the educational conditions in the 
 country. From the time when Latin was discarded 
 as the language of instruction until after the middle 
 of the nineteenth century, when the Finnish national 
 movement had gathered irresistible force, Swedish 
 was exclusively used at all educational institutions, 
 and it was necessary for Finns who desired higher 
 education to exchange their language for Swedish. 
 Thus large numbers of Finns became members of 
 the Swedish-speaking class and married into it. In 
 spite of the considerable racial fusion, however, the 
 extreme divergency of their languages made a close 
 intimacy between the Finnish- and the Swedish- 
 speaking inhabitants difficult, and the latter con- 
 tinued to be the ruling class in Finland. It should 
 not be lost sight of, however, that this class was to 
 a quite considerable extent recruited from the 
 Finnish-speaking population, which entered it and 
 was assimilated to it. 
 
 After being for centuries a province of Sweden, 
 
16 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Finland was, as we have pointed out, transferred 
 in 1809 to the Empire of Russia. This was only the 
 culmination to a long series of events. The struggle 
 between Sweden and the growing power of Russia 
 in the eighteenth century was fought out mainly in 
 Finland. In 1721 Russian acquired the south-east 
 corner of the country, and in 1743 Sweden was 
 forced also to cede the province of Viborg. Finally, 
 during the great struggle of 1808-9, the Finns, worn 
 out with conflict and seeing no further possibility of 
 help from Sweden, accepted Alexander I's gener- 
 ous offer that they should enter the Russian Em- 
 pire, conserving as their own the Constitution of 
 Sweden, and with it, of course, the whole legisla- 
 tion then in force. No Russian law was introduced 
 into Finland. Alexander I thus became the Grand 
 Duke or constitutional monarch of Finland, the cap- 
 ital of which was soon removed from Abo to Hels- 
 ingfors. Relations between the Swedish-speaking 
 officials of Finland and the Russian Court were very 
 cordial, and large numbers of Finnish Swedes took 
 service in the Russian army. The change was in 
 many ways a blessing to Finland, which had been 
 devastated by the never ceasing wars. Now, for 
 the first time for centuries, the necessary condition 
 for real progress opened out for the country, 
 namely, a long period of unbroken peace, and Fin- 
 land, as will be seen, was not slow to take advantage 
 of it. But the union with Russia carried in it the 
 seeds of the conflict which is being fought out at 
 the present day. The subject will be treated at 
 length later; here it is sufficient to point out cer- 
 
INTRODUCTORY 17 
 
 tain stages in the conflict to which frequent ref- 
 erence will have to be made. 
 
 With the Swedish constitution, Finland had, of 
 course, a representation. There was, legally, a Fin- 
 nish parliament (riksdag) elected in the same way 
 as that of Sweden. The Swedish Riksdag consisted 
 of Four Estates : nobles, clergy, burgesses and peas- 
 ants. Its organization dated from the beginning 
 of the seventeenth cetury, the time of Gustavus 
 Adolphus. But its origins are very much older ; in 
 fact, as far as history goes back, the Swedish people 
 has voted laws and taxes through general assem- 
 blies. During the later Middle Ages meetings of 
 nobles were convoked to the king's Samtaln, lit- 
 erally, parliaments. Out of these the Riksdag grew 
 and inherited the people 's right to make its laws and 
 vote its taxes. Now, in 1809 Alexander I convoked 
 such a riksdag, or, as it is called in Finland, a landt- / 
 dag or diet, at the Finnish town of Borgd. This / 
 Diet he attended in person, and in a speech made? 
 in French gave his confirmation of the constitution.^ 
 The Diet then did him homage as Grand Duke of 
 Finland. Thus was completed the Act of Union. 
 Alexander, at that time a Liberal, created this 
 Grand Duchy as a jar din d'acclimatation for West- 
 ern ideas and institutions in the Russian Empire — 
 the same policy which in 1815 he pursued in Poland. 
 In Finland he won what he immediately wanted, \ 
 namely, the gratitude of a loyal people, which was I 
 a guarantee against the reoccupation of the land by j 
 Sweden. As the Emperor grew more conservative, 
 he still upheld Finland as being the loyal Grand 
 
18 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Duchy, a land of ancien regime, where no French 
 revolutionary ideas had ever penetrated and where 
 he enjoyed the same devotion as had formerly ac- 
 crued to the Swedish king — Gustavus III. But 
 Alexander did not again convoke the Diet, nor did 
 his successor, Nicholas I. In fact, it was not con- 
 voked till 1863, in the reign of Alexander II. Nev- 
 ertheless, the constitution was not violated. For 
 the monarch was not bound to convoke the estates 
 regularly, but only when he wanted a new law or 
 a new grant, and there was till 1863 no new legisla- 
 tion or taxation in Finland. The constitution was, 
 indeed, more scrupulously observed than by the two 
 last Swedish kings. 
 
 For the central administration and jurisdiction a 
 Senate was created, like that of Russia, its Depart- 
 ment of Justice (Justitiedepartment) being a su- 
 preme court and its Department of Economy 
 (Ekonomiedepartment) being the central adminis- 
 tration. The Senators were Finnish citizens; only 
 in 1912 was the first Russian introduced into the 
 Department of Economy, while in the Department 
 of Justice all the members are as yet Finns. 
 
 Finnish affairs have been, and are still, reported 
 to the Emperor by a Finn, the Minister Secretary 
 of State. Between 1809 and 1811, however, a Rus- 
 sian official, the Liberal statesman Speranski, had 
 charge of Finland. Having organized the Grand 
 Duchy, he said in a letter to the Emperor: ** Fin- 
 land is a state, not a province." His successor was 
 Count G. M. Armf elt, the favourite of Alexander I 
 and formerly of Gustavus III of Sweden. Only 
 
INTRODUCTORY 19 
 
 since 1907 have Finnish affairs passed through the 
 Russian Council of Ministers, which, however, 
 merely advises approval or rejection of what the 
 Finnish Senate has proposed; it does not itself 
 prepare Finnish administrative matters. The 
 Governor-General has mostly been a Russian. This 
 high official is chairman of the Senate (where, how- 
 ever, he never sits) and chief of the executive. Up 
 to the 'nineties he did not take much interest in 
 the routine business of administration. Since then 
 he has been the chief agent of russianization. 
 
 After 1863, the Diet was regularly summoned ■ 
 every third year. There was never any quarrel l 
 between the Grand Duke and the representatives 
 of his Grand Duchy, and his being the Emperor of 
 Russia did not cause any difficulty. The interests 
 of Russia were fully safeguarded by Finnish leg- 
 islation, the Diet having good reason to comply 
 with the wishes of Russian Ministers, when ex- 
 pressed. But for the most part, as there were very 
 few points of friction, Finland was utterly ignored 
 by Russian officials. 
 
 In 1878, when a national Finnish army was cre- 
 ated, with Finnish officers and Finnish court- 
 martials, etc., it was officially declared by Alex- 
 ander III himself to be an excellent part of the 
 Russian army. But meanwhile Russian national- j 
 ism was growing stronger and demanding the uni- ■ 
 fication of the Empire. In 1899 the present Tsar 
 decided that Russian military law was to be intro- 
 duced into Finland without the consent of the Diet. 
 The latter was, indeed, consulted, but as it was 
 
20 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 clear that it would not pass the Bill, the Manifesto 
 of February 15, 1899, was issued, declaring that 
 any law demanded by an ** imperial interest" 
 might be passed without the consent of the Diet. 
 \This was meant as a death-blow to the constitu- 
 tion of Finland, the imperial interest being an en- 
 tirely vague notion, and the Emperor reserving to 
 himself the right to interpret it in casu. This was 
 quickly followed by the systematic russianization 
 of the country by General Bobrikoff, who terrorized 
 the nation until his dramatic assassination in 1904. 
 These five years are conveniently referred to as 
 the Bobrikoff period, or the first period of russian- 
 ization. They were succeeded by a brief period of 
 respite. In the autumn of 1905, at the same time 
 as the Tsar was compelled to summon the first 
 Duma, the Finns, by means of a general strike, 
 which seems to have broken out spontaneously, 
 from an instinctive recognition of the psychologi- 
 cal moment for striking a blow for freedom, in- 
 duced the Emperor to recall all illegal ordinances 
 and to restore the constitution on a wider basis. 
 Their jubilation was short-lived, however, for the 
 Russian Government was only waiting until the 
 Duma should be rendered powerless at home and 
 the revolutionaries crushed before it resumed the 
 destruction of Finnish autonomy. The second 
 period of russianization, which is still proceeding 
 at the time of publication, may be roughly dated 
 from the autumn of 1909. 
 
 The conflict with Eussia brought in its train cat- 
 aclysmic changes in the internal economy of Fin- 
 
INTRODUCTORY 21 
 
 land. Had there been no external trouble, tbe in- 
 ternal adjustments would no doubt have occurred, 
 but they would have taken place in a far less sud- 
 den and volcanic manner than was actually the 
 case. When the constitution was restored in 1905, 
 many long-delayed reforms were carried out with 
 great abruptness and thoroughness. The formerly 
 very restricted parliamentary representation was 
 transformed from the old Swedish system of Four 
 Estates, sitting separately, to a single Chamber 
 elected by universal adult suffrage on a system of 
 proportional representation. In the new Parlia- 
 ment, or Diet, of 200 members there sat 19 women 
 and no less than 80 Socialists. Nor did these wide- 
 reaching changes take place without considerable 
 Labour disturbances. The General Strike, while 
 directed primarily against Russia, contained also 
 a large element of class feeling, which has not 
 yet subsided and is sometimes very bitter. 
 
 All these circumstances have combined to leave 
 Finland in a very unsettled state, and it is often 
 very difficult to separate the accidental and tem- 
 porary from the essential and permanent elements 
 of modern Finnish life. Finland is indeed an ex- 
 traordinary mixture of the new and the old. In 
 some places it is rushing onward at motor speed, 
 in others the conditions existing for centuries have 
 not been disturbed. Women are admitted to Par- 
 liament, but at social gatherings men and women 
 still usually form separate groups. Stone houses 
 of six stories, with every modern convenience, 
 jostle one-storied wooden abodes, even in many of 
 
22 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the principal streets of Helsingfors. In telephones 
 Finland is far ahead of us, in drainage woefully 
 behind. 
 
 Certain things, however, strike one as being char- 
 acteristic of the Finns as a whole. Their virtues 
 are steady and stolid, not usually of a brilliant 
 nature. In spite of a contrary tendency visible 
 among the younger generation, I should place the 
 virtue of perseverance prominent among the per- 
 manent attributes of Finnish character. Quiet en- 
 durance also takes a high rank. Notwithstanding 
 the wave of materialism that has swept over the 
 country, the Finns are at heart a very religious 
 and law-abiding people. They have a profound 
 love of liberty, a quality that endears them to 
 Englishmen, and a sturdy hatred of tyranny. They 
 have the defects of their qualities in being at times 
 obstinate to the degree of mulishness and very 
 slow. They sometimes seem too earnest about life 
 and a little suspicious of gaiety and playfulness. 
 Nevertheless there is in them a latent capacity for 
 passion and warmth which breaks forth surpris- 
 ingly at times, reminding one momentarily of 
 Southerners. The fine flower of Finnish character 
 is a childlike simplicity and transparency com- 
 bined with quiet strength. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 
 
 NOT long ago, any one speaking of the smaller 
 nations of North Europe was understood to 
 refer to Norway, Sweden and Denmark. To-day 
 Finland must be included in the list, and the present 
 chapter attempts to give some notion of the men and 
 events which pushed Finland out of obscurity into 
 the light of an independent nationality. To do justice 
 to the National movement, however, an entire volume 
 would be necessary. For the movement may be re- 
 garded from many different aspects. Philosophi-^ 
 cally, it may perhaps best be described as a desper-i 
 ate attempt to preserve Finland's individuality from 
 being merged in the vastness of Russia, when once 
 the nexus with Sweden had been cut. To achieve 
 this end a vivid sense of nationality was essential, 
 and the genius of the Finnish people was sufficiently 
 virile to adapt itself to the new conditions and de- 
 velop that sense. Historically, however, as we shall 
 presently see, the movement may be said to have 
 commenced far earlier than 1809. But it was after 
 1809 that it came to a head, and it had many char- 
 acteristics in common with the other Nationalist 
 movements of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Racially, it represents a struggle between the 
 
 23 
 
24 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Swedish-speaking and the Finnish-speaking inhabi- 
 tants, resulting in the full enfranchisement of the 
 latter, while, as the former constituted roughly an 
 upper and the latter a lower class, the struggle also 
 takes on the aspect of a class conflict. 
 
 To attempt to treat the subject in all its different 
 aspects is out of the question in the present work. 
 But as no one can possibly understand modern Fin- 
 land without some knowledge of the movement, it is 
 necessary, however imperfectly, to give a brief ac- 
 count of it, and especially to try and convey some 
 idea of the spirit animating the men who best rep- 
 resent it. 
 
 The sources of the National movement may per- 
 haps be traced back as far as 1548, when Michael 
 Agricola published the first Finnish translation of 
 the New Testament. A hundred years later, in 1640, 
 Per Brahe, the famous Swedish Governor of Fin- 
 land, founded the University of Abo and recom- 
 mended the professors, who were Swedes, to learn 
 the Finnish language, which ^'does not lack a cer- 
 tain elegance in its construction and does honour to 
 the country.'' A complete Finnish translation of 
 the Bible appeared two years later, and when about 
 this time a printing-press was established in Abo a 
 considerable number of Finnish books began to be 
 published. 
 
 Bad times were in store for the country, however, 
 and interfered with its normal development. The 
 great wars which lifted Sweden to her zenith of 
 power and her tragic fall reached upon Finland 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 25 
 
 Thousands of her best men fell fighting in the Thirty 
 Years War, and those who stayed at home were im- 
 poverished by the heavy taxes necessitated by the 
 wars. Moreover, as we saw, Finland later became 
 the battle-field for Sweden and Russia and was rav- 
 aged time after time. Topelius describes how, when 
 the Swedish refugees returned to their homes after 
 the disastrous Peace of Nystad in 1721, they found 
 the roads destroyed, the bridges broken, no horses, 
 no food, the whole country a desert. The houses 
 were either burned down or roofless and window- 
 less, their contents sacked; the wells were filled 
 up with earth, the plough-lands were overgrown 
 with forest, birds had their nests in the abandoned 
 churches. The University was closed between 1713 
 and 1722, and other important institutions suffered 
 acutely during the same period. 
 
 After the Peace of Nystad the country began to 
 revive, but the separation of the two races and lan- 
 guages seems to have been more keenly felt than 
 ever before. The Swedish element formed an iso- 
 lated and superior class. The Finnish language, 
 which was the mother tongue of the vast major- 
 ity of the inhabitants, was not taught in the schools, 
 and all judicial and administrative proceedings 
 were conducted exclusively in Swedish. It fre- 
 quently happened that Swedish officials did not 
 understand the language of the country they were 
 called upon to administer. All the privileges of 
 education and culture were confined to the Swedish- 
 speaking class, so that if a Finn wished for edu- 
 cation he was compelled to give up his native Ian- 
 
26 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 guage and become **a Swede" — a fact which has 
 always rankled in the breasts of the Finns. 
 
 Nevertheless, indirectly the disastrous Peace of 
 Nystad helped to bring the two races together. For 
 it became apparent that Finland would be less and 
 less able to rely on Sweden for help against the 
 ever growing power of Eussia. This tended to 
 loosen imperceptibly the bond with Sweden and to 
 develop a more independent and self-reliant habit 
 \ of thought among the inhabitants of Finland, which 
 in its turn led up to the conception of a national 
 Finland, having an independent life and history 
 of its own. The idea is especially associated at the 
 end of the eighteenth century with the great scholar 
 at Abo, Henrik Porthan, who, though he wrote in 
 Latin and Swedish, was an enthusiast for the his- 
 tory, geography, philology and antiquities of Fin- 
 land and inspired a large number of young schol- 
 ars to make researches in these fields. The senti- 
 ment of national consciousness was immensely 
 .' stirred in 1809, when Finland passed into the Rus- 
 ^ sian Empire, and Alexander I made the famous 
 declaration that *^the Finnish people is henceforth 
 placed in the ranks of the European nations.'' But 
 people began to ask, **What is the Finnish na- 
 tion?'' They saw an official class isolated from 
 the people. Was this a possible basis for a strong 
 nation? Was it not desirable to give the mass of 
 the people a real interest in the maintenance of 
 Finland's independence and of the social order by 
 admitting them to the full rights and privileges of 
 citizenship ? 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 27 
 
 The current of thought thus started soon ex- 
 pressed itself not merely in the scientific and lit- 
 erary pursuits of Porthan's followers, but also in 
 politics. Thus in 181_9 an article appeared in the 
 journal Mnemosyne to the effect that there were 
 two real obstacles to progress in Finland : firstly, 
 the fact that Finnish was not in general use either / 
 in society or as a written language; secondly, that 
 Swedish was the official language. A series of sim- 
 ilar articles appeared in the Abo Morgonhlad 
 from the pen of E. G. Ehrstrom, who advocated 
 Finnish as the language of instruction at schools 
 and the University, and desired the fixing of a date 
 after which all State officials should be required 
 to use the language of the mass of the people. 
 A. J. Arvidsson wrote to the same effect, and ad- 
 vanced the famous proposition, **We are not 
 Swedes, we don't want to become Russians, so we 
 have to be Finns." Such proposals were not to 
 the liking of the authorities, who described them, 
 in a term afterwards to become famous, as fen- 
 nomania. They came at a time when all over 
 Europe the governing classes were in dread of rev- 
 olution and a *^ national'' spirit was regarded as 
 peculiarly dangerous. The infant movement was 
 crushed, the issue of the Aho Morgonhlad being 
 prohibited, Mnemosyne coming to an end for lack 
 of subscribers and Arvidsson being arbitrarily de- 
 prived of his lectureship at the University, upon 
 which he retired to Sweden. The seed of the move- 
 ment was, however, soon to spring up again, and 
 far more successfully, in the famous '* Saturday 
 
28 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Club." This consisted for the most part of a 
 group of young men who had been students at Abo 
 in the 'twenties and who after the removal of the 
 University to Helsingf ors, consequent on the great 
 fire at Abo, had settled in the new capital. The 
 club was quite informal. It had no chairman or 
 secretary, no rules and no defined object. It usu- 
 ally met on Saturday evenings at the rooms of one 
 of the group and discussed literary and scientific 
 matters and the questions of the day. Certainly 
 no such remarkable society has ever existed in Fin- 
 land before or since. As one reads through the 
 list of members one realizes that practically all the 
 best intellectual and spiritual forces of the time 
 belonged to the circle, and in studying modern 
 Finland one is constantly reminded of the fact 
 that the best ideas of to-day germinated in and 
 branched forth from the minds of its members. 
 
 Women as well as men belonged to the circle, as 
 several of the married men brought their wives. 
 Fredrika Runeberg, the wife of the poet, describes 
 how **most of the subjects, after being eagerly and 
 animatedly discussed by the men, were brought 
 over by one of them to us women and examined by 
 us in our own way, and our views were then con- 
 veyed to the men." This curious division of the 
 sexes did not exist, however, in a smaller group 
 within the club circle. Of this group Mrs. Rune- 
 berg writes: **The conversation was always ex- 
 tremely lively even when it turned on matters 
 which we women could not discuss because we had 
 never had the right to get the necessary knowledge 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 29 
 
 about them and therefore must sit as silent listen- 
 ers. But the men never considered that they owed 
 us the insulting politeness of talking down to our 
 level. And thus the conversation always proceeded 
 with the greatest life and interest, embracing all 
 subjects, from the highest and most profound to 
 the most gay and piquant jests. Such conversa- 
 tion as there was in this circle I have never found 
 elsewhere. There was always fire, sometimes in- 
 deed of a crackling sort, but always fire. Now fire- 
 works of genius and wit, now seriousness and the 
 highest and deepest questions of life, now disputes 
 so eager that strangers who happened to be pres- 
 ent thought the speakers ready to tear each other's 
 hair, but usually ending in new sallies and laughter, 
 never in bad temper and enmity.'' 
 
 The central idea of this circle, the one which gave 
 it its force and inspiration, was the development 
 in Finland of a national consciousness and the 
 raising of the material, the intellectual and the 
 spiritual level of the people. This implied a gen- 
 erous recognition of the natural rights of the 
 Finnish-speaking people, but there was no thought 
 of hostility to the Swedish-speaking population. 
 Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the Satur- 
 day Club spoke Swedish as their mother tongue, 
 which was, indeed, inevitable, seeing that it was 
 only among the Swedish-speaking society that edu- 
 cation was spread. '*To abandon Swedish and 
 clothe all civilization in a Finnish dress would be 
 to return to mediaeval barbarism," said a promi- 
 nent member of the circle of 1842. It was only at 
 
30 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 a later time that the struggle between the two lan- 
 guages made itself acutely felt. 
 
 The activities of the club were indeed directed 
 not to politics, but to literature and instruction. 
 It was felt that the first condition for the elevation 
 of the people was an improved education. Many 
 of the club members were professionally interested 
 in the subject and undertook to found a school based 
 on advanced ideas of pedagogy. The modern side 
 was developed at the expense of the classical and 
 newer methods of teaching were introduced. The 
 school was opened in 1831 as the Helsingfors Ly- 
 ceum, and played an important part in the renova- 
 tion of the Finnish school system. Among the 
 early teachers there appear the names of Runeberg 
 and Snellman. Uno Cygnaeus, the founder of the 
 Finnish folk-school, was also a member of the Sat- 
 urday Club. 
 
 Far more important than the Helsingfors Ly- 
 ceum, however, was the foundation in 1831 of the 
 Finnish Literature Society, **to propagate more 
 exact notions of the country and its history, to 
 work for the cultivation of the Finnish language 
 and to bring to birth in this language a literature 
 for both the educated classes and the people.'' 
 I ** Language being the foundation of nationality, a 
 national literature is not possible without a na- 
 tional language.'' Its programme included the 
 collection and publication of the ancient Finnish 
 songs, the issuing of works for the furtherance of 
 popular education and enlightenment, and the pub- 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 31 
 
 lication of a learned review. But what really gave 
 rise to the Society at this juncture was the desire ^ 
 of the Saturday Club to enable one of its most dis- 
 tinguished members, Elias Lonnrot, to continue his 
 publication of Finnish folk-songs. A short notice 
 of this remarkable man cannot be omitted from any 
 account of modern Finland. For it was the *'Kal- 
 evala," more than anything else, that gave its spir- 
 itual inspiration to the National movement and first 
 made Finland known to the outside world. 
 
 Elias Lonnrot was born of poor parents in 1802. 
 He was interested in poetry from his early child- 
 hood, and when he became a student at Abo Uni- 
 versity he found himself in the congenial society 
 of a number of young men, Porthan's disciples, 
 who were enthusiastically collecting Finnish folk- 
 poetry. Gottlund had recently uttered his famous 
 prophecy, '*If the ancient popular songs [of Fin- 
 land] were collected and arranged as a whole, there 
 might emerge an epic, a drama or something, out 
 of which a new Homer, Ossian or Niebelungenlied 
 might arise." These words it was to be Lonnrot 's 
 lifework to fulfil. 
 
 After leaving the University, Lonnrot became a 
 country physician, and as soon as possible under- 
 took his first journey in search of Finnish runes. 
 It was the publication of the songs thus acquired 
 that induced his friends of the Saturday Club to 
 form the Finnish Literature Society. Not long 
 afterwards he became doctor at Kajana, a village 
 in the heart of Finland, of which it was said at 
 that time that it had two streets: *' along one go 
 
32 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the pigs, when it's wet; along the other the inhab- 
 itants, when it's fine." This was Lonnrot's head- 
 quarters for some twenty years, and from it he 
 made his great series of journeys, which, in 1835, 
 resulted in the publication of the first version of 
 the *^Kalevala," and in 1849 of a fuller version. 
 These journeys extended to the White Sea and 
 Archangel, but it was among the Karelian Finns 
 on either side of the frontier between Eussian and 
 Finland that Lonnrot found his finest material. 
 
 Lonnrot was a man of great physical prowess—^ 
 none but a strong man could have undertaken his 
 arduous and tremendous journeys. He excelled in 
 walking, ski-ing, swimming, rowing and sleighing. 
 He was more indifferent to his personal appear- 
 ance than R. L. Stevenson and had much of the lat- 
 ter 's Bohemian temperament and scorn for cere- 
 monies. His adventures were innumerable and are 
 delightful reading. It is recorded that on his first 
 journey he was dressed as a peasant with knap- 
 sack and gun slung over his back, a staff in his 
 hand, a flute attached to his buttonhole, and in his 
 mouth a short pipe. He was taken for a tramp, 
 and when one day he was footsore and ordered a 
 trap, the innkeeper refused to provide one. On a 
 later journey he disappeared from the dinner-table 
 of a Lutheran pastor and was discovered transcrib- 
 ing the songs which the old bath-woman of the 
 place was singing to him. At one place the peas- 
 ants took him for a wizard and refused him food, 
 upon which he was able to threaten them with an 
 eclipse of the sun, which was due about that time. 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 33 
 
 His method of working was to induce any one he 
 met to sing him the songs they knew, which he then 
 proceeded to write down. But he made a special 
 point of visiting the best runo-singers, and has left 
 an account of his intercourse with the greatest of 
 them, Arhippa Perttunnen, which deserves quota- 
 tion at some length for the light it throws on the 
 nature of his activity. **The old man,'' he writes, 
 '^was at that time nearly eighty years old. Never- 
 theless he had to an extraordinary degree preserved 
 his memory. Two whole days and even part of a 
 third day he kept me busy annotating. He sang 
 his runos in good order, without leaving any great 
 gaps between them, and most of the songs were 
 such as I had not got from others ; I doubt, indeed, 
 whether they could now be got at all from any 
 other source. I was therefore extremely glad of 
 my resolve to visit him. Who knows if I should 
 have found him alive another time? But if he had 
 died a large part of our ancient runos would have 
 perished with him. The old man was greatly 
 moved when he began talking about his childhood 
 and his father, long since dead, from whom he had 
 inherited his runos. *You ought to have been 
 there,' he said, *when after sweeping the bottom 
 with our nets by the banks of the Lapukka we 
 rested by a log fire ! We had with us a man from 
 Lapukka to lend us a hand. He was a fine singer 
 too, but not my father's like. All through the 
 nights they sang by the fire, hand in hand, and 
 never the same song twice. I was a little boy and 
 sat listening, and thus I learned my best songs. 
 
34 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 But I have already forgotten much. None of my 
 sons will be a singer after me, as I was after my 
 father. The old songs are no longer loved as in 
 my childhood, when they were heard at work and 
 in idle hours in the village. Instead, the young 
 people sing their own flippant songs, with which I 
 wouldn't soil my lips. If at that time any one 
 like you had looked for runos, he couldn't have 
 written down in two weeks even those my father 
 knew." 
 
 A brief description of the contents of the **Kale- 
 vala" will be given in a later chapter.^ But it may 
 be well here to indicate Lonnrot's share in the great 
 epic. He collected the songs from the people, but, 
 having done this, he altered them so as to form out 
 of a somewhat chaotic mass a complete whole. In 
 some places he cut down the original song, in others 
 he added to it ; in others, again, two different songs 
 would be combined. Then the separate songs had 
 to be fused into a single great epic story, with a 
 unity underlying its infinite variety. The **Kale- 
 vala" is the vision of unity that arose in Lonn- 
 rot's mind from the vast mass of suggestive data 
 furnished by the runic songs. He believed that he 
 was only doing on a larger scale what the old min- 
 strels had already done on a small one. ^^I 
 thought," he wrote, **that, as no individual singer 
 could surpass me in a knowledge of runos, I had 
 the same right that, in my opinion, most of the 
 runo-singers had claimed — ^namely, the right to ar- 
 
 1 Messrs. Dent have published an English translation by 
 W. Kirby in Everyman's Library, 2 vols. 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 35 
 
 range the runes as they sorted best, or, in the 
 words of the folk-song — 
 
 I myself began to conjure, 
 I myself commenced to sing; 
 
 i.e. I considered myself to be as good a runo-singer 
 as they were.'' Thus the ^^Kalevala," while orig- 
 inally true folk-poetry, owes much of its artistic 
 form to the genius of its compiler. 
 
 Lonnrot also made a collection of some seven 
 hundred ancient songs and ballads, which were 
 published under the title of **Kanteletaar" (The 
 Daughter of the Kantele). Many of them are of 
 great beauty and intimacy of feeling, and throw 
 much light on the inner nature of the nation from 
 which they sprang. There are songs for almost 
 every event in life, whether gay or sorrowful, 
 whether associated with childhood, adolescence, the 
 prime of life, old age or death. 
 
 In 1854 Lonnrot was induced, much against his 
 will, to accept the Chair in Finnish which had re- 
 cently been established at the University. As Pro- 
 fessor, his chief energy was devoted to the fashion- 
 ing of Finnish into a written language. When Pres- 
 ident of the Finnish Literature Society he intro- 
 duced Finnish as its official language. Party poli- 
 tics he eschewed. His views on the language ques- 
 tion were that Finnish ought to enjoy equal rights 
 with Swedish, but he had no desire to oppress Swe- 
 dish, holding that there was room for the two lan- 
 guages side by side. His object was a united Fin- 
 
36 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 land, and he said characteristically, at the unveiling 
 of Porthan's statue in 1864: ^^It appears, to me at 
 least, vain to speak of a common Finnish national 
 spirit so long as by far the greater part of our coun- 
 try's inhabitants lack, with regard to their lan- 
 guage, the advantage and rights possessed by the 
 minority, and as long as this minority is still 
 ashamed of the name Finn, which it consequently 
 often uses as a term of insult, thereby showing that 
 it does not wish to be counted among the number 
 of the Finns." 
 
 Lonnrot lived to a ripe old age, full of energy and 
 love of work. Old minstrel that he was, he retired 
 to the country after eight years at the University, 
 rejoicing in his freedom. People constantly wanted 
 to do him honour; he as constantly tried to escape 
 it. He had to come to Helsingf ors to celebrate his 
 eightieth birthday in 1882. On being wished many 
 happy returns, he replied that he really would like 
 to live a few more years in order that he might see 
 among the students the same spirit of unity that had 
 existed among them sixty years earlier. Two years 
 later he died. 
 
 Altogether he must have been an extraordinarily 
 lovable character. He was full of tenderness to all 
 creatures, and it is said that he would not even kill 
 flies, but would carry them out of his room alive, 
 for they too needed the joy of living. He had the 
 astounding simplicity of a really great man and a 
 deeply rooted modesty. One of his latest utterances 
 was characteristic of him: **I think I have not a 
 single enemy in the world.'' 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 37 
 
 The other great literary force which sprang from 
 the Saturday Club was Johan Ludvig Runeberg. 
 He was born in 1804 at Jakobstad in Osterbotten, 
 the district from which so many of Finland ^s great 
 men have come, including the poets Franzen, Sten- 
 back, and Topelius. *^The Athenians of Finland'' 
 is the proud title claimed for the Osterbottnians by 
 one of them — and the poems of Runeberg in certain 
 aspects undoubtedly suggest the Greek view of life. 
 Runeberg 's father was a sea-captain, and both 
 father and mother were of Swedish descent. Johan 
 was the eldest of a family of six, three of whom 
 were girls. He went to the University of Abo in 
 1822, but owing to poverty was compelled to break 
 oif his studies and take the post of tutor to a fam- 
 ily living in the heart of Finland. Here he learned 
 Finnish and came to understand and love the peas- 
 antry. He returned to the University in 1826, and 
 after the great fire at Abo the following year re- 
 tired to Pargas, in the beautiful archipelago outside 
 the town, where he became engaged to Fredrika 
 Tengstrom, one of a family honourable in Finnish 
 history. His poetry ripened under a happy love and 
 he issued his first volume of lyrical poems. 
 
 The following song in praise of the North is a 
 characteristic example, and happily reflects the pe- 
 culiar beauty of Finnish landscape: — • 
 
 From the cloudland's purple-tinted edge 
 
 The swan sank, calm and boon. 
 And settled by the river^s bank 
 
 And sang one eye of June* 
 
38 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Of northern beauty was his song, 
 
 How happy is its air. 
 How day forgets the whole night through 
 
 To turn to slumber there. 
 
 How shadows there are deep and rich 
 
 Neath birch and alder tree, 
 How gold-illumined shines each creek. 
 
 Each cool wave of the sea. 
 
 How infinitely sweet it is 
 ' A loved one there to own. 
 
 How faithfulness is native there. 
 Yearns to it as to home. 
 
 So rang from wave to wave his voice. 
 
 His simple song of bliss. 
 And soon he sought his loved one's breast 
 
 And seemed to warble this: — 
 
 "Ah, what, love, if thy dream of life 
 
 Be but a short-lived thing! 
 Loved hast thou by our northern stream. 
 
 Sung in our northern spring." 
 
 Huneberg followed the University to Helsingf ors 
 in 1828 and married three years later on the 
 strength of a minor academic post. During the 
 years in Helsingf ors both he and his gifted wife 
 were regular attendants at the Saturday Club meet- 
 ings. In 1832 * ^ The Elk Hunters ' ' appeared, a long 
 poem in hexameters describing Finnish peasant life 
 in the remote parts of the country. A second vol- 
 ume of lyrical poems appeared in 1833, but his first 
 popular success came three years later with the pub- 
 lication of ^'Hanna,'' which, like ''The Elk Hunt- 
 ers,'* is written in hexameters. It is an idyll of 
 Finnish country life in midsummer, the scene being 
 a remote country parsonage. 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 39 
 
 **The Elk Hunters'' is the most important of the 
 early poems. Runeberg's patriotism was fired by 
 the subject, as the following passage concerning the 
 poem's origin shows: *^ Myself a descendant of the 
 colonizing Swedes, I had imagined the Finn as being 
 inwardly as he had seemed to me outwardly when 
 he had come from time to time with his wares to my 
 native town. How different I found him in his own 
 home and on a nearer view ! A patriarchal simplic- 
 ity, a profound manly endurance, an inborn clear 
 comprehension of life's most intimate aspects were 
 characteristics which I discovered in him, and 
 which, alas! I have been able to render but poorly 
 in the descriptions I have attempted." 
 
 Euneberg's view of the Finnish peasant is admit- 
 tedly idealistic, and contrasts greatly with the pic- 
 ture we get in such books as Kivi's *^ Seven Broth- 
 ers." Yet it is true to one side of Finnish char- 
 acter, as Kivi's description is true to another side. 
 
 Although the public was slow to recognize its 
 worth, the Saturday Club circle acclaimed * * The Elk 
 Hunters" as the first great national poem produced 
 in modern Finland, and a few years later Fredrik 
 Cygnaeus declared that, if the Finnish people were 
 to be destroyed, this poem and the **Kalevala" 
 would be its Herculaneum and Pompeii, from which 
 the perished nation might be known. 
 
 Euneberg was always in financial difficulties in 
 Helsingfors. He edited the Morgonhlad for some 
 time, but its circulation fell, owing to his criticisms 
 of the Swedish poet Tegner. He was unable to get 
 a good post at the University, as he was considered 
 
40 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 rather an advanced young man. His poems did not 
 sell. Finally, in 1837, he applied for the post of 
 teacher of Latin at Borgd, a beautiful little town 
 on the coast a few hours east of Helsingfors. The 
 University then made a late effort to retain him, but 
 in vain. Henceforth the events in his life were al- 
 most entirely internal. Borga was his home until 
 his death, in 1877, and for thirty-one years he spent 
 his summers on the same island in the archipelago 
 outside. He gave up his school work in 1857, and 
 for the last thirteen years of his life was bedridden 
 owing to the effects of a stroke. 
 
 In character there were several points of resem- 
 blance between Euneberg and Lonnrot. Both men 
 were profoundly simple. When Runeberg visited 
 Sweden and was being feted, he wrote characteris- 
 tically to his wife: **How I should like to be back 
 with you ! I am utterly weary of all the splendour 
 of the world, and long for porridge, fish, and the 
 peace of Kroksnas." Professor Grot, a Russian, 
 describes Runeberg's **open countenance, express- 
 ing intelligence, uprightness, gentleness, and an un- 
 shakeable peace of soul.'' The last characteristic 
 had also specially struck him in Lonnrot. The love 
 of sport and outdoor life was also common to the 
 two. Runeberg was almost as enthusiastic a fish- 
 erman as a poet, while his hunting expeditions 
 sometimes lasted for days at a time. He was on 
 intimate terms with the island population, and 
 shared his glass of toddy with the hardy pilots. It 
 was during a hunting expedition with his youngest 
 son that his stroke disabled him. Runeberg also re- 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 41 
 
 sembled Loiinrot in his dislike for party politics, 
 into which he steadily refused to be drawn. While 
 sympathizing with the raising of the Finnish lan- 
 guage, he disapproved of Snellman's theory that/ 
 Swedish must eventually disappear from Finland.! 
 He held that nationality was ultimately based, not 
 on language but on the land and its historic tradi- 
 tion and the common interests of those living to- 
 gether. 
 
 It is a matter for surprise and regret that Eune- 
 berg's great poetical achievement is not more widely 
 known and appreciated. He wrote many other 
 works, including ^^Nadescha,*' the love-story of a 
 Russian serf -girl, and a drama entitled ^ ^ The Kings 
 at Salamis,'' but his two finest poems are ^^Fanrik 
 Stais Sagner'' (the Tales of Ensign Stai), and 
 **King Fialar." The former work consists of a 
 series of narrative poems describing incidents of the 
 great war of 1808-9, when the Finns offered their 
 stubborn resistance to the armies of Russia. They 
 are impregnated with the atmosphere of a desperate 
 war waged by patriots in the snow and darkness of 
 a Finnish winter. The poems have left an indel- 
 ible imprint on the people of Finland, who feel that 
 one side of their nature has received in them a defi- 
 nite and final expression. Even a foreigner can 
 hardly read them without being moved to tears by 
 their naive simplicity, by the sheer beauty they shed 
 on noble human striving and suffering, by the faith 
 and reverence with which the poet handles the great 
 issues of life and death as if he were at home 
 with them, by the fiery, self-sacrificing patriotism 
 
42 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 through which human clay is transfigured into 
 something greater than itself, by the sublime hero- 
 ism of simple and stupid men, by the laughter amid 
 the tears, by the long suspense of inaction and 
 wasted marches, by the fierce joy of battle and slay- 
 ing, by the calm of nobly encountered death and by 
 the proud sorrow of mothers who have given their 
 sons for a great cause. 
 
 Runeberg was attracted to the subject for various 
 reasons. One of his earliest recollections was being 
 given a ride on the knee of Kulneff, the famous Eus- 
 sian cavalry officer, whose good-heartedness he cele- 
 brates in one of the poems. Another was the fa- 
 mous occasion when he saw the fiery General von 
 Dobeln curse God and shake his fist at heaven for 
 sending weather unsuitable for his operations. In 
 later life, especially at Borga, he was in touch with 
 many men who had taken part in the war, while in 
 his student years he had met and been inspired by 
 the old ensign whose tales he used as a framework 
 for his narratives. Perhaps ** narratives'' is not al- 
 together the right word. For in form these poems 
 in which the great memories of the war find expres- 
 sion are a series of portraits. Representatives of 
 all classes of the Finnish nation are introduced — ^not 
 engaged in their ordinary avocations, as in **The 
 Elk Hunters" and other poems, but seen in the light 
 of a national crisis. Military figures play the chief 
 role, as is natural, and there are fine portraits of 
 men of all ranks, from general to private. But the 
 peasant men and women are drawn with as skilled 
 a hand as any. It is difficult to select from such a 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 43 
 
 rich harvest, but among the most characteristic is 
 that of the girl whose lover played the coward. 
 When after the battle the troops go by and she can- 
 not see him, she first thinks he is dead, but when she 
 seeks his body on the battle-field and cannot find it 
 her heart is broken: — 
 
 When past our door the troop marched by, and I their ranks 
 
 had numbered, 
 I wept to think that like a man among the dead he slumbered; 
 I sorrowed, but my grief was mild, it had no bitter weight, 
 I would have lived a thousand years to mourn his noble fate. 
 O mother, I have looked for him where'er the dead are lying ; 
 But none of all the stricken bear his features calm in dying; 
 Now will I live no more on earth in shame to sit and sigh. 
 He lies not there among the dead and therefore I will die. 
 
 (,Edmund Gosse's translation.') 
 
 Sven Dufva is another characteristic peasant 
 hero. He is a good-natured but thick-headed young 
 giant, who is willing to do anything but does it all 
 wrong. He becomes a soldier and cannot learn his 
 drill, and when the war breaks out the regiment dis- 
 cuss whether he can go with them. He settles it 
 by saying that if he cannot go with the others he 
 will go alone. One day a bridge has to be held at 
 all costs by a small troop of which Sven Dufva is 
 one. All but five are killed and the order to retreat 
 is given, but Sven is too stupid to understand it — 
 **he had a bad head but a good heart." Alone, calm 
 and huge, with fixed bayonet he holds the bridge 
 until help comes, falling in the hour of triumph with 
 a bullet through his breast. A wise bullet, says the 
 general sadly ; it left his head in peace, for that was 
 
44 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 weak and poor, and went to a better place, his brave 
 and noble heart. 
 
 Noble patriotism has never been more finely ex- 
 pressed than in these poems, which did for Finland 
 what certain of Wordsworth's sonnets did for Eng- 
 land. Though more fiery in his temperament, Rune- 
 berg recalls Wordsworth in other respects also, not-^ 
 ably in the simplicity of his thought and language, 
 which, like Wordsworth's, sometimes seems a little 
 exaggerated, and in his love for and faithful de- 
 scription of Nature. He also recalls the Greeks, 
 which is perhaps the last thing one would expect 
 of a Finnish poet. He does so most, perhaps, when 
 his poems treat of Finland in summer, when the long 
 days and the clear, cloudless skies make the waters 
 of the Baltic seem the sisters of the blue Mediter- 
 ranean waters. He adds light and brightness to 
 Nature in a spirit akin to Greek poetry. His mind, 
 too, seems often to grasp human issues in a Greek 
 way. There is something nobly Hellenic in the 
 simple way his Finnish soldiers meet death, and his 
 people are as responsive to the call of patriotism as 
 were the inhabitants of the Greek City-State. His 
 great poem **King Fialar," apart from the differ- 
 ences of scene and civilization, might almost have 
 issued from a Greek mind, and for all the romantic 
 beauty of its Ossianic parts it bears the Greek im- 
 press of light and brightness. The story describes 
 the Nemesis which falls on the lonely and unloving 
 king, who, despising the gods, sacrifices all things 
 to the idea of his own greatness. He is warned that 
 his son and daughter will make an incestuous mar- 
 
THE NATIONAL MOVEMENT 45 
 
 riage, and seeks to prevent this by having his daugh- 
 ter drowned. She is rescued, however, and lives at 
 Morven with King Morannal, whose three sons woo 
 her in vain. Then her brother comes on a Viking 
 expedition, falls in love with her and marries her. 
 Only after they have lived together for some time 
 does he discover that Oihonna is his sister. The 
 poem ends with the deaths of Oihonna, King Fialar 
 and his son. Nevertheless, before the end, the king 
 has realized the wisdom of the gods and made his 
 submission to the laws of human life. Runeberg de- 
 scribed the poem as ^^a little epos, the subject of 
 which is the greatness and grace of the gods," and 
 Professor Walfred Wasenius well observes that its 
 fundamental thought is really, **If a man does not 
 love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God 
 whom he does not see?" 
 
 The form of the poem is very fine, and the skill 
 with which the complicated story is worked out by 
 the aid of purely natural agencies compels admira- 
 tion. What should make it of peculiar interest to 
 British readers is the fact that for his description 
 of Oihonna at Morven Runeberg has borrowed from 
 Celtic sources. It was necessary for the story that 
 Oihonna should grow up among some distant folk, 
 and it so happened that a Swedish translation of 
 Ossian appeared in 1842 just in time to suggest to 
 Runeberg a Celtic setting for that part of his poem. 
 The milder manners and humaner feelings of the 
 Celts afforded an excellent contrast to the harder 
 and harsher early Scandinavian world; and Celtic 
 legend and poem have contributed considerably to 
 
46 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 increase the loveliness and tragic grandeur of Eune- 
 berg's work, and to cast their romantic beauty on 
 the exquisite figure of Oihonna. 
 
 Euneberg is certainly the greatest dynamic force 
 produced by modern Finland and has inevitably be- 
 come a national institution. Nor could Finland have 
 a better source of inspiration. Splendid patriotism, 
 absolutely free from chauvinism, breathes through 
 his work, which is informed, moreover, with a sane 
 and bracing view of life and of human destiny, and 
 of the relation between human and Divine. The pro- 
 duction of poems such as his, with all they imply of 
 national strength and nobility of aim, justifies the 
 claim of Finland to an independent national exist- 
 ence at least as much as the documents signed by 
 successive Tsars. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 
 
 THE Finnish Nationalist movement had to pass 
 from the ideal stage in literature and thought 
 to the practical stage in politics. In this field its 
 great exponent was Johan Vilhelm Snellman, per- 
 haps the most discussed personality in Finnish his- 
 tory, and the one who provoked the bitterest hatred 
 and inspired the most reckless devotion. Snellman, 
 like Runeberg and other members of the Saturday 
 Club, belonged to the district of Osterbotten and 
 was endowed with the impulsiveness and the rather 
 choleric temperament which is characteristic of its 
 inhabitants. He was born, however, in Stockholm 
 in 1806, his father, a sea-captain, having settled 
 there three years earlier. He was the second son 
 of a numerous family. The events of 1809 forced 
 his parents to choose definitely between Finland and 
 Sweden, and they chose the former country, settling 
 at the seaport of Gamla Karleby in 1813. Although 
 poor, Snellman was able to study at the University 
 of Abo, where he met Runeberg, Lonnrot, and 
 others, and with them passed later to Helsingf ors, 
 where he became an important member of the Sat- 
 urday Club. He was one of the twenty-eight Oster- 
 bottnian students who in 1834 promised not to leave 
 
 47 
 
48 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the University without having passed an examina- 
 tion in the Finnish language — a promise, however, 
 which he failed to keep. In 1835 he became a philos- 
 ophy lecturer at the University and showed himself 
 an enthusiastic Hegelian. He early laid stress on 
 the doctrine that thehighest duty of the individual 
 is to work for the good of the whole, and that if a 
 clash of interests arises between the citizens and 
 society, the former must voluntarily give way to the 
 latter. The doctrine was to have profound practical 
 consequences. At the same time Snellman was per- 
 petually himself in conflict with that part of society 
 which was represented by the University authori- 
 ties, who regarded with the deepest disfavour the 
 new movement that was making itself felt among 
 the students as a result of the efforts of the Satur- 
 day Club. Storm followed storm in the University^ 
 Snellman was forbidden to lecture, and in 1838 he 
 was suspended from his lectureship for six months. 
 He retired to the country and presently shocked 
 Finnish opinion by publishing three numbers of a 
 paper entitled The Spanish Fly (Spansha Flugan), 
 the first of his great series of journalistic undertak- 
 ings. The Press was attacked, the exclusiveness of 
 the University was exposed, and scathing criticisms 
 of the general condition of the country abounded. 
 After publishing the first number Snellman retired 
 to Stockholm, where he got in with the ^* Young 
 Sweden" movement, wrote copiously in the news- 
 papers and composed novels, besides finding time to 
 visit Germany. Meanwhile he was working at his 
 most famous book, Ldran om St at en (The Theory 
 
 1 
 
THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 49 
 
 of the State), which appeared in 1842 and contained 
 a development of the Hegelian ideas already re- 
 ferred to. His thoughts were much with Finland, 
 not always hopefully. ^^The mass of the people," 
 he writes to friends in 1846, *4s from long- 
 established oppression turned only inwards. It may 
 possibly find fault with a bailiff or a priest, but 
 even a provincial governor is a little god, and a sen- 
 ator a non plus ultra. The thought of anything bet- 
 ter, an interest in the commune, parish, province or 
 country, it has hardly ever had except as a savage 
 has it — ^i.e. in open war." To raise the people is 
 impossible ^*as long as the language of administra- 
 tion and instruction is Swedish." This the educated 
 classes cannot understand, **and, if they did, it is 
 against their interest to work for it. ' ' He concludes 
 pessimistically that **the Finnish nation is in its 
 grave. ' ' 
 
 Probably his pessimism was partly due to the 
 contrast he found between the poverty of Finland 
 and the old culture and gathered wealth of Sweden 
 and Germany. At any rate, when two years later 
 he was practically promised a professorship of phi- 
 losophy in Sweden, where he had already made a 
 considerable reputation, he refused, in order to be 
 free to return to his native country. He meant to 
 put his theories to the test. **One must leave ab- 
 stractions and go deep into facts," he writes. He 
 crossed to Finland in November, 1842, but in spite 
 of his friends' efforts failed to get an appointment 
 at the University and had to be content with the 
 post of Head Master of the High School at Kuopio, 
 
50 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 a town of some 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants in the heart 
 of Finland. In the days before railways Kuopio 
 was considerably isolated, and in the 'forties only 
 enjoyed one post a week. But Snellman was a man 
 who made circumstances rather than submitted to 
 them. In 1846 he founded there the first Finnish- 
 speaking school in the country, an elementary school 
 for girls. As it proved successful, he established a 
 similar school for boys soon afterwards. He was, 
 moreover, the centre of a considerable intellectual 
 circle in this remote town. Here, too, he found a 
 wife, Jeannette Vennberg, whom he married in 1845 
 and who bore him six children. 
 
 What is especially associated with the Kuopio 
 days was Snellman 's work as a publicist. Working 
 like the engineers in a ship, remote and in isolation, 
 he was here producing the motive force that was 
 to carry on the National movement to a successful 
 issue. Snellman 's study at Kuopio was the prac- 
 tical workshop of the movement in these days. In 
 it, conceptions which had earlier been vague hard- 
 ened and took definite form. His first venture was 
 Maamiehen Ystdvd, a weekly paper in Finnish, 
 which aimed at spreading education among the 
 people. Before its appearance only seven papers 
 were being issued in the whole of Finland, all being 
 written in Swedish. Far more important, however, 
 was Snellman 's new Swedish paper, Saima, which 
 first came out in 1845. It was addressed to the up- 
 per classes, and expounded week by week Snellman 's 
 views of the future of Finland. The gospel he 
 I preached was the need for a national culture and a 
 
THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 51 
 
 I national spirit. At present there was neither. Be- 
 / tween the educated Swedish-speaking class and the 
 uneducated Finnish-speaking class there was a great 
 gulf fixed, which, if it were not soon bridged, would 
 destroy the country. A house divided against itself 
 cannot offer a strong resistance in a crisis, and when 
 might not a crisis arrive for Finland? What was 
 to be done? The Finnish race must be elevated, and 
 this in turn involved the elevation of the Finnish 
 language. Finnish must be used equally with Swed- 
 ish in the law-courts, in all branches of the admin- 
 istration, and in the schools. In a word, Finnish 
 must become a civilized language, and the Finns 
 must feel that they had no less an interest and stake 
 in their country's fortunes than had the Swedish- 
 speaking upper class. And this great change must 
 be brought about by that class itself as a patriotic 
 duty. It was to urge this duty upon them that 
 Saima existed. 
 
 So far Snellman had not exceeded the programme 
 of many of his contemporaries, and he received a 
 great deal of support from the more progressive 
 Swedish Finns. But he pushed his demands a point 
 farther, and proceeded to argue that national unity 
 could not be achieved completely when a nation had 
 I two languages, and therefore one must look forward 
 ■to the day when Swedish would entirely disappear 
 and make way for Finnish. And here came in the 
 Hegelian theory of the duty of the individual to 
 sacrifice himself for the whole. The numerically in- 
 ferior Swedes were required in the interest of the 
 whole country to abandon their language for that of 
 
52 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the Finnish majority. It is only fair to Snellman 
 to remember that he was more moderate in his prac- 
 tical proposals than in his philosophic theory. He 
 did not stand for an immediate but for a gradual 
 introduction of Finnish into public life, and he seems 
 to have expected that the Swedish-speaking class 
 would consent to the ultimate abandonment of Swed- 
 ish as a result, not of compulsion, but of convic- 
 tion. Eooted firmly in the belief of the essential 
 rightness of his opinions, he failed to realize that 
 these would strike others in a totally different light. 
 In pleading for the necessity of raising the Finns 
 to a higher level and putting their language on an 
 equality with Swedish, it can hardly be disputed to- 
 day that Snellman was absolutely and entirely 
 right. With the gradual rise of democracies after 
 the French Revolution, it became inevitable that the 
 Finns also should emerge from the state of tute- 
 lage in which they had lived for so many centuries 
 and come into line with the democracies of West 
 Europe. Moreover, there were reasons peculiar to 
 Finland which made this desirable. The contention 
 that after Finland had passed from Sweden to Rus- 
 sia in 1809 she had no national basis, and that this 
 constituted a serious danger to her future, was a per- 
 fectly just one. We may repeat Arvidsson's dictum 
 that Finland was no longer Swedish, she did not 
 want to become Russian, and therefore the only al- 
 ternative was to become Finnish. And in order to 
 do so, the great mass of the population must be 
 given an interest in their country by sharing more 
 fully in its duties and privileges, in the advantages 
 
THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 53 
 
 of its education and the responsibilities of its public 
 life. A hundred years ago, however, it was in- 
 evitable that even such a claim as this should pro- 
 voke the bitterest resistance among the majority of 
 the privileged class. To the aristocratic Swede, liv- 
 ing the life of a country gentleman, with rather ex- 
 clusive traditions and conservative both by interest 
 and temperament, the talk of Finnish Nationalists 
 seemed at first utterly absurd and later on almost 
 impious. The idea that the stolid-looking and 
 rather unkempt Finn who worked on his estate and 
 spoke a barbarous-sounding language should aspire 
 to a practical equality with a race boasting a pol- 
 ished and ancient culture and an honourable name 
 in history seemed preposterous. Even to-day 
 Swedes of the old school sometimes speak of the 
 Finns contemptuously as an inferior race, and a 
 century ago the majority of the Swedes were of that 
 school. The Finns were regarded as ugly and 
 stupid. When they desired Finnish to be the lan- 
 guage of instruction in the schools, the Swedes re- 
 plied that one simply could not imagine instruction 
 being conveyed in so gross a tongue. The idea of 
 a literature in Finnish seemed equally grotesque. 
 No educated person would ever employ such a lan- 
 guage. As to Finnish being used as the official lan- 
 guage, this was pure madness. 
 
 Nor were the Swedes altogether wrong. Finnish 
 really did require to be developed before it could 
 well serve for these ends. When the demand for 
 Finnish as the language of instruction first arose, 
 no Finnish schoolbooks were yet in existence, nor 
 
54 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 was the language subtle enough for official use. It 
 had to be remoulded and extended by the efforts of 
 the Finnish Literature Society before the dreams of 
 the early Nationalists could be realized. 
 
 The feelings of the Swedes in face of the Fenno- 
 man movement may perhaps best be realized if we 
 say they felt themselves threatened by a barbarian 
 invasion. The Swedes, they considered, whatever 
 their faults, had brought to Finland the great gift 
 of civilization. They may not have extended it high 
 and low throughout the land, they may have laid 
 themselves open to the charge of exclusiveness, but, 
 after all, what more could they have done? Their 
 numbers were small, and historical and natural cir- 
 cumstances had rendered the pioneer work of civi- 
 lization peculiarly difficult. They had succeeded in 
 erecting an edifice of Swedish culture in a barren 
 land, and if they had not been able to build wide 
 enough to include the mass of the Finns within its 
 sheltering and refining influence, that was not their 
 fault. And now their edifice was to be pulled down 
 by the Finns, their cultivated flower-garden was to 
 be trampled into mud under the heels of an invading 
 horde who neither possessed nor cared for culture. 
 At all costs the invaders must be repulsed or civili- 
 zation would ^^go under." When the servants be- 
 come masters, there is an end of the house. In the 
 vigorous newspaper campaign which raged about 
 the claims made for Finnish occur numerous letters 
 illustrating the temper of the time. Thus some one, 
 jwriting to an Abo paper in 1844, denied that Fin- 
 ^nish nationality was doomed to destruction on ac- 
 
THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 55 
 
 count of the neglect of its language, customs and 
 institutions. One had a proof of this in, e.g., the 
 Iroquois and Chippeways, Gaels and Irish (one is 
 reminded of Lord Salisbury's *^ Hottentot'' speech). 
 The advocates of Finnish were called **pro- 
 Iroquois." Other writers insisted upon the sheer 
 impossibility of Finnish as a civilized language. 
 
 It was regrettable, but perfectly natural and in- 
 evitable, that the majority of the Swedes should be 
 unable to discern the light and promise that shone 
 in the National movement, and should fail to realize 
 that the Finns were not enemies of culture butt 
 merely desired to broaden its basis by themselves 
 sharing in it. No privileged class can ever contem- 
 plate with satisfaction the loss of its privileged posi- 
 tion. But even the more far-sighted and generous- 
 minded minority which supported Snellman's orig- 
 inal contention was inclined to dispute his further 
 proposition that Swedish must eventually be re- 
 placed by Finnish. They maintained that it was 
 ridiculous to speak of Swedish, the language spoken 
 for centuries by a considerable part of the popula- 
 tion, as a foreign tongue, and held that Snellman 
 was wrong in identifying ** nation" with 'lan- 
 guage," arguing that it was perfectly possible to 
 have one nation speaking two different languages. 
 Thus a young man, Robert Tengstrom, wrote to 
 Snellman deprecating the emphasis laid by him on 
 the necessity of making Finnish supreme in order 
 to attain his ideal, and asking with some justice 
 whether he, Castren, Lonnrot, Runeberg, and Nord- 
 strom, all of whom spoke Swedish, were not, by 
 
56 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 spreading culture and developing a spirit of self- 
 reliance and self-respect among the people, doing 
 more for Finnish nationality than all the teachers 
 of the Finnish language put together. 
 
 Snellman did not confine himself in Saima to a 
 discussion of the language question. He pleaded 
 powerfully for an improvement of the Press, and set 
 an example by himself dealing with all the more 
 important questions of the day, which had hitherto 
 been left almost entirely untouched by Finnish 
 newspapers. He advanced his views on education 
 in all its branches, advocated the separation of edu- 
 cation from the control of the Church and pleaded 
 for a higher education for women. Industrial and 
 commercial matters were also dealt with. A later 
 generation was to adopt many of Snellman 's ideas 
 and carry them out in practice. But in the 'forties 
 they were regarded with the greatest disfavour. 
 Time after time he got into trouble with the censor- 
 ship, and finally Saima, after having marked an 
 epoch in Finnish history, was forced to come to an 
 end in December, 1846. 
 
 After the suppression of Saima, Snellman pub- 
 lisred the far less polemical Litter at urhlad. In 1849 
 he left Kuopio and came to Helsingfors. In spite 
 of the difficulty of getting work there, owing to the 
 persecution to which he was still subjected, he re- 
 sisted the temptation to abandon Finland. The 
 Chair of Philosophy at the University had been can- 
 celled since 1852 and it was this to which Snellman 
 was finally elected. But it was considered dangerous 
 to retain the name of Philosophy. Accordingly 
 
THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 57 
 
 Snellman became ** Professor of Ethics and the Sys- 
 tematization of the Sciences. ' ' He did not, however, 
 abandon his journalistic work and remained in the 
 very thick of the fray, fighting for his ideals. 
 
 The moment of realization came in 1863, a great 
 year in the history of Finland. In it the Diet was 
 summoned for the first time since 1809 and the fa- 
 mous Imperial Rescript was issued, which the Finns 
 regard as their Charter of Equality. This Rescript 
 enacted that within a period of twenty years Fin- 
 nish should occupy a position equal to that already 
 occupied by Swedish in public life. Alexander I had 
 already received several deputations of Finnish 
 peasants who brought petitions in favour of their 
 language, and a committee appointed in Helsingfors 
 in 1862 had reported that something ought to be 
 done, without, however, fixing any date for making 
 a change, a fact which caused great dissatisfaction 
 among the Finns. Snellman, who was appointed a 
 Senator in 1863, went to see the Emperor, then in 
 Finland on a tour of military inspection, put the mat- 
 ter before him, and the Rescript was the result. 
 Snellman 's action has been severely criticized on the 
 grounds that the settlement of such a question by 
 Imperial Rescript instead of by legislation created 
 a most undesirable precedent. The criticism ap- 
 pears to be a just one. The temporizing of the 
 Swedish party must have been excessively irritating 
 to the Finns, but the claims of the latter were bound 
 to be conceded before long, and therefore the wis- 
 dom of employing such a dangerous weapon seems 
 highly questionable. 
 
58 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 This is not the place to describe the successes and 
 checks the Nationalist movement had to chronicle 
 during the next decades. It must suffice to say that 
 the Swedish-speaking authorities were anything but 
 eager to carry out the Eescript and by their con- 
 stant obstruction went some way towards justifying 
 Snellman's forcing tactics. They succeeded in seri- 
 ously hampering the spread of Finnish schools, 
 which was effected only by the self-sacrificing ef- 
 forts of private individuals, who founded the 
 schools, made them a success, and eventually com- 
 pelled the State to recognize their value and take 
 them over or support them. As the twenty years 
 named in the Eescript approached completion little 
 had been done to fulfil its aim, and it was not until 
 March, 1886, that the Tsar, by another Imperial Re- 
 script, definitely secured for the Finnish language 
 the coveted position of absolute equality with 
 Swedish. 
 
 At the present day the old relationship between 
 the Finn and the Swede has been reversed and the 
 Swedes are now on the defensive. All along the 
 line the Finnish attack has proved victorious. A 
 Finnish-speaking educated class has been brought 
 into existence, which, in virtue of the huge prepon- 
 derance of the Finnish-speaking population, success- 
 fully claims to take an ever-increasing share in the 
 government and administration of the country out 
 of the hands of the Swedish-speaking element. 
 Similarly in trade and finance the old Swedish su- 
 premacy has had to yield to the onrush of Finnish 
 nationalism. Thus both political and economic 
 
THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 59 
 
 power are changing hands. Even racially fortune 
 seems to favour the Finns, for investigations into 
 the birth-rate show that the rate of increase among 
 them is slightly higher than that among the Swedes, 
 so that the proportion of the former to the latter is 
 likely to become still greater. 
 
 The change may be vividly realized by bearing in 
 mind three things. Firstly, Helsingfors was some 
 thirty years ago almost exclusively a Swedish- 
 speaking town, while to-day the Finns outnumber 
 the Swedes there. Secondly, when the Single Cham- 
 ber Diet and Proportional Representation were in- 
 troduced in 1906, the Swedes, who had previously 
 controlled two out of the four Estates, could only 
 claim one-eighth of the seats in the new house. 
 Thirdly, Finnish schools now enormously outnum- 
 ber Swedish schools, so that coming generations are 
 likely to be more Finnish than past ones. This 
 change is illustrated at the University. In 1860 
 practically all the students were Swedish-speaking, 
 whilst to-day nearly three-fourths of them have Fin- 
 nish for their mother tongue. 
 
 It might have been hoped that with the full en- 
 franchisement of the Finns the racial conflict would 
 die out. But this was not to be. Feelings had risen 
 too high to subside easily, and although a portion 
 of both Swedes and Finns desired reconciliation, an- 
 other portion desired war to the knife. Many of the 
 Finns argue that the Swedes cannot possibly re- 
 cover control of the country and therefore should 
 be left in peace. Finnish must of course be the first 
 language of the country, but they have no objec- 
 
60 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 tion to the retention of Swedish as the second lan- 
 guage, and desire co-operation between Swede and 
 Finn. But others cling to the view maintained by 
 Snellman in his most uncompromising moments, 
 that the country must have but one language, and 
 that Finnish. With extremists of this party Swed- 
 ish is synonymous with anti-nationalism and anti- 
 patriotism, and some of them even refuse to speak 
 Swedish, though they may know the language per- 
 fectly well. This party will have no truckling with 
 Swedish culture and tradition, seeing in it the great- 
 est hindrance to the development of a truly Finnish 
 culture and tradition, and regarding the Swedes as 
 the historical oppressors of everything Finnish in 
 the past. 
 
 The Swedes replied to this attitude by drawing 
 closer together and forming organizations for self- 
 defence. There has been a tendency in one party 
 among them to withdraw from public life, where this 
 involves close co-operation with the Finns, and to 
 emphasize their kinship with Sweden and their dif- 
 ferences from the Finns. 
 
 It is not our business here to describe the struggle 
 in its smaller details. To do so would be the reverse 
 of pleasant, because the conflict, like all of its kind, 
 is full of pettiness and there is much to take excep- 
 tion to in the attitude of the extremists of either 
 party. Let it suffice to say that whateve;r may be 
 the future of the Swedish Finns — whether, like the 
 Normans in England, they abandon their mother 
 tongue for that of their adopted country, or whether 
 they cling to it at all costs — they will always be 
 
THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 61 
 
 nobly associated with the past history of Finland. 
 This may seem a hard saying to persons whose vi- 
 sion under the stress of conflict has been focused 
 too exclusively upon the evils of Swedish rule in the 
 past. Many evils may freely be admitted — ^there has 
 been plenty of pride, exclusiveness, selfishness. But 
 the good that has come to Finland from the 
 Swedes far outweighs the bad. At a time when 
 there is a tendency unchivalrously to throw over- 
 board the past, it may be well before leaving the 
 subject briefly to summarize it. 
 
 It was from Sweden that the Finns received the 
 structure on which their national life is based — on 
 the religious side Christianity, on the political side 
 the free institutions of the Scandinavians. Without 
 the latter it is highly problematical whether Finland 
 would have been able to offer her stout resistance 
 to Russia to-day. In other parts of Russia the Finns 
 have failed to show any capacity for political co- 
 hesion, and probably the crossing of Finnish with 
 Scandinavian characteristics is the essential differ- 
 ence between Finnish character in Finland and out 
 of it. It was the work of the National movement to 
 set the seal on Finnish liberties by extending the full 
 advantages of Swedish institutions from the priv- 
 ileged class to the mass of the nation. 
 
 Nor should the advantages of the Swedish lan- 
 guage be overlooked. For centuries it was the only 
 channel through which culture came to Finland, and 
 even to-day it seems fully to justify itself as the 
 country's second language. It does indeed form 
 part of the heavy burden of tongues that the unf or- 
 
62 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 tunate Finnish school-child is called upon to bear, 
 but it brings with it commensurate benefits. Not only 
 does it open the rich treasures of Norwegian, Swed- 
 ish and Danish literature to him who masters it, 
 but it infinitely simplifies the Finn's task when he 
 comes to study the chief languages of West Europe. 
 It makes easier in every way the business of com- 
 munication between Finland and the outside world. 
 
 Again, the nation will never forget the glory shed 
 upon it by many illustrious Swedish Finns. For so 
 small a population they have produced a great num- 
 ber of remarkable men. The more chauvinistic of 
 the Finns are fond of saying that all the great men 
 of Finland, whether they spoke Swedish or not, 
 were really of Finnish origin, just as the more chau- 
 vinistic of the Swedes are fond of decrying all 
 things Finnish. But even admitting the Finnish 
 contention to be partly true, the number of remark- 
 able men produced by the Swedish Finns remains a 
 large one. 
 
 In conclusion, it may be well to emphasize two 
 great effects of the racial struggle, over and above 
 the general transformation of national life which 
 has been the theme of this chapter. The first is that 
 it has brought into Finnish life a healthy element of 
 competition which, when not carried to excess, has 
 greatly benefited and helped to develop the country. 
 The different parties have not merely been at war 
 with one another, but have also shown a noble 
 emulation of each other's achievements. As Mr. 
 J. R. Fisher writes: ^^Each side was so keen to 
 prove the advantage of its own language that the 
 
THE RACIAL STRUGGLE 63 
 
 building of schools, the writing of books and the 
 starting of newspapers received a tremendous im- 
 petus which has not yet spent itself.'' Whatever 
 may be said of Finland, it cannot be denied that the 
 country is alive and not asleep. Nearly every citi- 
 zen to-day has a wider interest than that of the mere 
 home circle and is identified with some cause outside 
 himself, and this seems due, more than anything 
 else, to the rivalry of Finns and Swedes. The writer 
 was once complaining of the extravagance of fac- 
 tion in Finland to an Englishman resident in Peters- 
 burg. The latter replied that he would a thousand 
 times rather have these signs of vigorous life than 
 the unhealthy quiet of Russia. 
 
 The second effect is that the racial struggle has 
 at times been so bitter as to involve national peril. 
 Party has been placed before country and atten- 
 tion diverted from the great issues of national life 
 to factional quarrels. This has even sometimes been 
 the case since the Russian peril became imminent. 
 On the whole, however, the common danger from 
 Russia has drawn the different parties together, and 
 there is probably a greater degree of understanding 
 between them to-day than has ever existed before. 
 The Swedish and the Young Finnish parties formed 
 an alliance during the Bobrikoff period under the 
 title of the Constitutional Party, and many Finns 
 who were previously very anti-Swedish have come 
 to realize that oppression of the Swedes would be 
 most illogical on the part of a race which is itself 
 protesting against Russian oppression. There are 
 a growing number of clear-sighted persons of every 
 
64 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 party who realize that the time for hatred and dis- 
 union is over and that an era of reintegration and 
 co-operative endeavour is overdue ; that to persist in 
 carrying on internal quarrels at a time when the 
 very existence of the country is threatened by Rus- 
 sia would be dangerous in the extreme. Such per- 
 sons believe that for the good of the country the two 
 races must work side by side, each developing its 
 own special qualities and respecting those of the 
 other. They believe that the common interests of 
 the parties infinitely outnumber the points of dis- 
 agreement. They are, in fact, the inheritors of the 
 best traditions of the National movement. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 LIFE IN HELSINGFOBS 
 
 AHUNDEED years ago Helsingfors was a 
 mere village. Greatness was thrust upon it 
 when Alexander I transferred the capital thither 
 from Abo, moved by the latter 's dangerous prox- 
 imity to Sweden. The supremacy of Helsingfors 
 was finally confirmed by the disastrous fire at Abo 
 in 1827, which, among other things, led to the Uni- 
 versity being re-established at a new capital. The 
 town has since increased by leaps and bounds and 
 will soon have a population of 200,000, four times 
 as great as that of Abo. 
 
 It lies on a rocky peninsula and has three splendid 
 harbours or fjords. Rarely can one view the open 
 sea from the lower parts of the town, on account 
 of the multitude of rocky islands that give the water 
 the effect of a lagoon. As one looks out to sea there 
 appears to be an unbroken wall of land enclosing 
 the water, and only as one approaches the wall does 
 it break up into separate isles, rocky and forest- 
 clad, each with a sharp individuality of its own. 
 While navigation is still open, on every side one sees 
 boats and steamers brilliantly white in the sunshine, 
 steam-launches and motor-boats plying between the 
 islands lying near the town, the bellying sails of 
 fishing boats gliding, exquisitely graceful, through 
 
 65 
 
66 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 narrow channels, and innumerable rowing-boats, 
 as often as not pulled by sturdy old women. One 
 gets the impression of a semi-aquatic race, as much 
 at home on water as on land. To appreciate its 
 spirit Helsingf ors should be approached by water. 
 
 The city makes all the impression of a captial. It 
 has spacious streets and is laid out in a dignified 
 manner. There are fine parks and piazzas, restau- 
 rants and theatres, churches and public buildings. 
 It has also the feeling and atmosphere of a capital, 
 the cosmopolitanism, the gaiety, the entertainments, 
 the rush of life, the rapid growth, the complexity 
 of interest. 
 
 Architecturally the town is an extraordinary mix- 
 ture of styles. It was fortunate in its early days 
 in being planned by the talented German architect, 
 C. L. Engel, who also designed some fine classical 
 buildings, such as the University and Senate House, 
 of which the city is justly proud. Some of the prin- 
 cipal streets show strong German influence; in 
 others Finnish peasant architecture lingers in low 
 wooden buildings ; in others, again, are striking ex- 
 amples of modern Finnish architecture. In the lat- 
 ter it is hard to decipher any definite style. Often 
 they are fantastic and seem to have a touch of Asia- 
 tie feeling in them, as if the granite would like to 
 break into Japanese or Chinese shapes were it only 
 more pliable. This bizarre effect is heightened by 
 the grotesque heads with which some of the build- 
 ings are ornamented, and in which the granite seems 
 to have achieved independent life and to leer at the 
 passer-by. Many of the houses are extravagant and 
 
LIFE IN HELSINGFORS 67 
 
 ill-proportioned, but a few attain to a surprising 
 dignity and beauty. Of most it may be said that 
 they are alive and that the architect was really aim- 
 ing at something. The interiors of certain build- 
 ings, notably several banks, are admirable. The 
 Finnish architects also excel in designing summer 
 villas, of which many enchanting examples are 
 within easy reach of Helsingfors. 
 
 One misses in Helsingfors old buildings and old 
 traditions. Electric trams, electric light, an excel- 
 lent telephone service, beautiful parks, do not make 
 up for the lack of historical associations such as 
 cling round the ancient towns of Abo, Viborg, Bovgk 
 and others, bringing with them a sense of rest and 
 old-world peace. The most delightful and old-world 
 thing that exists in Helsingfors is likely soon to be 
 abolished, namely, the open-air market. This is 
 held every morning on a great open space close to 
 the quays of the principal harbour. On one side of 
 you are stalls with all kinds of produce, on the other 
 side are boats from which neighbouring peasants 
 sell fish and vegetables. Here one usually sees real 
 animation and colour, features too often lacking in 
 Finnish life. Why Finnish artists do not use the 
 beautiful opportunity the Helsingfors market offers 
 them I cannot understand. The market is also asso- 
 ciated with the good old custom of the housewife, 
 perhaps accompanied by her servant, coming down 
 to do her own marketing. It is delightful to see 
 ladies of one's acquaintance doing this^ and one 
 looks forward with apprehension to the day when 
 snobbery will render it no longer possible. The mar- 
 
68 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 ket is especially exciting when the autumn sail- 
 fleet conies in to sell provisions for the winter. 
 Then one buys potatoes, cabbages and carrots in 
 great quantities and kegs of salted fish, apples both 
 for cooking and eating, and usually also a few 
 luxuries, such as a pot of honey. Another great day 
 in the market is when the ice breaks up, and one 
 fine morning, on the way into town, one sees the 
 long expected sight of masts and rigging along the 
 harbour quay. 
 
 People coming from Petersburg justly commend 
 the cleanness of Helsingfors. They also speak of it 
 as a good and cheap place for shopping. This is, 
 however, an impression hardly shared by any one 
 coming from England. Fresh vegetables can only 
 be obtained in winter at prohibitive prices, except- 
 ing of course the most common vegetables, such as 
 cabbages and carrots. Meat is not more expensive 
 than in England, but the quality is very inferior, 
 and nearly everything else costs more, and often 
 double or treble as much. The high tariff is largely 
 to blame. Tea which in England costs Is. 6d. or Is. 
 8d. a pound is sold here for 6s. 8d. a pound. For the 
 same reason one has to pay at a very high rate for 
 groceries of all kinds. Clothes, again, are extremely 
 expensive. Not only the tariff but also high rents 
 make things dear. The average rent per room is 
 about £20. This is due partly to the fact that Hels- 
 ingfors is growing fast and lies on a not very large 
 peninsula, but also to the violent speculation that 
 has been going on in land and building, forcing 
 prices up. There can be no doubt, also, that busi- 
 
LIFE IN HELSINGFORS 69 
 
 ness firms expect too high profits, and the public 
 has not yet awaked to the idea of protecting itself. 
 
 What with high rents and high prices, Helsingf ors 
 is not an ideal place to keep house in on a small in- 
 come. Nor is it freer than other places from the 
 servant problem. The writer's own experience in 
 this regard has been unusually fortunate, he having 
 been blessed with a peasant girl who has inspired 
 him with a profound respect for the qualities and 
 capacities of her race and class. Many people, how- 
 ever, complain bitterly of the independence of their 
 servants and their inconvenient habit of staying 
 out till the early hours of the morning. It is true 
 that the new wine of Social Democracy has rather 
 gone to the heads of the servant class, but one may 
 doubt if the fault is exclusively on one side. In 
 the older houses the accommodation for servants is 
 often rather deficient, according to English ideas, 
 and servants' wages range lower than with us, 
 though they are rising. 
 
 In spite of its summer beauty, Helsingf ors is de- 
 signed as a winter town. All the houses are pro- 
 vided with double windows, and in winter these are 
 fastened up with cotton-wool and gummed paper to 
 keep out the draught. Only one window in each 
 room is left so that it can be opened — sometimes, 
 alas! even this exception is not made. Wood is 
 burned, there being no coal supply, and the stoves 
 are of the continental type, usually reaching to the 
 roof. In spite of the abundance of timber, wood is 
 dear. A high tribute is due to the effectiveness and 
 economy of the Finnish system of heating. In spite 
 
70 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 of. the very low temperature in the winter, I have 
 never suffered so little from the cold as in Finland. 
 In November and December the days shorten with 
 extraordinary rapidity, and one seems to descend 
 into a black bottomless ditch. One longs for the snow 
 to stay, but it usually falls and melts several times 
 before Christmas. Nevertheless the sea is usually 
 frozen by the New Year, and soon one begins to 
 ascend the ditch on the other side. After the drear- 
 iness of the autumn the season of Christmas and the 
 New Year comes as a great relief. There is much 
 good cheer, though not of a kind one is accustomed 
 to in England. The Christmas ham is a great in- 
 stitution; it is served on a great dish encircled by 
 half a dozen dainties, like a big ship surrounded by 
 tenders. Another and, to the foreigner, less pleas- 
 ing feature of Christams fare is the so-called lut- 
 fisJc. It is stockfish prepared in some peculiar way 
 and accompanied by a mass of pepper and salt to 
 counteract its insipidity and sliminess. But it ranks 
 as a great delicacy and the taste can be acquired. 
 Christmas is indelibly associated in Finland with 
 sealing-wax, as all Christmas parcels are fastened 
 up by means of it. The Christmas-tree is a sine qua 
 non for every household, whether there are chil- 
 dren or not. Often such trees are quite small and 
 stand on a table. For a day or two before Christ- 
 mas the great square outside the railway station is 
 a mass of fir-trees of all sizes and shapes. As they 
 are constantly being moved, one is reminded of 
 Macbeth and how Birnam wood moved on Dun- 
 sinane. Trees cost from fourpence upwards, and 
 
LIFE IN HELSINGFORS 71 
 
 people either carry them home themselves or hire 
 some one else to do so, or take them home in a sleigh. 
 For days afterwards one's rooms have a delicious 
 scent of the forest. Father Christmas is also a 
 familiar figure in Finland. In appearance he is not 
 very unlike our own friend, but he bears the name 
 Jul-Bocken — i.e.. Yule Goat. He rings the house 
 bell, and on entering is welcomed with acclamation. 
 He usually carries with him a basket full of presents 
 for the company. With each present is a little poem 
 or a few lines of prose conveying compliments to the 
 person for whom it is intended or making fun of his 
 foibles. These the Yule Goat reads aloud amid 
 shrieks of laughter and the person addressed comes 
 forward for his Christmas-box. One can imagine a 
 Yule Goat, filled with a desire to reform people or to 
 pay off old scores, telling some deadly home-truths 
 to the company. Such an one, however, is not likely 
 to be chosen for the office. 
 
 When the sea is frozen the real joys of winter 
 begin. The ice becomes the scene of a vigorous life. 
 Roads marked by fir-trees are staked oiit on it be- 
 tween the town and the neighbouring islands, and 
 carts, cabs and automobiles make a lively traffic 
 upon them. Whole battalions of Russian soldiers 
 may be seen drilling on the vast white expanse of 
 snow and ice, whilst Russian battleships are ice- 
 bound in the harbour. One has a delicious shock of 
 surprise the first time one sees this life on the frozen 
 sea. With it, too, comes all the joy of winter sport, 
 for which Helsingfors is most happily situated. At 
 least five great skating rinks are cleared in the har- 
 
72 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 bours. They are frequently flooded at night in 
 order that the ice may be smooth and glassy, and 
 men go round filling up the cracks with water, as if 
 they were oiling a machine. Bands play there of an 
 evening, and the rinks are brilliantly lit by electric 
 light. At this time the spectacle is delightful, but 
 the rinks are often too crowded with small children 
 for comfort. One prefers to watch the adept figure- 
 skaters in the enclosed part of the rink. Had the 
 Greeks skated, the world would surely have been 
 enriched by some wonderful pieces of statuary. It 
 occasionaly happens that the sea is frozen before 
 the snows comes. This is the ideal time for skating, 
 for then one is not confined to a rink but can range 
 at will among the bays and islands and enjoy a 
 delicious sense of freedom. Then, too, one may 
 see people practising the perilous art of sailing on 
 skates. 
 
 Even more delightful than skating, on account of 
 this very freedom, is ski-ing. As Finland is not a 
 mountainous country the skis are made in a differ- 
 ent way from those used in Norway and Switzer- 
 land, being considerably longer. They are not at- 
 tached to the foot, which is merely slipped through 
 a strap, so that in falling one's foot is usually re- 
 leased. The people of Helsingfors are very fond of 
 ski-ing over the frozen sea. There is something 
 most exhilarating in going forward across the vast 
 shining plain of snow and ice, with a cloudless sky 
 above one. Good ski-runners can go at a consider- 
 able pace across the level, and if they find it mo- 
 notonous can make for some of the numerous islands 
 
LIFE IN HELSINGFORS 73 
 
 for variety. But few things call up the sense of 
 infinity so strongly as leaving the islands behind 
 one and ski-ing across the open sea. Often, how- 
 ever, people prefer to ski in the country, where there 
 is a constant succession of little hills and valleys. 
 Here the full beauty of winter woods becomes ap- 
 parent. This is especially so if one happens to go 
 on a morning when every tiniest twig has been 
 rimed. Then the scene is like fairyland or recalls 
 the delicate spray of fruit-blossom in the spring. 
 But on any clear day the trees laden with snow are 
 a noble and inspiring sight. 
 
 Tobogganing is but little indulged in, owing to 
 the absence of high hills, and is practically con- 
 fined to children, who seize every available slope for 
 it. A sledge, usually containing a seat in the mid- 
 dle, and called a sparkstotting, is used both by chil- 
 dren and grown-ups — ^by the latter for the convey- 
 ance of goods. It is propelled by pushing with one 
 foot, while the other rests on one of the runners. 
 
 Most thrilling of all winter sports, however, is 
 ice-yachting. It is not without its dangers. The 
 man in charge seems to behave very much as he 
 would on board a small sailing-yacht, but the pas- 
 senger ^s experience is very different. You lie flat 
 on your stomach and are hurled through the air at 
 the speed of an express train. The scenery shoots 
 past you at a dizzy pace. The runners on either 
 side are like the paws of some huge animal and are 
 lifted high when the wind is strong, descending on 
 the ice again with a shattering crash. You rush 
 with fearful impetus at a rocky cliff and, when de- 
 
74 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 struction seems certain, swerve round with the ease 
 of a lizard. At times it feels as if you were about 
 to fly, the yacht taking little leaps, like an aeroplane 
 before it leaves the ground, and seeming a creature 
 of the air tugging at some restraining chain. 
 
 A heavy price has to be paid before one passes 
 from winter to spring, April being especially trying. 
 All around the ice and snow are melting, and both 
 sea and land look dirty and depressing. The roads 
 are unspeakable, except a very few ; for although the 
 snow is carted from the main streets after each 
 snow-fall and piled up into a mountain in some con- 
 venient place, yet a thick pavement of ice and snow 
 always remains on the road until it melts, or is 
 broken up by men with pickaxes and removed in 
 carts. Moreover, the combination of sunshine, 
 warmth and thaw, coming after the tension of a 
 Northern winter, causes an intolerable feeling of 
 drowsiness to afilict one and makes good work ex- 
 tremely difficult. Finally, however, spring emerges, 
 like a beautiful butterfly, shedding its dirty chrys- 
 alis. It is expected of the winter that it shall have 
 disappeared by the first of May. The expectation 
 is not always fulfilled, and snowstorms have been 
 known to mar the day, but, whatever the weather. 
 May Day is celebrated as the coming of spring. 
 The different student choirs sing in the public 
 parks, speeches are delivered, many signs of carni- 
 val are seen, and the day is given over to jollity. 
 And although from a spectacular point of view the 
 festival is not very striking, there can be no two 
 opinions about the gaiety of the atmosphere. 
 
LIFE IN HELSINGFORS 75 
 
 During the winter months Helsingfors enjoys a 
 rich intellectual life and one cannot fail to be struck 
 by the intellectual abilities of the Finns one meets 
 in society. Many distinguished foreign scholars are 
 invited by the University to give public lectures 
 every winter, and many famous musicians give con- 
 certs here on the way to or from Petersburg. In- 
 deed, there is almost a superfluity of good concerts. 
 It is pleasant to add that by going to the People's 
 House you can often hear for sixpence or even 
 threepence the same concert which in the University 
 Hall would cost half a crown or four shillings. Thus 
 the best music can be heard by the poorer people as 
 by the rich. The theatres are well managed and 
 keep the public in touch with dramatic movements 
 all over Europe. British plays are popular. A 
 large number of Shawns have been produced, and 
 three of Galsworthy's, to say nothing of Shake- 
 speare. The theatres are of course repertory the- 
 atres, as is usual on the Continent. All the seats are 
 reserved and there is no need to stand outside the 
 pit or gallery door in the rain and cold, as in Lon- 
 don. The Finnish Theatre is a fine building, with 
 better cloakroom accommodation than most Lon- 
 don theatres. 
 
 In Helsingfors one is kept perpetually aware of 
 the fact that Finland is a country with two lan- 
 guages, and, in the official world, to some extent, of 
 three. The street signs are up in Finnish, Swedish 
 and Eussian, and each of these languages is repre- 
 sented by its own theatre. At an opera performance 
 one sometimes hears three different languages from 
 
76 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the stage, which is disconcerting until one gets used 
 to it. Students at the University have to pass an 
 entrance examination which includes a knowledge of 
 both Finnish and Swedish. Shpp assistants have 
 constantly to pass from one language to the other. 
 There are Finnish newspapers and Swedish ones. 
 Programmes for entertainments of all kinds are 
 usually printed in both languages, and so on. 
 
 Of Russia one is not very much aware outwardly, 
 except for the presence of Russian warships and 
 Russian troops. The fortress of Sveaborg, on its 
 seven islands, on one of which Dostoyevsky was im- 
 prisoned, lies right opposite the town, guarding the 
 approach to it; the north harbour is usually full 
 of Russian ships of various kinds, and the town 
 contains many large barracks. The Russian soldiers 
 look good-natured men, rather down-trodden and 
 not too clean or well-fed ; the best regiments are not 
 sent here, however. The officers make a rather 
 pleasant impression in that there is a complete lack 
 of ^'side^' about them. Of the Russian officials in 
 Finland, however, only an optimist could speak 
 hopefully. Most of them are simply * * on the make, ' ' 
 and their chief function, apart from feathering their 
 nests, seems to be the bringing of discredit upon 
 the nation they misrepresent. Between the Rus- 
 sians and the Finns there is, in these dark days, no 
 intercourse. 
 
 If Russia is not conspicuous to the eye in Hels- 
 ingfors, she is never absent from the mind. She 
 is a gloomy background, casting a shadow upon 
 every gay thought, a pestilential vapour poisoning 
 
LIFE IN HELSINGFORS 77 
 
 the country's life, a dark cloud that never lifts. 
 One can never get right away from the Russian 
 question. There is hardly a well-to-do family in 
 Helsingfors which has not the threat overhanging 
 it that one of its members may not come into con- 
 flict with the Russian-made law and be summarily 
 incarcerated in a Russian prison. It has already 
 happened to many, and will happen to many more 
 before better days dawn. 
 
 Society in Helsingfors falls into two main grooves 
 — ^the Swedish-speaking people and the Finnish- 
 speaking people. They mix little and do not speak 
 very nicely of each other. Both are delightful and 
 interesting, so long as they keep off party politics, 
 when they tend to become bitter and self-righteous. 
 This is the inevitable aftermath of the racial strug- 
 gle, yet one cannot help regretting that such nice 
 people should not know each other better. Between 
 Swedish and Finnish circles there is not very much 
 essential diference ; that is to say, one does not find 
 radically different conceptions of life or of values. 
 As regards externals, the Finns have copied in 
 most respects the customs of the Swedes. In the 
 houses of the latter there is apt to be more wealth, 
 refinement and formality, in the former more dem- 
 ons trativeness and less constraint. 
 
 People in Finland are exteremely hospitable and 
 entertain lavishly. The usual hour for dinner is 
 five or six, if one is inviting guests, otherwise about 
 four. As a rule the second part of the evening is 
 the most pleasurable, as the Finns take a long time 
 to get warmed up. Conversation is rarely broken 
 
78 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 by music or recitation, but a great variety of foods 
 and drinks are handed round in the course of the 
 evening. The scale of these entertainments and the 
 toasting that goes on recall the great banquets de- 
 scribed in Scandinavian or Finnish sagas, but one 
 sometimes would be glad of the minstrelsy which 
 broke the flow of talk on those occasions. In spite 
 of Woman's Suffrage the two sexes tend to form 
 groups separately. The groups once formed are too 
 apt to become rigid, and there is an opening for a 
 hostess who would develop the art of making her 
 guests change places more. The system has the 
 advantage, however, that if you have once got into 
 an. interesting conversation with any one you are 
 not so likely to be interrupted as in England. No one 
 who has been privileged to enjoy Finnish hos- 
 pitality can ever forget the warmth and generosity 
 of it. The same characteristic is beautifully in- 
 stanced in the Finnish habit of sending flowers. 
 Flowers here are an expensive luxury and often 
 fade only too rapidly. One sometimes regrets one's 
 friends spending their money in such a way, but 
 the feeling behind it is a fine one and, as an Eng- 
 lish-woman once remarked to me, recalls the story 
 of the alabaster box of precious ointment. 
 
 It cannot be denied that, as she develops, Finland 
 is acquiring the vices as well as the virtues of high 
 civilization. Nearly everybody is anxious to be 
 modern and like present-day England, France or 
 Germany, which is a little discouraging to persons 
 who love Finland as being one of the few European 
 countries which are not like present-day England, 
 
LIFE IN HELSINGFORS 79 
 
 Prance or Germany, which is a little discouraging to 
 persons who love Finland as being one of the few 
 European countries which are not like present-day 
 England, France and Germany. To the writer it is 
 painful to see the beginning of financial scandals, 
 bankruptcies, irresponsible borrowing and lending, 
 vulgar extravagance, snobbery, living above one's 
 income, cocksureness, put-you-rightness, and so on, 
 but others welcome these symptoms as showing that 
 Finland is getting into line with the Great Powers. 
 The divorce between the intellectuals and Chris- 
 tianity is very complete in Helsingfors, there being 
 an absolute indifferentism to religious questions. 
 Among the younger people, the attitude of con- 
 descension and cocksureness towards Christians is, 
 perhaps, a little exaggerated ; they give the impres- 
 sion that they have heard of Christians, but hardly 
 except to meet them out of England and museums. 
 A charming young lady whose opinion I asked con- 
 cerning, the ** Pilgrim's Progress," which she had 
 read for an examination, replied, ^* Myself, I do not 
 like it, but I think it is very nice for uneducated peo- 
 ple, who like to read the Bible, and such books.'' A 
 professor, however, walking home with the writer 
 after a jolly supper-party, made the striking admis- 
 sion: **We Finns are not irreligious because we are 
 so broad-minded, but because we are so narrow- 
 minded." However this may be — and there are 
 special reasons why religion is temporarily at a dis- 
 count in Finland — there is plenty of idealism in 
 other directions, such as education, art, music and 
 patriotism. If the Finns, justly proud of the won- 
 
80 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 derful progress they have made in so short a time, 
 are a little inclined to exaggerate the actual value 
 of their achievements in some of these fields, one 
 may well pardon them. For their patriotism is 
 usually of an admirable nature. They are prepared 
 to suffer for their country in a time of crisis, and in 
 normal times to go on quietly and unostentatiously 
 working for its sake. At the Paris Exhibition two 
 famous geographers, a Frenchman and a Russian, 
 were admiring a map of Finland. **Why is it that 
 it is better than the others 1 ' ' asked one. * * Because 
 every line of it is drawn with love,'' replied his 
 friend. 
 
 No one who studies life in Finland can fail to 
 acquire a great respect for the Finnish woman. Her 
 capacity and energy compel it. Energy, indeed, is a 
 quality which, in this generation, is far more appar- 
 ent among the women than the men, and it accounts 
 a great deal for the Finnish girPs success. This 
 energy has been generated partly by the new oppor- 
 tunities which have opened out to women in recent 
 decades and partly by the hard conditions of Fin- 
 nish life, thanks to which the girls have been brought 
 up to do for themselves many things which in other 
 countries are usually done for them. They have 
 reaped the advantages of character and will that 
 such activity brings with it. I know a girl of twen- 
 ty-three who travelled alone into the heart of the 
 country in midwinter and settled a builders' strike 
 on her father's property. 
 
 Finnish girls are as a rule anything but shy and 
 retiring, but their independence and self-sufficiency 
 
LIFE IN HELSINGFORS 81 
 
 rarely pass into blatancy or bad manners. They 
 are quite accustomed to comradeship with men and 
 a frank interchange of thought, and take such things 
 as a simple matter of course, in this respect enjoy- 
 ing a liberty which seems somewhat shocking to old- 
 fashioned persons both in Finland and abroad. 
 Both the grave type and the high-spirited type are 
 common among them, but the former predominates, 
 and is especially noticeable among those who have 
 not travelled. Going abroad often seems to loosen 
 the springs of joy in the Finns. The outer appear- 
 ance of gravity is frequently deceptive, however, 
 and causes visitors who are not accustomed to the 
 phlegm of the Finnish temperament to go away with 
 a wrong impression. **Do they never laugh and 
 flirt f I once heard an American lady say, in 
 pained indignation. They do. The fact is that the 
 Finns of both sexes are usually very slow to express 
 their feelings. They are capable of being as up- 
 roariously jolly as other people, but it takes them a 
 long time to get under way, and you must not hurry 
 them. The girls you see at their jolliest on festal 
 occasions, like Christmas, when they display a posi- 
 tive genius for arranging amusing entertainments 
 and an ingenuity of invention and a fund of high 
 spirits that could not easily be surpassed. 
 
 While exceptions are numerous, and will doubt- 
 less become more so as the standard of living rises, 
 Finnish girls are, on the whole, inclined to be rather 
 plain in their features. There is, however, a sim- 
 plicity and energy and healthfulness about them 
 which make a far pleasanter impression than does a 
 
82 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 too passive and ornamental beauty. They often fail 
 to do themselves justice through not having learnt 
 the art of dressing. Simplicity suits them, and com- 
 plex Paris fashions do not look well in Helsingf ors. 
 The climate makes it difficult for people to look ele- 
 gant in winter, and it is in their simple summer 
 dresses that the girls look best. Many of them are 
 excellent sportswomen, being adepts in ski-ing, skat- 
 ing, sailing, rowing and swimming, and it is when 
 engaged in these pursuits that they are seen to the 
 greatest advantage. Usually, like the men, they 
 drop these activities at what seems to an English- 
 man too early an age. It is pleasant to add that 
 their enthusiasm for sport does not turn them into 
 mere sportswomen, but that they combine sport with 
 intellectual pursuits. Altogether, the Finnish girl 
 who can manage a sailing-boat, talk half a dozen 
 languages and discuss sensibly most subjects of 
 general interest is a type of which any country 
 might be proud. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE COUNTRY-SIDE 
 
 THE writer's experience of the country-side is 
 that of the town-dweller who retires to spend 
 the summer there. For three months, beginning 
 from June, all who can do so leave the towns. Water 
 is what they make for, whether they go to the sea- 
 side or to the innumerable islands around the coast 
 or to the shores of the great inland lakes. Even 
 those whose professional duties forbid a complete 
 holiday usually live on islands and only go to town 
 for their office hours. Fleets of small white-painted 
 steamers keep up a lively communication between 
 the archipelago and the mainland. 
 
 The exodus to the country is a considerable under- 
 taking. The villas or rooms to which one repairs 
 are but scantily furnished, and a large number of 
 one's household goods have to be conveyed thither. 
 It is a house removal on a small scale, in which beds 
 and bedding and cooking utensils figure largely. 
 One also takes a large supply of groceries and other 
 edibles, as the fare obtainable in many country dis- 
 tricts is very limited. Milk and eggs are nearly 
 always to be had, excellent and in unlimited quan- 
 tities, but meat is by no means so easily obtained. 
 
 83 
 
84 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 One waits until some one kills a calf or a sheep, and 
 orders according to the state of the thermometer. 
 Fish one can have if one is fortunate enough to 
 catch them, or if one can find peasants willing to 
 sell their own catch. For vegetables one is alloted 
 a cabbage-patch of one's own. They come up very 
 quickly, owing to the great length of the summer 
 days, but it is advisable to post on some seeds to be 
 planted before one's arrival in the country. It is 
 usual to bake one's own bread. Sour milk, which is 
 solidified to the degree of junket, is a favourite sum- 
 mer dish. Fruit abounds in the shape of wild ber- 
 ries, but there is usually little garden fruit. 
 
 Summer in Finland is a revel of beauty. After 
 the long grip of winter relaxes, spring comes with a 
 rush, like a wild creature set free from a leash. 
 Arriving in the country in early June, one is lifted 
 up on the rising wave of the summer. If June is 
 true to her character, the sky and water are deepest 
 blue and the sun is never lost sight of except for the 
 brief hour or two when it is quenched by the sea. 
 This mystical interval is so beautiful that it is hard 
 to turn from it and sleep. The land is lovely with a 
 swiftly succeeding pageant of lilacs and fruit-blos- 
 som and wild roses, and the hills are covered with 
 the waving foliage and the white stems of delicate 
 birches, like dancing maidens, and the more mascu- 
 line beauty of pines and firs. The rock-strewn 
 meadows are brilliant with wild flowers. 
 
 The days are spent simply enough. One may 
 begin by bathing from a hut at the end of the little 
 wooden pier which belongs to every summer villa. 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE 85 
 
 Many people bathe several times a day in the hot 
 weather. No bathing-dress is worn, and there is no 
 mixed bathing. It is common for groups of farm- 
 labourers or of farm-girls to go down to bathe of an 
 evening, and as one rows home towards sunset one 
 may hear their cries and splashings borne for an 
 extraordinary distance across the water. Rowing 
 may be both work and recreation. At noon one may 
 catch bait for the line one will set at night, and in 
 the early morning one rows out anxiously to see 
 what one has caught for breakfast. Among the com- 
 monest fish are the perch and the gadda, the latter 
 a kind of salt-water pike. One may also row out to 
 watch the sun turn the rocks to crimson and sink 
 into the rippleless sea, or, again, for a picnic on an 
 island. On one such picnic we bought quantities of 
 stromming (the Baltic herring) from two old fisher- 
 men who might have stepped out of the sagas, then 
 made a fire and cooked the fish by stringing them on 
 twigs and holding them near the flames. Fish never 
 tasted so good before or since. 
 
 Yachting is another favourite summer pursuit 
 and a never-failing source of pleasure amid the belt 
 of islands around the coast, which offer an infinite 
 diversity of interest and beauty. 
 
 On land there is one 's humble garden to attend to 
 and walking of all kinds — ^walks to the nearest store 
 to provide for household needs; walks of explora- 
 tion through the country-side ; walks to farms to buy 
 butter and eggs; frantic walks when one is baking 
 and has forgotten the yeast. 
 
 In the course of these walks one comes across 
 
86 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 many a characteristic Finnish scene: cottages, all 
 wooden, and often painted a brilliant red which 
 blazes in the sunshine and looks cheerful in the win- 
 ter, nestling under rocky hills or lying close to a 
 sunny bay, with fishing-nets stretched along the side 
 walls ; or peasants waiting on the wooden piers for 
 the uncertain advent of the little steamer, whose 
 arrival is the event of the day or even of the week ; 
 or a pine-clad hill from which one sees on either side 
 an alternation of forest and gleaming water until the 
 eye becomes weary of distinguishing the successive 
 stretches of each and looks down to the flower at 
 one's feet. 
 
 When it has taken its fill of the outer beauties of 
 the country-side, the mind naturally turns to the 
 human life that has such a fair setting. And with- 
 out some realization of country life anything like 
 a true understanding of Finland is impossible. For 
 agriculture is Finland's staple industry. According 
 to a report made in 1901, over one and a half mil- 
 lion persons, or some 71 per cent, of the rural popu- 
 lation, were engaged in agriculture and its sub- 
 sidiary occupations, and this would represent about 
 57 per cent, of the entire population at that time. 
 
 The first thing that strikes one is the Finnish 
 farm. The older farm buildings are of unusual in- 
 terest. Like most things in the country, they are 
 made of wood. In the earliest buildings the tree 
 trunks are still rounded, only the bark having been 
 removed, while in those of a later date the beams 
 have been squared. Inside, the walls are not 
 papered, and in the gaps between the beams knives 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE 87 
 
 and saws and other implements are placed. The 
 number of things made of wood, and especially of 
 birch wood, is amazing, and includes shoes, baskets 
 of all kinds, knapsacks, halters, brooms and brushes. 
 In a few old farms moreover, wooden door-bolts and 
 nails and hinges and pestles and mortars may still 
 be seen, to say nothing of dishes, cups and saucers. 
 Birch bark was formerly used in times of scarcity 
 to mix with bread. 
 
 Some of the farms, with a laudable sense of tradi- 
 tion, have started little museums in which are stored 
 things of interest in connexion with their history. 
 To see such a museum is to get a very high idea of 
 human ingenuity and perseverance. Here you may 
 trace the development of agricultural implements 
 from the most primitive models, and see such ob- 
 jects as a harrow and plough entirely made of wood, 
 and primitive shafts, ingeniously constructed of 
 large branches that forked in a convenient shape. 
 The old Finnish farmers had a remarkably keen eye 
 for suitably shaped pieces of timber. 
 
 The older houses were chimneyless and the smoke 
 escaped out of a hole in the roof. Consequently the 
 upper half of the walls was stained a dark colour, 
 and when the rooms were cleaned the part above 
 the smoke-line was left unscrubbed and is clearly 
 demarcated from the rest. Light came only from 
 the fireplace and the pare, a long thin piece of resin- 
 ous wood which was fastened to the wall at one end 
 and lit at the other. But such old houses are now 
 but little used as habitations. 
 
 The outbuildings are also of great interest. They 
 
88 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 include houses for storing food of all kinds, clothes 
 and agricultural implements. In the old days, be- 
 fore private distilling was made illegal, each farm 
 had its own distillery also. Then there are huts in 
 which old bachelors and old maids kept their belong- 
 ings and partly lived, and finally the cow-houses, 
 stables and pigsties. Above many of the stables is 
 a loft, used as a storeroom in the winter and a sleep- 
 ing-place for the girls of the farm in the summer. 
 It is reached by a ladder or outer staircase. Other 
 things that strike the eye are the little patch on 
 which the farmer formerly grew his own tobacco, 
 the well with its pine trunk for dipping the bucket, 
 and the fences formed by pieces of wood placed 
 slantwise and supported at intervals by posts. 
 
 Most essential of all the farm-buildings, however, 
 is the bath-house. It is the first of them all to be 
 built and serves as a home until the dwelling-house 
 is ready. In one corner is the fireplace, made of 
 great stones. Near the roof is a broad shelf on 
 which the bathers lie. Sometimes there is a second 
 shelf used for malting. There is usually a small 
 opening, which can be closed by a sliding panel, 
 through which fuel can be thrown in. In some old 
 bath-houses there is a second hole, known as the 
 wolf -hole, through which the farmer in old days kept 
 watch at night on the wolves which might come 
 prowling around and shot them if he got the 
 chance. "When the time for bathing comes, the 
 stones are heated to a very high temperature, hot 
 water is thrown on them and the house is filled with 
 steam. You soap yourself, sit on the shelf, beat 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE 89 
 
 yourself, or are beaten by the old bath-woman, with 
 birch twigs, approach or keep away from the fire- 
 place according to your ability to stand intense heat, 
 and, finally, red as a tomato, plunge into the open 
 air. If it is summer this is a simple matter, but even 
 in winter the Finns run naked from the bath-house 
 to the farm, and very often take a roll in the snow 
 into the bargain. 
 
 The Finnish bath was, and still is, largely a 
 family concern, the two sexes taking it in common 
 and nudity seeming to have no terrors for them. 
 It is curious to note, however, that when bathing in 
 sea or lake men and women bathe separately. The 
 explanation is, perhaps, that the bath-house is a 
 kind of temple, the bath-woman its priestess, and 
 the bath of the nature of a ritual. The church and 
 the bath-house are holy places, says a Finnish pro- 
 verb. The place has grave and lofty associations of 
 another kind also. It is to the bath-house that the 
 mother retires when a child is about to be born, and 
 the temperature is made as high as possible in order 
 to ease her delivery ; to it, also, sick people are taken 
 as to a hospital. There is a Finnish proverb to the 
 effect that if the bath-house and brandy cannot help 
 a man, death is near at hand. The bath is, more- 
 over, a custom hallowed by great antiquity. Livy, 
 during his exile among the Sarmatians in Dacia, 
 describes the bathing customs prevalent there, and 
 the description corresponds closely to the Finnish 
 bath of to-day. Thus sentiment allies itself with 
 custom in excluding from this sacrament of nudity 
 any idea of licence. 
 
90 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 While the Finnish bath remains unchanged, the 
 faims are being considerably modified. They still 
 remain picturesque, however, partly owing to the 
 excellent custom of staining the outside of the newer 
 buildings a brilliant red. And, in spite of modern 
 inventions and the importation of agricultural ma- 
 chinery, they continue to be very largely self-sup- 
 porting. This is partly due to the difficulties of 
 communication in Finland. Usually the farms lie 
 far apart and are often separated by great stretches 
 of forest and water. There is no town at hand to 
 which you can easily repair when you want any- 
 thing, so that the country-side has had to develop 
 and maintain a large number of small industries. 
 Not only do country-folk still continue in many 
 parts to build their own dwelling-places, but they 
 also construct much of the furniture in them and 
 make many of the implements used on their farms. 
 The long winter evenings are the great time for 
 such pursuits. In the old days the household used 
 to gather round the open fire, the only source of 
 light by which continuous work could be done after 
 dusk. One can imagine the scene. Now, of course, 
 lamps are everywhere used. The men do a great 
 deal of carpentering, making buckets, spoons, cups, 
 baskets, shafts for their carts, etc. What some of 
 them can do with the aid of nothing but an axe is 
 astounding, their dexterity with this tool being de- 
 lightful to watch. Another common tool is the Fin- 
 nish knife, which every peasant carries at his belt; 
 it is used for every purpose imaginable, whether 
 good or evil. The women do a great deal of spin- 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE 91 
 
 ning, weaving, knitting and dyeing. The clothes of 
 the family are to a great extent made by them, 
 though of recent years manufactured stuffs have 
 become commoner. It is a delightful thing to see 
 the peasant women spinning and weaving, and their 
 work lasts better than the manufactured article. 
 Some of them add to the family earnings by selling 
 their productions. 
 
 Nearly all the needs of the peasant have to be met 
 in the simple way described. The women may still 
 be seen making potato flour, and candles are still 
 made at home, more often than bought. Candle- 
 making takes place after the autumn slaughtering, 
 when the dead animals are salted and the spare fat 
 is put aside for the purpose. Naturally the candles 
 do not come out quite as smooth and regular as 
 those one purchases in shops. Each little village 
 or big farm has, moreover, its own workshop, to 
 which representatives of the different handicrafts 
 come annually, by appointment, to supply the needs 
 of the community. Then the shoemaker comes and 
 settles down in the workshop to make as many pairs 
 of boots and shoes as the people will require for a 
 twelvemonth. The harness-maker comes and re- 
 pairs old harness and makes new sets, which will 
 have to last till he comes again a year hence, and 
 similarly with the other craftsmen. Indeed, the 
 farm workshop, which becomes in turn a tailor's 
 shop, a saddler's, a cobbler's, and half a dozen 
 other trades, is a great feature of country life. 
 
 The farmers are usually comfortably off, have a 
 considerable degree of education and culture, and 
 
92 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 tend to be conservative. Their properties have 
 often been held by the family for a great number of 
 generations. There is among them a considerable 
 amount of class-consciousness and they have little 
 social intercourse with the agricultural labourers. 
 Their farms are frequently very attractive and their 
 hospitality is most generous. The great kitchens, 
 with splendidly polished copper kettles and utensils, 
 are not easily forgotten. Much of the life of the 
 house takes place in the kitchen, and usually sev- 
 eral large rooms are unoccupied except in the sum- 
 mer, when they are let for a very small rent to town- 
 folk who come to the country for their holidays. 
 Nevertheless, the lot of the Finnish farmer is not 
 an easy one. The winter, as we saw, lasts from 
 about five months in the south to about eight months 
 in the north of Finland, and frosts are by no means 
 uncommon as late as May and as early as August. 
 Further, the greater part of the land surface is, 
 and probably will remain, unsuitable for cultivation. 
 According to the Agricultural Eeport published in 
 1901, only 8.6 per cent, of the land was cultivated, 
 and nearly half of this amount ranks as pasture- 
 land. There is reason to believe, however, that the 
 cultivated area can be at least doubled or trebled. 
 Moreover, as we saw in the introductory chapter, 
 there are many circumstances which modify the 
 harshness of the climate, and even in the north, 
 where the summer is shortest, things grow surpris- 
 ingly well, owing to the fact that summer days are 
 so long and light. The most productive soil is the 
 clay land of Qsterbotten and the southwest, where 
 
Rye 
 
 Corn 
 
 Oats 
 
 48.9 
 
 26.6 
 
 24.5 
 
 40.7 
 
 21-4 
 
 37.9 
 
 33.3 
 
 14.8 
 
 51.9 
 
 THE COUNTRY-SIDE 93 
 
 rye grows excellently. In the interior sandy soil 
 prevails, together with vast stretches of marsh-land 
 and moor-land. Wheat is but little grown, rye, corn 
 and oats being of far greater importance. The fol- 
 lowing table shows the relative harvests of these 
 three grains at different periods during the forty- 
 five years between 1860 and 1905 ; 
 
 1861-5 
 
 1881-5 
 1901-5 
 
 Rye is grown up to the 66th degree of latitude, but 
 oats do not grow well after the 65th degree. The 
 decrease in rye is due to its sensitiveness to frost, 
 which caused farmers very large losses and made 
 them look to the rearing of cattle as a safer and 
 more profitable investment. This in its turn led to 
 a demand for more fodder; hence the large exten- 
 sion of the land under oats. A further consequence 
 was a greatly increased cultivation of hay, clover, 
 turnips and also potatoes. The need of rye for 
 making bread has been met by importation. The 
 money value of the harvest of 1907, a representative 
 year, was estimated at 162 million marks, of which 
 rye accounted for 53 millions, corn for 19 millions, 
 potatoes and other roots for 34 millions. 
 
 If we turn from the growing of crops to the rais- 
 ing of cattle, we find that horned cattle and horses 
 are the most important, and among the former, cows 
 naturally take the first place. The number of cows 
 rose from 670,000 in 1865 to about 1,110,000 in 1907. 
 
94 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 In the latter year the number of cows per thousand 
 inhabitants was 374. Mention is made in another 
 chapter of the large butter export. The number of 
 horses rose from 260,000 in 1865 to about 330,000 in 
 1907. The horses are usually of a light build and 
 are very lively. They have run successfully abroad. 
 Most of the farm work is done with their aid, oxen 
 being but little used for drawing purposes. The 
 Finns as a rule treat their animals well. Sheep play 
 a decreasing role in Finnish farming. In 1907 they 
 numbered about 900,000, or rather less than in 1865, 
 in spite of the great increase of Finland's popula- 
 tion since that time. Nor do Finnish farmers seem 
 to have realized the economic possibilities of the 
 pig, in spite of the efforts of the State to induce 
 them to improve the breed. There are great oppor- 
 tunities for enterprise in this direction. Bee-keep- 
 ing and poultry are also practised but little, but the 
 prospects of both would be excellent if more atten- 
 tion were devoted to the subject. 
 
 The total value of the stock reared on Finnish 
 farms in 1907 is estimated at not less than 211 mil- 
 lion marks. 
 
 There is every reason to suppose that the produc- 
 tion of Finnish farming, both in crops and cattle, 
 could be largely increased. In the first place far 
 more land could be cultivated. Most of the unculti- 
 vated land consists of forests, but there are also 
 great tracts of bog-land, which would provide good 
 soil for cultivation if they were properly drained, as 
 they doubtless will be when sufficient capital can be 
 found. In the second place, better methods of cul- 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE 95 
 
 tivation could be applied. Until recent times Fin- 
 nish agriculture was extremely primitive. A wood 
 was burnt down and the soil thus reached was culti- 
 vated as long as it repaid the labour, when the peas- 
 ant proceeded to burn down a new wood and repeat 
 the process of cultivation. This wasteful method 
 is little in use to-day, however, and the Government 
 has intervened with various restrictions. The old 
 rotation of crops, namely, the growing of grain on 
 two fields out of three, still prevails largely through- 
 out the country, though in certain parts a more 
 complex system has been introduced. The State is 
 doing its best to further agricultural development. 
 The grant for agricultural purposes in 1909 was 
 over five million marks, of which nearly two mil- 
 lions was devoted to education and one and quarter 
 millions to Farmers' Associations, which latter are 
 private societies for the spread of agricultural 
 knowledge, both theoretical and practical. Numer- 
 ous schools of agriculture exist, and the University 
 has an agricultural section to which about three 
 hundred students belong. The State has created 
 * * The Institute for Agricultural Experiments in Fin- 
 land'' on a property near Helsingfors, and supports 
 a society for the draining of marsh-land, which has 
 two different establishments in the country. Four 
 agricultural laboratories have been founded, besides 
 one at Hango for the analysis of butter. But a list 
 of all the agricultural societies would be as tedious 
 to the reader as it is creditable to Finland. An in- 
 tersting study of State aid in Finland might be 
 made. 
 
96 
 
 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Thirdly, a great increase in production would 
 probably take place if the system of land tenure 
 were altered, so that large estates were broken up 
 and an increase took place in the number of small 
 holdings.^ 
 
 Dotted about the country-side in most parts of 
 Finland one sees the cottages of the agricultural 
 labourers. Their position is in some ways a curious 
 one and only becomes clear when we have obtained 
 
 ^ We find in the Agricultural Eeport already quoted that the 
 proportion of land under cultivation in 
 
 Small estates (less than 50 hectares) 
 Medium estates (50-250 hectares) 
 Large estates (250-1,000 hectares) 
 Very large estates (over 1,000 hectares) 
 
 was 25.1 per cent. 
 " 17.1 " 
 " 11.1 " 
 " 9.7 " 
 
 In other words, small properties are more highly cultivated than 
 large ones. The same thing holds good of the raising of cattle. 
 Compare the following table from the same Report — 
 
 Number of Animals per 100 Hectares op Cultivated Land 
 IN Holdings of — 
 
 
 Less than 
 3 Hectares 
 
 3-10 
 Hectares 
 
 10-25 
 Hectares 
 
 25-100 
 Hectares 
 
 Over 100 
 Hectares 
 
 Horses 
 
 22 
 
 17 
 
 11 
 
 7 
 
 5 
 
 Cows 
 
 128 
 
 55 
 
 37 
 
 26 
 
 24 
 
 Sheep 
 
 110 
 
 57 
 
 39 
 
 22 
 
 6 
 
 Pigs 
 
 21 
 
 11 
 
 7 
 
 4 
 
 3 
 
 Small holdings are advocated not only on agricultural 
 grounds, but also as a means of redressing the economic griev- 
 ances of large classes of the country people. 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE 97 
 
 an idea of the country-side as a whole, and of how 
 the land is owned and held. The greatest land- 
 holder of all is the State, which owns nearly 40 per 
 cent, of the land surface of Finland. Most of the 
 State land, however, consists, as we shall see, of 
 forests, and lies in the north and east of the coun- 
 try. It may be ruled out of account in the present 
 connexion. What really concerns us is the land 
 which is privately owned. First of all there are the 
 great estates. Although they number only 1.4 per 
 cent, of the total number of estates, their area is 
 nearly 18 per cent, of the land privately owned. 
 Most of them are situated in the centre of Finland, 
 where the land is but thinly populated and little 
 cultivated, or in the south and southwest, where the 
 population is comparatively dense and the land is 
 cultivated proportionately. Their growth is ex- 
 plained in two ways. Firstly, even as late as the 
 close of the Middle Ages, the land north of the 62nd 
 degree, save for the coast, was uninhabited, and it 
 became the policy of the Swedish kings to colonize 
 North Finland with people from the south. These 
 colonists maintained themselves by fishing, hunting, 
 and the primitive form of agriculture associated 
 with the burning down of forests. They therefore 
 required very lage areas of land, and as there was 
 in early times no lack of it, the State allowed them 
 to acquire as much as they liked, free of cost. Sec- 
 ondly, during the nineteenth century rich men 
 bought up small estates, especially in South Fin- 
 land, and converted them into large ones, while in 
 the north, centre and east speculators and saw- 
 
98 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 mill companies bought up enormous tracts of forest 
 land at low prices from the peasants, who sometimes 
 were not fully aware of their value. 
 
 The life of the wealthy landowners is similar to 
 that lived on great estates all over the world. The 
 houses are usually large wooden structures with 
 spacious and airy rooms and plenty of verandas. 
 They are specially designed as summer residences. 
 The gardens are not comparable with English gar- 
 dens, but have a wild beauty of their own derived 
 from their close relationship with uncultivated 
 Nature. Little game is reared, and altogether sport 
 plays a smaller part than in the life of English 
 gentry. The estate is usually within easy reach of 
 its own farm, which provides it with most of the 
 necessaries of life. The relationship between the 
 landowner and the tenants varies a great deal; in 
 some cases it still seems quite patriarchal. 
 
 The agricultural labourers may be divided into 
 two classes, according to whether they hold land as 
 tenants or have no access to the land at all. The 
 former are usually known as torpare. The system 
 which produced them was in origin as follows. The 
 larger landowners found their arable land separated 
 by natural causes into a patch here and a patch 
 there, with lakes and stretches of forest lying in be- 
 tween. It was consequently difficult for a single 
 man to superintend their cultivation, and holdings 
 were let out to tenants {torpare), vJho usually paid 
 their rent, not in money, a scarce commodity, but 
 by doing so many days' work per annum on the 
 landlord's own farm. The position of the torpare 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE 99 
 
 naturally varies considerably, and the system is far 
 more developed in some parts of the country than in 
 others. It has many drawbacks. The principal 
 claim of the torpare, taken up by the Socialist party, 
 is that landowners must either cultivate their land 
 themselves or let others cultivate it on legally estab- 
 lished conditions, and that no land must be left idle 
 while there is any one who desires to cultivate it. It 
 is maintained that it would not only enormously 
 benefit the torpare themselves, but that it would go 
 far towards providing land for the very large land- 
 less population; that it would increase the total 
 wealth of the country and do away with the necessity 
 which exists to-day of importing food on a large 
 scale ; that it would benefit not only the country but 
 also the town population, whose position is at pres- 
 ent threatened by the influx of masses of unem- 
 ployed persons, attracted thither from the country 
 by the hope of high wages, finally, that it would de- 
 crease emigration, which has in recent years as- 
 sumed large proportions. 
 
 An important law of 1909 provides for a tenure 
 of from fifty years (minimum) to one hundred years 
 (maximum), and secures to the tenant adequate 
 compensation for the improvements carried out by 
 him during his tenure. These concessions are far 
 from satisfying the torpare, but are admitted by 
 them to be a great improvement on the old system. 
 But there are difficulties from the side of the land- 
 lords, who are dissatisfied with the fifty years' 
 leases, and often prefer, therefore, not to contract 
 with their torpare for a new lease, but either to sell 
 
100 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the land or work it themselves. This may easily- 
 lead to a further increase of the landless population. 
 It seems clear, therefore, that the law of 1909 does 
 not provide a permanent solution, and that the 
 problem has still to be faced. 
 
 Finally we come to the agricultural labourer who 
 has no land to cultivate at all and is unable to get 
 any. This class has increased very rapidly during 
 the last few decades, on account both of the general 
 growth of the population and of the rising value of 
 timber, two circumstances which have sent up the 
 value of land. 
 
 The landless population accounts for no less than 
 43 per cent, of the inhabitants of Finland, and but 
 few of these can find an outlet in industry, which 
 plays but a small part in the country-side. They 
 live mainly as agricultural labourers and by work- 
 ing in the forests, much of their employment being 
 casual. It is from this class that most of the emi- 
 grants come, and they form the chief contingent of 
 the country people who stream into the towns. 
 
 The general situation in the country-side as re- 
 gards landholding is summarized in the following 
 table from the report of 1901 already referred to: 
 
 Households owning their holdings . . . 110,629 or 23 per cent. 
 " renting " " ... 160,525 " 34 " 
 " without any land 206,988 " 43 " 
 
 The poorer peasants, like the farmers, are very 
 hospitable, and there is something of the grand 
 seigneur in the simple and dignified way they enter- 
 tain one. Their usual mode of living, however, is 
 simple in the extreme. They eat mostly rye bread, 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE .' /./., 101 
 
 porridge, salt fish and meat, potatoes and curdled 
 milk, and their usual drink is coffee. Alcohol is 
 rarely obtainable in the country, but smoking is very 
 largely indulged in. Among the poorest people the 
 housing conditions are often very bad. The cot- 
 tages I have seen often seemed stuffy and dirty, and 
 there was a lamentable failure to appreciate the 
 advantages of fresh air and light. A lack of energy 
 and hopefulness characterized many of the men and 
 women, while the children were often pasty-faced 
 and thin. The latter looked as if they required more 
 air and better food, the former as if they needed 
 some one to give them a lead. 
 
 Not only is the air in the houses often extremely 
 stuffy, but there is much overcrowding. This is 
 partly due to failure of the landlords to provide 
 proper accommodation, but partly also to a genuine 
 preference of the peasants for the cosiness of living 
 all together, many of those who actually have, or 
 could afford, greater space not caring to avail them- 
 selves of the possibility. In former times it was 
 the custom to build a house as one large room, with 
 a hole in the roof through which the smoke could 
 ascend. In this room all the varied life of the house- 
 hold took place, and the hole in the roof kept the 
 air sweet and fresh. Nowadays houses are built 
 with separate rooms, and sometimes with windows 
 that cannot be opened and with stoves instead of 
 open fireplaces. In the absence of fresh air con- 
 sumption results. The disease increases and sana- 
 toria are built to combat it, but until people live 
 more healthily, the disease will prevail. 
 
103 FINIiAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 These remarks will fail of their purpose, however, 
 if they give the impression of the Finnish peasants 
 as being sickly people. They are, as a rule, remark- 
 ably strong and sturdy, although one cannot help 
 feeling that if they had more fresh air in their 
 houses, and did not live so much on salted food, they 
 would be still stronger and sturdier. Through the 
 long battle with adverse conditions they have ac- 
 quired some of the best qualities of the Scotch, in- 
 cluding a remarkable tenacity, endurance and thrift. 
 This is, among the best of them, combined with a 
 faith in God which has stood them in good stead in 
 their exceptionally hard struggle against the in- 
 tractable forces of Nature. Runeberg has expressed 
 this side of their nature admirably in the following 
 poem. **The Peasant Paavo"^: — 
 
 High, among the moors of Saarijarvi, 
 
 On his frosty farm, lived peasant Paavo, 
 
 Diligently managing his farming. 
 
 But his fruits he from the Lord expected. 
 
 There he dwelt in peace with wife and children; 
 
 Earned for them their bread, a scanty living; 
 
 Dug his ditches, ploughed his fields and sowed them. 
 
 Springtime came, and from the sprouting corn-plot. 
 Half the crops went off with melting snow-drifts: 
 Summer camq and then the pelting showers 
 Beat the ears to earth — ^just half the harvest; 
 Autumn came — the frost took the remainder. 
 
 Paavo's wife now tore her hair, lamenting: 
 "Paavo, Paavo, thou ill-fated husband! 
 
 ^ I have taken the translation appearing in Finland — an Mng^ 
 lish Journal devoted to the Cause of the Finnish People, some 
 numbers of which appeared in 1899 and 1900. 
 
THE COUNTRY-SIDE 103 
 
 Seize thy staff, the Lord hath us forsaken; 
 Begging bread is hard, but worse is dying I" 
 Paavo grasped his spouse's hand and uttered: 
 "The Lord is trying us, and not forsaking. 
 Thou must mix with bark our bread together; 
 Ditches I will dig in double numbers; 
 Erom the Lord will I expect a blessing." 
 
 So she mixed with bark their bread together; 
 Ditches dug he then in double numbers ; 
 Sold his flocks, and buying grain he sowed it. 
 
 Springtime came, and from the sprouting corn-fields 
 Nothing floated off with melting snow-drifts ; 
 Summer came and now the pelting showers 
 Beat the ears to earth — just half the harvest; 
 Autumn came — the frost took the remainder. 
 
 Paavo's wife then beat her breast, lamenting: 
 "Paavo, Paavo, thou ill-fated husband! 
 Let us die, the Lord hath us forsaken! 
 Death is hard, but ten times worse is living I'' 
 Paavo grasped his spouse's hand and uttered : 
 "The Lord is trying us, and not forsaking. 
 Twice as much of bark thou must be mixing 
 With the bread; I'll dig as many ditches. 
 Prom the Lord do I expect a blessing." 
 
 Twice as much of bark the wife now mixed 
 With the bread; he dug as many ditches; 
 Sold his kine, and buying corn he sowed it. 
 
 Springtime came, and from the sprouting corn-field 
 Nothing floated off with melting snow-drifts ; 
 Summer came and now the pelting showers 
 Beat no ears to earth in ripening corn-fields; 
 Autumn came — the frost, no more destroying. 
 Left the golden crops to greet the reaper. 
 
 Peasant Paavo bowed the knee, and uttered: 
 "The Lord hath tried us only, not forsaken," 
 
104 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 And his wife knelt down, and murmured with him ; 
 "The Lord hath tried us only, not forsaken/' 
 And with joy spoke she unto her husband : 
 "Paavo, Paavo, seize thy scythe, rejoicing; 
 It is time to live a life of gladness. 
 It is time to leave the bark for ever, 
 And to make our bread of pure corn only/''' 
 Paavo grasped his spouse^s hand and uttered: 
 "O Woman, no one bears his trials so calmly 
 As the man who ne'er forsakes his brother; 
 Twice as much of bark with bread then mix thou. 
 For frost-bitten stands our neighbour's cornfield." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 SOME COUNTRY-SIDE MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 
 
 WE should be making a mistake if, relying on 
 our impressions when travelling through 
 the country, we condoled overmuch with the Finnish 
 peasant on the loneliness and monotony of his life. 
 He has interests and resources of which we towns- 
 folk know nothing. His inner life is far richer than 
 we suspect. He reads Nature **as a scholar who 
 reads a book'* and sees things in her which to us 
 are quite hidden. He has the freedom of the lakes 
 and forests — a freedom only to be won by a life 
 lived among them. He has the peasant's profound 
 interest in all the works of Nature around him, in all 
 the simple and necessary processes of life as lived 
 in the days before towns were. He has the lore of 
 the hunter and the trapper. At the very gate of his 
 farm or holding lies the forest, still teeming with a 
 life of which town-dwellers have lost the secret, still 
 teeming, moreover, with animal and bird life. Eng- 
 land may have been something like it in the days 
 when it was covered with forests and a price was 
 paid for every wolf -skin. To-day the wolf is but 
 little seen in Finland, only coming in the winter and 
 returning to Russia with the approach of summer. 
 
 105 
 
106 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Nevertheless, it is not so long ago that the peasants 
 still constructed wolf -traps. A deep pit was dug and 
 covered with fir branches, and in the middle was 
 erected a pole to which was attached a cage contain- 
 ing a duck. The wolf jumped to seize the duck and 
 fell into the pit. Sometimes two or three were 
 caught in a single night. The bear, like the wolf, 
 is disappearing from Finland. He rarely molests 
 the peasants unless he is first disturbed, and one 
 could wish that he were left alone. As it is, his 
 winter home is marked by the peasants, who sell the 
 information to persons desirous of bagging a bear- 
 skin. In the old days bear-hunting was a great occu- 
 pation, partly because at that time the bears were 
 often destructive of crops and cattle. Many stories 
 are told of adventures with bears. A famous old 
 hunter, who in the course of his life killed 198 of 
 them, was once pursued by one up a tree. The bear 
 bit his leg and he fell on to its back, but with great 
 presence of mind he seized its fur and yelled out 
 *' March!'' upon which the frightened beast galloped 
 away, and the hunter slid off its back and escaped. 
 On another occasion, when his gun missed fire, the 
 same man saved his life by thrusting his arm right 
 into the open mouth of the bear that rushed at him. 
 This unnerved the bear and the hunter escaped with 
 a bad bite. In the old days the killing of a bear 
 was celebrated as a very important event, and his 
 deeds were sung over his dead body, as if he had 
 been a great human hero.^ 
 
 The elk is another creature which is fast disap- 
 ^ Cf . the description in the "Kalevala/' Euno 46. 
 
MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 107 
 
 pearing, in spite of its being protected by law. It is, 
 in a sense, a foe to the peasant, being very destruc- 
 tive of crops and young trees. The lynx is still to 
 be met within the depths of the forest, and every- 
 where foxes abound. One can still see in places an 
 interesting old type of fox-trap. A long stake is 
 fixed in the ground, and is shaped at the top like a 
 three-pronged fork, the central prong being the long- 
 est. The edges of the prongs are sharp, like knives. 
 Some bait is fixed at the top, and when the fox jumps 
 for it, his paws are caught between the prongs and 
 he cannot escape. 
 
 Of the birds of the country, the commonest are 
 the blackcock, the partridge, the hazel-grouse and 
 the capercailzie, in shooting which the peasant is 
 accompanied by his sporting dog, a kind of wolf- 
 hound. In the far north are swans and wild geese 
 and eider-ducks in great quantities, nor is the eagle 
 unknown. Near the coast wild ducks abound. Fish- 
 ing is carried on both in the sea and in the great 
 lakes and rivers. Salmon-fishing on a large scale 
 takes place on many of the latter, especially in the 
 north, the fish being caught in pens. This practice 
 has much spoiled the country for the angler. Never- 
 theless, angling is a very popular pursuit among 
 the peasants, especially among those living near the 
 great lakes. The Finnish temperament finds in 
 angling a particularly congenial recreation. The 
 coast population naturally rely upon sea-fishing for 
 a large part of their livelihood, the Baltic herring 
 being the principal catch. 
 
 In winter, fishing is carried on extensively 
 
108 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 througli holes in the ice. Large colonies of fisher- 
 men camp out on the frozen sea, often having horses 
 and sledges with them. It happens nearly every 
 winter that the ice cracks and one or more fishing 
 colonies are carried out to sea on gigantic icefloes. 
 They are then at the mercy of wind and wave; if 
 they are fortunate, the wind that has blown them out 
 to sea will change, and they will be blown ashore 
 again. But it often happens that they are on the 
 floe for days before being picked up by passing ves- 
 sels or by the boats that go in search of them. 
 Sometimes the floe may break up into several pieces, 
 each with its contingent of human beings. The men 
 take it all very coolly. Like miners, they seem to 
 be indifferent to the great perils they are exposed 
 to, and often they are carried out to sea because they 
 have been too careless to set a proper watch. If the 
 crack were reported at once they could, of course, 
 get ashore before it became too wide. 
 
 Seal-shooting on the frozen sea is an important 
 winter pursuit. The peasant lies flat on a sledge 
 which he propels with his feet. In front of the 
 sledge is fixed a white board or sheet, so that the 
 seals may not notice the approach of the sledge 
 across the snow. The peasant then stalks the seal 
 till he is near enough to get a shot. Sometimes the 
 sledge is dispensed with, in which case the hunter 
 wears a white overall and a white cap and creeps 
 along on his stomach. 
 
 Of the felling of timber and its transport to the 
 coast we shall speak in another chapter. But there 
 is one other pursuit of the Finnish peasant of which 
 
MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 109 
 
 a word should be said here, namely, tar-burning. 
 Tar-pits used to be common throughout the country, 
 and even to-day a great deal of tar is burned in the 
 north chiefly for purposes of export. The method 
 is to extract the tar from the wood by means of heat. 
 When the tar has been extracted, it is run into bar- 
 rels, which are sometimes attached to shafts, so that 
 a horse can draw them along as if they were car- 
 riages composed solely of large wheels. If it is not 
 wanted for home use, the tar is taken to the nearest 
 waterway and put into boats for transport to the 
 coast. These boats are designed to shoot the numer- 
 ous rapids en route. They are about 30 feet long 
 and only 3 feet broad, very lightly built so as to 
 yield before a slight shock, but with lofty sides to 
 keep out the foaming water. The skill and nerve 
 required for steering these boats are very great, 
 but accidents very seldom occur. The first plunge 
 into a rapid, the noise of which you have heard for 
 several minutes before, is a fine sensation. The 
 boat seems like a wild creature released, speeding 
 along in the first ecstasy of freedom; it seems to 
 have acquired a life of its own, to exercise choice, 
 to take pleasure in the sinuous curves of its body as 
 it neatly shaves the foam-capped rocks and threads 
 its way between the dangers that menace it. At 
 times, especially if you have your eye fixed on the 
 banks, you seem to be gliding forward with astound- 
 ing velocity. At other times, it seems as if your 
 boat, save for the tossing, stood still in a rough sea, 
 the crested waves of which rushed upon it with the 
 intent to destroy. Look at the banks, however, and 
 
110 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the illusion vanishes. When you emerge from the 
 rapids to smooth water the silence is overwhelming. 
 
 For the peasant the country-side is still alive with 
 spirits which townsfolk have lost the power of 
 seeing, but which have to be seriously reckoned 
 with by the tiller of the soil. There are still living 
 persons who claim to have seen mermaids and the 
 Lady of the Forest, and little old men sometimes 
 help the labourer at his work. Sand eddies conceal 
 witches who travel along in them. Spirits have 
 been known to unharness horses that an instant 
 before were ready to start. Cows are still ridden by 
 the nightmare. To protect them one must put a 
 knife in the wall above the stall. Another way of 
 shielding cows from harm of any kind is to make a 
 hole in the threshold of the cow-house and put quick- 
 silver in it. Many ordinary occurrences forebode 
 important events. If squirrels build near a house 
 it is believed that one of the inmates will die shortly. 
 The loss of a tooth is also supposed to indicate a 
 death. If a cat runs across the road you will have 
 bad luck, and as a preventive should spit three times. 
 Visitors will come if the cat licks its paws or if your 
 nose tickles. Breaking things indicates a wedding, 
 and so on. Eecourse is still had to charms for the 
 curing of sickness, the healing of wounds, for luck 
 in fishing, hunting, weaving, churning, agriculture 
 and love and the evil eye is still feared and guarded 
 against. , 
 
 Dr. Gunnar Landtman, who is well known for his 
 explorations among the tribes of the South Pacific, 
 
MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 111 
 
 was given a most circumstantial account of how a 
 shepherd boy in South Finland saw the Lady of the 
 Forest. **She stood leaning against a high pine- 
 tree and looked very beautiful. She was wearing a 
 fine large hat. The shepherd boy was on a hill when 
 he became aware of her and she looked at him flaunt- 
 ingly. When he opened the gate and called out the 
 cows she turned and fled. There was a fine aspen 
 grove in the place and the tree-tops swayed when she 
 ran, so that she was followed by a kind of hissing 
 sound. She was very ugly behind. For this rea- 
 son wood-nymphs do not like being seen from be- 
 hind.'' The same author was told about two coun- 
 try-girls who **came to a stream and saw some one 
 sitting on a plank that was stretched across it. At 
 first they thought that it was a human being. *Do 
 you see that?' said one of the girls. At the same 
 moment the creature plunged into the water and dis- 
 appeared. Then the girls knew that it was the 
 water-spirit. They were so near that they could 
 have hit her with a stick. The creature looked like 
 a woman; she was washing herself when they saw 
 her, and her breasts were so long that she threw 
 them over her shoulder. She had no clothes on 
 and was quite naked. Her hair was black and long. ' ' 
 Dr. Landtman records the following mysterious 
 adventure that happened to a fisherman who went 
 out in his boat one Sunday morning. While fishing 
 he caught half a perch on his hook. He was sur- 
 prised, but thought that the perch had in some way 
 lost its tail. Presently there was another bite, but 
 no fish came, and immediately afterwards a voice 
 
112 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 said, ** Stump, come back." The man, however, was 
 not frightened and continued to fish. Then a great 
 hand arose above the surface of the water, and sud- 
 denly the fisherman was cast ashore, boat and all. 
 When he came to, the perch was gone without his 
 knowing how it had happened. He didn't dare to 
 put out again and after that never fished on a Sun- 
 day morning. 
 
 A whole book might be written on the curious 
 habits and customs and beliefs that still survive in 
 the Finnish country-side and help to enrich its life. 
 Finland is indeed unusually interesting from this 
 point of view, because its folk-lore is derived not 
 only from the primitive Finns but also from the 
 primitive Scandinavians. Dr. Landtman's stories 
 are all taken from a Swedish-speaking tract quite 
 close to Helsingfors. Swedish Osterbotten is an 
 even richer field. 
 
 Social life plays a greater part in the country 
 than the great distances separating villages would 
 lead one to imagine. The peasants meet mostly on 
 Sundays, when it is the custom in the lake districts 
 and in the lagoons to row to church in the enor- 
 mous church-boats, which hold young men and 
 maidens, old men and children, and are as spacious 
 as Noah's Ark. They belong to the village or com- 
 mune that builds them, and often have room for 
 more than a hundred people. There are a dozen or 
 more pairs of oars and each oar is so big that it is 
 pulled by two persons. Near the church several 
 such boats may be seen moored, and after the serv- 
 
MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 113 
 
 ice they race each other home as far as their routes 
 converge, enjoying the wildest excitement. 
 
 The churches are mostly built of timber and have 
 a certain picturesque quality in the landscape. The 
 bell-tower usually stands separate from the church. 
 The pastor, who is appointed and supported by the 
 congregation, has a large house near by, and in 
 old days travellers went as a matter of course to 
 the parsonage for food and lodging. In every 
 church is hung a copy of the Act of Assurance by 
 which Alexander I guaranteed Finland her consti- 
 tutional liberties. As churches are quite out of the 
 reach of some of the people, especially of those 
 dwelling on remote islands, open-air services are 
 often held in the summer by the seashore. 
 
 The Church has played an important part in the 
 life of Finland, especially in the sphere of educa- 
 tion.^ But of recent decades it has lost much of its 
 hold upon the people. The Socialists have been re- 
 sponsible -for a good deal of anti-religious propa- 
 ganda and the Church itself has got rather out of 
 touch with the needs of modern life. But what has 
 done most of all to discredit religion in Finland has 
 been the attitude taken up by the clergy towards 
 the russianizing of their country. A few, indeed, 
 boldly took their stand on the constitution and 
 spoke out nobly, but the majority gave way from 
 motives of expediency, thereby losing the confidence 
 not only of the intellectuals but of large numbers 
 of the working classes. Rarely has a finer chance 
 been thrown away. 
 
 1 Cf . Chapter X 
 
114 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Harvest-time is the signal for great social gather- 
 ings. The peasants of the neighbourhood assemble 
 at the farm where haymaking or harvesting is going 
 on, and work together during the day and feast 
 and dance at night. All who work are entitled to 
 \ share in the feasting. These dances are unforget- 
 table. Many of the peasants dance astonishingly 
 well, and there is a naturalness and enthusiasm 
 about the whole thing which compares very favour- 
 ably with the more ceremonious and blase dancing 
 in fashionable ball-rooms. In parts of the country 
 the midsummer dance survives. On Midsummer 
 Eve you get into a farm cart trimmed with birch- 
 branches and filled with hay, amid which you lie, and 
 are driven through the light Northern night to the 
 accompaniment of an old fiddler who sits on a chair 
 in a corner of the cart. Singing and talking, you 
 bump along the not very good road until towards 
 midnight you come to a village green, in the centre 
 of which a gaily decorated maypole has been erected. 
 Here, in the delicious cool, you dance around the 
 maypole and revel in the joy of a night that never 
 grows dark. In the early hours of the morning you 
 drive back, perhaps dozing in your bed of hay, and 
 after getting your oars from the tree under which 
 you have hidden them, row across the silent fjord 
 and creep along the path through a pinewood to 
 your home. 
 
 In many parts of Finland the old pagan custom 
 of dancing and singing around a fire on Midsummer 
 Eve continues, and still in the twentieth century the 
 young people may be seen leaping over the flames. 
 
MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 115 
 
 At Whitsuntide, also, such fires are made, to cele- 
 brate the return of sunlight and warmth to the earth, 
 and the peasants sing ancient runes — so ancient that 
 in some places, like E-istala, near Tavastehus, the 
 very meaning of the words sung has been forgotten 
 beyond recovery. 
 
 Apart from the harvest and midsummer, it is the 
 Church festivals that are celebrated most enthusi- 
 astically. Easter has its painted eggs, as in other 
 countries, and a special dish called ^^memma,'' 
 which is made of malt, sweetened and boiled till it 
 becomes quite thick, and served in birch-bark bas- 
 kets. It is eaten with lots of cream and sugar. 
 Easter, for some reason, is a great time for chil- 
 dren to swing. All Saints' Day is remarkable as 
 the day on which servants' contracts take effect or 
 expire in the country districts — for servants are 
 engaged there by the year. Shrove Tuesday is cele- 
 brated by eating large buns, which are placed in a 
 soup-plate filled with milk and swell to a most em- 
 barrassing size. 
 
 Christmas is, of course, the greatest feast of all, 
 and preparations are made for it long beforehand. 
 Bread is baked, ale is brewed, and the eleborate 
 treatment of the stockfish is taken in hand. As the 
 festival approaches, the whole house in washed and 
 cleaned and the floor is covered with clean straw. 
 On Christmas Eve the whole family retires to the 
 bath-hut and undergoes the tremendous purgation 
 of the Finnish bath, afterwards perhaps taking a 
 roll in the snow. Then follows a meal from the 
 Christmas fare of rice porridge and stockfish. Nor 
 
116 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 have the animals, in the midst of whom Our Lord 
 was born, been forgotten. They are given extra 
 food, and a sheaf of corn has been put out for the 
 birds. The family retires early to rest, the chil- 
 dren often sleeping on the straw in memory of the 
 Christ-child who was born in a manger. Sometimes 
 what is called a *^ heaven" is suspended from the 
 ceiling. It is a framework of threads covered with 
 straws and decorated with pieces of paper cut in 
 the shape of stars and other appropriate emblems. 
 Lit up from below by candle and firelight it has a 
 beautiful transparent effect, and must seem very 
 lovely to a child. On Christmas morning all rise 
 very early, while it is still dark. They may have 
 to drive very many miles before reaching the church 
 in time for the six o'clock service. All do honour to 
 the great festival, according to their means. The 
 best horses are put into the sledges, which are cov- 
 ered with bright rugs, and as many bells as possible 
 are attached to the harness to make a merry sound. 
 Nor is this early morning drive entirely through 
 pitch darkness. For all, both high and low, have 
 placed lighted candles in their windows to celebrate 
 the Saviour's birthday, and every house or cottage 
 you pass flashes to you the good news. In the old 
 days there used to be a man holding a torch, who 
 stood at the back of the seldge and lit up the road 
 for you, but this custom has died out. When you 
 reach the church you find that this, like the cottages, 
 is brilliantly lighted with candles. They stand 
 everywhere — not merely in the conventional places, 
 but here, there and everywhere, and especially in 
 
MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 117 
 
 the windows. From the outside the church shines 
 through the darkness like a vast and brilliant lan- 
 tern. Tied along a fence near by is a long row of 
 horses and sledges; the breath of the horses issues 
 in clouds of white steam. At the end of the service 
 there is a rush for the sledges, for it is the custom 
 to race home from church. If the way lies in part 
 across a frozen lake, a tremendous pace may be 
 attained and there is the keenest excitement as half 
 a dozen sledges strain abreast. The remainder of 
 the day begun thus strenuously is usually spent in 
 eating the Christmas ham and other seasonable fare, 
 and in quietly resting. On St. Stephen's Day it is 
 customary for the young people to go out driving 
 and wish each other a good year for the flax, and on 
 New Year's Eve you melt tin and throw it in water 
 to harden, after which you hold it up against the 
 wall and see your future in the shadow it casts or in 
 the shape the hardened tin assumes. 
 
 The marriage customs are interesting and vary 
 greatly in different parts of Finland. In some 
 places the proposal is still made, not by the lover, 
 but by a friend acting on his behalf. The wedding 
 is a great event among the richer peasants and ^ 
 recalls echoes of the wedding described in the **Kale- 
 vala," the feasting in some cases lasting no less 
 than three days. The bride is dressed by a woman 
 who is the official village bride-dresser. If the bride 
 had misbehaved in her earlier life her wreath used 
 to be made in a different way from that worn by 
 other brides. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting of all the old mar- 
 
118 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 riage customs in Finland is one that has not yet 
 disappeared among the Swedish population of Oster- 
 botten. 
 
 Between nine and ten of a Saturday evening the 
 youths of the village meet, dressed in their best 
 clothes, and stand and talk for some time, waiting 
 for the girls to go to bed. Presently they disperse, 
 moving off unobtrusively each to visit his own girl. 
 If he is engaged, a boy may go openly to the place 
 where his sweetheart is living, but otherwise it is 
 de rigueur not to let the others know which girl he 
 visits. The girls are free to admit or refuse admis- 
 sion to any boy, but when once they are engaged the 
 girl is expected to admit her betrothed only. 
 
 In the old days the girls of a farm usually slept 
 all together, but nowadays they sleep, as a rule, in 
 a hut outside the main building or have a room to 
 themselves, thus en'joying privacy for these noc- 
 turnal visits. In the summer, moreover, these meet- 
 ings very often take place in the remote-lying huts 
 or cottages where the girls live in order to be near 
 the pasturing cattle and to be able to make butter 
 and cheese on the spot, without having to transport 
 the milk many miles to the farm. The girls take a 
 great pride in these saeters and make them look 
 as gay and attractive as possible, hanging up their 
 prettiest handkerchiefs and petticoats as ornaments. 
 When a boy who is not engaged comes to the place 
 where the girl he desires to visit sleeps, a curious 
 ritual takes place. The boy taps on the window, 
 and the proper thing is to use a cigarette-holder, or 
 something else that makes a sharp noise. It ought 
 
MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 119 
 
 to sound as much as possible like the click of a tele- 
 graph apparatus. After tapping, the boy waits a 
 little and then calls out, ^*Do you hear anything?'' 
 If he fails to get an answer he taps again, louder and 
 longer, and says: — 
 
 "Kick the fur to the feet. 
 Kick between the wall-beams your sleep; 
 Put your foot on the floor, 
 Your hand on the door 
 And let us meet. 
 
 Why in the name of all the devils are the girls so 
 mighty and proud that they don't care to get up and 
 answer an honest village boy? Don't you hear?" 
 
 Usually a voice is heard from within saying, 
 ^* Hullo, there!" 
 
 Then the boy exclaims: **0f course you must 
 have heard. Aren't you getting up? It is such a 
 small trouble to get up and see what a boy wants 
 this evening." 
 
 **Well, it isn't such a trouble," says the girl. 
 
 **It isn't so great that you haven't done something 
 greater before. You are coming after all, aren't 
 you?" says the boy. 
 
 Then the girl comes to the window and draws the 
 curtain, so that she can see the boy. They say 
 **good evening," and then the boy asks: 
 
 **What is going on in there, now," 
 
 **I am only sleeping," she replies. 
 
 ** Perhaps you have a sleepy boy with you," he 
 continues. 
 
 ^*No, I've no naughty sweetheart," she answers. 
 
 ** Aren't you going to let me in." he says. 
 
120 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 **I don't know if I will/' she replies. 
 
 **0h, you will surely let me in," he pleads. 
 
 And then she either agrees, saying, '*A11 right, 
 then, I will," or refuses, saying, **I won't let you 
 in this evening. Good night" in which case he has 
 to go off without further ado. 
 
 * ' If the girl is willing to receive him, however, she 
 goes to the door in her underskirt and admits him, 
 lights the lamp if it is dark (in the height of sum- 
 mer it is light all night), and then gets into bed 
 again. Presently the bgy asks if he may stay with 
 her overnight, and if she fays yes, he is allowed to 
 take off his boots, coat, waistcoat and collar, put out 
 the light and lie down at her side. If a boy to whom 
 she is not engaged attempts to undress more the 
 girl leaves him. The night is spent in talking, and 
 in the morning the girl gets up and makes coffee, 
 after which the young man departs, thanking her 
 for a good lodging. 
 
 If a boy from another village turns up, his friends 
 consider it only hospitable to secure him night 
 quarters also. But one of them must go with him 
 to explain to the girl who he is and guarantee his 
 respectability. Any boy who misbehaves very soon 
 forfeits his right to night quarters, for the report 
 travels rapidly round the village and none of the 
 girls will have anything to do with him. 
 
 The origin of this custom, which seems to have 
 been common at one time all over the north of Scan- 
 dinavia, was that, owing to the great distances sepa- 
 rating them and to the hardness of the life, young 
 people had very few chances of meeting openly and 
 
MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS 121 
 
 getting to know each other. In these days the con- 
 ditions are changed and the custom is no doubt 
 doomed to disappear.^ 
 
 ^ For my description of this custom I have followed closely 
 the account of it given in Brage's "Arskrift," 1908. 
 
 X. 
 
 \ 
 
V 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 
 
 BEFORE proceeding further it is desirable to 
 glance at the racial mind of the people we are 
 studying, as it is expressed in their ancient poetry. 
 This poetry was probably composed by a variety of 
 runo-singers or minstrels during the centuries im- 
 mediately preceding the introduction of Christianity 
 into Finland. But as it was handed down orally 
 from father to son for generations, in the course 
 of time it naturally received many influences from 
 Christianity, and opinions differ greatly as to the 
 pre- or post-Christian composition of many of the 
 runos. The songs were sung by two singers who sat 
 opposite each other, clasped hands, and swayed 
 forwards and backwards to the accompaniment of a 
 harp. One sang a line, which the other repeated, 
 thus giving the first one time to think out the next 
 line. It is described in the opening lines of the 
 poem : — 
 
 Let us clasp our hands together. 
 Let us interlock our fingers; 
 Let us sing a cheerful measure. 
 Let us use our best endeavours, 
 While our dear ones hearken to us, 
 And our loved ones are instructed, 
 122 
 
THE WOELD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 123 
 
 While the young are standing round us. 
 Of the rising generation, 
 Let them learn the words of magic, 
 And recall our songs and legends. 
 
 These my father sang aforetime. 
 As he carved his hatchet'si handle. 
 And my mother taught me likewise, 
 As she turned around her spindle. 
 When upon the floor, an infant. 
 At her knees she saw me tumbling. 
 As a helpless child, milk-bearded. 
 As a babe with mouth all milky. 
 
 We have already seen Tiow the fragments of this 
 ancient poetry were collected and fashioned into a 
 whole by Elias Lonnrot, and shall now regard it 
 mainly as it throws light on the world of the ancient 
 Finns. The word ** primitive'' strikes its key-note. 
 The earth itself is a primitive, pre-human place, 
 which, together with the sun, the moon and the 
 clouds, has been formed out of the broken fragments 
 of a teaPs egg, which the teal had laid on the knee 
 of the Water Mother, who, before she had descended 
 from the sky and been fertilized by wind and wave, 
 had been the Virgin of the Air. When the earth 
 has been formed, Man, in the person of the aged 
 bard Wainamoinen, issues from the Water Mother's 
 womb. The world as it presents itself to him (or 
 to the primitive people who created him) is on a 
 vast scale. He himself lay thirty years in his 
 mother's womb, and when he forced his way out and 
 fell into the surrounding water he was tossed about 
 on the sea for eight years before reaching land. 
 The land, too, was primitive and vast, as it must 
 
124 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 have appeared to those who first attempted to sub- 
 due it, and it was full of powers hostile to man, 
 which had to be propitiated. We read of an oak- 
 tree that grew so vast that it overshadowed the en- 
 tire country, hiding the sun and the moon. Even 
 inanimate things, such as iron and wood, have the 
 power of speech, while birds and beasts talk freely. 
 Indeed, the animal world is of very great impor- 
 tance to the inhabitants of these huge wastes. Thus 
 an eagle saves Wainamoinen by conveying him on 
 its back from the sea, when, after swimming for 
 many days, he begins to feel faint; and when the 
 northern maiden Aino is drowned, it is the hare that 
 takes the news to her family. Aino herself is turned 
 into a fish, and as such is caught by her old lover 
 Wainamoinen, only to escape into the water again 
 and mock him. 
 The population of Kalevala (the Land of Heroes,) 
 ^ seems to live in small groups, separated by great 
 N stretches of water, forest and moorland. It is a pre- 
 civilized life they lead, and the finer shades of feel- 
 ; and expression, such as a lyrical sense of the beauty 
 / of the earth and of motherhood, coexist with the 
 (^ thoughts and customs of a barbarous age. One is 
 reminded of early art, where the conception is hu- 
 man but the lines are stiff and unyielding. These 
 heroes and heroines still have much unassimilated 
 metal in their composition — they are often metallic 
 to the touch. But they by no means resemble the 
 stark and mighty figures of Icelandic saga or of the 
 Nibelungenlied, their metal being of quite a different 
 quality. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 125 
 
 The story and characters are not exclusively Fin- 
 nish in origin, but their relation to other sagas can- 
 not be discussed here. It is enough that they are 
 profoundly informed and moulded by Finnish feel- 
 ing and thought. 
 
 The principal men in the story are "Wainamoinen, 
 the aged bard, whose origin we have already seen," 
 and who is renowned for his wisdom, his singing and 
 his magic ; Ilmarinen, the mighty smith, who rejoices 
 in his forge; Lemminkainen, a jolly, hot-headed, 
 reckless rascal, who is a favourite with the girls 
 and is always getting into trouble; and KuUervo, 
 a tragic figure whose hand is against every man^s. 
 Of the heroines must be mentioned especially Louhi, 
 the mistress of Pohjola (the North), who is an ex- 
 tremely formidable personage, and her daughter, 
 the Maiden of Pohjola. These two women it is dif- 
 ficult to characterize, as they appear in many con- 
 tradictory parts and are obviously the creations of 
 several different minds. 
 
 The motive that unites these and the minor char- 
 acters of the poem is the forging of Sampo, the 
 magic mill, and its transference from Pohjola to 
 Kalevala. Closely associated with this are the at- 
 tempts made by the heroes to win the beautiful 
 Madien of Pohjola as bride. 
 
 The great power in this ancient world-order is 
 magic, and almost anything can be achieved by its 
 means. By it Wainamoinen sings his enemy Jouka- 
 hainen into a swamp, and Ilmarinen actually forges 
 himself a new wife, though it is true he fails to give 
 her life and warmth. In every emergency recourse 
 
 \ 
 
126 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 is had to it, and the magical spells in the **Kale- 
 vala^' are innumerable and often wearisome. In 
 order to control anything you must know and relate 
 to its origin. You can then do what you like with 
 it. Almost any risk is worth taking in order to 
 master a powerful spell, and Wainamoinen actually 
 goes down to Tuonela, the kingdom of death and 
 hell, in order to secure three magic words necessary 
 for the construction of a boat he is building. Their 
 ancient reputation as magicians clings to the Finns 
 even to-day, and it is commonly believed among 
 sailors of other nations that the Finn has the power 
 of calling up storms. In Kalevala the magical 
 world and the natural world have not yet been dif- 
 ferentiated ; magic mingles at every turn with daily 
 life and there seems to be no sense of inconsistency. 
 At one and the same moment we are face to face 
 ness of every-day home life, as when Joukahainen, 
 with the most powerful sorcery and with the cosi- 
 sunk chin-deep in the filthy swamp by magic spells, 
 beseeches Wainamoinen — 
 
 Speak thy word of magic backwards. 
 Break the spell that overwhelms me I 
 You shall have my sister Aino, 
 I will give my mother's daughter. 
 She shall dust your chamber for you. 
 Sweep the flooring with, her besom. 
 Keep the milkpots all in order: 
 And shall wash your garments for you. 
 Golden fabrics she shall weave you. 
 And shall bake your cakesi of honey. 
 
 Upon which Wainamoinen, who desires a wife for 
 his old age, dissolves the spell. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 127 
 
 While these excursions into the realm of magic 
 and descriptions of life on a huge scale have their 
 interest, it must be admitted that after a time they 
 become tedious to any but a student of folk-lore. 
 They create an atmosphere of primitive life, indeed, 
 but there is too much of it. The most attractive 
 and interesting side of the poem, apart from its 
 literary beauties, is the descriptions it gives of the 
 manners and customs of the primitive Finns. 
 
 -/There are many references to agriculture, but the 
 real interests of the men are rather to be found in 
 hunting, fighting, magic and love. When Lemmin- 
 kainen desires the daughter of Louhi in marriage he 
 is set three tasks: to capture the elk of Hiisi, to 
 bridle the fire-breathing horse of Hiisi, and to shoot 
 a certain swan — all exploits of the hunter — and a 
 whole runo is devoted to the description of how 
 .Wainamoinen killed a bear and of the great feast 
 that followed. Fighting, however, plays a smaller 
 part than in most other epics and does not seem to 
 have been regarded with great enthusiasm, but 
 rather as an unavoidable evil. It is usually an in- 
 dividual affair, and although one hears of bodies of 
 men engaged in it, as in the great struggle for the 
 Sampo, what most interested the audience was evi- 
 dently the description of single combats. Magic 
 plays an important part in fighting and is resorted 
 to where possible as a substitute for physical force. 
 In fact, war is at least as much a matter of super- 
 natural as of natural agencies. The heroes are not 
 ashamed of telling lies to their enemies ; indeed, it 
 seems rather creditable to do so if one is not found 
 
128 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 out. Nor are they ashamed to express their feelings 
 by weeping. They have a great and almost childish 
 delight in bright fresh objects, such as axes, swords, 
 nicely appointed sledges and shields. Take, for in- 
 stance, this description of a boat built by Waina- 
 moinen : — 
 
 There the pale grey boat is lying. 
 And the boat with red he painted. 
 And adorned the prow with gilding. 
 And with silver overlaid it; 
 Then upon the morning after. 
 Very early in the morning. 
 Pushed his boat into the water, 
 In the waves the hundred-boarded. 
 Pushed it from the barkless rollers. 
 Prom the rounded logs of pine-tree. 
 Then he raised a mast upon it; 
 On the masts the sails he hoisted. 
 Raised a red sail on the vessel. 
 And another blue in colour; 
 Then the boat himself he boarded. 
 And he walked upon the planking. 
 And upon the sea he steered it, 
 O^er the blue and plashing billows. 
 
 Here, again, is a description of a spear: — 
 
 Then the smith a spear constructed, 
 'Not a long one, not a short one. 
 But of middle length he forged it. 
 On the blade a wolf was sitting. 
 On the edge a bear was standing. 
 At the joint an elk was trotting. 
 On the shaft a colt was running. 
 At the end a reindeer leaping. 
 Then fresh snow was gently falling. 
 And a little snow had drifted 
 As it drifts in early autumn, 
 "White as is the hare in winter. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 129 
 
 Nor are they indifferent to their personal appear- 
 ance and to the joy of bright colours, as the follow- 
 ing description of Ilmarinen dressing for his wed- 
 ding shows: — 
 
 Then she brought him finest stockings. 
 
 Which, as maid, had wove his mother. 
 
 And with these his shins he covered. 
 
 And his calves were hidden by them. 
 
 Then she brought him shoes that fitted. 
 
 Best of Saxon boots she brought him. 
 
 And with these the stockings covered 
 
 "Which his mother sewed as maiden; 
 
 Then a coat of blue she chose him, 
 
 "With a liver-coloured lining, " 
 
 Covering thus the shirt of linen, 
 
 "Which of finest flax was fashioned; 
 
 Then an overcoat of woollen. 
 
 Of four kinds of cloth constructed. 
 
 O'er the coat of bluish colour. 
 
 Of the very latest fashion. 
 
 And a new fur, thousand-buttoned. 
 
 And a hundred-fold more splendid. 
 
 O'er the overcoat of woollen, 
 
 And the cloth completely hiding; 
 
 Eound his waist a belt she fastened. 
 
 And the belt was gold-embroidered, 
 
 "Which his mother wrought as maiden. 
 
 Wrought it when a fair-haired maiden; 
 
 Brightly coloured gloves she brought him. . . . 
 
 Which his father once had purchased. 
 
 When as bridegroom he adorned him. 
 
 As regards home-life and family relationships, 
 the people of Kalevala have an extraordinary affec- 
 'Hion for their mothers. This, indeed, is one of the 
 most beautiful features of the poems. The bride, 
 when she is being instructed in her new duties, is 
 warned never to forget her own mother :—- 
 
130 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 For it was thy mother reared thee. 
 And her beauteous breasts that nursed thee, 
 From her own delightful body. 
 From her form of perfect whiteness. 
 Many nights has she lain sleepless. 
 Many meals has she forgotten, 
 While she rocked thee in her cradle, 
 JWatching fondly o'er her infant. 
 
 If she forgets her mother the daughters of the 
 kingdom of death will reproach her: — 
 
 Why hast thou forgot thy mother. 
 
 Or despised thy dearest mother? 
 
 Great the sufferings of thy mother. 
 
 Great her sufferings when she bore thee, ^ 
 
 Lying groaning in the bath-room. 
 
 On a couch of straw extended. 
 
 When she gave thee thy existence. 
 
 Giving birth to thee, the vile one! 
 
 Wainamoinen, hero and sage as he is, turns to his 
 mother for comfort in his distress, saying : — 
 
 Would my mother now were living. 
 And my aged mother waking! 
 She would surely tell me truly 
 How to best support my trouble. 
 That my grief may not overwhelm me. 
 And my sorrow may not crush me. 
 In these weary days of evil, 
 In this time of deep depression. 
 
 Even the rascally Lemminkainen pities his mother 
 when he realizes how all her children are scattered 
 and remembers 
 
 How like flowers we gathered round thee, 
 In one homeland, just like berries. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 131 
 
 He turns to her for aid in every scrape. One of 
 the finest episodes in the ^^Kalevala" is that in which 
 Lemminkainen's mother, learning of her son's 
 death, goes in search of his body, rakes the water of 
 the cataract in which he has been drowned until 
 she has collected all the scattered fragments and 
 joined them into a whole, and restores him to life 
 with the help of magic and the gods. 
 
 The formidable position occupied by the mother 
 in a household is seen from the instructions given 
 to the bride as regards her attitude to her mother-in- 
 law. The newly married couple did not have a 
 separate establishment, but lived patriarchally in 
 the house of the bridegroom's parents, and the 
 mother-in-law could, if she chose, make herself re- 
 markably unpleasant to the young bride and give 
 her all the hard work. An old woman warns the 
 bride of her own sad experiences in this respect 
 saying:— 
 
 Fodder gathered I in summer. 
 Winter worked I with the pitchfork, 
 Even as a labourer toiling. 
 Even as a hired servant. 
 And my mother-in-law for ever. 
 Evermore for me selected 
 "Worst of all the flails of threshing. 
 Heaviest mallet from the bath-room. 
 Prom the beach the heaviest mallet. 
 In the stall the largest pitchfork. 
 Never did they think me weary, 
 I^or my weakness e^er considered. 
 Though my work had wearied heroes. 
 Or the strength of foals exhausted. 
 
 Old women were often powerful magicians, and 
 
132 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 this, no doubt, accounts in part for the respect in 
 which they were held. The young wife, on the 
 other hand, seems to have been very much kept 
 in her place, and going to a new home was almost as 
 delicate an operation for her as walking on eggs. 
 The instructions given her are of real interest, 
 throwing much light on the life of that time. For 
 instance : — 
 
 If you see the Great Bear clearly. 
 With his front to south directed, 
 And his tail extending northward. 
 Then 'tis time for thee to rouse thee 
 From the side of thy young husband. 
 Leaving him asleep and ruddy, 
 Fire to seek among the ashes. 
 Seeking for a spark in fire-box, 
 Blowing then the fire discreetly. 
 That from carelessness it spread not. 
 
 After lighting the fire there are the cattle to be 
 attended to, and by the time that is done the baby 
 will be crying, and she must return home *4ike a 
 blizzard'' to comfort it. The room has to be done, 
 so she comes along with a bucket of water, a besom, 
 and a pine-chip, and has to be kind even to other 
 people's babies who may interrupt her: — 
 
 Sweep thou then the floor to cleanness. 
 Sweep thou carefully the planking, 
 And upon the floor pour water, 
 Not upon the heads of babies. 
 If you see a child there lying, 
 Though thy sister-in-law's the infant, 
 Tip upon the bench then lift it, 
 Wash its eyes, and smooth its hair down. 
 Put some bread into its bandies, . 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 133 
 
 And upon the bread spread butter; 
 But if bread perchance be wanting 
 Put a chip into its bandies. 
 
 The cleaning of the room is a really formidable 
 affair, but she must never venture to get tired or 
 rest; for her husband will be coming in from his 
 work and she must take him a basin and towel and 
 be nice to him. And then there is her mother-in-law 
 to help. Water has to be fetched, the dough has to 
 be kneaded, the corn must be ground in a handmill, 
 logs have to be taken to the bakehouse, the oven 
 heated and the baking done. She must not linger 
 with her bucket by the water, lest her father-in-law 
 or mother-in-law imagine that she wishes to see her 
 charms reflected there, which would never do. She 
 must make no noise when she gets the wood, because 
 they might think she was flinging it about in a tem- 
 per. When she does the washing-up she must be 
 careful to count the spoons and dishes, for there are 
 dogs, cats and birds about and **the village swarms 
 with children." Then there is spinning and weav- 
 ing to be done, for the family requires thick woolen 
 garments, and there is also ale to be brewed. The 
 young wife must be careful to stir the ale with her 
 hands and not use a stick, and when she has to go 
 out at night to look after it she must not be afraid 
 of the wolves. In the evening her father-in-law will 
 want his bath, and she must go out to the bath-house 
 and prepare everything. And she must be quick 
 about it, or her parents-in-law will imagine she is 
 wasting her time, **on the bench her head reclin- 
 ing." 
 
134 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 When a stranger comes she should not resent 
 it:— 
 
 For a well-appointed household 
 Always has for guests provision: 
 Scraps of meat that are not needed, 
 Cakes of bread the very nicest. 
 
 She must amuse him with her conversation, but 
 when he goes she must not accompany him farther 
 than the house door, lest her husband should be 
 angry or gloomy. If she wants to go into the village 
 she must ask leave first, and be careful what she 
 says when she gets there. Thus, if asked whether 
 her mother-in-law allows her butter, she must an- 
 swer that she gives it to her by the spoonful, and 
 must never let on that she only does it grudgingly 
 about twice a year. 
 
 From other parts of the poem one infers that the 
 mother-in-law was not always as black as she is 
 painted for the bride's edification. There is, indeed, 
 a special element of heightening or exaggeration in 
 the long description of the marriage in the ^^Kale- 
 vala" which shows that we have to deal with a 
 rather elaborate form of ritual prescribed for the 
 occasion. The bride is required to weep bitterly on 
 account of the breaking with her old life. She is 
 then comforted and instructed in her duties, after 
 which an old woman frightens her by recounting 
 the terrible experiences she herself had as a wife. 
 Then the bridegroom is instructed in his turn, after 
 which the farewell is said and the two drive away 
 and receive a tremendous welcome at the bride- 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 135 
 
 groom's home, the bride being greeted in words 
 such as the following: — 
 
 Noble damsel, fairest aamse.. 
 With thy beautiful complexion. 
 In the house wilt thou be honoured. 
 As in f ather'^s house the daughter, 
 All thy life shalt thou be honoured. 
 As in husband's house the mistress. 
 
 The bridegroom's duties are unfortunately not 
 given so fully as those of the bride, the chief em- 
 phasis being laid on good treatment of the wife. 
 If she proves thoroughly recalcitrant, however, he 
 is recommended to use physical force but only after 
 he has tried every other means : — 
 
 Bridegroom, give thy bride instruction. 
 And do thou instruct thy apple. 
 In the bed do thou instruct her. 
 And behind the door advise her; 
 For a whole year thus instruct her. 
 Thus by word of mouth advise her. 
 With thine eyes the next year teach her. 
 And the next year teach by stamping; 
 If to this she pays no heeding, 
 Nor concerns herself about it. 
 Choose a reed where reeds are growing. 
 From the heath fetch thou some horse tail, 
 And with these correct the damsel, 
 In the fourth year thus correct her. 
 With the stalks then whip her lightly. 
 With the rough edge of the sedges. 
 But with whip-lash do not strike her, 
 Neither with the rod correct her. 
 If to this she pays no heeding. 
 Nor concerns herself about it. 
 Bring a switch from out the thicket. 
 In the dell select a birch-rod. 
 Underneath thy fur cloak hide it. 
 
136 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 That the neighbours may not know it. 
 
 Let the damsel only see it; 
 
 Threaten her, but do not touch her. 
 
 If to this she pays no heeding, 
 
 Nor concerns herself about it. 
 
 With the switch correct the damsel. 
 
 With the birch-rod do thou teach her. 
 
 But within the room four-cornered. 
 
 Or within the hut moss-covered. 
 
 Do not beat her in the meadow. 
 
 Do not whip her in the cornfield. 
 
 Lest the noise should reach the village. 
 
 And to other homes the quarrel, 
 
 Neighbours' wives should hear the crying, 
 
 And the uproar in the forest. 
 
 One does not find in the **Kalevala'' a very high 
 ideal of love, and throughout the poem the mother 
 seems more highly venerated than the wife. The 
 sexes are very free in their relations, and there is 
 little trace of chivalrous feeling between them. 
 Most of the heroes seem to regard women as their 
 fair prey. Even Wainamoinen, the most sympa- 
 thetic of them, hardly shines in his pressing of his 
 suit upon the girlish Aino. Marriage by capture 
 seems common. Lemminkainen, after having en- 
 joyed the favours of every woman but one in the 
 village which he visits, finally carries off that one by 
 force. Ilmarinen, also, wins one of his wives in a 
 similar manner, only to turn her into a seagull when 
 she persists in being hostile to him. Irregular rela- 
 tions are not, indeed, approved of in theory, but are 
 so common in practice that the theory seems almost 
 a dead-letter. No doubt, however, the heroes en- 
 joyed a greater license in these matters than the 
 common herd and are not to be taken as entirely 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 137 
 
 typical of the latter. Faithfulness to a past love 
 seems to enter no one's head. 
 
 The amusements of the primitive Finns consisted 
 largely in feasting, bathing, and singing. One of 
 the most spirited descriptions in the **Kalevala'' is 
 that of the great wedding banquet. All is on a 
 gigantic scale. The ox, which is of middle size only, 
 is so big that a swallow cannot fly between the tips 
 of its horns in a day and a squirrel takes a full 
 month to run from its neck to the tip of its tail, and 
 the house was of such dimensions that 
 
 If a cock crowed at the smoke-hole, 
 Underneath they could not hear it; 
 If a dog at end was barking. 
 At the door they did not hear it. 
 
 (The speeches, alas! are on a similar scale.) The 
 hostess, however, feels called upon to reply to the 
 bridegroom's compliments on the splendid hall in 
 the following terms : — 
 
 Hail, all hail to thee who enters 
 In this room of small dimensions. 
 In this very lowly cottage, 
 In this wretched house of firewood, 
 In this house of pine constructed. 
 
 The singing of the heroes is frequently described. 
 A harp was used, the singer accompanying himself. 
 Wainamoinen's singing was especially wonderful, 
 and there is a fine detailed description of how all 
 the creatures of earth and air and water came to 
 hear him and grouped themselves around him as 
 he sat on the singer's stone, 
 
 s 
 
138 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 On a hill all silver-shining. 
 From a golden heath arising, 
 
 and how the emotions of the singer swept through 
 his audience and moved them to tears. 
 
 Of the bath-house and its ancient ritual some 
 description has already been given. Here it is de- 
 scribed in verse. His sister prepares a bath for 
 Ilmarinen : — 
 
 Annikki, whose name was famous. 
 
 Heated secretly the bath-room, 
 
 With the boughs the wind had broken 
 
 And the thunderbolt had shattered. 
 
 Stones she gathered from the river. 
 
 Heated them till they were ready; ♦ 
 
 Cheerfully she fetched the water, 
 
 From the holy well she brought it. 
 
 Broke some bath-whisks from the bushes. 
 
 Charming bath-whisks from the thickets. 
 
 And she warmed the honeyed bath-whisks. 
 
 On the honeyed stones she warmed them; 
 
 Then with milk she mixed the ashes, 
 
 And she made him soap of marrow. 
 
 And she worked the soap to lather. 
 
 Kneaded then the soap to lather. 
 
 That his head might cleanse the bridegroom. 
 
 And might cleanse himself completely. 
 
 Then the smith, e'^en Ilmarinen, 
 Went to take the bath he needed; 
 There he bathed himself at pleasure. 
 And he washed himself to whiteness; 
 Washed his eyes until they sparkled. 
 And his temples till they glistened, 
 And his neck to hen's-egg whiteness. 
 And his body all was shining. 
 Prom the bath the room he entered. 
 Changed so much they scarcely knew him, 
 For his face it shone with beauty. 
 And his cheeks were cleansed and rosy. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 139 
 
 Of the religion of the ancient Finns it must suf- 
 fice to say that it seems to have been an extraordi- 
 nary mixture of animism and magic, with mono- 
 theism occasionally breaking through in noble 
 appeals to the Supreme God. Amid much that is 
 on a very different level of holiness we also find such 
 passages as the following : — 
 
 God does not forsake the worthy, 
 Does not ruin those that trust Him, 
 Never are the good forsaken, 
 
 and this precept : — 
 
 Do not walk in thine own virtue. 
 Do not walk in thine own power. 
 Walk in, strength of thy Creator; 
 Do not speak in thine own wisdom. 
 Speak with tongue of mighty Ukko. 
 
 Christianity has begun to cast its shadow over the 
 old deities and to modify the old animistic concep- 
 tions, and the close of the poem shows Wainamoinen 
 leaving his country in sorrowful anger after the 
 Virgin Marjatta has given birth to a boy who is 
 baptized as King of Karelia, and whom the old bard, 
 like Herod, desired in van to destroy. He puts off 
 in his boat, but promises to return again. Meanwhile 
 he leaves his kantele and his songs with his people. 
 
 Judged purely as literature, the ^'Kalevala'' suf- 
 fers from the variety of its composition. It con- 
 sists, as we saw, of a great number of runos 
 composed by different singers, which have been 
 combined into a whole. Such an origin implies a 
 considerable lack of unity, which is well illustrated 
 
140 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 in the person of the Maiden of Pohjola. One singer, 
 treating of her in her maiden days, represents her 
 as a beautiful, proud and cold girl. Another repre- 
 sents her as a bride, but she has become shy and 
 timid to a degree that is almost pitiable. A third 
 represents her as a wife, and she has become hard 
 and ruthless and cruel. To this lack of unity must 
 be added other defects already referred to, a certain 
 inhumanity in the characters, and a weariness aris- 
 ing from long-winded description and repetition, 
 and from the extremely primitive nature of the 
 world in which the action takes place. 
 
 Against this we have to set considerable literary 
 beauty, the charm of a primitive atmosphere that is 
 genuinely refreshing, provided we do not stay in it 
 too long at a time, the fascination of something that 
 comes out of the very heart of the people, naked and 
 unashamed, and with the charm of antiquity upon it. 
 
 Breath that is the spirit's bath, 
 In the old beginnings find, 
 
 are words that apply to the *^Kalevala'' when all 
 that can be urged against it has been said. 
 
 The literary quality of the ^^Kalevala" is per- 
 haps best seen in the tragic story of KuUervo, which 
 also illustrates the darker side of the national char- 
 acter. The incident, save for an entire canto de- 
 voted to the recitation of charms for the protection 
 of cattle, is admirably condensed and concentrated. 
 KuUervo is brought up as a slave. His parents' 
 home was destroyed by enemies, and he believes 
 them to be dead. From his very birth he is alone 
 
THE WORLD OF THE ANCIENT FINNS 141 
 
 and unfortunate. When, after his terrible and 
 weird murder of his wicked mistress, he escapes and 
 finds that his parents and brothers and sisters are 
 alive after all, still worse tragedy than murder 
 awaits him. For soon after he is reunited to his 
 family he meets and ravishes a maiden, whom he 
 afterwards discovers to be his own sister, long since 
 lost and given up for dead. When the girl discovers 
 who he is, she throws herself into a torrent and is 
 drowned. He then, too, determines on suicide, but 
 first goes out to be revenged on the people who had 
 enslaved him. He returns to find his home deserted, 
 and, wandering into the forest, he comes to the place 
 where he had the fatal meeting with his sister ; — 
 
 There the tender grass was weeping, 
 And the lovely spot lamenting, 
 And the young grass was deploring, 
 And the flowers of heath were grieving, 
 For the ruin of the maiden. 
 For the mother's child's destruction. 
 Neither was the young grass sprouting, 
 Nor the flowers of heath expanding, 
 Nor the spot had covered over. 
 Where the evil thing had happened. 
 Where he had seduced the maiden. 
 And his mother's child dishonoured. 
 
 There he dies on his sword. 
 
 Note. — The translation used in this chapter is that of 
 W. Kirby, published by Messrs. Dent in "Everyman's Library." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE LANDMAEKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE SINCE 
 EUNEBERG 
 
 
 I. KIVI 
 
 ETWEEN the ^'Kalevala^' and the Finnish 
 literature of to-day there is a great gulf, con- 
 sisting of many hundred years. The reasons for 
 this should be apparent from preceding chapters 
 I and need not be repeated here. But when writers 
 
 I began once again to make use of the Finnish lan- 
 \ guage they took up, as it were, a broken thread. 
 Story-telling had been the joy of the ancient poets 
 and it is to story-teling that modern Finnish writers 
 instinctively turn. They are the true heirs of the 
 / bards who wove their tales in the light of the flicker- 
 
 ing pare, when Finland was still Suomi and the 
 Finns were still pagan. In those days their country 
 must have seemed to the poets as vast as the cosmos 
 and as self-sufficing. Foreign lands were remote and 
 dim, lying on a far horizon. And when the spirit of 
 the race once more incarnated itself in stories, these 
 stories seemed to come direct from the soil, uninflu- 
 enced by grafting from the outside world. They 
 sprang not from the cultured people who live in 
 towns, but from the very heart of Finland. It is this 
 
 142 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 143 
 
 which gives its chief interest to Finnish literature. 
 
 The first figure in the history of the Finnish novel 
 is also the greatest. 
 
 Alexis Kivi was the son of a tailor who lived at 
 Nurmijarvi, in the province of Nyland. His real 
 name was Stenvall, but he is known almost exclu- 
 sively by his pseudonym, Kivi. He was born in 1834, 
 and at the age of twelve was sent to school in Hel- 
 singfors and afterwards became a student at the 
 University. During both his school and student 
 years, and indeed throughout his short life, he suf- 
 fered acutely from poverty, which contributed to the 
 bad health which always dogged him. He seems to 
 have been an extroardinary mixture of morbidity 
 and healthy-mindedness. His mother was very re- 
 ligious in a revivalistic direction — she had the sole 
 Bible in the village and the boy read only religious 
 literature. Yet nothing pleased him more than to 
 wander about the woods with a gun and to spend his 
 days in the open air. While still a student he won a 
 prize for a drama based on the KuUervo episode in 
 the **Kalevala^' — his own unhappiness and loneli- 
 ness doubtless attracted him to that hero. In 1864 
 apeared * * Nuumisuutarit, ' * a fine study of peasant 
 life in the form of comedy. After this he produced 
 more rapidly, owing to a relief from the financial 
 strain. He was given a refuge at Sjundea, in a 
 Swedish-speaking district, by Charlotte Lonnqvist, 
 a lady nineteen years older than himself. Finnish 
 literature owes her a great debt of gratitude. 
 Nevertheless, Kivi after some years longed to be 
 back in his home region, feeling a stranger amongst 
 
144 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the Swedish-speaking peasants. **The peasant 
 here/* he complains, ** stands far from the rich 
 spiritual life that exists in the Finnish peasant's 
 breast.'' He regards the Finnish peasant as *'the 
 most humorous in the world ; in my opinion he has 
 a profounder inner life than any other. However 
 this may be, I long to be away from here, from the 
 Swedish population, and to hear the Finnish lan- 
 guage around me. My life here is indescribably 
 monotonous. I don't get on with the peasants and 
 still less with the gentry. I spent the last two years 
 almost like a prisoner in a tower. During the last 
 three months, however, I have amused myself by 
 hunting, and have bagged ninety-eight birds — caper- 
 cailzie, blackcock, hazel hens and two ptarmigan. 
 On my expedition I have used both gun and snares. ' ' 
 Kivi's homesickness in a Swedish-speaking tract 
 becomes intelligible when one reads his works. 
 * * The Seven Brothers, ' ' his greatest book, could 
 have sprung from no other country than Finland 
 and could have been written in no other language 
 than Finnish. It was published in 1870. Although a 
 few of the critics had some idea of its worth. Pro- 
 fessor Ahlqvist, the most eminent of them, made it 
 the subject of the most bitter attack, which did the 
 author serious damage in every respect. Early in 
 1871 Kivi's mind gave way and he was removed 
 to an asylum, where he died on December 31, 1872. 
 *^The Seven Brothers" is both realistic and sym- 
 bolical. It is symbolical of the struggles of man to 
 subdue the intractable forces of nature, both in the 
 world around him and in his own breast. Kivi se- 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 145 
 
 lects the moment when the wild nomadic life of half 
 civilized man is being transformed into the more dis- 
 ciplined life of a civilized community. Man has to 
 break in wild nature with a plough and force the 
 desert to produce crops for his use, and he has to 
 break in his own self-willed soul, as one breaks in a 
 wild horse. The story is told realistically enough, 
 yet with vivid and grotesque imaginative power and 
 fantastic humour. Kivi's favourite reading was 
 the Bible, Shakespeare and Cervantes, and his real- 
 ism is that of the two sixteenth-century writers. 
 
 The seven brothers are the sons of a man who had 
 been a great bear-hunter and had finally lost his life 
 in this pursuit. He had a farm called Jukola, in 
 South Tavastland, but had neglected it owing to his 
 passion for hunting, and his sons inherited his dis- 
 like for regular work, though they loved the farm 
 with a passionate love. After their mother's death 
 they come into conflict with the village authorities. 
 They had never succeeded in learning to read and 
 are threatened by the pastor with the stocks. They 
 go to the parish clerk to learn, en route proposing 
 one after the other to a girl who will not take any of 
 them, and having a fierce battle with the boys of a 
 neighbouring village. They cannot master the 
 alphabet, are locked up by the clerk without any 
 food, but break the window and after many adven- 
 tures escape home. But they have made the neigh- 
 bourhood too hot for them, and, to escape being 
 put in the stocks, they take to the woods with their 
 guns, a couple of dogs, and their one-eyed horse 
 drawing a cart laden with hunting gear, household 
 
146 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 gods and the cat. They live in the woods, building 
 themselves a room which serves every purpose, in- 
 cluding that of a bath-room, and spend their time in 
 hunting, lazing and story-telling. 
 
 But at Christmas this hut is burnt down and they 
 are forced to return to Jukola till the spring, when 
 they take to the forest again and have extraordinary 
 adventures. Once when they are bear-hunting their 
 dogs are attacked by a herd of wild bulls. First 
 come ten bulls, seven of which the brothers suc- 
 ceed in slaying after a terrible struggle. But pres- 
 ently they are attacked by thirty-three of them. 
 They fly madly over the fence, through which the 
 bulls crash, and over one obstacle after another, till 
 they take refuge on a high rock where the beasts 
 cannot follow them. Here they have to stand a 
 siege. They shout and yell in vain for help. For 
 three days they are without food. One of them gets 
 drunk at the brandy flask, and a horrible fight takes 
 place in which they are all in imminent danger of 
 falling down from the rock. As it rolled and 
 writhed from side to side, ^Hhe heap of brothers 
 looked like a many-headed monster.'' By a wild 
 instinct of justice, the drunkard is condemned to 
 death, and one of the brothers has to be forcibly 
 restrained from flinging him from the rock. Finally 
 they do the only thing left to them to do, and shoot 
 the bulls. It is a terrible massacre. The owner is 
 furious, but the brothers, dripping with the blood 
 of the bulls they have skinned, and desperate with 
 hunger and strain, threaten to send him to another 
 world after his bulls if he has them molested. A 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 147 
 
 compromise is arranged and the brothers agree to 
 make good the damage. In order to do so they have 
 to cultivate the soil, and a new stage in their 
 career is entered upon. They begin to realize that 
 they are members of society and that, as such, they 
 have duties and responsibilities. This conversion is 
 accompanied by many backslidings, but gradually 
 there is a reconciliation between the brothers and 
 society. They return to Jukola, learn to read, get 
 married and settle down. The transition from 
 nomadic to civilized life has been completed, and a 
 new stage in the history of the brothers, and of the 
 fatherland they syriibolize, has commenced. As it is 
 said of one of them : * * The fatherland was no longer 
 for him a vague part of a vaguely conceived world 
 of which he knew neither where nor what it was. 
 Now he knew where that land was, this precious 
 quarter of the world where the Finnish people 
 lives, builds and struggles, and in whose bosom our 
 fathers' bones rest. He knew its frontiers, its seas, 
 its secret smiling lakes and its fir-grown ridges, 
 extending like brushwood fences. The picture of 
 our land as a whole, with its features, kind as a 
 mother's, had impressed itself once for all in the 
 depths of his heart." 
 
 As Kivi's work is almost unknown outside Fin- 
 land, and owing to the extreme difficulty of transla- 
 tion is likely long to remain so, the following vivid 
 incident may serve to give an indication of his 
 quality. The brothers, in celebrating Christmas out 
 in the forest, had got fighting, and as a result their 
 hut was set on fire and nearly all their belongings 
 
148 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 burned. It was night and they were practically 
 naked, for they had been partaking of the Christmas 
 bath, but they would die of cold if they stayed where 
 they were and there was nothing for it but to make 
 for the nearest shelter. 
 
 ^^Thus they betook themselves on their journey, 
 naked, save for their tow-yarn shirts and carrying 
 each his birch-wood knapsack on his back and his 
 gun over his shoulder or in his hand. Thus they 
 trod the dark and wintry road, fleeing from the cold 
 which came rushing upon them from the marshes of 
 the north. Yet it did not show them its most terrible 
 countenance. Winter did not this time put forth all 
 its severity. Sometimes, indeed, the face of the 
 heavens was bare, but the sailing clouds covered it 
 again and it blew but moderately from the north. 
 And the brothers were accustomed to cold. Their 
 skins had been tanned by the cracking cold of many 
 a winter, and, formerly, as unruly boys, they had 
 often gone barefoot for hours at a time and been 
 stuck in snow-drifts. Nevertheless, this journey 
 from Impivaara to Jukola was ghastly, terrifyingly 
 ghastly. They hastened forward with dread at 
 heart. At the head rode Eero and Simeoni on 
 Valko's back; the others followed them, running at 
 their heels, trampling the snows of the wilderness 
 amidst the driving snow. But at Impivaara, close 
 to the stove, the stones of which were still glowing, 
 sat the cat and the cock, gazing sadly at the charred 
 ruins. 
 
 '^The brothers hastened in the direction of the 
 village ; already they had left Sompio Marsh behind 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 149 
 
 them and were approaching Teerimaki, where the 
 terrible howl of the wolves was continually audible. 
 But at the moorland between the marsh and Sennala 
 Matties clearing there was a change of riders: Eero 
 and Simeoni dismounted and two of the other 
 brothers quickly took their places. Without delay 
 they continued on their journey, plunged across the 
 rising moor, crossed the road leading to Viertola, 
 and went on through the wide and murmuring pine 
 forest. At last they approached the rocky hill at 
 Teerimaki and suddenly the many-voiced and wild 
 crying of the wolves ceased. Soon they stood at the 
 top of the hill and gave their horse breathing-time ; 
 the riders got off its back and two others at once 
 took their places. Still they remained on the snowy 
 hill-top ; the north wind blew, the sky momentarily 
 cleared again, and the pole of Charles's Wain 
 showed that it was past midnight. 
 
 ^^But when they had rested, the brothers hastened 
 onward again, following the level route over the 
 hills and, when that ended, descending into the dark 
 forest where nature lay gloomy around them. The 
 moon looked down palely, the owls shrieked, and 
 here and there in the depth of this wilderness stood 
 a strange shape, like a forest bear, terrifyingly 
 huge — it was the mossy upturned roots of fallen 
 pines. Like rigid and motionless ghosts, these bear- 
 shapes stared at the strange procession that rushed 
 past them. Without a movement they gazed, but 
 between them and among them there soon arose in 
 the desolate forest an awful movement. For now 
 the hungry wolves were collecting on the tracks of 
 
150 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the brothers, coming nearer and nearer to them. 
 Now in front, now behind, now rustling over the 
 path or between the trees on either side of it, 
 glimpses could be caught of them hurrying along. 
 Furious and bloodthirsty, they followed the fugi- 
 tives from Impivaara; there was a cracking and a 
 snapping around them when the dry pine branches 
 broke. Valko trembled and snorted nervously, and 
 the man who was riding in front could scarcely pre- 
 vent him from bolting. The wolves ventured nearer 
 and nearer. Panting and bloodthirsty, they often 
 swung past the men at close quarters, and in order 
 to frighten them the brothers sometimes fired off 
 their guns to the right or to the left, but the wolves 
 did not retreat far. 
 
 *^Now they came to Kiljava moor. Here and 
 there stood the withered trunk of a pine, the home of 
 hawk and owl. The fury of the wolves became 
 terrible and the men were in fearful peril. Tuomas 
 and Timo were riding, but the others, who were 
 running after them, suddenly stopped and almost 
 simultaneously fired a sharp volley at their pur- 
 suers, who shrank back from it and withdrew a lit- 
 tle. Once more the men rushed on, but it wasn't 
 long before the bay of the pursuing wolves was 
 again heard around them and the danger was 
 greater than ever. Then Tuomas pulled up the 
 horse and said in a loud voice: ^If your guns are 
 empty, load at once — as quick as lightning.' Thus 
 he cried, and dismounted, bidding Timo hold on to 
 Valko. The brothers stood still and loaded, and 
 felt no cold either in their feet or in any other part. 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 151 
 
 The wolves, too, stood still, fifty paces from the men, 
 staring continually at them with their ravenous eyes 
 and lashing their tails in eager anticipation. 
 
 ' ^ Tuomas. Are our guns loaded ? 
 
 ''Aapo, Yes. What shall we do ? 
 
 '^Fuhani, All at once! 
 
 ^^ Tuomas, No, if we love our lives! Some one's 
 gun must always be loaded — remember that. Lauri, 
 you have the steadiest hand and sharpest eye, stand 
 by me. 
 
 ''Lauri. Here I am. What do you want? 
 
 ''Tuomas. A hungry wolf will even eat its bleed- 
 ing brother. If we could bring that off, we are 
 saved. Let us try. Lauri, we will aim at the one in 
 front on the left, but you others, reserve your fire. 
 Lauri, look sharp as an eagle and fire when I give 
 the word *Now.' 
 Lauri. Ready. 
 
 "Tuomas. Now. 
 
 **They both shot at the same instant and the 
 wolves fled in hot flight. But one of them remained 
 on the spot and tried to hobble after the others, but 
 in vain. The men hastened onward again with 
 might and main: six brothers on foot, and Timo 
 alone on the horse in front of them. Thus it continued 
 for a while. But soon the wolves ceased their flight, 
 wheeled round and hurried once more towards the 
 men. The driving snow rustled and the level 
 plateau of Kiljava resounded when they rushed for- 
 ward in a pack. At wild speed they reached their 
 comrade who was writhing in his own blood, dashed 
 by him, but quickly swung round as the smell of 
 
152 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 blood arose temptingly to their nostrils. They 
 slewed round, their tails lashed, the snow whirled 
 in a blizzard, eyes lusting for blood gleamed in the 
 night. Horrible to see, they rushed in a band at 
 their wounded brother, and a frightful howling and 
 tumult arose on the moor; one might have thought 
 the pillars of the sky were broken. The ground 
 shook and the snow was transformed into a wild 
 mess, where his former friends tore to pieces the son 
 of the wilderness whose blood the sure aim Tuomas 
 and Lauri had caused to flow. But silence reigned 
 once more over the midnight moor. Nothing could 
 be heard except soft breathing and the crunching of 
 bones as, with bloody muzzles and glittering eyes, 
 the creatures eagerly tore to pieces their victim. 
 
 ^*But far from their terrible foes the brothers 
 journeyed on, and like music in their ears was the 
 murderous clamour of the wolves at Kiljava — for 
 them it was the sweet and joyful message of safety.'' 
 
 II. AHO 
 
 Kivi was followed by Pietari Paivarinta, a peas- 
 ant who lived in Osterbotten. In the 'seventies, 
 when he was already a middle-aged man, he fell on 
 the ice one day, broke his leg, and was laid up for 
 several weeks. He employed the time in writing a 
 novel which was largely an autobiography. It de- 
 scribed how he was one of many children in a poor 
 peasant home, where hunger often knocked at the 
 door; how during one portion of his childhood he 
 even had to beg, how he learned to read and write 
 without going to school, and how when twelve years 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 153 
 
 old he went into service. Soon after coming of age 
 he marries, and a new struggle begins. He and his 
 wife borrow money and buy a piece of uncultivated 
 land, on which they build a cottage for themselves 
 and work manufuUy until they are finally able to 
 pay off the debt and bring up a numerous family in 
 well-being. Prosperity, however, brings trials of its 
 own. The hero is elected to responsible positions 
 in the commune, which take him away from home- 
 life, and gradually begins to drink. On one occa- 
 sion, when drunk, he maltreats his wife, but this mis- 
 deed proves his salvation, for he is conscience- 
 stricken, reforms, and henceforth leads an exempla- 
 ry life. 
 
 This may serve as a type of the peasant novel in 
 Finland. There is little action, but the description 
 has all the fascination and the originality of truth. 
 It succeeds in rendering the real and unmistakable 
 atmosphere of Finnish peasant life, with its depth 
 and its simplicity. One is thankful that the Fin- 
 nish peasant has not been too overwhelmed by the 
 prestige that surrounds authors to dare thrust him- 
 self into those sacred ranks. It is known that 
 Paivarinta hesitated to do so, but once, when in 
 Helsingf ors, he saw Topelius and other writers, and 
 discovered that they were ordinary human beings, 
 upon which he felt entitled to try his own hand at 
 composition. 
 
 The Finnish novel is not, of course, free from the 
 defects of its origin. Among the early writers there 
 is a lack of selection, a formlessness and a long- 
 windedness which, as we saw, characterizes the de- 
 
154 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 scrip tions of things in the ^^Kalevala" also. But 
 against this must be set the virtues of freshness of 
 vision and faithfulness of representation. These 
 writers know what they are talking about, and they 
 give us life near the marrow. The subjects which 
 they choose are drawn from their own struggles 
 against cold and hunger and darkness, the diffi- 
 culties of rearing a family and so on. Birth, growth, 
 love, decay and death are described as they appear 
 to the peasant. As we read, we peep into the 
 peasant's soul. There is a na'ive realism about it. 
 He does not idealize his fellow-peasants in the spirit 
 of a Rousseau, he writes of them just as he knows 
 them — just as we might write of mutual acquaint- 
 ances to friends whom we know well. 
 
 Quite a large number of peasant novelists ap- 
 peared after Paivarinta, but as, when space is lim- 
 ited, it seems advisable to concentrate attention on 
 the larger figures only, I shall pass by such inter- 
 esting writers as Kauppis-Heikki, Santeri Alko, 
 Heikki Merilainen and Juhani Kokko (better known 
 as Kyosti), and pass at once to Juhani Aho, who, 
 however, does not spring from the peasantry, but 
 from the clergy. 
 
 When we reach Juhani Aho we enter upon a new 
 stage in the art of Finnish novel-writing. In the 
 course of an illuminating study, Professor Soder- 
 hjelm says of him that *'his life-work in the service 
 of Finnish literature is something that, in the litera- 
 ture of many other countries, only a long develop- 
 ment, often embracing several generations, has 
 brought about. He has in an astonishingly short 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 155 
 
 time effected a revolution in Finnish prose, raised 
 it to a high artistic perfection. His peculiarity and 
 significance consist in the fact that he has responded 
 with the same sensitive receptivity to the influence 
 both of Finnish nature and national character and 
 of the modern currents in foreign literature. In 
 the best of his art he is completely a European ; but 
 the deep vein of personal lyricism, whose murmur 
 is heard in all his writing, has never been diluted, 
 and the inner affinity with the land and the people 
 which makes him so entirely Finnish has never been 
 broken. When we say that he has created and de- 
 veloped a modern Finnish art of story-telling, we 
 underline the three words, modern, Finnish, art, 
 with equal emphasis. ' ' 
 
 Juhani Aho was born in 1861 at Idensalmi, and is 
 said to have received his first literary impetus from 
 a groom, who used to recite him bits out of Rune- 
 berg and Walter Scott. He is a tall, fair and mas- 
 sive man, who gives one the impression of some 
 ancient chieftain. He lives simply and works in the 
 most modest of studies, from which he overlooks 
 the open sea beyond a foreground of rocky coast. 
 The summer life in the open air is his delight, and 
 he is, like Runeberg, an enthusiastic angler. His 
 strongest literary impressions were derived from 
 Runeberg and Topelius, and, later, from the Nor- 
 wegian realists of the 'eighties. His earlier stories 
 deal with Finnish peasant life. In ^^The Railway" 
 — ^to the writing of which he looks back with great 
 pleasure — ^he records with great insight the transi- 
 tion when the remote country-side first comes into 
 
156 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 contact with modern mechanical civilization. An- 
 other good example is his short story, **When 
 Father brought home the Lamp." All that that 
 wonderful and puzzling new implement meant to the 
 Finnish country-side, and all the wonder and ad- 
 miration it evoked among the neighbours, is brought 
 out with rare humour and sympathy. Behind the 
 humour and the fun, there is a suggestion of the 
 lamp as sympolizing the triumph of light over dark- 
 ness in these far-off regions. Finally, there is a 
 certain regret for the ancient life passing away. 
 Pekka, an old labourer, did not take to the lamp, 
 and the children of the house used to creep out to 
 the bath-house to be with the old man, who spent the 
 long evenings sitting there by the light of the pare, 
 and to listen to the crickets, who had forsaken the 
 dwelling when the changes took place. 
 
 Aho presently passes to a study of life among the 
 wealthier classes, as in ** Squire Ilellman," **The 
 Parson's Daughter'' and **To Helsingf ors. " 
 ** Squire Hellman" is a broadly humorous study of 
 the tables turned on a bully. Through the first half 
 of the story the Squire rushes like a tornado, the 
 terror of his wife, servants and horses. He is a 
 mean and avaricious man, rack-rents his tenants and 
 is loathed by the neighbours, on whom he hurls a 
 force of invective that recalls Squire Beltham in 
 "Harry Richmond." His uncontrollable temper, 
 however, brings him into conflict with the authorities 
 of the law and he becomes as cringing as he had 
 formerly been domineering. His final discomfiture, 
 when he is forced to spend a large sum of money on 
 
LANDMAEKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 157 
 
 a dinner to those whom he has insulted, and suffers 
 agonies at every glass of wine that is drunk and 
 every cigarette that is smoked, is told with great 
 spirit. In one part of the story Aho reveals the 
 psychological interest which becomes so pronounced 
 a feature of his later novels. It is when Hellman 
 drives across the ice, miserable and chilled to the 
 bone, and for a moment sees himself as the ugly 
 thing he really is and remembers his petty thefts 
 and his hardness to the poor. The mood soon passes, 
 as it would in so shallow a nature, and is replaced 
 by his usual bouncing self-assertion. Another fea- 
 ture of the story is the sympathy that Aho reveals, 
 almost unconsciously, for the poor whose faces Hell- 
 man grinds. He is alive to the evils of the country- 
 side, where Hellmans turn beggar-women and their 
 children roughly from the door and evict unfor- 
 tunate tenants. 
 
 In **The Parson's Daughter" we see the pathetic 
 and unsuccessful struggle of a girl brought up in 
 narrow surroundings at a country parsonage to 
 liberate herself and live a larger life. She is com- 
 pelled to marry her father's curate, a man she does 
 not love, and in a later and much finer book, **The 
 Parson's Wife," we see the intolerable married life 
 that opens out its weary vista before her. Romance 
 comes to her in the person of a lover, and her chang- 
 ing feelings afford Aho the opportunity for a won- 
 derfully fine psychological delineation. She resists 
 the exquisite temptation, but her life seems utterly 
 valueless and broken. *^To Helsingfors" shows 
 how a boy, who has been educated simply in the 
 
158 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 country, becomes a student and is brought in con- 
 tact with the vices of the larger world in the coun- 
 try's capital. It is a painful work. 
 
 In 1889 Aho paid a visit to Paris, which had im- 
 portant results on his writing. Hitherto he had 
 written in the rather circumstantial way of the 
 peasant novelists, although he had gifts of refine- 
 ment and vivid perception far superior to theirs. 
 But in France he learned to cut away unnecessary 
 matter and concentrate. The result is seen in his 
 volume of short studies entitled ** Chips," the first 
 of a notable series, in which the author touches 
 upon a great variety of subjects both grave and gay. 
 They are models of fine workmanship and full of 
 atmosphere, and rank as some of Aho's very best 
 work. A good example is that entitled ** Pioneers." 
 It describes in a very few pages how a young man 
 and a girl who were in service at a country parson- 
 age determined to get married. They were having a 
 nice easy time of it in service, but the instinct that 
 brought them together and the desire to start a home 
 of their own made them eager to face a life that could 
 be nothing but hard. For they had to create their 
 little holding out of forest and rock-strewn soil, with 
 hardly any capital to start on. And so they marry 
 and are full of hope, though the parson, who realizes 
 what they are facing, anxiously shakes his head. A 
 few years later we see the man, pale and worn out, 
 driving his wife 's coffin to the churchyard on a tum- 
 ble-down cart drawn by a poor starved horse. The 
 story was of debts, frost, children, a sick wife, and 
 then her death from overwork. The cottage they 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 159 
 
 had entered so full of hope was now untended and 
 desolate, and signs that the struggle had been too 
 much for human nature were all around. Neverthe- 
 less, they had worked valiantly. Land had been 
 cleared for corn, and birchwood had been cut down 
 and groves of alders had been converted into mead- 
 ows, *^but behind them stood the dark pine forest 
 like an unsurmountable wall. There he had been 
 obliged to stop. " 
 
 * * The first pioneer has fulfilled his task ; the man 
 can do no more good there now. His strength, his 
 energy are gone, the fire of lys eye is extinguished 
 and the self-confidence of his marriage morn has 
 forsaken him. Another will certainly come after 
 him and take over the cottage plot. He perhaps wiU 
 have better luck. But he will have a lighter task to 
 begin with, for before him no longer stands the sav- 
 age forest quite untouched by man. He can settle 
 down into a ready-made hut, and sow in the plot of 
 land which another has ploughed up before him. 
 That cottage plot will, no doubt, become a large and 
 wealthy farm, and in course of time a village will 
 grow up around it. Nobody thinks of those who 
 first dug up the earth with all their capital, the only 
 capital they possessed — their youthful energies. 
 They were merely a simple lad and lass, and both of 
 them came there with empty hands. 
 
 **But it is just with such pople's capital that Fin- 
 land's wildernesses have been rooted up and con- 
 verted into broad acres. Had these two only re- 
 mained at the parsonage, he as a coachman and she 
 as a housemaid, then perhaps the course of their own 
 
160 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 lives would have been free enough of care. But the 
 wilderness would not have been cultivated, and the 
 f oreposts of civilization would not have been planted 
 in the midst of the forest. 
 
 **When the rye blooms and the ears of the corn 
 ripen in our field, let us call to mind these first mar- 
 tyrs of colonization. We cannot raise monuments 
 upon their graves, for the tale of them is by thou- 
 sands, and their names we know not." ^ 
 
 Aho's gaiety and humour find expression in an- 
 other of these *' Chips," entitled *^Sasu Punanen." 
 Sasu was **fat, lazy, sleepy, taciturn, with no inter- 
 ests, no enthusiasm," the dullest fellow on earth. 
 But beware of passing judgment. You have to see 
 a man in his own sphere to know what he is worth. 
 Sasu's sphere is the Finnish bath. He prepares for 
 it as other people might prepare for confirmation. 
 One day he persuades a friend to go with him and 
 we see Sasu in all his glory. He undresses with 
 religious care — ' ' at the bath one must undress slowly 
 and not as if one would rush headforemost into the 
 water" — and arranges his discarded garments with 
 the exactitude of a philosophic system. When he 
 has finished this he admires himself long and lov- 
 ingly in front of a looking-glass before proceeding 
 into the bath-hut. The birch twigs must not be 
 warmed before he is there, for fear of losing the 
 smell of them, which is the **best thing in the whole 
 bath." Finally he gives the order for the water to 
 
 ^ I have availed myself of the excellent translation by Mr. K. 
 Nisbet Bain in "Squire Hellman and Other Stories" (Fisher 
 Unwin). 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 161 
 
 be thrown on the hot stones, and the steam and heat 
 become so intolerable that both his friends and the 
 old bath-woman cry him mercy. **The stones hiss 
 like a hundred spitting cats; it seems to me as if 
 they would suddenly rush at me, strike their sharp 
 claws into my body and tear me to pieces." But 
 Sasu just revels in it, and when the bath-woman 
 says, **Youll burn yourself and me too," he an- 
 swers, ^^Why, it's simply nothing as yet . . . how 
 will you stand it in hellT' And so he proceeds 
 through the mighty ceremony, now taking an active 
 part, now passive in the bath-woman's hands, now 
 calling for beer to increase his sublime perspiration. 
 ''What he thinks of I don't know, but he seems to 
 me a genius in comparison with myself, a giant 
 genius among all bath geniuses. If the Finns in 
 past days had a bath-god, a bath-hero, whom they 
 worshipped, he must have looked like this." 
 
 Aho's tragic power and the concentration of his 
 writing are nowhere seen better than in his novel 
 * ' Outlawed. ' ' The hero is a strong and silent young 
 peasant for whom, like his prototype KuUervo, all 
 things in life go wrong. The first words of the 
 story strike its key-note — ''Leave him in peace." 
 
 Junnu is the son of a prostitute, and in his youth 
 was imprisoned for stealing a dish of sour milk — an 
 escapade to which he was egged on by other boys. 
 Those at the farm where he now works readily take 
 advantage of his good-nature, but in spite of his 
 great physical strength and occasional outbursts of 
 terrible exasperation they all despise him and make 
 
162 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 his life a burden to him. He longs to be alone, away 
 from them all, where he can be in peace. He obtains 
 permission from the farmer who employs him to 
 settle as a torpare in a remote part of the forest, far 
 from human habitation. There he builds himself a 
 hut and lives alone with his horse and cow, and be- 
 gins to taste of happiness, though never without the 
 suspicion that it cannot last, that evil is impending. 
 He does everything he can think of to exclude the 
 possibility of his being interfered with on any pre- 
 text by the outside world, and to propitiate the 
 Fates, which have always been so hard on him, and 
 gradually his bitterness melts away and his fore- 
 bodings vanish. But now when he has at last at- 
 tained a measure of serenity, a blow, stunning and 
 incredible, falls. He hears the sound of axes in the 
 forest and from a hill-top sees a straight line being 
 cut through the trees. It advances day by day and 
 comes nearer and nearer his own hut. Finally hu- 
 man beings appear — engineers who are superintend- 
 ing the new railway. They actually enter his hut 
 and make themselves at home there. Soon after, the 
 navvies arrive and he sees the fields he had cleared 
 and ploughed and sown with such energetic love 
 trampled under foot and made hideous with the ap- 
 pliances of modern building. He is informed that he 
 must go, for the railway is to pass right over the 
 spot where his hut stands. He cannot even get com- 
 pensation, for the land is not his, and it is only the 
 crafty and farseeing farmer who stands to gain by 
 Junnu's improvements. The navvies mock him and 
 regard him as half mad, and presently he dare not 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 163 
 
 leave his hut out of sight for fear the threat of pull- 
 ing it down should be carried out. He becomes as 
 much a prisoner as if he were locked up in a cell. 
 Finally the sheriff comes along, and Junnu, furious 
 at the destruction of his home, with its cargo of 
 hopes and dreams, and maddened at the way he has 
 been cheated both by man and by fate, insults him 
 and thus hastens the evil hour. The order to pull 
 down the hut is given forthwith. There is a wild 
 scene as Junnu rushes out, threatening to kill the 
 first man who touches it, and pulls down the ladder 
 on which a man has ascended nearly to the roof. The 
 man is not killed, but Junnu is seized and bound and 
 laid unconscious on his own sledge. When he comes 
 to, he sees the ladder again standing against the 
 wall of his hut, and as he is driven off to prison the 
 roof beams are already falling. 
 
 Junnu emerges from prison weak and miserable 
 and with a mind distraught by suffering and the 
 sense of injustice. He comes back to the neighbour- 
 hood of his old home and finds the railway line com- 
 pleted. His horse has been sold for a song to a man 
 he hates, but his cow at least is safe in the hands of 
 an old woman. He goes out eagerly to look for it. 
 There it is on the other side of the line, at the head of 
 some other cows. It recognizes its master, lows and 
 comes towards him. **But when it reaches the line 
 and is about to cross, the locomotive is already whis- 
 tling at the curve and, belching forth smoke on either 
 side, rushes forward at full speed. 
 
 * * The cow stops in the middle of the line, is dumb- 
 founded, stares at the locomotive and can move 
 
164 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 neither forwards nor backwards. The engine whis- 
 tles and toots, but cannot check its course. 
 
 **Junnu rushes forward, waves his hands and 
 shouts, seizes his cow by the horns; it backs the 
 more he pulls it forwards and advances when he 
 pushes it back . . . and he has already got it half 
 over the rails when the engine, its drivers cursing 
 and shaking their fists and the brakes creaking ter- 
 ribly, drives over his cow, cuts it in two before him 
 and trails along one half of its body while its fore- 
 quarters remain in Junnu's hands. 
 
 **It still lives some moments while he holds it by 
 the horns ; it throws up its neck, moves its legs as if 
 to extricate itself, but then falls unconscious on the 
 embankment at Junnu's feet, its eyes staring at 
 him.'' 
 
 After this, Junnu, with every hope shattered, dis- 
 appears. But from the forest he has watched men 
 working on the railway and, maddened by suffering, 
 he gets the idea of wrecking the festival train which 
 is to be run in celebration of the opening of a new 
 part of the line. Thus he will be revenged on the 
 whole pack of his enemies. 
 
 We see him dripping with sweat, as he struggles 
 feverishly to loosen a sleeper. Finally he gets one 
 nail out, but another still holds fast when he hears 
 the engine whistle as it leaves the neighbouring sta- 
 tion. *^ Shall he leave it to another time? No; he 
 cannot, he will not. It must be now, now, that all 
 his sufferings are to be avenged. He grasps his axe 
 and begins to hew at the sleeper. But the axe strikes 
 a stone, sparks fly. Its edge is spoiled. The train is 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 165 
 
 already in motion, its roar comes nearer and nearer. 
 Again he grasps the pole, presses it under the rail 
 and throws himself on it with all his might. The rail 
 is lifted, the sleeper smashes, the nail comes up. 
 . . . Now he has them ! But when he makes another 
 effort, and hears the noise of the train echoed by the 
 sides of the cutting, the pole breaks and he falls on 
 his back on the line. He springs up ferociously, 
 grasps the rail in his hands, tears it with his fingers, 
 bites it with his teeth, and he knows not what. 
 . . . The engine whistles behind him. It will escape 
 him ; they will be saved, they will drive over him. . . . 
 No, never. He jumps aside, perceives the engine with 
 its waving flags, its shining eyes, rush towards him, 
 whistling and clattering, and quick as lightning a 
 new thought darts through his brain. . . . 
 
 **He bends down, puts his arms round a mighty 
 stone, lifts it up, rushes back to the line, shuts his 
 eyes, flings the block at the hurtling monster, hears 
 a frightful crash and reels senseless from the em- 
 bankment into the ditch. 
 
 **When he comes to, he finds himself lying on his 
 back as if on a moving floor, surrounded by men who 
 shriek and gesticulate ; he recognizes the engineers, 
 the sheriff, the farmer and Tahvo . . . his head is 
 aching, the engine whistles spitefully, smoke eddies 
 before his eyes and he knows that he is on the gala 
 train, which carries him swiftly to the town — ^for 
 ever. ' ' 
 
 Such is the end of this tragic and vivid story, in 
 which Aho represents symbolically and in a charac- 
 teristic Finnish setting the struggle between a man's 
 
166 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 desire to express himself and the forces of society 
 which often ruthlessly crush out both the desire and 
 the man. 
 
 Of late years Aho has gradually receded from 
 realism, and has written several historical novels 
 and several stories whose scene is laid in the past. 
 The idealistic and romantic side of his nature, al- 
 ways strong, has more and more gained the upper 
 hand. It is nowhere more beautifully apparent than 
 in his descriptions of Finnish scenery. Professor 
 Soderhjelm writes finely: ** Finnish nature is mir- 
 rored in his writing as faithfully as in the most 
 perfect picture. No one has rendered as he has the 
 tranquillity of summer evenings with their clear 
 and silent atmosphere, where the stroke of an oar 
 or the sound of a cow-bell is heard for miles, over 
 quiet fjords and moors, or the light of the sunset 
 on cottage windows on distant heights. The gaiety 
 of the winter day and the desolation of the winter 
 night live in some strokes of his pen with the same 
 force as the light and peacefulness of June nights. 
 Over all his writing lies very much of the inmost 
 essence of Finnish landscape: the gentle harmony, 
 the sad intensity, the peaceful lines, the mildly vary- 
 ing colour." 
 
 III. TOPELIUS 
 
 Swedish literature in Finland differs considerably 
 from Swedish literature proper, just as American 
 literature differs considerably from English. Even 
 in respect of language the distinction sometimes 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 167 
 
 makes itself felt, and still more in respect of feeling, 
 atmosphere and tradition. 
 
 The truth of this is seen when we glance at Rune- 
 berg's predecessor, Franzen (1772-1847). He was 
 the son of a merchant at Ule^borg, entered the Uni- 
 versity of Abo, became Porthan's favourite pupil, 
 and subsequently was made Professor of History. 
 He is best remembered for his poetry, however; he 
 had a fine lyrical gift and a great power of convey- 
 ing the beauty of northern scenery and the simpler 
 emotions of northern folk. But when Finland was 
 separated from Sweden he left both the country and 
 the best part of his poetic gift behind. He seemed 
 to lose inspiration when he was cut off from his 
 native soil, and his work seemed a little strange to 
 the people of Sweden. As a Finnish critic writes, 
 ** There was something genuinely Finnish in his tem- 
 perment and this perhaps prevented him from pene- 
 trating in Sweden as he did here." 
 
 In dealing with Runeberg in an earlier chapter, 
 we have already spoken of the most striking figure 
 in the Swedish literature of Finland, but we have by 
 no means exhausted its interest. During their years 
 in Helsingfors, Runeberg and his wife took into 
 their house a young Osterbotten student, Zacharias 
 Topelius, whose literary talents were greatly stimu- 
 lated by this association. Topelius was the son of a 
 distinguished father, who was in a sense the fore- 
 runner of Lonnrot, just as Franzen was in some re- 
 spects the forerunner of Runeberg. The elder To- 
 pelius, during his medical journeys, because ac- 
 quainted with some of the Finnish runos, immedi- 
 
168 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 ately began collecting them, and published a collec- 
 tion under the title of ** Ancient Songs of the Fin- 
 nish People/^ His son Zacharias was born in 1818, 
 took his degree in 1840, and the following year was 
 editing the Helsingfors Tidningar. He was very 
 young for such a post, but through his friendship 
 with the Runebergs he was in touch with literary cir- 
 cles. He knew personally the members of the Satur- 
 day Club, and though he was not old enough to be- 
 come a member himself, in the early days he was 
 sometimes present at their meetings as a silent audi- 
 tor. ^* During these Attic nights," he writes, *^one 
 could become acquainted with Runeberg's quiet hu- 
 mour, Snellman's merciless logic, Nervander's sar- 
 casms, Nordstrom 's sallies, sharp as needles," He 
 was thus brought up in the great traditions of the 
 National movement, and himself handed on the torch 
 received from his friends. He may indeed be re- 
 garded as the great popularizer of the movement. 
 "With less original force than several of his prede- 
 cessors, he had more power than they to bring the 
 meaning of it into the homes of unlearned and sim- 
 ple men. And he did so through his genius for sym- 
 pathizing and getting on with children. He showed 
 the child what Finland meant, what it really was to 
 be a child, and later, a citizen of his beloved country. 
 This seed planted in the minds of children flowered 
 in them when they came to years of maturity — 
 flowered in a patriotism which aimed at being pre- 
 pared not merely to die well but to live well for their 
 country. He compiled a reader for the Elementary 
 Schools entitled *^The Book of Our Land," which is 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 169 
 
 a model of what such a book should be, and both in- 
 spires and instructs every child. It consists of two 
 hundred readings, divided into six sections — ^the 
 land, the people, the legends, and three more dealing 
 with the history. Much more important, however, 
 from the point of view of literature, was his ** Read- 
 ings for Children,^' a collection of fairy stories and 
 tales of adventure, which has been much translated. 
 Children were passionately devoted to this man 
 with the heart of a child, and in his old age Uncle 
 Topelius received many letters from young admir- 
 ers. Here is a specimen ; — 
 
 My dear Uncle Toppelius Zakaeias, — 
 
 I do so long for my dear Toppelius. You 
 must come some day and see us we live in west 
 church street we will come to the station to meet you, 
 you must look for two boys with stars in their caps, 
 you ought to write a story-book for me . . . greet- 
 ings from my mama and my papa and my brother 
 and greetings from my sister and from Karl-Johan 
 Sandelin. T A S 
 
 6 years the 7th of March. 
 
 Topelius had indeed a rare gift of inspiring affec- 
 tion. Professor Werner Soderhjelm, describing the 
 poet's visits to Helsingfors in his old age, writes: 
 **01d and young are personally acquainted with 
 him; the latter have always been present at some 
 school fastival he has visited, or been members of 
 some deputation that has waited upon him, or of 
 some choir that has sung in his honour on a sum- 
 
170 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 mer's day at Bjorkudden — or they may be simply 
 the children of his older friends, who merely on this 
 account call him ^ Uncle' and regard themselves as 
 quite intimate with him." 
 
 The same writer records an incident that is typi- 
 cal. One evening a group of young artists and au- 
 thors were discussing some question or other at the 
 principal hotel, when Topelius happened to come in 
 and was persuaded to join them. Warmed by his 
 enthusiastic reception, he rose and made a speech 
 that they never forgot, * * about the old that goes and 
 the new that comes in its place, about the heritage 
 left by those who depart and which the young must 
 preserve, about the high mission of art in our land, 
 where it has to walk along untrodden ways." 
 
 It must not be supposed, however, that Topelius 
 was without original talent or was only appreciated 
 by young people. Both as a poet and writer of his- 
 torical romance he ranks high. ''The Tales of a 
 Surgeon" has been much translated and is de- 
 servedly popular. It tells in a rather discursive way 
 and with great variety of incident the history of Fin- 
 land, beginning from the time of the Thirty Years' 
 War. It is as if an old man spent his winter even- 
 ings chatting to you over the fire and telling you of 
 his past life. Topelius became Professor of His- 
 tory, but there is little of the professor about these 
 tales. He just talks in an intimate way about things, 
 he loves. Most of all he loves his country, and espe- 
 cially his native Osterbotten. You see the people 
 there, understand just how they are planted on the 
 soil, and how their lives are affected by the great do- 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 171 
 
 ings in the outside world. Then you see how they 
 were called on to take a share in them. He loves to 
 show you their great deeds abroad, and to describe 
 their fighting qualities in the campaigns of Gustavus 
 Adolphus. Most of the great characters of that time 
 are introduced into the story, and there are vivid 
 pictures of popular life in different countries. The 
 threads connecting the different periods covered 
 are furnished by two families, whose history is 
 traced through several generations with something 
 of the comprehensiveness which Tolstoi devotes to 
 the principal families in **War and Peace." 
 
 Perhaps Topelius will be remembered best, how- 
 ever, by his lyrical poetry. 
 
 The following stanzas, which are the opening of an 
 ode of thanksgiving to those nations of Europe (in- 
 cluding Great Britain^) which subscribed gener- 
 ously to relieve the distress occasioned by the Finn- 
 ish famine of 1857, may be quoted as an example of 
 his work. They are not without their applicability 
 to Finland in her present struggle against an even 
 worse enemy than famine. 
 
 On the world's furthest peopled strand 
 Fate gave to us a fatherland, 
 The last where man his foot has set. 
 Daring the North PoWs threat; 
 The last and wildest stretch of earth 
 Where Europe's genius built a hearth; 
 Her last and furthest-flung outpost 
 'Gainst night and death and frost. 
 
 Tho' we are few, this fight of ours 
 'Gainst darkness and wild nature's powers, 
 
 ^ Tha British fleet had attached part of Finland during the 
 Crimean War. 
 
172 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Is yet Humanity's own fight 
 For constant life and light. 
 Our conquest is its conquest too. 
 And if we fall, then 'tis most true. 
 There falls with us a bulwark strong 
 Life's forward path along. 
 
 Faithfully we've obeyed our call, 
 Bought with starvation, death, downfall. 
 Each yard of soil we've fenced with strife. 
 And rescued thus for life. 
 Life's house up here we've builded stout 
 Where once lay desert all about — 
 This is our thousand-year-old deed. 
 For this we claim Fame's meed. 
 
 It is chiefly through lyrical poetry that the Swed- 
 ish-speaking Finns have expressed themselves. It 
 is impossible here to give an account of the many fine 
 poets they have produced, such as Stenback, a con- 
 temporary of Runeberg, Wechsell, who wrote in the 
 'sixties, Tavaststjerna, the first of the modern real- 
 ists in Swedish Finland and a fine lyrical poet, Ly- 
 beck and others. It must suffice to say that in these 
 troublous days for Finland the fountain of song has 
 not run dry. I have attempted to translate poems by 
 two of the younger men. The first is a song in praise 
 of Finland by Bertel Gripenberg, the second, by 
 Hjalmar Procope, is a song of liberty in the face of 
 Eussian oppression. 
 
 THE FAIKEST LAND 
 
 The fairest land is the northern land. 
 
 Where the forest usurps the meadow, 
 Where the ground is rocky, barren, and dry. 
 
 And no plough has driven a furrow. 
 
LANDMARKS OF FINNISH LITERATURE 173 
 
 Where towering pines, with mossy bark. 
 
 Defiant strain to the sky. 
 And high o'er the silent wilderness 
 
 'Mid the cloudpack the eagles fly. 
 
 The fairest land is the forest land 
 
 Which dreams in the silence ever. 
 It binds our hearts with bonds of love 
 
 That none may forget nor sever. 
 It lures, it silently draws us on 
 
 With urgent and secret wooing, 
 It whispers on wild untrodden ways 
 
 Trollsongs in the forest's soughing. 
 
 Thou haven to restless and homeless thoughts, 
 
 Thou kingdom of lonely dreams, 
 Thou northland's endless pine-clad heath. 
 
 Peerless thy beauty streams; 
 The fairest, dearest land I know 
 
 Is the land of forests, the wide. 
 With its harsh and heroic solitude 
 
 Where unborn poems abide. 
 
 IN SPITE OF ALL 
 
 Let the blow descend ! We have made our choice. 
 
 And we are resolved to live. 
 Though Asia and' all her Ural hosts 
 
 Strive our death-stroke to give. 
 
 We do not await a golden spring, 
 
 Nor overflowing barns and tuns. 
 We await but years of ruin and stress 
 
 And ravages of the Huns. 
 
 Yet, ye tyrants, remember in time your guilt. 
 
 Lest the day of revenge come down — 
 !N'ot for ever shall Finland only shine 
 
 As a gem in a foreigner's crown. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAINTING AND MUSIC 
 
 FENNISH painting is of very recent develop- 
 ment, and its early stages are of little interest 
 to any but a native of the country. It drew in- 
 spiration in turn from Sweden, Italy and Germany, 
 but it was not until after 1880, when Finnish artists 
 turned to France, and more especially to the school 
 of Bastien Lepage, that a national school began to 
 develop. Many good critics, indeed, would object 
 to one speaking of a national school in Finland, 
 maintaining that the Finnish painters have not 
 evolved a new and distinctive vision or technique, 
 but have merely painted Finnish subjects in a 
 French way. This is a matter on which the writer 
 is not competent to express an opinion. It is at least 
 certain that even if she has not yet succeeded in pro- 
 ducing work that is original in the very highest 
 sense of the word, Finland can point to artists who 
 in any country would be distinguished. 
 
 The first of these was Albert Edelfelt, who occu- 
 pies in the sphere of painting a position similar to 
 that held by Runeberg in the sphere of poetry. The 
 objection is sometimes raised that he is too Swedish 
 
 174 ^ 
 
PAINTING AND MUSIC 175 
 
 to be representative of Finland, and it is indeed true 
 that he has never portrayed, like GaUen, the wildest 
 and most barbaric side of the Finnish soul. But, 
 taking his work all round, he stands for Finland 
 more completely than any other painter, and, in spite 
 of strong French influences, his devotion to his moth- 
 erland makes him a true Finn. His picture of father, 
 mother and daughter going down to the seashore 
 carrying masts and oars and fishing-nets is a symbol 
 of Finnish life. The faces and hands of father and 
 mother are worn and weather-beaten from their long 
 struggle to wrest a living from the sea, which, with 
 its rocks and islands, is a characteristic piece of 
 Finnish landscape. The daughter, who walks be- 
 tween them with a kerchief over her head and the 
 nets over her shoulder, is gravely sweet, dreamy, yet 
 capable. All three look patient, strong, full of endur- 
 ance, and noble with the dignity which comes from 
 living face to face with elemental things. Edelfelt 
 was thoroughly Finnish in his love of portraying the 
 sea and the life of the island folk, and these are 
 among his most delightful pictures. There is the 
 child's funeral, where the little coffin is conveyed in 
 a boat across the blue lagoon, a work full of pathos 
 and beauty; the exhilarating picture where the old 
 man sails his boat across a rough sea, his daughter 
 by him ; the romantic scene of young girls boating on 
 a light night of midsummer, and how many more. 
 When he paints the meeting of Christ and Mary 
 Magdalene after the Eesurrection, his background is 
 a Finnish bay and a birch wood, the Christ wears 
 the birch-bark shoes common in the Finnish country- 
 
176 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 side and the woman is dressed like a Finnish peas- 
 ant-girl. He never tires of portraying the worn hon- 
 est features of peasant women in their natural sur- 
 roundings, the background often being a charming 
 little vignette of a red-stained Finnish farm or cot- 
 tage on the edge of its native woods, in which the 
 trunks of silver birches gleam white in the sunlight. 
 He has also left charming studies of the summer life 
 of the upper classes. 
 
 Edelfelt is best known to the outside world as a 
 portrait painter ; people of all ranks and conditions 
 in half a dozen countries sat to him. His portraits 
 are strong and convincing, but have also a high de- 
 gree of delicacy and charm. They are less accessible 
 to the public than are his landscapes, but equally 
 worthy of study. That of the singer Aino Ackte in 
 the Athenaeum at Helsingfors is one of the finest. 
 There is also a striking picture of the actress Ida 
 Aalberg as Hedda Gabler, which hangs in the foyer 
 of the Finnish Theatre. Interesting portraits of 
 several eminent contemporaries, including Jean Si- 
 belius, are introduced into the fresco which adorns 
 the great hall at the University and represents the 
 foundation of the University at Abo in 1640. This 
 fine work, only a portion of which was completed, 
 owing to Edelfelt 's untimely death, was but one of a 
 long series of Finnish historical scenes that he 
 painted with enthusiasm throughout his life, and 
 which had a real effect in stamping upon the popular 
 imagination some of the great events of Finnish his- 
 tory. Most important of all Edelfelt 's works in this 
 respect were his illustrations to Runeberg's ** Tales 
 
PAINTING AND MUSIC 177 
 
 of Ensign St^l " (see p. 38). Great as was their in- 
 fluence from their first appearance, it was trebled 
 after Russia had begun her attack on Finnish lib- 
 erties, and many of the pictures have found their 
 way, through reproductions, into almost every Finn- 
 ish home, and, by giving expression to, have actually 
 helped to form, the Finnish soul. The drummer- 
 boys who head the men of Bjorneborg as they march 
 through the snow ; Dobeln, risen from his sick-bed to 
 lead his men to victory at Jutas ; the old magistrate, 
 his face lit up by a divine light, as, with hand on the 
 book of law, he defies and finally wins over the 
 amazed Eussian general — these are an inspiration 
 to noble patriotism to all Finnish citizens, and may 
 have done nearly as much to popularize the great 
 deeds of their ancestors as the poems of Euneberg 
 themselves. 
 
 Since Edelfelt's death by far the most striking 
 figure in Finnish painting is that of Axel Gallen, 
 who is still in his prime. He came under the same in- 
 fluences as Edelf elt in Paris, but is in most respects 
 a great contrast to him. Edelf elt represents that 
 side of Finnish nature which is most closely con- 
 nected with West Europe, and, while he makes a dis- 
 tinctly national impression, his pictures do not give 
 one a keen shock of surprise as Gallen 's do. Edel- 
 felt, again, chooses his subjects mainly from the 
 coast-lands and the southern, more civilized parts of 
 Finland, while Gallen goes preferably to the wildest 
 regions of the interior and the most primitive peo- 
 ple. Edelf elt 's mentality is of the order of Eune- 
 berg 's poems, while Gallen has gone for his inspira- 
 
178 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 tion to the ancient legends of his people and delights 
 in the barbaric extravagance, and the wild vastness 
 of the ^^Kalevala" world. In much of his work he 
 is the spirit of man before it has been disciplined 
 and civilized, when it is still at war with monsters 
 and at the mercy of primitive incalculable forces. 
 His people seem to dwell in wild pathless forests or 
 by huge mysterious seas, and to be in some ways 
 pre-human in their disposition. He loves to portray 
 the vast melancholy of untilled country, the almost 
 terrible silence of it, the life of the forest and of for- 
 est creatures before man has dominated them; and 
 man, slow, obstinate, powerful of body and sad of 
 mind, rude, brutal, patient, indomitable, dead to the 
 world beyond a narrow radius. 
 
 The atmosphere of such a world Gallen has 
 rendered very wonderfully in such pictures as 
 the *^ Making of Sampo," ^^Kullervo" and the 
 *^ Mother of Lemminkainen. " In the last-named 
 picture, the mother is sitting by the banks of the dark 
 river of death, which is bordered by great stones 
 covered with blood, and on which is seen the swan 
 which Lemminkainen came to kill. She supports 
 herself with her right hand, while the left rests on 
 her son's dead body, which she has pieced together 
 from a thousand fragments. Her face is turned to- 
 wards the sky with an almost incredibly intense ex- 
 pression in its every line, as she beseeches the Cre- 
 ator to restore the breath of life to the corpse. 
 Above her head we see a ray of light and the bee 
 which flew to other worlds and brought the ointment 
 which restored her son to life. 
 
PAINTING AND MUSIC 179 
 
 Of recent years Gallen has rather forsaken the 
 ^^Kalevala'' and chosen his subjects elsewhere, no 
 doubt with advantage to his art, which seems to have 
 widened and become more human and complete. 
 His manysidedness is remarkable. He ranks high 
 both as a painter of portraits and of landscape. In 
 either field his aim is to represent the soul of what 
 he is painting, to pierce right through the surface 
 to what lies behind it, to use the outer shell and sur- 
 roundings of an object to express its inner spirit. 
 He chooses by preference, and is at his best in por- 
 traying, subjects that are strongly suggestive and 
 mysterious, that cause one to reflect and dream. He 
 is rarely commonplace, but when he finds a sympa- 
 thetic subject all his powers are evoked, and he im- 
 presses one by his sheer force of imagination and in- 
 tensity of expression. 
 
 Gallen has also painted some important frescoes 
 for a mausoleum at Bjorneborg. The following is 
 a description of one of them, representing the river 
 Tuonela, the Finnish equivalent of the Greek Cocy- 
 tus: — 
 
 ** On the bank of the Tuonela stands a group of 
 human beings, both men and women, old and young, 
 waiting to be taken to the other side. Thus the pic- 
 ture represents in other words the different rela- 
 tions of human beings to death. In the boat, which 
 is gliding forward on the dark river, sits huddled up, 
 with her head in her hands, a young naked woman, 
 while a middle-aged man with a determined expres- 
 sion on his face is just getting into it. On the bank 
 we see another naked woman, beside herself with de- 
 
180 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 spair, hiding her face, while a young girl, sadly and 
 inquiringly, but at the same time submissively, gets 
 ready for the last journey. An old bearded man 
 with large corns on his feet sits still with his hands 
 crossed over his knees, awaiting death. Among the 
 other figures in this sad and solemn picture our at- 
 tention is directed first to a man on the right, in 
 whom the artist has portrayed himself, weapng an 
 apron and with a trowel in his right hand." ' 
 
 Gallen, however, does not always strike the dra- 
 matic and tragic note ; he can also be idyllic. He has 
 a wonderful feeling for snow, whether feathery on 
 trees or lying like a shield on the iron earth. Some 
 of his most charming work consists of snow scenes 
 in the hush of winter. He also loves tranquil sum- 
 mer nights and days by the water. His ^' Bathing 
 Girls" is a masterpiece of this kind, daring in de- 
 sign and colour, exquisite in feeling. The joy of life 
 is expressed in every line of the glowing picture, with 
 its blue water, which becomes brilliant gold where 
 the sun strikes it, and its beautiful figures and quaint 
 attitudes of young girls tingling with unconstrained 
 enjoyment as they splash one another or roll on the 
 sand at the water's edge. Again, in the triptych 
 representing the story of Aino — an earlier work, 
 while French influence was still strong — a more hu- 
 man and lyrical atmosphere prevails. In one of the 
 side panels we see Aino dressed as a peasant girl 
 and wearing birch-bark slippers, followed by the 
 white-bearded Wainamoinen through a twilight wood 
 of pines and birches, between the stems of which 
 gleams the sunset. It is a characteristic piece of 
 

 v. /''-** ^^ 
 
PAINTING AND MUSIC 181 
 
 Finnish landscape. In the other side panel Aino is 
 sitting naked on a rock by the water, watching the 
 water-maidens disporting themselves. Aino, it may- 
 be remembered, was drowned, and Wainamoinen 
 sought her everywhere, disconsolate. The centre- 
 piece represents the story of how he caught her in 
 the form of a salmon and drew her into his boat, only 
 to lose her again. We see the old man leaning for- 
 ward in his boat with arms outstretched and Aino, 
 in human shape, plunging into the water. The land- 
 scape is of a blue lake with pine-clad shores, and 
 suggests utter loneliness. The boat, which is 
 streaked with a rough decoration of red and fur- 
 nished with the pointed oars common in the north of 
 Finland, rocks from the shock of Aino's leap from it. 
 
 Perhaps the most interesting figure in Finnish 
 painting after Edelf elt and Gallen is Eero Jarnef elt. 
 
 He is a type of the artist par excellence; he lives 
 preferably remote from the bustle of modern life 
 and careless of the demands of the public. In an age 
 that admires stress and violent accentuation he is 
 liable to be overlooked. There is about his work no 
 fuss nor self-advertisement, and he does not paint to 
 advance any cause, artistic or otherwise. He is con- 
 cerned to put on the canvas his own quiet but intense 
 vision. He has painted landscapes which, as you 
 gaze on them, reveal through the temperament of a 
 lyrical poet the very soul of Finnish nature ; and he 
 can combine his vision of nature with the note of 
 human endurance and suffering, as in his picture of 
 '^ Burning the Forest," which is, as it were, a re- 
 strained cry of pain. The girl with the blackened 
 
182 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 face, who stares out at us from amidst the rolling 
 smoke and the flames, is an image of tragic child- 
 hood which grips the heart. Jarnefelt is also a fine 
 painter of portraits, especially if he is interested in 
 his subject. The noblest of his portraits is, perhaps, 
 that of Matilda Wrede, the saintly woman who has 
 left a position of comfort and social distinction to 
 give up her life to the service of the men and women 
 in Finnish prisons. Few artists could have painted 
 her with such sympathy and understanding, for few 
 modern artists have the passionate and intense con- 
 templation which is necessary in order to shadow 
 forth on canvas the human soul. 
 
 There are many other artists of established repu- 
 tation whose work cannot be more than referred to 
 in this brief sketch. Westerholm has long enjoyed 
 fame as a landscape painter. His snow scenes, 
 painted by preference when there is rather a dead 
 atmosphere, reveal a loving and careful study of the 
 moods of his native scenery that recalls Words- 
 worth. Enckell is a painter of great refinement of 
 perception and considerable originality of outlook, 
 delightfully free from slovenliness of execution. 
 Thome, Faven and Finch are all artists who stimu- 
 late by the genuine originality of their vision; the 
 latter, though an Englishman, has rendered the hard 
 and brilliant loveliness of Finnish landscape in sum- 
 mer as successfully as any of the Finnish artists. 
 These painters, whose inspiration is derived in con- 
 siderable measure from contemporary French art, are 
 developing a studied, subtle and refined technique, a 
 conscious simplicity of treatment, which aims at dis- 
 
PAINTING AND MUSIC 183 
 
 pensing with all unnecessary detail. It is probably 
 to them and the group of which they are members 
 that the future belongs, and their annual exhibition 
 is looked forward to with deserved interest. 
 
 Many of the younger artists are handicapped by 
 poverty, which prevents them from studying abroad, 
 this in its turn perhaps inducing among them too 
 great a contempt for the traditions of painting. The 
 conditions of picture-selling in Finland are also un- 
 favourable to them. It frequently happens that the 
 richest men have not yet learned the art of buying 
 pictures, and often, when they have acquired it, pre- 
 fer to purchase foreign works. Consequently the 
 Finnish artist has to do most of his work for mu- 
 seums and lotteries, and one of the greatest needs of 
 the present day is a public possessing insight and 
 discrimination which will buy Finnish pictures. 
 
 Even more than in painting, the soul of the nation 
 is mirrored in its music. It has already been pointed 
 out that the ** Kalevala " is but the co-ordination 
 into an epic poem of a vast number of songs, handed 
 down from generation to generation. The old runo 
 singer is fast dying out, but the love of song re- 
 mains, and shows itself in the extraordinary wealth 
 of folk-song which exists among the Swedish- as 
 well as among the Finnish-speaking population. As 
 in other countries, it was gradually being forgotten, 
 but of recent years much has been snatched from 
 the jaws of time with commendable energy. 
 
 The Finnish folk-songs are not purely Finnish in 
 origin. Modern research shows that the popular 
 
184 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 melodies of most countries have wandered about 
 from one land to another, and those of Finland are 
 no exception to the rule. In them we do but find 
 Finnish characteristics stamped on to what was 
 originally a common European stock. Nevertheless 
 the national note is strong in them. It is both grave 
 and gay, seeming in the one case to embody the surg- 
 ing joy of the summer on which no darkness ever 
 falls; in the other, the long snow-lit twilight of the 
 winter, when for months on end the sun scarcely 
 peeps above the level of the frozen earth. Among 
 the Finnish-speaking population especially, the sad 
 note predominates, sorrow and loneliness being the 
 favourite themes. *' In this country, *' said Lonn- 
 rot, * * people often dwell far apart from one another 
 and therefore seek friends and companions in the 
 whole of Nature. They imagine that all things in 
 Nature have life, feeling and the power of speech. 
 If any one goes to a foreign land, the sun and the 
 wind are his old friends. If the young bride leaves 
 her home and grieves that all there will forget her, 
 she knows that at least the osiers and wattles will 
 recognize her when she returns. . . . But the glad 
 and happy also seek Nature's companionship. Joy- 
 ous girls beg the cuckoo to sing them silver and gold. 
 Mountains, trees and animals express their thoughts 
 to each other and to human beings." The ancestral 
 love of song is also clearly expressed in the actual 
 life of to-day, and one cannot help realizing that it 
 springs out of the inmost heart. of the people. In the 
 long summer evenings people sit together and sing. 
 On anniversaries, choirs sing before the statues of 
 
PAINTING AND MUSIC 185 
 
 Finland's great men. At dinners given to honoured 
 guests, singing is often part of the entertainment 
 offered. The Finns imprisoned in Eussia for de- 
 fending the constitution have often been sent off with 
 singing and welcomed with singing on their return. 
 From emigrant ships upon the Atlantic floats the 
 sad cadence of Finnish song, and in the new world 
 the Finns meet together and sing their country's im- 
 memorial songs in a strange land. 
 
 Modern music is a very recent growth in Finland, 
 and its development has been extraordinarily rapid. 
 It may be said to have commenced with the founda- 
 tion of the very interesting Musical Society at Abo 
 in 1790. The '' father of Finnish music," Frederic 
 Pacius (1809-91), was German by origin and made 
 German influence, notably that of Mendelssohn and 
 Spohr, strongly felt. Richard Faltin (born in 1835), 
 who did a great work in introducing more modern 
 music into Finland, was also born in Germany. The 
 first distinctively Finnish composer was Karl Col- 
 Ian, Pacius' son-in-law (1828-71). He was followed 
 by Martin Wegelius and Robert Kajanus, the latter 
 of whom founded the Philharmonic Orchestra at 
 Helsingf ors, and is in his composition a worthy fore- 
 runner of Sibelius. He did much to give Finnish 
 music the national direction it has since taken. Of 
 other present-day composers, beside Sibelius, the 
 most interesting are Selim Palmgren, Erkki Melar- 
 tin, Oscar Merikanto and Armas Jarnef elt, all young 
 men. 
 
 Finnish composers have, as might be expected, 
 turned mainly to folk-song and the ** Kalevala " 
 
186 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 for their themes. The latter, with its vast indefi- 
 niteness, is full of suggestion to musicians, and, if 
 Finland develops a national opera, will no doubt 
 furnish its heroes and heroines, as Homer did for 
 Greek tragedy. In this way Finnish legend may be- 
 come more widely known to the rest of Europe. 
 
 Among Finnish composers Jean Sibelius is by far 
 the greatest. While transcending the limits of na- 
 tionality and forming part of the main current of Eu- 
 ropean music, he is yet distinctively Finnish in his 
 love of Nature and his patriotism. The latter is dis- 
 cernible in his choice of subjects, both for orchestral 
 music and for songs, but it is best described as an 
 atmosphere pervading all his work. Not only did he 
 often turn to the ** Kalevala " for his inspiration, 
 but also to that other great source of national feel- 
 ing, the poems of Euneberg. He is a great lover of 
 Nature and there seems to be something peculiarly 
 Finnish in his way of apprehending her, the Finn- 
 ish landscape in all its moods being often brought 
 most vividly into the mind of the hearer. There is 
 a keenness of perception that reveals the composer 
 as gifted with highly developed physical senses, his 
 works sometimes giving one the effect of bracing 
 days spent in the country. He also rejoices to por- 
 tray in his music the crashing of storms through the 
 forest and over the water. He excels in depicting 
 poignant moments, especially in his songs, which are 
 among the finest of modern times. 
 
 It is appropriate that a nation in whose music the 
 song has always played so great a part should be 
 unusually rich in fine voices. Their quality is clear 
 
PAINTING AND MUSIC 187 
 
 and metallic, like the physical atmosphere of the 
 country. Finnish singing is rich in spontaneous feel- 
 ing and has a fine primitive quality. Probably we 
 shall hear much of Finnish singers in the future. 
 Compared with the best German singers, they are 
 perhaps deficient in the highest gifts of style, polish 
 and culture, and lieder singing has been but little 
 developed among them. It is rather in opera and 
 folk-song that they shine, where finesse is less requi- 
 site and their simplicity and strength tell. When 
 they sing the songs of their native country really 
 well, one has the impression, not of exquisite art, but 
 of the simple utterance of nature, heartfelt and in- 
 evitable, the sublimation of peasant song. Choral 
 singing is a great feature of Finnish life and some- 
 times reaches a very high level, as in the choir Suo- 
 men Laulu. 
 
 Thanks to Mme. Aino Ackte, who needs no intro- 
 duction to British readers, Finland has initiated a 
 musical festival which may come to have a national 
 importance. It is held in the summer at Nyslott, in 
 the heart of Finland. Here the ruins of a noble 
 castle rise from a rocky island in the great Saima 
 chain of lakes, and thither go up the lovers of Finn- 
 ish music to listen to Finnish choirs, a Finnish 
 opera, and native compositions of all kinds. It is a 
 wild romantic spot, and the castle with its grounds 
 an ideal setting for Finnish opera. It remains to be 
 seen whether the festival will have any effect in de- 
 veloping musical talent ; it certainly gives local com- 
 posers a chance of bringing their works before a 
 wider public. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 EDUCATION" 
 
 ELEMENTARY schools in Finland date from 
 the eighteen-sixties. In early times the priest, 
 assisted by the sacristan, was the only schoolmaster. 
 It devolved on him to teach the people to read, and 
 laggard pupils were braced to their task by the law 
 of 1686, which enacted that no one might receive the 
 Holy Communion who had not a knowledge of the 
 Scriptures, nor be married who had not both re- 
 ceived the Communion and learned to repeat Lu- 
 ther's catechism. Parents were expected to take 
 their share in the work of instruction at home, on 
 pain of being fined. When the inadequacy of this 
 system became too glaring, parish schools were es- 
 tablished, and as, in so thinly populated a country as 
 Finland, these could not be instituted in sufficient 
 numbers to provide for the needs of the more remote 
 households, that interesting phenomenon, the ambu- 
 latory school, came into existence. Teachers jour- 
 neyed from place to place and settled down to in- 
 struct for a few weeks at each. Such schools still 
 exist in some of the more remote parts of Finland. 
 They belong to and are kept up by the parish, and 
 wiU disappear if State elementary education is made 
 compulsory. They act as a sort of preparation for 
 
 188 
 
EDUCATION 
 
 189 
 
 the elementary schools, which latter presuppose in 
 their pupils at entrance a certain knowledge of read- 
 ing and the Scriptures. 
 
 It was during the period of progress after Alex- 
 ander II's accession that the present system of ele- 
 mentary education was established through the foun- 
 dation of the FolJcskola (People's School). In 1863 
 the first training college for elementary teachers was 
 opened at Jyvaskyla, with Finnish as the language of 
 instruction, and when, after a four years ' course, the 
 students left the college to take up the practical 
 work of teaching, the elementary school was fairly 
 launched.^ 
 
 ^In 1908 there were 2,663 such schools in the country-side 
 alone, of which 89 per cent were mixed schools. The following 
 table shows the rapid spread of elementary schools since 1877, 
 together with the tendency of the mixed school to replace the 
 separate schools for boys and girls. The figures relate to schools 
 in the country only. These, of course, constitute the great ma- 
 jority of Finnish schools. Those in the towns will be referred 
 to later. 
 
 Year 
 
 Total Number of 
 Schools 
 
 Mixed Schools 
 
 Percentage of 
 Mixed Schools 
 
 1877-8 
 1887-8 
 1897-8 
 1907-8 
 
 357 
 
 755 
 
 1,510 
 
 2,663 
 
 172 
 
 446 
 
 1,206 
 
 2,369 
 
 48.2 
 58.7 
 79.9 
 89.0 
 
 If we divide the country schools according to the language 
 of instruction, the result for 1907-8 is as follows: — 
 
 Finnish 2,279 
 
 Swedish 374 
 
 Eoth Finnish and Swedish ... ... 10 
 
 The total number of children attending the country elemen- 
 tary schools in 1907-8 was 112,362. 
 There are two terms, from September 1st to December 20th, 
 
190 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 The subjects taught at the elementary schools in- 
 clude reading, writing, arithmetic. Scripture, his- 
 tory, geography, the elements of science, singing, 
 drawing and gymnastics. The most original feature 
 of the instruction is, however, the time devoted to 
 sloid, or manual labour. The girls are taught sew- 
 ing, knitting, darning, patching and dressmaking, 
 and in some schools cooking, while the boys pass 
 from working in paper and pasteboard to woodwork 
 and carpentering. The theoretical knowledge ac- 
 quired through arithmetic, geometry, drawing and 
 natural science is thus practically applied. The chil- 
 dren are particularly fond of this part of their work, 
 and the idea might with advantage be adopted in 
 other countries. 
 
 The teachers are trained in special training col- 
 leges, of which there are at present eight.^ Ten 
 
 and from January 15th to June 1st, the school year beginning 
 on September 1st, 
 
 The hours of instruction are usually 8 to 10 and 12 to 3 or 
 8 to 11 and 1 to 3. At the end of every hour there is a pause of 
 ten minutes, an excellent custom. The school age is from nine 
 to thirteen, the school course lasting for four years. The aver- 
 age number of children in a school was in 1907-8 42, the average 
 number of children to each master or mistress being 35. 
 
 With regard to elementary education in the towns, it should 
 be noted that the school age is from seven to thirteen instead 
 of from nine to thirteen as in the country, and that school at- 
 tendance is practically compulsory. In 1907-8 the town elemen- 
 tary schools were attended by 34,628 children, rather more than 
 half of whom were girls. 
 
 Of the 1,150 teachers, no less than 843 were women. 
 
 1 In 1877-8 the teachers numbered 363, in 1907-8 there were 
 3,197, of whom 1,681 were men and 1,516 women. There were 
 also about 2,000 persons giving instruction of various kinds in 
 addition to the regular teachers. 
 
EDUCATION 191 
 
 years ago there was a serious difficulty in providing 
 sufficient teachers, and even to-day it is not easy to 
 fill vacant posts. The salaries of teachers are as fol- 
 lows : the commune provides a house, garden and fir- 
 ing, or the money equivalent of these, while the 
 State pays a salary of 900 marks to single teachers, 
 whether men or women, and 1,100 to teachers with 
 families. The original salary is increased by 20 per 
 cent after five, ten, fifteen and twenty years ' service. 
 The teacher has further the prospect of a pension, 
 but here the principle of equal pay for equal work 
 ceases to be applied, and men are better pensioned 
 than women. 
 
 In spite of the extraordinary development of the 
 People ^s Schools, of which it is reckoned there is now 
 in the country districts one per 957 inhabitants, as 
 against one per 1,619 in 1896, the popular need of 
 education has not yet been met. At the present time 
 only about 50 per cent of the children of the school 
 age attend the elementary schools in the country dis- 
 tricts, and it is calculated that even if each of these 
 schools had as many pupils as it could receive, some 
 two thousand more would still be required to receive 
 all the children. Against this deficiency in schools 
 we have to place the fact that thanks to the efforts 
 already alluded to of parents and the clergy, practi- 
 cally every one in Finland can read from the age of 
 seven and a very large proportion can write. This 
 has been the case for a couple of centuries and is 
 very much to the credit of the country. 
 
 These remarks do not apply to the children of 
 school age belonging to the Eussian (Greek Ortho- 
 
192 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 dox Churcli,) who in 1906 numbered 9,106, of whom 
 2,694 were absolutely without any education. 
 
 A strong desire exists to make elementary educa- 
 tion compulsory, so that the advantage of the FolJcs- 
 kolamsij be shared equally by the entire population. 
 At present, the number of children of school age at- 
 tending elementary schools varies from 76 per cent 
 in the southern province of Nyland to only 30 per 
 cent. in the northern province of Ule^borg. A first 
 step in the direction of compulsion was taken in 1898, 
 when it was decided that the country communes 
 should so divide themselves into districts that all the 
 children could attend a folkskola without walking 
 more than 5 km. A school was to be erected in each 
 district thus formed, provided that it contained at 
 least thirty children seeking entrance. In 1910 the 
 Diet voted a Bill on these lines, making elementary 
 education compulsory and extending the course from 
 four years to six. But Eussia here, as in other cases, 
 blocks the way of progress, and there is at present 
 no chance of the Tsar giving his sanction to the Bill. 
 
 The Finnish child, if its education is to be con- 
 tinued, will pass from the People 's School to a State 
 or private Secondary School. The State maintains 
 Classical Schools {Lyceer) and Modern Schools 
 (Realskolor) for boys, and Modern Schools for girls 
 (Fruntimmerskolor). In the Classical Schools, 
 Latin and Greek are taught ; in the Real Schools and 
 Girls' Schools these are replaced by modern lan- 
 guages. The Boys' Schools have eight classes, the 
 highest of which leads on to the University; the 
 Girls' Schools have only five classes, but in many 
 
EDUCATION 193 
 
 places continuation classes are either provided or 
 subsidized by the State for those girls who wish to 
 become University students. The ordinary teach- 
 er's qualification is the degree of Magister and the 
 attending a Normal School, which is an ordinary 
 boys' school at which would-be teachers attend the 
 lessons and have themselves to give trial lessons, be- 
 sides passing an examination in pedagogy, in order 
 to acquire the teacher's certificate. The hours of 
 instruction are the same as at the elementary 
 schools. The course, however, is an eight years' 
 one. 
 
 No corporal punishment is permitted in the sec- 
 ondary schools, and it will probably soon be abol- 
 ished in the elementary schools. 
 
 The private schools include Mixed Schools, Girls' 
 Schools and Real Schools, the teaching in all of 
 which corresponds in the main to that given in the 
 State Real Schools. All the private schools receive 
 substantial support from the State. 
 
 They are regarded as an important field for ex- 
 periment, and it is here that the substitution of a 
 modern for a classical education first took place. 
 The most important experiment, however, was of 
 the Mixed School {samslcola) yWhioh began to appear 
 iu the 'eighties. Quite apart from educational the- 
 ory, its cheapness commended it to a poor country, 
 it being obviously much cheaper to build a single 
 school for both sexes than to establish separate 
 houses with different teaching staffs for girls and 
 boys. 
 
 Very different opinions exist on the subject of the 
 
194 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Mixed School, but the balance seems on the whole 
 to be in favour of it. None of the more serious 
 moral troubles which it is sometimes supposed to 
 bring in its train have appeared. It is admitted, 
 however, that in many schools a certain amount of 
 jflirting takes place between the girls and boys in the 
 higher classes, and complaints have been heard from 
 girls that the mixed school makes the boys less manly 
 and more snobbish. One also hears of boys requir- 
 ing a great deal of pocket-money in order to give 
 their best girls a good time. On the other side one 
 can set such stories as the following, coming from a 
 schoolmaster, who relates that the boys of his school 
 requested that girls from other schools might be in- 
 vited to the annual dance, as they did not look upon 
 their own as real girls. Many girls again have de- 
 nied the existence of much flirtation at their schools. 
 When opinions are so contradictory one can only 
 infer that the conditions are widely different at dif- 
 ferent schools. I should surmise that the Mixed 
 School is seen at its best in the country districts, 
 where there is less opportunity of spending money 
 and going to cafes. 
 
 Perhaps the most serious criticism of the Mixed 
 School lies in the still unsolved question whether it 
 is good for girls to be educated just the same as boys. 
 (There is, indeed, a certain difference in the gymnas- 
 tic training.) It seems possible that there is a very 
 real danger of the girls overexerting themselves. A 
 sries of weighing experiments made a few years ago 
 in the mixed schools in Helsingf ors showed that the 
 girls decreased in weight during the term and only 
 
EDUCATION 195 
 
 increased during the holidays, while the boys in- 
 creased throughout the year, though most during the 
 holidays. Whether the result is the same in the 
 mixed schools in the country I am unable to say. 
 The situation might perhaps be summed up by say- 
 ing that while it has been shown that co-education is 
 free from the terrors with which early prejudice 
 clothed the idea, it has not yet been proved that its 
 advantages are so overwhelming that we ought 
 forthwith to adopt it. 
 
 Hitherto the State, while liberally financing the 
 mixed secondary school in private hands, has estab- 
 lished very few such schools of its own. 
 
 The administration of the schools is in the hands 
 of the Board of Education, which is subordinate to 
 the Ecclesiastical Department of the Senate.^ Dif- 
 ferent sections preside over the elementary and sec- 
 ondary schools and provide inspectors for the vari- 
 ous districts. The authority of the Senate, however, 
 stops short of the University, which is at once the 
 goal of the schools and entirely independent of the 
 administration presiding over them. The Univer- 
 sity is one of the comparatively few old institutions 
 in Finland. It was founded at Abo in 1640, and 
 after the great fire was transferred to Helsingfors 
 in 1827. 
 
 At the end of their eight-year course the pupils at 
 the secondary schools take the so-called Student Ex- 
 
 ^ As this title may be misleading, it should be pointed out that 
 the Church and the School administration for the last forty 
 years have been separate. The Ecclesiastical Department cor- 
 responds to the Culius Ministerium in other countries. 
 
196 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 amination, the papers of which are set and corrected 
 by University professors. Subject only to success in 
 an oral examination at Helsingfors, those who pass 
 gain the coveted privilege of studying at the Uni- 
 versity and wearing the students' cap. 
 
 The University is divided into six faculties, con- 
 taining over 3,000 students, more than 700 of whom 
 are women. 
 
 Its social life is founded on the Student Corpora- 
 tions, to one of which every undergraduate belongs. 
 The corporations are twelve in number and are based 
 on locality. They are not, however, residential, like 
 English colleges. Each corporation has its own club 
 premises and carries on its separate social life. 
 There is also a Students' House to which all stu- 
 dents have access, independently of the corporation 
 to which they belong. 
 
 Thanks to an investigation made by the present 
 Vice-Chancellor, it is possible to determine with 
 considerable accuracy the different classes of society 
 from which the students are drawn. Professor 
 Hjelt divides the students according to their fathers' 
 rank or profession into upper, middle and lower 
 class, and taking two three-year periods gets the 
 following results : — 
 
 Upper, Middle, Lower, 
 per cent per cent per cent 
 
 1894-6 Men Students 51.8 30.7 16.6 
 
 .1894-6 Women Students 75 . 21 . 5 2.9 
 
 1903-5 Men Students 46.5 34.0 19.1 
 
 1903-5 Women Students .. . ... 49.3 33.4 15.9 
 
 The result shows very clearly to what an extentthe 
 
EDUCATION 197 
 
 advantages of higher education are within the reach 
 of the middle and lower classes. The privilege, how- 
 ever, seems often to be dearly purchased, for many 
 of the students are forced, through lack of means, to 
 study on borrowed money, and in later life quite a 
 number of men are still paying off the capital loaned 
 to them in their student years. Many of the stu- 
 dents manage on very small sums, but there is plenty 
 of extravagance among the richer ones and much 
 money is wasted at restaurants. 
 
 The first woman student matriculated in 1870, the 
 next in 1873 ; but for a long time women studied in 
 very small numbers only, and it was not until 1901 
 that they were placed on an absolute equality with 
 the men. They have shown a rather marked prefer- 
 ence for the Historical-Philological faculty. The 
 girls of the Finnish-speaking lower class have been 
 peculiarly ready to avail themselves of the privilege 
 of University education, as the following table of 
 Professor Hjelt relating to women students in 1893- 
 6 and 1903-5 shows:— 
 
 Upper, Middle, Lower, 
 
 per cent per cent per cent 
 
 Swedish speaking 72.1 24.2 2.9 
 
 Finnish speaking 39.9 37.0 19.9 
 
 The percentage of students, both men and women, 
 who complete their University course by taking the 
 final examination is rather small and is decreasing, 
 the reason being that most girls and boys are keen to 
 take the Student Examination as the culmination of 
 their school career, but do not desire a University 
 
198 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 degree. This remark is specially applicable to girl 
 students. 
 
 In addition to the primary and secondary schools 
 and the University, there exist many other educa- 
 tional institutions of great importance to the coun- 
 try, by means of which knowledge filters through to 
 all classes of society. Among the most interesting 
 of these are the so-called People's High Schools, a 
 kind of popular university built upon the foundation 
 laid by the elementary school. The idea came origi- 
 nally from Denmark and has been adapted so as to 
 meet Finnish conditions. The aim of these schools is 
 both ideal and practical. They try to awaken among 
 the peasantry an interest in culture and in the prob- 
 lems of the day and at the same time train them in 
 the best methods of farming and housekeeping. The 
 first of these schools was founded at BorgS, in 1889, 
 and to-day there are over forty of them, in about 
 two-thirds of which the instruction is given in Fin- 
 nish. The majority of the students are between the 
 ages of eighteen and twenty-two and belong to the 
 landowning peasantry. Each school has between 
 twenty and one hundred students. In the year 1907- 
 8 the total number of students attending the schools 
 was 1,447, of whom 578 were men and 869 women. 
 The course lasts from November 1st to May 1st. The 
 success of these People's High Schools is undoubt- 
 ed, and most of them receive an annual subvention 
 from the State. 
 
 It is not only from these schools, however, that 
 culture is gradually being spread through the Finn- 
 ish country-side. The University students them- 
 
EDUCATION 199 
 
 selves have through their corporations organized a 
 kind of Extension lecturing with a similar object. 
 In the vacations students travel about the country- 
 side spreading the knowledge they have themselves 
 acquired at the capital. It is an excellent plan. It 
 keeps the students in touch with the working people, 
 it is instructive for the country population, whilst it 
 benefits the student intellectually, because, by forcing 
 him to explain his knowledge to others, it compels 
 him first to think it out and make it clear to himself. 
 One would like to see a similar movement in other 
 countries. Moreover, the student corporations have 
 also raised considerable funds for sending special 
 lecturers to country places, for the founding of li- 
 braries and for other educational aims. 
 
 A word must also be said of the efforts made by 
 the country-folk themselves at self -improvement, in 
 the shape of the Young People's Clubs which have 
 developed so rapidly of late years. The idea started 
 in Osterbotten in 1882 and has since spread to every 
 part of the country, the different branches being 
 kept in touch by means of a federal body situated in 
 Helsingfors. These clubs have a double purpose. 
 Firstly, they afford young people a regular oppor- 
 tunity of meeting, which is by no means always an 
 easy matter in the Finnish country-side, and of in- 
 dulging in singing, dancing and theatricals. Sec- 
 ondly, they aim at interesting them in art, litera- 
 ture, science and the questions of the day. 
 
 There are a great number of other educational in- 
 stitutions which cannot be mentioned here — such as 
 navigation schools, agricultural colleges, gardening 
 
200 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 schools, commercial schools, schools for abnormal 
 children, etc. Finally, reference must be made to 
 the important Technical High School at Helsingf ors, 
 which has some sixty lecturers and over four hun- 
 dred students, who are divided into five faculties — 
 architecture, engineering, machine engineering, 
 chemistry and land-surveying. 
 
 Education in Finland is carried out under certain 
 disadvantages, some of which are inevitable, others 
 of which might be remedied. Among the former 
 none is a more serious handicap than the large num- 
 ber of languages that have to be studied. The fol- 
 lowing are compulsory: Finnish, Swedish, Russian 
 and German, together with French in the modern 
 and Latin in the classical schools. It is difficult to 
 see how the number is to be reduced, for Finnish is 
 practically useless outside Finland and Russian out- 
 side Russia, and, although Swedish opens up the 
 riches of the Scandinavian world, yet it is inevitably 
 to West Europe that Finland turns in order to keep 
 in touch with the great world. English is still a 
 voluntary subject in most schools, but is being 
 studied more and more. In fact, it has become very 
 fashionable to learn English. 
 
 The circumstances which condemn the Finnish 
 school-child to learn half a dozen languages may be 
 deplored, but can hardly be altered. The system of 
 education is, however, fairly open to criticism in 
 certain respects where changes might well be made. 
 Thus, too high a value seems to be set upon the 
 purely intellectual element in education, which is 
 bad both in itself and also because Finland is too 
 
EDUCATION 201 
 
 poor a country to support a large leisured class. The 
 attitude expresses itself most clearly in the tendency 
 for secondary schools to prepare their pupils too ex- 
 clusively for a University career. This uniformity 
 IS sometimes attributed to the prevalence of the Ger- 
 man ideal in Finland. How far the accusation is 
 just it is difficult to say. It is certain that Finland 
 has largely gone to school in Germany, and that her 
 debt to German culture can hardly be overestimated. 
 But the excessive importance attached to University 
 education and intellectual culture is probably due, at 
 least in part, to the desire of the Finns to turn out 
 as quickly as possible a Finnish-speaking educated 
 class qualified to hold the more important positions 
 in the State, this having led to an overproduction of 
 students or, at least, to a too rapid production of 
 them. 
 
 However this may be, one cannot help feeling that 
 a greater elasticity in educational ideals would be 
 good for Finland. Boys and girls in the secondary 
 schools work for years in order to pass the Student 
 Examination, and, having done so, never take a de- 
 gree. They have, indeed obtained what they desired, 
 the commercial value of the Student Examination, 
 such as it is, and the honour it brings. But the en- 
 ergy which has gone to winning these might in hun- 
 dreds of cases have been much better applied in 
 other directions. Moreover, the country itself loses 
 by having its intellectuals turned out too much of one 
 pattern. That a reaction against this excessive in- 
 tellectualism will take place it is fairly safe to proph- 
 esy, and this will no doubt bring with it a change 
 
202 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 in the relation of the University and the secondary 
 school. Fears are already being expressed that the 
 present tendency, if unchecked, might lead to the 
 production of an intellectual proletariat despising 
 manual labour, and remedies for the excessive uni- 
 formity of the system are being eagerly discussed, 
 and — in the People's High Schools — put into prac- 
 tice. 
 
 A foreigner may perhaps be allowed to question 
 whether there is sufficient personal contact between 
 students and professors at the University. There is 
 no college system with its nexus of common resi- 
 dence to unite them, and the students seem, accord- 
 ing to our English notions, to be left too much to 
 themselves. This is especially the case in their 
 choice of lectures. They do not map out a course of 
 study and stick to it, but flit from one subject to an- 
 other like bees among the fair flowers of learning, 
 with the result that too many emerge from the Uni- 
 versity without knowing anything really well. I be- 
 lieve that students are in the habit of attending far 
 too many lectures, and several have told me that 
 their first and second years have been largely wasted 
 for this reason. The remedy is surely a greater su- 
 pervision of the students by the professors, who 
 could teach them how to study systematically and 
 thus go directly to their object instead of making a 
 long detour. Moreover, too many students seem to 
 come to the University without any definite idea of 
 what subjects they want to study. Here the advice 
 of the teachers in the higher classes of the schools 
 ought to be of value. 
 
EDUCATION 203 
 
 Increased personal contact between teacher and 
 taught would probably counteract another exagger- 
 ated tendency in the Finnish student — namely, the 
 propensity to run after every new thing. It is so 
 easy to start a new interest in young Finland, so dif- 
 ficult to keep it going. A thing is tried, becomes 
 fashionable for a moment, and then is replaced by 
 something else, which as rapidly gives way to yet an- 
 other interest. Altogether, there is far too much 
 intellectual fluidity among the younger generation of 
 Finns, and not enough stability. 
 
 Another sphere in which one would like to see a 
 change is that of sport. That sport should play a 
 very much smaller part in Finnish than in British 
 education is neither to be wondered at nor regretted. 
 What one does regret, however, is that boys and 
 girls who in their early years became adepts at sport 
 should, on going to the University, almost entirely 
 abandon it. The reason assigned for it is lack of 
 time. But as a great many students find plenty of 
 time to spend in restaurants and in amusements 
 generally, in the majority of cases the reason does 
 not seem a convincing one. Moreover, one feels that 
 a moderate amount of time devoted to outdoor exer- 
 cise would have an excellent effect on their studies 
 and help to keep their minds fresh and brisk. It al- 
 ways strikes one rather painfully to see the splendid 
 skating-rinks covered with children, while young 
 men and women are hardly represented at all. If 
 the Finns did not allow the restaurant, with its sed- 
 entary habits, to take the place of sport until a few 
 years later than is the case at present, they would be- 
 
204 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 come a splendid nation of athletes, and this without 
 the sacrifice of intellectual pursuits. It is pleasant 
 to be able to add that in the opinion of competent ob- 
 servers the restaurant habit has been diminishing 
 during the last twenty years and the interest in 
 sport increasing. 
 
 There are many features of Finnish education 
 that strike one as being admirable. First of all, the 
 Finns are prepared to spend money on their schools. 
 The more recent school-buildings are models of their 
 kind and would excite admiration in any country. 
 They are kept extremely spick and span and are 
 splendidly equipped in every way. The teachers 
 seem to do their work efficiently and to be keen on 
 keeping in touch with educational movements all 
 over the world. They are enabled to do so with 
 considerable success, as sums are available to assist 
 teachers desirous of spending their holidays abroad 
 in studying foreign school systems. The Univer- 
 sity also has in its gift a number of valuable travel- 
 ling scholarships, thanks to which much of the best 
 work of Finnish scholars has been rendered pos- 
 sible. The importance of such scholarships in a 
 relatively poor country can hardly be overestimated. 
 
 The willingness to spend money on education is 
 only the outward sign of one of the best features 
 of Finnish character — namely, a genuine intellec- 
 tual curiosity. Eef erence has already been made to 
 the extravagant forms this enthusiasm sometimes 
 takes, but it is at least the defect of a noble qual- 
 ity. This little nation lying in what even to-day 
 seems a remote corner of Europe, and which a hun- 
 
EDUCATION 205 
 
 dred years ago seemed almost a mythological coun- 
 try, has for over two centuries had one of the best 
 records for literacy in the whole of Europe, and is 
 to-day informed by a resolute determination to be 
 in touch with **the best that has been known and 
 thought in the world." Teachers have been among 
 the most honoured men and women in the country, 
 and there is nothing of that condescending attitude 
 towards the profession that was common in England 
 not many decades ago, and which even to-day has 
 not entirely disappeared. 
 
 I should not like to close this chapter without 
 some reference to the professors and students with 
 whom I have had the honour of being associated, 
 and from whom I have received kindness which I 
 shall never forget. The men students are simple, 
 manly fellows, remarkably free from **side'' and 
 very easy to get on with. The girls are capable 
 and intelligent and by no means blue-stockings. Al- 
 together, the relationship between teachers and stu- 
 dents seems a very pleasant one, marked by good- 
 will on either side. Of the professors it is enough 
 to say that their work is valued most highly by those 
 who know it best. The quality of Finnish research 
 is familiar to English readers through the books of 
 Professor Edward Westermarck, Professor Yrjo 
 Him and others. Finnish professors are by no 
 means exclusively academic in type, and many of 
 them take an important share in the public life of 
 the country. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE DIET AND PAETIES 
 
 THE machinery of Government in Finland is 
 rather complicated. There are three main 
 factors to be reckoned with — the Emperor-Grand- 
 Duke, the Senate and the Diet, and the inter-relation 
 of these is based on the old Swedish constitution, 
 as defined by the ^^Form of Government'' of 1772 
 and the **Act of Union and Security'' of 1789. This 
 constitution was guaranteed to the Finns by Alex- 
 ander I in 1809, when Finland entered the Russian 
 Empire. 
 
 The Emperor-Grand-Duke governs in accordance 
 with the fundamental laws and the other laws of the 
 country, with the assistance of Finnish authorities 
 and officials. The legislative power is exercised by 
 the Emperor and the Diet together, but certain ad- 
 ministrative ordinances can be issued by the former 
 alone. The official medium of communication be- 
 tween the Emperor and the Finnish authorities is 
 the Secretary of State for Finland. 
 
 The Governor-General is the head of the civil ad- 
 ministration of the country. 
 
 The Senate, which corresponds in certain respects 
 to a Cabinet, consists of two Departments, that of 
 
 206 
 
THE DIET AND PAETIES 207 
 
 Justice and that of Economy. The former is pri- 
 marily a Supreme Court of Appeal, but has also cer- 
 tain functions of an administrative nature, which in 
 other countries fall under the domain of the Min- 
 istry of Justice. The latter is the administration 
 proper and is divided into eight ** expeditions'' or 
 ministries, at the head of each of which is a Sen- 
 ator. Senators are appointed for a term of three 
 years by the Emperor, who under normal conditions 
 takes into consideration the prevailing feeling in 
 the country in his choice. A strong desire exists to 
 separate the Department of Justice from the rest 
 of the Senate and transform it into an independent 
 Supreme Court. The fact that its members are ap- 
 pointed by the Emperor largely for political reasons, 
 and for a brief tenure of office only, seriously weak- 
 ens the Department to-day. It is also desired to 
 remove from the Department all business of an ad- 
 ministrative nature. In the Senate sits the Pro- 
 curator, its legal adviser, whose business it is to 
 see that public officials do not transgress the laws. 
 The Senate, it is important to notice, is not respon- 
 sible to the Diet. 
 
 Before passing to the Diet, it may be well to in- 
 dicate briefly the nature of local government and the 
 considerable functions it discharges. 
 
 The country is divided into 38 urban and 475 
 rural communes. The present organization of the 
 former was only established in 1873, that of the lat- 
 ter in 1865 (now Act of June 15, 1898). Behind it, 
 however, there lies a long experience in self- 
 government, based on the old Scandinavian insti- 
 
208 FINLAND AND THE FINNS i 
 
 tutions. Towns of more than two thousand inhabM 
 tants elect representatives, and smaller towns and 
 rural communes are also entitled to do so ; but it fre- 
 quently happens in the country communes that busi- 
 ness is still settled in a general assembly of all the 
 voters, which elects an executive to carry out the de- 
 cisions it has arrived at. The right to vote depends 
 on taxation, and, while in the Diet elections the prin- 
 ciple of one man (or woman) one vote reigns, in the 
 communes a man may have any number of votes up 
 to twenty-five, according to the size of his income. 
 This is a curious instance of the co-existence of the 
 old and the new in Finnish life. Married women 
 do not exercise the communal vote, because their 
 husbands pay their taxes. No doubt when the polit- 
 ical situation becomes normal again the communal 
 laws will be revised. The communes have the right 
 to manage practically all their own affairs, includ- 
 ing finance, the conununal properties, schools, po- 
 lice, poor law administration and the public health. 
 There are, however, a few matters in which they 
 have to obtain the consent of the provincial govern- 
 ors or the Senate, such as the raising of loans. In 
 the urban communes is a town court consisting of a 
 mayor and aldermen ; it is a court of justice acting 
 also as a magistrate, i.e., the executive body of the 
 town administration. But there may also be many 
 elective municipal boards, the principal one being 
 that of Finance (Dratselkammare). The country 
 communes have no such court. In 1909 the 38 urban 
 communes had a population of 451,030. According 
 to the budgets for 1908, their combined income 
 
THE DIET AND PARTIES 209 
 
 amounted to nearly 34 million marks, of which more 
 than a quarter was derived from income tax. The 
 municipal debt amounted to nearly 55 milUon marks, 
 while the assets were estimated at nearly 144 mil- 
 lions. The population of the 475 rural communes in 
 1909 was 2,608,229, their income for 1908 being 12 
 millions, of which nine were derived from income 
 tax. The debt amounted to nearly 17 millions. 
 
 The present parliamentary system in Finland 
 only dates back to 1906. Up to that time the old 
 Swedish representation had been in force. The Diet 
 had consisted of Four Estates, namely, the Nobil- 
 ity, the Clergy, the Burghers, and the Peasants, 
 which sat and voted separately. The electorate num- 
 bered some hundred thousand persons, a mere frac- 
 tion of the population, and large groups of citizens 
 who were keenly interested in politics were entirely 
 excluded from participation in them. Long before 
 1905 this system had been regarded as obsolete, but 
 circumstances had prevented the substitution of a 
 more modern alternative. 
 
 The present representation came as one of the 
 results of the Great Strike of 1905, by which the 
 Finns induced the Tsar to withdraw the illegal or- 
 dinances of the Bobrikotf regime and restore the 
 constitution. Two proposals for a new system of 
 election had been previously discussed in Finland, 
 each of them being based on the idea of universal 
 suffrage ; one of them favoured a two chamber sys- 
 tem, the other a single chamber, elected by propor- 
 tional representation. The latter opinion prevailed. 
 A committee drew up a scheme early in 1906, which 
 
210 
 
 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 was accepted by the Four Estates, and received the 
 Emperor's sanction on July 20th. 
 
 The Diet thus consists of a single chamber. It 
 contains two hundred members, who are elected 
 every three years by direct and proportional repre- 
 sentation. Every man or woman who has attained 
 the age of twenty-four, provided he or she is not 
 disqualified owing to certain obvious disabilities, 
 such as are recognized in every country, is both en- 
 titled to vote and eligible for a seat in the Diet. The 
 Diet meets yearly, being convoked by the Emperor, 
 and its session lasts for ninety days. The Emperor, 
 however, has the right to dissolve it before the ex- 
 piration of the session. In this case new elections 
 have to be held and the Diet meets again. The 
 Emperor has also the right to summon an extraordi- 
 nary Diet. The Finnish and Swedish languages are 
 on a footing of equality, and the Speaker uses both 
 when pronouncing a ruling or making a communica- 
 tion. Naturally much more Finnish is spoken than 
 Swedish, and Swedish speeches are translated into 
 Finnish by a special interpreter. 
 
 The first election on the new system was held on 
 March 15 and 16, 1907. The number of persons 
 who voted was 899,347, about 70 per cent, of the 
 whole electorate. The parties were divided as fol- 
 lows : — 
 
 Socialists ... 
 
 Old Finns 
 
 Young Finns 
 
 Swedish party 
 
 80 
 
 59 
 
 26 
 
 24 
 
 Agrarians ... 
 
 Christian Workmen 
 
 9 
 
 2 
 
THE DIET AND PARTIES 211 
 
 The great surprise of the election was the large 
 number of Socialists returned, the new party claim- 
 ing no less than two-fifths of all the seats. As, how- 
 ever, some account of the Socialists is given in an- 
 other chapter, reference will only be made here to 
 the other parties. The Swedish party, representing 
 the Swedish-speaking population of Finland, lost 
 most by the new system of election. Hitherto they 
 had controlled two out of the old Four Estates ; now 
 they shrank to an eighth part of the new represen- 
 tation. Nevertheless, their influence is out of pro- 
 portion to their numbers, because for generations 
 they have been the governing class in Finland and 
 have developed a practical political capacity which 
 gives them a considerable advantage over their less 
 experienced colleagues. They have been long accus- 
 tomed to control a machine which the more recently 
 enfranchised classes are still but learning to manip- 
 ulate. They first began to organize themselves as a 
 political party in the eighteen-eighties, when the 
 triumph of the National movement seemed to render 
 the formation of a league in defence of the Swedish 
 language imperative. The Nya Pressen was founded 
 as their Press organ about that time. To-day the 
 party is represented in Helsingf ors by Hufvudstads- 
 hladet and Dagens Pressen. In internal politics 
 both conservative and radical shades of opinion 
 emerge. With regard to Russia they have always 
 led the movement for ** passive resistance," and in- 
 sist on the strictest observance of the constitution. 
 They do not, of course, stand in any way for polit- 
 ical separatism. 
 
212 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 The Finnish party (usually called the Old Finns 
 or Fennomans, to distinguish it from the Young 
 Finnish party) began organizing in the eighteen- 
 sixties. Its aim was the realization of Snellman's 
 ideal, **one nation, one language." The philosophic 
 conceptions on which the party is based are derived 
 from Germany and are rather Bismarckian (Snell- 
 man, it will be remembered, was a disciple of Hegel). 
 The party achieved a great work in winning its 
 rights for the Finnish language and paving the way 
 for the intellectual and cultural development of the 
 Finnish-speaking population. Its yielding attitude 
 towards Eussian aggression has lately brought it 
 into conflict with the other parties and weakened its 
 hold on the country. It is sometimes accused of 
 yielding in order to receive the posts from which 
 the passive resisters are expelled. If applied to the 
 party as a whole, the accusation must be regarded 
 as unfair, but it is true that a great many political 
 adventurers joined the party during the Bobrikoff 
 period in the hope of personal advancement and 
 have done much to discredit it. To-day a tendency 
 exists among many of the Old Finns to abandon 
 their former policy towards Russia and adopt that 
 of the constitutional parties. Altogether the party 
 seems to be in a transitional state. Like the Swedish 
 party, it contains both conservative and radical ele- 
 ments. Its principal organ is Uusi Suometar. The 
 party is strongest among the peasant proprietors, 
 especially in west and south Finland, and has a very 
 large number of adherents among the Lutheran 
 clergy. 
 
THE DIET AND PARTIES 213 
 
 The Young Finns represent a revolt against the 
 too conservative and bureaucratic leaders of the Old 
 Finnish party. They definitely seceded and organ- 
 ized as a separate party in the early 'nineties. 
 Among their original aims was a speedy settlement 
 of the language question, about which they regarded 
 the old leaders being too lukewarm, too consider- 
 erate to the Swedes. Their party program was, on 
 the whole, a radical one, the political philosophy be- 
 hind it being French and English, rather than Ger- 
 man. Large numbers of artists, scientists and lit- 
 erary men are among their members. As soon as 
 the pressure from Russia became serious, the 
 Young Finns abandoned their earlier standpoint 
 on the language question and co-operated with the 
 Swedish party in the interests of national unity. 
 During the Bobrikoff period they joined with the 
 Swedes in founding the constitutional party for pas- 
 sive resistance against Russian aggression. The 
 party served as a refuge for many of the Old Finns 
 at this time, who could not agree with the yielding 
 policy towards Russia. If the Young Finns succeed 
 in holding to the ideal of a united Finland, with 
 **one spirit and two languages,'' they will do the 
 country an immense service. It is worth pointing 
 out that Herr Svinhufvud, for many years the hon- 
 oured Speaker of the Diet, who is generally re- 
 garded as the best representative of a united Fin- 
 land, is a Young Finn. 
 
 The Agrarians represent the small landowners. 
 
 The party situation in Finland might be roughly 
 summarized as follows : With regard to Russia, the 
 
214 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Swedes, Young Finns and Agrarians form the so- 
 called constitutional party, insisting on a policy of 
 rigorous passive resistance against aggression. The 
 Socialists usually make common cause with them, oc- 
 casionally differing on points of detail. The Old 
 Finns, however, adopt a somewhat yielding policy 
 towards Russia and are thus frequently opposed to 
 the other parties. Latterly there has been a tend- 
 ency among them to come into line, as they have re- 
 alized the true extent of Russia's designs on Fin- 
 land. With regard to internal politics, the situation 
 is more complicated. Broadly speaking, however, 
 the middle-class parties always unite against the 
 Socialists, whom they can thus outvote. Except for 
 their common dislike of the latter, the Swedish 
 party and the Old Finns usually disagree. Between 
 the Old and the Young Finns there is a good deal 
 of friction, the former tending to regard the latter 
 as not sufficiently devoted to the cause of Finnish 
 nationalism. Nevertheless, they have strong inter- 
 ests in common. The Young Finns are on rather 
 friendly terms with the Swedish party, as they have 
 temporarily abandoned the language struggle and 
 the two parties agree in their Russian policy. The 
 whole situation is complicated, however, by the fact 
 that in each of the middle-class parties there is a 
 right and a left wing, not definitely organized as 
 such, yet clearly perceptible. Generalizations about 
 the Finnish parties are therefore beset with pitfalls. 
 To a foreigner, one of the most interesting fea- 
 tures of the Diet is the light it throws on propor- 
 tional representation. Persons interested in the 
 
THE DIET AND PARTIES 
 
 215 
 
 particular system that obtains in Finland are re- 
 ferred to Mr. John H. Humphries 's ** Proportional 
 Representation '' (Methuen), which includes a very- 
 lucid exposition of this rather complicated subject. 
 Here it is sufficient to point out that the elector's 
 task is an easy one, as is seen from the fact that 
 less than 1 per cent of the voting-papers are spoiled. 
 The counting, however, takes several days. In the 
 selection of candidates great freedom is permitted. 
 The country is divided into sixteen electoral dis- 
 tricts returning different numbers of members, ex- 
 cept Lapland, which is only represented by one. 
 
 The proportion between the seats actually gained 
 and the votes cast is shown in the following analysis 
 of the election of 1909. The result is typical of all 
 the elections that have taken place since 1907, any 
 of which would have served equally well as an illus- 
 tration. The justice of the distribution is on the 
 whole very striking. 
 
 Party 
 
 Votes 
 
 Seats actually 
 obtained 
 
 Seats in Propor- 
 tion to Votes 
 
 Socialist 
 
 337,685 
 
 84 
 
 80 
 
 Old Finn 
 
 199,920 
 
 48 
 
 47 
 
 Young Finn 
 
 122,770 
 
 28 
 
 29 
 
 Swedish 
 
 104,191 
 
 25 
 
 25 
 
 Agrarian ... 
 
 56,943 
 
 14 
 
 13 
 
 Christian Workmen 
 
 23,259 
 
 1 
 
 6 
 
 Briefly, it may be said that the system works very 
 smoothly and gives a fair representation to all the 
 parties. 
 
 The work of the Single Chamber Diet has been 
 
216 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 conditioned largely by the unfortunate political re- 
 lations between Finland and Russia. It falls 
 roughly under three categories — legislation proper, 
 representations to the monarch, called forth by the 
 abnormal political situation, and thirdly, financial 
 matters. The first Single Chamber Diets devoted 
 most of their attention to legislation. They have 
 little positive result to show, owing to the hostility 
 of the Russian authorities, which has prevented the 
 measures passed from becoming law. In fact, for 
 several years legislation has been practically at a 
 standstill. Since 1910, when reaction became still 
 stronger, the Diets have been obliged to devote most 
 of their time to the last two categories, which, ow- 
 ing to Russian interference with Finnish finance, 
 are closely allied. In a succession of excellently 
 worded petitions and addresses, the Diet has vindi- 
 cated Finland's right to her constitution in the face 
 of Russian aggression, and has demonstrated the il- 
 legality and the harmful effects of Russia's present 
 policy. This attitude has been resented in Russia, 
 with the result that, except for that of 1911, none 
 of the Diets since 1907 have been allowed to run 
 their natural course of three years, but elections 
 have taken place annually. 
 
 There seems to be a very general impression 
 among persons who have sat both in the old Four 
 Estates and the Single Chamber Diet that, as re- 
 gards its composition, the older body was superior. 
 The sudden irruption of the proletariat into the Diet 
 may well have temporarily lowered the average of 
 education and political insight among its members. 
 
THE DIET AND PARTIES 217 
 
 Even the critics of the new Diet, however, admit that 
 a remarkable improvement in its work has taken 
 place during its later sessions, which suggests that 
 the Finnish peasantry are quick to learn their new 
 duties and will justify the confidence placed in them. 
 There seems to be no real ground for pessimism, es- 
 pecially when the inevitable dislocation accompany- 
 ing the early stages of so sudden and far-reaching 
 a change is borne in mind. On many sides one hears 
 that the effect of the extended franchise on the 
 electorate has been to widen their interests in a 
 remarkable manner. 
 
 Of recent years the opening of the Diet has been 
 an interesting ceremony, because a symbolic one. It 
 takes place in the State ball-room of the Palace, 
 which in happier days was the scene of friendly hos- 
 pitality extended by the Emperors to their faithful 
 subjects. To-day no Emperor comes to the deserted 
 building, which lives on its memories. Only when 
 the Diet is opened does it regain a temporary lease 
 of life. From one of the doors enters the Diet, 
 headed by its Speaker. It looks curiously out of 
 place in the polished and shining hall. Among its 
 members one does, indeed, distinguish many intel- 
 lectuals, but it seems mainly an assembly of farm- 
 ers, careworn, silent men with rugged, strongly 
 marked, yet extraordinarily impassive faces. Here 
 and there one notices a woman. They take up their 
 position in a semicircle opposite an imposing throne 
 placed on a dais. After a few minutes a sharp mil- 
 itary shout is heard, and the Eussian Governor- 
 General enters, followed by a long succession of 
 
218 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 officers, both military and naval, in brilliant uni- 
 forms. Glittering in steel and gold, they take up 
 their position opposite the sombre-coloured Diet. 
 When they have settled themselves a dramatic mo- 
 ment occurs. The representatives of the Autocrat 
 Tsar and of the Finnish democracy take a step for- 
 wards towards each other and exchange curt formal 
 bows, suggestive of the brief handshake of boxers 
 before a bout. The Russian stands brusque in man- 
 ner, unsympathetic, the picture of the military mar- 
 tinet. He gives the impression of a German rather 
 than a Eussian. Indeed, this apostle of russianiza- 
 tion is a German by family and a Lutheran by re- 
 ligion. He has an evil reputation in Finland, where 
 he was Bobrikoff 's right-hand man. The Finn con- 
 fronting him is a tall, massive man, looking as un- 
 shakeable as a rock of Finnish granite, a typical rep- 
 resentative of his country's patient strength. The 
 Russian reads out something in a harsh voice; the 
 Finn briefly replies. Again curt bows. Nothing 
 more happens. The uniforms troop out at one door, 
 the black coats and homespuns at another. The 
 muzzled Diet has had its session opened; in the 
 streets outside are Cossacks. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Finland's world-industry 
 
 THE characteristic features of a Finnish land- 
 scape are forest, water and rock, and it is pre- 
 cisely from these and especially the two former that 
 the wealth of the country springs at the present day 
 and is destined to spring far more rapidly in the 
 future. Possibilities of utilizing the enormous sup- 
 ply of granite are indeed not to be compared with 
 the certainties of wealth that lie in the endless for- 
 ests and the innumerable sources of water power. 
 Probably in no country in the world, certainly in no 
 European country, is there such a combination of 
 conditions favourable to the development of a tifa- 
 ber, and more particularly a paper industry. 
 
 Roughly speaking, 63 per cent of Finland is cov- 
 ered by forest, a proportion greater than that 
 reached in any other European country. Even if 
 from this is deducted marsh land and bog, an enor- 
 mous surface of dry forest land remains. Both the 
 geological formation of the greater part of the coun- 
 try and also the climate are favourable to forestry 
 — far more indeed than to agriculture — and the nat- 
 ural re-growth of the trees is unusually rapid. The 
 
 219 
 
220 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 difficult wol'k of transport is facilitated by two cir- 
 cumstances. Firstly, there is always enough snow 
 in the winter to make it easy to bring down the 
 logs from the forests, and yet the snow is not so 
 deep as to make the cutting down of timber difficult. 
 Secondly, the country is intersected by an enormous 
 network of waterways. The great Saima basin, ex- 
 tending 360 miles inland, has no parallel in Europe, 
 and, as a glance at the map will show, there are many 
 other notable chains of lakes. Along these great 
 natural waterways it is easy to float logs down to 
 the sea-coast at a low cost. Moreover, nearly all 
 the rivers through which the lakes issue have a large 
 number of rapids and are capable of producing an 
 enormous degree of water power, whether for saw- 
 or paper-mills. Nearly 2,000 rapids have been 
 counted in Finland, and Imatra alone, which takes 
 the overflow of the Saima basin, is calculated to be 
 equal to not less than 140,000 horsepower. Finally 
 there is an ever-increasing world market for both 
 sawn goods and all sorts of paper, but especially 
 for the latter, which is by far the most profitable of 
 the two, and which, as we shall see, is bound more 
 and more to engage the activities of Finnish capi- 
 talists in the future. 
 
 The forests are largest and thickest in the centre 
 of Finland, between the great lakes and the plain 
 bordering the Gulf of Bothnia, and in the east along 
 the Russian frontier, and in the north. The prin- 
 cipal trees are the common pine (Pinus sylvestris), 
 the fir {Abies excels a) and the birch. But many 
 other trees also flourish, notably both kinds of alder, 
 
FINLAND'S WORLD-INDUSTRY 221 
 
 the aspen, the larch and, in South Finland, the oak, 
 etc. The forests contain a very large variety of ber- 
 ries, which are of considerable importance to the 
 peasants. 
 
 It is comparatively recently that the value of the 
 timber as an article of export was realized. To the 
 earliest inhabitants of Finland the forest was a place 
 where one hunted. At a later period trees were 
 used for building, firewood, etc. As cultivation came 
 into use, the forests were regarded as manure — i.e. 
 they were burnt down in order that the soil might 
 be fertile for the production of crops. Even to-day 
 this custom persists in parts of East Finland. Acci- 
 dental fires also perform a great work of destruc- 
 tion, as may be judged from the fact that in each of 
 the three years 1868, 1883 and 1894, when proper 
 precautions were already being taken, considerably 
 more than 100,000 acres of forest was burnt down 
 in the State forests alone. Gales have also been 
 terribly disastrous from time to time. The keeping 
 of reindeer has involved a great destruction of trees 
 in North Finland, and the ignorant topping of trees 
 to provide fodder has been another source of loss. 
 Worst of all has been the wholesale selling of for- 
 ests to timber companies and speculators by the 
 ignorant peasants — fortunately a thing of the past. 
 The forests were often sold for a mere song, and 
 were simply ravaged by the purchasers, who took 
 all they could and rarely thought of replantation. 
 The coast district of Osterbotten and the shores of 
 the Saima chain of lakes have suffered terrible 
 havoc in this respect, and the only compensation 
 
222 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 has been that agriculture benefited by the money 
 derived by the peasants from the sale of their trees. 
 Only in the middle of the nineteenth century, when 
 saw-mills became common, did people begin to think 
 seriously of scientific forestry. The first Institute 
 for the training of foresters was opened in 1859. 
 But owing to a lack of pupils it had to be closed 
 from 1866 to 1874. Moreover, many mistakes were 
 made in practical matters, the most important being 
 that the foresters ' districts were made so large that 
 no single man could adequately control them. A 
 period of discouragement and stagnation set in, but 
 the steady increase of the timber export led to 
 further attempts at scientific management, which 
 have been far more successful, and to-day the admin- 
 istration of the forests seems much more satisfac- 
 tory. The farmers know the value of their trees 
 and exact a good price for them, and, though small 
 proprietors are not and cannot be expected to be 
 versed on forestry, the larger companies spend 
 money in improving their forests by draining, thin- 
 ning out the trees and replanting. Even to-day, 
 however, there is reason to fear that in some of 
 the privately owned forests the trees are still cut 
 down with a recklessness, a disregard for the fu- 
 ture, that calls for severe condemnation. Thus the 
 export of props and pit-props has lately been un- 
 usually large and has involved in places a deplorable 
 destruction of young trees that brings with it no 
 commensurate gain. It is also worth pointing out, 
 in view of the great growth of the timber export, 
 that the dimensions of the trees that come to the 
 
FINLAND'S WORLD-INDUSTRY 223 
 
 saw-mills are gradually diminishing. In 1889 an 
 average of 33.9 trees went to a standard of sawn 
 goods; in 1896 it reached 40, and although since 
 then it has fallen in some years, in 1911 it was 
 as high as 46. This does not, however, necessarily 
 mean that the forests are badly looked after, be- 
 cause as the tree grows fastest till it reaches a diam- 
 eter of, say, 7 or 8 inches, and then increases in 
 thickness very much more slowly, the best results 
 economically are obtained by cutting the trees be- 
 fore the period of slow growth sets in. 
 
 The forest land of Finland is divided into Crown 
 and private forests. The former have existed for 
 many centuries, since the State in early times 
 claimed for itself a right to all waste lands. In 1908 
 the Crown forests covered nearly 13 million hec- 
 tares, about a third of the total area of Finland, 
 over 11 million hectares being situated in the vast 
 province of Uleiborg. But only about 5% million 
 hectares are real forest land where the trees grow 
 thickly, most of the remaining 7% millions being 
 marshy land, where vegetation is comparatively thin. 
 
 The private forests amount to nearly 10 million 
 hectares of good forest land and nearly 2 million 
 hectares of marsh land. 
 
 The process by which the logs are got down from 
 the forests to the mills is one of great interest. As 
 soon as the snow falls in the autumn the felling of 
 the trees begins. The life of the woodcutters is any- 
 thing but an easy one. They leave their homes for 
 weeks at a time and settle in the forest so as to be 
 near their work. If possible they live with some 
 
224 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 of the peasants, but it often happens, especially in 
 the thinly populated north, that they have to rig 
 up shelters for themselves. One even hears of men 
 sleeping out round a fire, turning first one side 
 towards the heat and then the other. They cut down 
 the trees, rough-hew them with axes, peel off the 
 bark, pile them on sledges and take them to the near- 
 est waterway, where they are stacked either on the 
 banks or on the frozen water. When the spring 
 comes they are floated to the sea. Down the rivers 
 it is for the most part easy work, for the stream 
 carries them slowly along, and the only difficulty is 
 that they sometimes get stuck in narrow or rocky 
 places, where the current is powerful or there are 
 rapids. Men are usually stationed at such spots to 
 disentangle the logs with long forks. It is a diffi- 
 cult and dangerous work and often leads to loss of 
 life. If a very serious stoppage occurs, recourse 
 must sometimes be had to explosives. When the 
 logs emerge from the rivers into the great lakes, 
 artificial traction is of course necessary. The logs 
 are collected in large numbers, and, by means of a 
 girdle of trees chained to each other, are formed 
 into huge rafts. Sometimes the girdle breaks, and 
 then a most terrible confusion arises, which it takes 
 days to set straight. The passage of these rafts is 
 necessarily a very slow one, and the men who are 
 in charge of them build a hut on board and settle 
 down comfortably for the summer. There is quite 
 a little harvest of songs expressive of the life of 
 the raftsmen. They are not very popular char- 
 acters in the country-side, however, having the rep- 
 
FINLAND'S WORLD-INDUSTRY 225 
 
 utation of being extremely rough and quarrelsome. 
 The old method by which they got their raft to move 
 was very primitive. They rowed out as far as pos- 
 sible with an anchor attached to a line, dropped an- 
 chor, returned to the raft and wound up the line 
 on a capstan until the raft was pulled along as far 
 as the anchor, upon which the process was repeated 
 over and over again indefinitely. Nowadays tugs 
 do the work more and more. When the lakes issue 
 in rivers the raft is of course dissolved and the logs 
 are once more borne along by the current. In places 
 where the stream is used to supply power, canals 
 are constructed for the passage of the logs. Even 
 with the use of tugs on the lakes it often takes one 
 or two summers for the logs to make the entire voy- 
 age from the place where they are originally floated 
 to the saw-mills. 
 
 In 1910 the saw-mills numbered 531, not count- 
 ing a considerable number which worked only to 
 supply the needs of the owner or the commune. 
 Most of them are small, the number of saws which 
 turn out more than 10,000 cubic metres a year not 
 much exceeding 100, but these latter include some 
 very large mills. Most of the larger mills lie at or 
 near the mouths of the principal rivers, the Kym- 
 mene, the Kumo, the Vuoksi, and, in the far north, 
 the Kemi and the Tome. For this reason Kotka, 
 at the mouth of the Kymmene, and Bjorneborg, at 
 the mouth of the Kumo, have become important 
 places for the timber export. In East Finland, Vi- 
 borg holds a similar position, chiefly because it lies 
 close to the mouth of the Saima canal. Among the 
 
226 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 persons and firms which own the large saw-mills 
 may be mentioned Ahlstrom & Co., Hackmann & Co., 
 Rosenlew & Co., August Eklof, Gutzeit & Co., Sal- 
 vesen & Co., the Halla Company, the Finland Wood 
 Company, Ltd. The latter is a British firm, and the 
 three preceding it belong to Norwegians. 
 
 It is noteworthy that, in spite of Finland's wealth 
 in water power, almost as many mills are driven by 
 steam as by water. This is especially the case with 
 the larger mills, practically all those which turn out 
 more than 20,000 cubic metres per annum using 
 steam. The reason is that their position has been 
 determined by other considerations than the accessi- 
 bility of water power, and that such power is not 
 essential in saw-mills because sufficient fuel is ob- 
 tainable from the waste products of the mill. 
 
 The growth of the industry has been most rapid, 
 the average value having risen from 37 millions of 
 marks in 1886-90 to 143 millions in 1906-10. Of the 
 timber exported in 1911, 2,235,000 cubic metres was 
 unsawn, 277,000 cubic metres partially sawn and 
 3,120,000 cubic metres sawn and partially worked up. 
 Of the unsawn timber the greater quantity consisted 
 of props or pit-props, while of that worked up, 
 1,478,000 cubic metres consisted of boards, 857,000 
 cubic metres of battens and 403,000 cubic metres of 
 planks. 
 
 The raw-material of the saw-mills is derived from 
 the fir and pine forests. There is, however, an im- 
 portant industry which utilizes the birch, namely the 
 bobbin industry. The conditions for carrying it on 
 profitably do not exist in many countries. A very 
 
FINLAND ^S WOELD-INDUSTRY 227 
 
 large amount of wood is required, as there is a 
 wastage of over 90 per cent. Consequently it is 
 only profitable to make bobbins in a large town or 
 near mills worked by steam, w^here the waste can 
 be consumed as fuel. Moreover, there are transport 
 difficulties that do not exist in the case of the saw- 
 mills. For birch logs cannot be floated down like fir 
 and pine logs, but must be piled on barges and 
 brought down by tugs. Consequently such facilities 
 as Finland offers for water transport are of the 
 utmost value, and the bobbin industry flourishes ac- 
 cordingly. There are now thirteen factories, in- 
 cluding six large ones, two of which belong to the 
 Tornator Company, two to the Kaukas Company, 
 while two more at Kuopio were bought in 1912 by 
 Messrs. Coats, of Paisley. 
 
 Great as are Finland's natural advantages as re- 
 gards saw-mills, they are still greater as regards 
 paper-mills. The water power, which is often dis- 
 pensed with in the former, is of the very highest 
 importance for the latter. While paper-mill own- 
 ers have the greater need for water power, they also, 
 by reason of the different conditions of transport, 
 have a greater liberty to place their mills where 
 they can get it. In 1910 the mills were using 77,200 
 effective horse-power, and since then the amount has 
 been increased. Three-quarters of it was used in the 
 pulp factories, most of the rest in the paper fac- 
 tories, about 3,000 horse-power going to the cellu- 
 lose factories. Electrical power is also used and its 
 employment will certainly increase. In 1910 there 
 were 110 electric generators in use. 
 
?-8 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Most of the Finnish paper-mills are named after 
 the rapids by which they are situated and from 
 which they derive their power, and end in -koski, 
 the Finnish for waterfall. The largest firm is the 
 Kymmene Company, with a capital of 14% millions 
 of marks. It consists of three factories lying close 
 to each other on the Kymmene Eiver. The Tor- 
 nator Company is the second largest. Among other 
 important firms are Valkiakoski in South Tavast- 
 land and Leppakoski in East Finland. 
 
 The growth of the paper industry has been ex- 
 tremely rapid, as the following figures as to the 
 value of the output show : — 
 
 1885 ... 
 1895 ... 
 1905 ... 
 1912 ... 
 
 As the paper 
 
 9 millions of marks 
 16 
 
 41 " " 
 
 93 " " 
 
 industry exists principally for pur- 
 poses of export, it is interesting to note certain 
 changes in respect of the countries which take the 
 production. Cellulose up to 1904 went almost ex- 
 clusively to Eussia, but in 1911 Russia took only 
 about one-fourteenth of the total export. Ground 
 wood pulp also used to go almost entirely to Eussia, 
 but in 1911 Eussia took little more than a quarter 
 of the export. All along, Eussia has taken most of 
 the paper export, but the amount sent to other coun- 
 tries has increased from 3.2 per cent in 1909 to 21.8 
 per cent in 1911. After Eussia, Great Britain is 
 the best market for Finnish paper goods, and in 
 1911 imported 87,500 tons of ground wood pulp, eel- 
 
FINLAND'S WORLD-INDUSTRY 229 
 
 lulose, paste-board and paper. Nearly 20,000 tons 
 consisted of paper, three-quarters of it being brown 
 paper. 
 
 The extraordinary development of the paper in- 
 dustry is having an important effect on the saw- 
 mill owners. Saw-mills pay less and less, especially 
 in cases where the owners have no land of their 
 own from which to draw their supply of timber. 
 For, owing to the successful development of paper 
 manufacturing, the value of forest land is rising 
 rapidly. Both paper- and saw-mill owners find it 
 impossible to get their raw material on the old easy 
 terms, when farmers would give them ten-year con- 
 tracts for felling the timber on their land. The 
 farmers realize the state of the market and will only 
 contract for two or three years at a time. Conse- 
 quently the mill-owners are tumbling over each other 
 in their eagerness to buy up forests while the price 
 is still low compared to what it will undoubtedly be 
 one or two decades hence. But even now the price 
 is usually too high to make saw-mills a profitable 
 undertaking except for those who already own their 
 land, and there is little room for doubt that a silent 
 revolution will take place, and that, wherever pos- 
 sible, saw-mill owners will turn their energies to 
 paper making. There is far more money to be made 
 in this way. A standard of sawn goods brings in 
 some £7 or £8, while the same quantity of wood 
 turned into rough paper brings in from £30 to £50. 
 Moreover, recent experience shows that the export 
 of the more expensive products of the industry is 
 increasing at a far greater rate than that of the 
 
230 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 coarser products — another strong reason for be- 
 lieving that the future belongs to the paper-mill. It 
 is, however, impossible for paper-mills to replace 
 saw-mills all over the country, for the simple rea- 
 son that it is only the fir that can be used in mak- 
 ing paper, pine-wood being unsuited to the purpose. 
 But it has been estimated that if all the white wood 
 now exported as raw material for paper making in 
 other countries and as planks, battens and boards 
 were converted into paper, the paper export could 
 be increased fourfold or fivefold without cutting 
 down any more trees than is done at present. 
 
 In spite of the very advantageous conditions in 
 Finland, many paper-mills are not doing well. The 
 reason is that they started on wrong lines and find 
 it difficult to recover. The chemical process by 
 which paper is made out of wood was only invented 
 some thirty years ago, and the early paper-mills 
 were largely experimental. They had to feel their 
 way and made many mistakes. The mills had to be 
 rebuilt, the installations were wrong, too many dif- 
 ferent kinds of goods were made in the same mill, 
 and so on. Now, however, those who start paper- 
 mills have the benefit of past experience to guide 
 them. They know what to do, and their only need 
 is the capital with which to do it. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 OTHER INDUSTEIES 
 
 A 
 
 ^^ FINNISH WEEK'^ which was held in the 
 autumn of 1913 showed that a very large num- 
 ber of goods of different kinds are produced in Fin- 
 land. But while Finnish timber and paper are mak- 
 ing their way to all parts of the globe, most of the 
 other industries work mainly for the home market, 
 and do not seem capable at present of very much 
 development. 
 
 An exception to this remark is the stone indus- 
 try. This is, like timber and paper, a natural indus- 
 try for Finland, which is particularly rich in stone. 
 The soil rests on a foundation of granite, and this 
 has to a large extent come to the surface and con- 
 stitutes a considerable portion of the area of Fin- 
 land. It is the most important of the varieties of 
 stone found in the country. There is an annual ex- 
 port worth from 100,000 to 200,000 marks to Aber- 
 deen, but by far the greatest export is to Russia. 
 This is only natural, as Russia is so near to Fin- 
 land and is herself poor in stone. The ^^rapakivi" 
 granite from the east of Finland has been much 
 
 231 
 
232 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 used in St. Isaac's and the Kazan Cathedral at 
 Petersburg, while the red granite from south-west 
 Finland is used for the monuments of Alexander II 
 at Moscow and of Alexander III at Moscow and 
 Petersburg. The export to Russia ought to increase 
 considerably with the growth of Russian towns. The 
 chief thing that hampers the development of the 
 industry is the difficulty and expense of transport. 
 
 While Finland's wealth in timber and granite and 
 water power has long been realized, it is still an 
 open question whether or not she contains mineral 
 wealth. From the oldest times iron has been worked 
 in Finland, and one of the leading personages in the 
 **Kalevala" is Ilmarinen, the smith. Yet the coun- 
 try seems poor in iron, and the iron worked was 
 obtained not from mines, but from the beds of lakes 
 and bogs. Several attempts to discover iron mines 
 really worth working have been made from the sev- 
 enteenth century up to to-day, but without suc- 
 cess. Under the circumstances the manufacture of 
 iron goods is not likely to take place on a great scale, 
 more especially since considerable orders that used 
 to come from the Russian State have, since 1906, 
 been cancelled, owing to political reasons. Never- 
 theless, iron is an important industry in Finland, 
 employing over 10,000 persons, and the modern me- 
 chanical workshops are excellently managed. 
 
 In the eighteen-seventies gold was discovered in 
 the north of Finland, in the bed of the Ivalojoki, 
 which flows into the Arctic Ocean. Gold-washing 
 has since then regularly taken place, but the results 
 have been inconsiderable. Altogether, people had 
 
OTHER INDUSTRIES 233 
 
 better receive with caution reports of wealthy gold 
 mines in Finland. 
 
 The prospects with regard to copper seem more 
 hopeful. It is possible that an old mine at Orijarvi, 
 which has lately been reopened with modern plant, 
 may yield good returns, though the present manage- 
 ment of it has not succeeded in winning the confi- 
 dence of the Finns. Moreover, at Outokumpu, in 
 the province of Kuopio, some rich veins of copper 
 have been discovered. 
 
 Another industry that deserves special notice is 
 the manufacture of textiles. For this Finland pos- 
 sesses no natural advantages, but she has achieved 
 considerable results, especially in the last twenty 
 years, during which the value of the production has 
 risen from about 20 to about 70 millions of marks. 
 The chief seat of the industry is Tammerfors, ad- 
 vantageously situated between two lakes and en- 
 joying the title of Finland's Manchester. From 
 1856 to 1906 Tammerfors enjoyed important privi- 
 leges, by which its manufacturers were allowed to 
 import their raw material duty-free, even if it had 
 been partly improved. The largest factory is that 
 of Finlayson & Co., named after the Scotchman who 
 founded it in 1820. There are important factories 
 also at Forssa, Vasa, Abo and Bjorneborg. The 
 annual import of textiles is worth about 25 millions 
 of marks, of which Germany sends ten millions, Rus- 
 sia seven, and Great Britain five. The export is not 
 a large one and goes almost entirely to Russia. 
 
 A fair quantity of linen goods is exported to Rus- 
 sia, though limited to 50,000 poods, or 820 tons, a 
 
234 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 year, which is allowed to enter under the preferen- 
 tial duty agreement. The same quantity of cotton 
 goods is also allowed under the same preferential 
 duty agreement, and is consequently exported to 
 Eussia annually. 
 
 Finally, mention must be made of the dairy in- 
 dustry, which has of recent decades become impor- 
 tant, over 200,000 casks of butter of 1 cwt. each 
 being exported annually. By far the greatest 
 amount is sent to the United Kingdom. Cheese is 
 also made, most of it going to Petersburg. 
 
 The general growth of Finnish industries may be 
 seen from the following figures : — 
 
 The imports per inhabitant were worth 23 marks in 1856 
 
 u « « ;JL41 " 1911 
 
 The exports per inhabitant were worth 8 " 1856 
 
 u 101 " 1911 
 Thq number of industrial workers rose from 36,700 in 1885 
 to 102,900 in 1911. 
 
 Finnish industries are highly protected and are 
 likely to remain so. Even on paper the duty is a 
 very heavy one, and it is infinitely cheaper to buy 
 most sorts of paper in Great Britain than in Fin- 
 land, as the manufacturers here take advantage of 
 the tariff to keep their pricies high. 
 
 The only large tariff question affecting the coun- 
 try to-day is whether or not Russia will abolish the 
 tariff wall separating her from Finland. Many pol- 
 iticians in Russia are desirous of doing so, as being 
 part of their policy of russianizing Finland. Rus- 
 sian manufacturers, on the other hand, are strongly 
 against it and have protested against the scheme 
 
OTHER INDUSTRIES 235 
 
 both individually and through their Chambers of 
 Commerce. They believe that they stand to lose 
 heavily by it, as while there is a substantial duty 
 on Finnish goods going into Russia, practically all 
 Russian goods coming into Finland are free of duty. 
 Hitherto, the manufacturers' protests have been suc- 
 cessful, but it is by no means impossible that the pol- 
 iticians will gain the day. The effect on Finland 
 of the removal of the tariff wall would vary in the 
 different industries. Thus, the textiles would suffer, 
 because in Finland there is now no duty on raw 
 cotton and in Russia there is a heavy one. More- 
 over, the cotton industry is highly developed in Rus- 
 sia. Paper, on the other hand, would probably bene- 
 fit considerably, as the Russian market would be 
 open to it duty-free, while at present the duty on 
 Finnish paper is very heavy. Indeed, the probable 
 effect of the change would be the shutting up of the 
 Russian paper-mills. Taking it on the whole, it is 
 unlikely that the removal of the tariff wall would 
 hurt Finnish trade, seeing that the huge Russian 
 market would be opened to Finland. As business 
 men there is no reason to think that the Finns are 
 inferior to Russians, and the Finnish working men, 
 even if they should prove less clever and quick than 
 the best Russians, are on the whole steadier, more 
 orderly, and more sober. Moreover, in Russia reg- 
 ular work is constantly being interfered with by 
 Saints' days and other holidays, while in Finland 
 work proceeds with the regularity usual in other 
 European countries. 
 The great need of Finnish industry at the present 
 
236 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 moment is more capital with which to exploit the 
 natural resources of the country. Seeing that the 
 rate of interest is high, there is an excellent open- 
 ing for the judicious investor. The banks allow 5 
 per cent on a deposit standing account, 3 per cent 
 on a current account, while the dividends obtainable 
 from many other investments considerably exceed 5 
 per cent. Curiously enough, so far Britishers and 
 Norwegians seem to be the only foreigners who have 
 invested money in Finnish industrial enterprises, 
 and they partly control the business by having one 
 or two men on the board of directors where the busi- 
 ness is not entirely managed by them. 
 
 Finland also offers a very fair market for the 
 British manufacturer, who, however, has been some- 
 what slow to realize its possibilities. At present 
 most of the foreign trade is with German firms, 
 which show most praiseworthy energy and send over 
 large numbers of agents and commercial travellers. 
 Nevertheless British goods are much preferred to 
 German, and in many of the shops German goods 
 are passed off as British for this reason. What 
 handicaps British articles is usually the higher 
 price. But this is sometimes a purely artificial dif- 
 ficulty, as British goods are often exported to Ger- 
 many and then re-exported to Finland instead of 
 being sent direct from England. The present time 
 is a favourable one for an effort on the part of 
 British firms to establish a direct connection with 
 Finland. For there is now a strong wave of inter- 
 est in everything English. The language is being 
 studied more than ever before in the schools and at 
 
OTHER INDUSTRIES 237 
 
 the University. Finns travel in England and send 
 their daughters to be ** finished ^^ there, English 
 books are read, English fashions are copied, Eng- 
 lish games are played. A commercial rapproche- 
 ment is the natural concomitant of all this, and 
 young Finnish business men are beginning to study 
 English rather than German, so that the language 
 difficulty is likely to grow steadily less. British 
 firms, however, are slow to take their chance. They 
 should send energetic representatives who speak 
 German or Swedish and who will cultivate personal 
 relations with Finnish business men. One would like 
 to see a stores established in Helsingfors in which 
 all the goods were guaranteed of British make. 
 There might be an opening for such a stores in 
 other places also, for Finland is a country with an 
 industrial and commercial future and the towns are 
 growing rapidly. 
 
 It may be pointed out that the bankruptcy laws 
 in Finland protect foreign firms, which consequently 
 do not have to fear the dangers that beset them in 
 Russia. 
 
 Partly because industry itself is on a small scale 
 and of recent growth, industrial legislation is still 
 at a rather elementary stage. Although the making 
 of matches out of white phosphorous was prohibited 
 as early as 1865, it was not until 1889 that a more 
 comprehensive factory law was passed, which is still 
 in operation. This aimed chiefly at safeguarding 
 children. No child under twelve years of age could 
 be employed in a factory at all, and night-work was 
 forbidden for persons under eighteen. 
 
238 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 The maximum number of working hours for chil- 
 dren under the age of fifteen is six and a half, that 
 for persons between fifteen and eighteen is twelve. 
 Children who have not been to a secondary tech- 
 nical school have to attend classes at least twelve 
 hours a week. Certain minimum sanitary condi- 
 tions are exacted, and inspectors are appointed to 
 see that the law is obeyed. At the present day some 
 of these inspectors are women. 
 
 In 1895 was passed a Workmen's Protection Act, 
 by which employers are compelled to compensate 
 workmen for injuries received while in their em- 
 ployment. In case such injuries should result in 
 permanently unfitting the injured person for work, 
 or in death, the employer is required to guarantee 
 his ability to pay the necessary compensation by in- 
 suring his workmen with approved companies. By 
 a law passed in 1902, sailors on board Finnish ships 
 are placed in a similar position. Sickness insurance 
 is not compulsory. 
 
 It must be admitted that Finnish industrial legis- 
 lation requires much improvement. But the fault 
 lies not with the Finns but with the Russian Govern- 
 ment, which has refused to sanction many Bills 
 passed by the Finnish Diet with the object of bet- 
 tering the position of the working classes. What 
 Finland is aiming at in this respect may be seen 
 from the Bakeries Law of 1908, which is one of the 
 very few pieces of legislation the Single Chamber 
 Diet has succeeded in getting through. This law: 
 confines work to weekdays and forbids night-work, 
 i.e., between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. ; establishes a forty- 
 
OTHER INDUSTRIES 239 
 
 eight hour week; permits of not more than 120 
 hours' overtime per annum, overtime being paid 50 
 per cent above the usual rate; provides for the in- 
 spection of bakeries ; prescribes strict sanitary con- 
 ditions, and makes offenders against all these pro- 
 visions liable to fines of from 10 to 700 marks. 
 Hotels and pensions come under the operation of 
 this law, as well as bakeries. The law is thus an 
 excellent piece of work, and as soon as Finland is 
 free to carry out her own wishes in the matter she 
 will doubtless pass more industrial legislation on 
 the same lines. 
 
 Meanwhile she does what she can. A permanent 
 exhibition has been established for the showing of 
 all the latest inventions for the protecting and safe- 
 guarding of workmen in the workshop, factory and 
 mine, and Miss Vera Hjelt, its chief promoter, looks 
 forward to the day when factory-life shall be made 
 so safe that ** there need be no danger that we 
 should not be prepared to share with the manual 
 labourer.'' At the same time a considerable social 
 reform literature is growing up in Finland, typical 
 of which are such books as Miss Hjelt 's investigation 
 of the standard of living among the industrial 
 workers, with its rich statistical material, and the 
 same writer's study of seamstresses. Although of 
 great interest to residents in Finland, these books 
 are too detailed to attract the foreign reader who 
 is not something of an expert, and therefore will 
 not be described here. "With reference to the former 
 book, however, it may be of general interest to 
 point out that the average income of the 350 families 
 
240 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 investigated was about £65, of which about four- 
 fifths was earned by the head of the family. The 
 main items of expenditure were as follows : — 
 
 Per Cent. 
 
 Food 55.4 
 
 Housing 12 .4 
 
 Clothing 11.8 
 
 Heat and light ... ... ... ... 4.1 
 
 Prices are rising here as elsewhere, and usually at 
 a higher rate than wages. Two hundred and fifty- 
 nine of the families managed to live on their earn- 
 ings, while 91 families were forced either to bor- 
 row or to encroach on their savings — not a very sat- 
 isfactory state of things. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 
 
 IN many ways the year 1899 marks the beginning 
 of a new era in the history of Finland, and will 
 be looked upon by future chroniclers as a turning- 
 point in the national life. Not only was it the year 
 in which the russianization of the country seriously 
 began, with its profoundly disturbing effect on the 
 entire nation, but it was also the year which saw the 
 birth of a self-conscious Labour movement which 
 seems destined to influence in a far-reaching manner 
 the whole future development of the country. It is 
 true that a number of working men's associations 
 existed as early as the eighteen-eighties, but it was 
 only in 1899 that an organized Labour party came 
 into being, as the result of a congress at Abo. A 
 Finnish Socialist explains the late development of 
 the movement by saying that it could not arise before 
 the National movement had ^' paved the way of edu- 
 cation for the lower ranks of the nation. . . . The 
 rise of the social question is nothing but the second 
 step in our nation's great process of awakening and 
 development which the National movement began.'' 
 But if the Labour movement came into being late, 
 it has made up for this by the rapidity of its growth. 
 
 241 
 
242 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 This is mainly due to the unquiet period which gave 
 it birth, though it may also be remarked that ideas 
 and movements seem to spread through small na- 
 tions with a rapidity far above what is usual in large 
 nations. Both the russianization and the resistance 
 to russianization added fuel to its fire. Bobrikoff 
 prepared a way for it by his contempt for law and 
 tradition, which helped to destroy old sanctions in 
 the minds of the people. On the other hand, the pas- 
 sive resisters, by initiating the great national ad- 
 dress of protest to the Tsar and other movements in 
 which the people as a whole shared, did much to 
 make the masses of the people politically conscious. 
 To these two factors must be added a third — 
 namely, the growth of the revolutionary movement 
 in Russia during the Russo-Japanese War, which, 
 in this stormy period, inevitably reacted on Fin- 
 land. Both in Russia and Finland the autumn of 
 1905 brought a crisis to a head, and in either case a 
 General Strike was the deciding factor. The strike 
 in Russia forced the Tsar to concede the Duma ; the 
 strike in Finland induced him to restore the Con- 
 stitution and enlarge its basis. 
 
 The General Strike in Finland had a double char- 
 acter. It was aimed primarily against the Russian 
 oppressors of the country, but it also took on the 
 aspect of a rising of labour against capital, and was 
 followed by a considerable bitterness of class feel- 
 ing, which was accentuated by the occurrence of an 
 outbreak in which a few persons were killed. The 
 success of the strike, in which the Labour leaders 
 naturally had a large share, together with the mil- 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 243 
 
 lennial hopes that floated in the air both in Russia 
 and Finland during that wonderful time, brought 
 the Labour cause forward with a rush. The adop- 
 tion of universal suffrage deepened the class-con- 
 sciousness of the manual workers, and the result 
 was a Socialist triumph at the polls in the first elec- 
 tion under the new system.^ 
 
 But although the circumstances we have men- 
 tioned account for the suddenness and the rapid de- 
 velopment of the movement, they could not have had 
 such an effect if the soil had not been ripe for them. 
 The real cause of the hold taken by Socialism lies, as 
 we saw, in the conditions prevailing in the country- 
 side — the existence of a large number of persons 
 who own no land and the precarious position of 
 many of the torpare, or tenants. It follows from 
 this that Finnish Socialism has its chief strength not 
 in the towns but in the country. Of the 48,000 mem- 
 bers of the party in 1912, only about one quarter 
 were town-dwellers. From this, again, it follows 
 that trade unionism has had less to do with the 
 movement than in most other countries. It stands 
 to reason that there will be comparatively little 
 trade union organization where there are few towns 
 and few factories. As industry develops, however, 
 
 ^ The rapid growth of the movement may be illustrated by a 
 few figures. In 1899 the membership of the Social Democratic 
 party was 9,446. In 1908 it had risen to 71,266. It is true that 
 by 1912 it had sunk to 48,406, but this does not imply a corre- 
 sponding loss of influence in the countrry, as is proved by the 
 fact that the percentage of Socialist votes to the total poll has 
 risen steadily, since the election of 1907, from 36.7 to 40.1 per 
 cent., and the deputies elected from 80 to 86 in a House of 200. 
 In 1912 the party had no less than 1,450 branches. 
 
244 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 this state of things is being modified, and there is 
 every reason to think that trade unions have a prom- 
 ising future. The working classes in Finland realize 
 instinctively how important the solidarity of the 
 people is in their struggle for better conditions, and 
 this is the best of bases for the common action which 
 trade unionism implies. 
 
 The capacity of the Finns for common action is 
 strikingly shown by the success of the Co-operative 
 movement, which flourishes especially among the 
 Finnish-speaking population. In 1899 some enter- 
 prising persons founded Pellervo, a society for the 
 propagation of the co-operative principle among 
 the peasantry. Thus, co-operation in Finland did 
 not, as in most other countries, originate from the 
 independent initiative of the working classes, but 
 was the result of a deliberate propaganda. Pellervo 
 did a great work of education in preparing models 
 for co-operative societies, training and sending out 
 lecturers, publishing books, issuing tracts, insti- 
 tuting travelling libraries and helping the peasants 
 to start co-operative associations. Moreover, some 
 of its members had previously paved the way for 
 the success of the movement by agitating for a law 
 of co-operation, which was sanctioned in 1901. 
 
 The most important branches of co-operation in 
 Finland are dairies, banks and stores. All these 
 have proved very successful. There are also many 
 other kinds of co-operative undertakings, such as 
 societies for the purchase of thrashing machines and 
 moss litter, for the buying and selling of eggs, for 
 the procuring of telephones, for the acquisition of 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 245 
 
 land, the securing of steamboats for inland traffic, 
 etc. In the towns there are co-operative bakeries, 
 restaurants, etc. In addition to the local societies 
 there are four large central societies, including one, 
 named Valio, for the sale of the members' butter. 
 In 1906 20 per cent of the butter exported from 
 Hango came from Valio, and in 1909 the amount had 
 risen to 42 per cent. It is interesting to note that 
 banks are relatively few where big properties exist, 
 relatively numerous where small holdings are com- 
 mon. Some idea of the extremely rapid growth of 
 the movement may be gained from the figures given 
 in the footnote.^ Of its importance to the country 
 there can be no question, and its value is not merely 
 economic but educational and ethical. Punctuality, 
 orderliness and business habits are fostered. The 
 principles of scientific farming are learned and the 
 mind is brought to bear on problems of organization 
 and management. The sense of responsibility is 
 
 ^ The co-operative dairies in 1903 numbered 75, with a mem- 
 bership of 5,500 and a sale of 3V2 millions of marks. In 1908 
 there were 343 dairies, 33,200 members and the sales had risen 
 to 29 millions. 
 
 
 No. of 
 
 No. of 
 
 Loans in Millions 
 
 
 Banks. 
 
 Members. 
 
 of Marks. 
 
 1903 
 
 24 
 
 500 
 
 .04 
 
 1908 
 
 308 
 
 11,900 
 
 3.10 
 
 
 No. of 
 
 No. of 
 
 Sales in Millions 
 
 
 Stores. 
 
 Members. 
 
 of Marks. 
 
 1903 
 
 71 
 
 13,000 
 
 6 
 
 1908 
 
 495 
 
 100,000 
 
 52 
 
 The central societies show a similarity rapid growth. 
 
 In 1909 87 per cent of all the co-operative societies were in. 
 the country, only 13 per cent in the towns. The membership is, 
 however, relatively greater in the towns. The number of co- 
 operators per 1,000 inhabitants is about 50 for the entire pop- 
 ulation. 
 
246 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 developed, and the sense of social solidarity. The 
 peasant through co-operation enters into a wider 
 mental and moral life, and is led to realize how 
 ultimately he may come to be the master of his own 
 destiny. 
 
 The Finnish Socialists are strictly Marxist, and 
 their programme is based on the Erfurt programme 
 of the German Socialists, from which it differs but 
 slightly. The movement is still crude in many re- 
 spects, having developed far too rapidly. Many 
 who profess Socialism most eagerly can hardly be 
 supposed to have grasped its implications. Its 
 Parliamentary representatives have sometimes put 
 forward schemes which showed an incapacity to 
 grasp the actual conditions of Finnish economy. It 
 seems, moreover, to an outsider, that class hatred 
 has been preached to an extent that mny endanger 
 Finland's unity of action and blind people to an 
 objective view of things. Class hatred was suf- 
 ficiently embittered in the days following the Great 
 Strike, and it is surely a dangerous policy to further 
 play on this feeling. It may also be suggested that 
 the movement would not suffer by developing the 
 spirit of poetry alongside the spirit of economics, 
 and by insisting on the responsibilities of the 
 workers as well as on their rights. Nevertheless, 
 however much one may regret certain developments 
 among the Socialists, the movement has much to its 
 credit side. Its organization is wonderfully good 
 and its enthusiasm for education inspires confidence. 
 The ^* People's Houses" which exist in many Fin- 
 nish towns are a real tribute to the solid qualities of 
 
THE LABOUR MOVEMENT 247 
 
 those from whom they have sprung. That in Hels- 
 ingfors is particularly fine. It is the headquarters 
 of the Socialist party and also of the trade unions, 
 most of which have their head-offices there. There 
 is a fine spirit of comradeship ahout the place. In 
 the great hall, one of the largest in Helsingfors, 
 first-rate concerts can be heard at a very low price. 
 The party has instituted all over the country a great 
 many societies for spreading popular enlightenment, 
 including libraries and reading-rooms, dramatic and 
 musical societies and sports clubs. It also owns a 
 considerable Press, including six dailies, the most 
 important of which is Tyomies (The Working Man). 
 Previous to 1905 there were but few Socialist 
 papers, while to-day their combined circulation is 
 over 135,000. 
 
 There is a good deal of indignation and pessimism 
 among the upper classes on account of the startling 
 development of the Socialist movement and the 
 acutness of its class feeling. One cannot help the 
 reflection, however, that in the Socialist movement 
 the upper classes are to some extent reaping what 
 they have themselves sown. The violence of party 
 feeling between the Fennomans and Svekomans in 
 the past caused both of them somewhat to neglect 
 the material well-being of the people, while their 
 preaching of hate against each other paved the way 
 for the preaching of hate between class and class. 
 Probably, however, the situation is not so bad as 
 people fear. The Finnish peasant moves very 
 slowly, and, although there may be some Syndicalist 
 feeling in parts of the country. Labour unrest is not 
 
248 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 likely to break out seriously, unless stimulated by 
 some outside event, sucb as a revolution in Russia. 
 Meanwhile, future trouble might be saved if Labour 
 and Capital would try to meet, not as opposing 
 parties in a law-court but as human beings. No 
 lasting agreement can be reached where the two 
 parties do not make a genuine attempt to under- 
 stand one another and to enter into each other's 
 lives and difficulties. This is unusually difficult in 
 Finland, owing to the obstinacy of the national char- 
 acter and the extreme self-righteousness of the 
 opposing parties, unsoftened by any feeling which 
 might prompt them to regard each other as men and 
 brothers. To say that a thing is difficult, however, 
 is not to say that it is impossible, and there are 
 among the upper classes of Finland plenty of peo- 
 ple who have the welfare of the working classes 
 genuinely at heart and love the people, not merely 
 as statistical units, but for their own sake and be- 
 cause they know their lives. From such people the 
 basis of an understanding might arise. Only an 
 unimaginative person will discern in the Labour 
 movement nothing but the crudities of its green- 
 sickness and remain blind to the inspring idea of 
 the manual workers of a nation alive to their com- 
 mon interests, united in pursuing them and deter- 
 mined to avoid, if possible, the grosser evils of 
 industrialism as existing in most other countries. 
 
 We may conclude by quoting Snellman's aphor- 
 ism: *' Every loosened bond at first brings the froth 
 to the surface of a nation's life. It is through the 
 exercise of freedom that people learn its use." 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE BIGHTS OF WOMEN 
 
 THE Feminist movement in Finland has not been 
 without its heralds in literature, and before 
 speaking of it in its practical aspects it may be 
 well to glance at the life of the remarkable woman 
 who in her novels and plays best embodied the new 
 ideals and aspirations of women. 
 
 Minna Canth was born in 1844 at Tammerfors. 
 Her father, who some years later moved to Kuopio, 
 where he kept a store, was comfortably off. Minna 
 was educated at a Swedish school in Kuopio, with 
 the intention of becoming a schoolmistress. In 1863 
 she went to Jyvaskyla, where the first Finnish col- 
 lege for the training of elementary teachers had 
 just been opened. Two years later, at the age of 
 twenty-four, she married one of the teachers. At 
 this point a life which had hitherto been happy was 
 overclouded. Her husband proved to be a narrow- 
 minded tyrant, without the slightest perception of 
 his wife's character and abilities. She was not 
 allowed to have a servant or even to see people 
 freely, and she had to dress according to her hus- 
 band's instructions. In 1874, however, her husband 
 became editor of a paper, and Minna did most of the 
 
 249 
 
250 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 work on it, developing a fine literary talent. But 
 when she wrote an article against the misuse of 
 brandy, the proprietor of the paper, who owned a 
 distillery, dismissed her husband. An important 
 event in her life about this time was the visit of a 
 theatrical company to Jyvaskyla, which filled her 
 with the desire to write plays — she had never seen 
 a play before. In 1879 her husband died. She was 
 left a widow with seven children, the youngest of 
 whom was born nearly seven months after the hus- 
 band's death. She returned to Kuopio and took to 
 the business her father had formerly carried on. 
 She served behind the counter and meanwhile did 
 as much writing as she could. As her business 
 prospered — ^for she was a most capable woman — 
 she devoted more and more time to literature and 
 the drama. As a Finnish writer says: **When she 
 stood in her shop busied with her daily toil to earn 
 her bread, the visitor did not guess, unless he knew 
 it beforehand, that he had before him one of the 
 most important personalities in Finnish literature. 
 But if he crossed the threshold of her hospitable 
 home he was met by a breath of real culture of ideal- 
 ism and of European civilization. ' ' 
 
 The best introduction to her works is to be found 
 in her comments upon her own life: '*When, as a 
 young mother, I stood before life's most sacred 
 claims, irresolute, more ignorant than any so-called 
 uneducated woman, I learned profoundly to despise 
 and condemn the miserable thing which is called 
 woman's education, that delusion which goes by the 
 name of woman's culture. I place the responsibility 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 251 
 
 for every bad mistake I made in looking after tlie 
 children, for every dearly-bought experience, on the 
 wretched system of education which, instead of pre- 
 paring woman for life, drives her helplessly astray. 
 And when at last I had succeeded in acquiring the 
 power to fulfil the duties that a quiet life in a secure 
 position demands of a mother, I and my children 
 were suddenly deprived of our support. Then once 
 more I stood irresolute, unprepared, alone respon- 
 sible for a large family, although my mind had never 
 been made to realize such a possibility, still less been 
 given an insight into it, while, to^ crown all, I found 
 most of the sources of income which are open to men 
 were closed to me as a woman. With a body very 
 weak from the birth of many children following 
 closely one upon the other, ill, miserable, weighed 
 down by trouble and anxiety, I saw before me a life 
 of poverty and need, perhaps meanly sustained by 
 humiliating alms and charity, and this not only for 
 myself but for the many little ones to whom I had 
 given life. In desperation I grasped instinctively 
 at the first best expedient, or rather, the only pos- 
 sible one I could find, and thus took to trade, with- 
 out capital and without knowledge. In spite of this, 
 I was successful, owing to a combination of favour- 
 able circumstances and the gradual return of my 
 health and strength. The crisis was past, but I had 
 issued from it with my eyes open not only to what is 
 false in woman's position in society, but also to 
 various other social injustices and wrongs. It is 
 not any light-headed lust of destruction, but the 
 hard serious realities of life, that urge woman and 
 
252 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the workman to opposition against society as it now 
 is. And as the cause lies deep, they will not know 
 of any retrogression or reaction before they have 
 reached the goal of their striving. No reference to 
 'existing conditions,' * historical evolution' or Apoliti- 
 cal wisdom' can compel them to continue to endure 
 injustices, so long as they are not given the right, 
 by participating in legislation, to try to reshape 
 these conditions and themselves to exercise influence 
 on the course of historical evolution." 
 
 It is easy to see from the above what was the con- 
 tent of Minna Canth's novels and plays. The titles 
 alone are enough to indicate it — **Poor Folk," '^The 
 Workman's Wife," '^Voices of the People," ''The 
 Unfortunate." Her themes are that there is one 
 law for the rich and another for the poor, one law 
 for the man and another for the woman. She gave 
 voice to the awakening social consciousness of the 
 time and thus acted as a powerful inspiration both 
 to the woman's movement and, in a lesser degree, 
 to the Socialists. Women, especially, speak of her 
 in terms of the utmost veneration and affection. 
 
 Judged purely as literature, her work must be said 
 to suffer from the intensity of its propagandist 
 spirit, which causes her at times to strike a false 
 note and sacrifice considerations of art. Neverthe- 
 less there is a power about her and a sincerity and a 
 sanity which makes her characters and situations 
 vividly alive and caused her plays to arouse a bitter 
 fury of opposition. 
 
 Such is the woman who typifies the more serious, 
 determined and large-hearted side of Finnish wom- 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 253 
 
 anhood. We may now take a leap over intervening 
 years and consider the harvest that sprang in part 
 from the efforts she inspired. 
 
 On July 20, 1906, was promulgated in Finland the 
 new law of the Diet which gave women the political 
 franchise on the same terms as men ; and in March, 
 1907, the first election took place on the basis of 
 the new law. Finland was thus the first country in 
 Europe which made the experiment of women's suf- 
 frage. 
 
 To understand the motive that induced Finland to 
 make this experiment, both general and particular 
 circumstances must be taken into account. The main 
 general circumstance is to be found in the unusually 
 large share taken by women in the life of the nation. 
 This, in its turn, is chiefly due to the fact that Fin- 
 land is a poor country, and has hitherto been unable 
 to afford the luxury either of a large non-producing 
 class or of a large number of idle women. When 
 Nature is niggardly and the struggle for existence 
 hard, both men and women must work. The women 
 of the lower classes do their full share, whether on 
 the farm or in the factory, though especially on the 
 farm, where they not only tend the cattle and help at 
 haymaking and harvest, but often do such rough 
 work as ploughing and hedging and ditching, besides 
 taking part in such different pursuits as fishing and 
 building, and burning the forests to make fields. If 
 we turn from lower to middle class women, we find 
 the same principle in operation. It is regarded as 
 natural and right for them to earn their living, and 
 an idle woman is apt to be looked at askance. Of 
 
254 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 middle-class women a large number are engaged in 
 commerce. They hold positions in banks and busi- 
 ness houses as clerks and cashiers to an extent that 
 astonishes the foreign visitor, who also learns with 
 surprise the number of women who are doctors, 
 dentists, architects. Women have also thrown 
 themselves with enthusiasm into the work of educa- 
 tion, and to-day they outnumber the men teachers 
 both in the elementary schools and in the secondary 
 private schools. Of recent years the women have 
 flocked in great numbers to the University, and are 
 likely soon to be eligible for election to professor- 
 ships and lectureships. Among other sources of 
 employment for women are certain branches of the 
 public administration. 
 
 A subsidiary circumstance which made Finland 
 more predisposed than most countries to the idea of 
 women's suffrage is the prevalence of co-education, 
 which, whatever its advantages and disadvantages 
 may be, has certainly helped to familiarize men and 
 women with the idea and the practice of working side 
 by side and enjoying the same rights and responsi- 
 bilities. 
 
 Passing from general circumstances f avoruable to 
 women's suffrage to particular ones, we are con- 
 fronted with the stirring events of the last fifteen 
 years. Previous to those events there was, indeed, a 
 Feminist movement in Finland, which began to be 
 organized in the eighteen-eighties. In 1884 a Wom- 
 an's Suffrage Bill was introduced in the first of the 
 old ^^Four Estates" (the Chamber of the Nobility). 
 The Bill was defeated, but it proves that as early 
 
THE EIGHTS OF WOMEN 255 
 
 as 1884 women's political rights had at least received 
 some recognition. Fifteen years later began that 
 curious concatenation of events which carried the 
 movement to a realization of its central aim. For 
 in 1899 the Tsar issued the famous February Mani- 
 festo, which at a stroke deprived Finland of her 
 Constitution. Not content with protesting against 
 this coup d'etat through the ordinary channels, the 
 leaders of public opinion in Finland desired to make 
 a protest which should be representative of the 
 nation at large. A great address to the Tsar was 
 planned and carried out, every adult man and wom- 
 an in the country being invited to sign it. It was 
 generally felt that this appeal to the non-enfran- 
 chised portions of the nation at a time of crisis im- 
 plied a moral responsibility to enfranchise them, 
 both men and women, when the crisis had passed. 
 The women, moreover, proved themselves of great 
 value during the period of russianization which fol- 
 lowed the February Manifesto, both by the moral 
 stimulus they gave to passive resistance and by 
 m^ny services in the same cause. They often under- 
 took work which it was impossible for the men to 
 carry out. In 1905 took place the Great Strike, 
 which resulted in the restoration of the Constitution, 
 and when subsequently the question arose of widen- 
 ing the electoral system, and the women put for- 
 ward their claim to the vote, this was agreed to by 
 all the Four Estates with hardly a dissentient voice, 
 special reference being made in the debates to the 
 great services rendered by the women in resisting 
 russianization. 
 
256 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 It seems clear that had not the women been helped 
 by outer circumstances they would not have gained 
 the vote as early as 1905. They have to thank for 
 their enfranchisement not only their own efforts, 
 but also both the exalted state of national feeling 
 which followed the restoration of constitutional 
 government and the wave of strongly democratic 
 sentiment which accompanied the Great Strike. It 
 is no less clear, however, that the women would not 
 have been enfranchised even under these circum- 
 stances had they not shown by their conduct in a 
 time of crisis that they had earned the right to be 
 considered as citizens. 
 
 How did the women utilize the vote thus acquired? 
 
 Before trying to indicate what they have actually 
 done, it may be well to clear the ground by pointing 
 out a number of things that they have not done. 
 Firstly, they have not formed an independent wom- 
 an's party. There was, indeed, some talk of this, 
 but the idea was abandoned. There were good rea- 
 sons against it. In the first place women were 
 politically inexperienced; and in the second, seeing 
 that they already enjoyed full political rights, the 
 formation of a special party seemed unnecessary. 
 Accordingly the women joined the political groups 
 already existing, and election statistics show that 
 they have voted for the different parties in much 
 the same proportion as the men. There is no truth 
 in the assertion sometimes made that woman's suf- 
 frage has especially benefited the Socialist party. 
 An investigation made by two members of the Diet, 
 Dagmar and Arvid Neovius, shows, on the contrary, 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 257 
 
 that it was in districts where the women voters out- 
 numbered the men that the percentage of Socialist 
 votes was smallest. 
 
 Secondly, women did not fail to use their votes. 
 The percentage of women on the register who have 
 voted at the various elections since 1907 has varied 
 between 54 and 60 per cent, the corresponding fig- 
 ures for men being 64 and 70 per cent. 
 
 Thirdly, in spite of their numerical preponderance 
 — there are about 60,000 more women than men on 
 the register — women have not flooded the Diet with 
 representatives of their own sex. The number of 
 women elected has varied from twenty-five to four- 
 teen in a House of two hundred members, i.e., from 
 12.5 to 7 per cent. Women's moderation in this 
 respect has been due to a recognition of the greater 
 political experience of men, to the feeling that the 
 conflict with Russia made the time inopportune for 
 introducing changes or risking experiments on a 
 large scale, and also perhaps to a growing convic- 
 tion that a small number of women representatives 
 is sufficient to ensure a due recognition of women's 
 interests, seeing that experience shows that men pay 
 great attention to the opinion of women on subjects 
 which mainly concern the female sex. 
 
 Fourthly, women have not wasted the House's 
 time by prolixity of speech. 
 
 When we pass to the question of what women 
 have actually achieved some valuable evidence is 
 available. In January, 1913, when the Danish Gov- 
 ernment's plans for electoral reform were being dis- 
 cussed, the leader of the Right asserted that in most 
 
258 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 countries where women's suffrage had been intro- 
 duced there was a feeling of great discontent with 
 it. The Danish women saw a danger to their cause 
 in the spread of such reports, and, in order to meet 
 it, applied to competent persons, in countries where 
 women already enjoyed the franchise, to give their 
 opinion on the subject. Dr. Maikki Friberg took up 
 the matter as regards Finland, and collected a num- 
 ber of representative opinions. These are valuable 
 as coming not from young enthusiasts, but from 
 tried statesmen and public men, whose names are 
 respected throughout Finland. As their testimony 
 about the actual work of the women and the general 
 effects of the suffrage is infinitely more valuable 
 than the writer's own opinion could possibly be, I 
 shall quote from them at some length.^ 
 
 With regard to the character and qualifications of 
 the women representatives in the Diet, the follow- 
 ing extracts may be taken as typical. Professor 
 
 ^ Of the persons whose opinions I quote, the late Senator 
 Meehelin was the best known of Finnish statesmen and an emi- 
 nent champion of Finland's constitutional rights. Theodore 
 Eein was successively Professor of Philosophy, Eector and Vice- 
 chancellor of the University, besides having been a prominent 
 figure in politics and literature. Baron Wrede, after being Pro- 
 fessor of Civil Law, became President of the Department of Jus- 
 tice in the Senate, i.e., he has held the highest juridical appoint- 
 ment in Finland. He is also one of the most universally re- 
 spected members of the legislature, his opinion carrying great 
 weight there. P. Svinhufvud was the Speaker of the Diet from 
 the first session of the Single Chamber in 1907 until 1912. Pro- 
 fessor Eosenqvist is Professor of Theology at the University and 
 a member of the Diet, while Dr. Axel Lille was a member of 
 the old Diet (the Four Estates), and is editor of the Nya 
 Pressen. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 259 
 
 Rosenqvist writes: **As regards women's work in 
 the Diet, it probably bears comparison with the 
 average among the men. It is true that no leading 
 personalities have emerged from the ranks of the 
 women representatives — they will perhaps always 
 have to be looked for among the men — ^but there 
 are, and doubtless will always be, among the women 
 in the Diet, competent, hard-working, conscientious 
 and enlightened women representatives. If weaker 
 elements can be pointed out among them, the same 
 are not lacking among the male representatives 
 also." 
 
 Senator Mechelin wrote : * * The women who have 
 been elected to committees have performed their 
 duties satisfactorily. This has been especially the 
 case with the Finance, Social and Cultural Com- 
 mittees. At the Diet debates not all the women mem- 
 bers have spoken — the same thing is true of the 
 men — but in practical knowledge and oratorical 
 ability their speeches have usually been as good as 
 the men's.'' 
 
 With regard to the personal relations of the men 
 and women members, these, said Mechelin, **may be 
 briefly characterized as a good comradeship," while 
 Th. Rein writes that '^the co-operation of men and 
 women has, so far as I know, been in every way a 
 friendly one and marked by mutual respect." This 
 testimony coincides with that given elsewhere by 
 Miss Vera Hjelt, one of the women representatives, 
 who writes: '^We could turn to the men as to com- 
 rades and friends when we desired to be initiated 
 into any branch of the complicated machinery of 
 
260 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 State. The tone of goodwill, sincerity, refinement 
 and encouragement that we met with in our partici- 
 pation in the life of the party to which I belong has 
 confirmed my belief that it is by way of co-operation, 
 and not of suspicion or separation, that the influ- 
 ence and work of women can be of importance in 
 legislation. Also in committee work, shared with 
 men of different parties, equality has prevailed. 
 Women have had no reason to feel themselves re- 
 pulsed or in any way treated inconsiderately.'' 
 
 With regard to the work of the women M.P.'s in 
 general, Baron Wrede holds : ** As regards the share 
 taken in the Diet's work by the women representa- 
 tives, they have, as far as I know, neither in the 
 question of political petitions and addresses nor in 
 that of the Budget, contributed in any way worth 
 mentioning to the solution of these problems. On 
 the other hand, in the sphere of legislation proper 
 they have made notable contributions, both by their 
 own initiative and by their participation in commit- 
 tee work and in parliamentary debates. To what 
 extent such contributions would or would not have 
 been made by men, if there had been no women rep- 
 resentatives, remains an open question. Neverthe- 
 less, it seems as if certain questions or groups of 
 questions, especially social ones, are taken up with 
 warmer interest by the women than by the men. 
 That the former have not mastered the technique of 
 legislation is a natural consequence of their lack of 
 juridical knowledge, and is true also of the majority 
 of men." 
 
 As regards the work specially furthered by 
 
THE EIGHTS OF WOMEN 261 
 
 women, Senator Mechelin wrote that *^many of the 
 questions brought up by them had not received 
 proper attention from the men. Among the ques- 
 tions of reform which have been taken up by the 
 Diet on the initiative of women members, the fol- 
 lowing may be mentioned: the property rights of 
 women, the raising of the marriage age for women 
 from fifteen to seventeen, the improvement of the 
 legal position of illegitimate children, the establish- 
 ment of maternity insurance for very poor women, 
 the appointment of female sanitary inspectors, the 
 setting aside of funds for the promotion of public 
 morality, the extension of the right of women to hold 
 public offices. The above examples show that our 
 women representatives have specially concerned 
 themselves with those spheres in which women usu- 
 ally have a closer insight into existing evils than 
 men. This is not feminism, for the measures pro- 
 posed are all of a universally useful nature. ' ' 
 
 Theodore Rein gives a longer list of the motions 
 and petitions in which women have wholly or partly 
 taken the initiative, including, in addition to those 
 already cited, such matters as the abolition of the 
 husband's guardianship of his wife, the rights of 
 women to their children, the establishment of a home 
 for unprotected children and their mothers, practical 
 training in housekeeping, alterations in the prison 
 administration, temperance legislation, compulsory 
 schooling, the construction of new railways, the im- 
 provement of the legal position of the Jews, etc. 
 '^Many of these propositions have," he goes on to 
 say, ^'been accepted by the Diet. The fact that only 
 
262 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 in a very few cases they have resulted in the passing 
 of new laws and ordinances is due, not to the Diet, 
 but to the Government's (i.e., the Eussian) policy 
 of obstructing ameliorative social legislation." 
 
 Finally, as regards the alleged general discontent 
 with woman's suffrage and its bad effect on home 
 life, there is an absolute consensus of denial. P. 
 Svinhufvud writes briefly: ** Neither have I heard 
 in Finland the expression of any dissatisfaction over 
 woman's suffrage, nor are there, in my opinion, any 
 well-founded reasons to be advanced against it"; 
 while Dr. Axel Lille says : ^ * The granting of wom- 
 an 's suffrage was an act of justice and wisdom. 
 There is in this country hardly any politically 
 mature man, with a feeling of responsibility, who at 
 this moment would wish the reform had never been 
 made, and quite certainly none who would wish to 
 take away from woman the franchise she has already 
 received. ' ' 
 
 Senator Mechelin wrote that ^Hhe granting of 
 woman's suffrage has not in any way had a bad 
 effect on family and social life, but just the reverse. 
 It lies in the nature of things that equality of rights 
 has a healthy and ennobling influence on the way 
 human beings treat one another. And that woman's 
 exercise of the political franchise is calculated to 
 have a disturbing effect on family life and house- 
 hold duties is nothing but a fancy of weak men who 
 fear that their traditional authority will be lessened 
 by such a reform." 
 
 Although the quotation is a long one, I shall con- 
 clude with some remarks on this subject by Theodore 
 
THE EIGHTS OF WOMEN 263 
 
 Rein, which sum up the situation very fairly : * * My 
 own opinion, which I believe coincides with that 
 generally held in this country, is that the reform 
 which gave the franchise to adult persons of both 
 sexes, and made them eligible for election to Parlia- 
 ment, has not had any harmful consequences, even 
 if the positive gain has not been so great as had been 
 hoped — this being due to the general political situa-. 
 tion, which has prevented the Diet 's legislative work 
 from bearing the fruit it ought to and could have 
 borne. The fear not seldom expressed, that 
 woman's right to partake in political life would 
 estrange her from and make her indifferent to her 
 chief duty, that of caring for the home and the grow- 
 ing generation, has not in any way been confirmed 
 here. As a matter of act, it is only an exteremely 
 small proportion of the women who devote any con- 
 siderable part of their time to political work proper, 
 and of these it is only a minority who have families 
 to look after. The incomparably greater num- 
 ber of women share in political life only in so far as 
 once in every three years — or sometimes, if the Diet 
 is dissolved, with a shorter interval — ^they take part 
 in the elections. Naturally this cannot take up any 
 one's time in such a way as to prevent her from 
 fulfilling her duties to home and family. Nor need 
 participation in the elections make women indiffer- 
 ent to their private obligations. The fact that, in 
 consequence of their enfranchisement, they begin to 
 interest themselves in its implications, and try to 
 get the information they need for the exercise of 
 their right, cannot be regarded as haraiful. . . . 
 
264 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Women who have families to care for will then, more 
 than they would otherwise, implant in the rising 
 generation love of the nation and the fatherland, 
 and the desire to promote their welfare. And even 
 the relationship between man and wife ought in gen- 
 eral to gain from the widening of the circle of inter- 
 ests which are common to both and whose impor- 
 tance both fully recognize. ' ' 
 
 Although the principle of equal rights for men and 
 women is recognized in the political su:ffrage, it has 
 by no means been extended to all spheres of women's 
 activity. Thus, it is a little surprising to find that 
 Finnish women, while eligible for election to the 
 Diet, are generally not eligible for election to mu- 
 nicipal bodies, service on which would constitute an 
 excellent preparation for parliamentary work, and 
 that married women cannot even vote in the munici- 
 pal elections. These facts are sometimes quoted by 
 foreign opponents of women's suffrage as an argu- 
 ment against it. The Finns, it is said, are so dis- 
 gusted with the effects of woman's influence in poli- 
 tics that they refuse to have it extended to the sphere 
 of local government. As a matter of fact, however, 
 the Diet passed a new communal Bill in 1909, giving 
 women full equality with men, but the Emperor has 
 not sanctioned the Bill. 
 
 Another important disqualification under which 
 women still labour is that certain branches of the 
 public service are, according to the letter of the law, 
 confined to men. The law can in certain cases be 
 circumvented, women getting a special exemption 
 from their sex disabilities. Most women, however, 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 265 
 
 prefer to enter professions where the bar of sex has 
 not to be removed for them. They can only be freed 
 from this disqualification by a change in the funda- 
 mental laws. 
 
 "With regard to property rights, the unmarried 
 woman is rather favourably situated; she comes of 
 age, like a man, at twenty-one, and then has abso- 
 lutely the same property rights as a man, including 
 those of inheritance. So also have widows, even if 
 they have not reached the age of twenty-one. The 
 position of married women, however, is considered 
 less satisfactory. The law^ unites, and has since 
 time immemorial united, the real estate in the coun- 
 try acquired during marriage and iihe chattels, or 
 personal property, of husband and wife, in which is 
 included, also, real estate in towns, in a communaute 
 like that of the French Code Civile, and it is, at the 
 end of the marriage, equally divided between hus- 
 band and wife (or heirs), if not otherwise agreed 
 by a pre-nuptial settlement. Separate property is 
 the real estate in the country which husband or wife 
 owns at the time of marriage or inherits during mar- 
 riage. But, by a pre-nuptial settlement, everything 
 which husband or wife owns at the time of marriage 
 may be made his or her separate property, and by 
 a will or a gift the property conveyed, be it real or 
 chattels, can also be made separate. By will, hus- 
 band and wife can dispose of their property to each 
 other or third persons, according to the common 
 
 iFor marriages since 1890, the Act of April 15, 1889; for 
 marriages between 1890 and 1879, Act of June 27, 1878; for still 
 earlier marriages, the Swedish law-book of 1734. 
 
266 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 rules of the liberty of testament. The right and 
 duty of administration generally belongs to the hus- 
 band. But newer legislation (Act of April 15, 1889) 
 has, under the influence of the English Married 
 Women's Property Acts, given the married woman 
 the control of her own earnings, which, like the earn- 
 ings of her husband, are common property and can- 
 not, even by a pre-nuptial settlement, be made sepa- 
 rate. Her husband cannot prevent her from work- 
 ing outside her home, if she so desires. On the 
 other hand, she generally may not run a business 
 without his consent. She has no control whatever 
 over her own separate property unless this has been 
 specially provided for in a pre-nuptial settlement; 
 but her real property he may not alienate. By mis- 
 use of administration he makes himself liable to a 
 judicial separation. A married woman is thus prac- 
 tically under her husband's guardianship. She is 
 represented by him in judicial matters, but not in 
 criminal matters nor in those concerning property 
 which she controls.^ It is probable, however, that, 
 when the political situation becomes normal again, 
 a comprehensive measure will be passed removing 
 all the disabilities of married women; a draft Bill 
 has already been produced by the Government stand- 
 ing legal-reform committee. 
 
 The divorce laws are rather favourable to women. 
 By divorce a marriage ceases to exist altogether, 
 and the wife's legal situation bcomes like that of a 
 widow. When divorce results from adultery, the 
 
 ^ The income of the wife's separate property of which she has 
 the administration is common property, but under her control. 
 
THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 267 
 
 guilty party loses one half of his or her share in the 
 common property. The innocent party may re- 
 marry, but the guilty party may never marry the 
 co-respondent, nor any one else as long as the inno- 
 cent party remains unmarried, unless the innocent 
 party and the Government give their consent. The 
 husband and wife may agree as to who is to have the 
 children and be their guardian ; the other has to pay 
 half the cost of their education and up-bringing. 
 The only other legal ground for divorce is desertion, 
 i.e., when husband or wife leaves home and goes out 
 of Finland, with the intention of not returning and 
 living with the other. At the request of the one 
 remaining at home, the court of justice asks the 
 other to return within one year, and if the request is 
 not complied with, the divorce is granted. In prac- 
 tice, divorce can be obtained still more easily, but 
 this is not approved of. The guilty party loses his 
 or her share in the common property, which goes to 
 the children, if any, otherwise to the innocent party. 
 This form of divorce is designed for cases of incom- 
 patibility, which is the commonest ground of divorce. 
 
 By special license the Senate also affords divorce 
 in grave cases, such as hopeless mental disease in 
 wife or husband. 
 
 The Diet has recently given its assent to two very 
 interesting Bills concerning illegitimate children. 
 Although the Bills have not yet received the Em- 
 peror's sanction, it is worth while describing their 
 contents. The first has to do with the general posi- 
 tion of illegitimate children. Guardians are to be 
 appointed in each commune who will look after them 
 
268 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 if the mother is thought to be unfit to do so. The 
 father is compelled to help the mother to support the 
 child until it is sixteen, and in certain cases even 
 longer. The amount of money demanded for the 
 child is to depend on the position of both parents — ^it 
 is payable in advance at fixed intervals. The guard- 
 ian has to bring about an agreement between the 
 father and mother as to the sum required, and to see 
 that it is not too low. The father has to support the 
 mother entirely for two months before and after 
 her delivery, and, if she keeps the child, for six 
 months after its birth. If doubt exists as to the 
 child's father, more persons than one are liable to 
 be called upon to contribute to its support. 
 
 The second Bill is still more far-reaching. It 
 provides that as soon as fatherhood has been either 
 admitted or proved, the illegitimate child is entitled 
 to absolutely the same rights of inheritance as chil- 
 dren born in wedlock and to the use of its father's 
 name.^ 
 
 In spite of the important share they take in indus- 
 try, women have not organized themselves very 
 much except in certain trades. In many cases they 
 belong to the men's unions, which are on a firmer 
 foundation than their own. The feeling of resent- 
 ment amongst the men at female competition is not 
 
 1 The present law as regards illegitimate children is as follows : 
 The illegitimate child is supported by father and mother, and 
 inherits both parents when the mother has been at the concep- 
 tion bona fide, i.e., has believed herself in legal wedlock with the 
 father or has at least had his promise; so also when he has 
 married her afterwards or only given her his promise and death 
 has come between. The illegitimate child is generally educated 
 by its mother, the father paying his half of the cost. 
 
THE EIGHTS OF WOMEN 269 
 
 stronger in Finland than in other countries. Men 
 continue to receive higher pay than women for the 
 same work in nearly all branches of industry except 
 the printing trade, where an agreement between em- 
 ployers and workers has established the principle 
 of equal pay for equal work. There are also sepa- 
 rate firms which apply the same principle, but these 
 are exceptional. 
 
 It is interesting to know that women have not 
 favoured special protective legislation for their sex 
 in factories, unless such legislation is to apply to 
 men as well. Not long ago the question of night- 
 work in factories arose, and it was proposed to make 
 it illegal for women, but the majority of women 
 workers were against the proposal, because they 
 questioned whether it really would protect them, and 
 if it would not rather drive them out of the better 
 organized and better paid factories into the ill paid 
 and casual home-work. They preferred night-work 
 with good wages to the prohibition of night-work 
 with bad wages, and have only approved of its inter- 
 diction when, as in the Bakeries law, the embargo 
 is laid on both sexes alike. 
 
 It has already been pointed out that the principle 
 of equal pay for equal work is applied to the salaries 
 of elementary school teachers, and the Diet in 1913 
 pronounced in favour of the principle in the case of 
 women in the State service. A committee of the 
 Senate had desired to pay the women less than the 
 men, but the Diet declared its disapproval of the 
 suggestion in the following important pronounce- 
 ment : /*In the opinion of the Diet there is no reason 
 
270 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 to apply to women in the State service a procedure 
 departing from existing regulations and from the 
 general principle obtaining in those regulations, that 
 salaries are determined according to the nature of 
 the work done without reference to the person hold- 
 ing the office.'' Only by the establishment of this 
 principle throughout industry will men cease to suf- 
 fer from loss of work or lowered wages due to 
 female competition. 
 
 To illustrate the excellent practical work which 
 women are doing in Finland, one cannot do better 
 than give a brief sketch of one of the numerous 
 societies founded and organized by them. A good 
 instance is the Martha Society. This was founded 
 in 1899, the year of the February Manifesto, and its 
 foundation was doubtless precipitated by the desire 
 to counteract russianizing influences by stimulating 
 the interest of the peasants in their own country and 
 homes. It is entirely a woman's society, and its 
 members are drawn from all classes without distinc- 
 tion. The objects of ** Martha" are to work for im- 
 proved housekeeping, a better bringing up of chil- 
 dren, the spread of handicrafts and the teaching of 
 gardening. It has, moreover, such moral objects as 
 the encouragement of temperance and pure living. 
 Its promoters began wisely by calling meetings at 
 different places and electing local committees. They 
 did not make the mistake of trying to manage the 
 movement altogether from Helsingfors, but allowed 
 the local bodies as much freedom as possible. 
 Women lecturers travelled over the country making 
 propaganda for the society. They visited the homes 
 
i 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF WOMEN 271 
 
 of the peasants, talked with the women, sought to 
 win their confidence and excite their interest. On 
 the whole they were very well received, though some- 
 times their visits were at first regarded with sus- 
 picion. Sewing-parties were one of the earliest 
 forms of the society's activity. Expert instruction 
 in the cutting out of clothes was given and the meet- 
 ings were frequently enlivened by lectures, discus- 
 sions, reading aloud and singing. Many branches 
 arranged for lectures independently of sewing- 
 parties, preference being given to such subjects as 
 woman's work in the home, the care of children, 
 temperance, cleanliness, the duties of women to so- 
 ciety, gardening and poultry-keeping. As far as 
 possible practical instruction is given in the two 
 latter activities, which have hitherto been much 
 neglected in Finland. The society employs a large 
 number of women gardeners, who travel round the 
 country in the spring and summer, giving advice and 
 help to members. In many places co-operative pur- 
 chase of seeds is customary. Prizes are offered for 
 the best-kept garden. Poultry-keeping is also mak- 
 ing rapid progress, though the society only under- 
 took it quite recently. Already a co-operative sale 
 of eggs has been established and the society has its 
 agent in Helsingfors. Courses in cookery have be- 
 come very popular, and will help to raise the stand- 
 ard of Finnish cookery, which at present leaves 
 something to be desired. One of the most valuable 
 sides of the society's work is the encouragement of 
 women's arts and crafts. Courses in weaving are 
 numerous, curtains, handkerchiefs, blouses and dif- 
 
272 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 ferent clothes being manufactured. With these 
 is also combined instruction in the use of vegetable 
 dyes. The revival of this old art is a matter of 
 congratulation. **What calm and strong delight of 
 colour the good old fabrics have," writes a member 
 of the society. * ^ They tell us of field and forest, of 
 flowery meadows and green foliage, and first and 
 last, of women's happy work in weaving beautiful 
 objects for their homes." 
 
 The society has also a publication department 
 and issues numerous tracts and pamphlets in addi- 
 tion to its own journal. It arranges exhibitions and 
 excursions and has Martha Days, to which all who 
 can make a point of coming. And all this admirable 
 work is done not by rich people with an excess of 
 money, but in the face of perpetual financial difficul- 
 ties and the hampering of progress owing to meagre 
 funds. Moreover, the entire society is managed, as 
 it was originated, by women.^ 
 
 ^ The following details, kindly supplied by the society, may 
 possibly prove of interest. The membership in 1912 was about 
 11,000, the members being divided among the 164 branches of 
 the society. Each branch usually consists of a commune, i.e., a 
 town or parish. But there are some branches including two or 
 three communes, and certain communes contain more than one 
 branch. The largest country branch contains 474 members, em- 
 bracing a small town and sixteen neighbouring villages. During 
 1912 73 branches had cookery courses, which were visited by 
 3,125 women; 21 had weaving courses, with an attendance of 
 456; 96 had regular sewing-parties, at which the attendance 
 varied from 10 to 50. Between 60 and 70 women gardeners 
 travelled round the country and gave instruction and help to 
 about 4,000 homes. Forty-three branches received instruction 
 in poultry-keeping. Besides the ordinary meetings of the differ- 
 ent branches, 335 large extra meetings were held and 500 lec- 
 tures were delivered. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE POSITION OF FINLAND IN THE KUSSIAN EMPIEE 
 
 AS has already been pointed out, it was in con- 
 sequence of the war of 1808-9 that Finland 
 passed from Sweden to the Eussian Empire, and 
 this war was only the culmination of a struggle for 
 supremacy which had been carried on for centuries. 
 From the time when Peter the Great founded his 
 capital at Petersburg, the ultimate control of the 
 Gulf of Finland by Eussia became a foregone con- 
 clusion, and the Eussian monarchs clearly recognized 
 the necessity of breaking down Sweden's power 
 there. As early as 1742 we find the Empress Eliza- 
 beth, while at war with Sweden, issuing a manifesto 
 to the Finns in which she offers to liberate them 
 from the rule of Sweden and to make Finland an 
 independent State. The Empress Catherine enter- 
 tained a similar idea. In 1788 she urged the Finns, 
 if they really desired peace, *Ho prevail upon the 
 Swedish army to leave Finland." They were to 
 ** summon their own Diet, declare themselves inde- 
 pendent, frame laws. . . .," and Her Majesty would 
 ** solemnly and for ever confirm all their resolu- 
 tions'' and, if necessary, protect them from the 
 
 273 
 
274 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Swedish king by force of arms. In 1808, when the 
 Eussian general Buxhoevden crossed the Finnish 
 frontier before the declaration of war, he issi^ed a 
 manifesto on behalf of the Emperor Alexander I 
 desiring the Finns not to resist his advance, because 
 the Eussians came as ^^friends and protectors." 
 During the long struggle that followed two opinions 
 were current in Eussia with regard to Finland ^s fu- 
 ture. One party desired annexation and the treat- 
 ment of Finland as a province of the Empire; the 
 other party advised the Emperor to guarantee to 
 the people the constitutional rights they already en- 
 joyed. The long and stubborn . resistance of the 
 Finns, combined with his anxiety to free the Eus- 
 sian army for duties elsewhere, induced Alexander 
 I to adopt the latter policy, and, at his request, a 
 deputation representing the nobles, burghers, peas- 
 ants and clergy of Finland met at Petersburg on 
 November 12, 1808, while, though Finland had prac- 
 tically been abandoned, the war was still in progress, 
 to discuss with him what could be done for Finland. 
 The deputies asked that a Diet should be summoned, 
 representing the Four Estates of Finland, and on 
 January 20, 1809, the Emperor convoked the 
 famous Diet of Borga. General Buxhoevden was 
 recalled as a sign that hostile relations no longer 
 existed between Finland and Eussia, and a civil 
 Governor of Finland, Sprengporten, was appointed 
 in his stead. 
 
 A word of explanation as to Finland's separation 
 from Sweden is desirable. The alternatives before 
 her were to resist to the end without regular troops 
 
FINLAND IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 275 
 
 and then surrender unconditionally, or to accept the 
 exceedingly liberal terms proposed by Alexander I, 
 which included the most important thing of all, 
 namely, the maintenance of the Swedish Constitu- 
 tion as the Constitution of Finland. As it became 
 evident that Sweden neither could nor would do 
 anything more for Finland, public opinion tended 
 more and more to welcome the latter alternative. 
 Sweden had left the Finns to take care of themselves 
 and they did so. The deposition of the Swedish 
 king, Gustavus IV, by his own subjects, which oc- 
 curred about a fortnight before the Diet of Borga, 
 removed all qualms of conscience from the minds of 
 waverers. By the treaty of peace of Fredrikshamn, 
 Sweden ratified the new order of things. The ar- 
 rangement suited Alexander I as well as it suited 
 Finland. The Emperor required a buffer State 
 between Petersburg and the kingdom of Sweden. It 
 was also desirable, in view of the proximity of the 
 Finnish frontier to his capital, that he should have 
 military control over that buffer State. He further 
 desired, as part of the same policy, the control of 
 its foreign policy. But otherwise, so far as he was 
 concerned, Finland might be free and autonomous. 
 Indeed, it was better so, for the Finns, whose fight- 
 ing qualities he was only too well aware of, would 
 then be contented, and unlikely, in the event of a new 
 war with Sweden, to make difficulties for Russia 
 by revolting in favour of the Swedes. 
 
 The position of Finland in the Russian Empire 
 was determined by the proceedings at Borga and 
 the Treaty of Fredrikshamn. The former were 
 
276 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 marked by great solemnity. On March 15/27, 1809, 
 Alexander I reached Borga and on the same evening 
 signed the so-called Act of Assurance. On March 
 17/29 the Finnish Estates met the Tsar in the 
 Cathedral of Borga to receive his pledge and subse- 
 quently do homage to him. The Act of Assurance 
 was read out by the Governor-General on behalf of 
 the Tsar. It runs as follows: — 
 
 We, Alexander the First, by the Grace of God Emperor and 
 Autocrat of All the E-ussias, etc., do make known: — 
 
 That Providence having placed Us in possession of the Grand 
 Duchy of Finland, We have desired hereby to confirm and j'at- 
 ify the religion and fundamental Laws of the Land as well as 
 the privileges and rights which each class in the said Grand 
 Duchy in particular, and all the inhabitants in general, be their 
 position high or low, have hitherto enjoyed according to the Con- 
 stitution. We promise to maintain all these benefits and laws 
 firm, and unshakeable in their full force. In confirmation 
 whereof we have signed this Act of Assurance with Our own 
 hand. 
 
 Given in Borga, March 15/27, 1809. 
 
 Alexander. 
 
 The Four Estates then took the oath of allegiance, 
 after which the Tsar spoke in French as follows : — 
 
 Je regois avec sensibilite les serments de fidelite que les hab- 
 itants de la Finlande viennent de me preter par I'organe de 
 leur representants. 
 
 Les liens qui m'unissent a eux, affermis par ce mouvement 
 spontane de leur affection, consacre par cet acte solennel, en 
 deviennent plus cher a mon coeur, plus conf orme a mes principes. 
 
 En leur promettant de maintenir leur religion, leur lois fon- 
 damentales, j'ai voulu leur montrer le prix que j'attache aux 
 sentiments de la confiance et de Pamour. 
 
 J'implore PEtre tout puissant de m'accorder sa force et sa 
 lumiere pour gouverner cette nation respectable d'apres ses lois 
 et sa justice divine. 
 
FINLAND IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 277 
 
 The Emperor then made a triumphant tour in 
 Finland and was everywhere received with the 
 greatest enthusiasm. Before leaving the country- 
 he issued at Borga, on March 23/ April 4, the fol- 
 lowing important manifesto in French, which he 
 commanded should be translated into Finnish and 
 Swedish and be read aloud, together with the Act 
 of Assurance, in all the churches in Finland: — 
 
 Nous, Alexandre Premier, Empereur et Autocrate de toutes 
 les Eussies, etc., Grand Due de Finlande, etc.:— 
 
 Ayant reuni les etats de la Finlande en une Di^te generale, et 
 regu leurs sermens de fidelite, Nous avpns voulu a cette occa- 
 sion par un acte solennel, emane en leur presence et proclame 
 dans le sanctuaire de TEtre Supreme, confirmer et assurer le 
 maintien de la Religion, des lois fondamentales, les droits et 
 les privileges dont chaque etat en particulier et tous les habi- 
 tants de la Finlande en general ont joui jusqu'a present. 
 
 En faisant promulger cet acte par ces presentes Nous croyons 
 devoir instruire en meme tems Nos fideles sujets de Finlande 
 qu^en ous conformant a Fusage antique et venere de ce pays 
 Nous regardons les sermens de fidelite pretes par les etats en 
 general et par les deputes des paysans en particulier en leur 
 nom et en celui de leurs commettans, de leurs mouvemens 
 propres et spontanes, comme bons et obligatoires pour tous les 
 habitans de la Finlande. 
 
 Intimement persuade que ce peuple bon et loyale conservera 
 a jamais pour Nous et pour Nos successeurs les memes senti- 
 mens de fidelite et d'attachement inviolable qui Font toujours 
 distingue. Nous attacherons a lui donner avec Faide de Dieu 
 de preuves continuelles de Nos soins assidus et paternels pour 
 son bonheur et sa prosperite. 
 
 A Borga ce 23 mars, 1809. 
 
 Alexandre. 
 
 These two documents are the charter of Finland's 
 liberties. The Treaty of Fredrikshamn, which 
 ended the war between Russia and Sweden, was 
 signed on September 17 in the same year. In it 
 
278 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Sweden formally renounced all claims to Finland, 
 thereby officially recognizing the change that had 
 actually taken place several months before. It is 
 urged by certain Eussian controversialists that by 
 this treaty the Act of Assurance and the manifesto 
 of March 23/ April 4, 1809, were cancelled. This 
 is so far from being the case, however, that the 
 treaty, in one of its clauses, actually recognizes 
 the agreement already in existence between Alex- 
 ander I and the Finns. 
 
 The clause quoted by Russian writers in support 
 of their contention is No. 4 of the treaty. It con- 
 tains the following proviso: — 
 
 These provinces [of Finland], with all their inhabitants, 
 towns, ports, forts, villages and islands, with all their appurte- 
 nances, privileges and revenues, shall hereafter under full own- 
 ership and sovereignty belong to the Russian Empire and be 
 incorporated with the same. 
 
 They omit, however, to quote Clause 6 of the 
 same treaty, which runs as follows: — 
 
 His Majesty the Emperor of All the Russias having already 
 given the most manifest proofs of the clemency and justice with 
 which he has resolved to govern the inhabitants of the provinces 
 which he has acquired, by generosity and by his own spontane- 
 ous act assuring to them the free exercise of their religion, 
 rights, property and privileges, His Swedish Majesty considers 
 himself thereby released from performing the otherwise sacred 
 duty of making reservations in the above respects in favour of 
 his former subjects. 
 
 This clause clearly refers to the proceedings at 
 Borga and recognizes the validity of the agreement 
 then entered upon by the Emperor and the people 
 of Finland. Consequently, both the Diet of Borga 
 
FINLAND IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 279 
 
 and the Treaty of Fredrikshamn have to be taken 
 into account in any definition of Finland's legal 
 position. ' The former defines her position with 
 regard to internal administration, the latter defines 
 it exclusively from the standpoint of international 
 law. 
 
 We must now glance briefly at the manner in 
 which the sovereign power of the Autocrat of All 
 the Russias was limited in his capacity of Grand 
 Duke of Finland. What the Emperor did at Borga 
 was to sanction the already existing Swedish laws 
 in Finland, and in particular thie so-called **form 
 of government" of 1772 and the Act of Union and 
 Security of 1789. These latter were to constitute 
 the Finnish Constitution, or the ^^fundamental laws 
 of Finland," and their essence was contained in 
 sections 40 and 41 of the '*Form of Government," 
 which run as follows: — 
 
 The king shall make no new law nor abolish an old one with- 
 out the knowledge and consent of ther Estates. 
 
 The Estates of the Realm (Riksens Stander) shall abolish 
 no old law nor make a new law without the king's yea and 
 
 consent. 
 
 In other words, a law, if it is to be binding in 
 Finland, must, firstly, be passed by the Finnish Diet, 
 and secondly, be sanctioned by the Emperor-Grand- 
 Duke. 
 
 Other important principles established by the 
 Constitution are the following: — 
 
 The country must be governed wdth the assistance 
 of Finnish authorities (the only exception being the 
 Governor-General) . 
 
280 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 The Constitution cannot be altered without the 
 consent of the Finnish Diet. (This principle was de- 
 fined more clearly by the law of the Diet of 1869.) 
 
 There were, however, certain fields of legislative 
 activity in Finland in which the Emperor is at lib- 
 erty to issue ordinances having the force of law 
 without the co-operation of the Diet. This right 
 descended to him in virtue of the old constitutional 
 practice in Sweden, where, ever since the thirteenth 
 century, it had been a recognized principle that the 
 king could issue laws in certain minor matters by 
 way of administrative procedure. These matters 
 have never been actually defined and are regulated 
 by precedent. They may be stated briefly as the 
 administration of Crown properties and revenue- 
 yielding rights, the carrying on of certain trades, 
 general economy, the preservation of public order 
 and the establishment of official departments. No 
 administrative ordinance, however, may clash with 
 ordinary legislation. 
 
 There are also certain matters affecting Finland 
 which fall within the competence not of the Finnish 
 but of the Eussian State, such as the laws of suc- 
 cession to the Eussian throne, foreign policy, the 
 position of foreign consuls, the Eussian army and 
 navy and Church and schools in Finland. 
 
 The above is a brief statement of the legal rela- 
 tion of Finland to Eussia, as it appears to the Finns. 
 It is not the purpose of this book to render an ac- 
 count of the polemic that has raged round the 
 subject. Persans interested in the juridical aspect 
 of the conflict should consult such books as Mr. 
 
FINLAND IN THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE 281 
 
 J. R. Fisher's admirably lucid ^^ Finland and the 
 Tsars" (second edition, 1901). By far the most im- 
 portant document on the subject, however, is the 
 declaration made by international lawyers in Febru- 
 ary, 1910, after a conference held in London. The 
 signatories represent the best juridical opinion of 
 Europe, and their verdict may fairly be regarded as 
 conclusive so far as the legal issue is concerned. The 
 statement is as follows : — 
 
 We, the following — 
 
 Gerhard Anschiitz, LL.D., Professor of Public Law, Univer- 
 sity of Berlin; L. von Bar, LL.D., Geheimer Justiz-Rat, Pro- 
 fessor of Law, University of Gottingen, Hon. Member and Past 
 President of the Institut de Droit international. Member of 
 the Court of Arbitration of The Hague ; A. de Lapradelle, Pro- 
 fesseur agrege a la faeulte de droit de I'Universite de Paris, 
 Directeur de la Revue de Droit international prive, Co-directeur 
 du Recueil des Arbitrages internationaux, Associe de I'Institut 
 de Droit international; Leon Michoud, Professeur de droit 
 public a I'Universite de Grenoble; Ernest l^ys, Professeur de 
 droit international a I'Universite de Bruxelles, Conseiller a la 
 Cour d'Appel de Bruxelles Membre de I'Institut de Droit inter- 
 national; Sir Prederick Pollock, Bart., LL.D., D.C.L., late 
 Corpus Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Oxford; W. 
 van der Vlugt, Professeur de la philosophic du droit a I'Uni- 
 versite de Leyde; J. Westlake, K.C., LL.D., D.C.L., late Pro- 
 fessor of International Law, University of Cambridge, Hon. 
 Member and Past President of the Institut de Droit interna- 
 tional; C. V. ISTyholm, formerly a member of the Supreme 
 Court of Denmark — 
 
 Led by our studies to an examination of the relations, be- 
 tween Finland and Russia. . . . Having welcomed the sugges- 
 tion made by a group of Dutch jurisconsults to meet in London, 
 in order to examine the arguments adduced on both sides, and 
 to deliberate in common . . . have unanimously agreed on the 
 following conclusions : — 
 
 1. The rights of Finland in respect to her Constitution are 
 not a figment of Finnish "imagination," but an historical real- 
 
282 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 ity; they do not form a "dogma" in which the Finlanders be- 
 lieve without being able to offer proof, but a juridical truth 
 scientifically demonstrated. 
 
 2. It is not only from Sweden, under the Treaty of Frederik- 
 shamn (Article lY), but, as was recognized by the same docu- 
 ment (Article VI), before this treaty, from the Finlanders 
 themselves, that Alexander I, on his solemn promise to them to 
 respect their Fundamental Laws, took possession of Finland. 
 
 3. When, at the Diet of Borga, the Oath of the Four Estates 
 followed on the promises of the Czar, Finland "free as regards 
 her internal affairs," "from henceforth placed in the rank of 
 nations," did not enter into the Russian Empire as a conquered 
 province, precariously endowed with temporary privileges, but 
 as an autonomous organism, united by free agreement to a 
 sovereign State, which, on account of this agreement, is obliged 
 to respect this autonomy. 
 
 4. In whatever fashion authors analyse and define the tie 
 between Finland and Russia, according to their conception of a 
 State and their different modes of classifying institutions of 
 public law, they are, with very few exceptions, all agreed, Rus- 
 sians included, on this point, that Finland has the right to de- 
 mand that the Russian Empire should respect her Constitution. 
 
 5. The introduction in Russia of a constitutional system, 
 could not modify the position of Finland. . . . 
 
 6. Being unable, by direct means, to withdraw either from 
 the Diet or from the Finnish administrative organs all or any 
 part of their powers, Russia cannot do so by indirect means 
 through reserving to herself the right to determine the scope 
 of this competence. 
 
 7. If the superior interests of the Empire demand the estab- 
 lishment of a common procedure for dealing with certain inter- 
 nal affairs, it pertains to the Diet either itself to determine 
 those affairs or to consent to the creation of a body charged 
 with determining them. 
 
 Frederick Pollock. 
 J. Westlake. 
 Ernest Nys. 
 A. de Lapradelle. 
 Gerhard ANSCHijrz. 
 L. VON Bar. 
 
 LtON MiCHOUD. 
 W. VAN DER VlUGT. 
 
 C. V. Nyholm. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE FIEST PEBIOD OF BUSSIANIZATION 
 
 FINLAND and Eussia are separated not only 
 by such natural barriers as the Gulf of Fin- 
 land and Lake Ladoga, but also by the profound 
 psychological gulf that lies between the Russians 
 and the West European. Of this gulf the Russians 
 themselves are perfectly conscious. Prince Kropot- 
 kin describes in his ^^ Memoirs'* a conversation he 
 had with TourgueniefP in the- eighteen-seventies. 
 ** *You must have had a great deal of experience 
 in your life among Frenchmen, Germans and other 
 people,' he said to me once. *Have you not remarked 
 that there is a deep, unfathomable chasm between 
 many of their conceptions and the views which we 
 Russians hold on the same subjects — points upon 
 which we can never agree?' " Tourguenieff then 
 gave a striking illustration of what he meant from 
 the sphere of marriage relationships. Kropotkin 
 admitted that amongst the middle classes the differ- 
 ence between nation and nation was immense in- 
 deed, but contended that between the workers, and 
 especially the peasants, of all nations there is an 
 * immense resemblance." *^In saying so, I was, 
 however, quite wrong," he continues. ** After I had 
 had the opportunity of making a closer acquaintance 
 with French workers, I often thought of the right- 
 ness of Tourguenieff 's remark." 
 
 The same difference is implied in Tolstoy's re- 
 mark to Dr. Sarolea : * ^ I am glad you are going to 
 make a special study of Russia, but if you want to 
 
 283 
 
284 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 understand us you must grasp the principles of the 
 Slavophils. * ' 
 
 Now, the Finns, thanks to the Swedish conquest, 
 are essentially West Europeans. Their minds face 
 west and not east, while the most typical Eussian 
 minds face east and not west. Life in Finland has 
 a close family resemblance to life in any other West 
 European country. But when one crosses the fron- 
 tier of Russia one enters a new world and a new set 
 of values. Compare Petersburg, by no means the 
 most characteristic Russian city, with Helsingfors, 
 and the difference is at once realized. Nowhere does 
 it come out more strongly than in the churches, 
 (where the contrast between the gorgeous Greek 
 Orthodox ritual of the one and the Lutheran sim- 
 plicity of the other is almost startling. The differ- 
 ence of the worshippers is equally obvious. The 
 Russian has probably sounded spiritual depths be- 
 yond the ken of the Finn, but it is easy to under- 
 stand, when you see him at worship, that he has 
 never developed the particular qualities out of 
 which free citizens are made, and that he is an easy 
 prey of those who wish to exploit him. 
 
 The difference of mentality between Russians and 
 Finns expresses itself in different kinds of law and 
 government. In Russia the sovereign is an auto- 
 crat; in Finland he is a constitutional monarch. 
 \ In Russia the word of the sovereign is law ; in Fin- 
 ; land the idea of law penetrates the whole of society, 
 just as it does in Great Britain, and sovereign 
 and ministers are subject to it, no less than the 
 poorest peasant. In Finland law is the product 
 of the nation ; in Russia it is the creation of an in- 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 285 
 
 dividual influenced by a bureaucracy. When the 
 plans for a railway from Petersburg to Moscow 
 were brought to Nicholas I, he drew a straight line 
 across the map between the two towns, saying that 
 that was the route it must follow, and thus it had to 
 be built in spite of the enormous difficulties and 
 needless expense this autocratic command entailed. 
 
 The above distinctions are not drawn with the 
 intention of showing the West Europeans in general 
 and the Finns in particular to be superior to the 
 Russians. No one who has had even a superficial 
 acquaintance with Russian life and character can 
 doubt that while we of West Europe have much to 
 give to Russia, we also have much to learn from 
 her, especially in the sphere of spiritual things. 
 The old contempt for everything Russian is out-of- 
 date, and an attitude of sympathetic inquiry is fast 
 replacing it. It is not a question of being better 
 or worse, but of being different, and the object of 
 the contrast we have drawn is simply to show how 
 the inclusion of West European Finland within the 
 Russian Empire inevitably brought with it the seeds 
 of political conflict. 
 
 Sometimes, indeed, it seems surprising that the 
 trouble did not come to a head much earlier than 
 was actually the case. The only guarantee for Fin- 
 land's Constitution was the sacred oath of the Tsars, 
 and there was a constant danger that the autocrat 
 might overpower the constitutional monarch. Temp- 
 tations of this nature sometimes arose, as when, dur- 
 ing the later part of the nineteenth century, Russian 
 nationalism, impatient at being bound by a Consti- 
 tution in Finland, when everywhere else throughout 
 
286 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the vast Empire the Government had a free hand, 
 hinted to the Tsars that their scruples with regard 
 to Finland's Constitution were unreasonable and 
 out-of-date. 
 
 During the nineteenth century, however, the Tsars 
 were true to their oath. Thus, when Count Stein- 
 heil was appointed Governor-General of Finland in 
 1810, Alexander I wrote to him, in the course of 
 other instructions: **My object in organizing the 
 situation in Finland has been to give to the people 
 a political existence, so that they shall not regard 
 themselves as subject to Eussia, but as attached to 
 her by their own evident interests, and for this rea* 
 son not only their civil laws, but also their political 
 laws have been retained." Moreover, in 1811 the 
 Emperor reincorporated the eastern portions of 
 her territory, including the town of Yiborg, which 
 had been ceded to Russia in 1721 and 1743, and had 
 since then been governed as a Russian province. 
 Thus, instead of levelling the rest of Finland down 
 to the provincial status of Viborg, he raised Viborg 
 to be a part of autonomous Finland. Further, he 
 reintroduced the ecclesiastical and judicial authority 
 of Abo over Viborg and made arrangements for the 
 representation of Viborg in the Diet. No better 
 proofs of his intentions towards Finland could be 
 desired. Towards the end of his reign he again 
 showed his respect for the Finnish Constitution in 
 a striking way. For, when Count Zakrevsky, the 
 fourth Governor-General, obtained the Emperor's 
 consent to the passing of certain ordinances, with- 
 out having previously consulted the Finnish authori- 
 ties, Alexander heeded the protest made by the 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 287 
 
 Senate and directed the Court for tlie future to 
 ** present his report through the proper constitu- 
 tional channels.'* 
 
 The Diet was not summoned a second time by 
 Alexander I, nor did his successor, Nicholas I, 
 convoke it. This, as we saw, was hardly in keeping 
 with the spirit of the Constitution, but it did not 
 involve a formal violation of it, so long as no new 
 law was enacted or tax levied. For though in the 
 Swedish ^^era of freedom'' (1719-72) the Estates 
 met regularly every three years, later on it was 
 left to the sovereign to convoke them when he 
 thought it necessary. Although no new taxes could 
 be levied, yet, seeing that the Crown had the dis- 
 posal of the ordinary State revenues, such as cus- 
 toms, the income of crown properties, etc., it was 
 possible for the sovereign to carry on the govern- 
 ment without summoning the Estates, by acting in 
 conjunction with the central governing body (in 
 Sweden the Riksrad, in Finland the Senate). More- 
 over, there was, as we saw, the whole domain of 
 so-called administrative legislation, where the sov- 
 ereign can issue ordinances having the force of law, 
 independently of the Diet. 
 
 But although the Tsar's failure to convoke the 
 Diet was not actually a breach of the Constitution, 
 it had a bad effect, and the impossibility of new 
 legislation acted as a check to the country's develop- 
 ment. It was in every way a great advantage to 
 Finland when Alexander II in 1863 returned to the 
 more regular procedure by summoning the Estates 
 and assuring them in the speech from the throne 
 that he intended to maintain *Hhe principles of con- 
 
288 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 stitutional monarchy essentially involved in the 
 character of the Finnish people, and of which all 
 their laws and institutions bear the impress/' He 
 closed his speech with the following striking pas- 
 sage, which seems to indicate that he contemplated 
 the extension of constitutional government to other 
 parts of the Empire: ^*It is for you, the represen- 
 tatives of the Grand Duchy, to prove, by the dignity, 
 moderation, and the calmness of your discussions, 
 that in the hands of a wise and well-conducted peo- 
 ple . . . liberal institutions, far from being a dan- 
 ger, become a guarantee of order and prosperity.'' 
 
 After this the Diet was summoned fairly regu- 
 larly about every four ye^ixs^ In 1869 the Diet was 
 recalled and tEeFundamental Laws were further 
 defined, it being provided that a fundamental law 
 can be made, altered, interpreted or repealed only 
 on the representation of the Emperor-Grand-Duke 
 and with the consent of all the Four Estates. 
 
 It is worth pointing out that in 1860 the Emperor 
 decreed for Finland a separate money system. The 
 unit was the Finnish mark, equivalent to the French 
 franc and to a quarter of a Russian rouble. 
 
 On several occasions Alexander II stood between 
 Finland and the bureaucratic Russian, Ministers 
 who wished to bring the country into line with the 
 rest of the Empire. His most important interven- 
 tion concerned military matters, which is interest- 
 ing, seeing that it was this subject that eventually 
 brought the Russo-Finnish conflict to a head. In 
 1873 Russia adopted a new scheme of army organi- 
 zation, as a result of the war between France and 
 Germany. General Miliutin, then Russian Minister 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 289 
 
 of War, wanted Alexander II to extend the scheme 
 to Finland by Imperial Decree. But when it was 
 pointed out to the Emperor that this would be alto- 
 gether illegal, he ordered that the scheme should be 
 submitted to the Finnish Diet in the regular way. 
 The Diet recognized the necessity for creating a 
 more efficient force and keeping it in close touch 
 with the Russian army, and in 1877 adopted a Gov- 
 ernment Bill giving effect to these principles. At- 
 tempts had been made by General Miliutin to induce 
 the Emperor to alter the Bill, but in spite of the War 
 Office he refused to do so, and the law was promul- 
 gated in 1878 in the form in which it had left the 
 Diet. The most important provisions were that all 
 Finns were to be liable for military service; that 
 the army should consist of Finnish citizens only, 
 and that its object should be the defence of Finland. 
 The Governor-General was to be in supreme com- 
 mand, a Finnish officer was to report purely mili- 
 tary matters to the Minister of War, who in turn 
 was to report them to the Emperor, and the military 
 department of the Senate was to be responsible for 
 the civil administration, commissariat, barracks, etc. 
 To the troops commands were to be issued, as be- 
 fore, in the Russian language. 
 
 The irritation felt by official Russia, with its ex- 
 cessive love of uniformity and centralization, at the 
 exception forced upon its notice by the Finnish 
 Constitution was not, however, the only element of 
 danger to the Grand Duchy. The whole course of 
 Russian policy in her frontier provinces constituted 
 a menace to Finland. The russianization of Poland, 
 which had long been proceeding, was carried out at 
 
290 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 redoubled speed, and with appalling rigour, after 
 the unsuccessful rising of 1863. The Polish lan- 
 guage was persecuted and Eussian officialdom ruled 
 the country. A similar fate befell the Lithuanians, 
 the Little Russians and the inhabitants of Caucasia. 
 Then Russia turned her attention to the Baltic prov- 
 inces, on the southern side of the Finnish Gulf. 
 Almost the entire system of education in those prov- 
 inces was made Russian, the political rights of 
 estates, cities and corporations were arbitrarily 
 withdrawn, and the racial strife between the Ger- 
 man nobility and the Letts and Esthonians was ex- 
 ploited in such a way as to place the country more 
 and more at the mercy of the Russian bureaucracy. 
 How was Finland to escape a similar fate? 
 
 Further, a Nationalist movement in Russia had 
 also to be reckoned with. Finland is anathema to 
 a large body of opinion in Russia because in virtue 
 of her Constitution she enjoys a separate position. 
 This offence is aggravated by the fact that the Finns 
 are one of the many non-Russian nationalities within 
 the Empire. Perhaps the leading idea among the 
 Russian Nationalists is a chauvinistic hatred of the 
 foreigner. From this root has sprung the persecu- 
 tion of the Jews, Poles, Georgians and other non- 
 Russian nationalities. The famous writer Katkoif 
 had already in the 'sixties marked out Finland for 
 destruction, and in the early 'eighties a vehement 
 Press campaign, probably originated by Ministers 
 who knew well how to inflame the worst feelings of 
 the Nationalists, began to be directed against Fin- 
 land. The argument ran that Finland's rights were 
 purely illusory and based on misrepresentation and 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 291 
 
 even forgery; that Alexander I had not understood 
 what he was doing, or had not meant what he had 
 said; and his successors were urged in the name 
 of Russia's interests to make an end of Finland's 
 special position and extend to her the principles 
 of autocracy as they existed in the rest of the 
 Empire. 
 
 The Russian articles and brochures were repeat- 
 edly answered from Finland, and their arguments 
 were refuted by Senator Mechelin and Professors 
 Hermanson and Danielson, Nevertheless, the Rus- 
 sian Government proceeded to commence the work 
 of russianization by issuing a manifesto on June 2, 
 1890, by which the Finnish Post Office was subordi- 
 nated to the Russian Ministry, while in December of 
 the same year another manifesto suspended the ap- 
 plication of the new Criminal Law recently adopted 
 by the Diet and sanctioned by the Emperor. Other 
 ordinances were issued the next year tending in the 
 same direction. 
 
 The accession of the young Tsar Nicholas II, in 
 November, 1894, was the signal for great hopes in 
 Finland, as well as in Russia. He, like all his pre- 
 decessors since Alexander I, solemnly guaranteed 
 Finland's Constitution, but that he was no friend 
 to the constitutional idea early became manifest. 
 The dreams of constitutional rule nourished by 
 Alexander I and Alexander II were entirely aban- 
 doned, and the spectacle of a flourishing constitu- 
 tional monarchy like Finland, on the borders of 
 Russia and actually within the Empire, must have 
 seemed not merely an eyesore to the Russian Court, 
 but ^ positive danger, inasmuch as it afforded to 
 
292 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 ithe discontented masses in Russia a working model 
 of democracy at their very doors. It is hardly sur- 
 prising, therefore, that the attack on Finland became 
 far more vehement than ever before. 
 
 It was the military question on which Russia de- 
 jtermined to fight. She decided upon the extension 
 lof the Russian military system to Finland. The 
 latter 's army consisted mainly of nine battalions 
 of infantry, so-called sharpshooters, who served 
 three years, and a reserve which met for ninety days 
 during three successive summers. The troops were 
 drilled according to the rules of the Russian army 
 and commanded in Russian, but the language of 
 the military education was Swedish and Finnish. 
 Russian investigators could find no fault with the 
 Finnish army, and the Tsar Alexander III had 
 officially declared that during manoeuvres the Fin- 
 nish troops had perfectly well collaborated with the 
 Russian army. 
 
 The man chosen to carry out the Russian Nation- 
 alist programme in Finland was General Nicolai 
 Ivanovitch Bobrikoff, who was appointed Governor- 
 General of Finland in August and reached Helsing- 
 fors on October 12, 1898. A few days before his 
 appointment the Tsar had issued his famous Peace 
 Manifesto. Yet Bokrikoff was sent to Finland to 
 force upon the people a military system by which 
 the army would be quadrupled. His first hectoring 
 speech to the Senate and provincial governors at 
 once showed what Finland had to expect, and the 
 impression was confirmed on January 24, 1899, when 
 the Diet was opened and he read out on behalf of 
 the Tsar the speech from the throne. In it the ITinns 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 293 
 
 were treated as a number of Russian subjects liv-i 
 ing in a number of Russian ** governments/' and 
 the Diet's constitutional right to decide legislative 
 matters was completely denied. Moreover, the Mili- 
 tary Bill laid before the Diet was extremely objec- 
 tionable, being the military law of Russia ; officers / 
 were to be Russians ; courts martial and the military ( 
 criminal code were to be Russian ; the Finnish levies , 
 were to be sent to Russia and divided between Rus- 
 sian regiments and fed by Russian authorities. 
 
 While the Diet was still discussing this Bill, a 
 new and crushing blow fell upon Finland. On Feb- 
 ruary 15th General Bobrikoff arrived from Peters- 
 burg with the famous February Manifesto, the 
 essence of which was as follows: Finland's Consti- 
 tution was no longer to be observed where Imperial 
 interests were concerned. On such matters the Diet 
 might express an opinion but not decide. It lay 
 exclusively with the monarch to determine what 
 matters should be considered of Imperial interest, 
 and consequently decided by him alone. The mani- 
 festo thus struck a fatal blow at the Constitution. 
 
 By a majority of ten votes to nine the Senate, the 
 central administrative body of Finland, decided to 
 promulgate the manifesto, and then proceeded to 
 send a petition to the Tsar. It was not received, 
 and a protest from the Diet met with the same fate. 
 General Bobrikoff published the following bluff: 
 *^A11 reasonable people in Finland are satisfied with 
 the manifesto. ' ' But there were no reasonable peo- 
 ple in the Governor-General's sense. At a meeting 
 of citizens in Helsingfors it was resolved to collect 
 signatures for a national address to the Emperor 
 
294 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 urging him to revoke the manifesto. Messengers 
 were dispatched to spread the news far and wide. 
 The result was astonishing. The signature of any- 
 adult man or woman was accepted, and when on 
 March 14th the lists were counted in Helsingfors, 
 the number of names was found to amount to 
 520,931. To realize the significance of these figures 
 it must be remembered that all the signatures were 
 collected in ten days, that the total population of 
 Finland was only some two and a half millions, 
 spread over an enormous area, and that hundreds 
 of villages and islands could only be reached by 
 sledges or by men on skis, sometimes at the risk of 
 their lives, owing to the weakness of the ice in the 
 spring. The immense collection of signatures can 
 be seen at the State Archives in Helsingfors and is 
 an eloquent testimony to the Finns' passionate love 
 of their country, which, moreover, expressed itself 
 at this time of national calamity by the ladies ap- 
 pearing in the streets dressed in mourning. A great 
 deputation, consisting of five hundred men, elected 
 by informal meetings in various Finnish communes, 
 was dispatched to Petersburg on March 15th to 
 present the address to the Tsar, and in spite of all 
 his secret police General Bobrikoff knew nothing 
 of it until it had already started. The Tsar refused 
 to grant an audience, saying through the Finnish 
 Secretary of State: ** Inform the members of this 
 deputation of five hundred men that I, of course, 
 will not receive them, although I am not vexed with 
 them." The russianization was to go forward. 
 
 Bobrikoff's central aim was naturally to get the 
 administration of Finland entirely into his own 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 295 
 
 hands. Accordingly, the first step to the russiani- 
 zation of the whole of the country was to be the 
 russianization of its officials. The rest would follow 
 naturally, he hoped. The administration of Finland 
 being legally in the hands of Finns, Bobrikoff had 
 an alternative. He could either dismiss the Fin- 
 nish officials and replace them by Russians, or he 
 could retain them, but try to frighten them into 
 assisting in the work of russianization. The latter 
 course had two advantages. By retaining the Fin- 
 nish officials he would not be violating that para- 
 graph of the Constitution which requires that the 
 country shall be administered by Finns. Secondly, 
 it was much easier to russianize through men who 
 knew the business of administration and spoke 
 Finnish and Swedish than through persons abso- 
 lutely ignorant of the language and conditions of 
 the country. Accordingly, he embraced the latter 
 policy, although not exclusively. He used the 
 weapons both of persuasion and of threat, saying 
 in effect, **You need not be so excited, gentlemen; 
 we are not going to destroy Finland's autonomy, but 
 only to make one or two necessary alterations. But 
 these little alterations we mean to make, and, if you 
 resist, it will be the worse for you." 
 
 The question of the promulgation of the February 
 Manifesto had, as we saw, disclosed two currents of 
 opinion as to the proper attitude of official Finland 
 to encroachments on the Constitution. The Senate 
 had been divided, ten Senators voting for immediate 
 promulgation, nine for delay. When the question 
 arose of the promulgation of the unconstitutional 
 Language Manifesto of June 20, 1900 (to which 
 
296 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 further reference will be made shortly), a similar 
 conflict took place, and no less than twelve of the 
 Senators sent in their resignations. The conflict of 
 opinion spread from the Senate to the whole official 
 world, and we see two different theories of Fin- 
 nish deference develop. 
 
 The point of view of the party represented by the 
 resigning Senators was as follows: Unconstitu- 
 tional ordinances and commands ought not to be 
 carried out either by Finnish officials or Finnish 
 citizens. According to the Constitution, only Fin- 
 nish law is binding in Finland and Russian law 
 ought not to be obeyed. If an official receives orders 
 to do anything that would involve the breaking of 
 his oath to observe the Constitution, he is bound 
 to disobey the orders, whatever the consequences 
 to himself. At the worst, he must resign rather than 
 assist in carrying out illegal orders from Eussia. 
 Let Eussia do her own work of destruction; she 
 should receive no help in it from Finns. Finland 
 might get back what Eussia had taken away by 
 force — she would never recover what she had herself 
 helped to destroy. The supporters of this policy con- 
 sisted mainly of the Swedish and Young Finnish 
 parties, who combined against Eussian aggression 
 in the so-called Constitutional party. 
 
 The standpoint of the Senators who remained in 
 office, and of those who supported them, may be 
 stated as follows : They agreed with the Constitu- 
 tional party in the desire to preserve Finland's 
 autonomy but differed as to the means to be em- 
 ployed, holding that an uncompromising stand on 
 the strict observance of the Constitution would only 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 297 
 
 irritate Russia and cause her once for all to make 
 an end of Finland's liberties. They did not believe 
 that Russia intended to go beyond a certain point, 
 and argued that if they gave way a little Russia 
 would be satisfied and not demand more. Therefore 
 the Finnish official was not necessarily to resign 
 if he was ordered to execute unconstitutional com- 
 mands; he was, in the words of Yrjo-Koskinen, *Ho 
 look the truth in the face and, in so far as it was 
 necessary, yield to the external compulsion of his- 
 tory.'' To put the matter in less metaphysical lan- 
 guage, the Finnish officials '* ought to consider the 
 consequences of their actions in every individual 
 case, and when they found that, as far as human 
 eye could see, a temporary subjection was not to 
 be avoided, they ought to resign themselves to tread- 
 ing the hard road of history, while protesting all 
 the time and insisting upon all rights for the fu- 
 ture.'* It was felt, moreover, on this side, that it 
 would be far easier to bring about a return to con- 
 stitutional government in the future if only the Rus- 
 sian tschinovnik could be kept out of the country. 
 Accordingly, Finnish officials were not merely not 
 to resign when a conflict arose between Russian com- 
 mands and the Finnish laws, but they were also to 
 accept vacant posts, if offered them, more especially 
 in the Senate, the centre of the administration. As 
 long as this was in Finnish hands a return to legal 
 conditions would, they held, be possible. 
 
 The supporters of this policy, who consisted 
 mainly of members of the Old Finnish group, 
 stepped into positions from which members of the 
 Constitutional party were ejected or had resigned. 
 
298 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 A long and bitter controversy has raged as to 
 which of the two policies the country ought to adopt. 
 There is much to be said on either side, but to the 
 writer it seems that the nation showed a sound in- 
 stinct in supporting the Constitutional party, for 
 the simple reason that the other policy, while having 
 undoubted advantages, had the supreme disadvan- 
 tage of playing into Eussia's hands. For, whatever 
 its other merits or demerits, it enabled Bobrikoff to 
 do what he wanted, i.e. govern Finland with the aid 
 of Finnish officials. He wrote in November, 1903: 
 *^I am content with the Senate and imagine they 
 have nothing much against me." And von Plehve, 
 who was at once Eussian Minister President and 
 Minister Secretary of State for Finland, in an open 
 letter to W. T. Stead, said that *^the principle of 
 Imperial unity" must be established in Finland, 
 and that it would be best if it could be accomplished 
 through the co-operation of the local authorities, add- 
 ing that the hope of such co-operation is justified, 
 seeing that all branches of the Imperial authority are 
 already working freely with the aid of pure Finns. 
 
 Bobrikoif had, however, to deal also with a very 
 large body of officials of the Constitutional party. 
 These he could not induce to do his will, and ac- 
 cordingly the only course was to get rid of them and 
 put Eussians or Finns of the Senatorial party in 
 their place. In the early autumn of 1902 several 
 ordinances were issued giving the Governor-General 
 very wide powers over recalcitrant officials. All offi- 
 cials were henceforth to be liable to dismissal, with- 
 out any investigation or trial, on the mere word 
 of a superior — a flagrant breach both of justice and 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 299 
 
 of Finnish law. Further, Russians were to have 
 the same rights as Finns to positions in the Finnish 
 administration, although, according to the Constitu- 
 tion, such appointments can only be held by Finns. 
 It lay with the Governor-General to decide whether 
 a man was ** qualified '^ for the position he desired. 
 A further step was to free officials from all fear of 
 prosecution in the Finnish courts for breaches of 
 Finnish law committed by them in executing Bobri- 
 kotf 's orders, by making such prosecutions depend- 
 ent on the consent of a ^* higher authority," i.e. the 
 Governor-General. Bobrikoif 's power was still 
 further widened, at the cost of the Senate, so that 
 he was steadily approaching the position of Dicta- 
 tor of Finland. 
 
 The dismissal of officials began to take ever 
 greater proportions and to become a matter of 
 daily occurrence. One of the most important in- 
 stances concerned the Court of Appeal at Abo. On 
 April 18, 1902, some Cossacks, acting under the 
 orders of the Russian Governor of the province of 
 Nyland, General Kaigorodoff, had charged a peace- 
 able crowd of people in one of the principal squares 
 of Helsingf ors and done considerable injury among 
 them. For this the Governor was summoned to 
 stand his trial before the Abo court. The court 
 was ordered by the Russian authorities to drop the 
 case, but refused to submit to this unconstitutional 
 command. The trial was an important one, for the 
 issue at stake was whether General Kaigorodoff, or 
 any other Russian, could order his Cossacks to use 
 their sabres and knouts on peaceful Finnish citizens 
 with impunity or not. If the trial was quashed, it 
 
300 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 meant that the Finns had no redress whatever 
 against the violence of the Eussian military, and 
 that these could commit whatever crimes they chose 
 without fear of punishment. The Eussian answer 
 to the court's refusal was summarily to make an end 
 of the resistance by dismissing, with loss of pen- 
 sion, no less than twenty-three members of the court 
 and replacing them by members of the Senatorial 
 group. The acceptance of the posts by these men, 
 and their retention of them after the events of 1905, 
 was one of the greatest causes of bitterness between 
 the Constitutional and the Senatorial parties. Bob- 
 rikoff continued the work of destruction by dis- 
 missing, in large numbers, members of the Courts 
 of Appeals at Viborg and Vasa, besides removing 
 from office the mayors of eleven of the principal 
 towns of Finland. It is estimated that among the 
 higher branches of the administration alone the dis- 
 missals amounted to nearly three hundred, and to 
 these must be added all the military officers, high 
 and low, the police officials, clerks and copyists, and 
 a host of other persons who were ^either turned out 
 or forced to resign. 
 
 Besides the dismissal of constitutionally-minded 
 officials, Bobrikoff used various other means to de- 
 nationalize Finland, only a few of which can be 
 mentioned here. The February Manifesto, as has 
 already been pointed out, was soon followed by 
 the Language Manifesto of June 20, 1900. This re- 
 quired the extension of the Eussian language to 
 many new branches of the Finnish administration,^ 
 
 ^ Russian had of course always been used in the oflGicial com- 
 munications between the leading Finnish authorities and the 
 Emperor-Grand-Duke. 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 301 
 
 although the Russian-speaking population of Fin- 
 land, exclusive of the military, is only some 8,000. 
 It further provided for the dismissal of officials 
 who could not within a given time speak Russian, 
 which in its turn implied that only persons who 
 spoke Russian would be eligible as officials in fu- 
 ture. In 1902 it was further enacted that a very 
 substantial amount of Russian should be introduced 
 into the administration of the province of Viborg 
 in two years from January 1, 1904, and into that 
 of the rest of Finland in ^ve years from that date. 
 
 Bobrikoff early took steps to stifle the expression 
 of public opinion. Thus, by means of an ordinance 
 enacting that no public meeting might be held with- 
 out his permission, he made an end of Finland's 
 time-honoured right of association, inherited from 
 Sweden. Moreover, he flooded the country with his 
 spies, that they might overhear and report speeches 
 or conversations. The censorship of the Press was 
 made far stricter. Many newspapers were heavily 
 fined, others were suspended for several months 
 at a time, others ceased to appear altogether. It 
 often happened that papers which had actually 
 been sanctioned by the censor were confiscated when 
 published and their owners fined. One result of 
 this persecution was the growth of a very interest- 
 ing secret Press, which was organized in a remark- 
 ably able way. 
 
 The education of the country was also to be rus- 
 sianized. The Governor-General was made chief 
 inspector of all educational institutions, and it was 
 his duty to ' * so direct the instruction that the youth 
 
302 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 of the country is inspired with a spirit of affection 
 for H.M. the Emperor and Eussia. ' ' There is some- 
 thing grimly humorous in the notion of Bobrikoff 
 fulfilling this command. The hours that had to be 
 devoted to the study of Russian were disproportion- 
 ately increased so as to interfere seriously with the 
 school curriculum. Spies contributed their share 
 in instilling a love of Russia among the school- 
 children, and many school-teachers had to leave 
 their posts for political reasons. A special com- 
 mittee sat in the Governor-General's office to revise 
 the text-books on Finnish history and geography 
 used in the school — another spectacle which pro- 
 vokes a smile. Nor was the University quite left 
 alone, the yice-Chancellor being forced to resign in 
 1903, some students being banished and a certain 
 number being ^'sent down'' for six months. 
 
 A new Imperial manifesto was issued on April 15, 
 1903, conferring on Bobrikoff the powers of a Dic- 
 tator. And about this time conunenced the practice 
 of banishing leading Finnish citizens who were 
 objectionable to Russia. In April 1903 eight promi- 
 nent men were commanded to leave the country 
 within a week. Their houses were searched by Rus- 
 sian dragoons. Shortly afterwards, sentence of 
 banishment was passed on eight others. In June 
 and July seven more followed ; in August and Sep- 
 thember eleven, in October three, and so on. Other 
 persons met with even a worse fate, being arrested 
 and transported to Russia, where they were im- 
 prisoned or kept under police supervision. In many 
 cases no reason was given for the banishments; in 
 others, only the general reason that the banished 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 303 
 
 man was a danger to public order. Against the 
 violence of Russian troops or police there was no 
 redress. Indeed, the police became, under Bobri- 
 koff, more and more the rulers of the land. Their 
 numbers increased, while their quality deteriorated. 
 Many of the best among them were dismissed or 
 resigned, and their places were taken partly by 
 persons drawn from the worst elements of society 
 and partly by Russians, Esthonians and other for- 
 eigners, who in most cases could speak neither 
 Swedish nor Finnish. In Helsingf ors and Viborg 
 nearly half the police force consisted of foreigners, 
 and in Tavastehus the proportion was even greater. 
 Even among the officers were men who had been 
 sentenced to imprisonment for crime, but who were 
 sheltered by Bobrikoff on condition that they be- 
 came his creatures. Far from protecting society, 
 the police force became a menace to it. Persons 
 were illegally arrested and kept in prison, women 
 were subjected to insults, men and even children to 
 gross maltreatment, and all classes of society to 
 the ignoble supervision of the paid spy. Not con- 
 tent with this, Bobrikoff in 1903 procured an 
 ordinance which, in defiance of the Finnish Consti- 
 tution, gave to the Russian police the same authority 
 in Finland as the native police, together with the 
 right to receive salaries out of the Finnish State 
 funds. Russian police now interfered in various 
 branches of Finnish life, looking for forbidden liter- 
 ature in the custom-house, carrying on house-search- 
 ings, trying by bribery or the offer of preferment 
 to induce the lowest element among the population 
 to turn spy or informer. In this horrible aim they 
 
304 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 were sometimes successful, and secret accusations 
 began to be only too common. Such is the effect 
 of forcing degrading standards of life, even upon a 
 population that is naturally of sterling honesty. 
 
 Finally it must be pointed out how Bobrikoff 
 carried out the military programme for which he 
 was sent to Finland, and whose object was the ex- 
 tension to the Grand Duchy of the Eussian military 
 system. The first step was the issuing of an ordi- 
 nance according to the military law of Russia which 
 prescribed conscription. The number of conscripts 
 was to be fixed by the Emperor. Finnish conscripts 
 could be drafted into Russian regiments and were 
 liable for service in Russia, and Finland was to have 
 no separate military organization. Moreover, all 
 the Finnish troops except the Guards and the 
 Dragoon regiment were disbanded, a step which 
 caused particular bitterness. Shortly afterwards 
 Bobrikoff found an excuse for disbanding the Dra- 
 goons also. 
 
 A great national address of protest was made to 
 the Emperor, nearly half a million signatures being 
 collected. But the Finns prepared to protest also 
 in a far more effective way, namely, by refusing to 
 serve as conscripts. A most astonishing strike was 
 the result, the execution of which implied a re- 
 markable power of organization. When carried out 
 in its fulness the plan of action was as follows : The 
 clergy first refused to proclaim the new law in the 
 churches. Both the clergy and the district clerks 
 then refused to send in lists of the young men whose 
 age rendered them liable to service. The recruiting 
 boards refused to make a selection from these young 
 
FIRST PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 305 
 
 men. The presidents of the communes and the doc- 
 tors refused to work the law in any way. Finally, 
 the young men themselves refused to put in an ap- 
 pearance on the day when they should have become 
 recruits. 
 
 In few places was this scheme carried out in its 
 fulness, the clergy in particular often being very 
 half-hearted in their resistance. The congregations 
 in many cases, however, made up for this by walking 
 out of the church in a body as soon as the pastor 
 began to proclaim the law, or by singing hymns so 
 loud that his voice could not be heard. By 1903, 
 however, the resistance had weakened, partly owing 
 to the arguments of the Senatorial party, who dis- 
 approved of the strike, and partly owing to the 
 cleverness of the Russians, who began by merely 
 insisting on an almost purely formal registration of 
 names. About two-thirds of the conscripts pre- 
 sented themselves, Russian troops being in some 
 cases employed to bring recruits to the place of 
 meeting. In 1904 about four-fifths of the conscripts 
 presented themselves, and Russia seemed almost 
 to have gained her point. The long struggle against 
 brutal oppression was clearly telling on Finland, 
 and the spirit of the nation seemed likely to be 
 broken, when relief came from an unexpected quar- 
 ter. Eugene Schauman, a young gentleman em- 
 ployed at the Senate, shot Bobrikoff on the steps 
 of the Senate House on June 16, 1904, and after- 
 wards shot himself. He had no confidants, and for 
 some time before the assassination he avoided his 
 friends and refused to greet them in the streets, 
 lest they should be arrested on account of his asso- 
 ciation with them. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE SECOND PEBIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 
 
 OTHER circumstances besides Bobrikoff 's death 
 contributed at this time to relieve the pres- 
 sure upon Finland. Russia was in the midst of the 
 war with Japan, and needed all her forces for that 
 great struggle. The war, moreover, afforded a long 
 sought opportunity to the Russian revolutionary- 
 parties, who brought about the General Strike which 
 resulted in the Tsar's concession of a Duma. Under 
 Prince Obolenski, Bobrikoff 's successor, the Russian 
 grip on Finland was already relaxing, and as soon 
 as the news of the Tsar's manifesto conceding the 
 Duma to Russia reached Finland, the General Strike 
 broke out there also. 
 
 It had many results, but the most important was 
 that it induced the Russian Government to withdraw 
 the illegal ordinances and restore constitutional 
 government. The Tsar issued a manifesto to this 
 effect, and life resumed its ordinary course. As 
 was pointed out in previous chapters, the franchise 
 was widened and the Constitution amended. The 
 Russian officials vanished. The Senate was formed 
 by the Constitutional party, under the chairman- 
 ship of Leo Mechelin, and an era of reform began. 
 It seemed as if the constitutional battle having been 
 fought and won in Russia, a bright future was open- 
 ing for Finland. 
 
 The period of hope was, however, short-lived, and 
 the storm-clouds soon gathered again round both 
 countries. By means of wholesale executions and 
 banishments, Stolypin crushed the revolutionary 
 
 306 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 307 
 
 movement throughout Russia, and, after a fierce 
 struggle with the first two named Dumas, he suc- 
 ceeded, by means of his famous coup d'etat, in get- 
 ting a Duma which was an obedient instrument in 
 his hands. Finland's turn now came. 
 
 To the old motives calling for the russianization 
 of Finland new ones were added. The Russian Gov- 
 ernment was now animated by a desire to take ven- 
 geance on Finland for the death of Bobrikoff and 
 the General Strike. The wish to distract attention 
 as much as possible from the misgovernment at 
 home was also a reason for reviving the Finnish 
 question. Moreover, the Duma, crippled as it was, 
 had introduced a new element into Russian politics. 
 The reactionaries now required a certain amount of 
 popular support, or at least the appearance of it, 
 for whatever they undertook, and Stolypin pur- 
 chased this by attacking Finland. He thereby se- 
 cured the support of the Nationalists, who always 
 regarded with satisfaction the persecution of the 
 non-Russian nationalities within the Empire. This 
 plan had been suggested early in 1906, when the 
 position of the Russian Government was still critical 
 in the extreme. Count Witte had said at a Cabinet 
 Council presided over by the Emperor: ** Assuming 
 that we survive the present misfortunes . . . the 
 Finnish question is not dangerous. . . . Why should 
 your Majesty take it upon yourself to settle the 
 Finnish question! Rather let the Duma do so. If 
 it is nationalistic, it will go farther than the mon- 
 archs have gone ; it will settle every question. It is 
 inadvisable for the Government to provoke the Finns 
 and drive them to ally themselves with the Duma." 
 
308 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 This discussion incidentally throws a sad light 
 on the degree of sincerity in the Russian Govern- 
 ment's restoration of the Finnish Constitution a 
 month or two earlier. 
 
 It is impossible to go into details about the latest 
 attack on the Finnish Constitution, and the subject 
 can only be presented in outline. The campaign 
 commenced on May 18, 1908, when M. Stolypin ex- 
 plained his Finnish policy to the Duma. He argued 
 that Russia's rights in Finland depended not on 
 the Act of Assurance at Borga, but on the Treaty 
 of Fredrikshamn (see Chapter XVI). He admitted 
 Finland's autonomy, but said that this was merely 
 a *4ocal" autonomy, and that in Imperial matters 
 Russia had the right to legislate for Finland. At 
 the same time he hastened to reassure Finland and 
 the world in general that ^Hhere must be no room 
 for the suspicion that Russia would violate the 
 rights of autonomy conferred on Finland by the 
 monarchs. In Russia might cannot go before right. ' ' 
 
 The worth of this excellent sentiment was seen a 
 fortnight later, when on June 2nd the Tsar sanc- 
 tioned a protocol of the Council of Ministers which 
 practically transferred the control of the adminis- 
 tration of Finland from the Finnish Senate to the 
 aforesaid Council. Before being brought before 
 the Tsar, all Finnish legislative proposals and all 
 administrative business **of general importance" 
 must, according to this protocol, be communicated 
 to the Russian Council of Ministers. The Council 
 was then to determine ** which matters concerning 
 the Grand Duchy of Finland also have a bearing 
 on the interests of the Empire, and consequently 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 309 
 
 call for a fuller examination on the part of the 
 Ministries and the Government Boards." Having 
 determined that a matter affects some ** Imperial 
 interest, ' * the Council was to prepare a report on it. 
 If the Council and the Finnish authorities differed 
 in their views of the matter, the Finnish Secretary 
 of State, who alone, according to the Constitution, 
 can bring Finnish matters before the Tsar, was only 
 to do so in the presence of the President of the 
 Council of Ministers or some other Russian Min- 
 ister. 
 
 Perhaps the most astonishing thing about this 
 revolutionary protocol was that none of the Fin- 
 nish authorities knew anything whatever about it 
 beforehand. Neither the Secretary of State, nor 
 the Diet, nor the Senate was warned. The whole 
 matter was arranged privately by the Tsar and his 
 Ministers. Yet it involved nothing less than the 
 undermining of the Finnish Constitution. 
 
 Needless to say, the Senate protested to the Em- 
 peror, and no less than three memoranda was sent 
 up to him, bearing the dates of June 19, 1908, De- 
 cember 22, 1908, and February 25, 1909. 
 
 The memoranda were rejected by the Emperor on 
 the advice of the Council of Ministers. The Diet 
 forwarded a petition dated October 13, 1908, but 
 this met with the same fate. The Emperor went 
 so far as to refuse an audience to the Finnish Secre- 
 tary of State, so that the matter could not even be 
 brought before him in the constitutional manner. 
 Half the Senators, those composing the Department 
 of Justice, resigned as a consequence of these pro- 
 ceedings, while Mechelin and many of his colleagues 
 
310 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 in the central administration were dismissed. Let 
 US now consider how the Russian Council of Min- 
 isters used the powers it had thus usurped. 
 
 In the first place, wide as were its powers under 
 this unconstitutional protocol, the Council was not 
 content with them, but proceeded to lay hands on 
 measures that could by no means be classed as of 
 ^* Imperial interest.'' Following the CounciPs ad- 
 vice, the Emperor refused his sanction to a num- 
 ber of such Bills. In November, 1908, a Trades Law 
 adopted by the Diet was thus destroyed. In De- 
 cember, 1908, a grant of the Senate for the building 
 of a road in Finnish Lapland was disallowed. In 
 the same month a proposal to transfer £200,000 
 from the ** General State Fund'' to a fund for fur- 
 nishing loans to secure small holdings for the land- 
 less population was interfered with. Instances could 
 easily be multiplied. The administration of the 
 country was seriously interfered with, the bureau- 
 crats at Petersburg being entirely ignorant of Fin- 
 nish conditions and utterly out of sympathy with 
 the nation they were mismanaging. It is worth 
 pointing out not merely the unconstitutionalism and 
 the harmfulness of the Council's action, but also 
 its absurdity. Thus in January 1910 we find the 
 Council of Ministers actually engaged in discussing 
 whether a new porter might be appointed to the 
 Geographical Department of the University of Hels- 
 ingf ors and whether the physical laboratory might 
 be allowed to engage a new stoker. 
 
 The next great blow directed against Finland 
 was the appointment of a committee, consisting of 
 six Russian and five Finnish members, to draft 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 311 
 
 proposals for regulations concerning ** Imperial leg- 
 islation." Its real work was to decide what mat- 
 ters might reasonably be withdrawn from the com- 
 petence of the Finnish Diet on the ground that they 
 were ** matters of Imperial interest.'' Both the 
 Finnish and Russian members drew up projects, 
 but naturally failed to reach any agreement. The 
 reason becomes clear when we examine the Russian 
 project. Legislation concerning the following sub- 
 jects was to be withdrawn from the Finnish Diet 
 and transferred to Russia: — 
 
 (1) The participation of Finland in the expenditure of the 
 
 Empire, and the imposts, taxes and charges to be fixed 
 for this purpose; 
 
 (2) The taking up in Finland of military service and of other 
 
 military burdens; 
 
 (3) The rights of such Russian subjects resident in Finland 
 
 as are not Finnish citizens; 
 
 (4) The employment in Finland of the language of the 
 
 Empire ; 
 
 (5) The execution in Finland of sentences, verdicts and reso- 
 
 lutions of courts of justice and other authorities in 
 other parts of the Empire, as well as of agreements and 
 covenants there entered into; 
 
 (6) The fundamental principles for, and the limitations of, 
 
 carrying on the Finnish government by special insti- 
 tutions on the basis of a special mode of legislation 
 (Fundamental Laws of 1906, Article 2) ; 
 
 (7) Safeguarding public order in Finland, and the organiza- 
 
 tions which deal with public order; 
 
 (8) Criminal law, and the official responsibility of public func- 
 
 tionaries in Finland; 
 
 (9) The fundamental principles of the administration of jus- 
 
 tice in Finland; 
 
 (10) The fundamental principles of public education in Fin- 
 
 land, and the organization and control of the same; 
 
 (11) The establishment in Finland of companies, associations 
 
 and societies, and the conditions under which they may 
 work, and the arranging of public meetings; 
 
312 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 (12) Legislation about the Press in Finland, and import of 
 
 foreign literature; 
 
 (13) The customs of Finland; 
 
 (14) Protection of trade marks and commercial privileges, as 
 
 well as literary and artistic copyright; 
 
 (15) The monetary system in Finland; 
 
 (16) The post, telegraph, telephone, aerial navigation and other 
 
 similar means of communication in Finland; 
 
 (17) The railways in Finland so far as they touch the defence 
 
 of the Empire and the traffic betwee-i Finland and 
 other parts of the Empire, as well as international 
 traffic; also the railway telegraph; 
 
 (18) Navigation, and the pilot and lighthouse service in 
 
 Finland ; 
 
 (19) The rights of aliens in Finland. 
 
 A study of this list shows that Russia intended 
 to abolish the Finnish Diet as it now exists and re- 
 duce it to the level of a county council. 
 
 Such was the end in view, and it now remained to 
 carry it out. Count Witte's advice to let the Duma 
 settle the Finnish question was not forgotten. But 
 nationalistic as the Duma was, the Opposition put 
 up such a hardy resistance when the above project 
 was laid before it that the Premier thought it pru- 
 dent to say that it was to be looked upon not as a 
 Bill to be passed immediately, but rather as a pro- 
 gramme for future legislation. As such it was 
 accepted by the Duma, and the reactionary Purish- 
 kevitch uttered his triumphant exclamation, ^* Finis 
 Finlandiae." 
 
 It was not for long that the Russian project re- 
 mained at the programme stage. The obedient 
 Duma proceeded to pass two laws which are having 
 a profound influence on the situation in Finland. 
 The one concerns the military question. Since the 
 dissolution of the Finnish army by Bobrikoff, Fin- 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 313 
 
 land has, by decision of the Diet, paid an annual 
 contribution to the Russian Treasury in lieu of mili- 
 tary service. The Duma decided in January, 1912, 
 that this arrangement should be made permanent. 
 To make this contribution illegal it has not been pro- 
 posed to the Diet, which would have accepted it. 
 Far more important, however, in its effect upon Fin- 
 land has been the other Duma law, which extended 
 to all Russians resident in Finland full citizen rights. 
 This also was never put before the Diet as a Bill, lest 
 it be legalized ; the Diet would have asked no better 
 than accept it. 
 
 These two measures were laid before the Finnish 
 Diet in the form of proposals about which it was to 
 be allowed to express its opinion. The Diet refused 
 to do so, on the ground that the whole procedure of 
 the Russian authorities was a violation of the Fin- 
 nish Constitution, according to which the Diet had 
 the right not merely to give an opinion upon such 
 questions, but to decide them. The Diet expressed 
 its willingness, however, to meet Russian wishes in 
 every possible way, only provided that these were 
 brought to its notice in the manner prescribed by 
 the Constitution. To have acted otherwise would 
 have been to surrender Finland's entire right to 
 constitutional government. 
 
 Finding that the Diet would not play into their 
 hands, the Russian authorities returned the two 
 measures to the Duma, which, in the committee 
 stage, made important additions to them. The 
 rights of Finnish citizenship were extended from 
 the civil population to the Russian military in Fin- 
 land, and the clause which prescribed that all Fin- 
 
314 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 nish officials who resisted the execution of the Duma 
 measures should be tried before a Russian court 
 was widened so as to embrace not only the official 
 but also the non-official world. This clause has 
 caused more trouble than anything else of recent 
 years in Finland, and has led to the astounding 
 spectacle of the arrest and trial before a local court 
 in Russia of one of Finland ^s three Supreme Courts 
 of Appeal. And as the incident which led to this 
 crisis is a trifling one, it is extremely important to 
 remember that the Finnish objection to the Duma 
 laws does not depend on the actual contents of those 
 laws. Apart from the monstrous clause providing 
 for the trial of Finns in Russia, the Diet would have 
 little objection to passing similar measures, though 
 that concerning Russian residents would re- 
 quire considerable modification in matters of detail. 
 The real dispute is not over the rights of Russians 
 in Finland, but over the right of the Duma to legis- 
 late for Finland. The conflict is as much one of 
 principle as was John Hampden's refusal to pay 
 ship-money. It arose in the following manner: A 
 Russian wished to set up a store in Viborg. Accord- 
 ing to Finnish law, he had to apply for permission 
 to the Governor of the province, but according to 
 the newly made Duma law he must go to the town 
 council. He went to the latter, which promptly re- 
 ferred him to the Governor, thus putting on record 
 its refusal to recognize the Russian-made law. The 
 Russian authorities then arrested three members 
 of the town council, who were subsequently tried 
 and imprisoned in Petersburg, under a clause of the 
 Duma law. The Supreme Court of Viborg protested 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 315 
 
 against the arrest of the three magistrates, as being 
 a breach of Finnish law, and ordered their release. 
 This was refused, and steps were now taken against 
 the Supreme Court. Twenty-four of its members 
 were arrested in December, 1912, were tried next 
 month by the Petersburg District Court, and (all 
 except one) were sentenced to sixteen months* im- 
 prisonment and loss of office for resisting the Duma 
 law. It must be difficult to find a parallel to such a 
 situation as this, in which a Supreme Court in one 
 country is forcibly removed to another country and 
 there tried and condemned by a local court for hav- 
 ing obeyed the very laws which it was bound by the 
 most solemn oath to maintain. 
 
 The Viborg judges, many of whom are elderly 
 men, have suffered acutely under the Russian 
 prison regime, and their sufferings were in- 
 creased by the knowledge that on their release 
 their occupation would be gone and their places 
 filled by Old Fennoman nominees of the Russian 
 Government, under whom the Court cannot but 
 degenerate. 
 
 The whole affair is typical of Russia's work of 
 destruction in Finland. Everywhere honest and 
 capable officials are being ousted and replaced by 
 persons of an altogether lower type. 
 
 The province of Viborg has all along borne the 
 brunt of the Russian attack. Bobrikoff, in his report 
 upon his work from 1899 to 1902, proposed its re- 
 union with Russia, and added significantly: **The 
 reincorporation of the province of Viborg ought to 
 be regarded only as the first step towards a final 
 inclusion of Finland in the Russian State.'' Of 
 
316 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 recent years the Russian Government has more than 
 once contemplated carrying out this plan, but noth- 
 ing has as yet come of it, owing as far as one can 
 judge, to the opposition it provoked abroad. But 
 that the idea is not abandoned is clear from the 
 decision to incorporate with Russia two parishes, 
 Nykyrka and Kivinebb, which lie on the frontier. 
 These parishes, which number about 30,000 inhabit- 
 ants, are to be annexed on the pretext that Russia 
 requires them for military purposes, and there can 
 be little doubt that their seizure is intended only to 
 be the prelude to the reincorporation of the entire 
 province. 
 
 Among other striking features of the work of rus- 
 sianization have been the frequent dissolutions of 
 the Diet for protesting against the unconstitutional 
 regime; the russianization of the pilot service; the 
 disbanding of the boy and girl scouts, who were 
 regarded as a menace to the Empire ; and the appro- 
 priation of Finnish State funds for Russian pur- 
 poses and to feather the nests of Russian officials. 
 The list could be extended ad nauseam^ but enough 
 has been said to show the general trend of Russian 
 policy. It is, indeed, the programme of Bobrikoff 
 over again, without its dramatic elements. The Rus- 
 sian authorities have come to the conclusion that 
 less resistance will be provoked if they go to work 
 quietly. 
 
 Such a wholesale destruction of a nation's rights — 
 rights, be it noted, which are not merely abstract 
 rights of humanity but the concrete historical rights 
 of Finland, definitely established by law — cannot 
 possibly be justified on any other hypothesis except 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 317 
 
 that they seriously impair the safety or efficiency of 
 the Russian Empire. If Finland is merely being 
 sacrificed to the temporary convenience of Russian 
 politicians, who desire either to distract attention 
 from home misgovernment or to win the support of 
 the least educated and most chauvinistic people in 
 Russia, or again, because it is thought to be danger- 
 ous to the Russian Government to have a flourishing 
 democracy so close to the Russian capital, or because 
 it is a way of finding lucrative positions for hungry 
 Russian officials, all that can be said is that such a 
 sacrifice is not merely unjustifiable but abominable. 
 It is a dim perception of this fact that has caused 
 the Fennophobes in Russia to raise the cry of Fin- 
 nish disloyalty. Finland, it is argued, is disloyal, 
 and Russia cannot afford to have a disloyal State so 
 near her capital. Hence Finland must be russian- 
 ized. Now, if Finland were really disloyal there 
 would be much to be said for this argument. But 
 Finnish disloyalty is a pure myth, and a myth whose 
 origin will not bear examination, as any one ac- 
 quainted with the activities of the Russian Secret 
 Police in Finland very well knows. It is perfectly 
 true that in years immediately following the Diet of 
 Borga there may have been a few sentimentalists 
 who dreamed of a reunion between Finland and 
 Sweden, but no one paid any attention to them, and 
 to talk of a separatist movement in Finland is to 
 misrepresent history. The bond between Sweden 
 and her former province rapidly became what it 
 now is, one of culture and historical tradition, with- 
 out any political significance whatever. Meanwhile 
 the bond with Russia grew steadily stronger, for 
 
318 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 various reasons, such as the personal popularity of 
 the Emperors, who were greatly beloved in Fin- 
 land, the development of commercial intercourse 
 between the two countries, the part played by Fin- 
 land in the Crimean War, and, in a word, the general 
 effects of the political tie uniting the two countries. 
 Indeed, one feels that so far from showing disloyalty 
 the Finns were more inclined to err on the other 
 side, and in their gratitude to the Russian monarch 
 to stint their sympathy for those in Eussia who were 
 striving to obtain the constitutional blessings that 
 Finland already enjoyed. That Finland is less en- 
 thusiastically loyal to Russia to-day than twenty 
 years ago may readily be admitted, but this must be 
 attributed simply and solely to the fact that of recent 
 years Russia has done everything possible to de- 
 stroy her loyalty. In view of all that has been done 
 to irritate the Finns, it says much for their good 
 sense that they have not been goaded into rebellion, 
 as many a more excitable nation might have been. 
 But of rebellion there has never been a question, 
 and to speak of such a thing is a calumny. If Rus- 
 sia wants to revive the waning fires of Finnish 
 loyalty, she has only to return to the policy she pur- 
 sued for ninety years with such conspicuous suc- 
 cess. That policy was a surer guarantee of Russia's 
 safety from invasion via Finland than the russian- 
 ization of Finland can ever be. 
 
 Akin to the argument of alleged Finnish dis- 
 loyalty is another, which runs that, owing to the 
 danger of invasion via Finland, Russia must acquire 
 absolute military control over the Grand Duchy, 
 which must consequently be russianized. The an- 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 319 
 
 swer to this is quite simple — so simple, indeed, that 
 it shows the argument to be one of questionable hon- 
 esty. It is that Russia in virtue of the Constitution 
 already enjoys absolute military and naval control 
 over Finland, and that this control could not there- 
 fore be increased, however much the country were 
 russianized. Finland has no authority whatever 
 over the military and naval forces Russia chooses 
 to station in the Grand Duchy, and would have no 
 legal right to complain if Russia were to station 
 the entire forces of the Empire there. 
 
 The only other ground on which the destruction of 
 Finnish rights could possibly be justified is that 
 these interfere with the efficient administration of 
 the Empire. No serious attempt to show that this 
 is so has been made on the side of Russia. It would 
 indeed be ridiculous to maintain that the Imperial 
 administration as a whole is interfered with by the 
 Constitution of a country of 3,000,000 inhabitants, 
 which is a mere corner of the huge Russian Empire. 
 The narrower proposition that, in certain details, a 
 modification of Russo-Finnish relations might prove 
 necessary, may, however, be freely admitted. But 
 if a modification of Russo-Finnish relations is de- 
 sirable, the question arises ; How ought any change 
 determined on to be carried out! 
 
 The answer is perfectly clear. As the Conference 
 of International Lawyers pointed out in March, 
 1910, *^ Finland has the right to demand that the 
 Russian Empire should respect her Constitution,'' 
 and **if the superior interests of the Empire de- 
 mand the establishment of a common procedure for 
 dealing with certain internal affairs, it pertains to 
 
320 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 the Diet either itself to determine those affairs or to 
 consent to the creation of a body charged with deter- 
 mining them.'* 
 
 In other words, no change can legally be made 
 without the consent of the Diet. For the overriding 
 of the Diet's authority and the forcing of her will on 
 Finland by external pressure, Eussia has no justi- 
 fication whatever, either legal or moral. 
 
 Russia's refusal to make use of the simple and 
 natural way of settling the question — the way time 
 after time pointed out by the Finns — her persistence 
 in pursuing a policy so contrary to her own true 
 interests in Finland and one which can only end in 
 turning the fairest spot in the Empire into a discon- 
 tended and sullen land; her tenacity in the face of 
 the protests of enlightened public opinion and of 
 expert legal opinion both in Russia and in West 
 Europe; her perseverance, in spite of dangers and 
 complications at home, in a course of action of which 
 the obvious risks so utterly outweigh the visible 
 advantages — these and similar considerations have 
 caused people to suspect that there must be some 
 other motive in Russia's mind, and to find it in a 
 historical necessity pushing her towards the open 
 sea. In other words, it is argued that the russian- 
 ization of Finland is in reality intended to mask an 
 aggressive movement upon Sweden and Norway. 
 
 This theory has been put forward several times — 
 e.g., by Mr. V. Whitford in the Contemporary Re- 
 view for August, 1912, by Dr. Sven Hedin in several 
 articles and pamphlets, and by Herr Konni Zilliacus 
 in his **Revolutionen och Kontrarevolutionen i Rys- 
 sland och Finland. ' ' It may be restated as follows : — 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 321 
 
 Russia has long desired to acquire great seaports, 
 but found herself checked on every side. There have 
 been four great lines of advance — one southwards to 
 Constantinople and the Mediterranean, one east- 
 wards to Port Arthur, one southeast to the Persian 
 Gulf and Indian Ocean, and one northwest to the 
 Atlantic. Sometimes one line of advance has been 
 most pressed, sometimes another. The advance to- 
 wards the Atlantic began with the foundation of St. 
 Petersburg and the efforts of Peter the Great's suc- 
 cessors to conquer Finland. A great step forward 
 was taken in 1809, for not only did Russia acquire 
 the Finnish ports on the Gulfs of Finland and 
 Bothnia, together with the Aland Islands, but (what 
 is usually little recognized) extended her frontier at 
 one point to within 20 miles of the Atlantic. A 
 glance at the map shows that Finland, far up in the 
 north, pushes as it were an arm between Norway 
 and Sweden. **For some 300 miles," writes Mr. 
 Whitford, *' Russia is only separated from the ocean 
 by a narrow strip of Norwegian territory. At one 
 point her frontier comes within 18 miles of the 
 Lyngenf jord. There are many ports in the north of 
 Norway which would afford excellent naval har- 
 bours, for instance Vardo, Hammerfest, Tromso. 
 All of these are kept ice-free throughout the winter 
 by the Gulf Stream. When it is remembered that 
 her Empire extends to the Pacific on the east, it will 
 be seen how great is the temptation for Russia to 
 acquire those few miles of territory which separate 
 her from her goal on the west. Further, she might 
 easily be provided with a practically unbroken line 
 of communication from West Europe to East Asia. 
 
322 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 For not far south of the Lyngenfjord runs the Lap- 
 land railway, recently constructed by Sweden. This 
 joins the Atlantic at Narvik to the Gulf of Bothnia 
 at Luled. A branch line covers a part of the short 
 distance from Lule& to the Finnish frontier at 
 Haparanda (north of the Gulf of Bothnia). Con- 
 sequently, if Russia were to acquire this railway, 
 so temptingly close to her frontiers, she would 
 possess, save for the one little gap just indicated, a 
 vast line of railway joining the Atlantic to the 
 Pacific." 
 
 There is no doubt that Russia would have pre- 
 ferred to reach the sea either in the south or the Far 
 East. The result of the wars of 1827-8, 1854-5 and 
 1877-8 seemed to show conclusively that the way 
 southwards was, for a long time, blocked. Efforts 
 were now directed to the Far East, and ended in 
 Russia snatching Port Arthur from the hands of 
 victorious Japan. Everything possible was done to 
 fortify and render impregnable the ice-free port 
 thus won, the Siberian railway being continued to 
 Port Arthur and a large fleet stationed there. But 
 Russia's prodigious efforts and sacrifices only ended 
 in the disasters of the war with Japan and the loss 
 of the splendid port. Baffled here, Russia turned to 
 the southeast and the northwest. She continued her 
 earlier work in the former direction by gradually 
 overrunning North Persia and preparing to annex 
 at least part of that kingdom, thus getting nearer 
 and nearer to the Persian Gulf — a process we are 
 watching to-day. At the same time she continued 
 her progress towards the Atlantic by returning with 
 redoubled energy to the russianization of Finland. 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 323 
 
 Facts which lend confirmation to this theory are 
 to be found, as Mr. Whitf ord shows, both in Finland, 
 Russia and the Scandinavian countries. 
 
 For instance, Russia has interfered extensively in 
 Finnish railway policy, forbidding the building of 
 lines required by Finland for her economic develop- 
 ment and demanding the construction of others for 
 strategic purposes. Her object is to secure a rapid 
 communication, firstly, between Petersburg and 
 Vasa (where the Gulf of Bothnia is narrowest), and 
 secondly, between Petersburg and Torne^ (on the 
 Swedish frontier). In previous wars Russian 
 armies have invaded Sweden via Torned and Vasa. 
 
 o 
 
 A third line of advance was by the Aland Islands, in 
 view of which Russia's attempt a few years ago to 
 cancel the clause prohibiting their fortification is 
 perhaps significant. Other Russian actions which 
 are to be taken into account are the russianization 
 of the Finnish pilot service, the steady but unob- 
 trusive increase of the Russian military forces in 
 Finland, the inducement offered to Russian officers 
 to learn Swedish, and the large number of Russian 
 spies sent to North Sweden. 
 
 Sweden is well aware of the Russian menace, and 
 as Mr. Whitford shows, has entirely reorganized 
 her system of defence with a view to meeting it, 
 sftationing more and more troops in the north to 
 oppose a possible Russian invasion and building the 
 powerful fortress of Boden. Many Norwegians are 
 also keenly alive to the danger.^ 
 
 Russia naturally does not proclaim her designs 
 
 ^ Cf. La Revue Scandinave, March 1911. Article by Captain 
 Axel Roekkebo. 
 
324 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 upon the housetops, but nevertheless evidence of 
 them sometimes slips out. The Novoje Vremja ex- 
 pressed a general feeling when, on January 2nd o.s., 
 1905, it wrote: ^^ Russia is growing and spreading 
 over regions of boundless extent. If she is to ac- 
 complish her historical mission, it is essential that 
 she should secure access to the open ocean, which 
 she resembles in greatness. '^ Passing from the 
 general to the particular, we find General Kuro- 
 patkin, when discussing Eussian frontier policy in 
 his book, **The Russo-Japanese War'' (vol. i, pp. 
 40-4), declare, with regard to the Swedish frontier: 
 *^The southern portion quite corresponds to our 
 requirements, but the northern is too artificially 
 drawn and is disadvantageous to us, as it cuts Fin- 
 land off from the Arctic Ocean and gives all the coast 
 to Norway.*' The admission is rather striking from 
 one in so high a position, though it need not be 
 pressed too far. Nevertheless, it is not weakened 
 when taken in conjunction with Russian railway 
 policy in Finland. General Kuropatkin goes on to 
 argue that ^4t is our duty to smooth the way as much 
 as possible for the early unification of Finland and 
 Russia, in order to ensure Russia's safety against 
 an attack from Sweden" — a manifest absurdity, 
 which suggests that the real motive of unification is 
 not defence but aggression. For how could modern 
 Sweden dare to attack Russia? 
 
 Whether the acquisition of a port on the Atlantic 
 is or is not the main object of Russia's policy in 
 Finland, the theory just sketched in outline is one 
 which cannot be brushed aside as merely fantastic. 
 If it is true, then Finland, in resisting russianiza- 
 
SECOND PERIOD OF RUSSIANIZATION 325 
 
 tion, is unconsciously fighting a battle on behalf of 
 Scandinavian independence and of all nations inter- 
 ested in its maintenance. If it is not true, Finland 
 is still fighting a battle for freedom. She is main- 
 taining the cause of constitutional government as 
 against autocracy, of law as against anarchy, of 
 Western civilization as against Eastern civilization, 
 of nationality as against centralization and level- 
 ling. She is, moreover, fighting on the side of those 
 who hope that Eussia will develop on constitutional 
 lines, and the Russian Constitutionalists are her 
 natural allies and her stoutest champions. She has 
 perhaps been a little slow to realize this and to co- 
 operate with them. For her fate seems to be inex- 
 tricably bound up with Russia, and her position in 
 the Russian Empire of the future may well depend 
 on the degree of sympathy she succeeds in fostering 
 in the mind of the Russian nation. For it is not 
 the Emperor, but the Duma, which will determine 
 her fate in coming years, and even a representative 
 Duma might as a whole be ignorant and prejudiced 
 about Finland. Meanwhile, more than on Emperor 
 or Duma, Finland's future seems to depend on her 
 own power of resistance. Foreign sympathy is of 
 great value in stimulating her resistance and heart- 
 ening her courage, but of itself it can do little. For 
 Finland it is a question of holding on tenaciously 
 until better days dawn in Russia. But should the 
 unexpected happen and the present Russian regime 
 desire a friendly settlement of the Finnish question, 
 the question would speedily cease to exist. For it 
 is really an artificial question, raised by Russia as a 
 pretext for russianization. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 FINLAND AND THE WAR 
 
 WHEN the war broke out in the summer of 
 1914, the sympathies of Finland were di- 
 vided. The inclination of the mass of the people 
 was towards the Allies. In spite of what they had 
 suffered from Eussia they felt instinctively what 
 some of the better-educated classes failed to grasp 
 — that the defeat of the Allies would involve the de- 
 feat of democracy and the cause of the small nations. 
 
 It might seem strange that Russia, who had op- 
 pressed many small nations, should be drawing the 
 sword on behalf of Servia, but, in some mysterious 
 way, on this occasion Russia was in the right. 
 
 This feeling expressed itself in various ways. The 
 writer was in Stockholm when the war broke out, 
 and had to return to Finland on a train carrying 
 some 800 Russians who had escaped from Germany 
 and other parts of the Continent. Many of these 
 Russians were penniless and destitute, but all alike 
 were treated with the utmost kindness and gen- 
 erosity by the Finns who thronged the railway sta- 
 tions. There was no suggestion anywhere of the 
 hostile demonstration which many of the travellers 
 seemed to expect ; old wrongs were forgotten, and a 
 new spirit of brotherhood seemed to be taking the 
 place of the old suspicion. This change of attitude 
 was reflected in a new tone which became noticeable 
 in several Russian papers which had been notori- 
 ously anti-Finnish, and in the manifesto issued by 
 the Grand Duke Nicholas thanking the Finnish rail- 
 way men for the efficient help rendered by them at 
 
 326 
 
FINLAND AND THE WAR 327 
 
 the time of mobolisatioii. It seemed that the war 
 might initiate a new era in Eusso-Finnish relations. 
 
 There was, however, a minority on whom the im- 
 mediate struggle to retain their vanishing liberties 
 pressed so hard, that they failed to see the world- 
 conflict in its true perspective. For these, smarting 
 as they were with their wounds, Russia loomed as 
 a sinister power which could not by any possibility 
 be fighting on the side of liberty. Nor was there 
 any possible defence of France and Britain, who 
 had irretrievably condemned themselves by joining 
 hands with the Muscovite. To this minority it was 
 useless to point out that the whole case of Finland 
 against Russia was based on the sacredness of a 
 ^^ scrap of paper," and that to take sides with the 
 power which openly repudiated treaties and the 
 pledged word was practically to justify Russia in 
 her aggression upon the rights of Finland. This 
 party counted among its adherents, also, many 
 whose education had imbued them with a genuine 
 love or admiration for Germany, and theorists who 
 contended that the essence of the world struggle was 
 the social conflict of Teuton and Slav. Britain, in 
 siding against Germany, was branded as a traitor to 
 the sacred cause of Teutonism. 
 
 The Russian Government unfortunately played 
 into the hands of the minority in Finland. After the 
 too brief period in which the countries seemed to 
 be drawing together, the reactionaries at Petrograd 
 succeeded in frightening the Government into a re- 
 sumption of the policy of russianization, on the plea 
 that Finland was disloyal and could only be held 
 down by force. Up to this time, the disloyalists in 
 Finland were a negligible quantity, but the natural 
 
328 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 result of this change of policy was to make many 
 people in Finland say, **If this is what we get from 
 Russia for showing our loyalty, have we not more 
 to gain from a German victory f Indeed, the ques- 
 tion suggests itself whether the change of policy 
 may not have been the result of German intrigue. 
 A disloyal Finland would embarrass Russia, and 
 the policy adopted and carried out by the Governor- 
 General, himself of German origin, was exactly cal- 
 culated to exploit any disloyalty there might be in 
 the country. This, however, is matter for specula- 
 tion. What is certain is that German agents were 
 profuse in their promises to the Finns, if only these 
 would revolt from Russia. With a fine inconsist- 
 ency, German agents in Finland were promising to 
 make Finland an independent republic, while others 
 in Sweden were offering to restore the Grand Duchy 
 to the Swedish Crown! 
 
 The net result of German intrigue and Russian 
 mistakes was to cool the sympathy of the mass of the 
 people for the Allies, and to make Finland, in feeling, 
 a neutral country. It was common to hear the hope 
 expressed that Britain and France might be victori- 
 ous on the west, and Russia suffer defeat on the east.^ 
 
 No attempt will be made in these pages to lift 
 the veil which has shrouded events in Finland dur- 
 ing the greater part of the war. Nor is it profitable 
 to attempt any detailed mapping-out of the future. 
 In times of uncertainty, judgment must be based on, 
 
 ^ The feeling of neutrality was strengthened by the fact that 
 the Finns do not serve in the Russian army. The application 
 of the Russian system to Finland was several times mooted, 
 but has never been carried out, chiefly from a fear of the pos- 
 sible consequences. Finns are fighting both in the Russian and 
 German armies as volunteers. 
 
FINLAND AND THE WAR 329 
 
 and action guided by, broad principle. Broadly 
 speaking, the future of Finland depends on whether 
 the rights of the smaller nations are or are not 
 going to be respected. In the event of a victory for 
 the Central Powers, those rights would be trampled 
 under foot as ruthlessly as were the rights of Bel- 
 gium. The only hope of the smaller nations rests 
 in an Allied victory. But even in the event of an 
 Allied victory, there are certain small nations which 
 may be pardoned if they view the future with con- 
 siderable anxiety. Of these the Finns are one. 
 
 The future of their country depends on what hap- 
 pens in Russia, on whether liberal or bureaucratic 
 tendencies prevail there. The Finnish patriot in- 
 evitably asks himself, ' ^ Is there any prospect of Rus- 
 sia becoming more liberal as a result of the warT' 
 Let us glance at the nature of the prospect. 
 
 Among the forces making for liberalism are these. 
 The war is taking the Russian peasant out of his 
 narrow village life and showing him his own coun- 
 try and other countries. His mind is expanding, he 
 is asking questions he has never asked before. He is 
 comparing the conditions of life in Russia with the 
 conditions of life in other lands. It was men who had 
 fought in the Napoleonic wars who sowed the seeds 
 of liberalism which were to result in the emancipa- 
 tion of the Serfs fifty years later, and no less a 
 revolution may result from the impregnating of the 
 Russian mind to-day with ideas current in Western 
 Europe. The close association of Russia with 
 France and Britain strengthens the same tendency. 
 The Russian may not be easily coerced, but he can 
 easily be won if his heart and imagination are 
 touched. It was a British Prime Minister who won 
 
330 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 Eussian confidence by his gallant words at a critical 
 time — **La Douma est morte. Vive la Douma!" A 
 similar spirit in France and Britain may achieve 
 similar results to-day. Eussia has no desire to ap- 
 pear illiberal in the eyes of her Allies. 
 
 The war has advanced the cause of progress in 
 other ways also. The prohibition of the sale of 
 Vodka has been accompanied by a great increase of 
 prosperity and of self-respect. The savings of 
 peasants have increased by leaps and bounds, and 
 therewith the feeling that they have a stake in the 
 country. By cutting off supplies from the outer 
 world, the war has given a tremendous stimulus to 
 industry and to industrial organisation. This, as in 
 other countries, is accompanied by a greater feeling 
 of independence among the working classes. The 
 political sense of the people has been developed by 
 having to face great issues, and the power of organi- 
 sation has been increased by the war-work which, 
 in spite of the jealousy of the central government, 
 has had to be entrusted to the Zemstvos. The army 
 can no longer be officered exclusively by the aristoc- 
 racy, and new men who have come to the front and 
 tasted responsibility will not be denied their right 
 to a share in the life of the nation after the war. 
 
 Last among the forces making for liberalism is the 
 fact that Eussia is fighting Germany. The conflict 
 is not merely the external one that is being fought 
 out on the plains of Central Europe — it is also an 
 internal conflict, which is being fought out in Eus- 
 sia itself. This is easily realised by anyone who 
 is able to estimate at their true value the many 
 changes in the Government machine during the war, 
 the many swingings of the pendulum towards and 
 
FINLAND AND THE WAR 331 
 
 away from the Central Powers. It is not always 
 realised how deeply Germany has set her seal on 
 Eussian life, nor how much the ordinary Russian 
 resents it, and wishes to emancipate himself from 
 it, nor how difficult it is for him to do so. Prussia 
 and Russia have been linked by many ties. The two 
 aristocracies spring largely from the same barren 
 countryside on the fringe of the Baltic, and have 
 been inspired by similar ideas. Since the partition 
 of Poland, they have had a common interest in re- 
 taining the stolen property. The Kaiser has been a 
 bitter foe of the Russian Duma, and has encouraged 
 every attempt to suppress it, realising that the 
 establishment of Constitutional Government in Rus- 
 sia would imperil his own position at Berlin. Rus- 
 sia has always resented these German influences 
 which have strangled her own attempts at self -ex- 
 pansion, but she has never been able to throw them 
 off. There can be no doubt that if, as a result of the 
 war, she succeeds in doing so, a great obstacle to 
 progress will have been removed. 
 
 The signs are propitious. Sickened by the 
 intrigues of pro-Germans in high places, whose 
 policy threatened to disgrace Russia and to drag 
 her into a dishonourable and feeble peace, the peo- 
 ple, with instincts nobler than their rulers, have in 
 these days taken the matter into their own hands. 
 What the outcome of the March revolution may be, 
 whether it will be guided throughout by the wisdom 
 which has marked its early stages, it is impossible to 
 say. We welcome its dawn, and our hearts respond 
 to this spontaneous outburst of a great nation's 
 indignation and hope. We know equally well that 
 the path to be travelled cannot be an easy one. Rus- 
 
332 FINLAND AND THE FINNS 
 
 sia was not born for easy victories. The task of 
 readjustment is a gigantic one. It may be decades 
 before the great problems of home and of imperial 
 reform are worked out to a conclusion. 
 
 Meanwhile, as regards that particular portion of 
 the Eussian Empire with which this book is con- 
 cerned, it is clear that if the principles for which the 
 Allies claim to be fighting are to be carried out, Fin- 
 land must receive other treatment than she was re- 
 ceiving before the war. It by no means follows, 
 however, as some Finns seem still to imagine, that 
 the clock can be put back 20 years, and all be as in 
 the days before the russianisation policy was ever 
 started. The Finnish problem must be considered 
 henceforward as part of the general Russian im- 
 perial problem. This problem, in its vastness and 
 complexity, is comparable only to the imperial prob- 
 lem which will confront the British Empire at the 
 close of the war, and cannot be discussed here.^ 
 
 It must suffice to say that the Finns will have to 
 abandon the too rigid nationalism into which they 
 drifted, partly through a little people's fear of 
 absorption, and partly through Eussian aggressive- 
 ness, and learn to think of themselves as part of a 
 great whole. It would be folly to predict a golden 
 path for Finland, and the period of readjustment 
 cannot be viewed without anxiety. But the path of 
 exclusiveness will not be the path of safety. That 
 lies, rather in a closer understanding with the men 
 who stand for progress in Eussia, and who have 
 over and over again had the courage to stand up 
 for Finland in the past. 
 
 ^ Some reflections on this problem as it affects Finland may 
 be found in an article by the author published in the Political 
 Quarterly for April, 1915. 
 
INDEX 
 
 ^alberg, Ida, 176 
 
 "">o, 5, 13, 16, 233, 300 
 Ackte, Aino, 176, 187 
 Act of Assurance, 276 
 Adlercreutz, 3 
 Agrarian Party, 213 
 Agricola, Michael, 24 
 Agricultural Experiments, Insti- 
 tute for, 95 
 Agricultural Report, 96 
 
 Labourers. 98-100, 243 
 
 Schools, 199 
 Agriculture, 92-96 
 Ahlqvist, Professor, 144 
 Aho, Juhani, 155-166 
 Aino, 124, 126, 136, 180 
 Aland, 3, 11, 321 
 Alexander I, 3, 16, 17, 57, 274, 
 
 286, 287, 291. 
 Alexander II, 18, 288, 291. 
 Alexander III, 19, 292. 
 Allies, Sympathy with, 326, 328 
 Annikki, 138 
 Army, Organization Bill, 289 
 
 Finnish, 292, 304 
 Arvidsson, 27 
 
 B 
 
 Baltic Provinces, 290 
 
 Bath, Finnish, 88, 89, 137, 138 
 
 Bear-hunting, 106 
 
 Bee-keeping, 94 
 
 Bernadotte, 4 
 
 Birds, 107 
 
 Birger Jarl, 13 
 
 Bjorneborg mausoleum, 179 
 
 Bobrikoff, General, 20, 242, 292- 
 
 306, 315 
 "Book of Our Land," 168 
 Borga, 40, 275 
 Buxhoevden, General, 2, 274 
 
 Canth, Minna, 249-252 
 Castren, M., 9 
 
 Catherine, Empress, 273 
 Cattle-rearing, 94, 96 
 "Chips" (Spanor), 158 
 Church, 14, 113, 188 
 
 Festivals, 115 
 Churches, 113 
 Clubs, Young People's, 199 
 Collan, Karl, 185 
 Colleges, Training, 189, 190 
 Communes, 208 
 Constitution, Finnish, 17-21, 206- 
 
 7, 273-282, 287, 308 
 Constitutional Government, 331 
 Constitutional Party, 63, 306 
 Co-operation, 244 
 Copper mines, 233 
 Council of Ministers (Russian), 
 
 308-310 
 Court of Appeals, 14, 299, 314, 
 
 315 
 Cygnaeus, Fredrik, 39 
 Cygnaeus, Uno, 30 
 
 D 
 
 Dairy industry, 234 
 Danielson, Professor, 291 
 Diet, 17, 21, 57, 59, 206, 287, 288, 
 293, 309, 310, 311-313, 316 
 of Borga, 274-275 
 Divorce, 266-267 
 Dobeln, General von, 42, 177 
 Dostoyevsky, Fidor M., 76 
 Duma, 306, 312, 313, 330, 331 
 
 Edelfelt, Albert, 174-178 
 Education, 29-30, 188-228 
 Ehrstrom, E. G., 27 
 Elizabeth, Empress, 273 
 "Elk Hunters," 38 
 Enckell, 182 
 Engel, C. L., 66 
 "Ensign Stal's Tales," 41, 176 
 Eric, King, 12 
 
334 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Faltin, Richard, 185 
 
 Farms, 80-5, 86-92 
 
 Faven. 182 
 
 Feminist movement, 253-264 
 
 Finch, 182 
 
 Finland and the War, 326-332 
 
 Finnish Literature Society, 30- 
 
 31, 54 
 Finnish Party, 212 
 Fisher, J. R. 62, 281 
 Fishing, 107 
 Folk-song, 168, 183 
 Franzen, 167 
 Fredrikshamn, Treaty of, 8, 275, 
 
 277, 308 
 Friberg, Dr. Maikki, 258 
 
 Gallen, Axel, 177 
 
 Gamla Karleby, 47 
 
 General Strike, 21, 209, 242, 255 
 
 Gottlund, 31 
 
 Governor-General, 206, 217, 301- 
 
 2, 328 
 Gripenberg, Bertel, 172 
 Grot, Professor, 40 
 Gulf Stream, 8 
 Gustavus III, 18 
 Gustavus IV, 2 
 
 H 
 
 Hango, 5 
 
 Hangoudd, 2 
 
 "Hanna," 38 
 
 Helsingfors, 5, 7, 16, 65-82 
 
 Lyceum, 30 
 Helsingfors Tidningar, 168 
 Henry, Bishop, 12 
 Hermanson, Professor, 291 
 Hirn, Professor Yrjo, 205 
 Hjelt, Professor, 196 
 Hjelt Vera, 239 
 
 Ilmarinen, 125, 129, 136, 138 
 Imatra, 220 
 
 Imperial Rescript, 57, 58 
 Industrial legislation, 237-239 
 Industrial organisation, 330 
 
 Industries — 
 
 Bobbins, 227 
 
 Dairy, 234 
 
 Paper, 227-230 
 
 Stone, 231-232 
 
 Textiles, 233 
 
 Timber, 219-227 
 International Lawyers' Declara- 
 tion, 281-282, 319 
 Intrigues, German, 328, 331 
 
 Japan, War with, 306, 322 
 Jarnefelt, Armas, 185 
 
 Eero, 181 
 Joukahainen, 125, 126 
 
 K 
 
 KaigorodofiF, General, 299 
 
 Kaiser, 331 
 
 Kajana, 31 
 
 Kajanus, Robert, 185 
 
 "Kalevala," 31, 122-137, 178, 183 
 
 "Kanteletaar,"-35 
 
 KareHans, 10, 12, 32 
 
 "King Fialar," 41, 44 
 
 Kivi, Alexis, 39, 143-152 
 
 Kiyinebb, 317 
 
 Klingspor, 2 
 
 Knutsson, Torgils, 13-14 
 
 Kullervo, 125, 140, 178 
 
 Kulneff, 42 
 
 Kuopio, 50 
 
 Kuropatkin, General, 324 
 
 Ladoga, Lake, 8, 144, 283 
 
 Land, Cultivation of, 92, 93, 95 
 Tenure of, 96, 97 
 
 Landtdag, see Diet 
 
 Landtman, Dr. G., 110 
 
 Language struggle, 59, 60, 61 76 
 
 Laran om Staten, 48 
 
 Legislation — 
 Bakeries' Law, 238 
 Factory, 269 
 
 re Finnish citizenship, 313-314 
 re Illegitimate children, 267 
 Industrial, 237, 238, 239 
 Project for Imperial, 311 
 
INDEX 
 
 335 
 
 Workmen's Compensation Act, 
 
 238 
 Lemminkainen, 125, 127, 130, 131, 
 
 136 
 Litteraturblad, 56 
 Local government, 207-208, 264 
 Lonnqvist, Charlotte, 143 
 Lonnrot, Elias, 31-36, 41, 123, 
 
 184 
 Louhi, 125 
 Lybeck, M, 172 
 
 M 
 
 Maamiehen Ystdvd, SO 
 
 Magnus Eriksen, 14 
 
 Maiden of Pohjola, 124 
 
 Manifesto of February, 1899, 20, 
 255. 293 
 Borga (1809), 277 
 Language, 292, 295, 300 
 Peace, 292 
 
 Marriage customs, 117-121 
 
 Martha Society, 270-272 
 
 Mechelin, Leo, 291, 306, 309 
 
 Midsummer Eve, 114 
 
 Miliutin, General 289 
 
 Music, 75, 183-187 
 
 Musical Society, 185 
 
 N 
 
 "Nadescha," 41 
 
 Nations, Rights of Smaller, 329 
 
 Napoleon, 1 
 
 New Era, 327 
 
 Newspapers, 211, 212, 247 
 
 Nicholas I, 285, 287 
 
 Nicholas II, 291 
 
 Nicholas, Grand Duke, 326 
 
 Novel, Finnish, 153-155 
 
 "Nuumisuutarit," 143 
 
 Nykyrka, 316 
 
 Nyland, 13 
 
 Nystad, Peace of, 25 
 
 Oihonna, 45, 46 
 Old Finns, 212 
 Orivais, 3 
 Ossian, 45 
 "Outlawed," 161-165 
 
 "Paavo," 102 
 Pacius, Frederic, 185 
 Paivarinta, Pietari, 152 
 Palmgren, Selim, 185 
 Paper industry, 227-230 
 "Parson's Daughter, The" 156 
 Parties, Political, 206-218, 296- 
 
 298 
 Pellervo, 244 
 Per Brahe, 24 
 Perttunnen, Arhippa, Zi 
 "Pioneers" 158 
 Plehve, von, 298 
 Poland, 17, 289, 331 
 Port Arthur, 322 
 Porthan, Henrik, 26 ^ 
 Post Office, Prussianization of, 
 
 291 
 Poultry, 94 
 
 Procope, Hjalmar, 172 
 Proportional Representation, 59, 
 
 215 
 Purishkevitch, 312 
 
 "Railway, The" 155 
 Railways, Finnish, 323, 326 
 Religion, 79 
 
 of Ancient Finns, 139 
 Rent, 68 
 
 Revolution, March, 1917, 331 
 Rights of Smaller Nations, 329 
 Riksdag, 16-17 
 
 Runeberg, J. L., 4, 30, 37-46, 
 102, 167-168 
 
 Fredrika, 28, Z7 
 Russian liberalism, 329-331 
 
 Saima, 6, 225 
 Samoyedes, 9 
 Sampo, 125, 178 
 Saturday Qub, 27-28, 47, 168 
 Saw-mills, 225-226 
 Schauman, Eugen, 305 
 Schools, Elementary, 189-190, 
 192 
 
 Mixed, 193-195, 254 
 
 Normal, 193 
 
336 
 
 INDEX 
 
 People's High, 198, 202 
 
 Private, 193 
 
 Secondary, 192 
 
 Technical High, 200 
 "Scrap of paper," 327 
 Seal-hunting, 108 
 Senate, 18, 195, 206, 295-297, 
 
 308-309 
 "Seven Brothers, The," 39, 144- 
 
 152 
 SibeHus, Jean, 186 
 Snellman, J. V., 30, 41, 47-57. 
 
 168. 212 
 Socialism, 21, 210, 211. 241. 245- 
 
 248 
 Soderhj elm. Professor, 154, 166, 
 
 169 
 Song, Choral, 187 
 Speranski. 18 
 Sport, 203 
 
 Sprengporten, Governor, 274 
 "Squire Hellman," 156 
 Stead, W. T., 298 
 Steinheil, Count, 286 
 Stenback. 172 
 Stenvall, see Kivi 
 Stolypin, P., 306-308 
 Student Corporations, 196, 199 
 Suffrage, 209 
 
 Women's, 253-258 
 
 Women's, Opinions on, 259-264 
 Sveaborg Fortress of, 3, 76 
 Sven Hedin, Dr., 320 
 
 "Tales of a Surgeon," 170 
 Tar-burning, 109 
 Tavastland, 13 
 Tavasts, 10, 12 
 Tegner, 39 
 Tengstrom, Robert, 55 
 
 Fredrika, Z7 
 Theatre, 75 
 
 Thirty Years' War, 25 
 Thome, 182 
 Timber trade, 219-227 
 "To Helsingfors," 157 
 Topelius, Zacharias, 167-172 
 Torpare, 98, 99 
 Trades Law, 310 
 Tuonela, 126 
 
 U 
 
 Uleaborg, 2, 3 
 
 University, 14, 24, 25, 27, 59, 65, 
 66, 195-198, 202, 203 
 
 Valio, 245 
 
 Viborg, 14, 16, 286, 314, 315 
 
 Vodka, Prohibition of, 330 
 
 W 
 
 Wainamoinen, 124, 128, 130, 136, 
 
 139 
 Wasenius, Walfred, 45 
 Wechsell, 172 
 Wegelius, Martin, 185 
 Westerholm. 182 
 Westermarck. Professor, 205 
 Whitford, v., 320-322 
 Wilhelm n, 331 
 Witte, Count. 307 
 Women, 21, 80-82, 197, 249-272 
 
 Property rights of, 265 
 Wrede, Matilda, 182 
 
 Young Finns, 63, 213 
 
 Z 
 
 Zakrevsky, Count, 286 
 Zemstvos, 330 
 Zilliacus, Konni, 320 
 
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