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From Vandraren eller Minnen af en Resa till Fots genom
Tavastland, Savolax och Karelen (‘The traveller or recollections
from a journey on foot in Häme, Savo and Karelia’,
first published in 1902). Extracts from a letter from Elias Lönnrot
to his friend Carl Nicklas Keckman
Tavastehus [Hämeenlinna], 3 May 1828
You yourself must have experienced how disagreeable it is to start
a journey from home. Even when you’ve finally managed to allay
your parents’ needless and often excessively long-drawn-out
worries about your welfare, you’ve still got to deal with an
assortment of aunts, godmothers and others whose consciences would
torment them if they let you go in peace and quiet. One is convinced
I shall drown and repeats ancient tales about every imaginable person
who has drowned ever since the deluge in the belief that this will
make me more cautious. Then another comes forward and says she had
a dream last night or maybe over several nights which undoubtedly
applies to me: I shall either be assaulted and robbed or die on
the road or be eaten up by bears and wolves etc etc. On top of this
they tell me dozens of stories about someone who went off to the
east and someone else who went off to the west and yet others who
went off to other points of the compass, all of whom, to the indescribable
sorrow and grief of the narrator, have never been seen anywhere
near their homes again.
I get rather tired of all these fantasies
and so far as I’m concerned Father Homer, who says that ‘even
dreams come from God’, can keep his beliefs to himself. But
it’s time now to sling my rucksack on my back and let this
tender-hearted crew think what they like.
It was the next to last day of April
when I left home. At this point I ought to follow the convention
and state that the sun shone down majestically on the moment of
my departure, but I can hardly remember anything about it. For a
long time I was surrounded by forests and hills where during my
childhood I sometimes wandered in the fields, and sometimes with
other children picked wild strawberries and other berries or set
traps and snares for woodland birds. Rivers, lakes and fens, where
I would sit on an old oak log and fish all day long. And here and
there the steep slopes which, in times gone, I would have been rushing
down during Lent on skis or a sledge. I still seem to hear the air
echoing with the noise of happy and lively companions generously
cheering the one whose sledge travelled furthest or whose skis were
first down the slope.
How empty the world seems compared
with the close circle of friends among whom one passed one’s
childhood! And yet we all hurry so light-heartedly from that temple
of peace, to search for what? Name and fame? Maybe. But is such
good as we achieve better if thousands know of it than if only one
person or even nobody at all knows of it? Perhaps we are after wealth
and gold? How shortsighted! When every stone near our homes is a
like a goldmine, and the famous gold-mines of Peru seem no more
than bare rocks....
Now you must step out briskly and come with me through Loppis [Loppi],
a district where the devil must for some time have felt very
much at home. I know it seems hard to celebrate the First of
May like this with a dry throat, especially as one can’t stop
one’s thoughts making frequent expeditions to the old First
of May field in Åbo [Turku], but I want to reach Tavastehus
[Hämeenlinna] by evening. With a short stop at Räikälä,
the last inn on the road from Loppis to Tavastehus. Here I ask for
a stage-horse so as to get to the town earlier, or rather arrive
looking more like a traveller than an itinerant workman. The innkeeper
says ‘saadaan kattoa’ (‘Let’s see’), which
‘saadaan kattoa’ keeps me waiting a good half hour, during
which I amuse myself by watching how my hostess uses her rattling
weaver’s reed to weave threads row by row into her brightly
coloured web. The time passed quite quickly while I chatted with
her daughters who were unusually beautiful for peasant-girls. But
in the end it became clear that the promised horse had not materialised.
I asked a lad who was in the cottage to go and ask the reason for
this delay. ‘The boss is working upstairs, go yourself,’
said the lad with a cross look. I went to the innkeeper and asked
whether he had no horse at home, and if he had why had he kept me
waiting so long. ‘On kyllä hevoisiakin, vaikk’ei
Kisälleille anneta’ (‘Of course we’ve got horses
but we don’t give them to workmen’), he answered in a
tone that would have tried anyone’s temper. I kept calm even
so, pointed out that I wasn’t a workman and listed all my many
titles, including Civis Academicus Nylandus, Philosophiae Candidatus,
Medicinae Studiosus and Stipendiarius Publicus, and when all
this seemed to have no effect except to cause his mouth to open
a bit wider at each new title as if he wanted to capture all these
proofs of gentlemanly status in it at one go, I finished by stating
I was a Master of Arts. The only response I got to this was ‘Sanokaa
Kransille senlaisia, ehkä hän uskoisi ja kyydittäisi
teitä’ (‘Tell that to Krans [a big black dog lying
on the floor], perhaps he’ll let you persuade him to drive
you’). This mocking answer set my heart thumping so fiercely
that I was afraid it would bruise all the ribs on my left side.
My right fist clenched almost of its own accord and was on the point
of expounding further arguments when the heavy-limbed, broad-shouldered
handyman suddenly happened to come in. This interfered with my plan
to present these arguments extempore, just as at an academic disputation
when the Chairman sometimes amuses himself by intervening, often
causing the Opponent to lose his nerve and say ‘concedo’.
Without making any further statements, which so far as I could see
would have been unprofitable, I walked angrily in silence to the
inn building, threw my rucksack on my back and set off down the
road.
As I was leaving the same boy who
had annoyed me earlier said, ‘Käydenkö magisteri
lähtee’ (‘Is our Master of Arts going to walk?’),
and I saw that when I gave him a furious glare they all smiled.
I felt happy to escape from that tiresome place, only feeling ashamed
in front of the beautiful daughters, in whose eyes I only wish I
could have appeared as something more than a common workman.
By now the sun had already sunk so
low as in Åbo long ago at the time of day when the sight of
the empty punch-casks on the field where we’d celebrated the
First of May used to remind us that it was time to think of the
journey home, but on this occasion I still had to cover one and
a half Swedish miles to Tavastehus. Exhausted though I was I walked
nearly one Swedish mile [10 km] without stopping and would certainly
have turned into some farmhouse for the night, had my experiences
with the innkeeper not put me off farm people and everything to
do with them. Besides, I could see that the fire had already been
allowed to go out in the places I passed on the way, and I was afraid
I could easily be taken for a robber if I knocked on their doors
at that time of night. You must remember that the villages round
here sometimes do have visits from guests of that sort. Should I
then walk the rest of the way to the town? But if so, who would
take me in in the middle of the night? I was in a real quandary
when I was suddenly saved by a happy thought. I could go into the
evergreen forest which bordered the road and make myself a bed from
fir branches. No sooner said than done. But might I not catch cold?
Rubbish! In the old days didn’t lots of heroes lie on the bare
ground after a merry First of May party and get up the next morning
visibly refreshed? I remember one sleeping all night with his head
on the edge of a snowdrift and in the morning all that bothered
him was that he would have to walk a quarter of a Swedish mile into
town before he could refresh himself with a dram.
These hasty comparisons combined with
exhaustion, a need for sleep and the lateness of the hour to bring
me in no time into the forest, where I was soon lying on a bed of
fir branches a foot high, with a similar quantity of the same on
top of me as a quilt. I’m still not sure whether it was a dream
or how it happened, but I seemed to hear a terrible noise round
me in the forest, with all sorts of voices coming from all sides
and dogs barking. Had it been any other time of day I wouldn’t
have doubted for a moment that there was a wolf- or bearhunt going
on. The dogs scared me most, because if they’d detected me
and roused the alarm round my insecure refuge, I would certainly
have been seized as a robber. This din continued for a good hour,
after which everything went quiet and I either fell into a real
sleep or stopped dreaming. When I woke at about one a.m. I felt
so refreshed after the previous day’s trek that I couldn’t
get to sleep again. My feet and hands and the whole of my body were
so thoroughly restless that I couldn’t keep them still for
a moment. I took this as a heavy hint that I should begin the day’s
hike, so I got up and started walking. But which way to go? The
night was so dark I could hardly see beyond the end of my nose,
or I should easily have found the road which wasn’t too far
from the place where I’d slept. When you have no idea which
way to go there are two possibilities open to you: you can either
stand still or you can follow your nose. I trusted my nose and set
off confidently but my nose led me astray. Getting lost in a forest
is something any of us can try for himself, so I won’t put
myself to the trouble of describing the experience. Eventually I
found the way, in which connection I must observe (you’ll never
believe it) that I was still in the forest.
At about two in the morning I reached
Tavastehus and went to the pharmacy where I’d once been apprenticed.
The gate to the yard was unlocked, so I had no problem reaching
the lobby that led to the room where the students slept. I was about
to knock on their bedroom door when it sprang open of its own accord
at the first touch. If I’d been superstitious I might have
believed the building itself had opened the door for me on recognising
me, but I realised it was probably just that the latch had not engaged
properly with its catch, but was resting on top of it. In any case
I wasn’t much interested in how I’d got in; the main thing
was that I had got in. The student pharmacists were fast asleep
and and gave not the slightest sign of waking. It was almost as
if the god of sleep had sealed their eyes with sticking-plaster.
I took the top of a sofa, which I found propped against the office
door, and laid its ends on two chairs to serve as the base for a
bed which I then made up for myself from old cloaks and other clothes
I found in the office. I did all this so silently that no one in
the room woke. Then I lay down and slept long into the next day
to the great astonishment of the pharmacists, who hadn’t the
faintest idea how I’d got there or where I’d come from.
When I woke and made for the dispensary
where the Dispenser, anxious for my health, had invited me to take
some drops, I felt a strange tenderness under the soles of my feet.
I pulled off my boots and studied them from all sides, but there
was nothing wrong with them. You will laugh at my simplicity in
attributing feelings to my boots, but you must know that a careful
doctor, intent on discovering a source of pain, will take every
possibility into consideration. After my boots I came to my socks
which, apart from a little hole at the heel and a bigger one at
the toe, were also in good condition. Now all that was left was
to examine my foot itself which, I immediately saw, had large blisters
under it. The pain will prevent me continuing my walking tour for
several days, but gives me a valid excuse to spend at least a week
in Tavastehus. If you answer this letter I’ll send you more
news shortly.
Translated by Silvester Mazzarella
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