98 SOME WANDERINGS IN THE NORTH OF FINLAND. 



ground a foot or two on granite boulders. Most of them 

 are painted red, with white window frames and doorposts. 

 Food is of the roughest — generally very hard rye bread, 

 with excellent butter and plent}'- of milk. Sometimes there 

 is a large wooden bowl in which milk has been let stand 

 for a few days, from the top of which you scrape off the 

 cream with a wooden spoon. Occasionally, too^ you may 

 get some very salt fish or a piece of smoke-dried reindeer. 



Much of the rye bread is made in large flat circular cakes, 

 of any thickness up to about a third of an inch, with a 

 hole in the middle. Then they are strung on a stick 

 passing through this hole, and hung from the ceiling for 

 use when wanted. They have to be broken over the knee 

 or with a hammer, and are not very satisfying when you 

 are hungry. 



We travelled three stages the first day, and then stayed 

 for two nights at a small place called Pippola, on the river 

 Kemi. Unfortunately our Finnish vocabulary was too 

 limited to allow of any conversation but a request for food. 

 However, we much enjoyed our short stay there, and were 

 evidently a source of amusement to the native?, who were 

 continually passing through our room during the night for 

 the purpose of looking at us. A little way below the inn 

 there were some rapids, and here the Finns had built an 

 elaborate system of weirs for the purpose of catching 

 salmon. We watched them scooping the fish with a net 

 at the end of a long pole out of the pools where they w^ere 

 waiting for an opportunity of going up stream. I myself 

 saw one Finn catch nine salmon in the net at one scoop. 

 We were fishing for grayling, which much amused the 

 Finns, who laughed at our small fish, and with great 

 glee drew out two salmon at least for every grayling we 

 caught 



