482 
THE AMERICAN-SCANDIN AVIAN REVIEW 
Iwana lives in Karelia not far from 
the Russian border, and his name spells 
a Slavic blend. The deeply religious 
prints decorating his cottage indicate 
also that his faith, unusual for a Finn, 
is that of the Greek Church. But for 
all that Iwana is a good Finn, tackling 
his little problem with that same bull¬ 
dog tenacity which enables the Finns to 
win laurels in music and in painting and 
on the track of the world’s Olympic 
games. Iwana’s task is to clear his part 
of the korpi, the Finnish word for the 
wilderness, that stubborn confusion 
of rocks and trees which nature in¬ 
tended to be a habitation only for the 
hardy bear and his kind. Whatever 
their tasks, Iwana and all his cousins 
are at work in grim earnest to-day, and 
Finland suffers less from unemploy- 
The Proudest Members of the 
Kirjavalahti Co-operative Bank 
ment than any other coun¬ 
try in Europe. 
Iwana dropped the 
crowbar and led us along 
the causeway built by his 
own arms to his little birch 
cottage on the bluff over¬ 
looking the solitary Lake 
of the Cross, Risti-Jarvi. 
Proudly this rural mon¬ 
arch pointed to his works, 
the field he had cleared, 
the forest that he had laid 
low. In the cottage his 
wife was ready to receive 
•/ 
us, a quaint, kindly little 
lady who shuffled about 
the premises in slippers of 
birchbark. Promptly she 
entertained us at a feast of 
Iwana Clearing His Farm, an Ardent Co-operative 
Banker 
