File:All the Russias- travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia (1902) (14781806224).jpg

Identifier: allrussiastravel01norm (find matches)
Title: All the Russias: travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Norman, Henry, 1858-1939
Subjects: Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910 Eastern question (Central Asia)
Publisher: New York, C. Seribner's sons
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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Text Appearing Before Image:
A Finnish coun-
tryman can only obtain intoxicating liquor by going to a town
and bringing it back with him, and towns are few and distant,
and he is not a mobile unit. And when he wishes to celebrate
some domestic festival, and like King Olaf's guests, to feast late
and long, he has to get a special police permit for enough spirits
to entertain his neighbours and drink Skaal to the Northland,
skaal like his forebears, the vikings and the hoary skalds.
Except for this law the savings bank of Suomi would tell a dif-
ferent and a sorrier tale.
The law-makers of Finland have also been strikingly wise in
all that relates to education. It is a land of schools. Except
upon the eastern frontier, where the people are still backward,
everybody can read and write. The total population in 1890 was
2,380,140, and so far as I can calculate, no fewer than 540,412
souls were attending school. That is, out of every hundred of
the entire population, something like twenty-three were actually
at school. This seems an extraordinary record, taking all things
into consideration. There are 2,608 university students, includ-
ing women; 4,723 are at the lycees; private schools educate
Text Appearing After Image:
FINNISH AGRICULTURE—BURNING THE WOODS FOR A SEED-BED.

THE FINNS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS 83
7,785; primary schools contain 413,867; "urban popular
schools" give instruction to 25,931; and "rural popular schools" to 72,991;
normal schools are preparing 1,881 teachers, the sexes
being of about equal number; and private schools receiving a
subvention from the State have 7,785 children. With such a
foundation, one is no longer surprised to read the long list of
learned societies which flourish here—literary, philological, ju-
ridical, medical, and scientific. One of these, the Society of
Finnish Literature, is laying the world under obligations by the
wealth of folk-song it has discovered and preserved. So long ago
as 1889 it had a collection of 22,000 epic, lyric, and magic songs,
13,000 legends, 40,000 proverbs, 10,000 enigmas, 2,000 runes,
and 20,000 incantation formulas.
I find in my note-books a number of other figures about Fin-
land, some of them eloquent concerning the national character
and achievement.

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