The Book of Our Country/Chapter 199
The sun sets behind the birches into the calm lake. There is gold in the water, cool in the air; Heaven's peace over all my land.
Now is June month, the häggama flower, all birds sing in the woods. I return from school back to home. The road makes me so tall, my heart is so full. I want to think of something else, while I still have a piece left to the back of the church.
What I have not learned and seen since the morning before, when I stepped on the steps there at home thinking of the incomprehensible word of our country! Now I feel it;
- yes, that is, I feel a little bit of it; the first letter of a long homework. But I now know that it is worth loving and why we love it. My Father in Heaven, let me learn a lot more about my country of birth, that I may be worthy and able to earn it throughout my life!
How strange God, however, has created this land and blessed its poverty! So hard, so cold, so poor, distant, hidden and forgotten, and yet the most beautiful, best, richest, happiest country for us! What about a country where man in a lasting summer sits down to nature's ready-made table? Everything bids her, but not the happy honor of creating something new and better, not the strong consciousness of being able to forsake, not the free feeling of being a slave. I want to be the gentleman of nature and not his sweetheart. I want to be Solgrim, who fought the land and transformed it into a garden. Oh, my mother, you were right: this is something worth living for.
And 'this people, as the Lord God has set here to break rocks at the end of the world, what I love it in its calm power! It's such nature and fate have done it; a rough old tree on a rocky ground. But when we clean the dry twigs, when we get it air and light and wide fresh, new soil around its roots, see, then it will shoot green peaks, then it will flourish in healthy youth. When I think of what this people were going through, without dying, what it burst, without bursting and forsaking without despising; then I imagine that it can never be broken, as long as its root is healthy. There is only one enemy who can kill it by embracing its core, and his name is Veklighet. But see, then, the hard, cold, poor country stands around and says: work! The forgiven people wake up like a dream, find themselves naked at the drives, recognize themselves and live.
The more I think of what I read about the advancing days of this people, the better I understand how wonderful God has accompanied it through deep dark valleys to the light of the heights. It belonged to a large and numerous, but poor, ignorant, around half the divorced tribe. Had God now surrendered the Finnish people to his own power, then it would have become such a miserable, spoiled waste of mankind, as now the unfortunate, devastating people in the wilderness of Siberia. But God had graciously appointed this people among so many its relatives. Why? I do not know that; possibly because he initially deduced higher gifts than at the other. Then he led his way further west, where it came into contact with the Slavic and Germanic people. There God placed it under a foreign Swedish empire, strong enough to be its support, but not enough or powerful to swallow it. And bound, like a young tree, by this support, grew the Finnish people, hardened in severe storms. Its baseline is Oriental, Asian; but since it got the best that Europe could have given it: Christianity, society and free, human cultivation, it carries both East and West within. Of such people God can do something. When the time was complete, God loosened the former band with Sweden, knocking the people into a new bond with Russia, as well as referring it to its origins. For it seems that the meaning of God is quite obvious, namely that the Finnish people will be a teacher and advocate for many lost progenitors, while it makes the stupidity of their stomach fertile to humanity. And once it grew to 12 million. . .
I see my home, I see it, the windows glance at a distance in the evening sun! There is our own pastoral garden, where is our field. I can see the farmyard, the gate, the barnyard and the well. There she is left, the old ripened ridge with the sooty door, where I used to jump evenly in the straw. Oh, what's all alike, and what's all beautiful! The red ladder has received a new thank you; The bridge over the brook has just been transformed. So. . . now the high grans cover the farm! What the road is long! - long! long! long! Listen, there bark a dog. It's Musti, yes, I'm sure then, he's awaiting my arrival. The road curls; here are the old asparas, where the crows are used to gathering in the evening. Forward, Forward, - Oh, I could fly! And now I see the gate, the farm, the stairway close by. Somebody's coming. . . she stretches out her arms. . . It's my mother, my beloved mother, who meets me. What I am happy, my God; You've given me everything, mother, home, country of birth. Oh, God was promised!