The Book of Our Country/Chapter 94
Many Germans have taken part in Finland and they have been actors, craftsmen or artists. They are the most splendid in Wiborg, the German language is still spoken, Finnish, Swedish and Russian, but also in Helsinki, Turku and some of the town's cities. The Germans are working and have introduced German merchandise, but also many useful skills. Some of them move home to their country again, when these accumulated wealth; others quarreled, and their children adopt the language and customs of the country.
At the factories and in the cities, a few skilled English people have settled. Some French, Swiss, Danes and Polacks are also resident in Finland, but their numbers are small.
The Jews, who, according to the word of prophecy, are scattered throughout the world, are forbidden by the law to settle in our country. But since the law allows divorced warriors of Jewish descent to entertain their families in their country, there are a few hundred Jews in Helsinki and Wiborg, who trade in old clothes and furniture, and have their own synagogues, where they celebrate their worship after Moses' law. Most are poor and low-minded, not rich and mighty, like the Jews in other countries; but everyone acknowledges in them the remarkable people, as before God's people, that the punishment of God came upon them.
Another stranger and alienated people have traveled all the way to Finland. These people are the Gypsies, which of the Swedes are called Tattars and of the Finns Mustalaiset. Of these, here are a few hundred, recognized by their brown skin, their black hair and their dark southern eyes. You have been forgiven sought to make them permanently settle in one place and seek their income with farming or other bourgeois nutrition. They prefer to walk in inner and eastern Finland from farm to farm and from town to town, have no own houses and sofas sometimes in the woods. Their usual profession is to shoe horses, cure sick cattle, patch old kittens and spit in their hands. As horse-riders and sometimes horse-ridden ones, they are not well-known when they come to the village with their black-haired, half-savvy children and all their property on a cart. They speak among themselves a foreign language, but others speak the language of the country. Many fear them, and the crown service has a lot of trouble with them; but we must not forget that they are poor refugees, like the Jews. Therefore, we must have compassion on them; because of Jews and Gypsies we learn what great disaster it is to have no fatherland. Then there is a man like the wide sea: he sees no beach, he has no harbor, he lives and dies like a stranger on earth.