style="font-size:15px;"> Christmas was so beautiful at home and we had Christmas for twenty days. Every neighbor had a party. And we had our Christmas tree that we cut down from the woods, snow up to the waistline. We shook the snow out. We had a veranda that went across the whole house and mother used to keep it there and put paper under it so it wouldn’t ruin the floor. Then when it was dry enough, we took it in and the whole house smelled from the fir. We didn’t have any bought decorations. We made stars out of paper and little baskets of paper that were woven—slips of different kinds of paper, blue and green and red and all kinds—with a handle on it. Then we put a little candy or raisins or prunes in it, so the day the tree was taken down we could eat all those goodies. There were strips of colored paper that we made a garland out of and put around the tree. It was very cute when we got done with it. We had candleholders on the branches and we stuck candles in there, and we never had an accident or anything with the candles burning.
The first of May we had really big, big fires. We used to go up on the mountain and build the fires and then we could see all over town and all the church steeples. The mountain was not far from our house. We used to climb up there and make the fires and we used to sing, “Idag det första maj, maj, maj; idag det första maj,” today is the first of May.
Midsummer was also one of the highlights in our lives. They cut down birches and decorated the outside of the house with birch trees. Just at that time, the birch leaves were all out and they were so pretty. Some people even made a little house with just birches all around it and then the entrance to go in; and there was a little table and you could go in there and have your coffee.
They did have a lot of superstition there, and when I was a child I really was scared. We had a woodshed and they said some lady—I don’t know if she lived in our house or what—was there chopping wood and she had been dead for years and years and years. It took me a long time before I could go out to the woodshed and get wood without being scared. And then we had some hills to go up on the road, and they always said that there was somebody on the hill. And that scared me, too, because I had to go up that hill when I walked from the minister. I hoped that, my goodness, nobody is coming that I would be scared of!
I went to school about six years. You went longer if you wanted to go to another school, but I didn’t do it, because I was more for the domestic. I liked cooking, sewing, embroidery, weaving, and all those kind of things. So I quit at fourteen and went to confirmation class. I had to go away; it was too far to walk from our house to the parsonage where they had class. Another girl friend and I lived in a little house with a lady. We took food with us from home and the lady helped us cook it. We went a long time, too; it isn’t like here. We started in the fall and went the whole school year to confirmation class. We had two pastors, one was for the catechism and the other was for the Bible history.
I stayed home for a while and then I had a very good friend that wanted me to come to Stockholm. So I was there a year. I worked for a captain’s widow. She had fixed up her house for a guest house. She had seven or eight people living there at a time. They called it a private hotel, but we served just coffee and coffee bread and cakes for breakfast. I worked hard there and she didn’t give me enough food either. I was very homesick, but I didn’t want to let them know I was homesick at home, so I stuck it out a year.
Then I was home for a while and helped mother and then I started working for a minister. I did a lot of little things. I knitted stockings and took care of the plants and got the wood in from the woodshed. We had to have fires in all the fireplaces every morning and that was my job. I stayed there until I went to America [1922].
I didn’t really decide; it just came on me all of a sudden. My friend Edith said she was going to America and I thought I would go, too. She said, “Come with me, because I would be so lonesome without you.” My poor little mother didn’t want me to go off, because she thought it was too much and too far away and I didn’t speak English. The minister didn’t want me to go. He said, “Other people live here, so you can also live here. That big place New York, you wouldn’t like that.” I didn’t pay much attention, because I went.
I promised mother that I would come home as soon as I paid my fare coming over here and saved enough money. And that I did, because I made ninety dollars a month in Boston, which was very good at that time. I saved every penny I possibly could, and I went home to visit my mother and sisters and that was really a lovely, lovely time. I came home for Christmas. There was so much snow and we went to church at night with a horse and sleigh. I forgot how beautiful it was in the wintertime.
*Although the population of the Åland Islands identifies culturally and linguistically with Sweden, the island group constitutes an official län or province within Finland.
Ina Silverberg
“I get so lonesome for Finland.”
A 1907 emigrant from rural Finland, Ina Silverberg planned only a brief visit with her brothers in southwestern Washington. Instead, she married a logger of Scandinavian descent and settled in Astoria, Oregon, where she held various service jobs and raised a daughter. Her contacts with the homeland included three return trips and regular correspondence.
I have been born in 1889 in farm country—Kaustinen, Finland. My maiden name, Aino Elisabet Huntos.
Huntos, that’s a Russian word. We used to be underneath the Russia.* In my homeplace, where I was born, was a Russian military hospital. An old man, nobody know what nationality he was, he stay years and years as kind of caretaker that place. He used to have a dog, Hunt, and if somebody come along, he say, “Ooshs, ooshs,” that means, get in. Then they started to tell [call] that place Huntos. My daddy, he had been born “Pentala.” When he buy this place, they start calling him “Huntos.”
At the farm Pentala, they got four boys and they make just living. My daddy was the youngest boy. He used to do farmwork and blacksmith. And he went to Russia. In Karelia there was good carpenters; they built so many church I can’t name it.† They went to Russia and they start building the famous church in Petersburg, they call it Isaac’s Church. My daddy work there.
I remember when we used to have farm. First thing, early the morning, my daddy built a fire; we had the open fireplace in the corner of the house. Then he went to take care the cows, give them something to eat, and take care the horses. Then he came in and then I used to be up. He cook coffee and calling to mommy to come have a coffee. They drink coffee and he take me in his lap. When he was through with the coffee, then he dress up me and fix my hair. We used to have always a working girl. [But] I have been so fussy; I didn’t let anybody touch my hair. I always holler, running after daddy, “Daddy, don’t go. You brush Aino’s hair, Aino’s hair.” And daddy had to always fix my hair. I have been really my daddy’s girl.
We make living. They talking about poor Finland, how poor. I used to say, “America is good country. I am citizen. I like. But I want to tell true, I never been hungry in Finland.” I didn’t know even others that be hungry. We have everything; we had plenty. We just had a good farm, growing always our grains, barley and rye and oats. Early in the spring, most everybody there, they start to make something from what they had, a little piece of land. They ask my daddy [for] rye. He just tell them, “How much do you need? Just help yourself.” And they did that, the poor families. And they asked him to pay, he said, “No, just come help out when we start digging up the potatoes.” He gave how much they need, if they just come help when we need the help. Same with barley and everything.
They was so glad to come help, especially young girls and boys. At my place they get really good eats; mother make good meat and many dish. My mother was really good cook. Then the evening, we was through with picking potato and cutting rye, then we have a big place, really smooth, let us
