What does one need in the tundra, or the coniferous forest belt of the Arctic? A wooden sledge for fetching water from under the ice, an ice-drill, a state-of-the art pump, a chamber-pot and an axe.      The sledge, lightly built as it is, without a single nail, ferries huge loads, in proportion to its size, following the slender lines of the footpaths, and obeying the slightest movement of the steering-shaft. An altogether beautiful and appropriate means of transport.      And the chamber-pot? An incomparable companion in a house with no inside loo. Nowadays potties are mainly designed for kiddies: they hold a few decilitres. In crackling frosty weather in the old days the hearty lady of the house could swoosh into her own pot without a care. If only you could see my petite potty, its sides painted with a few leafy sprigs: as I aim my bottom on the said chalice it's difficult not to visualise an elephant pissing into an egg-cup. And all this is due to the law of supply and demand. Everyone has a water-closet, and pioneers of the outside earth-closet like myself will have to be content with these enamel thimbles. Oh shame! I could as well be living in China, Italy, South America, or Siberia. Humankind transform wherever they live into their territory. They can turn any old pair of grim granite boulders into their imperial seat, colonise hostile yards and tranquillise the hatreds the previous occupants left in the gardens.      All places have to be run-in – houses, yards, parks, streets, trees and forests. In its day this house had a waterwheel operated by two pairs of stones. The beautiful spirit of that old miller has, for a long time now, been dimmed by the bad habits of those who succeeded him.      Before ourselves, the house was inhabited by an old drunk and his family. He worked in a ski factory and contracted asthma from the wood dust. They'd got a few cows and horses. The waterwheel brought electricity to ten houses. The head of the house laid crayfish traps in the river, sold the crayfish at Jyväskylä market and bought vodka with the money. Finally the old lout did nothing but drink vodka and eat herring. Every boulder and stump was encircled by holes stuffed with vodka bottles and pickled-herring jars, as if the rock had been endowed with bottle-teeth.      In this village the custom was that when the eldest son got married the house was sawn in half for him; and thus a cottage-son literally turned into a prince, inheriting half a kingdom. Tier by tier, the logs were divided in two like a cake, the son took the part that belonged to him, and away he went with it.      It required art to obliterate the old drunk's curses, the baleful happenings overshadowing the neighbourhood. By that hill over there the wife was battered unconscious, the dog had its ribs kicked in. Still in shock from the former inhabitants, the trees and the bushes looked balefully at us. All those bottle-choked rocks and stumps – though I didn't know all the evils that went on, their weird spirit hovered over the place, looking askance at the newcomers.      Nevertheless, the woman of the house had heroically succeeded in preserving half of all the beauty – a small strawberry patch, a few apple trees, the ruins of a flower bed.      The dog goes round peeing to mark his territory. Whatever they're dealing with – a one-room flat, a small house, part of a street, or a nearby park folk first have to propitiate the places, pacify the aggressive spots, the enraged bushes that glower hostility at an intruder from a pair of bug-eyed berries. Unfriendliness can even emanate from the wooden steps, the walls, the benches, to say nothing of the maltreated trees. Under their leaves a man had been knifed. For the past three months here I've spoken nothing but Pomeranian, great tit, woodpecker, jay, chicken, goat, and with folk the Savo dialect. English I last spoke with Czech hitchhikers a year ago. I taught the dogs the English for 'sauna', and whenever we went down to the beach I said 'sawna', and the dogs immediately managed to choose the right path. Smart! What would be the best way for me to enrich my English with a couple of prods on a button? Add more brain-fluid to my cerebrum? - make my mouth speak English all by itself when even my Finnish is faltering and I say 'veterinarian' instead of 'veteran'?      It's all the same which hallucinatory city or parish you happen to be living in. But everything depends on the house: the speed you go at ­ and that in turn depends on the chimneys and the ovens and how much wood you put on the fire. And when you've got up the speed you want, what really fills the MAINSAIL of the house (like wind for a yacht) is the FROST. That's what keeps any house buzzing along. Unlike the wind, it's not measured in knots but in cubic metres (of firewood). By looking at the thermometer, seeing how many tens of degrees below it is, we know how fast we're sailing today:      minus thirty-seven. Translated by Herbert Lomas   Top of page