December 6th is Finland’s Independence Day. In December 2010 I included two blog posts about the 1930 Runeberg Choir Tour to Finland. I did transcriptions of two entries in Linnea Gord’s diary about the trip, an entry about Marieham and a second Marieham entry and an entry about Åbo. . She was nineteen years old and the choir piano accompanist. It was fifteen years later, after World War Two, that she married and became the mother of my sister and myself. Part of our experience was the Runeberg Choir.
(Since those entries I have learned about the identity of the building in the photograph of the arrival of the choir at Marieham, which is explained in my previous blog post.)
The choir left Tacoma's railroad station in the Runeberg Express, their train car, on May 25, 1930. During three weeks of travel there had been many experiences before they arrived for the planned series of concerts. By the time they reached Marieham and then Åbo they had rehearsed at train stations along the way and performed on board their steamship the Georgic III.
Vocabulary: strömming are little herring, fished in the Baltic Seas.
JUNE 13, 1930 - HELSINGFORS, FINLAND
We left the little town of Åbo at 11:40 and arrived at the big metropolis of Helsingfors at about 3:40 in the afternoon. There was a big crowd at the station to meet us, and the reporters were there to take our picture for the Huvudstadsbladet. Rooms had been "preserved" for us at the Hotel Fennia, across the square from the railroad station. My! what a grand hotel after our quarters at Åbo. The Fennia was a veritable palace, with wide stairways, thick rugs and what not. Blanche, Auntie and I had a very nice room on the fifth floor. On the same floor was the Somppi family, too, so Edith and I were together most of the time in Helsingfors, too. We had dinner that evening in the Kappellet--a restaurant near the park in which a statue of J. L. Runeberg stands. We had strömming for dinner, and boy! it was good. Our third concert was in the Vita Salen at 8 o'clock. Every seat had been sold out for weeks. We sang our first program, Mr. Jofs talked and Blanche sang. We received three beautiful bouquets, one of which had a poem of welcome attached to it. Then we were all presented with a Finland emblem. After all our songs on the program were sung the people just wouldn't let us stop. They clapped, whistled, hollered, and there was a regular riot. We had a request for "Engelbrekts Märsch" so we sang that and "Vårt Land". Still they weren't through. When we went outside they were all crowded in front of the entrance cheering. They all followed us through the streets of the town, and we stopped at Runeberg's statue and sang "Vårt Land". That moment will remain in our memories forever. On to the Muntra Musikanters hall, where we had a great reception in our honor. The hall was packed, and we were all mixed into the crowd as we were the night before. They had a very nice program and then dancing--which lasted until two o'clock. Walking back to our hotel that morning (at two o'clock) it was almost broad daylight.
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