My father, Karhu-Sammeli said in 1968:
It was 1920. I was working for Vesko-Petteri. Then the Spanish Flu came and it killed in a couple weeks many hundreds of people.
Vesko-Petteri’s wife also became ill. Petteri woke me up at night and sent me from Inari to get a doctor before she died. It was miles and miles away from Mudusniemi.
There was a very hard southern wind. I didn’t really want to go, but as a hired hand, I had to do what my boss told me. I got the bull reindeer and started driving.
When I got to Inari, there was Spanish Flu everywhere. There were lights on in every house; nobody was asleep. Yrjö Jukola was the doctor in Inari then. I went to him and said, “I was sent to get you.” He smiled and said, “The likes of me aren’t any help against this disease, whether here or there.” But he gave me a prescription for cognac, two liters. There were instructions for its use. I went to the pharmacist and picked up the medicine.
I had the bulls tied up to a post by the hospital. I had put some lichen there for them to eat but the hard wind had swept the dry lichen away. The bulls were skittish, upset and cold. They fought heavily against me and I had to fight hard to get them harnessed. When I finally got Vesko-Petteri’s lead bull harnessed, it charged with such speed that I couldn’t even get in the ahkio (sled) so I hung on behind it as far as the primary school. There was a snowdrift where I was able to get the bull to stop. When I made it back to the ahkio, it ran like the devil a couple kilometers and then it ran all the way right up to the doorstep at Mudusniemi.
Vesko-Petteri asked, “Didn’t you bring the doctor?” I said what he told me, that he couldn’t do anything, but I brought two liters of cognac anyway. It so happened that his wife did not die after all; she got better. But the cognac sure did come to an end.
When Vesko-Petteri himself became ill, he heated up some stones on the stove, burnt some tar on them and inhaled the tar smoke. He rubbed some pine pitch oil on his nose, too. Petteri didn’t get any sicker.
I didn’t get ill at all. I buried the dead in Inari and helped the ill, but I never got infected by the disease.
The Spanish Flu made one’s stomach, back and head ache terribly. Those who got better,
were so weak that the wind would nearly blow them over when they stood up. They had to stay in bed until they were well enough. Nobody knew where the disease came from. There were anyway heavy southern winds.
Matti Morottaja
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"Here lie app. 200 persons who died from the Spanish Flu of 1919-1920, 10% of the present population. This monument was erected by the Inari Parish in 1970." |