After the Finnish War

[ahad1020]

Kaarle was not the only one whose path to the Finnish forests had passed through Juva. At the Svartnäs ironworks, the headman Norrdén spoke to me. He had been stationed in Juva during the Finnish War in 1788 and remembered the gentry of the parish well. He was particularly amused that the surveyor Schéele and his brother, the bailiff Schéele, were still alive. They had been very friendly to him.

Norrdén told me about a soldier named Munter, who lived nearby. He had had a comrade named Remmer. After the Finnish War, they had settled in the forests with the Finns after losing their homeland and had lived as friends, respected and favored by their neighbors. Remmer went one morning on another Finn's trip to buy a cow for his newsagent and on that road he disappeared. When it was known that Remmer had money, it was suspected that his traveling companion had robbed and murdered him, telegram number database although he could not be proven guilty. The name Remmer seemed familiar. My father, as Juva's chief, had written it down on the list of missing soldiers. The man had been a topic of conversation at the parish some time ago. I learned from Norrdén that Remmer had been born in Livonia, from where he fled to Finland to escape conscription and did not dare to return to his new homeland, which had become part of Russia.

This is how I knew Remmer, and I knew him even better when Norrdén described the man's appearance. I was happy to be able to assure him that Remmer lived in Finland and thus clear the reputation of an innocent man. At the beginning of the war, Remmer had left Juva a wife and a considerable fortune, which he had accumulated through diligence and thrift. In the winter of 1815, he returned to embrace his beloved and, as she thought, faithful spouse. But the wife, who had not heard from him for seven years, had begun an affair with a Ostrobothnian wanderer.