Each passenger is provided with descriptive folders

The 10-kr. “joy flight” over Stockholm, mentioned in an earlier chapter, is a mere appetizer for this air classic to Finland and Esthonia. Your pilot taxis the big seaplane into the wind, rushes over the water, skims the wavelets with swift rat-tat-tat, rises decisively and — you're off! Over the garden city, the civilized suburbs, the lush inner skerries, the bleak outer skerries, and finally a fifteen-minute dash over the open Baltic, and then appear the myriad dots and dashes which are the outer isles of Finland.

Each passenger is provided with descriptive folders of the trip, a clear large-scale map, and (to wet flying whistles) a free bottle of mineral water. The only comfort which is denied is that of the smoking weed, for severe signs state not only Rökning Förbjuden but Tupakkaan Poltto Kielletty, which is the crisp Finnish warning against smoking.

Two and a half hours after quitting Stockholm you seem to be settling down upon a pine forest, but the plane slides just over the tree tops and settles as gracefully as a silver gull in the haven of Åbo, Finland's western port. It is but an hour thence across "The Land of Forty Thousand Lakes” (the more enthusiastic brochures say sixty thousand) to the bright capital of Finland, known in that nationalistic country as Helsinki, though its more limpid Swedish name, Helsingfors, refuses to die out.

Sidney A. Clark: Sweden on fifty dollars. 1936

It is appropriate here to present the reader with some account of Abo

It is appropriate here to present the reader with some account of Abo. "The city of Abo, pronounced Obo (the Finnish name is Turtu), contains about 14,000 inhabitants. It has four or five barracks, some of them built of wood, which in time of peace have in them from 3000 to 4000 Russians, as the Fins call all soldiers. The town is defenceless as to forts and fortifications. 

There is an old Swedish palace at the mouth of the river, called the Slott (palace or castle), now used as a prison and barrack; but it has no guns or defence except its walls, strongly grated with thick bars of iron. The low buildings in front appear much older than the two long wings. There has been a moat in front, from the river to the sea to the right; but it has little water, and resembles a large ditch. 

Behind the Slott is a bridge, half a mile long, made of piles, and connecting the island of Runsalla with the main-land. Runsalla was given by the government a few years ago to the town; it is one of the very few islands off the Finnish coast upon which the oak grows; it is divided into lots, which are sold for building villas upon; but the purchaser may not cut down an oak, even if it interferes with his view or his building, as they are reserved by the crown for shipbuilding, though they are nearly all rotten. 

Opposite Runsalla is the island of Beckholm, where large ships anchor and discharge into lighters, as there is not water enough in the river for vessels drawing more than twelve to fourteen feet. Passenger steamers proceed up to the lower bridge, though they sometimes get aground in the river when the water is low, as it is when there is an east wind."

The illustrated history of the war against Russia. 1857

What is the meaning of the barefoot women and girls in rural Finland?

 What marvels are the Finnish rural women — marvels of vitality, industry, robust interest! They seem to do all that any man can do, and then some. Cheerfully they tend the cows, feed them, milk them, clean their stalls, make cheese, make butter, care for their children, keep house; then weave, knit, read, go to school. They hold to their bosom ideals of art, learning, music, home, country. Boys bow and click their heels together. Girls modestly curtsy. Hospitality is naive, direct, neither stilted nor nervous.

What is the meaning of the barefoot women and girls in rural Finland? Is it a relic of age-old inferiority in the masculine mind? Is it an economic necessity? Why no running water in houses? Why no washing machines? Would rural sociological research mend matters any more quickly? Would statistics help? Must a country wait till a Grundtvig comes? Or a Snellman?

My drift into rural sociology : memoirs of Charles Josiah Galpin. (1938)