Once even in the far limits of Finland

I am a man of varied tastes and a score of interests. As an undergraduate I had been filled with the old mania for the complete life. I distinguished myself in the Schools, rowed in my college eight, and reached the distinction of practising for three weeks in the Trials. I had dabbled in a score of learned activities, and when the time came that I won the inevitable St. Chad's fellowship on my chaotic acquirements, and I found myself compelled to select if I would pursue a scholar's life, I had some toil in finding my vocation. In the end I resolved that the ancient life of the North, of the Celts and the Northmen and the unknown Pictish tribes, held for me the chief fascination. I had acquired a smattering of Gaelic, having been brought up as a boy in Lochaber, and now I set myself to increase my store of languages. I mastered Erse and Icelandic, and my first book—a monograph on the probable Celtic elements in the Eddie songs—brought me the praise of scholars and the deputy-professor's chair of Northern Antiquities. So much for Oxford. My vacations had been spent mainly in the North—in Ireland, Scotland, and the Isles, in Scandinavia and Iceland, once even in the far limits of Finland. I was a keen sportsman of a sort, an old-experienced fisher, a fair shot with gun and rifle, and in my hillcraft I might well stand comparison with most men. April has ever seemed to me the finest season of the year even in our cold northern altitudes, and the memory of many bright Aprils had brought me up from the South on the night before to Allerfoot, whence a dogcart had taken me up Glen Aller to the inn at Allermuir; and now the same desire had set me on the heather with my face to the cold brown hills.

John Buchan: The Watcher By The Threshold 

The clear-eyed men of the Finnish community

Another hour after that Jolly Roger's pulse beat a little faster as he strained his eyes to see ahead. Somewhere near, within a mile or two, was the first settlement with its sawmill and its bunkhouses, its one store and its few cabins, with flat mountains of sawdust on one side of it, and the evergreen forest creeping up to its doors on the other. Surely they would find life here, where there had been man power to hold fire back from the clearing. And it was here he might find Nada and the Missioner, for more than once Father John had preached to the red-cheeked women and children and the clear-eyed men of the Finnish community that thrived there.

James Oliver Curwood: The Country Beyond

What does Robert think about Finland?

I ask after the evacuees, the puppy, Aunt Blanche, Cook and the garden and tell Robert about Serena, the Canteen, the Blowfields and their cosmopolitan friend—Robert of opinion that he ought to be interned at once—and unresponsive attitude of the Ministry of Information.

What does Robert think about Finland? Envoy now in Moscow. Robert, in reply, tells me what he thinks, not about Finland, but about Stalin. Am interested, but not in any way surprised, having heard it all before a great many times.

E M Delafield: The Provincial Lady in Wartime

Snub-nosed Finnish woman

I rang the bell, and the cook at once opened the door to me, and showed me into the room without speaking. All these details are necessary that the reader may understand how the mad adventure, which had so vast an influence on all that followed, was rendered possible. And to begin with, as regards the cook. She was an ill- tempered, snub-nosed Finnish woman, and I believe hated her mistress Tatyana Pavlovna, while the latter, on the contrary, could not bring herself to part with her from a peculiar sort of infatuation, such as old maids sometimes show for damp-nosed pug dogs, or somnolent cats. The Finnish woman was either spiteful and rude or, after a quarrel, would be silent for weeks together to punish her mistress.

Fyodor Dostoevsky: A Raw Youth

Finnish orchid seemed amused

Afterwards, Hayden grumbled to himself. He recalled rumors that Dr. Kivi had no bracing Finnish blood in him at all, but was actually a German named Hans Schmuck. But to Hayden he was formidable. He had seen Kivi beat the local chess champion who, being named Perkins, could not conceivably rival a master who smelled of beer and gherkins. In Denver, Hayden had heard Kivi publicly affirm his faith:

"I am not going to let my clients haf all the pingpong tables and leetle antique furniture they vant, efen if I go broke and take to honest farming." That Augustinian creed had set all the Rocky Mountain architects debating, and enabled Kivi to charge an extra thousand dollars on every house.

Sinclair Lewis: World So Wide (1951)

Married to a white Finnish woman

Mr. Skagstrom, who was married to a white Finnish woman and who was half Swede, quarter Negro, quarter Chinese, with traces of Choctaw and Mexican—which made him one hundred per cent. African—manufactured excellent canoes. He was a pious Lutheran and he disapproved of what he called "all this vice and laziness that you find among so many colored folks." He felt pretty well about his generosity in employing as many Negroes as whites in his factory. He was a typical American businessman, except that he was less interested in race-questions than most of them, and he was glad to have Neil step into his accounting-room every Friday—at cut rates.

Sinclair Lewis: Kingsblood Royal

Finland then under his heel

"He accepted me as an accomplice, Sire."

"What did you offer?"

"A vigorous scheme. Your Majesty's revolt is to begin in Finland—where Sprengtporten is a landowner and where his regiment, the Nyland Dragoons, is at present, his intention is to take, by surprise, the fortress of Sveaborg—Finland then under his heel, he would sail to Sweden and meet your Majesty at Erstawir, and overcome Stockholm by a night storming, the Senate would be arrested, and a new constitution given to Sweden. Count Karl Scheffer is in this enterprise, it is not known to many beyond him and your Majesty's brothers." Toll turned his steady placid eyes, slightly narrowed with irony directly on the King. "Your Majesty still has sufficient power to deny this, to have me arrested—and disposed of."

Marjorie Bowen (writing as George R. Preedy): Nightcap and Plume