“No field is so well cleared, that by diligence and attention a sheaf may not be collected.” ~ Captain George Matthew Jones

“I travelled through its silent and solemn forests, looking at the tracks of the wolves on the snow beneath, and listening to the crashes among the trees of the dense woods whose branches, bound together by icicles, were shaken by the stormy winds.” ~ John Bowring

“In a few places the ice of the gulf was a smooth sheet; in others it was roughly frozen in waves and large masses. The vast extended plain of ice, broken in abrupt ridges, the boundless and dreary track marked only by a line of trees and boughs, and the rugged rocks starting up on every side, afforded one of the most desolate scenes imaginable.” ~ William Coxe

“As we continued to advance across the more open sea, the ice became stronger: and being now at a considerable distance from any land, the prospect widened on all sides, and became at every instant more desolate and appalling. The wind had carried off every particle of snow; and we journeyed for many miles over a surface clear and transparent as glass.”~ Edward Daniel Clarke

“We were amused at the ice hills heaped one on another, sometimes to a considerable height. These were formed while the ice was yet in broken pieces, by the wind and the waves throwing one piece upon another.” ~ John Paterson

“There are various kinds of sledges used in this country: some are entirely close; others quite open; those which we employed were partly open, and partly covered. A sledge of this sort is shaped like a cradle; its tilt, which rises from the hinder extremity, and projects to about two feet, was open in front, but provided with curtains, which might be drawn and tied together whenever the weather was severe.” ~ William Coxe

“The floors of the apartments, instead of being covered with carpets, were, according to a custom not unusual in these parts, strewed with leaves and small twigs of pines and firs, which afford, when bruised, a pleasant smell, and give a cleanly appearance to the rooms.” ~ William Coxe

“The ceiling is loaded with hundreds of small black cakes, baked in the month of October, and, having a hole in the middle, they are put upon a stick, and in this manner hung up.” ~ George Green

“The extraordinary number of small windmills, both near the town and during the whole of the day’s journey, attracted a good deal of attention; it appears to be the custom for every person to grind his own corn.” ~ Captain George Matthew Jones

“A stranger from far more civilised parts of the world than Finland is greatly surprised at finding the intercourse between the sexes so unconstrained and yet so innocent.” ~ Brooke

“Not such the sons of Lapland; wisely they  \ despise the insensate barbarous trade of war; \ they ask no more than simple Nature gives, \ they love their mountains and enjoy their storms. \ No false desires, no pride-crated wants, \ disturb the peaceful current of their time, \ and through the restless ever-tortured maze \ of pleasure or ambition bid it rage.” ~ “Winter”, Thomson.

“The night-hag visiting the Lapland witches”, Fuseli.

“This Instrument is of an oval form, made of the bark of the fir, pine, or birch-tree, one end of which is covered with a sort of parchment dressed from the Rein-deer skin. This is loaded ith brass rings artfully fastened to it. The Conjurer then beats it upon his breast with a variety of frantic postures. After this he besmears it with blood, and draws upon it rude figures of various kinds.” ~ Matthew Consett

“The Fenni live in a state of amazing savageness and squalid poverty. They are destitute of arms, horses and settled abodes: their food is herbs; their cloathing, skins; their bed, the ground. Their only dependence is on their arrows, which, for want of iron, are headed with bone; and the chace is the support of the women as well as the men, who wander with them in the pursuit, and demand a share of the prey. Nor do they provide any other shelter for their infants from the wild beasts and storms, than a covering of branches twisted together. This is the resort of youth; this is the receptacle of old age.” ~ Tacitus, Germania. Translation by J. Aiken.

“Not such the sons of Lapland; wisely they \ despise the insensate barbarous trade of war; \ they ask no more than simple Nature gives, \ they love their mountains and enjoy their storms. \ No false desires, no pride-crated wants, \ disturb the peaceful current of their time, \ and through the restless ever-tortured maze \ of pleasure or ambition bid it rage.” ~ “Winter”, Thomson.

“The vicissitudes of sovereignty, the change of masters, affect this race of man as little as they affect the wolves, whose troops occupy their magnificent pine-tree forests, or the seals that play about the borders of the Bothnian Sea.” ~ J. Bowring.

“Yet even in these remote and inclement kingdoms, are the seeds of knowledge scattered; and if the mind receives no pleasure from the reflection of their past greatness or refinement, yet may it be enlarged and improved from the consideration of their present comparative power and importance in the scale of Europe.” ~ N. W. Wraxall

“Whenever the Finns were mentioned in conversation, the inhabitants shake their heads, ascribing to them , or to their influence, all deeds of anger, lust, violence, and drunkenness.” ~ Edward Daniel Clarke

“From the first he is obsessed by vital force and finds it expressed in plants and creatures; then, as his scientific researches develop he learns the vast power of natural forces and he pursues science as a means by which these forces can be harnessed for human advantage. The further he penetrates the more he becomes aware of man’s impotence; his studies of geology show that the earth has undergone cataclysmic upheavals of which ordinary earthquakes are but faint and distant echoes; his studies of embryology point to a central problem of creation apparently insoluble by science. The intellect is no longer supreme, and human beings cease to be the centre of nature; so they gradually fade from his imagination, or when they appear, as St. Anne or St. John, they are human no longer but symbols of force and mystery, messengers from a world which Leonardo da Vinci, the disciple of experience, has not explored though he has earned the right to proclaim its existence. La natura e’ piena d’infinite ragioni che non furono mai in esperienza.” ~ K. Clark

“They correspond with his own deepest belief: that the destructive forces of nature were like a reservoir, dammed up by a thin, unsteady wall, which at any moment might burst, and sweep away the pretentious homunculi who had dared to maintain that man was the measure of all things. […] Leonardo glories in the triumph of natural forces and dwells with gusto on every detail of destruction. […] They are so far from the classical tradition that our first term of comparison might be one of the great Chinese paintings of cloud and storm.” ~ K. Clark