Wash day

Possibly Kristinestad, Ostrobothnia, Finland, between 1910 and 1920, photographer unknown, via The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland Commons on flickr.

Nagasaki


Blooming cherry trees in Nagasaki, Japan, an hand-colored souvenir photo collected by Nikolaj Gerasimov, ca. 1900, via Society of Swedish Literature in Finland Commons on flickr.

Helsinki

helsinki-old-church-park-ca-1890-swedish-literature-in-finland-on-flickrChildren and nurses in the Old Church Park, Helsinki, Finland, ca. 1890, photographer unknown, via Society of Swedish Literature in Finland Commons on flickr.

Life in gardens: from the window

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Hagar Olsson — Finnish novelist, essayist, and critic — in her parents’ home in Räisälä (then in Finland, now in Russia), ca. 1920, photo by Edith Södergran, via The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland Commons on flickr.

Edith Irene Södergran was a Finnish poet and one of the first modernists in Swedish-language literature — both she and her close friend Olssen wrote in Swedish.  She was also an amateur photographer. She died in 1923, at the age of 31, from tuberculosis.

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Look out our astounding
clear windows before evening.
It is almost as if
the world were blue
with some lubricant,
it shines so.

Denis Johnson, from “Looking Out the Window Poem