Photos: Refugees arrive in Finland

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A woman walks her dog past a landmark Lutheran church, the Siilinj‰rven Kirkko, near downtown Siilinjarvi, Finland. The small town, located in the Laplands, is about to get up to 500 refugees in a makeshift "reception center" near downtown. The influx of refugees across the Finland border has forced immigration officials to work round the clock on finding places to house the asylum seekers until their cases can be heard.

SIILINJARVI, Finland -- The buses are coming. No one knows when, how many, or exactly who will be in them, only that they are coming -- buses filled with refugees who began their journeys thousands of miles away and will arrive any day now at their final destination, this remote town in the piney forest of eastern Finland.

"I want to know how long they've been traveling," one town resident says, helping to prepare an old empty hospital to house them.

"I was wondering if they have families," says another, who is fitting gurneys with donated sheets bearing the image of Justin Bieber.

"And the whole situation -- the war situation," says another, who is taping "No smoking" signs in Arabic to the walls. "I want to ask about that."

There are so many questions, and so far, all that the 22,000 residents of Siilinjarvi know about who might be coming is what they've seen on the news: People pouring out of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and countries in Africa. A little boy who drowned and washed up on a shore in Turkey. Seventy-one refugees suffocated in a smuggler's truck in Austria. Crowds being tear-gassed in Hungary. A vast, ever-growing line of more than 750,000 people zigzagging all across mainland Europe as far west as France -- where on this October day the Paris attacks are still a month away -- and in increasing numbers heading north.

Into Germany, where a government that has registered more than 500,000 refugees this year has begun to discuss limits. On to Denmark, where officials began offering free passage north into Sweden. On to Sweden, where officials last month began offering free buses all the way to the northeastern border -- a one-way refugee express to the very last place it is plausible to go: Finland, beyond which is nothing except Russia and the Arctic Circle.

"This is like the final stop," says Jaana Vuorio, director general of the Finnish Immigration Service in Helsinki. "Nobody goes to Russia. This is the end."

Read more: End of the line: Small town near the Arctic Circle braces for a historic influx of refugees