The Land of Sad Songs – Stories From Protect and Survive Finland

[Hörnla]

Very good update, Drakon Fin.

You mention the continued dying, and we talked about Germany before.

I have from scratch done some lofty estimates on how countries would fare demographically, with the assumption, that the Nadir of the demographic development would be in the early 1990s in most places

Finland in 1984 OTL was a Country of ca. 4.8 Million. Have you done any estimates for the Background of your story?


[For comparison, I assumed that the UK and France would fall from ca. 56 to slightly over 15 respectively 19 Million inhabitants.

Austria, whose situation might be quite comparable to Finland, suffers 4.5 Million Deaths during the War, the Exchange and the immediate Aftermath, leaving 3 Million behind, and going down to 2.1 Million by 1990.]

 

[DrakonFin]

Very good update, Drakon Fin.

You mention the continued dying, and we talked about Germany before.

I have from scratch done some lofty estimates on how countries would fare demographically, with the assumption, that the Nadir of the demographic development would be in the early 1990s in most places

Finland in 1984 OTL was a Country of ca. 4.8 Million. Have you done any estimates for the Background of your story?


[For comparison, I assumed that the UK and France would fall from ca. 56 to slightly over 15 respectively 19 Million inhabitants.

Austria, whose situation might be quite comparable to Finland, suffers 4.5 Million Deaths during the War, the Exchange and the immediate Aftermath, leaving 3 Million behind, and going down to 2.1 Million by 1990.]

I have done only very rough estimates, but it seems my thinking has been somewhere along your Austrian numbers. Up to 1,5-2 million deaths in Finland in the Exchange and the next few weeks, up to further 1,5-2 million in the following two years or so, especially until the summer of 1985. Then an easier downward slope through the late 80s and the early 90s, bringing the total population of the FNA and the PPO together down to 1-1,5 million by 1992 or so. A stabilization in the early-to-mid-90s, and slight population growth since. In late 2014 the newly reunified Finland would still have a population closer to 1,5 than 2 million.

Like I have commented in several updates, while the Exchange was a horror, also in Finland it would have only signalled a couple of years of possibly even worse horrors for the survivors, who would have seen catastrophic mortality due to various reasons Mr. Fagerholm listed above, too. At least during the Exchange itself, most deaths were quick. In the village where the last part of the story is set, the next winter will be brutal, and I am pretty certain the Civil Defence chief knows himself he is telling a lie when he tells how well the village will be prepared for the winter. But then, the whole point of the event is to raise morale among the still functional, more or less healthy survivors, not to give them a realistic view of what to expect from the coming months.

Incidentally, perhaps, the death of the Acting in 1987 and the first pro-democracy demonstrations of 1988 coincide with the passing of the most dire years and entering the early part of real recovery - revealing the National Committee's raison d'etre of continued "emergency rule" being necessary for ensuring stability and preventing the nation from falling into chaos as highly suspect in the retrospect, even if many of the generals and their allies might have believed the idea at the time. Under somewhat different circumstances, like with a stronger continuity from the pre-war government, a return to democratic forms of governance might have taken root already in the early 90s.

 

[DrakonFin]

When I was eight years old I knew
That the the world will be destroyed
In a duel between the superpowers
When I was eight years old I knew
That humans will be crushed
Becoming history in an instant
…

When I was eight years old
I went through the maps
To find a far away place
That would avoid the fallout

Ultra Bra: Kahdeksanvuotiaana (1996)




Addendum IX. Heavy and Precious


Northern Sweden, June 2042

Oh, that old thing? There is a story about it, a story I rarely get to tell anyone. But now that you are here, why not... I'll make us some tea, you sit sit down there. Move those things off the chair, yes, there, I'm sorry about the mess.

...here, dear, a nice warm cup of tea. And look at that sun, it is a very pretty, bright day outside isn't it?

What, yes, I was about to tell you a story.

Back in the day I lived here alone with my grandmother. She was... about as old as I am now, I guess. My mother was from here, she had met my father when he was a young engineer with LKAB, here at the mines, and when he got a good position at Stockholm they moved there. I was born at the old Karolinska in 1976.

When all that... trouble... started, mum and dad sent me to stay with grandmother, to be safe. I remember climbing aboard the train that was leaving due north. Only my mum was there to send me off – dad went from meeting to meeting, some important state business, mom told me. When I hugged mum goodbye I was sad to leave her and angry at dad for not being there. Not being there for his only daughter!

But when matters of state are at stake, what is a girl of eight in comparison, right?

My grandmother, Greta, had stayed here near Svappavaara even if my mother repeatedly asked her to move south. But she refused, said she would not like it in Stockholm, with all the people there, with all the hustle and bustle.

And when we went back to her house, with the old Volvo Duett her husband, my grandfather the miner had left her, she smiled at me warmly and I felt right at home. I had always liked Greta, her grey hair and ironic little smiles and winks. And the candy she used to have waiting for her one and only granddaughter, of course.

I settled surprisingly easily in a routine at the old house, helping Greta with firewood, with the food and tidying up, with going to the store at the village. I missed my parents and friends, of course. But it felt like a holiday, at first, what with not having to go to school even if Greta tried to teach me something almost every day. She had promised to my mum that I would not fall behind from my classmates, you see.

Well I didn't. We watched the TV – the reception was spotty, and sometimes you'd rather get the Norwegian TV – and saw all the news about how it all turned, towards war. The King and the Queen, making their tours among the soldiers preparing to defend the nation, sometimes even with the young princess and little prince with them. Do you remember the pictures of the King holding hands with Victoria and inspecting a line of soldiers? No? Well, it made a big impression on me. We are about the same age, me and Victoria, and seeing her being so brave about it all helped me as well. Some nights, when I got lonely, I went to my grandmother in the dark and then she would help me sleep by telling me stories about the Princess of the North – that was me, and in those stories I had wonderful adventures.

The story of that... thing is an adventure as well.

For, on some days, we would go out with Greta and explore the surroundings. We were some kilometers outside the village, almost next to the railway line. Sometimes, before, trains used to go past, heavy locomotives pulling even heavier loads of iron ore. But now, due to the war being so close, those trains started appearing all the more rarely. Finally, they stopped coming and going altogether.

And then... then came the Bombs. The next day, the TV would not show us anything and we could not reach my parents by phone anymore. Those days, we spent most of our time in the basement to protect ourselves from the nuclear fallout. Greta told me that she was sure my parents were all right, but as soon as we heard that what had happened to Stockholm, I got very worried and cried myself to sleep many nights. They also said that an atomic bomb had destroyed a Norwegian town on the coast and that it was even more terrible everywhere else. It was quite horrible, though I have to admit the other bombs would not have worried me as much if I would have heard my mum's or dad's voice again.

It was one of those nights, around the Exchange like they later called it, when a train arrived to the rails some ways from the house. I heard the noise in the night, I think, even from the basement. There it stopped, and there it would stay for months. A number of men came along, men in heavy winter clothes, carrying weapons in their hands. At first they stayed strictly around the train, just patrolling its vicinity.

My grandmother was nothing if not brave and curious, though. And so, maybe two weeks after the Bombs we put on our winter clothes, covered our faces the best we could, and went outside hand in hand. Making our way across curiously light grey snow drifting in the wind we came to the train, standing there alone on the tracks, the snow slowly gathering up against its immobile carriages, the whole thing like a big caterpillar gone into hibernation.

As we got closer, suddenly two men barged out of the door, with stubby weapons in their hands, training them on us. But as soon as they they saw that one of the arrivees was a little child, they put the weapons down, abashed. I believe their faces went quite red under the cloths covering their faces, especially after Greta unleashed a verbal broadside against them, for scaring an old woman and a little girl with weapons built for killing people.

I guess the two men were sort of jarred themselves, and lonely as well, because they asked us inside the railway carriage. My grandmother seemed suspicious, but she later told me that they seemed decent, after they put the guns down, and besides, they spoke halting Swedish in the same Finnish accent her late husband Jukka had spoken to her for all those decades. She instinctively trusted them.

Once inside, it was what looked like an ordinary passenger carriage, but one where people had lived for some time. After the two men removed their hats and the fabric from around their heads, I could see they were bearded and grizzled, but both had warmth in their eyes and the corners of their mouths. On one of the seats in the carriage, a coat had been casually thrown. It had a blue lion logo on it. I pointed it out to my grandmother, who nodded. The men noticed our interest and the older one of them spoke up.

” - That's my coat”, he said in that clumsy but recognizable Swedish of his.

” - We're Finnish policemen, from the Helsinki Police, and we're here to guard this train. There's more of us, in a building a little way back, but someone has to be in the train at all times. We've got our orders.”

My grandmother asked what it was, exactly, they were guarding, but the men refused to answer.

” - I am afraid that's secret. I'd trust you, if it were up to me, but it isn't. We were given this mission by the Finnish government. We can't talk about it, but we'll see it through, so help us God.”

My grandmother asked no more questions after that.

We talked some more with the men. The older one was called Markku, and I though he had an air of a seasoned policeman about him. The younger man was called Jari, and he seemed more unsure of himself. After a while, the men said that they had to attend to their duties. They thanked us for visiting them – they really had been lonely – and we left them to go back to the house.

One thing the men had said was that they were starting to run out of food and supplies. Greta, though, had food and supplies to spare. Both she and Jukka had been accustomed to live in comparative isolation, and they kept large supplies of dry goods and various foods that would keep well. But now, after Jukka had passed and a after Greta herself was now losing her health, what my grandmother needed was someone to do heavier work around the house. And so, in a few days after the first meeting, we went back to the train to strike a deal – as long as one of the policemen would come to help us once in a while, with clearing the snow and firewood, and so on, Greta could pay them back with food and supplies.

Now, older as i am, I can understand that if the men wanted, they could have just taken what we had and given nothing in return. Such things happened everywhere after the Exchange, I know, I know. But these were men of the law, by profession, and there was still some sense of decency left in them. Besides, I have later thought that maybe it was a deeper plan by Greta to protect us. Finnish refugees had been settled in the Gällivare area from even before the Exchange, and after it even Svappavaara got miserable, freezing people from the Finnish areas, as well as from Norway. Gradually, more and more strange people were wandering about. Strange, hungry, sick people, more often than not. Sometimes quite crazy. Under the circumstances, it really was a good thing for an old woman and young girl to have men around they could trust.

Men with guns, even.

Those men with guns were somewhat lost, thought. Even if the seven of them had an important mission, or so they told us, they could not get help from the outside to move forward towards the south. Apparently, what with the destruction brought about by the war, they had been forgotten here. They tried to make contact south via the Svappavaara village, and two of them even journeyed south to Gällivare to get someone who could help them. But I guess they were treated like any other random Finnish refugees there – only barely as a human being that merits any attention at all.
The surroundings of the Boden fortress had been declared a disaster area, due to the bomb dropped there, and what with all the other problems, the railways were a mess and nobody was sending extra locomotives to some random Finns up in Svappavaara.

During those weeks, I think the presence of the Finns did scare away people that might have wanted to hurt us, to steal food from us. Greta had Jukka's old shotgun, of course, but I am not sure she could have shot another human being with it. And besides, we had nice conversations with the men. I especially liked the young policeman Jari who used to tell jokes to me when he visited the house. I remember thinking that Greta treated him a little colder than the other Finns, though, which I did not think was exactly fair.

And so the winter months passed. I understand I was luckier than most children in Europe, but at the time, I was worried sick about what had happened to my parents and I used to wake up in nightmares of them dying in atomic explosions – or even worse, coming to get me but not as their ordinary selves but as weird, radiation-damaged monsters who wanted to eat me.

Even for us, food started running low in April and Greta found it difficult to buy more in Svappavaara. That was, I think, when they started the rationing scheme in earnest. The Finns of course were not a part of it, and still we tried to share with them what little we had.

One day, Greta had again taken the Volvo to go to the village to get some supplies – she still had some petrol in the big tank by the house, when Jari came to the door, and once he took off his fur hat I could see there was a broad smile on his lean face.

” - We just got news from the south – they are sending us a loco, and with any luck we'll be on our way towards the south in a few hours!”

I was not sure what to think. I was happy for them, but I was also apprehensive about us losing their support.

” - Where is Greta?”, Jari asked, ”I need to talk to her about something.”

I told the young policeman that she was off to the village and would not be home until a few hours.

Jari shrugged his shoulders and then smiled.

” - You'll do then”, he said, ”come along, I have something for you.”

I guess I should have been more careful about going with him, but then I liked him and I had learned to trust the Finnish policemen. And so, so together with Jari we walked again to the train, the sound of our footsteps creaking in the light grey snow under overcast skies.

Once there, I could see several of the seven men at work around the train, clearing out snow and doing other preparations. Clearly they were getting the carriages ready for departure.

Jari took me inside one of the goods carriages, and looking carefully around himself , took a bunch of keys from his pocket, opening several heavy locks in the equally heavy door which he opened and beckoned to me to enter. It was something like a foyer in the carriage, before a bigger space beyond.

” - Wait here”, he said, and disappeared to the other side of the door.

As he came back, he gave me a small canvas backpack with something hard and heavy inside.

” - Take this to your grandmother”, Jari said and shook my hand. Then he hugged me briefly.

” - And when you get home, tell her that you can come along with us if you want. To Gothenburg.”

I promised to Jari to do that.

Right then, the senior policeman, Markku, came in with an urgent look on his face.

” - So here you are. What the hell, Aarnio? Anyway, the loco's here so let's get cracking!”

I followed the two men outside and there, some way away, I could see a diesel locomotive was reversing its way towards the carriages. The wind had picked up.

Markku also shook my hand and thanked me, asking me to take his thanks to Greta as well. Then he turned around to give some hand signals to the approaching railway engine.

Fast as I could with the heavy object in the backpack, I made my way back to the house. There the Volvo was waiting me on the yard, and when I got inside, my grandmother was waiting me there as well, looking angry.

” - Where were you? I was so worried about you!”

I told Greta would had happened, and about the arrival of the locomotive. I was just about to reach for the backback, when I heard the sound.

It was a sound I had waited for weeks, for two months by then.

It was the telephone, ringing for the first time since forever.

Without waiting for Greta to answer it, I sprinted to the phone, picked up the handset and put it on my ear.

” - Nina dear, is that you?”, said a voice from what felt like across a great distance.

It was my father. Quite alive.

So was my mother, it turned out. They had been among the last people to get out of Stockholm, and they had spent several weeks at a refugee camp around the disaster zone near the capital area. Communications had been spotty and they had had huge amounts of work to do. Only now could they contact me and tell me they were not dead!

Later, you know, I was very angry to my parents for not reaching out to me earlier. But right then, I was overjoyed. So overjoyed that I forgot all about the train and the heavy little backpack.

Only hours later, when both me and Greta had talked with my father and mother on the phone for an extended amount of time, did I take the bag and raise it to the old wooden table. I still can see the look on Greta's face in my mind's eye when she saw that thing with its dull luxurious gleam on the table's worn old wood.

” - Is that... gold?!, Greta asked me, her eyes on the heavy yellow bar on the table, bearing the stamped numbers ”999.9” and ”1972” on it.

That it was. From the part of the gold reserve of the Bank of Finland they managed to evacuate from Helsinki before the war, I would later learn. I am dead sure Jari did not have the right to take a damn gold bar and give it to us to thank us for our help. No right at all. I don't know if he got into trouble for it later, but then those were the kind of days a lot of things got overlooked and fell through the cracks.

Even solid bars of gold.

In the next morning, when we went to see the railway tracks, the train was gone like it had never been there at all.

Another cup of tea, dear? No? Are you sure? I got plenty left.

…

A small and tender hold
A hold of a human being
The very same feeling like the wind's touch
A small and tender hold
That is all

Light and dark, there's nothing unnatural there
In both songs a good feeling grows and grows
I don't like it that moving on requires great deeds
After the rain, on a sandy road, beauty shines and bows deep

Dave Lindholm: Pieni ja hento ote (1982)

 

[FromThereToHere]

I absolutely LOVED this new story/addendum. Thank you, DrakonFin!

 

[Archangel]

I absolutely LOVED this new story/addendum. Thank you, DrakonFin!

Seconded on both things.

What's the status of Stockholm by 2042, and has Finland fully recovered and moved back to first world status by then? I imagine that as Finland goes in terms of recovery, so goes Central/Eastern Europe.


Russia (or parts of it) may be at a TTL 2014 Finland level.

 

[Bernard Woolley]

Wow, more of thi story. Always enjoy this and love your style.
Wonder what happened to the gold bar?

 

[prettydragoon]

What a nice young policeman! So generous and polite. I wonder what happened to him afterwards.

In those lean days, gardening was surely a good way to supplement your meager rations.

 

[Jukra]

When I was eight years old I knew
That the the world will be destroyed
In a duel between the superpowers
When I was eight years old I knew
That humans will be crushed
Becoming history in an instant
…

When I was eight years old
I went through the maps
To find a far away place
That would avoid the fallout

Ultra Bra: Kahdeksanvuotiaana (1996)

Good update! Incidentally, as an eight year old and having avid interest in model airplanes I grabbed this book from my local library as it was in same library shelf as books such as "Airplanes of the First World War" After reading the facts about end of the world always being some 30 minutes away, effects of radiation and thousands of nuclear weapons suddenly Freddy Krueger movie a classmate had seen and told about did not seem so horrible anymore...

"The Big Book on Nuclear Warfare; Armaments, Strategies, Crisis Regions, Balance of Power" by Christopher Chant and Ian Hogg." Originally published as "Nuclear War in the 1980's" in 1983.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nuclear-War...K_1_88?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457355792&sr=1-88

 

[Karelian]

Funny thing, that train full of gold.
Like all other currencies, initially after the war it is little more than a vast lump of cold and lifeless metal. But as time goes by and the survivors start to have a somewhat functional economy, it is likely to once regain and then exceed its prewar value.

 

[wannis]

Good to see some addenda to the story every now and then!

 

[DrakonFin]

I absolutely LOVED this new story/addendum. Thank you, DrakonFin!

Seconded on both things.

What's the status of Stockholm by 2042, and has Finland fully recovered and moved back to first world status by then? I imagine that as Finland goes in terms of recovery, so goes Central/Eastern Europe.


Russia (or parts of it) may be at a TTL 2014 Finland level.

Wow, more of thi story. Always enjoy this and love your style.
Wonder what happened to the gold bar?

Thank you for the comments, guys! I thought it was a time for a brief look at the gold train that was mentioned in at least one or two updates in the TL proper. There are again several other explicit or implicit references in the addendum as well - by now I think this is not a TL anymore but just a big web of references that folds on itself again and again.

As for the situation in the Stockholm area in 2042 and the eventual fate of the gold bar... Those are whole another stories I might get back to at some point.

What a nice young policeman! So generous and polite. I wonder what happened to him afterwards.

In those lean days, gardening was surely a good way to supplement your meager rations.

Constable Aarnio? He will stay in Gothenburg for a couple of years to work for Jakobson at the Finnish Embassy. He then moves to Mikkeli via Seinäjoki and becomes a member of the FNA civilian police organisation. Slowly rising throught the ranks, being considered a solid, affable policeman, he loathes the rise of Varis and his military police goons as much as his other colleagues. By the 2010s he is a mid-ranking official in the Mikkeli Police Command and (like pointed out in one chapter of the epilogue, E10.), he starts supporting the Opposition Interim Council early and thus after the Winter Games is seen as a strong contender to become the national head of the joint Finnish civilian police organisation after the military police has been de-fanged.

Now, how deeply was Aarnio involved in the Winter Games and toppling the National Committee? We know he is corrupt, even by FNA standards, and it is quite likely he is working for the revolution, either after being paid off or coerced like Vartia. How much is he in bed with, say, General Ahola, the Spokesman or the man called Streng? That may or may not come into light later. There was someone who might know this - but as we know, he was put away under false charges of murder and whatnot, and what evidence he had in his bulging briefcase was destroyed by Streng's associate.

Aarnio has quite certainly been supplementing his income through various more-or-less legal projects on the side. He quite probably has been into smuggling as much or more than his OTL self, though it seems quite unlikely he will face any negative consequences due to it.

Good update! Incidentally, as an eight year old and having avid interest in model airplanes I grabbed this book from my local library as it was in same library shelf as books such as "Airplanes of the First World War" After reading the facts about end of the world always being some 30 minutes away, effects of radiation and thousands of nuclear weapons suddenly Freddy Krueger movie a classmate had seen and told about did not seem so horrible anymore...

"The Big Book on Nuclear Warfare; Armaments, Strategies, Crisis Regions, Balance of Power" by Christopher Chant and Ian Hogg." Originally published as "Nuclear War in the 1980's" in 1983.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nuclear-War...K_1_88?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457355792&sr=1-88

Thank you. I remember reading that book as well. I agree that it was quite intimidating, what with its colourful photos and matter of fact portrayal of nuclear weapons and their effects - if I remember correctly.

Funny thing, that train full of gold.
Like all other currencies, initially after the war it is little more than a vast lump of cold and lifeless metal. But as time goes by and the survivors start to have a somewhat functional economy, it is likely to once regain and then exceed its prewar value.

Quite so. Right after the Exchange, the aid given by Greta to the seven policemen might have well been more valuable than the gold bar, as such things like raspberry jam, canned nötkött and knäckebröd will keep one alive much better than trying to gnaw gold bars. But of course in the future the contents of that train will be a lot of money - and will have a big effect on the relations between the Gothenburg - Seinäjoki - Mikkeli triangle.

Good to see some addenda to the story every now and then!

More might appear sporadically, unless I get my other TL projects started sometime in the near future.

 

[prettydragoon]

Constable Aarnio? He will...

Awesome! It's good to have police officers you know you can trust. Trust them to do what, now that's where opinions may differ.

 

[Archangel]

Is Constable Aarnio this gentleman?

 

[DrakonFin]

Is Constable Aarnio this gentleman?

That's him. Looks a bit different than IOTL and is in a somewhat different position in 2016, but is essentially the same person. That is, an apparently capable, liked and trusted police officer who is also eminently given to bending the rules for personal gain.

Or that is at least how I see him, for the sake of argument (and the story, as far as it has anything to do with him).

 

[Karelian]

Choosing him to guard the gold treasury makes sense - in OTL the man was chosen to be the Police of the Year in 1987.

A good call on including him in - he's far too juicy character to miss story-wise.

 

[DrakonFin]

Choosing him to guard the gold treasury makes sense - in OTL the man was chosen to be the Police of the Year in 1987.

A good call on including him in - he's far too juicy character to miss story-wise.

I can readily concede that the TL includes several wholly gratuitous cameos. But Aarnio travelling with the gold train makes a lot of sense. In ordinary times, this kind of an operation would most likely be the purview of the Security Police. But then this is wartime, and the SP has its hands full with protecting the state leadership, counter-espionage and of course the evacuation of the parliament. OTOH, as the capital city force, the Helsinki police department has many special responsibilities even in ordinary days, and in a pinch the appropriate leadership would look at that organisation for reinforcements for an operation of this kind.

Now, like you pointed out, Aarnio seems to have been a rising star in the department even from the get-go. He started as a uniformed constable in 1979 and was moved to Narcotics already in 1981. By early 1984 he would already have experience of sensitive operations. He is 27, motivated, talented and hardworking. Known for being athletic, no less.

Aarnio fits the bill for someone who could get the job of protecting the gold train pretty much to a T. It is of course highly likely that the leading officer in the operation is from the Security Police, but the rest are most likely younger, well-regarded and preferably unattached men from the Helsinki department.

 

[Petike]

Apologies for the necro, but I found an interesting timelapse video that passes through Jyväskylä and the wider surrounding region.

Though a contemporary vid, it can give readers a bit of an idea of what the Finnish countryside and country roads look like in that part of south-central Finland.

Here's a timelapse of contemporary Jyväskylä, some ten years ago.

Briefer timelapse of the countryside and main roads around Mikkeli. I bet things are more built-up nowadays then they were in the early 1980s, but still.

 

[DrakonFin]

Apologies for the necro, but I found an interesting timelapse video that passes through Jyväskylä and the wider surrounding region.

[snip]

Though a contemporary vid, it can give readers a bit of an idea of what the Finnish countryside and country roads look like in that part of south-central Finland.

[snip]

Here's a timelapse of contemporary Jyväskylä, some ten years ago.

[snip]

Briefer timelapse of the countryside and main roads around Mikkeli. I bet things are more built-up nowadays then they were in the early 1980s, but still.

I like that first video, because it looks appropriately grey and hopeless.

The countryside would have looked pretty similar in the early 1980s, though there would have been more gravel roads, in comparison, and slightly more open fields and less trees - I bet there are many small farms around those roads that were in operation at the time, but have given up on agriculture since the 1990s and had their fields grow full of trees. To imagine how things would have looked like during most of the story, you'd have to add a lot of snow as well, and often snow covered with black and grey ash from all the fires around the country. Generally, the last part of the video could be seen to represent the conditions during "the Battle of Porvoo" in the early summer, in southern Finland - with some snow already melted away but the winter still lingering. On the smaller roads and along forest trails it would have been "rasputitsa" conditions for the units fighting the sorry battle.

As for the two latter videos, there indeed has been a lot of construction and change in between now and the 80s. You can see the last video even showing some roadwork happening the time it was shot. There has been a significant amount of major highways built in Eastern/Central Finland since the 80s, so ITTL even the bigger highways would have been more modest than today, and by 2016 ITTL also in a pretty poor condition despite the efforts of the FNA to maintain at least the most important routes.

Much of the story happens on and around National Road 5. Most characters travel on that road for at least a part of their journey. Since the 80s, it also will be one of the FNA's main routes. I found a clip shot in 1987 in Hirvensalmi, a municipality near Mikkeli, and even though it is summer in it, the views from the car are very true to what the smaller places and their surroundings would have looked like in Eastern Finland/Savonia in the 1980s. For example, see the typical municipal hall/municipal complex at 2.23, the SYP bank at 2.30, a little local shop in 2.40, the tanks of a small gas station flashing by at 2.52. And of course it all ends at the local church.

And here, also relevant, a clip of Finnish Air Force training in the 80s with Drakens and MiG-21s of the exact same units depicted in the story:

I have linked this 1983 Finnish Army film Jääkärit (Jaegers) also before, but it is a very potent period piece as well. (Maybe I'll do a bit of a breakdown later).