"A farmer's daughter taking a break from harvest work in North Karelia."
Olavi Paavolainen: Sirpein ja vasaroin (”With Hammers and Sickles”), 1947.
Nineteen: The Maid at the Crossroads
The traditional personification of Finland is the Maid of Finland. Used in fiction and art since the 19th century [1], the Maid makes one of its earliest truly iconic appearances in Edvard Isto's painting Hyökkäys (”The Attack”) in 1899. In the painting, the determined young woman, with a flowing straw-blonde hair, a white dress and a blue sash flying in the wind, protects the traditional Finnish laws and rights (represented by a heavy book titled ”LEX” in its arms) against the aggression of a two-headed eagle which can be seen looming ominously over the Maid with its wings outstretched. The belligerent eagle is of course Tsarist Russia and the context of the painting is the first period of Russification Finland was subjected to during the reign of Tsar Nicholas II at the turn of the century.
Since Finnish indepence was won, the Maid of Finland was usually depicted accompanied with the white and blue cross flag of Finland. The Maid was thought to represent the very physical shape of the Republic of Finland, too, inside its 1920 borders reminescent of a female figure in a dress, tipping one of its toes into the Baltic and extending its hands up towards the Arctic Sea.
In June 1939 Finland was visited by General Sir Walter Kirke, the British officer who had already in 1924-25 worked in Finland to offer assistance in developing the young republic's armed forces.[2] During a dinner with then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Eljas Erkko, Kirke told those present that since his last visit, ”Finland has come of age as a beautiful young lady”. How well Kirke was in the know about the domestic depictions and understanding of the Maid of Finland is not known, but it was the context in which his comment was understood by the hosts. ”The number of suitors, though”, continued Kirke, ”seems to have grown uncomfortably large for the maid. But I understand that she considers the weather too hot for the touch of a dance partner's hand. She does not particularly care to join anyone for a dance, but would rather sit the next dance out”. Kirke ended his comment by saying that Britain understands the need to maintain the honor of this Maid of Finland, a view in which the Finns present could join with the hearty applause.
In his 1947 book Sirpein ja vasaroin, the Finnish writer Olavi Paavolainen invokes this same image of Finland as an innocent maid, ”sweet, honest and unblemished” as he saw the nation in late summer 1939. This view is quite understandable. Paavolainen had spent several months in the USSR in 1939, to gather material for a new travel book to follow his well-known collection of reportage and essays, Kolmannen valtakunnan vieraana (”As a Guest of the Third Reich”), from 1936. The Soviet reality, had made a distinct impression on Paavolainen during his stay, perhaps violently so. In the event, upon hearing the news of the events in Finland in mid-August, Paavolainen finally decided to return to his home country on the last week of August. By all accounts, the writer's acclimatization back to the Finnish reality took some time and effort.
Due to various reasons, though, Paavolainen's planned book about Stalin's USSR, for which he had many notes and a lot of material, was not realized as planned. The book would be completed only in 1947, and then in a quite different form from what the member of the Tulenkantajat literary group [3] had originally planned. The 1947 book is a reflection of the Soviet realities of 1939, taken together with the events of the Second World War that followed, and mixed with influences from Paavolainen's previous experiences in Hitler's Germany as well.
Paavolainen the writer and keen observer of things had returned to a Finland where the news of the signing of the non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany on August 22nd had already been mulled over for a few days. For many a Finnish layman who had recently been worried over the growing international tensions in Europe, the pact between the two totalitarian powers seemed like a relief. The German and Soviet regimes were natural ideological enemies, and in the prevailing conditions it would thus seem that a war between the two nations would be a realistic culmination to the political trouble Europe was experiencing. With the pact, this particular threat appeared to diminish significantly.
But then this view of European politics would have been myopic at best. In June, at the same diplomatic event General Kirke had appeared in, Field Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim had outlined the three options he saw for the political development between the major powers in Europe in the recent future to the British ambassador to Finland, Thomas Snow: one, a treaty between Britain and the USSR; two, a treaty between Germany and the USSR; and three, no binding treaties being agreed to between the powers at all. Like Mannerheim said to Snow, the second option would be the most dangerous for Finland. Now, just two months later, the most dangerous option for Finland had just been realized.
When the so-called Oslo states's foreign ministers met in Brussels on the 22nd, Finland did not send a minister of its own to the event due to the ongoing cabinet reshuffle. The new Foreign minister could not then start his stint with joining other Nordic governments and the king of Belgium in their pious joint wishes for peace and harmony in Europe. When the US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, then visited Finland on August 24th, though, Voionmaa could meet him to receive an American ”thank you” for the well-known debt-paying nation of Finland.
The implications of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed by the German and Soviet high contracting parties in the early afternoon of August 22nd, did raise some discussion between the Finnish political and military leadership on the last week of August, a week of summery heat and packed beaches by the sea across Europe. The newly-appointed Foreign Minister, Väinö Voionmaa, summoned the German ambassador to Finland, Wipert von Blücher, to his presence on August 25th to allow him to shed some light into the recent German-Soviet deal. Von Blücher, by all accounts in personal terms a sincere friend of Finland, was quick to assure Voionmaa that the pact would not incur negative consequences for the Finnish nation. For the benefit of von Blücher, it needs to be said that the ambassador did not at this time yet know of the secret additional protocol to the pact, famously dividing Eastern Europe into mutually agreed spheres of influence for Germany and the USSR, and did thus not need to actively deceive the Finnish minister.
Rumours that the German-Soviet pact did in fact include designs upon Finland and the three smaller Baltic states did make their appearance in the Finnish press and public discussion already in the last week of August, though. The Aamulehti of Tampere for example speculated in its editorial already on the 23rd about the potential concessions the Germans had made to Stalin at the expense of the smaller nations to get their bargain with the Soviet dictator. There were views about among the Finnish nationalist right to the effect that Germany had already ”betrayed” Finland. This view of course includes a clear error: Finland was not a German ally, but had consistently through the thirties tried to distance itself from German influence, aiming for neutrality and orienting itself politically towards the Scandinavian states. Germany owed nothing to Finland, and it thus was actually the Finns who had betrayed themselves by thinking that in all conditions, it would be in the German interest to try to oppose any and all growth of Soviet influence in the Baltic Sea area.
Unlike for much of the ordinary people, still on their summer holidays, the last week of August was a week of hard work for the diplomats and top politicians of Europe. In a few nations, it was a very busy one for the soldiers as well. While there were some rather desperate last-minute attempts to broker a mutually acceptable solution for the outstanding issues between Poland and Hitler's Germany, and between Germany, Britain and France, at this point nothing would stop Europe's descent into war. After Stalin had snubbed the British and the French advances for mutual defensive arrangements, and after the last-minute deal between Hitler and Stalin had been struck, the German Führer was now ready to start realizing the plans and designs he had towards Germany' eastern neighbour. The date for the German attack had been originally set for the 26th – in the event, the objective conditions on the ground conspired to move the date forward a few days. On August 30th, then, at 4.30 in the morning, the German war plan was put practically into motion.
The war caught the maid of Finland, like most of Europe, in her bathing suit.
…
"Beach life in summery Helsinki in August 1939."
...
September 2009
The young woman hesitated at the street corner. The Finnish street names said nothing to her, and neither of the crossing streets sounded like the one she had memorized at the hotel. The one she thought she had memorized.
Maybe someone, like Ericsson or, what, Tohatsu, could invent a map they could put in a phone one of these days?, she thought to herself, or a program-thing that tells you where you are and where you should be going through an ear piece or something? It would help stupid people who neglect to grab a tourist map along when they leave their hotel.
Just a thought.
Flipping a coin in her mind, she settled on the option on the left.
Passing the incongruous collection of buildings this part of the city seemed to be made of, derelict-looking post-war apartment buildings alternating with hypermodern boxes of angular, reinforced glass and faux-rusty steel, the architectural style that had apparently grabbed all of Europe by storm since 2005 or so. The young woman had for long assumed that somewhere in Brussels or Geneva, maybe, there was a shadowy a cabal of middle-aged men in corduroy jackets, goatees and thick-rimmed glasses who decided on these things, chain-smoking French cigarettes as they did so.
A gamut of Gauloises geeks, the woman thought and smiled to herself. Maybe any year now, one of them would spill his wine, or stumble on a poodle, and they would then accidentally nudge Europe on another architectural track.
Nora had walked here through a part of town they called Töölönlahti, a collection of angular city blocks apparently undergoing a major rebuild. Now, just before the major north-south Liberty Boulevard [1] running to the city centre, she arrived to the area where she was supposed to go.
Or so she thought.
It was early afternoon on a Saturday. There were people about, but then for someone who had lived most of her life in Brooklyn, it seemed pretty placid, for a weekend. As Nora crossed the street at random street lights, she almost bumped into a knot of sports fans. There were groups of young men about, in color-coded clothing, brandishing scarves and chugging beer from cans they carried around. Nora thought she saw fans of two teams- a red-white one, and a yellow-black one. She had no idea what sport they were all about, and wasn't really invested in the thing enough to stop one of the small groups of men to ask them.
Some of the men tried to make Nora to stop, though, and offer beer to her. She just gave them the cold shoulder. Nora used to say yes to free beer back in the day, every time it was even remotely possible, or to any free drink at all, but now things were different.
Maybe in another life.
After another seemingly random choice of turns, Nora arrived to a small open area between lines of buildings. It was park-ish, she thought and started looking for a street sign somewhere.
Sure enough, in a minute she found one that said Olympiapuisto.
Lo and behold, it was the right place.
Walking along to path towards the centre of the small park she looked around herself but her eyes could not pinpoint what she was looking for.
Soon she reached the concrete water feature in the middle of the park. Next to it was a large, newish metal plate with some text in it, and a picture of a buildind with a single elegant tower seemingly carved into the steel.
”In this location stood the Helsinki Olympic Stadium”, said the text, in Finnish and English. It said nothing more, and Nora felt kind of let down by it. Why pique my interest about a building that is no longer here? Why is it no longer here? What happened to it and why?
Come to think of it, Nora wasn't quite sure if there even ever had been Olympic games in Helsinki. But then an exhaustive supply of sports-related trivia certainly was not one of her strong suits, anyway.
Nora sat down on a modern-style bench some meters away from the water feature. There was nobody in sight but a small bunch of kids in black, hanging out in the corner of the small park. From where they were sitting, they looked very much like AnarGoths. They probably were AGs, she decided. There were AGs all over the world. A lot of people liked bands like the Messiah Moneylenders or the Krakd Skulls.
Sitting there on the bench all alone, Nora felt a familiar itch on her arm. Rolling back her sleeve, she again saw the uneven grid of criss-crossing scars there.
Don't scratch it, she told herself again, it'll only get worse.
It was psychosomatic, she had decided by now. It had been the same thing ever since she got out of jail.
Glancing again at the AG kids, especially the one girl that very much reminded Nora of a younger iteration of herself, she was distracted by movement in the corner of an eye. Off a side street, a red car had appeared, and it slowed down to stop by the side of the street. It was an older model European car, of the kind of ”boxy, rounded a bit around the edges” style late 70s European cars were. This one, though, was in a very good condition. By the looks of it, the car could have rolled off a production line if not yesterday, then probably last week.
Someone loves this car very much.
The car's driver got out, and it did not really surprise Nora to see that it was a familiar figure. The man took a look around himself, and then nodded to her. Closing the car door, he took off towards her across the otherwise deserted street.
”Hello”, the man said, ”is this seat taken?”
”Go ahead, sit down”, Nora answered to Jyri Rantanen, the white-bearded man from the Finnish National Archival System, ”I though you had forgotten our meeting.”
The man shrugged.
”Problem with the old thing”, he said, nodding towards the car, ”Sorry.”
The man sat down heavily and then looked at the sky, like expecting rain at any time.
The group of kids Nora had just been looking at now walked past them, some of them looking at Rantanen and his car. One of the boys, with a particularly nasty look about him, looked directly at the bearded man and suddenly threw up his right hand.
”Sieg heil!”, he yelled, his voice dripping irony, ”Nordlicht!”
Rantanen glared at him, but said nothing. He kept his eyes on the boy as he stalked off.
”The kids these days – what do they learn at school, exactly? I drive a god-damned VAU and he thinks that makes me a Fascist? Really, I am not even a Civil Guardsman!”
Nora didn't understand.
”What?”
”Those guys in grey uniforms, with an 'S' on their sleeves and on their vehicles. Civil Guard.”[5]
”It thought they were security guards, or something.”
”Well, they are, kind of. And then in some ways they are also like the police. Sometimes.”
Nora shook her head.
”They can't be both, that doesn't make sense.”
Rantanen smiled.
”Well, you're an American. Unlike our Finnish youth, you have an excuse to be ignorant of our history. They didn't teach Finnish history in your school, did they?”
I didn't much care for learning about American history those days, either, Nora thought but said nothing. She looked at Rantanen's briefcase instead, meaningfully.
The man smiled.
”There's something I can do for you... But it will cost you.”
”Money's no object to me. I learned that a few weeks go, actually. For the first time in my life.”
The inheritance had certainly been a surprise. Nora wasn't quite sure how to take it even now.
Rantanen's smile grew wider.
”I am... kidding, isn't that how say it. I am not going to charge you any money, not really. As far as I am concerned, it...”
Rantanen's voice was cut out by the sound of an explosion. It could not have been more than some hundred meters off, Nora thought later. A rush of adrenaline washed over her.
After a brief silence, there was the sound of shouting, and some car horns. And then she heard emergency vehicles.
Rantanen shook his head mournfully.
”Not this again.”
…
I am a friend of bruises
I just can't get enough of them
And so why even a shark or a bull
Would not keep playing with you
Here I am again without a helmet
And soon I'll be licking new wounds
Deep and salty ones
When nothing feels like anything
Pain is a substitute for a friend
...
Notes:
[1] At this time, apparently, sometimes called Aura after the Aura River running through the city of Turku, the centre of the traditional province of Finland Proper.
[2] One of the most well-known recommendations of the Kirke Committee was to base Finnish military aviation predominately on bombers and recon aircraft, floatplanes operating out of coastal and lakeside bases. The plan, which was welcomed by the Finnish Air Force at the time, was in retrospect very appropriate for the time when it was made.
[3] A group of young writers and artists, seeking to ”let some air” into the stuffy Finnish cultural milieu by ”opening windows to Europe”. Paavolainen and Mika Waltari were among the best-known members of the group.
[4] Vapauden puistokatu.
[5] Suojeluskunta.
...
To Be Continued
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