Vantage Point North

The social stability in Finland had steadily deteriorated as the newly independent nation lacked both police and military forces and the Russian army still had a strong presence within the Finnish borders. Both socialists and conservatives had begun to build their own security forces during the previous summer. Red Guards and Russians supporting them To solve the situation, that had already escalated into sporadic violence and acts of terror, the Finnish Senate, with a mandate from the elected Parliament, declared in 25th of January1918 that the Civil Guards would become the Senates army under the command of the General Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, a 30 year veteran of the Imperial Russian Army. The Reds immediately refused to obey the order to stand down their military forces. The Civil Guards began to disarm the Russian garrisons and used the captured weaponry to arm their forces. During the 27 th of January 1918 the Red Guards issued a full-scale mobilization within the...

The only picture taken at Petäjäsaari during Winter War. As a celebration of the #Finland100 I decided to write about a small but personal piece of Finnish history. A few years ago my mother asked me to find out what exactly happened to her uncle Sulo, who had disappeared during the Second World War. She knew that it had happened at the end of the Winter War in 1940, but nothing else. She gave me his full name, rough time of birth and a copy of his last letter. In that letter he wrote that he had just arrived as fresh reinforcement to a new unit. Finnish soldiers overlooking the Lake Ladoga during the Winter War (Sa-kuva) Armed with this information I started to dig some archives and uncovered the date of Sulo's demise, only three days after the last letter was dated. The same source revealed the unit he had served in and the place of his disappearance. Another archive hosted the war diaries of the different Finnish military units, so I dug out the diary of th...