Land of Snow and Ashes

by Petra Rautiainen

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction; World War II; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

The haunting, gripping story of Lapland's buried history of Nazi crimes during World War II, perfect for fans of Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius

“A beautifully written novel and a thriller that will keep readers turning the page to find out the truth about this disgraceful chapter of Finnish history”  – Harvard Review

Finnish Lapland, 1944: a young soldier is called to work as an interpreter at a Nazi prison camp. Surrounded by cruelty and death, he struggles to hold onto his humanity. When peace comes, the crimes are buried beneath the snow and ice.

A few years later, journalist Inkeri is assigned to investigate the rapid development of remote Western Lapland. Her real motivation is more personal: she is following a lead on her husband, who disappeared during the war. Finding a small community riven with tension and suspicious of outsiders, Inkeri slowly begins to uncover traces of disturbing facts that were never supposed to come to light.

From this starkly beautiful polar landscape emerges a story of silenced histories and ongoing oppression, of human brutality and survival.

Release date: October 10, 2023

Publisher: Pushkin Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
 
It goes without saying that complex, sprawling global conflicts like the Second World War were experienced in different ways by different people in different places. In Britain, for instance, there is a particular narrative of how we think of the war, and this is underpinned by the language we use to talk about it. Events like the Blitz, the Normandy landings and the Dunkirk evacuations don’t require any explanation for English-language readers because they are so ingrained in our collective, supra-generational memory of the war. However, when faced with similarly iconic Second-World-War events from the Finnish context—say, the destruction and subsequent reconstruction of Lapland—an amount of background and context is needed. And whereas our gallery of protagonists from Churchill to Vera Lynn and the Bletchley codebreakers needs no introduction, readers may be less familiar with their Finnish equivalents Marshal C.G.E. Mannerheim (a prominent military leader and subsequent President of Finland), Risto Ryti (wartime Prime Minister and later President), the Lotta Brigade (a voluntary women’s auxiliary organization) and the Paatsalo Unit (a collective of double agents working reconnaissance operations along Finland's north-eastern border during the war). 
Naturally, Finland has its own unique narrative of the Second World War, too. In fact, Finns consider the war as at least three separate conflicts: the Winter War (1939–40), the Continuation War (1941–44) and the Lapland War (1944–45), and it is during the two latter conflicts and their aftermath that the events of Land of Snow and Ashes take place. It follows, therefore, that Finnish has its own vocabulary to discuss themes associated with these conflicts, and rendering this intricate discourse in another language without footnotes, while maintaining the elegance of the original prose, is a challenge for the translator.
Much has been written on Finland’s role in the Second World War, but, to provide brief context for the events of this novel, during the Continuation War Finland aligned itself with Nazi Germany because both had a shared enemy in the Soviet Union. Though still a taboo subject in Finland, there was an expansionist aspect to the Continuation War. One of its goals, advanced primarily by the Finnish nationalist organizations the Academic Karelia Society and the Patriotic People’s Movement, and at least notionally supported by former President P.E. Svinhufvud, was the creation of a so-called Greater Finland. Finland’s eastern border had already been redrawn several times since 1809, so the aim of Greater Finland was to incorporate all the Finnic peoples living on the Russian side of the border (including Karelians, Ingrians and various Sámi-speaking communities) back into the Finnish fatherland. As the novel lays bare, the matter of deciding who could be considered ethnically “pure” came perilously close to full-blown eugenics, as the references to the doctor, anthropologist and “race researcher” Yrjö Kajava suggest. Needless to say, after the war the cause of, and the ideology behind, a Greater Finland were swiftly disavowed.
The Continuation War came to an end with the signing on 19th September 1944 of the Moscow Armistice, the template for the eventual peace treaty between Finland and Russia. As well as ceding many areas along the eastern border back to Russia, including the Petsamo region in eastern Lapland, the armistice also required that Finland eject all German troops from its territory. As they retreated from Lapland, the Germans sought to destroy as much infrastructure as possible and planted innumerable landmines—as one iconic road sign put it, “Als Dank für nicht bewiesene Waffenbrüderschaft” (“By way of thanks for not showing brotherhood in arms”). The scorched-earth withdrawal from the region saw thousands of houses and churches razed to the ground and hundreds of roads and bridges detonated. This period was known as the Lapland War, and it is in the lead-up to this shift in allegiance between Finland, Germany and Russia that Väinö’s diary is written. Inkeri’s arrival in Enontekiö in 1947 coincides with the initial phase of the post-war reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the rebuilding of Lapland provided a suitable opportunity to continue the process of assimilating the Sámi into Finnish life and culture. This process has been going on since at least the seventeenth century with the imposition of Christianity and the Church’s active discouragement of local beliefs and religious practices, shamanistic traditions such as yoik-singing, and the speaking of Sámi languages. As the novel describes, not only were schools rebuilt after the war, education in Lapland was entirely restructured, for instance by making children “board” at school dormitories, far away from their families and traditions, and teaching them Finnish instead of their native Sámi languages. At the time of events in the novel the Sámi began to express growing resentment at their treatment, and to this day there is a sense that each new law passed represents the slow erosion of their centuries-old traditions and livelihoods. This long-held grudge is encapsulated in Piera’s untranslatable apophthegm “Lanta sikenee, Lappi pakenee”, literally “the nation deepens or tightens its grip, Lapland retreats”. In the translation I have rendered this on p. XX as “the south prospers while the north withers”. Setting this as a conflict between north and south is, of course, a slight oversimplification; it is more a case of one culture gradually encroaching upon another over a period of centuries. The character of Bigga-Marja embodies this clash; her double-barrelled name is half Sámi, half Finnish, and, caught between the two cultures, she struggles to establish her own identity.
The question of how to refer to the Sámi in English is complicated, as we lack the words to express subtle distinctions between the groups and identities at the focus of Land of Snow and Ashes. In her 1967 book The Finns and Their Country, Wendy Hall writes that “the Lapps are to be distinguished from the Laplanders, who are Finns living in the province of Lapland”. The Finnish term lappalainen (“Lapp”) is today considered somewhat pejorative, though it appears frequently in the language of the novel. Because Hall’s distinction is important for the interpersonal dynamics at play in the novel, throughout this translation I use “Sámi” and “Lapp” to refer to specifically Sámi characters (e.g. Piera and Bigga-Marja) and “Finn”, “Laplander” and occasionally “southerner” to refer to the non-Sámi characters (e.g. Inkeri and Olavi).
This being said, the Sámi themselves are far from a homogenous group. There are at least nine main Sámi languages, including Northern Sámi, Akkala Sámi (now virtually extinct) and Inari Sámi, which are all mentioned in the novel. Furthermore, as nomadic people the Sámi have never been confined within the arbitrary borders of nation states, though the constant redrawing of these borders has created many problems over the years, particularly for reindeer herders. The Sámi still consider their land to encompass the entire area from the Norwegian coast in the west all the way to the Kola Peninsula in the east. As one of the herdsmen in the novel notes, “The reindeer bow to the authority of no man".
Though, to this day, there are Sámi news broadcasts every evening on national television, Finnish and Northern Sámi, the largest of the Sámi languages and the one used most frequently in this novel, are not mutually intelligible. For this reason(!) I have elected to retain examples of Sámi languages in their original forms, not in a voyeuristic attempt to provide local colour but to preserve the sense of alienation that Finnish readers would experience when reading these passages. The snippets of dialogue in Sámi, notably the encounter with the herdsman, serve to put the reader in Inkeri’s shoes: though she represents the “dominant” culture, she can’t understand anything of the local language. As Piera puts it, she will always be an outsider. When they read this passage, Finnish readers are at a loss too: no Finnish translation is provided for these dialogues, and though Finnish readers will readily identify the language as Sámi, they won’t understand more than a word here and there. This communication barrier—between Finns and the Sámi and between the reader and the text—in fact exemplifies the cultural clash explored throughout the novel.
As I write these words in Hanko, the southernmost point in mainland Finland, it is worth remembering that from here it is over 1,200 kilometres to Inari. Finland is a vast country, and even to readers here in the south, Lapland is both geographically, linguistically and culturally a distant, alluring place that most people have never visited. I hope this short introduction will help open a window into the fascinating history and culture that informs the world of Land of Snow and Ashes.
 
David Hackston
Hanko, July 2021
 


I


INARI
 
Feb. 1944
I arrived in Inari yesterday, transferred from the penal colony at Hyljelahti. This new camp isn’t marked on Finnish maps. It lies about twenty kilometres to the north-east of Inari parish church. The lake is nearby. There is no proper road to speak of, and as you turn towards the camp two large trees hide everything from view. By the trees there are a couple of signposts informing us in German and Inari Sámi that trespassing is punishable by death—Sámi because anyone hiking around here is likely a Lapp trekking across the fells. Whether or not they can read is anybody’s guess.
      Hänninen was there to meet me. I introduced myself: Väinö Remes, martial official, interpreter. He said nothing, sized me up from head to toe. I imagine I must have looked quite young. We drove along the footpath in a German vehicle. At first the guard on duty didn’t react at all, but when he saw the officer his expression changed. You could see from the young German’s eyes that he was afraid. On one side of his collar was the insignia of a skull. Hänninen said something and offered him a cigarette. The guard declined. I’m not sure whether he understood any Finnish.
      Hänninen explained the same things I had heard before. Just as before, the prisoners are segregated into different tents. The tent on the left is for Ukrainians, the next one along for Soviets and the one after that for Serbs. And there is a fourth tent here too. He didn’t tell me anything about that one. I don’t know what is in there.
      There are no Jews here. Any Jews, or any suspected Jews, are transferred to the penal colony at Hyljelahti. There aren’t as many prisoners here as there are elsewhere, but more arrive in a continuous stream. According to Hänninen, another consignment of prisoners came by ship from Danzig the day before yesterday, among them Poles and Romanians. From tomorrow they will be set to work building the road to the north. There are a few other camps nearby, one of which is reserved for Germans, race traitors and those convicted of treason. Every Sunday they are rounded up and taken to the county jail in Inari for execution.
      You cannot describe this camp without mentioning the smell. The fresh winter air notwithstanding, the stench of death hangs all around. The smell struck me in the face as Hänninen pushed open the door of one of the tents. Right in the middle of the tent, amid a clutter of dirty blankets, stood a strange-looking contraption. I don’t know why, but at first I thought it must have been a rubbish bin made of old tin cans. You can make all kinds of things out of tin, but I soon realized that the assemblage in fact served as a small stove. The men slept tight together, some chained to the iron structure and the rest shackled to one another. There was no fire in the stove, though it was freezing cold. The stench coming off the prisoners was so repulsive that I broke out in a coughing fit.
      Hänninen told me that people get used to the smell. His eyes were languid and sleepy. I know where a look like that comes from. I asked him why there was no fire in the prisoners’ stove. He replied that yesterday one of the prisoners had brought firewood into the tent without permission.
      We continued on our way to a building standing next to a trench cut into the peat, its colourless walls made from long-dead pine trees and with only two windows. Inside the building it was warm. Hänninen stepped into the room and logged my arrival by noting the details in a ledger. I signed the page without reading what it said, and he didn’t look at what I wrote either. He’s fed up with all this too.
      Hänninen impressed upon me that I should always follow orders and that I am here to serve the Germans, not only as an interpreter but also as a guard. He told me the story of another guard, Lars something or other, who had inadvertently leant so far into the guard’s booth that he couldn’t be seen from afar. Commander Felde, who was to be my superior, had just returned to the camp, drunk, after a meeting with provincial governor Hillilä and Colonel Willamo. He shot the guard on the spot. Hänninen said he had witnessed it himself. He had been with the commander at the time, claimed he still had bits of the German boy’s brain spattered on his shirt collar. As he told me all this he took something small from the upper shelf, stuffed it in his pocket, then picked up his suitcase from the floor.
      Once outside, he handed me my weapons and various other accoutrements. A rifle and a pistol. It was the first time I had ever carried anything like this. In my previous roles, I had had neither permission nor inclination to bear arms. The pistol belt felt surprisingly heavy. We walked in silence towards the guard’s booth, where I was due to start a shift. Before we parted ways, Hänninen took a brown-glass phial from his pocket, a blank label attached to its side. He administered a few drops into his mouth, swallowed and cleared his throat. He looked at me closely, as though he was about to ask if I was cold. I tugged instinctively at my thick coat, beneath which I had pulled on an extra overcoat, and wiggled my toes inside my oiled and waterproofed boots.
      Hänninen took his watch from his pocket, glanced at it and wound it, then gazed at the sky. ‘There’s a Finnish prisoner here too,’ he all but whispered, and I didn’t have the chance to ask anything further before he wished me good luck and retraced his own steps back through the gates, walked to the car and slammed the black door shut behind him. The rear lights flared red as a German guard stepped out of the booth, stood to attention and headed back to his barracks for the night. Then I took his place.
      It was around three-fifteen in the morning when I saw a solitary shooting star fall from the sky. But I didn’t dare make a wish.
      This land can no longer afford wishes.
      This is a lost land...