Chapter3 The Line Crossed Us? Remapping the Geo-body of a Nation: How Young People in Finland Understand Shifting Borders

Finland’s Shifting Borders in Historical Perspective

Historically Swedish territory, Finland came under Russian control following Russia’s 1808–9 war with Sweden, and in 1812 Russia created the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland.14 The Karelian border drawn in 1812 was still in place in December 1917, when Finland declared its independence from Russia on the heels of the Bolshevik Revolution. The next two years were marked by turmoil, as the so-called Whites—supporters of the provisional Finnish government set up in 1917—fought the revolutionary forces of the Finnish Socialist Workers’ Republic (the Reds). After a bloody civil war in the spring of 1918, the Whites prevailed, and in 1920 the newly constituted Republic of Finland and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic signed the Treaty of Tartu, which established the border between the two. Although Finland’s Karelian border was unaltered, its northeastern border changed quite dramatically in 1920 as a result of the addition of the Petsamo area, which the Russians ceded to Finland in exchange for two districts of East Karelia that the Finnish Army had occupied during this tumultuous period.

As these initial struggles might suggest, the looming presence of the Soviet Union, just across the border, was a central factor in Finland’s post-independence process of nation building. As Paasi points out, “The Finnish state as a national ‘We’ has typically been constructed in exclusive terms in relation to Russia/the Soviet Union (‘The Other’),” with the physical borderline making concrete this conceptual division.15 Uuno Kailas’s well-known poem “Rajalla” (On the border), the opening stanza of which is quoted in the epigraph, expresses this nationalist perspective. The poem refers to the borderline between the newly independent Republic of Finland and the Soviet Union, which Kailas likens to an unbridgeable gulf, a chasm. Saija Kaskinen points to the antagonism toward the Soviet Union visible in the poem, which portrays Finland “as the guardian of Western culture against an invasion from the East.”16

No such invasion materialized, however, until the outbreak of World War II. During the war, Finland experienced two periods of warfare against the Soviet Union, the second in alliance with Nazi Germany. These are known as the Winter War (November 1939–March 1940) and the Continuation War (June 1941–September 1944). The Winter War began when the Soviet Union invaded Finland and lasted for only three and a half months. It ended with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty, according to which, as mentioned earlier, Finland was obliged to cede a significant portion of its territory: the Karelian Isthmus (the area between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga) and Ladoga Karelia (adjacent territory to the north of Lake Ladoga extending roughly halfway down its northeastern shore), part of the northern municipality of Salla, and five islands near the eastern end of the Gulf of Finland (see figure 3.1). A new Finnish-Soviet border was drawn across Karelia, to the west of the 1920 borderline, thus substantially shrinking Finland’s share of the Karelian region.

The Continuation War began in June 1941, just a few days after Nazi Germany launched a major offensive against the Soviet Union. Although not formally allied with the Axis powers, Finland saw in the German attack on its long-standing enemy an opportunity to recover the part of Karelia it had ceded in 1940 and perhaps gain even more. Supplied by Nazi Germany and supported by German troops, the Finnish Army succeeded in recapturing the lost Karelian territory in little more than two months, thereby restoring the 1920 borderline. The army then advanced into Soviet Karelia to occupy territory extending along the entire northeastern shore of Lake Ladoga and all the way northeast to the western shore of Lake Onega while also slightly expanding its share of the Karelian Isthmus (see figure 3.2). This advance was fuelled in part by the expansionist and ultra-nationalist vision of “Greater Finland,” which would include essentially all of Soviet Karelia.17

Finland retained control of the territory it had captured for the better part of three years. In June 1944, however, Soviet forces embarked on a major, multi-pronged offensive and by September had recaptured most of the territory that Finland had occupied. This led to the signing of the Moscow Armistice, which restored the 1940 border. In addition, Finland was forced to cede the Petsamo area (such that Norway now bordered the Soviet Union) and to lease territory on the Porkkala peninsula to the Soviets for a period of fifty years for the construction of a naval base.18 Finland’s border was ratified in the 1947 Paris Peace Treaties and has remained unaltered since then.

World War II caused a traumatic, permanent loss of property, community, and way of life for those who lived in and were forced to leave the areas that Finland ceded to the Soviet Union. In total, somewhere around 420,000 people, over 11 percent of Finland’s wartime population, were evacuated from their homes and subsequently resettled elsewhere in postwar Finland.19 Karelia was the largest of the ceded areas, and it also contained the city of Vyborg, a cultural hub situated in the Karelian Isthmus on the Gulf of Finland. Not only, then, did the ceding of Karelia generate by far the greatest number of displaced persons (roughly 407,000, or about 97 percent of the total), but the loss of that territory delivered a major cultural and economic blow to the Finnish nation.20

Following World War II, the issue of whether Finland should attempt to reclaim sovereignty over Karelia and the other ceded territories and thus restore the 1920 borderline (the so-called Karelian Question) became a topic of discussion, although during the Cold War it was never officially on the political agenda, as Finland could not afford to antagonize the Soviet Union. In the post-Soviet era, however, the experiences of the Karelian evacuees could be more freely recounted and published, and opinions and feelings around Karelia and the Karelian Question could be openly expressed, for example, in the Finnish press, which had self-censored during the Cold War.21

During the Soviet era, Finland’s eastern border formed a section of the Iron Curtain and, much as the 1920 borderline had done, represented a dividing line between the east and the west. Yet that line truly was a curtain, concealing an unknown beyond. As Kaskinen observes, a forbidding sea of barbed-wire fencing, watchtowers, and ominous warning signs, the Finnish-Soviet border became “one of the most strictly controlled and monitored borders in the world.” It was “closed and silent,” to the point that, as one former borderland resident recalled, “It felt as if the world is really flat and the end of the world is the Border. . . . It was the Border who was our neighbour, not the Soviet Union.”22 After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Finnish-Russian borderland experienced significant growth in terms of cross-border trade and traffic and was gradually transformed “from two isolated national territories into a transition zone, where the ‘other’ culture and society is ever more present.”23 Consequently, by the time I conducted my research, attitudes toward the border had begun to shift, and it was not necessarily seen as the barrier it once was.

Spatial Socialization and Mental Maps

For many people in Finland, the loss of Karelia and the other territories ceded during World War II has come to seem quite distant, yet some may still experience territorial phantom pains. Why an individual or group of people might feel territorial phantom pains in relation to former national territory can be explained in part by the concept of spatial socialization.

In Paasi’s definition, spatial socialization is “the process through which individual actors and collectivities are socialized as members of specific territorially bounded spatial entities and through which they more or less actively internalize collective territorial identities and shared traditions.”24 In other words, it is through spatial socialization that people come to feel that they belong to a particular expanse of territory (be it a nation or a local neighbourhood) and also learn what membership in that territory implies—what it means, for example, to be Finnish. At the same time, they develop a sense of ownership of that territory, the feeling that the territory belongs to them, just as they belong to it. At the national level, spatial socialization occurs not only through formal education (especially classes in history and geography) but also through everyday encounters with maps—on TV weather forecasts, for example, or in newspapers and magazines. Not too long ago, for example, an outline map of Finland even began to appear on milk cartons.25

At the time I conducted my research, the high school students with whom I worked were constantly being exposed to the processes of spatial socialization that operate via formal education in Finland as well as to informal processes at work in the society at large (although the milk cartons had yet to come along). For example, during a group discussion in the city of Oulu, on Finland’s west coast, students were asked how they had learned about Karelia. They reported that, although they did learn about it in school, it was also “general knowledge,” as one put it. Another called it “internal knowledge,” while a third commented that “it would be weird if you’re a Finn and you haven’t heard of Karelia.” A student in the northern city of Rovaniemi further noted that there are “a lot of . . . stories in magazines” about Karelia. Their comments well illustrate the effects of spatial socialization. Regardless of their geographic location, students viewed knowledge of Karelia as part of their identity as Finns.

Rovaniemi and Oulu were two of the eleven cities in Finland that I visited in 2017 in the course of my study (see figure 3.3). In what follows, I draw on data collected during thirty-eight mixed-methods focus groups, comprising a total of 325 high school students (aged 16 to 19).26 These data consist of transcripts of discussions that took place during the groups, 315 pairs of maps of Finland drawn by participants, and 958 pieces of written material.27 The transcripts and the written materials were analyzed qualitatively, according to a method known as thematic content analysis.28 The maps were analyzed mainly via quantitative grouping, although the analysis also included qualitative interpretations.

During the groups, students were asked about the events of World War II and about their knowledge and perceptions of Karelia, in particular. In order to stimulate discussion, I also asked them to draw mental maps of the outline of Finland before and after the war. In brief, in a mental mapping exercise, a participant draws a map based on an image they have formed in their mind. As subjective impressions, mental maps provide insight into spatial perceptions—how participants conceive of or imagine a certain place.29 The maps were not entirely individual efforts, however. Participants were encouraged to talk to each other about their maps as they were drawing them, and the talk during the mapping task added another layer to the analysis.

Locating the Past in the Present: Perceptions and Interpretations

As was clear from the maps they drew, students were aware that Finland’s eastern border changed as a result of World War II. The loss of the Petsamo area was shown in 89 percent of the map pairs, and 66 percent marked the ceded Karelian territory. In contrast, the other ceded territories—Salla and the islands in the Gulf of Finland—and the leased area of Porkkala were indicated on only a very few maps: Salla on 8 percent, with the gulf islands and Porkkala each marked on only 2 percent. As a general rule, the maps were simple outlines that included few other details. All but twenty-five of the 315 map pairs (92%) showed Finland as if it were a free-floating island, without any indication of what lies beyond its borders: Russia to the east, Sweden to the west, Norway to the north, and Estonia to the south, across the Gulf of Finland.

About 5 percent of the map pairs were anthropomorphic, depicting Finland as a human figure, sometimes complete with human face. Participants also anthropomorphized Finland in comments made during the mental mapping task. For example, in an apparent allusion to the Finnish Maiden, a student in Imatra described Finland as “a skirt-wearing woman who has her hands up.”30 In some cases, participants gave Finland’s body a voice to call attention to a key feature on a map. Several indicated that Petsamo was understood as Finland’s lost arm: “I lost me hand!” “I have been amputated,” “Where’s the other hand [mis toinen käsi]?” (see figures 3.4, 3.5, and 3.6), while a fourth map announced that “Karelia has been lost [Karjala menetetty]” (see figure 3.7). In discussions during the mapping task, Petsamo was also sometimes imagined as having been violently severed from the national body. As a student in Lappeenranta commented, “After the Second World War, the arm was pulled off.”31

Prior to the war, the Petsamo region—the Finnish Maiden’s second arm—was a striking visual feature on a logo-map, jutting out at a sharp angle to the northeast. Its subsequent loss, which does resemble an amputation (a war wound, so to speak), is very noticeable and therefore more likely to be recalled and represented on a mental map.32 As noted earlier, Karelia was not an especially distinctive feature on a map, however, and for those accustomed to the postwar logo-map, its prewar shape is harder to envisage, as is evident in these maps. While the loss of Karelia is remembered for other reasons, students seemed somewhat uncertain of its shape, variously depicting the territory as a protruding rectangle, a crescent, and an inland panhandle.

Immediately after the map-drawing task, I asked participants, “What happened in Finland during World War II?” In their responses, students generally remembered the loss of Karelia, Petsamo, and Salla and also mentioned the leasing of Porkkala to the Soviet Union, even though the location of Porkkala was marked on only 2 percent of the maps they drew. Sometimes participants left out one or another of the ceded areas. For example, a participant in the city of Turku, in the southwestern corner of Finland, neglected to mention Petsamo, in the far northeast, commenting that, after the Continuation War, “we lost Salla, Ladoga Karelia, and the Karelian Isthmus, then Finland’s outer islands, and then Porkkala was rented out for fifty years.”33 In several groups, participants collaborated in order to create a list of the ceded areas and when they were lost. A student in one of the Helsinki focus groups noted that at the end of the Winter War, “peace came and Finland lost Karelia,” and then went on to say, “Finland also lost Porkkala cape. After the war. Then all the train windows had to always be covered, when the train went by there”—an eerie reminder of the Soviet presence beyond the curtains.34 Another participant added, “Petsamo was lost in the peace of Moscow ’44” (a reference to the Moscow Armistice).35

Some of the focus groups discussed Finland’s expansionist aims at the beginning of the Continuation War (1941–44). As a group participant in Vaasa commented, after the territorial losses of the Winter War (1939–40), “peace was not considered to be final, it was only temporary”—referring to the Continuation War, in which Finland set out to recover the territory it had lost.36 A student in Oulu explained to me that, before the Continuation War, “everyone just thought that, okay, Finland just want[s] their old areas back, but then hunger grows when you eat . . . so we went a bit over.” Note that the student uses the national “we” to include herself in an anthropomorphized Finland, which hungrily “eats” the additional territory.

During a focus group session in Helsinki, I asked participants to define “Greater Finland,” an idea that had become popular around the time that Finland declared its independence. While definitions differ, Greater Finland is commonly understood to encompass the entire Karelian region, from the western shore of the White Sea, in the north, down to the southern tip of Lake Onega and then west along the Svir River to the southern shore of Lake Lagoda and finally to St. Petersburg. One student, however, acknowledged the existence of a far more aspirational vision of Greater Finland, noting that “some think it was only a bit more, than, like, the border that was there before the wars, but some think it should be until the Urals.”37 In this ambitiously expansive definition—the Urals are a mountain range some 1,500 kilometres east of St. Petersburg, generally regarded as the dividing line between eastern and western Russia—Finland would include a vast tract of territory covering much of the northern half of eastern Russia.38

Although the ceded territory of Petsamo was mentioned in focus groups everywhere, I specifically asked about it only in focus groups in Rovaniemi—of all the cities I visited the one closest to the territory itself (although still several hundred kilometres away). The fact that 94 percent of the students in Rovaniemi represented the loss of the Petsamo region on their “after” maps, whereas only 16 percent indicated the Karelian territory that had been ceded, suggests the influence of proximity on spatial perception.39 Despite its remote location, well inside the Arctic Circle, the Petsamo region had provided Finland with access to the Barents Sea, in the Arctic Ocean, via the ice-free harbour at Liinahamari, and was also an important source of nickel. One participant commented that, in comparison to Vyborg, Karelia’s largest city, “Petsamo was a greater loss, in my opinion.”40 When I asked the group about this comment, one replied that Petsamo is “an economically more important area . . . economically the bigger loss is Petsamo.”41

Later, I asked whether the group thought Petsamo should be part of Finland. “Definitely,” answered one participant, while another noted that “it could bring lots of jobs here to Lapland.”42 The same participant also said that it would be “lovely” if both Vyborg and Petsamo were to “belong to Finland again, but it’s not worth starting a war over them,” and then added that “if there’s a situation where it’s possible to get them back, like in a sensible way, then, certainly.”43 Members of other Rovaniemi focus groups voiced similar views. One expressed indifference regarding the fate of Vyborg (“It’s all the same to me where it is”) but declared that “of course” Petsamo should be part of Finland: “It gives access to the Arctic Ocean.”44 “Finland would be rich,” said another, “if we still had Petsamo,”45 while a third felt that “there’s literally zero chance it’ll ever be part of Finland, but it would be nice.” Overall, these participants clearly regretted the loss of Petsamo, yet the reasons they gave were economic and pragmatic. There was little evidence of cultural or emotional ties to Finland’s northeastern arm, and its amputation did not seem to be associated with any territorial phantom pains.

The ceded area of Salla was mentioned in passing in a number of groups but discussed at length in only one, replicating mainstream Finnish discourse more broadly, in which this ceded area has been largely ignored.46 A participant in Oulu brought up Salla because of family ties: “My mother’s father used to talk about the town called Salla where he used to live,” she recalled, “and I’ll remember probably forever how he said that his mother was baking bread when the announcement came that they have to leave and she couldn’t stay and wait for the bread to be ready—they had to go right away. [. . .] It makes me feel that we have things so good in these times.”47

During the focus groups, participants also discussed their perceptions of Karelia.48 Two recurring and related themes were the idea that Karelia rightly belonged to Finland (on which opinions varied) and the significance of the region to Finnish national identity. “Karelia had been a really important area for Finland for the whole of Finnish or Swedish history,” said a student in Oulu, “and there’s a lot of our ancient history there,”49 while a member of a focus group in Turku commented: “It was originally a part of Finland but then we sort of had to give it away to the Russians.” When participants were asked, “What do you know about Karelia?” the slogan “Return Karelia” (“Karjala takaisin”) was often their instant response (and one student even included it on an “after” map: see figure 3.6). When a student in Lahti was asked where he had heard the slogan, he replied, “Well, it’s kinda a nationalistic thing—it belongs to Finns’ culture.”50

Echoing the theme of Karelia as inherently Finnish, a student in Oulu explained to me that “many Finns think it should belong to Finland.” It is an area, she said, that “we would like to have back, but we probably never will.” Participants also reflected on the desire to see Finland’s territorial integrity restored in the summaries they wrote at the end of the group sessions. Linking this desire to national identity, a student in Rovaniemi wrote, “It’s part of Finnishness to yearn to get back those areas lost in the war.”51 In contrast, another student in Oulu rejected any sense of national loss: “Can Karelia ever be returned? No. Finns don’t miss it anymore.” All the same, the student said, “It was important that Karelia was discussed.”52

As the happy “before” faces and the unhappy “after” faces that appeared on their maps suggest, the students in my sample had learned, through processes of spatial socialization, that Karelia is integral to Finnish identity and that its loss should be mourned, although not necessarily put to rest. At the same time, as their comments illustrate, they had not always fully internalized that message and reacted to it in various ways—one pointing to the probable futility of hopes for restoration, and another challenging the very message itself.

The comments that students made during focus group discussions also illustrate the role of spatial socialization in the replacement of an existing logo-map with a new one. For example, a student in Vaasa clearly regarded the post–World War II border as correct, commenting that “Finland would be an awkward shape” if the border were adjusted back to its pre–World War II position. Arguing against the idea that the city of Vyborg should be part of Finland, another student in Vaasa noted its disappearance from the map and remarked that Finland “would be an ugly shape” if Vyborg were included.53 Like the first, this student had internalized the post–World War II logo-map, on which Finland’s southeastern border appears as a smooth curve from which no sections of territory protrude.

The lost part of Karelia did not appear to prompt much by way of territorial phantom pains in my participants, suggesting that, as Jussi Laine and Martin van der Velde observe, “the rough edges of the Karelian scar are slowly healing and fading in people’s memory.”54 With the exception of a few anthropomorphic maps and comments (see, for example, figure 3.5), students did not associate the loss of Petsamo with the idea of a violent assault on Finland’s geo-body, and they seldom mentioned Salla and the other lost territories, let alone with any sense of longing. My research participants may have recognized that “to yearn to get back those areas lost in the war” is part of being Finnish, but they felt little of that yearning themselves.

Conclusion

The redrawing of Finland’s border at the end of World War II created a new logo-map. The loss of territory integral to the Finnish geo-body provoked intense emotional pain among those upon whom the previous logo-map had been thoroughly imprinted. For them, remapping was difficult, and emotions associated with that loss have been slow to recede. Through processes of spatial socialization, however, young people today have internalized the new logo-map and have thus come to regard the redrawn border as correctly delimiting “their” space. At the same time, they know the history and have also learned via spatial socialization to view Finland’s forced sacrifice of territory as an unfair blow to the Finnish nation. This leaves them with the task of integrating various understandings of Finnish territory into their personal sense of national identity and of negotiating historical emotions that they have not themselves experienced.

The fading of memories and the emotions they once evoked is a natural process, one that occurs under any circumstances. Yet with respect to Finland’s changed borders, the lack of strong emotions among the students with whom I worked reflects an additional circumstance. Not only had these young people no personal experience of Finland’s eastern border being anywhere other than in its current location, but they were born roughly a decade after the fall of the Iron Curtain, at a time when Finland’s border with Russia was relatively open. They had no personal recollection of the Soviet Union’s existence or of the geopolitical climate in which the people of Finland once lived. All the same time, these young people had been exposed to a parallel narrative that also influenced their sense of national identity. They grew up surrounded by ideas and imaginaries concerning Finland’s the eastern border that derived from the memories of those who did recall the events of World War II and their aftermath—the ongoing threat posed by the Soviet “Other” and a “closed and silent” border that felt like the “end of the world.”

As one might predict, the tension between the past and present was especially visible in relation to Karelia, not the least because that territory had been home to the vast majority of those people evacuated from the ceded areas. Collectively, those evacuees represented a powerful storehouse of memories, permeated by feelings of sorrow, nostalgia, and a lingering sense of outrage—all bound up today in the slogan so often heard in my focus groups: “Karjala takaisin.” It is difficult to overestimate the enduring emotional significance of Karelia to Finnish national consciousness. Although the students in my sample were too far distant from that original moment of rupture to experience the same pain, their awareness of the past complicated their feelings around the border.

Since 2017, when my focus groups took place, the situation surrounding the Finnish-Russian border has, of course, altered dramatically. In 2020, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the closure of all Finland’s borders. This would have been the first time in their lives that my participants ever encountered a closed border. Russia’s subsequent invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, not only sent shockwaves throughout Finland, as it did through most of the world, but also raised fears about further Russian aggression. In response, Finland temporarily closed its eastern border while at the same time welcoming refugees from Ukraine.55 A little over a year later, in April 2023, Finland ended its long-standing policy of neutrality by joining NATO, much to the displeasure of Russia. Finland temporarily closed its border again in November 2023, after Russia began putting pressure on the country by channelling undocumented migrants to border regions. Then, in the face of Russian threats to mobilize troops, the Finnish government announced in April 2024 that the border would remain closed indefinitely.

Once again, then, the border is closed and silent, shrouded in an atmosphere of threat, and the sense of cautious optimism felt in 2017 now seems sadly premature. Even though the Finnish geo-body remains intact, the students who participated in my study will, like other Finns, have been obliged to reconsider their feelings around the country’s eastern border. As I hope this chapter has illustrated, borders are in large measure states of mind, ever subject to bordering. Once drawn, a borderline need not change in order to provoke new perceptions and new emotions, which in turn reshape the spatial socialization that young people subsequently internalize. It remains to be seen whether this generation will be taught that to regard Finland’s border with Russia as a danger zone is an inherent part of what it means to be Finnish.

Notes

1. 1. For a discussion of bordering, see James W. Scott, “Bordering, Border Politics and Cross-Border Cooperation in Europe.” On the social construction of borders, see Vladimir Kolosov, “Theoretical Approaches in the Study of Borders,” 50–51; as well as Vladimir Kolossov (an alternative spelling) and James Scott, “Selected Conceptual Issues in Border Studies.”

2. 2. See Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-body of a Nation, 17.

3. 3. Franck Billé, “Territorial Phantom Pains (and Other Cartographic Anxieties),” 10. Note that page numbers refer to the copy of Billé’s article available at https://api.repository.cam.ac.uk/server/api/core/bitstreams/2ede3afc-3d6a-4a12-8e66-8b1318cace86/content.

4. 4. Billé, “Territorial Phantom Pains,” 10. As Billé notes, the concept of a “logo-map” derives from Benedict Anderson’s classic study Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (first published in 1983), in which Anderson traces the origin of the map as logo to the production of imperial maps on which each state is represented in a different colour (13).

5. 5. Billé, “Territorial Phantom Pains,” 5.

6. 6. Billé, “Territorial Phantom Pains,” 18. See also Małgorzata Łukianow and Chloe Wells, “Territorial Phantom Pains: Third-Generation Postmemories of Territorial Changes.”

7. 7. Billé, “Territorial Phantom Pains,” 18.

8. 8. Spyros Spyrou and Miranda Christou, “Introduction,” 5.

9. 9. On youth and the construction of nationhood, see, for example, Pirjo Jukarainen, “Definitely Not Yet the End of Nations: Northern Borderlands Youth in Defence of National Identities”; and Janette Habashi, “Palestinian Children: Authors of Collective Memory.” On young people and bordering, see Martina McKnight and Madeleine Leonard, “Bordering in Transition: Young People’s Experiences in ‘Post-Conflict’ Belfast”; as well as the other essays in Spyros Spyrou and Miranda Christou, eds., Children and Borders.

10. 10. On Karelia and its significance to the Finnish people, see Christopher S. Browning and Pertti Joenniemi, “Karelia as a Finnish-Russian Issue: Re-negotiating the Relationship Between National Identity, Territory and Sovereignty”; Jussi Laine and Martin van der Velde, “Spiritually Ours, Factually Yours: Karelia and Russia in Finnish Public Consciousness”; and Kimmo Katajala and Ilkka Liikanen, “The Politics of History of the Lost Land: Shifting European, National and Regional Approaches to the History of Karelia.”

11. 11. On the role of maps in this process, see Katariina Kosonen, “Making Maps and Mental Images: Finnish Press Cartography in Nation-Building, 1899–1942.”

12. 12. For a history and analysis of the Finnish Maiden, see Johanna Valenius, Undressing the Maid: Gender, Sexuality and the Body in the Construction of the Finnish Nation.

13. 13. Anssi Paasi, “Dancing on the Graves: Independence, Hot/Banal Nationalism and the Mobilization of Memory,” 25. See also Saija Kaskinen, “If the Borders Could Tell: The Hybrid Identity of the Border in the Karelian Borderland,” 1190. Finland was not alone in this experience. At the end of World War II, Poland was, like Finland, forced to cede to the Soviet Union territory central to Polish national identity, which again entailed a massive displacement of people. For a comparison of the transgenerational persistence of territorial phantom pains, see Małgorzata Łukianow and Chloe Wells, “Territorial Phantom Pains: Third-Generation Postmemories of Territorial Changes.”

14. 14. On the earlier evolution of the Swedish border with Russia, see Ilkka Liikanen, “Territoriality, State, and Nationality in the Making of Borders of Finland: The Evolving Concept of Border in the Peace Treaties Between Russia and Sweden, 1323–1809”; and Kimmo Katajala, “Line, Zone or Sieve? Conceptualising the 1617 Russo-Swedish Border.”

15. 15. Paasi, “Dancing on the Graves,” 25. On the historical construction of the Finnish-Russian border more broadly, including its role in nation building and its ideological and socio-spatial significance to the Finnish people, see Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness: The Changing Geographies of the Finnish-Russian Border.

16. 16. Kaskinen, “If the Borders Could Tell,” 1192, which is also the source of the translation quoted in the epigraph. “Rajalla” was first published in 1931, in Uni ja kuolema (Sleep and death), and reprinted the following year in the anthology Runoja (Poems). See also “Uuno Kailas—Finnish Nationalist Poet, Author, and Translator,” Alternative Finland, June 9, 2013, http://www.alternativefinland.com/uuno-kailas/.

17. 17. On the nationalist aspirations surrounding the Continuation War, see Browning and Joenniemi, “Karelia as a Finnish-Russian Issue,” 14–15.

18. 18. The newly leased territory on the Porkkala peninsula replaced territory on the Hanko peninsula—located at the southwestern tip of the country by the entrance to the Gulf of Finland—that Finland had been forced to lease to the Soviet Union at the end of the Winter War (although the Soviets occupied the area only until December 1941). Although the Porkkala lease was for fifty years, by the mid-1950s the Soviets had, for a combination of military, political, and economic reasons, come to regard the Porkkala naval base as unnecessary. The base was therefore closed early in 1956, and the Soviet Union returned the territory to Finland. Even though the area had not been permanently ceded, while the base was operational Porkkala was in fact Soviet territory, completely sealed off from Finland itself. Over seven thousand Finnish residents were evacuated from the area, and although Finns could still travel by train from Helsinki to Turku, they had to cover the windows and were strictly forbidden to take photographs.

19. 19. For the figure of 420,000, see Olli Vehviläinen, Finland in the Second World War: Between Germany and Russia, 75.

20. 20. For the number of Karelian evacuees, see Ulla Savolainen, “The Return: Intertextuality of the Reminiscing of Karelian Evacuees in Finland,” 171.

21. 21. On the expression of public opinion regarding the Karelian Question as it emerged in the pages of Finland’s national newspaper, see Laine and van der Velde, “Spiritually Ours.” For reminiscences of Karelian evacuees, see Evgenia Golant, “Sharing the Stories of Those Migrated from Karelia”; and Savolainen, “The Return.”

22. 22. Kaskinen, “If the Borders Could Tell,” 1192.

23. 23. Virpi Kaisto and Olga Brednikova, “Lakes, Presidents and Shopping on Mental Maps: Children’s Perceptions of the Finnish-Russian Border and the Borderland,” 59. See also Pirkkoliisa Ahponen, “Miserable or Golden Karelia? Interpreting a Cross-Border Excursion of Students from Finland to Russia”; and Virpi Kaisto, “The Finnish-Russian Borderland as a Lived Space: Perceptions, Experiences, and Identities in Everyday Life.” As Kaisto notes, by the early 2010s “border crossings were at their peak, and visiting neighbouring cities across the border had become customary for many individuals residing in the border cities” (11). This trend toward ease of movement was interrupted in March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic set in and all of Finland’s borders were temporarily closed. Then, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, tensions along the border escalated, and any nascent sense of rapprochement swiftly dissolved.

24. 24. Paasi, Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness, 8. See also Paasi, “Dancing on the Graves,” 25; and Kirsi Pauliiina Kallio, “Rethinking Spatial Socialisation as a Dynamic and Relational Process of Political Becoming.”

25. 25. For an image, see “Kotimaista rasvaton maito 1l [Domestic skim milk, 1 litre],” Kaupat, accessed April 8, 2024, https://www.s-kaupat.fi/tuote/kotimaista-rasvaton-maito-1l/6415712506032.

26. 26. I was the sole facilitator during the focus groups, which took place in a combination of English and Finnish. (When I quote a comment that was originally in Finnish, I have provided the Finnish text in a note.) During the discussions, I followed a script with questions but also added my own comments and ad hoc questions, usually for purposes of clarification, as I would not be able to go back to one of the participants later on and ask, “What did you mean by that?” For more on my positionality and role during the groups, see Chloe Wells, Vyborg Is Y/ours: Meanings and Memories of a Borderland City Amongst Young People in Finland, 74–75.

27. 27. The written materials consisted of 319 lists of what each of the participants associated with the name “Vyborg” (“Viipuri,” in Finnish), Karelia’s main city, lost to the Soviet Union during World War II; 318 summaries that participants wrote at the end of the study detailing what their group had discussed and/or what they found interesting to discuss; and 321 feedback forms filled out by participants at the end. As participation was voluntary, not all of the 325 students completed all three tasks, so the totals are slightly under the total number of participants. Similarly, five participants did not draw mental maps, while another five maps had to be discarded because they were single maps, not pairs. For a more detailed description, see Virpi Kaisto and Chloe Wells, “Mental Mapping as a Method for Studying Borders and Bordering in Young People’s Territorial Identifications.”

28. 28. In contrast to quantitative methods, in thematic content analysis the significance of a theme depends not on how many times it appears in the data but rather on “whether it captures something important in relation to the overall research question.” Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology,” 82.

29. 29. For more on mental mapping and on using the method with young people, see Elen-Maarja Trell and Bettina van Hoven, “Making Sense of Place: Exploring Creative and (Inter)Active Research Methods with Young People”; Thomas F. Saarinen, “Student Views of the World”; and Efrat Ben-Ze’ev, “Blurring the Geo-body: Mental Maps of Israel/Palestine.” See also Kaisto and Wells, “Mental Mapping.”

30. 30. “No piirränks mää siihen, hameellisen naisen. Jolla käet pystyssä” (lit., “Well I’ll draw it like this, as a skirt-wearing woman. Who has her hands up”). All translations from Finnish are my own.

31. 31. “Toisen maailmansodan jälkeen vedettiin pois käsivarsi.”

32. 32. In a study of global sketch maps likewise carried out with students, Thomas Saarinen found that the edges of continents and countries that have a distinctive shape (such as Italy, “the boot”) were more often depicted on the maps of the world drawn by his participants. Saarinen, “Student Views of the World,” 155–56.

33. 33. “Me menetettiin siin jatkosodan jälkeen Sallan, Laatokan Karjalan ja Karjalankannaksen, sit Suomen ulkosaaret ja sit Porkkala vuokrattiin viidekskymmeneks vuodeks.” Finns refer to the islands in the Gulf of Finland as the “outer islands” (“Suomenlahden ulkosaaret”).

34. 34. “Sit tuli rauha ja Suomi menetti Karjalan,” followed by “Suomi menetti sit kansa Pokkaanniemen. Sit sen sodan jälkeen. Sit kaikkien junien ikkunat piti peittää aina, ku juna meni siit ohi kohalta.”

35. 35. “Menetettiin Petsamo Moskovan rauhassa 44.”

36. 36. “Rauhaa ei pidetty lopullisena, vaan se oli väliaikanen.”

37. 37. “Et joidenki mielest se oli sellanen vaan vähän enemmän, kun siit niinku ennen sotia olevast rajast, mut jotkut ajattelee et sen pitäis olla Uralilla asti.”

38. 38. For a map of this grandiose vision, see Janne Sundqvist, “Suur-Suomi olisi onnistunut [Greater Finland possible only with the help of Nazi Germany].” As Sundqvist notes, this vision appeared “in the wildest dreams” of Finnish nationalists (“Hurjimmissa haaveissa rajat piirrettiin lännessä Norjaan ja idässä Uralin valorisation”).

39. 39. For further discussion of location-based differences that emerged in this study, see Kaisto and Wells, “Mental Mapping.”

40. 40. “Petsamo oli suurempi menetys mielestäni.”

41. 41. In full: “No sinänsä Petsamo saattaa ollaki isompi, koska niinku taloudellisesti tärkeempi alue. No yhteydet ja noi että sinänsä taloudellisesti isompi menetys on Petsamo.”

42. 42. “Tottakai”; “se ois voinu tuua paljon työpaikkoja tänne Lappiinki.”

43. 43.“Mie koen varmaan sen niin, että ois se ihanaa jos molemmat ois taas Suomen niinku, kuuluis taas Suomeen, mut ei niitten takia kannata alottaa sotaa et ne saatas takasi vaa juuri et jos tulee tilanne, jossa ne on mahollista saada niinku järkevällä tavalla takasi nii ehottomasti.”

44. 44. “Ihan sama mulle oikeestaan, että missä se on”; “Tottakai . . . pääsis käymään Jäämerellä.”

45. 45. “Suomi olis rikas, jos se [Petsamo] ois.”

46. 46. See Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, “Transnational Heritage Work and Commemorative Rituals across the Finnish-Russian Border in the Old Salla Region,” 199–200.

47. 47. See Golant, “Sharing the Stories,” for similar accounts of daily life suddenly interrupted by forced evacuation.

48. 48. Specifically, the students were asked, “What do you know about Karelia?” “What comes to mind if you hear the word ‘Karelia’?” and “Where is Karelia?” A more detailed discussion of how students responded to these questions can be found in Łukianow and Wells, “Territorial Phantom Pains”; and in Chloe Wells, “Suomen nykynuorten käsityksiä Karjalasta [Perceptions of modern Finnish youth about Karelia].”

49. 49. “Karjala on ollut Suomelle niinku tosi tärkeä alue koko Suomen tai Ruotsin historian ajan ja siellä on paljon meiän niinkö muinaishistoriaa.”

50. 50. “No se on vähä sellanen, nationalistinen juttu se liittyy, suomalaiseen kulttuuriin.”

51. 51. “Kuuluu Suomalaisuuteen haikailla sodassa menetettyjä alueita takaisin.”

52. 52. “Voiko ikinä saada Karjalan takaisin? Ei enää Suomalaisia kaipaa. Tärkeätä oli se, että puhuttiin karjalasta.”

53. 53. In full: “Suomen kartastaki tulis ruman mallinen jos se ois.” For a more detailed analysis of the students’ perceptions of Vyborg, see Wells, Vyborg Is Y/ours.

54. 54. Laine and van der Velde, “Spiritually Ours,” 74.

55. 55. Finland was not, of course, alone in welcoming Ukrainian refugees, but their arrival did prompt comparisons to the evacuation of Finnish territories lost to Russia over eighty years earlier. One story in the Finnish news media shared the traumatic memories stirred for one Karelian child evacuee (now nearly ninety) when he saw images of Ukrainians fleeing their own country. See Miki Wallenius, “Kuvat Ukrainan pakolaisista toivat oman pakomatkan 87-vuotiaan Eino Kilpiäisen uniin: ‘En tiennyt tulevaisuudesta mitään’” (Images of refugees from Ukraine caused 87-year-old Eino Kilpiäinen’s to dream if his own evacuation journey: “I knew nothing of the future”). See also Riina Rastas, “Ukrainan sota on nostanut evakoiden muistot pintaan: ‘Moni kokee, että Karjala on menetetty nyt kolmannen kerran’” (The war in Ukraine has brought the memories of the evacuees to the surface: “Many feel that Karelia has now been lost for a third time”).

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1. * This chapter is dedicated to my Grandad, John “Jack” Wells (1919–2017), who trained at the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan School in Lethbridge during World War II.