Lähteenkorva, Pekka & Pekkarinen, Jussi
Ikuisen poudan maa.
Virallinen Suomi-kuva 1918-1945
[Land of eternal clear blue skies.
The official image of Finland 1918-1945]
Helsinki: WSOY, 2004. 464p.,ill.
ISBN 951-0-28324-X
 € 31, hardback

According to the well-known safari joke, when the American saw the elephant, he thought about taking it back to his native land and making money out of it, the Frenchman reflected on the details of the elephant's love life, and the Finn pondered on what the elephant might think of him.
     While the well-worn anecdote is perhaps not fair to the Americans and French, it does give a rather realistic picture of Finns' over-sensitivity: the Finns are almost neurotically concerned with how they and their country are seen abroad.
     The reason for this is, of course, to be found in history - or rather in its absence. Having lived under Swedish rule until 1809, and having been thereafter part of the Russian empire, when Finland attained its independence in 1917 it began the process of building its national image almost from scratch; the country was much older in origin, but outside its borders this was little known. After independence, one of the tasks of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs was to disseminate knowledge about Finland abroad. Most of this work became the responsibility of the Ministry's Press Department, founded in 1923, and of the Finnish embassies and consulates.
     This book by the archivists and historians Pekka Lähteenkorva and Jussi Pekkarinen studies the process of image-building - which in its day was openly called propaganda - from an official point of view, based on the documents of the Foreign Ministry. Unfortunately they also content themselves with giving summaries relating to one country at a time, which very often do not go any deeper than civil service reports.
     The building of Finland's image began with athletics - as early as the Russian era Hannes Kolehmainen 'ran Finland on to the world map' with three gold medals at the Stockholm Olympics of 1912. The role of runner hero passed to Paavo Nurmi, who won nine gold medals at Olympic competitions in the 1920s. Nurmi's victories were also the subject of rejoicing at the Foreign Ministry and the new embassies abroad: success in athletics brought Finland to the attention of the rest of the world and created the image of a tough and successful nation. In 1925 Nurmi was sent on a tour of the United States, on which he won dozens of running contests. The vice consul who had thought up the tour rubbed his hands with satisfaction: an incredible amount was written in the American press about Nurmi the 'Flying Finn'; in the vice consul's estimation, the same amount of publicity would have cost a sum equivalent to several of the Foreign Ministry's annual budgets .
     Outside the sports arenas, the athletes' PR skills were certainly in need of improvement: at the Los Angeles Olympics of 1932, at which Finland did not do very well, the Finnish athletes, who were not much versed in languages, aroused the attention of the American press with their 'unlimited, free-style sulking'.
     Finland's image could not be left solely to athletes - or to the master composer Jean Sibelius, who was by the far the best-known Finn in the field of culture. The Foreign Ministry wanted the country also to become known in future as a land of flourishing industry, Western civilisation, modern urban culture and subtle landscapes. An attempt was made to encourage the images by feeding the foreign press with positive texts and photographs or by discreetly guiding the attention of visiting foreign journalists to certain objectives.
     The arsenal of propaganda was expanded in 1922 by the addition of a two-hour 'Finlandia movie' commissioned by the Foreign Ministry. The film had neither actors nor dialogue, but it was a carefully scripted work. In a way it was ahead of its time, as Finlandia was the world's first propaganda film produced by a state. True, the section depicting the country's will to defend to itself was all too effective, as after the feedback that was received from foreign countries, the army pictures had to be cut: they gave the impression that Finland might be a threat to world peace. It was believed that propaganda films might also be used to lure tourists to Finland, but the tourist industry was still in its infancy.
     The balance between exoticism and modernity was a difficult one. If, for example, the idyll of agrarian Finland was illustrated with traditional methods of cultivation and agricultural equipment, it was noticed that the pictures were in conflict with the image of the quest for a modern industrial state. On the other hand, the depictions of winter nature showed foreigners a wilderness which, with all its snow, ice and frost, gave the impression of being almost unfit for habitation. The interest in Lapland - the embassies often received requests for pictures of reindeer - was also considered risky, as it was feared that it might characterise all Finns as Lapps.
     Ethnic background and racial origins were certainly sensitive topics, for the 1920s and 30s were a period of intense racial prejudice. The Foreign Ministry played a part in rebu?ng the notion, widespread at the time, that Finns had Mongolian blood in their veins; an attempt was made to see that the photographs selected to go out to the rest of the world made Finns look 'European', not the kind of people who stood out because of their 'peculiarity, ugliness or primitiveness' - the Finns on whom foreign journalists and tourists were thought to focus their attention. When a picture book about the Olympic athletes was compiled in the early 1930s, no 'Mongolian-looking wrestlers' were accepted for it.
     This sense of racial inferiority was also connected with the complex relation that existed between the country's language groups. The Swedish-speaking part of the population had - and still has - a strong constitutional minority protection, which the true Finns born in the 1920s tried to break down by among other things demanding that the bilingual Helsinki University should be made Finnish-language only. Although the language barrier was not a racial barrier, the Swedish-speakers who entered the armed forces began to emphasise their role as upholders of western culture in Finland; this carried a hint that the Finnish-speakers represented a more oriental, barbaric level of culture. The language war tarnished Finland's reputation in Sweden and the other Nordic countries as well.
     As in the language dispute, the diplomats also found it hard to see the beams in the eyes of their compatriots when in the early 1930s the foreign press published large headlines about the radical right-wing movement in Finland. In 1930 the activists who supported the Lapua movement beat up communists or suspected communists, kidnapped them and dumped them near the Soviet border. With the help of a march by 12,000 Finnish peasants on Helsinki, the president was forced to appoint a new government which forbade the political activity of the communists. As a result of this, Finland was characterised in the world at large as a fascist, sham democracy approving of extra-parliamentary tactics. Only Mussolini's Italy took a calm approach to the events in Finland.
     Although the danger of a right-wing coup was obvious in the early 1930s, the Foreign Ministry had difficulty in acknowledging the facts. Newspaper reports expressing horror at the situation were explained as hunger for sensation or as caused by the fact that the movement's most intense phase coincided with the holiday season, when the best forces of the newspapers were not functioning. Finland's reputation only began to improve when the vanguard of right-wing radicalism collapsed in its unsuccessful attempt at a coup, the Mäntsälä Revolt of 1932.
     Finland's political vacillation was compensated for by its reputation as 'the country that paid its debts'; it had conscientiously repaid the loans it had taken after the First World War and emerged in American eyes as a model country: in 1933 Finland was the only state that had paid its debts. The American newspapers also began to take an interest in the political and economic conditions that had become established after the stormy phase of the early 1930s.
     No sooner had the wounds inflicted by right-wing radicalism on Finland's image healed than the country became the object of an attack by its communist great power neighbour in late 1939. The small country's poorly equipped army received plenty of sympathy in this 105-day combat between David and Goliath, especially as the other fronts in the Second World War at that time were quiet. The defensive struggle of the Winter War - which prevented the country being occupied, but led to grave sacrifices of territory - also became one of the central pillars of Finland's image.
     The promulgation of the heroic reputation of the Winter War was certainly a challenge during the Continuation War which began in the summer of 1941 when, embittered by territorial losses, Finland attacked the Soviet Union simultaneously with the forces of Nazi Germany. The Continuation War also ended with a sense of loss. Finland managed to preserve its independence, but the threat from the Soviet Union felt oppressive. Previously the cultivation of Finland's image in the Soviet Union had been considered a hopeless task, but in the difficult conditions that prevailed after the war the attempt had to be made. An eastern front had also to be opened in the process of image-building.
     The book ends in 1945. The history of Finland's image in the post-war period is mostly connected with how a neutral country's special relationship with the Soviet Union could best be explained after the Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation and Mutual Assistance concluded in 1948, both in the West and in the East. If and when the book receives a sequel, it would be interesting to study the formation of Finland's image in a broader context than that given by the Foreign Ministry's own papers.
     It is obviously difficult, on the basis of the ministry's official documents, to assess how Finnish culture has influenced the country's image abroad. For example, Lähteenkorva and Pekkarinen have not really been able to get to grips with the importance of Sibelius as a creator of Finland's image, although the use of the composer and his music are mentioned in certain propaganda contexts.
     It would be interesting to know, for example, how the process of image-building was assisted by the Marimekko trademark, the author Tove Jansson's Moomintroll, or the international publicity received by the film directors Aki and Mika Kaurismäki. Even the story of the attempt to achieve international recognition for a Finland-resident Father Christmas / Santa Claus would probably be a valuable subject of research in a class of its own.

Translated by David McDuff