US OR THEM

Author: Christina Falck
Year: 2014
Publisher: Sahlgrens Förlag
Language: Swedish

One should think that as a Swede with an above-average interest in history, I should be able to demonstrate passable knowledge about the events which brought liberty and independence to my country’s closest neighbour and former Swedish ‘Eastern half of the realm’, but which also plunged it into a four-month-long civil war. Truth be told, I suspect that most Swedes could not even tell the difference between the Civil War (1918) and the Winter War (1939-1940).

I am therefore deeply grateful for Christina Falck’s decision to write, and now defunct Sahlgren Förlag’s decision to publish “Vi eller de” (not available in English but a simple translation would be “Us or Them”).

This is a heart-warming story about the Björks, a family of landowning farmers in southern Finland, and about how their world was hurled into chaos following the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the long-anticipated Finnish independence, and the disastrous civil war between the conservatives (the Whites) and the communists (the Reds) that followed. It was to be a tumultuous time. Celebration turned into despair, loyalty to treason, hope to anguish. As death and violence slowly crept up on the Björks, they realised that their farm may not be spared and that people they thought they could trust may be the ones who would draw destruction and mayhem upon them.

But there was also a great deal of love, forgiveness, and understanding. For example, the unbridled love into which the Björk family included their two foster siblings. As I progressed through the book and saw the circumstances becoming harsher and the class struggle more and more pronounced, I was waiting for the Björks to begin to question the loyalty of their foster sister who, by birth, would be looked upon as more akin to the Reds than to the Whites. I waited in vain.

The novel is based on the preserved collection of letters that Christina Falck’s grandparents wrote each other during the conflict and which are still in the author’s possession. Some excerpts appear in the book. To me, that adds an exceptional dimension to the reading experience. This powerful connection to the past, to the real men and women of flesh and blood who helped shape the world that we are but temporary stewards of, allows me to almost smell the earth, feel the grass, and hear the voices of yore. Letters like those handed down to the author, are the closest that we will ever come to a time capsule.

By necessity, given the source material, the main protagonists will be best known to the author and therefore be most richly painted. The depictions of Astrid and Edvard are beautifully crafted. Astrid’s sister Ellinor and her brothers are also easy to establish an emotional bond with. Anneli, the foster sister, is actually the one character that I feel I would want to know more about. I found the love story between her and the farm hand, Hugo, a bit surprising and it would have helped me to grasp it if I had understood Anneli better. I could easily accept that Hugo was interested in Anneli, but I did not immediately expect his feelings to be answered.

Historically, the novel seems to check out very well. It is all there: The White Guards, the Jägar rangers, the detention camps, the sketchy news reports, the concerns of the Swedish speaking minority, the disappointment with the Swedish government’s lukewarm support.  

As landowners, the Björks sympathised with the Whites. One of the sons even went to Germany to obtain military training as a ranger to fight against the Russian oppression. Still, the author is careful to put her own family loyalty aside and paint a fair and emotional picture of the Red side as well. The misery of the poor, the lack of hope, the understandable anger and resentment, and the inner struggle between the willingness to fight for freedom and the disgust at the expectations to commit atrocities as part of that fight. It is a fair and warm portrayal of individuals, with all the weaknesses and strengths of the human heart and soul, on both sides of a conflict that ended up claiming almost 40,000 Finnish lives.  

This makes the title, “Vi eller de”, a bit provocative. Although politicians, generals, and historians do their best to solidify the boundary between the Reds and the Whites, human beings are not so easily compartmentalised. The battlefronts are, as always, blurred by memories, emotions, ideas, ambitions, and parallel conflicts. In the end, there is no us and them. There is only a web of destinies more or less closely intertwined.

 “Vi eller de” is a highly accessible read. The language is straightforward and the chronology linear. Despite the crushing topic, it is not gloomy or tormenting. On the contrary, at its core, the book is marked by light and hope. The characters are richly painted and it is easy to get to know them and to care for them. Falck lets us inside the heads of several people long gone and the perspectives are varied, credible, and stringent. It is all very well put together and makes for a delightful reading experience.

I recommend this book to anybody who likes to read about family ties, love, friendship, loyalty, and honour, but also to all Swedes out there who have realised it is about time they took an interest in the 20th-century history of our Finnish neighbours.

My copy, signed by the author.