Heartbreaking Letters Reveal Voices of Finnish Military Children and Their Mothers

A non-fiction book published in Sweden narrates the story of war children based on letters. Hanging branch, a Finnish mother, like many others, was hesitant to send her three-year-old daughter, Stiina, to Sweden due to the war. However, she eventually sent Stiina to Sweden in 1942, like tens of thousands of other Finnish mothers, making her a war child. The mother started a long correspondence with Stiina’s new “Swedish mother” Majkeni, which ended up in a book by historian Ann Nehlin titled The Finnish war children, a Nordic family drama.

The book, a compilation of letters from the Swedish Riksarkivet and the National Archives in Finland, provides an emotional account of the experiences of these children and their families. To protect their privacy, Nehlin changed the names and some details.

The book also explores the reasons behind these child transplants, which partly stemmed from Sweden’s guilt for not providing military aid to Finland during the winter war. As the winter war intensified, attitudes in Finland changed, leading to one of the world’s largest child transplant operations.

Through these letters, Nehlin narrates the pain of separation, the children’s reception in Sweden, the longing on both sides, and the expected gratitude from those who found safety across the bay. The fate of nearly 70,000 war children has been depicted in various forms, including books, dissertations, movies, and novels.

According to Nehlin, broken families only desired to be together somewhere where there was no war. The correspondence between Ritva and Majken was initially warm, but as time passed, they began to distress the child. Eventually, the letters ceased, and Stiina stayed in Sweden.