Oula Seitsonen took part last week in geoarchaeological surveys of Finnish Civil War (1918) mass grave sites with the Finnish Association for Forensic Archaeology and Anthropology (FAFAA). Forensic archaeology applies archaeological research methods in the forensic and crime scene studies.

FAFAA field studies aim at comparing and developing advantageous non-invasive survey methods for working with the contemporary (and historical) mass grave sites and other burials. FAFAA co-operates with the Lapland’s Dark Heritage project, and archaeo-geophysical surveys of for example World War 2 plane crash sites and mass graves in Lapland have been planned.

Ground penetrating radar at the Tammisaari mass grave monument (Photograph: Oula Seitsonen).

Finnish Civil War mass graves have been studied by FAFAA, in co-operation with the Department of Geography and Geosciences, University of Helsinki, and the Finnish Defense Forces, with ground penetrating radar and other archaeo-geophysical methods at Tammisaari and Santahamina; studies at Tammisaari have been financially supported by the Kansan sivistysrahasto Tammisaari 1918 trust.

Mass graves at both Tammisaari and Santahamina derive from the Prisoner-of-War camps established by the victorious White side for the defeated Reds in 1918: Whites and their German allies captured tens of thousands of Red Guard members and associated people, including several thousand women and over 1000 children. Living conditions at the PoW camps were poor, and at the worst camp, Tammisaari, mortality rate exceeded 30 percent. Altogether ca. 1 percent of the country’s population was annihilated by the Civil War: only half in the battlefields and the rest by executions, disease and famine. This left the newly independent state severely divided for decades after the Civil War.

General map of the Tammisaari mass grave site showing the survey lines (© Oula Seitsonen).

More about the Finnish Civil War:

Haapala, P. & Hoppu, T. (toim. ) 2009: Sisällissodan pikkujättiläinen. WSOY.

Upton, A.F. 1980: The Finnish Revolution 1917-1918. University of Minnesota Press.

Finnish Civil War archaeology:

Seitsonen, O. & Kunnas, L. 2009: Ahvola 1918: Archaeological Reconnaissance of a Finnish Civil War Battlefield. Journal of Conflict Archaeology 5.

 

 

In the later part of the Second World War in 1940-44 Finland had close ties with Nazi Germany, even though there was no formal alliance between the two countries. German troops arrived to northern Finnish Lapland as part of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa,
the attack on the Soviet Union. While effectively allying itself with Germany, Finland was eager to maintain the impression of two separate wars against the Soviet Union, and tried to avoid conflict with the other Allies, especially the United States. Great Britain, however, declared war on Finland in 1941.

At the peak of the German military buildup there were more than 200,000 German soldiers in Northern Finland. Germans officially took some 9,000 Soviet Prisoners-of-War (PoW) on the northern front, and brought ca. 20,000 prisoners more to Finland as a workforce. Germans established over a hundred temporary PoW camps, punishment camps, and work camps in the northern half of Finland; the Finns also established some twenty camps in the area.

Spatial distribution of the German-run and Finnish-run PoW and forced labour camps in 1941-1944 is shown in the map below, based on Lars Westerlund‘s historical studies (Westerlund, L. 2008: Saksan vankileirit Suomessa ja raja-alueilla 1941–1944. Tammi), field trips by the Lapland Military Historical Society and our own pilot field research in 2007-2014 (click the map to make it bigger):

The close Finno-German relations ended with the Lapland War in 1944-45 after Finland had made a cease-fire treaty with the Soviet Union and was demanded to drive out the German troops. The German troops resorted to scorched earth tactics during their retreat to Norway, which resulted in the so-called ‘burning of Lapland‘.

For more information see for example:

Kulju, M. 2013: Lapin sota 1944-1945. Gummerus.

Mann, C. & Jörgensen, C. 2002: Hitler’s Arctic War: The German Campaigns in Norway, Finland, and The USSR 1940–1945. Ian Allan Publishing.

Seitsonen, O. & Herva, V.-P. 2011: Forgotten in the Wilderness: WWII German PoW Camps in Finnish Lapland. In A. Myers, G. Moshenska (eds.), Archaeologies of Internment, One World Archaeology 171. DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9666-4_10

Westerlund, L. 2008: Saksan vankileirit Suomessa ra raja-alueilla 1941–1944. Tammi.