The Finns waged war to force the Germans to retreat to Norway via the Northern route in 19 this period is known as the Lapland War. A part of that treaty was the demand that the Finnish army needed to chase the German troops out of Finnish territory. In 1944, Finland negotiated a secret separate peace treaty with the Soviets. Underneath the skies of polar night and midnight sun, dark secrets begin to unfold.įinland was an ally to Hitler’s Germany against the Soviet Union during the second World War, from 1941 to 1944. Inkeri is also acquainted with a young Sámi girl who lives at the local boarding school where the objective is to assimilate the Sámi children to the dominant culture. The more Inkeri gets to know her young tenant Olavi – who is also originally from the south but has lingered in Lapland after the war ended – the more convinced she becomes that he is hiding something concerning her husband’s destiny. She also has an agenda of her own: to find out what happened to her husband who disappeared during the war. Journalist and photographer Inkeri settles in the town, to write a series of reports on Lapland’s reconstruction.

The town of Enontekiö in Western Lapland, from 1947 to 1950:

The crimes committed are buried deep in human mind, but later omitted with complete silence in the official history. In the middle of the Arctic wilderness in North-Eastern Lapland, in 1944:Ī young Finnish soldier, Väinö, works as a translator at a German-led prison camp where extreme cruelty is part of daily life, not only prisoners but also guards have to fight to preserve their humanity.

These secrets are buried deep, while inconceivable destinies drive the narration, resulting in an intoxicating read. In this powerful debut novel, the beauty of the Arctic nature in Lapland contrasts with the brutal actions conducted both at a secret Nazi prison camp during the Second World War and against the indigenous Sámi people after the war.

Snow like ashes