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Anyone who wishes to understand the literature of Finland, whether written in Finnish or Swedish (for the nation is officially bilingual), must have command of certain historical facts: as a land between East and West, Finland has been subjected throughout its history to tensions which have left their mark everywhere in its cultural life.

The Finns, members of the Finno-Ugric linguistic family, came to Finland sometime early in the Christian Era; the first Swedish speakers seem to have arrived on the southwestern and southern coasts of Finland during the Viking Age. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, "crusades" were sent out from Sweden in an effort to subjugate and Christianize the heathen Finns; and by 1323 Finland had become a definitive part of the Kingdom of Sweden, in which position it remained until the Swedish-Russian War of 1808-9. For the next one hundred and nine years Finland belonged to the Russian Empire, commencing as a semi-independent grand duchy, only to have the rights granted it by Alexander I at the Diet of Borgå (March, 1809) slowly whittled away by his successors on the Russian throne. On December 6, 1917, in the wake of the November (Bolshevik) Revolution, the Finnish diet and senate, re-established after the abdication of Nicholas II the previous March,   [p. x]   declared Finland's independence. A civil war ensued, between the "Red Guards" (many of whom were blinded by simple poverty to the fact that they were fighting for a return of Finland to Russia) and the newly organized Finnish national army, under the command of C. G. E. Mannerheim, lately a czarist officer. The "Whites," substantially aided by a German expeditionary force, won the short but bloody war; and after a year of unfortunate reprisals and political confusion the Finnish Republic was declared.

From November, 1939, until March, 1940, the Republic was involved in the "Winter War" with Soviet Russia, as a result of which it was forced to cede most of Carelia to its giant neighbor, as well as a strip of territory in the north. In the so-called "Continuation War" of 1941-44, the army of Finland, now a cobelligerent of Germany, advanced to the old boundary of 1939 and passed it, occupying the territory known as Eastern (Russian) Carelia. The war ended with the Russian offensive of the summer of 1944; by the armistice of Moscow, Soviet Russia was granted not only the territory it had been accorded in 1940 but also the Petsamo region in the extreme north, thus depriving Finland of its access to the Arctic Ocean. Since then, Finland has walked a tightrope between inclination and necessity, its difficulties increased by the problem of the resettlement of the Finnish Carelians inside the nation's new boundaries.