To Toil and to Survive: Wartime Memories of Finnish Women

This article concerns the way women have remembered their wartime experiences in Finland almost 50 years after the end of the Second World War. Special attention is paid to a certain group of women called the Lottas, who worked voluntarily both on the home front and in the theatre of operations supporting the military forces. The organization was suppressed by order of the government after the war, but despite this some stereotypical pictures of it have persisted to this day. The author discusses how these women themselves have responded to this public reevaluation of wartime and women’s role during it. The material referred to in the article is a set of written reminiscences collected at the end of the 1980s. The memories are shown to be linked both to a generation and to a gender, and they are instructive not only for the time of war but also for the years after it.