War Games and Winter in Finland’s Lapland: Arto Paasilinna’s The Year of the Hare

by Toma Kavonius
Reading Arto Paasilinna's The Year of the Hare once again made me yearn for a proper Finnish winter.  I have always relished the Helsinki summer with its constant daylight and thawing temperatures.  Therefore when Vatanen, the protagonist in The Year of the Hare, begins his journey through the wilderness during Finnish summer, I cannot help but wish that summer would come quicker. But when winter arrived and Vatanen was living in a small cottage and skiing on frozen lakes and swamps amidst the forest of Lapland, I realized that I did not hope for early summer only because of t...