Check out Nordic Watchlist’s The Winter Warriors book review.
Churchill once said: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Readers would do well to heed that advice when reading Olivier Norek’s The Winter Warriors, a chillingly brutal look at The Winter War, fought between Finland and Russia between November 1939 and March 1940.
Largely overshadowed by the wider Second World War raging at the same time, this secondary campaign was brutal in its short-lived span. With Russia invading neighbouring Finland during the harsh Arctic winter, the largely unprepared Finns had to hastily assemble defence units from villages across the country. Russia had expected its unarmed neighbour to capitulate quickly, but despite their lack of men and resources, Finland delivered devastating losses to the Russian invasion force – 70,000 men lost from the Finnish army, and 400,000 men lost or injured from the vastly larger Russian forces (though the official Russian count was a mere 350 casualties).
Olivier Norek’s compelling tale tackles the challenge of portraying the vast sprawl of war by focusing on the individual impact. Though a fictional account, Norek uses real characters and events to paint the horrors of war in graphic detail. In the small farming village of Rautjärvi, the threat of war seems a distant enemy. Up to now, the only weapons have been used to hunt wildlife in the surrounding forests. Young farmer Simo Häyhä has earned a reputation as a marksman, honing his skills on the deer in the forest.
As war breaks out, however, Häyhä and his friends find themselves recruited to defend their country from the Russian invasion. Barely equipped and with limited training, the only advantage the squad has is their knowledge of how to survive a harsh Finnish winter. Soon, though, Häyhä finds a more challenging target in his rifle sight – killing a man, even your enemy in war, is a very different moral conundrum from shooting a deer.
It’s a conundrum Norek portrays perfectly. This is no sanitised Hollywood depiction of war – this is the kill-or-be-killed dilemma faced by countless soldiers throughout human history. Häyhä pulls the trigger, and continues to pull the trigger throughout the war, his marksmanship building him the reputation of the world’s best sniper and earning him the nickname “The White Death.”
It isn’t a nickname Häyhä wears lightly. The loss of friends, the stark horror of fighting in Arctic conditions, his own brush with death when shot himself – all are described by Norek (and through Nick Caistor’s translation) in vivid, yet accessible, form. Through the eyes of Simo Häyhä, the novel transforms the statistics of war into unforgettable human stories.
There’s always a challenge when portraying historical events in a fictional context. Too much detail and you risk turning it into another dry history textbook; veer too far from fact and you enter the world of cinematic storytelling, where truth is often sacrificed for narrative drama. Norek balances that dilemma perfectly – there’s plenty of fact to set historical context, yet it never feels overwhelming. Part of the accessibility lies in the focus on the human conflict – the lives irreversibly changed by the horrors of war. By drawing out the detail of everyday impact, Norek strangely manages to paint a much bigger picture – these individual lives multiplied in their thousands across the front line. This is a novel that refuses to flinch from the realities of battle yet finds humanity in the bleakest moments.
Though the events of The Winter Warriors take place 85 years ago, readers can’t help but draw parallels with the modern day, with Russia’s invasion of neighbouring Ukraine a chilling replay of events over eight decades earlier.
Like Simo Häyhä and his village school friends, tales of entire communities of young men from across Ukraine uniting to protect their homeland from invading forces permeate our news today. While the weaponry may have changed in a more technologically advanced age, the timeless elements of national defence and the horrors of armed conflict remain universal. In every snowbound skirmish, in every quiet moment of doubt, The Winter Warriors asks what it truly means to defend one’s home.
The Winter Warriors is not an easy read; Norek’s balance of historical accuracy and emotional depth makes it both harrowing and deeply moving. The horrors of war are writ large on its pages, but it’s an essential and timely read – reminding us that history’s echoes are never far away, especially when the cost of conflict is measured in shattered lives.
The Winter Warriors by Olivier Norek, translated by Nick Caistor, is published by Open Borders Press.
