The 1939-40 Finno-Soviet War, popularly known as the Winter War, which saw the small, fiercely united Nordic nation hold off the combined might of the Red Army and the Soviet air Force for 105 days, is rightly considered Finland’s finest hour.

A regiment of fleet-limbed Finnish ski troops decimated a Soviet division at Suomussalmi in the north of the country, after which Winston Churchill, then Lord of the Admiralty,  declared in a BBC speech on 20 January 1940: ‘Finland, superb, nay sublime in the jaws of peril… Finland shows what free men can do.’

I vividly recall seeing the posters celebrating the living veterans of the Winter War, or the Talvisota, as the Finns call the conflict, which dominated the first winter of what became the Second World War, on my first visit to Suomi nearly 50 years ago.

Legenda elää, the posters exclaimed. ‘The legend lives.’

At the same time, it is important to recall the enormous amount of help Finland received in her hour of need from her sister democracies. Great Britain, France and the United States, among others, sent large amounts of planes, tanks and other war materiel, as well as hundreds of  volunteers to Helsinki, eager to fight for Brave Little Finland in her unequal struggle.

The country that made the greatest contribution to the embattled Finns, both in terms of manpower and materiel, was their former mother country, Sweden, which had ruled over them for 700 years before Russia wrested her easternmost province from Stockholm following the 1808-09 Finnish War.

All told, over 8,000 Swedes got on trains, flew, sailed or skied to Finland during the Talvisota, by far the largest complement of the estimated 12,000 men and women from around the world drawn to the Finnish cause. The Kingdom of Sweden also provided massive amounts of equipment, including 135,000 rifles, 347 machine guns, 144 field guns, plus 27 Gloster Gladiator fighters and Hawker Hawk bombers and their pilots, who together represented a sizeable fraction of Swedish air power at the time.

And one distinguished, passionately Finnophile general by the name of Ernst Linder.

It was Linder who recruited, trained and commanded the Swedish Volunteer Corps (Svenska Frivilligkåren, SVG), the ad hoc group of Swedish soldiers and civilians who answered the call to assist their Nordic brethren in December, 1939, shortly after the shock Soviet invasion that triggered the David-and-Goliath contest.

It was Linder who headed the first detachment of Swedish volunteers to leave Stockholm Central Station for the northern border city of Haparanda en route to the Finnish town of Tornio to link arms with the Finns.

Most of the men who followed Linder, unlike the majority of the enthusiastic, if ill-trained members of the volunteer force, were regular Swedish soldiers. Although Stockholm remained neutral in the conflict, it permitted its troops to join the fight and take their reliable Swedish Mauser rifles with them.

Linder’s Finnophilia was a matter of blood: Finland was the land of his birth. A member of Finland’s Swedish-speaking minority, he was born and grew up in Pojo in the south of the then Russian Grand Duchy of Finland in 1868.

But it was more than that. Finland’s sak ar var – ‘Finland’s cause is our cause’ – was the powerful slogan coined by Christian Gunther, the Swedish foreign minister, to mobilise Swedish support for the beset Finnish republic after the Soviet invasion: Finland’s cause was the cause of democracy. Linder believed it, too.

Linder was already 71 years old when he took the train to Haparanda to lead the Swedish Volunteer Corps into battle. His lifelong friend and comrade, Gustaf Mannerheim, the celebrated Finnish army commander-in-chief, who welcomed him, was a year older.

‘Linder and Mannerheim had many things in common,’ says Henrik Meinander, the Finnish historian and Mannerheim’s biographer. ‘Both were Swedo-Finns. Both were nearly the same age. Both were passionate equestrians who forged their careers as cavalrymen, although Mannerheim decided to join the Imperial Russian army first, a path which Linder considered before enlisting in the Swedish army. Both of their families were of noble lineage.’

‘But of course the most important thing they had in common,’ adds Meinander, ‘was their commitment to Finland.’

In the event, Linder’s decision to fight for Finland, and with Mannerheim in the Winter War was a case of déjà vu. 

Twenty years before, Linder, then a colonel in the Swedish army, made the unusual decision to resign from his position and join the fight for Finnish independence with the Mannerheim-led White forces against the Soviet-backed Red forces during the Finnish Civil War, one of the first Swedish officers to do so.

Arriving in February 1918, Linder took command of the Satakunta Group, a key White formation in western Finland, which integrated arriving Swedish volunteers who had also decided to make Finland’s cause their own with native Finnish troops. Successfully leveraging his cavalry expertise and flair for mobile manoeuvres, he and his inspired troops succeeded in overcoming the Reds’ disorganised defences.

Later, Linder was given his own group, named after him, comprised entirely of Swedish volunteers. His insistence on retaining operational control of his fellow countrymen helped ensure their efficacy as shock troops, enhancing the Whites’ overall effectiveness amid the fluid battle lines of the short, fratricidal three-month long conflict.

Together, he and his troops captured a number of strategic towns in southeastern Finland, helping turn the tide against the communist forces.

In April 1918, while the war was still ongoing, Linder was promoted to major general in the Finnish army in recognition of his help quelling the Bolshevik threat and bolstering the military of the nascent republic.

‘Linder unquestionably played a key role in defeating the Reds in the civil war,’ writes Meinander.

It was then that his lifelong friendship with Gustaf Mannerheim was forged.

Following the Whites’ victory in the civil war, Linder, who had the unusual distinction of having a commission in two armies, returned to Stockholm and resumed his duties as Inspector of Cavalry, helping keep Sweden’s strong equestrian tradition alive before retiring in 1920.

As a civilian, Linder devoted himself full-time to his equestrian passion. In 1924, at the age of 56, the debonair retiree competed in the 1924 Paris Summer Olympics winning the individual gold medal aboard the Trakehner stallion Piccolomini. 

After that, the venerable trooper expected to ride into the sunset – until 1939, when Finland, once more in a battle for its life, called again, and he boarded the train for Tornio with his fellow Swedes.

‘The Swedish volunteers comprised the largest contingent of foreign volunteers in military history, apart from the Irishmen who served in the British Army during the World War,’ notes Fredrik Erikkson, associate professor of military history at the Swedish Defense University.

‘Also,’ he adds, ‘unlike the Irish volunteers, the Swedes who enlisted were concentrated in one discrete corps.’

The Swedish Volunteer Group – which ultimately also included 725 Norwegians and 600 Danes – made a significant, if often overlooked contribution to the Finnish effort. The first component to see combat was the aviation element, Flight Squadron F19, which took to the skies over Lapland in mid-January. F19’s fighters were a welcome sight to the denizens of northern Finland. Up until that point, Soviet fighters and bombers had strafed and bombed them at will. Now they had opposition. Ultimately the pilots of F19 recorded a dozen confirmed ‘kills’, with several achieving ace status.

The second component, Linder’s battle group, comprised of Swedish volunteers organised into two reinforced infantry battalions, entered combat at the end of February. The tide of the war had turned in Moscow’s favour at that point, after the second, better-trained wave of Stalin’s troops managed to crack the Mannerheim Line, and the Finnish troops defending the so-called Salla sector were needed on the Karelian front.

Previously, Mannerheim made the clear decision that foreign volunteers, including the Swedes, would not be used as cannon fodder. Instead, he preferred to place them on quieter fronts.

Linder’s group replaced the Finnish Lapland Group, while absorbing a number of Finnish troops.  Significantly, the Swedish Volunteer Corps was the only operationally independent formation consisting of foreign volunteers which the Finnish High Command sufficiently trusted to attach Finnish soldiers to. In effect, Linder commanded a multinational force. In the meantime, Mannerheim, now a field marshal, oversaw his promotion to lieutenant general.

To be sure, the Salla sector was relatively quiet: although Linder’s 10,000-strong corps saw some combat, its principal strategic value was in reinforcing Finnish troops. At the same time, the very presence of so many of their Nordic friends as well as other foreign volunteers in the ranks was a huge morale boost.

The SVG also suffered some casualties – 35 killed, including six of the pilots of F19. Tragically, nine of the fatalities were suffered on 13 March, the last day of the war, after the battered but unbowed Finns reluctantly agreed to an armistice with the Soviets.

The Finns didn’t forget their Nordic comrades’ contribution. Nor did Mannerheim, who travelled to Salla on 24 March 1940 to personally thank them and their commander, and to bestow medals on some of the soldiers who had particularly distinguished themselves in combat.

Ernst Linder was awarded the Finnish Liberty Cross, Fourth Class, for succeeding at his mission.

Then the old soldier, having twice answered the summons from Suomi, returned to Stockholm – for good.

General Ernst Linder died on 14 September 1943 and was buried in a quiet ceremony at the Northern Cemetery in Soha near Stockholm.

His old friend Gustaf Mannerheim was absent. Instead, he was busy leading Finnish forces in the so-called Continuation War, the three-year conflict that followed the Talvisota.

Neither he nor the nearly 10,000 Swedes, Danes and Norwegians who volunteered to fight for Finland’s cause, including the 39 Swedes and Danes who perished in what has been called ‘the last glorious war,’ have been forgotten.

They still live as part of the legend of the Winter War.