Historian Tamminen composed a small book of small stories of Finland from memories of Finnish people since its inception (1917): on each page, a few lines and the year at the bottom (side note: it is a perfect book for a learner of Finnish).

The country’s history fits into three generations and the book mostly tells childhood memories or fragments of family stories - daddy angry at the radio announcing reparations to be paid to Russia; the four-year-old hiding under the floor in one cache during the White vs Red civil war; children talking about the coming war in the school yard; another daddy angry at the radio announcing the results of a presidential election regarding the irremovable Kekkonen (UKK)…

These are the types of images passed down in family history: “Grand pa used to hide some weapons over there,” “Did you know I had to learn Finnish while living in Sweden because there were so many immigrants then that all the factory work was in Finnish!”, “Oh yeah, my friends and I had our first marbles when the American relief packages arrived through the Red Cross. We didn’t even know what to do with them, but we loved them!”; “Yeah, your uncle died because of an issue with that broken rib he had since he was born. Do you know a Russian soldier did that to him by hitting his pregnant mother?”; “I remember when Finland won the Eurovision, I was there.”