The Swedish Brigade: From National Romantic Heroes to European Counter-Revolutionaries?

Abstract

This article analyzes the character and development of the Swedish Brigade, a small military volunteer unit in the Finnish Civil War of 1918, in the context of the European counter-revolution. Volunteers in the various civil wars following the Russian Revolution have been studied extensively before, but have largely focused on countries that participated in the First World War. This case study of the ‘White’ Swedish Brigade aims to highlight the importance of volunteers from neutral countries, and their specific role in the transnational counter-revolutionary movement. The Brigade was an ostensibly politically neutral unit, with a socially heterogeneous make-up. Heavily supported by the Swedish right-wing media, it was widely romanticized as a heroic effort to restore Sweden's honour by supporting the Finnish fight against the old Russian enemy, and defending the former Swedish province as a bulwark of Swedish culture, law and order against barbarism. While its political culture was steeped in a romanticized Finno-Swedish history and culture, shared by many of the volunteers, the brigadiers were quickly confronted by the realities of poor equipment and organization, political division, and above all an exceptionally brutal civil war and the morally degrading violence it entailed. Brigade archive documents and memoirs show that this quickly changed the character of the actual volunteer unit to contrast heavily with the right-wing press's romantic imagination. Additionally, through contacts with the Finnish and German military, and in the face of a Left Swedish critique of the Brigade as reactionary butchers, many of the volunteers reconceptualized their role in the civil war, not as one of heroic and historical significance for Sweden, but as part of a vicious European struggle against Bolshevism. This seems to some extent confirmed by their post-war history, which raises interesting questions about these volunteers’ roles among the new Right of interwar Europe.

The middle-aged Swedish senior officer Harald Hjalmarson did not hesitate to volunteer to fight for the White Army when the Finnish Civil War broke out on 28 January 1918. It was in fact obvious that one should join, he proffered in his memoirs of the conflict. ¹ Owing to Swedish neutrality for the past century, Hjalmarson had no immediate experience of war. He had served as a commander of the Persian gendarmerie in 1911–1916, leading a small Swedish police unit to establish law and order for the empire's trading routes, largely in the interests of the European great powers. Near half of the unit later volunteered in the German Imperial Army during the First World War, though Hjalmarson was not one of them. ² But the Finnish Civil War was a golden opportunity for this officer: Finland was in the minds of Swedish conservatives and nationalists not a foreign country but an old outpost of the Swedish Empire, and it was an opportunity to apply in practice what had been learned in peace time, while being ‘allowed to fight on old Swedish soil against the old enemy’. ³ The civil wars that scarred Eastern and Central Europe in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 were capable of holding a certain attraction also for countries which were neutral during the First World War. For members of the Swedish military the period of 1914–1923 was an exciting time, and many welcomed the opportunity to exercise their profession. While the global war itself attracted volunteers from many countries, and some 70 Swedes to the German Army, what has been termed ‘the Greater War’ had a heavily transnational character.

The civil and military conflicts of the 1917–1923 period in Europe, sparked by the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the imperial dynasties, and the Versailles settlement, have been highly developed as a field of research in the past fifteen years. The connections between the Central and East European civil wars, World War I and the White Terror have been made increasingly evident, delineating the contours of a transnational counter-revolutionary movement, even if its participants had very different end goals and political trajectories. ⁴ This research has also done a great deal to emphasize the impact of the revolutions and civil wars on political opinion far away from the battlefields, showing how the transnational character of these military conflicts produced an international fear of Bolshevism, fruitfully encouraged by the new Right of interwar Europe. ⁵ In all this, the psychological element behind military volunteerism and the uncommon brutality and cruelty of civil war and counter-revolutionary violence have been featured prominently in scholarly analysis. Of course the brutalizing effects of war had already been posited by George L. Mosse in the 1990s, while Klaus Theweleit's research in the 1980s remains a reference point for the psychological study of White violence and its presumed endpoint in fascism. ⁶ In 2017, elaborating on previous research on counter-revolutionaries, Robert Gerwarth contributed with The Vanquished, proposing that the explanation of this outburst of post-World War I violence and political radicalization on the Right was not due to the experience of war in its own right – a thesis long since disproved – but defeat and resentment. ⁷

While this field of research has thus developed substantially in recent times, there are still some obvious lacunae, one of which this article aims to fill (or at least start to), by analyzing the role of participants from countries which did not have any immediate experience of war or defeat or otherwise, but which nevertheless did have participants in the counter-revolutionary warfare of 1917–1923. The case study is the so-called Swedish Brigade (Svenska Brigaden), in reality not a brigade at all but a battalion, owing to the lack of numbers and armaments, which consisted of predominantly amateur volunteers fighting under the formal command of Gustav Mannerheim, the general of the Finnish White Army. The Swedish Brigade has been studied before, extensively in Swedish, as it attracted a great deal of attention in the contemporary press, stirring some controversy about its supposedly apolitical nature, as well as its military performance. ⁸ In 2012 it was also the subject of a short monograph by Jan Olov Näsman, which has handily summarized the available source basis and history of the unit for scholars. It also received extensive attention in Tobias Berglund and Niclas Sennerteg's 2017 history of the Finnish Civil War, which pays particular attention to Sweden's role in the bloody conflict. ⁹

However, the Swedish Brigade has received very scant attention on a theoretical basis and outside of the Swedish and Finnish literature: overwhelmingly research has focused on establishing its composition, movements, character and military performance, with no publications as of yet trying to fit it into a wider framework of European political developments, nor understand its particular political culture, and how it changed in response to those developments. These are the key considerations of this article. The unit was not strictly speaking a paramilitary unit, which has been the favoured category of analysis in recent research. While motley in its composition and equipment, and lacking in professional soldiers, it did serve under regular officers as part of the formal hierarchy of the Finnish White Army, answering to the orders of Mannerheim's High Command, so that it is not altogether similar to something like the German Freikorps. Nevertheless, in the debate, it is worth considering as a unit of irregular volunteers, with a highly politicized outlook on a foreign civil war, and a small part of the European counter-revolutionary movement that highlights its variety and complexity. At the same time, the ‘Brigade’ derived its character and motivation to a large extent from a uniquely Finno-Swedish history and political culture that meshed in interesting ways with the narrative of a European struggle of civilization against Asiatic Bolshevism. Relying on the archive of the Swedish Brigade, as well as contemporary memoirs, histories and newspaper reports, this article will analyze the formation, actions and dissolution of the unit against the background of the Swedish Right's long-running romantic obsession with Finland as a kind of Swedish irredenta, and its intersection with the brutal violence of the transnational counter-revolution.

I

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Swedish military establishment could fairly be described as obsessed with Finland and its role in Sweden's history. Colonized in the later Middle Ages, Finland was an integral part of Sweden until the nineteenth century; by 1918 the population counted among its number several hundred thousand Swedish-speaking Finns, or Finno-Swedes. These were predominantly small farmers and fishermen along the southern and western coasts, though there was also a large minority of wealthy and middle-class Swedes living in the large cities of the south. ¹⁰ Swedish Finland had remained an integral part of Swedish nationalist consciousness, which was helped along by the fact that it was the only barrier standing between ‘national Sweden’ (Rikssverige) and Russia.

Finland's role as the eastern frontier of the Swedish Baltic Empire came to a definitive end in 1809. Russia invaded the province the year before, and within two months had conquered the supposedly unconquerable fortress Sveaborg (Suomenlinna). Swedish post-war literature, historical and poetic, condemned the feckless government of the ‘enlightened despot’ King Gustav IV Adolf, who was held personally responsible for the defeat. Free airing of discontent with royal policy was made possible by the coup d’état led by Carl Johan Adlercreutz on 13 March 1809, who deposed the king, and won the reputation of a war hero, even if he failed to avert the surrender of Finland to Russia. ¹¹ In retrospect, the Russo-Finnish War seemed the last great Swedish war against her arch enemy.

The Swedish General Staff, for want of wars in living memory, was preoccupied with military history, not least the Great Power era of Charles XII, who at a young age waged aggressive wars on the Baltic empire's eastern frontiers. ¹² The Swedish Right of the early twentieth century was still ambivalent about the virtues of parliamentary rule and democracy. The military still regarded the monarch, the Commander in Chief, as the country's proper leader, at a time when his Carolingian predecessor was widely glorified. ¹³ Charles XII was held aloft as a role model of military-authoritarian monarchism, with some – including the famous explorer Sven Hedin (1865–1952) – going as far as encouraging King Gustav V to stage a coup and initiate a new Carolingian Golden Age. ¹⁴ In military plans Russia naturally loomed large, and the Finno-Russian war was the most recent lesson from which to learn. ¹⁵ Consequently Finland played a prominent part in the minds of Swedish military, aristocratic and nationalist circles. Some, such as Olof Palme (1884–1918, uncle of the later Prime Minister of the same name), a disciple of the nineteenth-century nationalist historian Harald Hjärne (1848–1922), ¹⁶ went so far as to advocate the reinstatement of the 1809 borders. ¹⁷ In the minds of the military there was little doubt that Sweden's attention should be to the eastern frontier – some even suggested that concern with Norway, which attained independence in 1905, was a dereliction of Sweden's proper duty. Psychologically, Finland was still very much a part of Sweden, part of the same ödesgemenskap (community of destiny), threatened by the great Russian Empire. ¹⁸ Beyond military circles, this interest in the eastern frontier manifested itself as concrete plans for extending Swedish political and commercial interests eastwards, in what was presented as new and peaceful forms of Charles XII's eastwards drive. The Swedish Right therefore regarded the proclamation of Finnish independence, and the ensuing civil war, with considerable interest.

Preparations for nationalist military action in Finland had already commenced several years before the Eastern and Central European revolutions. Already since the late nineteenth century Germany entertained plans for using Finland in an attack against Russia, while the 1910 discussions with the Swedish military even considered a Swedish support attack via Finland. ¹⁹ During the First World War the Finnish Jäger Battalion had been trained in Germany for a strike against Russia, consisting of 1897 soldiers, including 550 Finno-Swedes, and six Swedish nationals. ²⁰ With the collapse of tsardom in the Russian Empire in March 1917, Finland's status as a Grand Duchy of the empire came under review. Finland, unlike other parts of the empire, had not supplied soldiers for the war effort against the Central Powers, and now had an opportunity to extract itself altogether. Ironically for the Finnish White nationalists, this possibility was opened up by the Bolsheviks, whose coup in November the same year hastened the dismantling of tsarist institutions, meaning both imperial structures and the withdrawal of Russian troops from Finnish soil. The Bolsheviks were also the only Russian party to support Finnish independence, as confirmed by their emissary Alexandra Kollontai. ²¹ Initially the Finnish ‘Reds’ were rather more moderate and democratic than the sectarian Bolsheviks who were launching large parts of Eastern Europe into civil war, looking to models like Switzerland for a new Finnish democratic nation-state. ²² The Finnish Social Democrats enjoyed widespread popular support, and the party's parliamentary leaders mainly advocated a moderate social democracy, not revolution, and advocated independence over incorporation in the emergent Soviet Union. ²³ However, over the course of 1917 the moderates on both Left and Right were pushed aside: the social democrats’ radical wing encouraged the formation of Red Guards and ultimately hoped to secure a socialist revolution, and soon enjoyed mainstream support for an armed coup, especially as hopes for more radical change were raised with developments in Petrograd that autumn. Likewise moderate conservatives were quickly sidelined by those advocating decisive and violent action on the Right, encouraging the rapid growth of White protection corps across the country, in a snowballing movement of mutual armament and radicalization, with skirmishes breaking out already in August. ²⁴ Finnish paramilitaries on both sides were formed amidst the chaos of world war and revolution, typically in response to the strike waves of the summer, and structurally pushed by the disappearance of the Tsarist police force. ²⁵ The fragmentation and destruction of institutional structures encouraged escalating violence. ²⁶

Finland, in spite of being largely untouched by the First World War, and most Finns having very little combat experience, was not to be excluded from the extreme civil violence that Central and Eastern Europe would endure during 1917–1923. As part of the post-imperial ‘shatterzone’, Finland, like the Baltic states, saw, simultaneously, a nationalist move for independence in the midst of war, and a left-wing drive for revolution, together with the involvement of foreign powers pursuing their own objectives, not least Germany. While the civil war in Finland itself only lasted three months, coming to an end in mid-May, the casualties were disproportionate, with especially the White Terror killing thousands of prisoners of war and civilians after fighting had ceased. While Finnish Red campaigns killed c. 3800 people, the White campaigns claimed as many as 13,200, outside of combat. ²⁷ The Finnish Civil War had an important role in the spread of violence and terror in the region, as it followed quickly after the so-called Russian Revolution of November 1917. As such, it seemed to confirm the fear that the social upheaval and chaos of Russia and the Bolsheviks were not contained, and indeed were like a virus capable of spreading and infecting the rest of Europe. ²⁸ This was an analysis eagerly promoted by the Finnish White leadership itself. In Mannerheim's words of mid-February 1918: ‘For Europe must realize that it itself has the greatest interest in the battle in Finland. If anarchy breaks down the dam we are trying to raise, then the blood-red deluge will continue west’. ²⁹

From the mid-nineteenth century the revolutions and civil wars fuelled the Right's fears that socialism meant the destruction of the economy and civilization. But it also aided the Right by providing a useful propaganda tool, equating native socialist and labour movements with the fantastical horrors abroad, even if there were very few similarities in reality. Among the bourgeoisie of the West, news from Central and Eastern Europe, brought home by émigrés and amplified by right-wing propaganda, caused something of a panic, highly disproportionate to the actual threat Bolshevism presented. ³⁰ In the regions most immediately impacted this led to the emergence of an ultra-violent transnational counter-revolutionary movement, which suppressed the Left with brutal military violence, with a terroristic afterlife in the interbellum. ³¹ But liberal democracies like Sweden that escaped most of the war and conflict still saw a panicked response. Years of food rationing and fears of conflict with the Great Powers brought crowds on the streets of Stockholm, while the Social Democrats organized large-scale demonstrations in the capital in response to revolutions abroad to put pressure on the government, particularly in the wake of the German November Revolution. Middle-class circles, looking not least to their immediate neighbour in the East, were quick to form militias to guard against the Left. Even large parts of the Swedish Left, not least the leader of the Social Democrats, Hjalmar Branting, were worried that the ‘Russian contamination’ could spread to Sweden, and were keen for the Red revolt to stop at the border. ³² While the threat of Bolshevik revolution in Sweden was wildly exaggerated, much of the Swedish Right was in no doubt that the situation in Finland was of direct relevance and required urgent, military, attention.

II

It was much to the dismay of Swedish nationalists and conservatives, one month after the outbreak of hostilities in Finland, that the government declared its neutrality in the conflict. The hoped-for intervention on the side of the White government in Vasa did not materialize, although it would later turn out that Sweden had covertly supported White Finland with crucial armaments and other military hardware. ³³ This was not generally known at the time however, and instead White sympathizers, dubbed ‘friends of Finland’ – handily ignoring the very considerable popular support enjoyed by the Finnish socialists – quickly mobilized military volunteers to stand in for an official Swedish military response. Approximately a thousand military were permitted to cross the border and fight in Mannerheim's White Army, including a high number of Swedish officers. With the Swedish military's extremely developed officer corps training, these provided highly professional leadership that became the backbone of the White Army. In sharp contrast to this senior professional military support, was also one all-Swedish volunteer unit: the Swedish Brigade. ³⁴

While intended as a brigade, i.e., some 1500–2000 men, including artillery, in reality it never grew to more than a little over 500 men in the field at any time, ³⁵ not least thanks to a highly effective Left counter-campaign. ³⁶ Founded at the behest of the Union of Finland's Friends [Föreningen Finlands vänner], the principal organizers of the project were all scholars of the humanities: the aforementioned right-wing historian Olof Palme; the classical archaeologist Axel Boëthius (1889–1969); and the archaeologist Gustaf Hallström (1880–1962), who had recent experience as a volunteer in a German Red Cross ambulance unit. ³⁷ (Hallström's brother was Ivor Thord-Gray, a British lieutenant-colonel supporting the White Army in Siberia.) The unit was led by Lieutenant Hjalmar Frisell and Erik Hallström, a Swedish officer from the German Imperial Army. ³⁸ The Swedish Brigade was extremely well funded, privately: the project received some eleven million kronor within a few weeks, particularly with contributions from Finno-Swedish exiles. ³⁹ (Financial documents in the Brigade archives show predominantly large individual donations, typically in the tens of thousands of kronor or mark; business and aristocracy were keen contributors). ⁴⁰ Since it was illegal to formally recruit soldiers for a foreign war in which Sweden was neutral, offices were set up around the country where volunteers could receive information and equipment, and directions to Uleåborg in northern Finland where they would first sign their service contracts. ⁴¹ Information for potential volunteers was published in Swedish newspapers, requiring resignation from the Swedish army where applicable, a visa valid until 5 August 1918, a grey Swedish military uniform without insignia, and ideally proof of military experience. Officers were paid 300 kronor per month in Sweden and 200 mark per month in Finland, soldiers 75 kronor per month and 10 mark per day. ⁴²

Recruitment of the Brigade proceeded as conservatives fulminated against government neutrality. In one article, General C. O. Nordensvan complained that the loss of Åland to Russia in 1809 was a major threat to national security, and now the government had wasted an opportunity to both help Finland attain its independence, and solve Sweden's security problem. The government was clearly ‘not sufficiently historically inclined’, so that ‘the Swedish king's government has brought shame and dishonour to our country [by having] pushed away the young Finnish state’. ⁴³ At the same time there was embarrassment that it was Germany rather than Sweden which came ‘to help [Finland's] legal government to maintain the new republic against the bandit hordes from the East, closely collaborating with the traitors of its own people’, as well as concern about what this meant for German influence in the Baltic and Scandinavia. ⁴⁴ Rather than mobilizing the military for Finland, the government was busy preparing legislation for female suffrage and an expanded franchise. General Rüdiger von der Goltz, in charge of the German Ostsee-Division in Finland and later of the Baltic Freikorps, stated that ‘Sweden has neglected a great historical moment’, making instead Germany the father of the new Finland. ⁴⁵ Sundsvalls Posten noted that the German Vossische Zeitung had published an article drawing parallels between Charles XII and Germany's current position in the Baltic, and denounced the Swedish government's ‘sober judgement’ as a sure way to moral defeat.

It has become fashionable within certain Swedish cultural camps to deride the great historical memories, and from that direction nothing generates more anxiety and dismay than speaking of the obligations of tradition. For the Swedish mind that has been seized by sadness before this national cold, there is something humiliating in having to see how Swedish historical memories are used by foreign nations as their role models, and used for denigrating assessments of the current Swedish national mood. ⁴⁶

With this historical reference the Swedish Right framed the issue almost exclusively in terms of morality, duty and honour, and had little patience for the Liberal government's sober diplomatic policies. Conservatives characterized the civil war as a war of independence against treason and Asiatic Russia, rather than a modern counter-revolutionary struggle against the Left, a moral-historical narrative rather than a contemporary-political one. ⁴⁷ In Axel Boëthius' 1920 history of the Swedish Brigade, he described the reaction to the outbreak of the war: ‘Vividly like never before one perceived that the battle in Finland concerned the Swedish legal order, Swedish culture, that it was a defensive war for Sweden, waged as so often before on Finnish soil’. ⁴⁸ The Right's roots in the romanticized history of the Swedish Baltic Empire and moral frame of reference created a ubiquitous dual Sweden: an official Sweden [det officiella Sverige] held in contempt, ⁴⁹ and, by implication, a true, historical Sweden, which existed in the minds and actions of those willing to fulfil the nation's historical-traditional obligations in this time of crisis. The writer and Brigade volunteer E. Walter Hülphers (1871–1957) wrote in his 1918 account of the Brigade: ‘I too am Sweden. Sweden is also me and my friends here’. ⁵⁰ As a Swedish-led all-Swedish unit, the Brigade was a natural vessel for this romantic conception. ⁵¹

In fact, it is remarkable to what extent the Swedish volunteers in general, and the Brigade in particular, were given a romantic-poetic frame, and encouraged to understand themselves within this frame. It is widely understood that, not surprisingly, among the Swedish volunteers and Finland activists there was a great deal of enthusiasm for the shared Finno-Swedish culture and history: Finlandsvärmeri [lit. Finland enthusiasm]. ⁵² Classics of Finno-Swedish literature, not least the poet Runeberg and his Swedish magnum opus on the Russo-Finnish War of 1809 (Fänrik Ståls Sägner, The Tales of Ensign Stål) which was widely taught in Swedish schools, were a ubiquitous cultural reference point for Swedes’ understanding of both Finland and the ongoing conflict. That reference point unilaterally encouraged a conception of the Finnish Civil War as a time of historical importance filled with possibilities for adventure and heroism. ⁵³ Some volunteers applied for a position in precisely those terms. One applicant from Malmö added to their letter, in verse: ‘I want to unite myself with you Swedes, / in the battle for freedom, law, and right, / for the salvation of Finland and the honour of Sweden’. ⁵⁴ With Hülphers as the self-appointed bard of the Brigade, the Swedish contribution was defended against Finnish criticism of official Swedish neutrality through poetry: ‘Thus, brother, save the bitter words, / let us redeem Sweden's guilt with blood’. ⁵⁵ Brigade members visited Runeberg's home town as a special outing during the war, paying their respects at his monument, and received a special edition of Fänrik Ståls Sägner as a gift before the victory parade. ⁵⁶

III

Needless to say, the reality of the Swedish Brigade was less romantic. Once on the ground in Uleåborg, recruits were generally poorly equipped. In spite of good funding, organization proved wanting, caused by difficulties inherent to foreign volunteer units, and the Brigade's leadership. Most recruits had no weapon when they crossed the border, and there was no uniform apart from the obligatory white armband. While some volunteers had brought Mauser rifles, the standard issue weapons were old Russian rifles (that showed distance in verst rather than metres), which proved difficult to aim with even for those who had prior military training, and could not be fitted with the standard Swedish bayonet. They were organized by the Swedish captain Hjalmar Frisell, and Erik Hallström, a Swedish lieutenant from the German Imperial Army. While key equipment like machine guns was lacking, the Brigade did manage to form a music band replete with instruments. To compound the issue, the volunteers were in the first instance trained in what was complainingly termed barracks- and parade-discipline, rather than for combat, criticism that would cause Frisell to eventually be removed as leader of the Brigade. ⁵⁷ Otherwise the state of the ‘Brigade’ was typical for the Finnish Civil War, where both sides started out poorly prepared for a military confrontation, with small forces, little training and few weapons. ⁵⁸ The volunteers themselves were socially heterogeneous: 40 per cent were workers, but a disproportionate group was nobility (several of which were descendants from the Swedish generals of the 1809 war, enhancing the Runebergesque fantasy), ⁵⁹ similar to counter-revolutionary units in Germany, Austria and Hungary, ⁶⁰ along with academics among the leading organizers such as Palme and Hallström. ⁶¹ More unusually, they came from a variety of political backgrounds; while it has not been possible to determine this exactly, it is clear that volunteers came from both the Left and Right – Hülphers for instance was a Social Democrat, ⁶² though after the war he would make a sharp turn to the Right and eventually end up as editor of Nationalsocialistisk Tidning (National Socialist Newspaper). A small number of the Brigade were Norwegian and Danish. ⁶³ As with other contemporary civil wars in Europe, the volunteers comprised a very wide age range, from 16 to 50. ⁶⁴ The later Brigade commander Harald Hjalmarson noted there were disciplinary problems on account of the age range, with older members being reluctant to obey younger officers. ⁶⁵ By the organizers’ own admission, some of the volunteers were less than ideal, with mercenary attitudes and dubious motives, which fostered suspicions of undercover Red agents. ⁶⁶

The Swedish Brigade was first active in skirmishes at Uusikylä in southern Finland, which quickly showed up problems in both troop quality and intelligence about terrain and enemy numbers. ⁶⁷ After a hard-won victory, the Swedish Brigade plundered the village. ⁶⁸ Soon it was deployed in what was set to be the largest battle on Nordic soil up to that point in history, the siege of Tampere (Tammerfors), from 16 March to 6 April, which effectively collapsed Red resistance in Finland. The siege did much to spark the imagination of the Swedish bourgeois press, which portrayed it as Sweden's moment of redemption, as the largest foreign volunteer force on Swedish soil (before the arrival of the Germans on 5 April) fulfilling its duties against the Russian enemy once more. Hülphers recounted that Svenska Dagbladet – one of the largest dailies in Sweden – pleaded for the Brigade to, again in poetic form, ‘with their blood pay for Sweden's guilt and idleness’. ⁶⁹ In some sense the Brigade indeed did so: miscommunication and error, possibly as the fault of Axel Boëthius, ⁷⁰ meant the Brigade ended up under friendly fire, ⁷¹ as well as heavy enemy fire at an unexpectedly early point in the attack, leading to high casualties. Two officers were killed, Gunnar Jägerskiöld and Olof Palme, as the German-owned, Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet reported. ⁷² Stockholms-Tidningen, while it noted some of the discontent with how the Brigade had been organized, and the bloody losses suffered by the unit, concluded: ‘While the Swedish Brigade's baptism of fire was therefore bloody, it has through that written its name into the history of the Finnish civil war with that warrior's glory [krigarglans] which is after all attached to the Swedish name’. ⁷³ On 11 April, the local Finno-Swedish tabloid Tammerfors Aftonblad, briefly headed by Hülphers, ⁷⁴ joined in on the glorification of the Brigade:

The Swedes here showed themselves to be true descendants of that warrior people, which in past times won the admiration of the entire world. […] The bond that brothers in arms now tie, will unite Swede and Finn, that bond which was tied at Breitenfeld, Lützen, Narva, and countless glorious battlefields and which the hundred year divorce has not been able to weaken. Proudly a Swede like a Finn can exclaim: ‘Yet lives the spirit of the fathers’. ⁷⁵

Already on 1 April, Erik Hallström was quick to congratulate Captain Frisell on the successful assault, speaking of heroic deeds and honour, in spite of the excess dead. ⁷⁶ Generally the sympathetic Swedish press over-emphasized both the significance of the battle for Tampere and the Brigade's contribution to the battle, which while costly and not insignificant, hardly decided the outcome. ⁷⁷

In spite of the continuous romanticization of the Swedes’ efforts, the harsh realities of war, and a civil war in particular, made themselves felt. Regardless of Runeberg, the Swedish volunteers were very much foreigners in the conflict, and were by no means universally well regarded. Official Swedish neutrality, the far readier German response to help White Finland, and the ongoing ‘language battle’ (språkstrid) which promoted the marginalization of Swedish by resurgent Finnish nationalism, all contributed to make the Brigade feel less than welcome. Reports from one member of the Brigade, Carl-Gustaf Grönstrand, noted complaints that Finnish troops were much better provided in terms of food and equipment. ⁷⁸ Hülphers claimed the Swedes had to beg for food from the Finns. ⁷⁹ There were also symbolic slights after the victory at Tampere. Calle Dillner wrote that they were met with disdain by the population, General Mannerheim did not mention them in his victory speech, and they were not permitted a religious service to honour the dead, ‘no te deum for the victory’. ⁸⁰ Harald Hjalmarson, who took over command of the Brigade after Tampere, noted that the primary religious service was entirely in Finnish, which severely demoralized the Swedish troops who felt like mercenaries. ⁸¹ Most poignantly to Hülphers, the White political leader Svinhufvud renamed the seventeenth-century fortress Sveaborg, subject of poems by both Runeberg and Esaias Tegnér, Suomenliina, Fortress of Finland, a direct attack on Swedish national culture according to the author. ⁸² To compound the disappointment, Brigade members resented the new Swedish recruits that came to Finland later in the war. Members’ accounts universally deride them as uncouth, incompetent, and mercenary. ‘Tell Finland's Friends to for God's sake not send all of the street scum there is in Stockholm. […] Are we here going to train a bunch of half-idiots to make a Swedish brigade, and regard them as suitable to rehabilitate our falling honour. Fuck Finland's Friends in Stockholm’. ⁸³ In a 1931 commemorative volume for the Brigade, organizer Gustaf Hallström also admitted that some of the new recruits perhaps left a little to be desired in terms of morals and standards. ⁸⁴ As the tone of Dillner's account suggests, there was also a growing frustration with the naïve and idealistic attitudes at home.

The poetic framing of the Swedish Brigade in the Swedish press, and the romantic imagination of its members, could not resist the reality of the Finnish Civil War, something that inevitably led to severe disillusionment. The sense of a fraternal alliance with the Finns fighting against the old Russian enemy was undermined by Finnish treatment of the Swedish volunteers, the friction of international politics, and the far more significant German intervention. Poor equipment and incomplete or misguided training added mundane and practical vexations felt on a daily basis. When frustrated volunteer troops led by officers of questionable competence directly confronted the death and destruction of war, with severe losses in the first battles, we may surmise little idealism survived. Indeed, accounts from the Brigade from April onwards are typically quite negative in tone, and only Swedish press reports mention any particularly ‘heroic’ attitudes after that point. Of the post-war memoirs, Boëthius’ generally rather dry account does not talk a great deal about troop morale, though it does admit things were not easy for the fresh volunteers, and maintains the heroic discourse by and large; but Boëthius was one of the key organizers behind the Brigade, and as such could be seen as responsible for how it fulfilled its mission. Hülphers on the other hand, an intellectual who in fact ended up on the sidelines for most of the combat, gave an account that seethes with resentment, and deliberately contrasts the idealized mission for Swedish civilization with the miserable state of what was in reality a small battalion, and its petty treatment. But what perhaps did most to shatter the Swedes’ illusions was the brutality of what was in reality not a war against Russia, ⁸⁵ but a civil war, with all the violence typical of such a conflict where institutional sanctions had been largely obliterated. ⁸⁶ Hjalmarson, whose memoirs perhaps tried the hardest of all to maintain the historic-romantic framework, noted:

And yet one more time Finland's soil has had to be painted bloody, in the ongoing for centuries struggle in the North against Asian barbarism's Russian form, which, in spite of all the influence from Western civilization, has shown receptiveness only to its waste products and has managed only to make its underside its own. Those the Muscovite liked best – the crusades had stopped too early. ⁸⁷

IV

Even by the standards of civil wars, the Finnish Civil War was exceptionally violent. In total more than 30,000 people were killed in the war, the majority of them outside of combat, constituting more than 1 per cent of the Finnish population. The vast majority of those were on the Red side, who perished in what was soon called the White Terror, continuing long after hostilities had ceased in May 1918. ⁸⁸ The ill-disciplined nature of the paramilitary Red Guards and White protection corps contributed to the violence, as did the initially localized character of the conflict, which encouraged the settling of accounts with rivals and enemies through the war. It was also an opportunity for local elites who had lost power to workers’ organizations to seize that power back and get revenge. ⁸⁹ There were also individual officers who took the directive to secure and purge territories to extreme lengths. ⁹⁰

But the violence was encouraged directly from above from the beginning of the war, and only later reluctantly discouraged. In a controversial interview with Swedish journalist Nils Hasager for Dagens Nyheter and the Danish Politiken, the White leadership including Mannerheim maintained an implacable attitude, demanding the death penalty for all rebels. On the 25 February, Mannerheim issued a notorious and illegal directive that handed local commanders wide-ranging powers to carry out summary executions without consequence, the so-called Shoot on the Spot declaration (Ammutaan paikalla –julistus). As a basic principle the leadership encouraged the shooting of as many as possible before taking prisoners. While counter-directives were issued prohibiting summary executions, and courts established to deal with matters legally, the original directive was never revoked. Widespread contradictions, vague statements and tacit endorsement of the killings ensured the terror continued, and escalated, over the months. ⁹¹

Swedish volunteers arriving in Finland as early as February had already heard news of the Red Terror. Hjalmarson noted the Reds’ ‘terrible atrocities’, murder and torture, stating in his memoirs that one ought never to be caught alive by the enemy. ⁹² To Hülphers, the first Red prisoners were like ‘the wolf man’ [vargmänniskan]. ⁹³ Several members of the Swedish Brigade had taken on false identities, so that relatives would not receive news of their torture and mutilation if they were caught by the enemy. ⁹⁴ While there was thus clearly a common expectation of violence, particularly a kind of brutal, extrajudicial violence by the enemy, which was replicated in many of the Swedish reports and accounts of the war, reactions and engagement with White violence varied strongly. Hjalmarson showed a rather realistic assessment of the situation, at least according to his memoirs, when he put in a request to Mannerheim to be given a role as a frontline commander, rather than any duties behind the frontline, as he expected this to quickly become ‘tasteless’ [osmakligt] police work. ⁹⁵ For Hjalmarson, a civil war was a nasty business, a war he could only wage in the knowledge that the enemy was actually the Russians. ⁹⁶ Other volunteers in the Swedish Brigade did not show themselves to be particularly concerned about the nationality of the enemy, describing instead a desire to fight against ‘inhumane bandits’ and ‘murdering red guards’. Other common descriptors were traitors, thugs, and hooligans [förrädare, ligister, huliganer]. ⁹⁷ Olof Palme set the tone for the unit by expressing his enthusiasm for ‘shooting some hooligans’. ⁹⁸ In fact Palme was typical of a sub-section of Swedish volunteers who, in spite of the rhetoric of a Nordic brothers’ alliance, saw the conflict in heavily racist terms, as saving Swedish culture from Finnish Mongol violence, and to whom the true Finnish nation was its Swedish-speaking nobility. ⁹⁹ In his 1917 pamphlet, Finland!, Palme wrote: ‘In every Finn there hides, in spite of centuries of cultivation, a bit of barbarian, which for a long time yet, as until now, will require care and discipline’. ¹⁰⁰

Swedish pretensions to being more civilized than their Finnish counterparts – typically with reference to law and order as being a Swedish gift to Finnish society – quickly showed themselves hollow as the volunteers proved no less willing to participate in summary and mass executions. In spite of the lack of clear orders regarding these killings, and without evidence of direction from Swedish military superiors, scholars have nevertheless managed to demonstrate extensive Swedish participation in the White Terror. Generally there appears not to have been anything to particularly distinguish Swedish from Finnish troops in this regard. ¹⁰¹ Hjalmarson, in spite of his professed reluctance, ended up organizing the execution of one Red prisoner which he described as terrible but necessary duty. ¹⁰² While he claimed to feel pity for the prisoners, he wrote that he was altogether unaffected by the executions by the end of the war, as he guarded prisoners before execution in Tavastehus. ¹⁰³ The Brigade at this point he describes as ‘possessed by the most bitter hatred for the red vermin’. ¹⁰⁴ Another noted Swedish commander in the war and a former subordinate of Hjalmarson in Persia, Martin Ekström (1887–1954), after Tampere the commander of the Vasa regiment, also participated in executions. Ekström, a military adventurer and daredevil, and future leader of the National Socialist Bloc, was venerated by his troops, and had a powerful reputation among the Swedes. He also had a reputation for humane treatment of prisoners. ¹⁰⁵ Nevertheless, it is notable that he was one of the two commanders to conquer Vyborg, the last Red outpost after Tampere. Alongside General Ernst Löfström's Kajaani regiment, the Vasa regiment massacred over three hundred civilians in Vyborg, most of them Russians without any association with the Finnish Reds, including children. ¹⁰⁶ Aside from the culpability of Swedish officers, it is clear that Swedish soldiers were quick to adopt the established no-quarter mentality – if anything, the Swedish volunteers were keen to prove themselves to the more experienced indigenous troops, ¹⁰⁷ an attitude familiar from other European war zones. ¹⁰⁸ In his memoirs, Hjalmarson describes one episode where a small patrol of Red guards is taken prisoner by his unit, who are interrogated and declare they are on their own. When the Swedes encounter another (unrelated) Red patrol, the prisoners are promptly executed on the spot, before officers intervene. ¹⁰⁹ None of the men were punished. ¹¹⁰

The Swedish Brigade specifically was also put in charge of guarding prisoners in Tampere after the victory, where they witnessed, ¹¹¹ and several volunteers participated in, the extensive mass executions that followed the White takeover. ¹¹² Avoiding the executions was impossible, as they were so numerous and continued over such a long time, even civilians were constantly confronted by them. ¹¹³ Lieutenant Reichenberg of the Brigade was given charge of a machine gun unit guarding an execution site at the edge of Tampere, where prisoners were executed en masse and corpses were piled up in heaps. ¹¹⁴ Some of the volunteers, not least Hülphers, regarded the executions with complete distaste. While Hülphers earlier noted the summary executions of prisoners with some indifference, and described his enthusiasm for the attack on Tampere with the battle cry of ‘To Tammerfors over the corpses of the perverse beasts!’, ¹¹⁵ the aftermath was a different matter. Embittered after encounters with the far more popular German military, and the new, suspicious Brigade recruits, Hülphers heard gunshots on the street.

I hurry hence and see a warehouse wall, against which they are executing people. Hooligan leaders and Red Russians, they say! The picture is indescribably disgusting. On the ground there is already a bloody corpse heap. One does not shoot like honourable soldiers, in salvos, but guns them down one by one, according to inclination. One [person] walks around and shoots with his browning pistol. Are these executioners in essence better than their enemies? What would they be capable of if they lacked leadership and discipline? I start to suspect, that the Whites like the Reds are of altogether the same kind. ¹¹⁶

The experience of the war thus by no means had a direct brutalizing effect on all volunteers, but Hülphers' account does underline the significance the executions: not necessarily participating, but simply witnessing them had a real impact on the volunteers. Needless to say, his account of his own feelings and experiences needs to be analyzed critically. His memoirs are those of an experienced writer, with a story which presents the reader with a neat trajectory from patriotic bravery and idealism to disillusionment and regret, underlining the point that it is Swedish civilization in Finland that is worth saving. (They were also published within months of the end of the war, and thus do not show the fact that Hülphers subsequently turned from social democracy to national socialism in the 1920s.)

Other volunteers on the other hand displayed a keen interest in the mass executions, and volunteered to kill prisoners. One brigadier photographed the bodies (for his own use it seems, the photographs are not in the Brigade archive), and happily noted how all Russians were executed. ‘One is no more bothered that there are some corpses on the street than if they were some rats’. ¹¹⁷ He repeated a common claim that Red assassins continued to kill White troops by shooting them from the cellars, something commonly claimed to be practised by women in particular. However, ten Red prisoners were executed for every assassination, he reports. ‘I am glad I came here: it is interesting and educational and I feel so good and have an excellent time here’. ¹¹⁸ One report in the Swedish Brigade archives, widely noted by historians, ¹¹⁹ is by the aforementioned Carl-Gustaf Grönstrand, who evidently took pleasure in the killings. In his account he volunteers to execute prisoners, and defends his decision to shoot defenceless people to protesting comrades:

Has not all of Finland been defenceless in their hands, have they spared society? They are not people, [but] beasts, which are to be exterminated, they are. They have no right to existence whatsoever and therefore they need to be gone. Soon you’ll be of the same opinion. ¹²⁰

Later he witnesses and participates in several executions, including several women for whom he has a particular distaste.

While Grönstrand's grotesque enthusiasm for the executions, and dehumanization of the Reds, has made for a striking illustration of Swedish participation in the White Terror, what is perhaps more interesting in this and the above case is the description of time in Finland as educational. After Tampere, the Brigade moved on to participate in several skirmishes around Lempäälä, after which they encountered a German army unit for the first time, a bicycle battalion in Koskis. ¹²¹ The Swedes admired the much better equipped soldiers: ‘Handsome uniforms and helmets on their heads, machine guns attached to the bicycles and well-equipped, it was a delight to see them’. ¹²² Later in Tavastehus they also had the opportunity to admire the Germans’ modern field kitchens and artillery. The German troops were polite, and shared cigarettes with the Swedes. Grönstrand got in conversation with one German officer, who had heard about the Swedish Brigade, which had a reputation for its diverse age range, and lack of uniform clothing. They also discussed the supposedly awful women in the Red Guards.

His resentment of the reds was incredible, especially on account of their brutal warfare. In his opinion they had no right whatsoever to be treated like regular enemies. ‘With the small heaps we capture we shoot down the whole lot’, he said, ‘though we couldn’t of course shoot all 7000 of those we took the day before yesterday’. He also said: ‘In the interest of humanity we have come here to do a great cleaning’. That is the most important thing I remember, of that we talked about for 20 min. ¹²³

Later that afternoon Grönstrand heard how some thirty Red prisoners, including one teenage girl, were executed by a Jäger unit (the officer initially wanted the Swedes to perform the executions). ‘I don’t believe it was such a terrible “white terror” against these.’ ¹²⁴

Grönstrand himself can surely not be assumed to be representative of the Swedish Brigade, and the archive does not contain anywhere near enough reports like the above to extrapolate on volunteer attitudes as a whole, but his encounters do offer an informative view of the transnational dynamics of the Finnish Civil War, and its intersection with violence. The concrete transnational exchanges between counter-revolutionaries in Central and Eastern Europe in this period have already been noted, and Finland fits in here too. ¹²⁵ What Grönstrand demonstrates is that this was a site for exchange, politicization and violent radicalization, that also included foreign volunteers from states that were altogether neutral in and unaffected by the great conflicts of the time. Exposure to extreme violence and terror tactics, specific military forces which impressed by their comparative quality, the no-mercy attitudes of native troops, as well as verbal exchanges through a violent discourse of dehumanization, all influenced foreign volunteers who had various motivations for joining the conflict.

Analyses of some of the 1611 applicants’ given reasons for volunteering show that several already possessed a strong counter-revolutionary ideological drive: murderous anti-Bolshevik rhetoric was already present, perhaps especially among teenagers. ¹²⁶ Influential individuals in the Brigade like Olof Palme, as well as officer Reichenberg, already possessed a favourable attitude towards mass executions as a means of wiping out the enemy. ¹²⁷ But more idealistic and pragmatic motivations predominated: shame at ‘official Sweden's’ neutrality; a desire to defend law and culture from barbarism; a sense of historical duty; and, on the other hand, the need for employment; hope for a career in the military, or faster military advancement through concrete experience; not to mention sheer adventurism or shadier motives ¹²⁸ (as especially newer recruits were suspected of). Regardless of what motivated the Swedes who ultimately fought in Finland, they were no less amenable to the White Terror than the White Finns. That is not to say their reactions to the violence were uniform, and especially not uniformly positive, as Hülphers' example shows. In fact, feelings of reluctance and disgust were also evident, though these were more frequently found in published sources than private ones, which may hint at a performative rejection of dubious civil war violence. Indifference was also evident, but like Grönstrand's ghoulish enthusiasm, hardly a publicly acceptable attitude. Others, for example Hjalmarson, rationalized the violence as occurring mostly on the enemy side, while White violence was a legitimate response against the ‘Russian invader’ or traitors. Regardless, what most of the responses in the Swedish Brigade to the White Terror share is that they meshed poorly with the romantic preconception of the war as a heroic effort that was part of a long historical line of glorious Swedish war against the Russian arch enemy, through the 1809 war down to the expansionist efforts of Charles XII. Coming home, the Left was keen to remind the volunteers of this fact.

V

From the moment the recruitment campaign for the Swedish Brigade started in February, the extra-parliamentary Left condemned the bourgeois effort to involve Sweden in the fight against the workers’ rebellion. On the Left August Strindberg attacked right-wing intellectuals like Verner von Heidenstam and Sven Hedin, condemning their support for White Finland as class-motivated. ¹²⁹ Papers like the communist Politiken, in sharp contrast to the bourgeois press, portrayed the conflict as a class war, an effort by business and aristocracy to murder and subjugate Finnish class brothers. In a March issue, the paper claimed one working-class volunteer in the Brigade felt tricked into joining, and that the war was a pure class war. Allegedly officer Forsell threatened to shoot those who would not fight without a contract (the claim is entirely unsubstantiated). ¹³⁰ The volunteers’ departure for Finland saw heavy protests from the Left at the train station, especially in Norrbotten. ¹³¹ Throughout the war, and upon their return at the end of May, the communist party press was vociferous in its condemnation of the ‘blackguards’ [svartgardister].

The Brigade was formally released from duty by Mannerheim on 28 May:

Forward our thanks to Sweden, and may it be said out loud, that you comrades have reconnected the centuries-old link, which was about to break. You have brought us back to the Sweden of our poets, and shown that manly courage and honour still live in the lands of heroes. ¹³²

A few days earlier, organizers and funders of the Brigade – a roll call of Swedish aristocracy and business, including Mannerheim, Wrangel, Palme, Hallström and von Stedingk – met to ensure, in Baron Johan Mannerheim's words, ‘that the reception of the Swedish Brigade will be as solemn [högtidlig] as possible’. ¹³³ The reception and celebration was, unfeasibly, to be ‘free from all political elements’. ¹³⁴ Upon their return at Stockholm harbour, crowds greeted the Swedish Brigade with flags, but: ‘From several directions the bourgeoisie's cheers and waving was mixed with strong boos from workers and other human-feeling elements in the audience’. ¹³⁵ The liberal and conservative press uniformly hailed the volunteers as heroes, who were received and formally disbanded in an official ceremony at Stockholm Stadium, a ticketed event for an audience of a little over six thousand. ¹³⁶ As the ‘Brigade’ entered the stadium, young women dressed in white strewed their path with flowers. Once in position, a choir sang, among other things, Vårt Land (Our Land), the Finnish national anthem based on the poem from Fänrik Ståls Sägner. ¹³⁷ In his speech, Harald Hjalmarson doubled down on the romantic-historic associations:

When violence, brutality and barbarism in uncouth union seized power for itself over there, and seemed poised to triumph over the civil society raised on the age-old Swedish foundation, then the old feeling of belonging in Swedish hearts was awakened, not to renewed life, but to renewed strength. […] We are proud of the honour, together with our brave Finnish war comrades, of having been permitted to relive the memories of past historical days. ¹³⁸

Subsequently Brigade officers were received by King Gustav V, where Hjalmarson praised the ‘extraordinarily popular’ Brigade, consisting of nothing but fine, brave men. ¹³⁹

In the following months the trade unions banned the veterans, ‘who for paltry gold sold themselves to the Finnish upper class, and in its service mowed down not just hooligans and bandits, but organized Finnish workers, socialists, comrades and friends to us here at home’. ¹⁴⁰ They were widely denied employment and physically attacked in the streets by workers, ¹⁴¹ for their ‘night-black treason against the world's working class which can never be redeemed’. ¹⁴² As the Right placed the Swedish Brigade and other volunteers in a neat romantic sequence of Swedish and Nordic history, the Marxist Left had a distinctly less historical vision, instead placing them in the realm of contemporary politics, and of course internationally as part of a European counter-revolutionary response to the workers’ revolution that started in Russia, but was bound to carry all of Europe and eventually the world. ‘That the “Swedish brigade” is praised in right-wing circles is of course entirely natural, since this brigade has worked in and secured the interests of capitalism in Finland, by murdering our class brothers there.’ ¹⁴³

The Swedish Brigade was ostensibly, by its own account, a politically neutral force, and indeed contained some left-wing members. After all, the Social Democrats were critical of the Red revolt in Finland as the sister party cast aside parliamentary methods. But the communists’ condemnation of the Brigade as reactionary oppressors helped push the veterans further to the Right. Paradoxically, this perhaps also meant pulling the veterans closer to the Marxist interpretation of the civil war – i.e., not as a historical struggle against the old enemy, but an international counter-revolution against socialism. As seen, the volunteers’ encounter with the brutality of civil war violence was sharply at odds with the romantic and poetic celebrations of the Right at home, inducing rapid disillusionment, but also encouraging brigadiers to look for other interpretations of their role in the conflict. Alternative perspectives were easily found among an indeterminate number of the volunteers including officers, Finnish troops, and the German division of Rüdiger von der Goltz, a transnational exchange which helped foster a sense of commonality with those fighting socialist revolution elsewhere in Europe.

Being cast out from trade unions, and with the shared experience of violence, many of the veterans shared a similar post-war fate. A veterans’ organization was formed: Svenska Krigare (Swedish Warriors), under the chairmanship of Harald Hjalmarson. ¹⁴⁴ The Brigade archives are full of letters asking the administration for work, ¹⁴⁵ and indeed one of the main activities of Finland's Friends after the war was to support veterans financially and help find them work. Some moved to Finland to avoid the union boycotts, others continued in the Finnish military and elsewhere. Several joined or attempted to join the German army before its surrender in November that year. ¹⁴⁶ Others volunteered in the Baltic civil wars, ¹⁴⁷ where again Rüdiger von der Goltz was leading German Freikorps units in combating both Bolsheviks and local independence movements. ¹⁴⁸ In Estonia, Martin Ekström commanded the main Swedish volunteer unit, which led the capture of Narva (an event hailed in the right-wing press as a repeat of the feat of Charles XII), after which he became a military instructor in Lithuania. ¹⁴⁹ Gustaf Hallström, the primary person in charge of the expedition during and after the war, attempted to set up a new organization for volunteers in the Estonian and Latvian civil wars, though it never got off the ground. ¹⁵⁰ Working-class veterans received some financial assistance from the expedition in the months after the war, which also attempted to connect them to employers willing to hire them. There was an outcry in the right-wing press against the socialist persecution of the veterans, especially Aftonbladet, ¹⁵¹ but ultimately the national union federation Landsorganisationen (LO, Land Organization) did not annul the anathema until 1939. ¹⁵² Quite predictably, many of the veterans became involved in strike-breaker organizations. One veteran, Edvin Konrad Petterson, formed the Svenska Nationella Skyddskåren (Swedish National Protection Corps) in 1925, which employed many former brigadiers, and was put in against the Ådalen strikes in 1931, highlighting a far-reaching politicization and radicalization of the Finland veterans. ¹⁵³ However, it is important to note that not all participants were set on a trajectory of rightist radicalization, and that responses were varied. Harald Hjalmarson, who in an interview with Aftonbladet claimed to have nothing but beautiful and grand memories from Finland, ¹⁵⁴ killed himself in December 1919.

***

This article has attempted to situate the Swedish Brigade in the bigger picture of the European counter-revolutionary movement. With most of the counter-revolutionary activity taking place after the First World War, with the dissolution of the Central Powers’ formal military forces, the Brigade would be an early instance of such action, before that movement had taken more concrete organizational shape. If it does fit within that context, it is a somewhat unusual case, as it originated from a comparatively democratic state which did not participate in the First World War: as such the brigadiers lacked the central motivations identified by Robert Gerwarth, i.e., resentment of defeat and a desire to challenge and modify the post-war settlement. Nevertheless, they were clearly part of a wide European trend of military volunteering to quash socialist revolution, with Finland the first line of resistance against the supposed contagion.

However, the Swedish volunteers’ mission was in the first instance not portrayed or understood as a reactionary one. Instead, the liberal and conservative press and other right-wing commentators almost universally saw the Swedish Brigade in romantic-historic terms. With the encouragement of Swedish-speaking exiles from Finland, and the Finland nationalist activist movement more generally, this was a war interpreted with reference to Finland's centuries-long relationship with Sweden, and particularly as romanticized by the great Swedish and Finnish poets of the nineteenth century. Whatever happened once troops were on the ground, there is relatively little evidence of anti-Bolshevik motivations at the initial stage of volunteering. From the moment of recruitment, the Swedish Brigade's progress was constructed via this romantic-historic narrative, influenced as much by the nationalist reading of Swedish history as the Swedish-Finnish literary heritage. Consequently, in spite of the considerable international ramifications of the Finnish Civil War, especially in the context of the ongoing world war, this was also a highly localized national narrative, not a European one, and the Brigade's contribution was understood accordingly. This was a heroic effort to save true Sweden's honour from the shame imposed by official Sweden's neutrality, a war for Finnish independence against the tyranny of the arch enemy.

The romantic-historic narrative was brutally disrupted on the ground. The realities of war, including the poor organization, the Brigade's’ suboptimal training and equipment, poor treatment, disdain from the native population, and the landing of the obviously superior German army, but particularly the exposure to extreme violence against enemy combatants, prisoners, and civilians, seems to have led to considerable disillusionment. The poetic fulminations against the barbaric Left and the eulogies for Swedish heroes redeeming Sweden with blood – including by Brigade volunteer E. Walter Hülphers – rang increasingly hollow under the conditions faced by the volunteers, foreigners involved in an exceptionally brutal civil war. While many brigadiers, in their reports and letters, explicitly read events in light of Runeberg's poetry, summary and mass executions and the piles of dead bodies did not submit readily to the framework of romantic poetry.

Alongside the far-Left critique of the Brigade as reactionary butchers of the working classes, there were other more contemporary and political readings available to the volunteers to understand their own identity and actions in the Finnish Civil War. It seems self-evident that the vociferous condemnation of the ‘blackguards’ by papers like Politiken would have facilitated the Brigade in more and more seeing itself as an opponent of the Left. The brigadiers had joined for a variety of reasons, ranging from careerism, opportunism and practical reasons, through a sense of historical duty, to reactionary ideological motivations. Disillusionment with the romantic-historic narrative doubtlessly encouraged volunteers to see themselves less as Swedish warriors redeeming their nation's honour, and more as counter-revolutionaries halting the Red flood. The presence of volunteers with an articulated anti-Bolshevik ideology from the outset, including the likes of upper-class leaders like Olof Palme who lost property or family in areas of Finland captured by the Reds, can only have facilitated this shift. On the other hand, reactions were not uniform across the hundreds of soldiers: disgust with the violence, even combined with racist views of the Finns, could also produce a rejection of the White Terror. The aspect of the Finnish Civil War as a site of transnational exchange was crucial here: the Brigade was not an isolated social group subjected to impersonal forces, but one party in interaction with both Finnish troops and, from April onwards, the German army. This allowed for concrete contacts which readily offered the Swedes alternative perspectives on the conflict beyond those offered by the bourgeois press, whose continued glorification of the romantic heroes stood in striking contrast to the new realities being faced by brigadiers like Carl-Gustaf Grönstrand.

In general terms, I propose that Swedish volunteers joined the Finnish Civil War broadly as a unit that saw itself as distinct and separate from a broader counter-revolutionary movement, but as the war progressed increasingly identified itself with the international military response against socialist revolution. Several left as, or soon became, committed political counter-revolutionaries, joined far-Right organizations and parties, or fought to suppress socialists in other conflicts. There is ample opportunity here for further research: the post-war political trajectories of the veterans, both as individuals and as an organization (Svenska Krigare), need to be traced; we still know relatively little about the personal connections that Finland volunteers established across borders, or what political networks were established that lasted into the post-war period. Not just Swedish, but more broadly Scandinavian participation in the Baltic civil wars, as well as later conflicts further afield, deserves in-depth research, not least in regard to its connections to the new Right in northern and central Europe. As the Swedish Brigade suggests, military volunteers from neutral states occupied an important and interesting place in the European counter-revolutionary movement, and our understanding of its history is incomplete without them.