Born in 1917 in the village of Metsäpirtti on the Karelian Isthmus, Arvi Hämäläinen joined the Finnish army at the age of 21.
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The Winter War began when Soviet forces invaded Finland on 30 November 1939. File photo. Image: Yle Elävä arkisto, kuvanauha
Finland’s oldest surviving veteran of the Winter War, Arvi Hämäläinen, died on Monday at the age of 108.
Hämäläinen’s death was confirmed to the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper by local SDP politician Tuula Vallius.
Born in 1917 in the village of Metsäpirtti on the Karelian Isthmus, Hämäläinen joined the army at the age of 21. The Karelian Isthmus was a 110-kilometre-wide stretch of land between the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in northwestern Russia, and was partly ceded to the Soviet Union by Finland following the Winter War.
Hämäläinen served as an artillery rangefinder during the Winter War, and later remained in the army as a sergeant during the Continuation War.
After the war, he moved with his wife and daughter to the town of Valkeakoski, near Tampere, where he lived for most of the rest of his life.
Hämäläinen was one of Finland’s last surviving veterans of the Winter War, which began when Soviet forces invaded Finland on 30 November 1939 and ended with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty on 13 March 1940.