Is Aimo Koivunen well known in Suomi?

34 comments
  1. I’ve only heard him talked about online. And even then mostly things like those reddit posts. Kinda like Häyhä.

    We had enough soldiers in population to not need that many hero tales passed on. Propaganda during war naturally

  2. I would say that after Simo Häyhä and Lauri Törni he is the most known ordinary soldier (aside from people who became famous after the war for other reasons like Väinö Linna)

  3. Not by name, but I’ve heard of the story before multiple times and my guess is that so have many other people too

  4. My personal take on these guys is “I wouldn’t expect anything less from a Finn.” Don’t know him tho and he looks like he’s still on drugs on that photo.

  5. Yeah, every once in a while when I come across a post about him I remember the story about a soldier on meth who made seemingly impossible things possible, never remember the name though, maybe from now on.

  6. We are not taught much about single persons but about our elders and their sarcifises. Its not about single great deeds but what good we can do together. There was old video where veterans got guestioned about their things. All the awnsers were pretty much “we did what we had to do” . Finnish people dont like to brag we let the actions do the talking. And we like our peace and freedom not taking it away from anyone

  7. I’d still say that the dude was lit. I think i would have just had trip of my life and most likely frozen at some place. Even that the story is quite amusing, those times weren’t a joke so kudos to him surviving that well.

  8. He is quite well known among the conscript soldiers, at least in sodankylä. We actually had a picture of him with some text about his pervitin fueled trip in our room

  9. So the thing about Koivunen is that as far as I know only there is a single source for his adventure and that was written by the man himself. It’s from a 1978 issue of a magazine collecting war memoirs and it is a great read, but also obscure and hard to verify. Until it started making rounds online, very few people had heard of him. If you can read Finnish it is available [here](http://kansataisteli.sshs.fi/Tekstit/1978/Kansa_Taisteli_04_1978.pdf) (page 10-15 of the pdf, or 126-132 of the magazine).

  10. The normal war nerds know him, but the general public probably doesn’t. He isn’t as infamous as Simo Häyhä and even Häyhä isn’t *that* well known.

  11. I love the Fins. I was lucky enough to work there years ago. What an experience I had. True, genuine real people. 🙂

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