Contemporary Church History Quarterly
Volume 31, Number 4 (Winter 2025)
Article Note: Ilari Taskinen, Risto Turunen, Lauri Uusitalo, and Ville Kivimäki, “Religion, Patriotism and War Experience in Digitized Wartime Letters in Finland, 1939–44,” Journal of Contemporary History 57 (2022): 577–96, doi: 10.1177/00220094211066006.
By Dirk Schuster, University of Vienna
In 2022, four Finnish scholars, Ilari Taskinen, Risto Turunen, Lauri Uusitalo, and Ville Kivimäki, published a truly fascinating and a forward-looking paper featuring a particularly pioneering methodological approach to analyzing historical sources in the Journal of Contemporary History 57. For their contribution, they analyzed letters written by Finnish soldiers during Finland’s three wars between 1939 and 1944, which at first glance may not sound spectacular or particularly innovative. The question of “religion, patriotism, and war experience” is equally unspectacular, to be honest. The study of religious elements in letters from and to soldiers during wartime is a common theme in academic work. Nevertheless, Taskinen and his colleagues have produced a truly promising and, above all, forward-looking contribution.
