This article discusses how the post-war Finnish nation was negotiated through the controversy about the Kalevala in Finland and between Finland and the Soviet Union. The Kalevala and pan-Finnism have been discussed within the Finnish national context. Seen from Soviet Karelia, however, the Kalevala and pan-Finnism were not only Finnish national issues but also political, ideological, and cultural topics both Finland and the Soviet Union shared, even after the Second World War. The Kalevala controversy thus offers a key for scrutinising how Finnish and Soviet scholars lived and discussed the Kalevala, Greater Finland, and pan-Finnism, and how the controversy articulated the post-war Finnish nation. Utilising Russian and Finnish archival documents, scholarly materials, journal pieces, and newspapers, this article analyzes the controversy among Finnish and Soviet philologists after the Second World War. Among others, the focus goes to the Kalevala epic poems, the role of Elias Lönnrot in the making of the Kalevala and the Finnish-Karelian kinship. The article shows a hidden continuity between pre-war and post-war pan-Finnism and the boundary Finnish intellectuals attempted to draw between the Finnish post-war nation and the Soviet Union. Keywords: The Kalevala; Finnish-Karelian kinship; Elias Lönnrot; Soviet Karelia; Soviet-Finnish Relations

The article examines Finnish nationalism and the debate on national identities in the early 1990s, when Finland was applying for membership of the European Community/European Union and experiencing major changes such as the depression and the end of the Cold War. Alongside the media-driven public discourse, Finnish intellectuals in particular were reflecting on the relationship of national identity with European identity and the future. The debate emphasised Finland’s Western and European identity, but was at the same time concerned about the continuity of Finnishness in a changing world. The debate on Finnish identity and its future extended beyond European integration, related to the context of liminal uncertainty and unpredictability created by the great global changes of the early 1990s. The article’s central observation is that the most fruitful way to approach reflection on nationality in the 1990s is not from the perspective of banal and everyday nationalism, as “Finland” became an object of active reflection and construction. The depression and geopolitical uncertainty gradually faded the irony in questions about Finland’s “mental” state and future. However, the phenomenon did not represent hot nation building, as in the newly independent Baltic countries, for example. We call this phenomenon lukewarm nationalism. Keywords: the 1990s; nationalism; European Union; national identity; 1990s depression; intelligentsia; neo-patriotism; post-Cold War era

This article examines nationalism on the Internet, asking how “Finland” was imagined on YouTube. The article shows that Finland’s first world championship gold medal in men’s ice hockey (WC95), a celebrated national milestone, is insightful in studying Finnish nationalism online and on YouTube. The first WC 95 videos were uploaded on YouTube in 2006, a year after YouTube was launched. The WC95 videos were uploaded on YouTube mostly by an amateur user. Michael Billig’s and Benedict Anderson’s theories of nationalism are used as a theoretical framework in the article. The source material consists of more than 50 WC95 videos. In the article, the videos are situated in the larger context of “Finnish” YouTube. Their content and the comment section are also analysed, showing that there have been many different uses for the WC95 videos. These different uses have produced a banal nationalism. However, “Finland” has also been consciously imagined on YouTube, where the WC95 videos have been a constant source of joy, memories, and “shivers”, even after the three world championship gold medals Finland has won in the 2000s. Keywords: nationalism; banal; internet; YouTube; Finland; sports; extremism