In 1939, as the world prepared to plunge into the chaos of World War II, a small frozen country withstood the onslaught of the Soviet giant. Three million Finns compared to 171 million Russians. One hundred and five days of combat at fifty degrees below zero. This forgotten story is what Olivier Norek (Toulouse, 50 years old), former police officer and author of crime novels, rescues in The winter warriors (Istoria), which has already sold more than 300,000 copies in France. His new work not only revives the so-called Winter War, but turns it into a mirror of the present with Putin’s current aggression. “I didn’t want to write about the war in Ukraine,” says the author, visiting Madrid. “But I did want to understand it. And to understand it I thought I had to tell a war from a century before. Because forgotten history is condemned to repeat itself.”
It all started, he says, one morning in 2022, listening to the radio. “I heard Vladimir Putin threaten us with a nuclear winter. In 2022, no one was prepared for that. Neither was I. And when I’m afraid, I investigate. I wanted to understand a century of relations between Russia and the rest of the world, to discover if the past could give me the intellectual weapons to understand tomorrow.” On that trip through history, Norek came across an almost mythical episode: the war that pitted the Soviet Union against Finland between 1939 and 1940. “I found myself with 105 days at minus 51 degrees, and with a gigantic army trying to subdue a tiny country… and failing. And in the center, a man: Simo Häyhä, a five-foot-two farmer, with the face of an angel and lethal aim, who became the nightmare of “Russia. An unlikely hero. When you come across a story like that, you know you have to tell it.”
The white death
Simo Häyhä, known as The White Deathis a figure as legendary as he is elusive. His exploits—more than 500 confirmed kills as a sniper—turned him into a living myth, but he never spoke about it. “Simo was a man of few words,” explains Norek. “He gave only one interview to a German newspaper. So I decided to respect his silence: in my novel he doesn’t speak. You can only hear him when he describes his rifle. Everything else is told through the eyes of those around him: his companions, his superiors, the soldiers who feared him. That was my way of preserving the mystery.”
In times of exhibitionism and noise, isn’t a silent hero almost revolutionary? “Simo did not want to be a hero. He was a peasant who only wanted to take care of his farm. But when he was told that Russia was going to attack his country, he left his life and took up the rifle. Before he hunted wolves; then he had to face men. And in that transformation he sublimated. It is what we writers look for in our characters: someone who was not prepared, who does not have the appropriate weapons, but who faces the mission because his cause is just. One does not choose to be a hero, one becomes one through the eyes of others.”
When the war ended, Häyhä returned to his farm. “He bought a cow, a horse and an old yellow beetle. He rejected journalists. He lived in silence. He only accepted, once a year, a man knocking on his door to hunt with him. That man was the president of Finland.”
The sublimation of a country
A pair of minks, la grandeza de The winter warriors It is not only in its protagonist, but in the community. “Not only Simo was sublimated. An entire country was sublimated: the women who sewed uniforms, the young people who went to the front, the elderly who defended the towns. When you have a just cause, everything else stops mattering.” That idea runs through the book and also through Norek’s thinking. “During World War II, when Germany attacked Russia, the Soviets resisted because they had a just cause. But when they attacked Finland, they did not succeed, because their cause was unjust. The justice or injustice of a cause determines the inner strength of those who defend it. When you fight for love, for your land, for your people, it is almost indestructible.”
Norek’s novel, however, devotes much space to the Russians. “For me it was essential not to dehumanize the enemy. At the beginning of the book I talk about the blood shed: not the Finnish blood, but that of both sides. At one point, a soldier falls, he wants to turn around, but he knows that if he does so his own comrades will shoot him. He kneels, looks at the sky and prays. In that moment, it does not matter which side the bullet comes from. If the reader does not know if he is Russian or Finnish, then I have done it right. Because deep down they were all young people, brothers, cousins, boys who did not decide that war. Those who rule never send their children to the front. That is the universal tragedy.”
The cold is not only the setting, but the spirit of the narrative. “I wanted to tell about war, violence and death in a poetic way. Winter, because it is white, because snow is a movie screen or a blank page, allows you to tell everything. Snow absorbs blood and turns red. It is another character, a mirror of the soul. And, furthermore, its whiteness invites poetry. Horror can only be told with beauty, or it cannot be tolerated.”
Fact and fiction
Although The winter warriors is based on real events, Norek insists that his view is that of a narrator, not that of a historian. “I have written a history book with the soul of my crime novels. I did not invent anything, I did not add heroic acts, everything I tell is true. I only changed the way of telling it. Because for a novelist the essential thing is the human: the characters, the emotions. You can have the best twists, but without emotions there is no story.” One of the discoveries that most impacted him during the investigation had to do with the human side and was an unusual strategy of General Mannerheim, the Finnish commander-in-chief during the war. “He decided that each village would form a combat unit. It seems simple, but it was decisive. To your left was your brother, to the right your best friend, in front of you was your cousin. That way no one fled. They did not fight for an abstract concept, but for those they loved. It was the first war that was won thanks to love.”
The winter warriors It is not just a historical novel, but a moral mirror. “I want the reader to remember that wars repeat themselves when we forget. Today, in Ukraine, the same thing happens. The first year we feel excitement, the second we send weapons, the third we start to get tired. And the fourth, when we hear ‘Ukraine’, many people yawn. But it is not only Ukraine that defends itself, it is Europe. If Ukraine falls, if Finland is attacked, we all have a problem.” For this reason, the author insists that diplomacy must go to the end: “When words disappear, violence comes. We still have time to debate, to talk. But if that spark ignites, it will set us all on fire. We have never been so close to a Third World War.”