The a Tale of Two Krigsbarns

In the lake country just north of Kristianstad, in Skåne, that old land that proudly remembers its old independent culture formed neither by the Danes nor the Swedes, there lives a man. I will call him Magnus, though his name is unknown to me. He’s somewhere between 65 and 75. Most of the time, he smells of cheap spirits and acrid, unwashed flesh. You might be tempted to think he was homeless if you met him on the road, because his tattered clothes and unkempt body don’t speak of home and care. Homeless he is not, however, because his small house, about 150 km from the lake, keeps the rain off and the chilly winds at bay. Still, one wonders if he doesn’t still feel quite displaced, even now, 60-some years after he came to Skåne as a “krigsbarn” – a war child – from Finland.

Neighbors whisper that he is rather strange. He is, they wager, an alcoholic. In any event, he’s a throwback to an earlier age in more ways than one. Shunning indoor plumbing (because of cost or custom, nobody knows), he runs to his outhouse come sun or snow, and his life is, by all accounts, simple and quiet, even if he has neither assimilated to the old Scanian culture or the new Swedish aesthetic.

There, in a land that still clings to its own identity as, at its roots, neither Danish nor Swedish, there is a man without roots, save those that dig into the frozen earth from the scant plum, cherry, pear and apple trees that fill his rotting mouth with their abundance when summer thaws the northern climes, and those that run deep, yet withered, to his Finnish birthplace.

Magnus is not much for words, but the words he shares on the rare occasion that a neighbor finds him out of doors and feeling sociable are un-Swedishly raw. He remembers war-torn Helsinki. He remembers bodies “delade på mitten” – rent in half at the waist. He remembers the strangeness of a new place and a new family after witnessing the far greater strangeness of human cruelty and war.

Neighbors think he must have stayed in Skåne rather than return to his native land when the war was over. Perhaps he had no family to return to, no home. Instead, he took up his dwelling there, in the quiet lake-land. He lives peacefully, alone, trying to forget the bitter fruit life fed him by cultivating fruit of a sweeter, life-sustaining sort and drinking the fermented spoils of the fruit of vine and field.

How did I learn of this now-grown Finnish krigsbarn? I watched a gem of a Finnish film “Äideistä parhain” or “Mother of Mine” and then I spoke of it to a Swedish friend, who just happens to be one of this man’s neighbors. This strange old Finn is one of the 70,000 very real Finnish children who found themselves transported to neutral Sweden during the war. He is one of the 70,000 people who are represented by Eero, a young Finnish lad -- a fictional composite -- who is sent to live with a Swedish family near Ystad, on the southernmost coast of Skåne -- about 60 miles south of the lake home of the Finnish man whose own experiences might have inspired the film had they been known in their own peculiarity.

“Mother of Mine” is visually stunning, and rich color and passionate music paint an emotional picture that is at once achingly simple and richly complex. Eero’s story, though steeped in time and place, speaks of the universal themes of life -- love, regret, sorrow, loneliness, despair, joy, hope, redemption, forgiveness -- that resonate here and now. The story of his two mothers -- one of the flesh, one born of war -- is a story of lives intertwining and permanently changing in ways that none of them could have predicted.

Certainly, life changed for Magnus, fresh from the horrors of Russian-invaded Helsinki. Nor will it ever be the same for the thousands like him and those Swedish families who made room at their tables for such as him. This film seems fitting tribute to their perseverance. It's no wonder that this film has won 11 international film awards; it is truly lovely... and it just might just bring a tear to your eye for the Eeros and Magnuses of the world, and for what they and their many mothers share in common with you and me.

Images are from http://terve.rossi.se/