"Sisu." The defiant will of free men and women.

A faithful reader and friend sent, among other things, a number of books which were surplus to his needs to me this past week and among them was A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War Of 1939-1940 by William Trotter. I have been a fan of Trotter since I read his book Bushwhackers. The Civil War in North Carolina: The Mountains.

Naturally, I adopted A Frozen Hell as my insomniac reading as soon as got it. Here is a selection on the subject of "sisu':

The Finns would win or lose on the basis of their conventional, professional, military skills, the fiber of their discipline, the worthiness of their commanders -- and above all else, on the depth and stubbornness of their sisu. That bristling little word was once the most famous Finnish idiom ever to become part of the outside world's vocabulary. It can be translated as "guts" or "spunk" or "grit" or "balls," or as a combination of all those words together. The word in Finnish has nuances that resist easy translation. -- Page 62.

Trotter later discusses how this Finnish sisu was not just something for soldiers:

Before the border area could be turned into a combat zone, however, the Finns had to move the civilians out. During the interval between the collapse of the Moscow negotiations and the start of hostilities, thousands of Karelian families were evacuated. The Finnish border troops who organized this exodus were deeply moved by the toughness and patriotism of the farming families they dealt with. They were simple people, few of them educated, and they lived poor, marginal lives close to the earth. But they had sisu in abundance.

In one village, a detachment of border guards came up to the home of an aged peasant woman and sadly informed her that she must prepare to leave her home, possibly forever, with only the belongings she could carry on her back and in the horse-drawn sled tethered near the end of her cabin. In the morning, they would return and burn her house to the ground, so that the Russians could not sleep there. When the soldiers returned the next morning, they found the sled parked by the old woman's door, piled high with her possessions. When they entered the farmhouse, they were startled to see that the entire dwelling had been scrubbed and whitewashed until it sparkled. Stuck to the wall by the door, the woman had left a note saying that she had gone to fetch something at a neighbor's house and would return in time to drive the sled away in the soldiers' company. In the meantime, the note concluded, if the soldiers would look by the stive, they would find enough matches, kindling, and petrol to burn the house quickly and efficiently. When the old woman returned, the soldiers asked her why she had gone to so much trouble. Pulling herself upright with all the dignity she could summon, she looked them in the eye and replied, "When one gives a gift to Finland, one desires it should be like new."

In another border village, covering troops aroused an old farmer from his slepp -- a gentleman who had refused earlier evacuation -- and informed him that there would probably be fighting here by morning. They had come to burn his house tonight, they said, because when the battle started, they would be too busy. Grumbling, the old peasant gathered his few personal belongings, hitched up his horse, and rode eastward. Later the next morning, even as the first sounds of skirmishing could be heard in the distance, the same Finnish border troops were astonished to discover that the old man had returned and was wandering amid the ruins of his former house, prodding the ashes with a tree branch and muttering to himself in the thick dialect of the Karelian Finns. Several soldiers went over to the old fellow and asked him what he was doing back here, especially with the fighting now in earshot. The farmer's gnarled features twisted into a grim smile and he said, "This farm was burned down twice before on account of the Russians -- once by my grandfather, and once by my father. I don't reckon it'll kill me to do it either, but I'll be damned if I could drive away without first making sure you'd done a proper job of it."

No wonder that Stalin, even at the pinnacle of victory after 1945, didn't try to force the Finns into becoming a member of the USSR. Sisu, indeed.

Sisu patch and insignia of a British volunteer unit in the Winter War.