| Description : Väinö Linna (1920‐1992) was one of the
best‐known Finnish authors of the 20th century. After being drafted as a soldier in the Continuation War
1941‐1944, he worked as an assembler in a textile factory and began to write. His best‐known work, Crosses in
Karelia, is classified as social realism. It destroyed the myth of the noble war by its harshness, depicted dilemmas and
wrong decisions of the military leadership, and mostly had ordinary Finnish soldiers use coarse language. Thus the work,
published in 1954, was censored and only appeared posthumously in 2000, unabridged under the title Sotaromaani (War
Novel). Petri Neuvonen designed the coin that reflects Linna's time as a textile worker in the background of the
portrait: threads of yarn on the left and woven fabric on the right ‐ just as individual thoughts can be woven into a
complete work. On the left is the arched inscription "VÄINÖ LINNA". Below the year "2020" is a lion (the heraldic
animal of Finland) the mint mark of the Finnish mint Suomen Rahapaja OY in Vantaa and the country abbreviation
"FI" (Finland). |
