While I must object on principle as well, I do wonder how Finland can be considered "a backwater". With no mention of agriculture or the paper industry, but with a lot of focus on Erika, it seems Finland has continued on the path towards a more tech-based economy and the majority of population in the densely populated (by Scandinavian standards, at least) southern urban areas. A quick glance at some World Economy Forum world rankings alone should make it clear Finland's not a backwater in the "retarded in development" sense.

Nor is it a backwater in the sense of being isolated. We currently export as much as Poland, at 1/7th the population. The traffic in R&D workers between Erika and foreign megacorps alone should be a significant source of employment of shadowrunners, and with the chaos in Eastern Europe, Finland is still one of the easiest/cheapest gateways between Central Europe and Russia.

And if you define "backwater" by the fact that Finland happens to be located in one corner of Europe, well, I guess you're really happy SoE doesn't cover Greece.

I do agree, however, that they made Scandinavian Union somewhat too perfect, slightly boring. The coming of megacorps and the ways it changes the society would have caused major unrest and a surge in crime even here, and while it's obvious to a native that this sort of the case, the entries could well seem to describe peaceful, prosperous and dull countries to people who are already used to significant levels of crime, poverty, oppression, etc. More stuff like in Norway, powerful and rather open conflict between the economic gains of succumbing to foreign megacorps (and other influence) and a nationalistic desire to maintain self-reliance, would have been welcome.

Still, I think the section did a good job of describing the feel of the scandinavian setting, considering the very limited space. With the amount of interest there is in Scandinavia (ie almost none outside of the few Scandinavian SR players), I think the entries strike a good balance, giving enough information for running the Scandinavian shadows without stealing too many pages away from the more interesting (for some people, anyway) areas.

Yup, I agree with you there.

One thing that struck as somewhat odd was the fact that there was no Kalevala-based magic. The Norwegians, Swedens and Norwegians have their Viking mythos, and even the Sami were covered, but no mention of Kalevala/Finnish folk lore. Where are the Väinämöinen and Perkele totems?!

Also, why is the Union the Scandinavian Union when Finland isn't geographically a part of Scandinavia? The Nordic Union would've been a more appropriate term in my opinion.

The Finnish military will number between 250,000 and 350,000 for the foreseeable future. It's currently going down at a slow rate, but looking at how that's going it won't be lower than 250,000 when the Eurowars hit, and it's unlikely that it'll go down much between the Eurowars starting and 2063.

This would leave an army of at least ~200,000 men in 2063. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most corporate militaries about the size of a regiment, or a division at best? Considering how the Finnish "area defense" strategy works, Erika probably has a military several times as large as the AAAs (except for Aztech) put together. So does Erika really put that much money into its own military force, or does it simply "sponsor" the Finnish Defense Forces?

This is a rather important detail considering the Fear of Russia athmosphere in the Finnish entry. Assuming a well-trained and equipped military of at least 200,000 men and the strategy of defending every square meter of land, Russia requires some real madmen in governmental and military top positions to make the general population and the whole military believe they can achieve anything signficant by attacking us.

Plus the CorpCourt PoV: If Russia continues harassing the ScandUnion, nationalistic views will only grow in popularity and there's no way megacorps will gain a firmer foothold here, so Russia's all out of allies, and it'll be hard pressed to even find neutrals in the area.

The Finnish Armed Forces nowadays number about 35,000, most of them conscripts. 350,000 would be what they get if they call in nearly all the trained reservists. In the military I'd think the "backbone" would be career soldiers, and there are not a lot of them in the Finnish one (and for another meaning of the word backbone, I guess it also makes a lot of sense for the Finnish military communications center to be operated by Erika).

Okay, that makes more sense. The actual peace-time number in 2003 was 32,000 to be exact. There are only 8,500 career soldiers, but any significant portion of that would still be a massive force by AA corp standards. Though it would fit the general image of Erika for them to employ perhaps around 1/3 - 1/2 the training NCOs/WOs and lieutenants. Especially the lieutenants play a very important role in training and could very well be called the "backbone" of the FDF, and there probably aren't more than maybe a thousand or two of them.

The current number (for war-time manpower) is 490,000, actually. And that's certainly not "nearly all trained reservists". At 27,000 new reservists a year and each staying in the reserve for an average of 30 years, the potential is much higher. It's just that there currently isn't enough equipment to arm and support all of them into a combat force.

Yes, I'm aware of the fact that there seems to be some confusion as to what actually is Scandinavia. I guess it's just a matter of perspective.

Well, I certainly hope so.


As for the Fear of Russia atmosphere mentioned by Austere Emancipator, it doesn't seem very likely that Russia would attack Finland/the Union, what with the war in Poland and the problems Russia has with Awakened Siberia. In fact, I think it's more likely that it would be Finland that attacked Russia, and not the other way around. Just think about it: Finland is militarily probably stronger than ever and Russia's weaker than in a long time, it seems. Combine that with an almost irrational paranoia and (at least for some people) hatred of Russia, and what do you get? "A pre-emptive strike" or "the liberation of Karelia", that's what.

Sorry, no Kalevala magic AFAIK. I don't know enough about it to make something decent.

The conflict over Karelia was one of the plots that got cut somewhere in the process. It might pop up some other time.

There's a modern religion today called Asatru based on a Norse/Scandanavian background. Linkage. Therefore, I would have to say that there would be more than enough of a magical/mystical background for an SR Asatru based religio-magical tradition.

Is it any different from believing they are being possessed by Baron Samedi and the other Loas? Or believing they can speak with Coyote the Trickster, Snake the Guide or any other NA Totem?

Only if it was springing up from a place where that religion hadn't existed before. Since, apparently, people DO worship those ancient gods again in a neo-pagan fashion, I guess it's not any different. I mean, it's all the same to me anyway... Odin, Zeus, Jesus, Buddha, Discordia, Hendrix, whatever man.

I love it! I wonder how many people on here will get it, though? I think I'm gonna introduce a Perkele shaman somewhere in my campaign... it'd be hilarious!

Because, as has been pointed out, people in other parts of the world (that is, anywhere outside the Nordic countries and those closest to them on a map) think that Scandinavia = Nordic and includes Denmark, Finland and maybe even Iceland although it should just be Sweden and Norway. A bit sad to see the mixup in a sourcebook, though, but ah well.

From the sound of it, Sweden in SR seems like a fairly tame and useless place, which I'm a bit bummed to hear. But ah well - shame on me for not contributing, eh?

Really? Cool; hadn't heard that one. (Just variations with similar-ish myths.)

really? off course, the original dwarfs were supernatural creatures, so Tolkiens adaption doesn't fit perfectly, but most of the myths are on track. Even the names of the dwarfs are all from Norse mythology. Elves are a total different matter though.

That's a cow tail actually. Never heard that she's supposed to be the troll kings daughter, though I could be mistaken. The troll king (more correctly the Elf king or the Mountain king) himself often lures away young girls so they're obviously related.

there's also the myth of Fossegrimen, a supernatural creature living in waterfalls(a water spirit of some kind) who would teach some to play the fiddle or flute. He's supposed to be just as good a teacher as the devil. As for selling your soul to learn to play, I don't think there's that much to it as all folk music and dancing was considered a sin by 18th and 19th century priests (even early 20th century), i.e. every fiddle player had indeed sold his soul to the devil.

this should help then (some idiots has cracked the site, but it would probably be up again in a few days)
<http://www.heithingi.com/>

I think Synner is a bit misguided on Åsatru and official religion in Scandinavia though. In Norway you need 3 people and some thousand NOK to form your own religion and get official recognition (with tax and everything). Danish and Swedish rules may be a bit different though, and as someone said Denmark recognized Åsatru as an offical religion this year. There are probably around 1000 organized Aesir worshippers in Norway (and some of those helped me create the rules for Norse magic) and some thousand unorganized ones.

It's not so much Swedish and Danish laws as EU ones which superceed local since technically a religion recognized in a member country is recognized by the Union these days (hence the 10000 figure). However, I meant 10000 signatures which was what the Åsatru spokespeople handed in 2 years ago in Sweden (the figure might be off but it came from an old BBC News item and a 2002 Newsweek report).

Obviously. However, I brought it up because it is now officially recognized as a religious symbol (one of several but probably ther best known) of the Asartu (spelling in English varies) religion in the Scandinavian countries that approved its status (and consequently in the EU, which in turn means it is banned from open use in French schools for instance ). It is indeed seen as a right-wing/rascist/neo-fascist symbol (mostly in Northern Europe though) - one of the reasons we made the connection in SoE.

In Norwegian, it's Åsatro. (One 'Ås', two'Æser'). 'Aesir' is Old Norse according to my encyclopedia.

The first says quite explicitly that Russia did attack and invade parts of Finland, the second clearly says Russia didn't attack Finland. Finnish borders haven't changed, apparently, and I couldn't find any other mention of Finland having been attacked. So, what's the deal?

Ah, my apologies - so it is! And I have also recently (since my post) been taught that it can be called åsatro or åsalära even in Swedish (though rare), so I retract that part of my statement completely.

Yes, Aesir is Old Norse, and as far as I know the most commonly used word (for the gods themselves, not the religion) in English.

Shouldn't that go into an Errata somewhere?

Never heard the Åsa version and I read ALOT about the topic. Åsa is a girls name and Asar are the old gods of norse mythos. Åsar is something completely differnt and totally unrelated to this in every possible way.

AFAIK this person was even asked to do some stuf for the book, but as it could not be as he wanted like his web page, and thus not canon, he had no interest.

I really never liked the page.

Your not alone

-- Uhhh . . . methinks you are misremembering the threads on that issue (Iceland?). As I'm almost certainly the freelancer in question I'm not particularly happy about how you phrased this as "dumb freelancer vs. enlightened new guys."