Signe Hammarsten Jansson - Blog Posts

I had never heard of this movement. As an American in 2025 it is very very familiar though, as I am sure it will also be to Germans and many others whose countries have tried to do something similar.

I am learning about imperialism in the late 19th- early 20th century in my AP history class and we recently analyzed some political cartoons.

I miss when political cartoons were actually entertaining. I wasn't alive then but I miss it. Although a lot of them were pretty racist back then.

Anyway, speaking of familiar political moves, Trump taking over Gaza and building a resort on the rubble isn't even something a cartoon villain would do, it's what a parody of a cartoon villain would do. And I heard someone said invading Canada is something out of South Park, which I agree with based on what I've heard about South Park.

"The May 1930 cover illustration of Garm pokes fun at the advocates of a Great Finland who are depicted as showing a keen interest in Swedish territory, off the west coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. This dynamic and cynical style is Signe's hallmark. The title of the illustration is "Unrequited love, or a proposal of a young male advocate of the Ultra-Finn movement (Aitosuomalainen) to a Swedish lady from the west coast of the Gulf of Bothnia." A young muscular man carries a Finnish puukko under his belt and a hip flask with alcohol in his pocket. The young woman is clearly repudiating his advances. Her anxiety, stemming from an unwelcome proposal, is not only suggested through her expressions and gestures, but also by the black shadow which darkens the background.

The illustration openly reveals Signe's (and the editor, Rein's) aversion to the Ultra-Finn movement which partly arose from Signe's belief that its vision of a Great Finland revealed Fascist tendencies popular at the time. During the 1930s and 40s, Nazi Germany was expanding its territories under the slogan of "Lebensraum [Habitat]." Witnessing Hitler's iron-fisted success, the pro-German sentiments of the right wing in Finland gained increasing force."