Geopolitics

ISSN: 1465-0045 (Print) 1557-3028 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fgeo20

A Geopolitics of the Horse in Finland

Pauliina Raento

To cite this article: Pauliina Raento (2016): A Geopolitics of the Horse in Finland, Geopolitics,
DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2016.1192531

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2016.1192531

Published online: 19 Jul 2016.

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 GEOPOLITICS
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2016.1192531

A Geopolitics of the Horse in Finland

Pauliina Raento
Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Finland

ABSTRACT
The disregard of animal subjectivity in geopolitics is challenged
as outdated and arrogant in light of the growing interdisciplin-
ary understanding of the relational, dispersed, and co-evolving
nature of agency. First, the war horse is examined by joining the
instrumental approach of military history with the emphasis on
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emotion in animal studies. Knowledge about animal subjectivity

is expanded by demonstrating how the horse itself has co-
produced the Finnish experience in World War II and the
national narrative about this conflict. Calculable territory, biopo-
litical state intervention, the political ecology of war, affect, and
the body build connections between the horses war and the-
ory, methodology, and concepts in political geography and
geopolitics. Equine labour and response to the states geopoli-
tically motivated breeding exercises during peace then bridge
animal studies and critical geopolitics, showing how the horse
has supported the formation of Finnishness. Finally, a look at
contemporary mobility, geopolitics of disease, and biometric
bordering exemplifies how the horse continues to adapt to
new roles in Finnish society and contribute to human institu-
tions and governance. The examination demonstrates the
importance of other-than-human beings in the making of
Finland as a political space and place. Suggestions for further
studies and data point to opportunity. The article serves those
who question rigid categorisations and segmentation of
research and pedagogy into intellectually self-contained islands.

Introduction
In the articles published in Geopolitics animals are only commodities,1 meta-
phors, or symbols,2 even if the discipline frequently deals with themes that
concern animal activity and relationship with people. The political ecology of
conservation conflicts is one point of contact, but the framing has been criticised
for being static and for overlooking subjectivity and scale.3 The recent debate
about Foucauldian biopower, animal biopolitics, and subjectivity in Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space4 remains largely disconnected from work in
geopolitics and political geography. It is also indicative that a recent book about
animals and war contains no contributions from geographers or students of
international relations.5

CONTACT Pauliina Raento pauliina.raento@helsinki.fi Professor of Human Geography, Department of

Geosciences and Geography, P.O. Box 64, University of Helsinki, 00014 Finland.
2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
 2 P. RAENTO

One explanation to the isolation of geopolitics from animals in the general

more-than-human, non-human, and other-than-human scholarly turn since
the 1990s might be that distinct differences in language, worlds of writing
and researching and scales of analysis6 are alive and well. The often (post)
humanistic jargon in animal studies is, admittedly, quite different from that
favoured in geopolitics, political geography, and international relations.
Students of the humananimal relationship also tend to focus on emotions,
perception, experience, and everyday intimacies, which are still perceived as
feminine and inferior in relation to the masculinity of the state and world
politics and to their top-down view.
This order is highlighted in traditional Western (and Christian) thought,
where animals are perceived to be less than people, without sense and
sensibility, and an impersonal, disposable mass of instruments, resources,
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or threats to the state and its people.7 In this sense animals are more Others
than women, children, the disabled, or the poor, who also used to be seen to
lack moral and social abilities needed to care for themselves8 and who
waited for a place in serious scholarship. Stereotypes of crazy cat ladies and
zealous animal rights activists may also repel geopolitical scholars whose
trade cherishes not only the state and world scales over the personal and
the everyday and masculinity over femininity, but also problem solving over
conceptualisation and reason over sentiment.
This article will challenge the above-described thinking by stressing the
relational, dispersed character of agency, which can show why animals are
broadly relevant, and theoretically and methodologically promising, to geopo-
litics. The examination will engage political geography, geopolitics, military
history, animal biopolitics, and humanistic equine studies, questioning seg-
mentation of investigative inquiry into intellectually self-contained islands.
An important starting point is Kersty Hobsons argument that animals
should and could be considered political subjects9 well beyond the animal
rights, welfare, and ethics debate where animal subjectivity appears to be
fixed and essentialised.10 By examining bear pile farming and bear rescue in
China and Hong Kong Hobson showed how looking at the Moon bear itself
in this controversial equation can enrich the way in which political practices
are understood. By resorting to hybrid, relational, and contextual
approaches11 she revealed the ways in which the Moon bear co-created a
particular political process and its outcomes in a particular place and time
that is, how the bears influenced their own life course as well as social and
political change in human society.12 An expansion of view beyond human
networks, structures, and power contests related to the Moon bear and
towards the bears ecological, physiological, and behavioural characteristics
helped unearth critical factors that are not incidental but crucial to the
political geography of this story.13
 GEOPOLITICS 3

The horse can build a similarly strong case for animal geopolitics because
of its ability to adapt to multiple roles and conditions in human societies.
Most importantly, it escapes the monolithic, exclusive categorisations
through which people like to make sense of the world.14 Instead of being
wild or tame/domestic, livestock or companion animal, endangered or of
least concern, urban or rural, harmful or useful, the horse is all this. Those
who do not roam wild work with, and for, humans as athletes, therapists,
military or agricultural assets, export items, a source of meat, and in multiple
other tasks, and one individual equine can occupy several positions, some-
times simultaneously, over its life course of up to thirty years. The horse thus
participates in numerous political, economic, and cultural networks as a
labourer and a producer, and has global mobility and agential impact, as
imperial wars and expeditions, international agro-food business, the thor-
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oughbred racing and breeding industries, and affective humanhorse rela-

tionships illustrate.15
The war horse is perhaps the most obvious link between equines and
geopolitics in the popular imagination, not least because of the long, roman-
ticised, and contested history of the cavalry and the recent return of the war
horse in a tear-jerking theater production (2007) and filmatisation (2011)
based on Michael Morpurgos book for the youth.16 Scholars have viewed the
war horse either as a military asset and transportation tool or an object of the
soldiers affect and emotionally charged symbolism.17 But the instrumental
and emotional views are by no means mutually opposite or exclusive, as Nora
Schuurman and Riitta-Marja Leinonen observe in their study about Finnish
views on equine death.18 Nor is the horse just a passive recipient of human
commands or affections but, rather, operates in active relation to others in
particular contexts.19
This article will engage and develop these thoughts with empirical evi-
dence from Finland. The first three segments of the article focus on the
twentieth-century war horse, confirming the need to address both emotion
and instrumentality. The case study will also expand understanding of animal
subjectivity and confirm Hobsons message by showing how the horse itself
has co-produced the Finnish nations war experience. With help from
Matthew Hannah, Philippe Le Billon, and others, the discussion will exem-
plify how the equine war experience relates to calculable territory, biopolitics,
the political ecology of war, and agency, affect, and the body.20 The assess-
ment will broaden interpretations in equine studies and military history
about the role and fate of the war horse.
The attention then turns to equine biopolitics, biosecurity, and institutions
of the Finnish state during peace. The fourth segment employs the basics of
critical geopolitics21 to counter the disregard of the states geopolitically
motivated interest in breeding and to show how the horse has contributed
to the formation of Finnish territory and identity. The fifth segment
 4 P. RAENTO

addresses contemporary biosecurity which in both animal studies and poli-

tical geography has brought to the fore mobility, biometric bordering, and
the new geopolitics of disease examined by Louise Amoore, Alan Ingram,
and others.22 The discussion will show how equine contributions to Finnish
society today influence the ways in which the state controls and protects its
territory and populations.
The examination is based on a triangulation of multiple data. Finnish-
language recollections of wartime veterinary personnel and ordinary people
about their relationship with the horse, published as memoirs23 or stored at
the Folklore Archive of the Finnish Literature Society,24 offer first-hand
information about the Finns geopolitically and identity-politically meaning-
ful relationship with their horses and, especially, the local all-purpose breed,
the Finnhorse. Supporting knowledge comes from historical accounts, statis-
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tical reports, and photographs in these materials and archives of the Equine
Sports Museum of Finland.25 Life-long but varied personal interest in the
equine industry, especially trotter racing, wagering, education, and their
research26 has facilitated access to documents, practices and processes, and
informal information networks relevant to the study.

Instrumentality, Calculable Territory, and Biopolitics

At the advent of World War II, the Finnish army really needed the horse.
This had much to do with circumstances, as Finland was a rural, poor,
peripheral, and technologically underdeveloped country. By way of contrast,
Britain a major European horse country already had a fully motorized
army.27 On the other hand, the horse was a suitable choice for Finlands
rudimentary roads, heavy snowfall, and difficult terrain, and the local breed
was well adapted to tough conditions.28
That the horse was a critical constituent of Finnish national defence was
evident in the preparations for a crisis. One issue that the young government
had had to solve soon after independence from revolutionary Russia (1917)
was the acquisition of horses for the military in the case of war. The Finnish
approach was based on lessons from the 1918 Civil War and experiences of
European armies in World War I. The acquisition relied entirely on domestic
stock, which was both pragmatic and necessary. As purchases and voluntary
compacts with individual horse owners would not meet the need, the solu-
tion was equine mobilisation through general conscription under law (first
passed in 1922 and renewed in 1939).
The Finns were generally used to horses, but skills needed improving.
Shoeing and veterinary assistance were thus added to the offerings of the
military education system, a remount school was established, and manuals of
equine care were published in the 1920s and early 1930s.29 The horse was
also valued in Finnish society beyond its contributions to primary production
 GEOPOLITICS 5

and transportation, not least because riding sports were popular among
military officers and the urban elite, a good trotter was a source of pride
and income for the rural population, and the country had its own breed, the
Finnhorse, with a recently established national studbook (1907).30
On the eve of the Winter War against the Soviet Union (19391940), a
nationwide inventory of the equine population was organised to map the
resources. It showed that Finland had 173,000 horses of 517 years of age,
which were deemed fit for service and not occupied in breeding.31 This
accounted for 45 percent of the countrys horses, which mostly consisted of
Finnhorses working in agriculture.
The Winter War mobilised about 72,000 horses from private owners.32
This was arranged through a territorial acquisition system, which sought to
respect both regional and individual circumstances. The mobilisation signif-
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ied a massive logistics endeavour, for each horse needed inspection and
documentation and fresh water, fodder, tack and equipment, shelter, skilled
handling and shoeing, and veterinary care to perform. The initial needs were
satisfied by the requirement for the owner to provide with the horse a
minimum of fifty kilograms of oats, one hundred kilograms of hay, a blanket,
a bucket, a brush, head gear, and harness. At entry each horse received an
individual identification number which was marked on its body together
with the number of the acquisition district. A corresponding identification
card recorded the names and home address of the horse and its owner, the
horses age, sex, height, colour, identifying marks and, later, its movements
between units, injuries and treatments, and other events of note. A similar
system was created for the horses obtained from the enemy and deemed fit
for further service. They were classified per their citizenship, quarantined
for disease control and, in the case of colts and stallions, castrated before
integration in the Finnish army and civil society. The system, supervised by
military veterinarians, was refined for the Continuation War against the
Soviet Union (19411944) and the War of Lapland against the former ally
Germany (19441945), in which 62,000 and 11,000 horses served, respec-
tively. Soviet war horses deemed fit to serve Finland numbered 1,700 and
12,600, and, especially during the Continuation War, reduced the need to
mobilise domestic horses.33
The inventory, effectively, was a nationwide equine census, which brought
farm horses outside the studbook to the sphere of the state and created an
administrative equine population. By contributing to territorial legibility, the
inventory was a prime example of a biopolitical knowledge-gathering exer-
cise and one precondition for other forms of state intervention more
commonly associated with sovereignty.34 The inventory and the subsequent
mobilisation created a spatial regime of inscription described by Reuben
Rose-Redwood with urban directories and house numbering and modelled
by Matthew Hannah on the basis of West German census boycotts.35
 6 P. RAENTO

The territorial acquisition system of the Finnish army corresponds to the

three first levels in Hannahs six-level model by ordering territory through
defining the location of each horse in the country (level 1), ordering them per
districts (level 2), and creating standardised evaluation criteria and procedures
for gathering the desired individuals for service via preassigned locations (level
3). Demographic and socio-economic information collected from each district
(level 4) was then used to evaluate the quality of the horses and their owners
conditions in a broader regional context (level 5), just like Hannah describes.
During the war, records of individuals being at particular places doing specific
things at specific times was collected on the identification cards (level 6). These
records intervened in the fate of individual horses by guiding the states use of
both sovereign and biopower over their life, death, and duties. As Hannah
confirms, with Michel Foucaults assistance, violent interventions presuppose
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seizure of bodies, which in turn presupposes calculable territory.36

For many horse owners, the practice was economically and emotionally
difficult, as the following recollection, at the Folklore Archive of the Finnish
Literature Society, by a farmers son born in 1930 describes:37

The outbreak of the Winter War was a tough experience especially to my father.
Father did not have to go to war because of his age, but [our mare] Liinu had to be
given up. The Niinisalo garrison was seven kilometers away from my home. That is
where Father was ordered to take his workmate. I was allowed to go with Father to
the giving away of Liinu. The separation of Father and Liinu was a pitiful event.
Father, broken by grief, hugged and padded [the horse] and cried. How do we
now get by at home when I have to let you go, he kept saying.

That the owners of the horses complied with the state despite the hardship is
significant, because interventions such as the described inventory and mobi-
lisation of horses (and carriage) could have been met with resistance by
people who only a couple of decades earlier had killed each other over the
legitimacy of the state and its government.38 They complied knowing that
national sovereignty was threatened by an external enemy and that the states
purpose was to return the horses to their owners after the conflict or to
reimburse the owners for their loss. This return-or-reimburse policy was the
motive behind the detailed documentation, and pragmatic and cost-efficient,
because Finnish agriculture and forestry depended on horse power. The data
suggest that some individuals complied because they knew that the govern-
ment (which had won the Civil War against the Red rebels) was capable of
coercion, but resisted by sending to the war the worst horse and equipment.
One could also speculate that those in charge of the system felt the ideolo-
gical and pragmatic need to respect private property and production capa-
city and maintain internal peace when facing an external threat.
The return policy also helped the Finnish army avoid becoming the
reluctant owner of thousands of unwanted horses in the end of the war,
 GEOPOLITICS 7

which in the case of Britain after World War I had resulted in mass slaughter,
contested exports, and public controversy.39 Despite some dissatisfaction
over the fate of individual horses or the reimbursement, the Finnish solution
arguably helped foster national unity and trust in the state which had now
united the divided people against an external enemy. The system also fos-
tered unity by expanding instrumental interests in the war effort. These
focused on the welfare of the horses, whose performance was critical for
survival of the economically valuable animals themselves, the people who
fought by their side, and national sovereignty. Adding significantly to these
economic, military, and political considerations, the horses were home-bred
workmates and family members on the predominantly small farms, and their
return was deemed emotionally, symbolically, and culturally important.40
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A Political Ecology of War

Numbers testify to the critical role of the horse in the Finnish war effort and,
more generally, the level of technological development in Finnish society at
that time. The importance of horse power is evident in the following figures
for the Winter War: An infantry regiment had 1 car, 2 motorbikes, and 500
horses, whereas an artillery regiment had 5 cars, 2 motorbikes, and 1,300
horses. Over 50 percent of the men in the artillery were assigned to the
driving or care of horses. The army, overall, had 3 motor vehicles per 100
horses. The ratio had risen to 22:100 by the Continuation War, but supplies
still depended on horse power to reach the front.41 These numbers are
evidence of dependence on particular natural resources in this case, the
horse and its fodder which over the course of history has significantly
influenced the course of armed conflicts.42 In this light, and because of the
complex worldwide exchange networks created by the acquisition of horses
for military purposes,43 it would make sense to consider animals more
explicitly in what Philippe Le Billon calls the political ecology of war44
and further challenge the static view of political ecology on animals.
Furthermore, as Le Billon observes, outcomes of violent campaigns often
depend on the quality of key resources, rather than their abundance or
scarcity. In the case of the horse, quality means suitability for the purpose
and the human understanding of this. The Finnish guerrilla tactics during
World War II and the backup plans for the sparsely settled eastern border-
land until the mid-1980s45 relied on the silence of the horse and the local
breeds ability to move in roadless boreal forests, survive on whatever food
was available en route, and endure cold. In the Boer Wars and in the race to
the South Pole in the early twentieth century, the British campaigns failed
largely because of human attitudes towards animals they depended on. They
gave the imported equines no time to adjust to the environment or failed to
see that this was impossible.46 In the case of Germany in World War II, the
 8 P. RAENTO

abundant horse power acquired from occupied Western and Central Europe
was of little use in the conditions of the eastern front, and the small Russian
horses taken for replacement were a mismatch with the German heavy
artillery, tack, and other equipment designed for bigger animals.47 In
Finland the German performance suffered from poor horsemanship, evi-
dence of which is documented in Finnish veterinarians accounts.48
Finland lost over 22,000 horses in its three campaigns during World War
II. Cases of wounded or sick horses numbered 110,000.49 Death was typically
caused by shrapnel and air raids, especially in the Winter War, but also by
exhaustion and starvation, which plagued the later war years.50 In the
opinion of military historians R. L. DiNardo and Austin Bay, these, and
the other above-mentioned numbers hold tremendous significance, both
militarily and economically.51 In the German and Finnish cases alike, they
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illustrate not only the dependence of the national future on the military horse
and its fodder, but also the impact of equine mobilisation on agriculture.
From the perspective of Finlands national economy, the needs and practices
of war had a major impact on the pattern of resource exploitation and the
state of the environment,52 just like Le Billon writes. The lack of human and
horse power in agriculture damaged production in a little-motorised country,
despite the government ordinance to leave one horse per ten hectares of
cultivated land in the home front.53 The deficit of fodder, for example, was
caused by increased demand, problems of storage, transportation, distribu-
tion, and fertilisation of fields, overgrazing of pastures, and difficulties in
scheduling and completing field work because of the lack of hands, hoofs,
and skills. Together these factors jeopardised national sovereignty by threa-
tening to immobilise military transportation. The efforts to treat regions and
farmers equally could not anticipate the impact of regionally and temporally
uneven death tolls in units where men (and horses) from the same area
served together.54

About Agency, Affect, and the Body

The role of the horse in wartime geopolitics is broader than that of a
resource, a transportation tool, or a globally traded commodity, as the
importance of returning the home-bred workmates to the farmers after the
war has begun to show. As Hobson says, and as the described (mis)match
between particular animals and environments proposes, paying attention to
their ecology, behaviour, and physiology will add crucial insight to our
understanding.55 For starters, important constituents of equine military
agency have been the ability of the horse to run fast and pull or carry
heavy loads in difficult terrain and the vulnerability of its body against
modern war technologies. Photographs and descriptions in the examined
data tell how the horses body also served the Finnish war effort by providing
 GEOPOLITICS 9

people with food (flesh, blood) and raw materials (leather, grease, hair) and
by advancing veterinary science.
The horses need for care created a bond between horse owners at home
and caretakers in the front, suggesting that affect is one link between animal
studies and geopolitics. Several contributions to the Folklore Archive at the
Finnish Literature Society exemplify how people, often previously unknown
to one another, communicated because of the horse. A northern-Finnish
man, who at the outbreak of the Winter War was eleven years old, recalled:

[The family workhorse] Osmos caretaker was A. Neuvonen. I cannot recall

from which part of Finland Neuvonen was from. Over the war years he wrote
several times telling about Osmo. Mother sent packages, because her husband was
not sent to war. She only had Osmo
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It was certainly in the material interest of both parties to do so, because good
care of a horse maintained its economic value for the owner and resulted in
extra parcels of food, clothes, and tobacco for a good caretaker. But it is clear
from this citation, the previously recalled separation of Liinu and her owner, and
archived correspondence that these exchanges had a powerful affective compo-
nent, which in no way contradicted the instrumentality. Individual horsemen
and soldiers also cared for their personal reputation and self-esteem, and
appreciated the companionship and sense of friendship offered by the horse.56
Affect and solidarity are also present in the symbolically charged view of the
horse as an innocent victim of human violence and the burial of dead horses in
wartime conditions. Howeverand challenging the sometimes narrow focus on
emotions in humanistic equine scholarship57containing health risks and criti-
cism of conduct were likely to be important motives to bury horses, especially
considering the generally good control of contagious disease among the Finnish
troops, the indiscriminate burial of their own and enemy horses in the same
graves,58 and the practice of skinning dead (enemy) horses before burying them.
Further evidence of affect is, however, easy to find in the generous public
response to the armys call for additional blankets for the war horses59 and
practices and reactions related to the eating of equine flesh60 or letting blood
from live horses for human nutrition.61 The Finnish military used painless
markings on hair and hoofs instead of branding by burning or otherwise
scarring the skin. The decision of the Finnish state to cancel the sale of horses
to Italians after the war because of their ill treatment of the first shipment62
likewise encourages consideration of both instrumental and emotional views.
Despite the crushingly high63 death toll of the Finnish war horse, its case
counters the predominant (mostly British) generalisations in humanistic
equine studies about the fate of the war horse: that few return and even
those who survived the killing fields were simply sold on,64 that numbering
by authorities makes horses anonymous and depersonalised, or that identi-
fication systems of individual horses make no reference to citizenship or
 10 P. RAENTO

subjectivity.65 The challenge of the Finnish case to British interpretations also

encourages redirection of attention in military history from the major thea-
ters of the western front to small but nationally critical events in the east, like
Gervasive Phillips has suggested.66
Most importantly from the perspective of symbolic charge and affect, it
was Finlands own purebred breed, the Finnhorse, which helped fight the
enemy. Because of its work in primary production and World War II, the
Finnhorse has been dubbed an exemplary Finn, a national treasure, and
a hero of the everyday67 in the nations identity-political narrative rooted in
Protestant ethics of hard work and collective care. The horse stands for
endurance, loyalty, humility, and silent perseverance associated with the
national character and a nostalgically idealised rural lifestyle. In popular
recollections and history writing alike, the Finnhorse is repeatedly thanked
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for its contributions to national sovereignty, and recollections of individual

horses actions express a sense of debt. In the words of a southwestern
farmer, born in 1935, The horse heroes must be remembered when the
[Finnish national] blue-and-white cross flag is flown as a sign of the inde-
pendence of a free country.68
A central constituent of the heroic, agential status of, and popular affect
for, the Finnhorse as a breed in the national(istic) narrative is, indeed, the
behaviour and performance of particular horses in particular situations. In an
emotionally reserved and tight-lipped culture, describing the behaviour of the
horse has offered a way to express emotions more vividly than might other-
wise be possible. In his contribution to the Folklore Archive, a northern man,
born in 1928, sums up the popular accounts about a war horse greeting its
owner at the railway station upon return and, when let loose, running
straight home across town:69

Many veterans have recalled how in the end of the war path the feet felt light, even
if they were tired, hurting, and the toes were swollen by blisters. [But] few
expressed the joy of home coming as openly as the war horse returning to its
home barn.

The citation exemplifies how in the examined data equine behaviour is

anthropomorphised to project collective human sentiments and support
recovery. Here it is about relief and joy for survival and home coming in
the end of an armed conflict. Stories about stoic equine calm in emergency
situations, in turn, look like veiled accounts of numbness and paralysing fear.
But fear is also explicit in the data, especially in the memoirs of wartime
veterinary personnel. For one veterinary nurse, who experienced repeated air
raids in an equine hospital in Finnish-occupied Karelia during the
Continuation War, It was shocking to see and hear how a creature of nature,
too, is shaken and afraid; each one wanting to be close to the human and get
its muzzle in the lap and under the armpit.70 Here, the horse is a target of
 GEOPOLITICS 11

human empathy and understanding but subordinate to the human and a

subject cognitively capable of fear and need of comfort.71 The horror of war
is not solely a human experience and the horse hardly a blank canvas on
which social constructions are projected.
The data also contain plenty of evidence about trauma. Some tell about
material and emotional loss through the fate of the horse: Roima returned as
a small sum of money to its master. He cried bitterly, a northern-Finnish
woman recalled in her contribution to the Folklore Archive. Bitterness and
pain are also embedded in the bad treatment of horses by anxious, angry, and
violent men during and after the war and in the traumatised accounts of
eye-witness narrators who typically belong to the next generation. And,
valuably from the perspective of animal subjectivity, there are several descrip-
tions of horses who were hostile or unpredictable because of pain and bad
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treatment or who lost their nerves in the war so that for years afterwards
they ran in panic or ducked and covered at the sound of an airplane, loud
engines, or explosions, no matter what they happened to be doing.72 Human
sentiments of hope and future-orientedness are evident in the affective
stories about animal rehabilitability, which was central in the case of the
Moon bear.73 In the Finnish case these stories focus on successful foaling in
difficult circumstances and recovery of individual returnees from deep phy-
sical and mental wounds.

A Critical Geopolitics of Breeding Finnishness

Keeping the most valuable Finnhorses away from World War II and gelding of
enemy colts and stallions by the Finnish military are minor episodes in the
long continuum of human management of equine reproduction. As imperial
horses and dogs across the world have illustrated over centuries, production or
companion animals rarely just happen. Rather, they result from intensive
human biopolitical governance with the help of top science and technologies.
They also point to the states central role in breeding. An engagement with the
basics of critical geopolitics as defined by Gearoid Tuathail and Simon
Dalby74 helps bridge biopolitics in animal studies with geopolitics.
The labour and reproduction of the horse constitute what Tuathail and
Dalby call a spatial practice of the state. In Finland this has been the case
ever since men and horses from Finnish lands began to serve the medieval
Swedish empire in its wars and help build the states strategic service net-
works (such as the postal system in the seventeenth century). For centuries
the horses work in field, forest, and transportation arranged food and shelter
for both themselves and people, and connected people, horses, and places in
the emerging national territory.
Systematic state involvement in equine reproduction in Finland, however,
dates back to the Russian period (18091917), when the growing need for
 12 P. RAENTO

horses in the Russian army motivated the emperor to launch a network of

crown stallions in the western resource periphery in the 1830s. The pur-
pose of the quality sires distributed across the country was to produce bigger
horses with hard back and sturdy feet.75 Particular attention was paid to
the molding of movement and bone structure so that these would better
endure the hardship of heavy loads and long distances. Selection based on
speed was promoted since 1865 by organising state races, where Finlands
autonomous senate offered a sizeable purse and visibility for the best
performers.76 The ability of the local horse to respond by adapting to, and
excelling in, these activities diversified its role in society, fostered socio-
economic change and new contacts, and, gradually, improved the conditions
of equine life. A boost in horse trade to Russia and racing increased the
economic value of healthy performers, and, slowly, peoples interest in offer-
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ing better treatment, food, and conditions77 for the horse.

That the horse was a member of the urban working class and an agricul-
tural labourer78 carved a special niche for it in the context of national
emancipation and imperial Russification policies in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century. At that time breeding of a distinctively Finnish horse
was gradually institutionalised, first by local improvement societies and, by
1905, a state-induced nationwide network of regional breeding associations.
Identity-politically charged aspirations fuelled national resistance by celebrat-
ing national peculiarity and achievements. The creation of a purebred breed
would bring to the fore the best in the Finnish horse, which already was a
source of national pride as a valued export item and labourer. In the
national-romanticist literature79 its qualities and actions already embodied
the Finnish national character. The autonomous senate thus opened an
exclusive studbook for the pure-breeding of Finnhorses in 1907.
The first breeding guidelines focused on the looks of individual horses
and on eliminating certain colours and other perceived evidence of for-
eign influences. Consideration was soon given to eliminating hereditary
disease and defining unacceptable structure and behaviour which could
make a horse unsuitable for its intended work. The nations boundaries,
ability and health, and purity of blood were thereby defined through
symbolic and concrete inclusion, exclusion, and othering via equine bodies.
The horse now had an acknowledged place in national resistance and
territorial identity politics beyond warfare. Because of their ability to
respond to peoples needs and to adapt further through changes in
body shape, behaviour, and performance the horses were themselves a
force in social change.80 They were also building their own future as
cherished members of the nation. This view on statehorse interdepen-
dency stands in sharp contrast to romanticised claims about the Finnhorse
being originally Finnish and that centuries have refined this horse to
become a perfect match with our conditions.81
 GEOPOLITICS 13

In the words of Tuathail and Dalby, the Finnhorse acquired a material

and representational status as its physiology and behaviour changed. The
standardisation communicated a certain visual order and optical consis-
tency across the national territory, not least because the Finnhorse was both
fixed as a representational form and movable [and capable of moving]
across territory. The studbook also drew Finlands material and concep-
tual borders through the definition of a nationally exclusive breed and
presence of this horse in quotidian environments. Europes millions of horses
certainly saturate[d] the everyday life of states and nations and connected
to both elitist and popular practices not only through their work in primary
production and transportation but also in riding and racing. These contribu-
tions to Finnish boundary and nation making help explain why the military
of a poor country later made a major effort to treat the mobilised horses as
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individual brothers in arms rather than disposable mass instruments of war.

State-regulated institutionalisation of breeding culminated in the establish-
ment of a state stud in the southwestern town of Ypj in 1937. The stud
promoted the desired improvement of the Finnhorse as a breed, generating
more meticulous book keeping, calculation, instruction and guidelines, regis-
tration, and identification of individual horses. Subjective evaluation of
appearance was accompanied by detailed measurements of performance,
reflecting the Finns new international contacts, technologies and ideals,
scientific fashions of the era, and the identity-political need to belong in
the community of modern Western nations.82 The horse was thus party to
the creation of influential governmental institutions, advancement of Finnish
veterinary science and national education system, and consolidation of what
Tuathail and Dalby call the states techno-territorial networks.
That the humanhorse relationship corresponds to Tuathail and
Dalbys situated knowledge is evident in the collapse of the number of
Finnhorses from the all-time high of 408,800 individuals in 1950 to a mere
14,100 in 1987 in changing geopolitical and geoeconomic circumstances.
The share of the Finnhorse of all equines in Finland dropped from almost
full monopoly to 40 percent.83 Motorisation, urbanisation, industrial pro-
duction, and fashion pushed aside the heavily built workhorse, which made
way to the lighter trotter type so that all pure workhorse bloodlines
disappeared in a couple of decades.84 Then the Finnhorse trotter, once
the sole competitor on Finnish tracks, began to lose popularity to warm-
blood trotters, which to many sportsmen represented new economic oppor-
tunity and international contacts. The Orlov and other Russian racer breeds
first appeared in Finland in the mid-1950s, thanks to president Urho
Kekkonens sports diplomacy where Friendship Races and the subsequent
bilateral exchange of Finnish cows for Soviet horses fostered new amicable
relations between the former enemies. The American Standardbred trotter
then took over in warmblood racing in Finland in the 1970s, establishing
 14 P. RAENTO

economically and ideologically desired contacts with the leading trotter-

racing countries in Europe and, then, the USA.85
Westernisation, an increase of leisure time and disposable income, and
growing interest in heritage and nature offered new opportunities for the
horse in Finnish society. Reflective of this development, and to counter the
post-war decline of the Finnhorse, two new breeding categories, riding horses
and pony-size Finnhorses, accompanied workhorses and trotters in the
Finnhorse studbook in 1971, when a national equine registry was founded.
The broadening selection of equestrian sports and growing popularity of
leisure riding in Finland employed more horses and new breeds, which
were imported across the countrys relaxing borders. Despite the competi-
tion, the remaining 19,200 Finnhorses (26 percent of the equine population
in 2015) still stand for an identity-political defence of national peculiarity and
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tradition, authenticity and originality, and, increasingly, for biodiversity

in the context of neoliberalism and globalisation.86
The direct involvement of the state in the equine business shrank gradually
as the value of the horses work in national defence and economy diminished
in the latter half of the twentieth century. The Finnish cavalry was
demounted, the military remount school and breeding programmes were
closed, the state stud was privatised, and civilians took over the teaching of
riding, veterinary care, and other horse-related skills. The military gave up its
last horses in 1993, after the fall of the Soviet Union and in the context of
economic depression. The only horses owned by the Finnish state today are
those few officers of the mounted police who serve in ceremonial, public
order, and public relations tasks in the capital city Helsinki, giving a friendly
face to the police. In the present context of peace and prosperity, the states
attention focuses on regulation, border and health control, national eques-
trian sports teams, and administration of the education system. Through its
role in these structures, the diversifying equine population continues to have
an agential influence on Finlands boundaries.

Biosecurity and Biometric Bordering

The relationship between states and their equine populations in the new
millennium is being shaped further by new mobilities, neoliberalisation, glo-
balisation of the agro-food business, and securitisation, which have highlighted
the geopolitics of disease and biosecurity concerns related to animals.87 A look
at this relationship in todays Finland expands the view on animals as agents of
disease (cross-species transfer of pathogens), threats or defenders of environ-
mental or crop health (pests and their enemies), or human food security risks
(disease and contamination)88 towards their co-producing role in human
 GEOPOLITICS 15

institutions, border and people management, and economic activity. The

present era also offers further evidence of affect, friendship, and solidarity.
Animal scholars argue that biosecurity also involves conflicts over territory
between humans and wildlife (such as cougars), because the involved species
pose a threat to each others physical safety and intense human measures are
taken to keep the opponents in their right place.89 In this sense all spaces
shared by people and horses are bioinsecure, because both parties constantly
react to, and resist, each others actions and both have the ability to kill. Most of
the coexistence is smooth, but horses can ignore commands, escape, refuse to
move, break tack and equipment, charge, kick, and bite. Humans respond with
pre-emptive and, if necessary, coercive handling practices and tools, infrastruc-
ture, and bodily interventions (such as castration) tailored to keep daily work
and leisure spaces safe for both parties. An unresolved conflict over production
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and obedience can mean capital punishment,90 especially if the horse repeat-
edly inflicts injury on others. In Finland appropriate handling, and understand-
ing of the limits of equine physical and mental abilities, are taught as part of the
national education system in its equine programmes and are regulated by animal
protection laws, which originated from the resistance and human-inflicted
disability of the workhorse in early nineteenth-century Britain.91
Institutionalisation of problem prevention has intensified nationally and
supranationally because of global changes in biosecurity and equine labour.
Protecting human food from contamination is certainly one major motive for
the state and international organisations such as the European Union to
control equine disease, medication, and slaughter, but the states interests
reach beyond public health, public order, and cost-efficiency concerns.92 At
least in Finland, image and reputation matter, too, not least because the
country continues to take pride in its successful control of contagious animal
diseases.93 Instead of stopping infectious diseases at the national border
through measures such as the quarantine of war horses confiscated from
the enemy, the state now prefers to prevent the emergence of such diseases
in the first place and involve multiple non-state actors in the process.94
Indeed, the focus in the new millennium has been on health rather than
disease. This transition from Westphalian to post-Westphalian health, risk
management, and disease control95 is not exclusively a human prerogative.
Affect and solidarity matter in the management of equine well-being and
health, because horses are increasingly valued as companions, athletes, therapists,
entertainers, and consumers of goods and services.96 Their main task in contem-
porary Western societies is to strengthen economic, physical, and emotional well-
being of humans and, in sports, national fame and identity. In the case of Finland
one can also speculate that the long-term prominence of horsemen in the parlia-
ment, visibility of the national elites in the equine sports business,97 and the
popular interest in preserving the Finnhorse have added political weight to affect
in the construction of institutional structures around equine health.
 16 P. RAENTO

The increased international mobility of horses, however, has complicated

their reliable identification as individuals and keeping the national equine
registry up to date especially since Finlands membership in the European
Union (1995). The state now resorts to techniques routinely used in human
identification and biopolitical control instead of hand-written records and
markings on skin, hair, and hoofs. By way of example, a foal born in todays
Finland is identified, microchipped, and DNA-checked during its first year.98
This information and proof of necessary payments will earn the foal a passport
from the national trotting and breeding association, which has already entered
the newcomer in the national registrys online database and calculated its
breeding value index.99 The colour-coded EU-standardised passport and the
registry record the name, date and place of birth, breed, sex, colour, marks, and
descent over four generations. A personal identification number codes the foal
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per country (resembling citizenship), breed (nationality/ethnicity), managing

organisation (the passport-issuing national association), and contains informa-
tion about the individual, resembling human Finns social security numbers.100
The passport also shows the horses inoculation record and whether the meat
can be used for human consumption (administration of certain medications
prohibits this permanently). Most importantly for the status as an individual,
however, the horses name is still the first entry in all documents and data-
bases and the horse itself usually recognises it when called.
In their anthropological discussion about animal passports and the
stories these tell about surveillance of disease and movements,101
equine scholar Lynda Birke and her co-authors make two observations
that are valuable here. First, they point out that the passport must travel
with the horse at all times on pain of legal sanctions, that is, not only
across international borders but also whenever the horse travels
domestically. Second, they recognise the role of horses in managing
human obedience: the equine passport establishes criteria of responsible
ownership (those who maintain required schedules of inoculation), thereby
also categorizing humans into good and bad citizens.102 Horses thus assist
the state in sorting its people into categories per the quality of their
behaviour towards animal health and risk management. Coercion is used
by excluding troublesome humans:103 without the owners health com-
pliance their horses cannot perform the intended tasks (for example,
compete in sports or shows). Horses thus contribute to the governance
of humans through institutions of which equines form part.
Microchips, passports, DNA information, and EU-mandated health certi-
ficates issued by state-certified veterinarians in cases of export104 are prime
examples of portable biometric borders discussed by Louise Amoore.105 The
identification technologies, data management, and health inspections make
the equine body a mobile regulatory site, which, following Amoore, con-
stitutes all equines as a risk population, sorts them per (il)legitimacy and (un)
 GEOPOLITICS 17

safety to human property other equines, that is and food security, helping
to manage all this in the everyday. By way of example, the passport can be
inspected and the microchip scanned and read by the police on the roadside,
customs officers at the state border, trotter race or riding competition
organisers in a nearby town, and veterinarians in their local clinics (or any
of these places) in a circumstance in which they need to verify the identity of
a particular horse and, perhaps, compare what they find and see with the
medical and other information on the record.
The regulation of the whole descends hierarchically from the Ministry of
Agriculture and Forestry to its executive arm, the Finnish Food Safety
Authority, who works with the national trotting and breeding association.
Both the Authority and the registry-keeping association have regional and
local representatives and associates.106 This structure is yet another sign of
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increasing hybridization of legal and non-legal authorities, which stretches

from the strictly judicial to the professional and personal, just like Amoore
writes.107 The professional and personal are particularly relevant here,
because it is the responsibility of the good owner-citizen to have the veter-
inarian inoculate the horse against contagious disease (most importantly, the
equine influenza) and to acquire the required health certificates in order to
keep population-level epidemics under control. Because here the horse hardly
poses a threat to humans as an agent of disease, a key goal is to protect the
horses and their economically, culturally, and emotionally valued relation-
ship with humans. This expands the view on risk in biometric bordering by
Amoore: horses are not only a risk population but also a population at risk.
Instrumentality and emotion by no means exclude each other here, either.
Importantly from the perspective of biometric bordering and the post-
Westphalian emphasis on health, the system engages the fellow horse owner
as a foot soldier who, at least in the Finnish horse culture, quite eagerly
keeps an eye on the neighbours obedience, categorises others per perceived
(ir)responsibility and professionalism, and (re)acts on suspicion. This vigi-
lance is available to any electronically enabled citizen108 capable of using
the Internet, for the date of an individual horses last inoculation against
equine influenza is available on the opening page of the horses record in the
national registry. That is, much of the information in the registry is available
through the website of the national trotting and breeding association to
anyone who wishes to log on.109 In this sense, the guarding of equine health
has succeeded in making everyday spheres of commute, the office and the
household sites of authority, much like Amoore wrote about the war on
terror. Arguably, equine health and its relationship with people have also
served to deepen faith in data as a means of risk management and the body
as a source of absolute identification.110 Not surprisingly, errors found in
the national database can cause outspoken concern and even anger among
Finnish horse people.
 18 P. RAENTO

Conclusions
Finland would be different without the horse. The state has certainly shaped
the horse and its relationship with people, but the horse has co-produced the
nations experience of territorial and identity formation and war. The horse
has fostered changes in international relations, state networks, institutions,
and legislation, influencing the ways in which the Finnish state defines,
controls, and protects its national territory, boundaries, and populations.
The horse has been able to steer its own future by adapting to, and excelling
in, new forms of work, and be useful, likeable, and admirable to humans in
changing circumstances. It is clear that interspecies relations produce
space111 and horses have been central agents in the constitution of space
and place named Finland.112 Taking equine subjectivity into account allows
for a richer understanding of the way in which the politics of this issue have
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played, and continues to play out.113

A change in both thinking and attitude is needed in geopolitics for
benefiting from the observation that agency is relational, dispersed, and co-
evolving, and relevance does not require intent as (Western) humans custo-
marily understand it. Parties to a geopolitical or political process can have a
critical impact on it without being aware of the course, cause, or interde-
pendency of events or without any plan regarding an outcome. Instead of
persistently reasoning why, students of geopolitics can expand existing
knowledge by adventuring further into how other-than-human beings are
and relate to their surroundings and others in the complex interaction
between space and power. The horses themselves may not think about the
nation-state or international relations, but their character and actions have
mattered so much to people that scholars miss opportunities by ignoring
their agential influence.
The situated knowledge from Finland can be used to study similar
processes in other spaces and times and to challenge existing interpretations,
as the contrasts between animal studies and geopolitics or the Finnish,
British, and German approaches to war horses begin to suggest. Obvious
lines of further and deeper inquiry in geopolitics reach beyond territorial
conflict and border control to animal contributions to espionage and clan-
destine communication, international expeditions and trade relations, sports
diplomacy, rehabilitation of soldiers, nation building, and landscape. Animals
can also help in understanding the new geopolitics of disease and food,
affect, citizenship, and slavery. This empirical engagement with interdisci-
plinary research has sufficed to demonstrate that an exclusive focus on
human animals in geopolitics and political geography is increasingly difficult
to justify. The exclusive focus on humans also looks outdated and arrogant in
light of the general scholarly animal turn and inquiries in animal studies
into war, biopolitics, biosecurity, and resistance.
 GEOPOLITICS 19

An expansion of view beyond human subjectivity will also serve the

classroom, where interdisciplinarity and novel connections are emphasised
and typically receive a keen response. For starters, general challenges such as
that by the horse to existing research can support creative exercises about
theory, methodology, and conceptualisation and help make these concrete
in ones daily life. This is likely to motivate audiences whose lives intersect
with animals in multiple ways. One particular pedagogically rewarding chal-
lenge is the one posed by equine adaptability to rigid categorisations and
hierarchies.
Enriching investigative and pedagogical exercises with narrative life
texts114 and ethnography, and mixing instrumental and emotional perspec-
tives, expand the insight available from official documents and distant
observation favoured in geopolitical research. Over the long run, (self-)
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critical challenges to paradigms tend to influence the value and treatment

of others in geopolitical and political practice.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Juha Erola (the Equestrian Museum of Finland), Jason Dittmer (University College
London), Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway), Pivi Laine (Ypj Equine College), Riitta
Matilainen (University of Helsinki), and Juha Nirkko (Finnish Literature Society SKS) for
their insightful comments or help with the data. The feedback from the editor Virginie
Mamadouh and the three anonymous referees was most helpful.

Funding
The manuscript is part of The Horse in Finland project, generously funded by the Kone
Foundation in 20142018 (www.koneensaatio.fi).

Notes
1. J. Ackleson and J. Kastner, Borders and Governance: An Analysis of Health
Regulation and the Agri-Food Trade, Geopolitics 16 (2011) p. 22. See the starting
point in J. Wolch and J. Emel, Animal Geographies (London: Verso 1998).
2. W. Mwangi, The Lion, the Native, and the Coffee Plant: Political Imagery and the
Ambiguous Art of Currency Design in Colonial Kenya, Geopolitics 7 (2002) pp. 3162;
P. Raento, Communicating Geopolitics through Postage Stamps: The Case of Finland,
Geopolitics 11 (2006) pp. 601629; J. Kirshner, Sovereign Wealth Funds and National
Security: The Dog that Will Refuse to Bark, Geopolitics 14 (2009) pp. 305316.
Representation and objectification unite in Russian president Vladimir Putins show-
offs with tiger killing, fishing, and horseback riding in rugged environments: A. Foxall,
Photographing Vladimir Putin: Masculinity, Nationalism, and Visuality in Russian
Political Culture, Geopolitics 18 (2013) pp. 132156.
3. K. Hobson, Political Animals? On Animals as Subjects in an Enlarged Political
Geography, Political Geography 26 (2007) pp. 250267.
 20 P. RAENTO

4. L. Holloway, Subjecting Cows to Robots: Farming Technologies and the Making of

Animal Subjects, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 25 (2007)
pp. 10411060; L. Holloway and C. Morris, Contesting Genetic Knowledge-Practices
in Livestock Breeding: Biopower, Biosocial Collectivities, and Heterogeneous
Resistances, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2012) pp. 6077;
R.-C. Collard, CougarHuman Entanglements and the Biopolitical Un/Making of Safe
Space, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 30 (2012) pp. 2342; K.
Srinivasan, Caring for the Collective: Biopower and Agential Subjectivication in
Wildlife Conservation, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 32 (2014)
pp. 501517.
5. R. Hediger (ed.), Animals and War (Boston: Brill 2013).
6. Hobson (note 3) p. 252.
7. See E. Fudge, Perceiving Animals (Chicago: University of Illinois Press 2002); H. Neo,
They Hate Pigs, Chinese FarmersEverything! Beastly Racialization in Multiethnic
Malesia, Antipode 44 (2012) pp. 950970; N. Vaughan-Williams, We are not ani-
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mals! Humanitarian Border Security and Zoopolitical Spaces in Europe, Political

Geography 45 (2014) pp. 110.
8. J. C. Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class: Writing the History of Animals from Below,
Human Ecology Forum 14 (2007) p. 108; Wolch and Emel (note 1) p. xi.
9. Hobson (note 3) p. 251.
10. Holloway (note 4) p. 1044; Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8) p. 102; also
see Collard (note 4).
11. See, for example, S. Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies (London: Sage 2002); N. Castree,
Environmental Issues: Relational Ontologies and Hybrid Politics, Progress in Human
Geography 27 (2003) pp. 203211; R. Netz, Barbed Wire (Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press 2004).
12. Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8).
13. Hobson (note 3) p. 261.
14. Also see Collard (note 4) p. 25; Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8) p. 102.
15. For example, I. Elbl, The Horse in Fifteenth-Century Senegambia, The International
Journal of African Historical Studies 24 (1991) pp. 85110; J. Singleton, Britains
Military Use of Horses 19141918, Past & Present 139 (1993) pp. 178203; S. Swart,
Horses in the South African War, c. 18991902, Society & Animals 18 (2019)
pp. 348366; S. L. Wilks, The Coldest Dog and Pony Show on Earth: Animal
Welfare on the First Expeditions to Reach the South Pole, Anthrozos 25 (2012)
pp. 93109; P. McManus, G. Albrecht and R. Graham, The Global Horseracing
Industry (London: Routledge 2013).
16. M. Morpurgo, War Horse (London: Kaye & Ward 1982); R. Drews, Early Riders
(New York: Routledge 2004); G. Phillips, Scapegoat Arm: Twentieth-Century
Cavalry in Anglophone Historiography, The Journal of Military History 71 (2007)
pp. 3747; L. Birke, War Horse, Humanimalia 1 (2010) pp. 122132.
17. R. L. DiNardo and A. Bay, Horse-Drawn Transport in the German Army, Journal of
Contemporary History 23 (1988) pp. 129142; Singleton (note 15); R.-M. Leinonen,
Finnish Narratives of the Horse in World War II, in R. Hediger (ed.), Animals and
War (Boston: Brill 2013) pp. 123150.
18. N. Schuurman and R.-M. Leinonen, The Death of the Horse: Transforming
Conceptions and Practices in Finland, Humanimalia 4 (2012) pp. 5982.
19. Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8) pp. 101105.
20. P. Le Billon, The Political Ecology of War: Natural Resources and Armed Conflicts,
Political Geography 20 (2001) pp. 561584; Hobson (note 3); R. Rose-Redwood,
 GEOPOLITICS 21

Indexing the Great Ledger of the Community: Urban House-Numbering, City

Directories, and the Production of Spatial Legibility, Journal of Historical Geography
34 (2008) pp. 286310; M. G. Hannah, Calculable Territory and the West German
Census Boycott Movements of the 1980s, Political Geography 28 (2009) pp. 6575.
21. G. Tuathail and S. Dalby, Towards a Critical Geopolitics, in S. Dalby and G.
Tuathail (eds.), Rethinking Geopolitics (London: Routledge 1998) pp. 27.
22. A. Ingram, The New Geopolitics of Disease: Between Global Health and Global
Security, Geopolitics 10 (2005) pp. 522545; L. Amoore, Biometric Borders:
Governing Mobilities in the War on Terror, Political Geography 25 (2006)
pp. 336351; Collard (note 4); L. Budd, M. Bell and T. Brown, Of Plagues, Planes
and Politics: Controlling the Global Spread of Infectious Diseases by Air, Political
Geography 28 (2009) pp. 426435; L. Birke, T. Holmberg, and K. Thompson, Stories of
Animal Passports: Tracing Disease, Movements, and Identities, Humanimalia 5
(2013) pp. 126.
23. V. Rislakki (ed.), Hevosten sotasavotta (Espoo: Suomen Hippos 1977); U.-M. Aaltonen
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(ed.), Kiitos Suomen hevoselle (Helsinki: Art House 1991); E. Jokela, Kaksipa lottaa
Vieskasta (Vaajakoski 2006); K. Anhava, Elinlkrin muistelmat (Helsinki: Tammi
2007); A. Mkel-Alitalo (ed.), Lehmst leopardiin (Helsinki: SKS 2013).
24. The Folklore Archive can be reached at <www.finlit.fi>. The excerpts in this article are
from a 2003 collection of horse stories. Another data, collected in 1975 about World
War II, is used by Leinonen (note 17). For more data translated into English, see
Schuurman and Leinonen (note 18).
25. G. hman, Hevostappioita ja menetyksi vv. 193940 ja 194144 sodissa, Suomen
Elinlkrilehti 6 (1948) pp. 226242; I. Ojala, Suomenhevonen sotavuosien jlkeen,
in I. Ojala (ed.), Suomenhevonen Suomen puolesta, 2nd ed. (Hmeenlinna: Karisto
1997) pp. 91110; I. Ojala, Suomalainen hevonen ja suomenhevonen sotilashevosena,
in M. Saastamoinen (ed.), Suomenhevonen (Espoo: Suomen Hippos 2007) pp. 1732;
M. Waris, Suomenhevonen sotahevosena, in I. Ojala (ed.), Suomenhevonen Suomen
puolesta, 2nd ed. (Hmeenlinna: Karisto 1997) pp. 3574; S. Savikko (ed.),
Suomenhevonen arjen sankari (Somerniemi: Amanita 2014). The Equestrian Sports
Museum of Finland: <www.hevosurheilumuseo.fi>.
26. For example, P. Raento and L. Hrml, The Contested Structural Change in Finnish
Trotter Racing and Betting in the 2000s, in P. Raento (ed.), Gambling in Finland
(Helsinki: Gaudeamus University Press 2014) pp. 125152; P. Raento, Geopolitics,
Identity, and Horse Sports in Finland, in N. Koch (ed.), Critical Geographies of Sport
(London: Routledge 2016).
27. Singleton (note 15) p. 202.
28. Cf. Singleton (note 15); Wilks (note 15).
29. Waris (note 25) pp. 4344.
30. Raento, Geopolitics, Identity, and Horse Sports (note 26).
31. Waris (note 25) p. 46.
32. Ibid., p. 74.
33. Ibid., pp. 54, 58, 74.
34. Hannah (note 20) p. 70.
35. Rose-Redwood (note 20) p. 289; Hannah (note 20) p. 68.
36. Hannah (note 20).
37. See Leinonen (note 17) p. 130 for supporting data.
38. See R. Alapuro, State and Revolution in Finland (Berkeley: University of California
Press 1988); Hannah (note 20) pp. 7074.
39. Singleton (note 15) p. 200.
 22 P. RAENTO

40. Schuurman and Leinonen (note 18). Consult P. J. Raivo, Landscaping the Patriotic
Past: Finnish War Landscapes as a National Heritage, Fennia 178 (2000) pp. 139150
about the return and commemoration of Finnish human war dead.
41. Waris (note 25) pp. 49, 57; Ojala, Suomenhevonen (note 25) p. 25.
42. Le Billon (note 20) p. 566.
43. For example, Elbl (note 15); Singleton (note 15); Swart (note 15).
44. Le Billon (note 20).
45. See Ojala, Suomenhevonen (note 25) p. 72 and the photo supplement in his book.
46. Elbl (note 15); Singleton (note 15); Swart (note 15); Wilks (note 15).
47. DiNardo and Bay (note 17).
48. For example, Aaltonen (note 23) p. 55; Anhava (note 23) p. 84 and photo supplement.
Also see Leinonen (note 17) p. 129.
49. Waris (note 25) p. 74.
50. hman (note 25).
51. DiNardo and Bay (note 17) p. 135.
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52. Le Billon (note 20) p. 566.

53. Waris (note 25) p. 46.
54. See Raivo (note 40).
55. Hobson (note 3) p. 261.
56. See Schuurman and Leinonen (note 18); Leinonen (note 17) pp. 134136; Hribal,
Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8) p. 103; also E. A. Lawrence, His Very Silence
Speaks (Detroit: Wayne State University Press 1989).
57. Schuurman and Leinonen (note 18) p. 71.
58. See photographs about veterinary prevention measures in Ojalas book (note 25),
especially on pp. 213214, and in Anhava (note 23).
59. Waris (note 25) p. 44.
60. Schuurman and Leinonen (note 18); Leinonen (note 17) p. 133; also see the photo-
graph on p. 212 in Ojalas book (note 25).
61. Jokela (note 23) p. 52; Anhava (note 23) p. 110.
62. Ojala, Suomenhevonen (note 25) pp. 106107.
63. Waris (note 25) p. 68.
64. Birke (note 16) p. 128.
65. Birke et al. (note 22).
66. Phillips (note 16).
67. For example, L. Itkonen, Suomenhevonen, in T. Halonen and L. Aro (eds.),
Suomalaisten symbolit (Jyvskyl: Atena 2006) p. 39; Savikko (note 25).
68. Leinonen (note 17) p. 136 cites similar statements. Aaltonens book (note 23) is titled
Thanks to Finlands Horse.
69. For more data, see Leinonen (note 17) pp. 140142.
70. Jokela (note 23) p. 76, emphasis added.
71. Hobson (note 3); Schuurman and Leinonen (note 18) pp. 6263, 6667.
72. For example, accounts in Aaltonen (note 23); also see Leinonen (note 17) p. 141.
Consult Schuurman and Leinonen (note 18) about human trauma.
73. Hobson (note 3) pp. 262263.
74. Tuathail and Dalby (note 21) pp. 27.
75. Ojala, Suomalainen hevonen (note 25) p. 19.
76. Raento, Geopolitics, Identity, and Horse Sports (note 26).
77. Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8) p. 103.
78. J. Hribal, Animals Are Part of the Working Class: A challenge to Labor History,
Labor History 44 (2003) pp. 435453.
 GEOPOLITICS 23

79. Z. Topelius, Maamme kirja (Porvoo: WSOY 1993 [reprint of the 34th ed. 1930])
pp. 118120. This iconic Book of Our Country was first published in Swedish in
1875 and in Finnish one year later.
80. Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8) p. 103.
81. Itkonen (note 67) p. 39; see N. Schuurman and J. Nyman, Eco-National Discourse and
the Case of the Finnhorse, Sociologia Ruralis 54 (2014) pp. 285302.
82. M. Antonsich, Cardinal Markers on Finlands Identity Politics and National Identity,
Eurasian Geography and Economics 46 (2005) pp. 289304; Raento, Communicating
Geopolitics (note 2); S. Moisio, Finlandisation versus Westernisation: Political
Recognition and Finlands European Union Membership Debate, National Identities
10 (2008) pp. 7793.
83. A helpful summary of the annual statistics by the national trotting and breeding
association Suomen Hippos (<www.hippos.fi>) and its predecessors can be found in
T. Peltonen, K. Maijala, and E. Perttunen, Monipuolinen suomenhevonen
nykypiv ja tulevaisuutta, in M. Saastamoinen (ed.), Suomenhevonen (Espoo:
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Suomen Hippos 2007) pp. 6667.

84. Ojala, Suomenhevonen (note 25) p. 109.
85. See Raento, Geopolitics, Identity, and Horse Sports (note 26).
86. Ibid.; also see M. Saastamoinen (ed.), Suomenhevonen (Espoo: Suomen Hippos 2007);
Schuurman and Leinonen (note 18); Leinonen (note 17); Schuurman and Nyman
(note 81).
87. Amoore (note 22); Collard (note 4); Birke et al. (note 22); also Budd et al. (note 22).
88. For example, Ingram (note 22) p. 533; see Budd et al. (note 22).
89. Collard (note 4).
90. Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8) p. 103. See D. Haraway, When Species
Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 2008) p. 80.
91. Hribal, Animals, Agency, and Class (note 8) pp. 105109.
92. Budd et al. (note 22).
93. P. Raento, Stomaching Change: Finns, Food, and Boundaries in the European Union,
Geografiska Annaler B 92 (2010) pp. 300302.
94. Budd et al. (note 22) p. 432; see Amoore (note 22); D. Newman, The Lines that
Continue to Separate Us: Borders in Our Borderless World, Progress in Human
Geography 30 (2006) pp. 143161; B. J. Muller, Risking It All at the Biometric
Border: Mobility, Limits, and the Persistence of Securitization, Geopolitics 16 (2011)
pp. 91106.
95. Ingram (note 22); Budd et al. (note 22).
96. See H. J. Nast, Critical Pet Studies?, Antipode 38 (2006) pp. 894906.
97. Raento, Geopolitics, Identity, and Horse Sports (note 26).
98. Birke et al. (note 22) describe similar practices in Britain.
99. Since 2002 Finland has used the BLUP, Best Linear Unbiased Prediction, as an
indicator of breeding value.
100. See M. Dodge and R. Kitchin, Codes of Life: Identification Codes and the Machine-
Readable World, Environment and Planning D: Society & Space 23 (2005)
pp. 851881.
101. Birke et al. (note 22) p. 2.
102. Birke et al. (note 22) p. 5; see N. Rose, The Politics of Life Itself (Princeton: Princeton
University Press 2007) about biological citizenship (p. 132) and exclusion of those
who do not obey.
103. See Rose (note 102).
104. See TRACES (Trade Control and Expert System by the European Commission).
 24 P. RAENTO

105. Amoore (note 22); see Dodge and Kitchin (note 100); Muller (note 94).
106. See <www.mmm.fi> (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry), <www.evira.fi> (Finnish
Food Security Agency), and <www.hippos.fi> (the national trotting and breeding
association Suomen Hippos).
107. Amoore (note 22) p. 345; see Newman (note 94); Muller (note 94); Collard (note 4).
108. Amoore (note 22) p. 346.
109. Go to <www.hippos.fi> Heppa and search with Brad de Veluwe. In the case of sires
the last test for the sexually transmitted CEM and duration of breeding licence are
included in the public data.
110. Amoore (note 22) p. 342.
111. Collard (note 4) p. 29.
112. Wolch and Emel (note 1) p. xiii.
113. Hobson (note 3) pp. 258, 263.
114. D. Newman and A. Paasi, Fences and Neighbors in the Postmodern World: Boundary
Narratives in Political Geography, Progress in Human Geography 22 (1998)
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pp. 186207, cited in Raento, Stomaching Change (note 93).