Northern Europe
mill this fourth volume, East Norway and its Frontier (Allen and Unwin. 25s.), Frank Noel Stagg has covered all Norway in his series of histories; they are based on wide exploration of each region, which is fortified by his know- ledge of the language and of the extant histories in Norwegian. Commander Stagg carefully plods through the morasses and bounds along the clear-cut paths of political, social, cultural and economic developments. He has an occasional appreciative eye for scenery and arts and crafts and allows these factors to leaven slightly the account of power- politics and bloodshed, down to the inter-war period when 'Christiania' was erased from the maps in favour of 'Oslo.' Contemporary Norway must remain the subject for his fifth volume.
In Finland between East and West (Mac- millan, 45s.), Anatole G. Mazour, with a Stanford professorship of history and access to the Slavic Library in Helsinki behind him, writes with fierce candour and objectivity of Finland, since earliest times a field of conten- tion between the Scandinavian and Russian powers, Four-fifths of his account deals with the period since the Russian Revolution, and with great skill he untangles the hideously complicated story of a political system shaped by, and always having to compromise with. the notion of perpetual co-existence with richer, more powerful. and occasionally rapacious, neighbours. He estimates Russian attitudes towards Finland since early days, and particularly since 1917, very fairly, provides extensive data on the country's economic system, and gives what is nearly a day-by- day account of the tragic and futile events from 1939 to 1945, when Finland was barred from neutrality and got the worst side of the deal in her relationships with both Russia and Nazi Germany. The account runs to the eve of the 1956 Presidential election, and carries in appendices the texts of all the Russo-Finnish treaties since 1920.
A. V. COTON
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