Qualla: Military Museum of Finland

Military Museum of Finland: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Michal Pise, Michal.Pise, CC BY 2.0. Vesikko fired one torpedo in anger and hit a Soviet transport. That was July 3, 1941, near the island of Suursaari in the Gulf of Finland, and it was enough to make Vesikko the most-decorated submarine in a fleet of five. The other four were scrapped in 1953 because the Paris Peace Treaty of 1947 forbade Finland from owning submarines. Vesikko was kept for educational purposes that never quite materialized, almost sold off, finally rescued by ex-submariners' lobbying, and dragged across Helsinki harbor to Suomenlinna where she sits today inside the UNESCO sea fortress as the Military Museum of Finland's most popular exhibit, drawing about 50,000 visitors a year into her 250-ton hull.

Image: Michal Pise, Michal.Pise | CC BY 2.0

Military Museum of Finland: Three Wars in Twenty-Six Years

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Josefiina Alanen, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Military Museum was founded on November 25, 1929, ten years after Finland emerged from a brutal civil war that pitted Reds against Whites and killed roughly 36,000 people in a country of three million. The first state exhibits in 1908 had covered the Finnish War of 1808-1809 ...

Image: Josefiina Alanen | CC BY-SA 4.0

Military Museum of Finland: A Russian Arsenal Becomes a Finnish Museum

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kuusim, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Manege building on Suomenlinna, where the Military Museum's main exhibitions live today, was built in 1880-1881 when Finland was still a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. The Russians used it as artillery storage. Architect Greifon's brick design has a long central hall wher...

Image: Kuusim | CC BY-SA 4.0

Military Museum of Finland: Vesikko's Strange Career

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kuusim, CC BY-SA 4.0. Vesikko was built by Crichton-Vulcan in Turku in 1933, originally as a German design prototype that the post-Versailles Reichsmarine could not legally build at home; she was a smaller cousin of the Type II U-boats that Germany would put into mass production. The Finnish Navy boug...

Image: Kuusim | CC BY-SA 4.0

Military Museum of Finland: A Torpedo Tube That Sank Twice

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ypsilon from Finland, CC0. One artifact in the Manege has been at the bottom of the Baltic Sea twice. The torpedo tube began life on the Imperial Russian torpedo boat Bditelnyi, which struck a sea mine in November 1917 and went down. The Finnish navy raised the tube and installed it on the Finnish torpedo ...

Image: Ypsilon from Finland | CC0