History is Not Boring discussion
Biggest errors or mistakes?
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There are a lot... I excuse authors who wrote before the Internet but I agree with you that in this day and age facts can be checked easily. Wikipedia may not be the best source but it's there and if you check the footnotes you can follow the leads to the source used. I like historical fiction books that contain author's notes in the back that tell what's true and what's not and provide sources. My favorite author as a teen was Ann Rinaldi because her history was believable and she explained the story behind the story.
I mentioned Wikipedia because I was talking about "major" events or "basic" history that may have their own articles even. So I wasn't even talking about details that needed to be checked.Like the book I am talking about completely ignores the Russification of Finland and for example the Jäger Movement and wants us to believe that a Finnish father would like his son to join the Imperial Army during the time when the majority of Finns tried their best to oppose everything Russian. Also the author thinks that an average boy with little education in Finland would know Russian (and probably French, too) just like that, when other boys of that time who actually continued their studies further, tried their best to fail in Russian. (In later novels he seems to have a position that could be compared to one this traitor had.)
And the author also missed the tidbit that can be read pretty much everywhere that in the old days Finns both gave birth in saunas and also washed their dead there. So making the father an undertaker to whom even the poor people take the bodies so he can use some chemicals on them, doesn't really ring true. No, they only took them to the church or cemetary to be buried like they had done for centuries.
Also when it comes to Russia and the elite Chevalier Guard, it's not like they just took everyone who wanted to go there. I believe one needed to be a member of nobility and even that wasn't probably enough. (Like with Mannerheim: "Mannerheim’s aristocratic family background, financial support from his maternal relatives and his successful military training opened him the way to the highly respected Regiment of the Guard.") And everyone who writes about Russia should know that they use patronymics there and it's an important part of the name and when addressing people.
So I'm not really sure how important some details are when the whole premise is so wrong. Oh and there is a timeline at the end of the book with real information but I don't think it really saves anything. And then to make the main character Finnish but there is not one Finnish name among the people he thanked, nor not one book in the literature list. I just wonder did the author think that no Finn would ever read the book?
A bit off topic, but I've read that a couple of studies have checked Wikipedia & found it as accurate as the old paper ones were. They didn't get everything right all the time, either. I thought that was both surprising & incredibly uplifting. I'm so used to masses of humans disappointing me.
Yes, I've read the same. But of course the problem is that they are much easier to change. Recently I found falsified "info" that I would call propaganda on one biography page at IMDB. Someone clearly had had a cause.Talking about that book... the "details" are getting even weirder...
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The things that tend to drive me nuts are stuff like an author deciding, "oh, the Tudors aren't interesting enough; I'll just make up something more interesting."
Oh, yes, I can't be too critical when it comes to older authors. Though I have read about an older book that didn't get the basic facts right about events that had happened 10 years prior, like even who was fighting against whom.It's funny actually, that era is quite interesting with all that was happening, a lot of spying and scheming. The plot in the book, not so much.
People just don't seem to know about Finland. I remember when I was a kid, I read a book by Marissa Moss about emigrant Russian Jews at the turn of the century. There was a historical map of Europe in the front of the book. I forget exactly what was wrong, but I think they had Finland as a separate country when it was part of Russia at that time. I wrote a letter to the publishers, and they actually wrote back apologizing (if I'm remembering correctly).Being a historical fiction writer myself, I sympathize with the authors. We're just trying to write a story, but then, due to a realistic setting, we have to fact-check everything. Sometimes historical facts can lessen the quality of the fictional narrative (i.e., When I was 12, I discovered rich people didn't make clothes themselves in the 1890s. I was upset, but I changed my original draft, which altered one of my whole plot arcs into something less believable.). I can understand why some authors just gloss over the research process. However, it's only an explanation for why such errors occur; not an excuse.
I agree with Emily that most Americans know nothing about Finland. I have a pen-friend there and I don't know much about the history. My best friend has been twice to visit her pen-friend and I'm not sure my friend even knows details about the history. If I were writing a novel though I would make it my business to know. Sometimes plots hinge on something totally unrealistic and it works for the story (like cross-class romance) and sometimes it doesn't work at all.
It's not that I expect an average people to know. But if someone chooses to make the main protagonist of his book series a Finn, I would think he study at least a bit of the nation's history. If nothing more than for out of respect. Not doing that makes me think that he just has an attitude of a "superpower", meaning that small nations and minorities don't have an identity and thoughts that are separate of the larger nation. It makes me suspectful of other authors' books and their views of history, too. About that Grand Duchy era, it depends a bit what it was about. Sure, Finland was a part of the Empire but also with a very large autonomy. So there were emigrant Jews in Finland, too, even though the laws that were from the Swedish era wouldn't have exactly allowed them. I believe they were Russian citizens (they had stayed in Finland after serving in the army here), and yes, Finns were citizens of Finland and even needed a passport to go to Russia. I'm not sure how comparable it would have been to Canada or Australia, for example.
For me it's just unbelievable to write something that would get published and just make things up as it suits your story. Especially something that is still quite widely known. I guess the author had seen the name "Finliandsky Guard Regiment", not knowing they weren't actually Finns serving there, but Russians in Finland. The Finnish Guard had been dissolved years earlier.
But yeah, according to this Nicholas II read Finnish (?!) and was interested in Finnish nationalism (that he actually tried to demolish). And for a Finn it's very strange to read that in that non-existent regiment there were boys from Helsinki, Turku and KAUHAVA. That last one is not a big town, and it is known mainly for the fact that lots of young men from there left for GERMANY at the exact time this book is set. The first training course actually started exactly 100 years ago (Feb 25th) and those men had a huge impact in our history. So yeah, not many so many glaring mistakes in this one.
And it's written in 2010 so he could have just checked some of the stuff from Wikipedia... And then people write in their reviews how there is a sense of history or something. Argh. I think it was never meant to be read by someone who happens to know a bit more about the subject, like we didn't exist or matter.