Newly orphaned youth Yrjö (Kullervo Kalske) heads off to the big city in search of his fortune, stopping briefly to meet, and it turns out, impregnate his childhood sweetheart Elsa (Irma Seikkula). An innocent in the urban jungle, not unlike his co-star in her previous Juurakon Hulda, Yrjö advertises in the newspaper as a man looking for work, only to attract the attention of a liquor smuggler who wants him to work on the wrong side of the law. Penniless and destitute, Yrjö is just about to throw himself in front of a train, when he is rescued by the friendly Lehtinen (Reino Valkama), and put back on his feet by the Salvation Army.

Pretending to be a trader’s long-lost nephew, Yrjö gets a job at last, and after a long series of misadventures, becomes a champion athlete, before returning to the countryside and cluelessly playing with Elsa’s son Matti, unaware that he is the father. Tardily coming to realise his responsibilities, both to Elsa and to Finland, he competes in the 10,000 metres race at the Helsinki Olympics and, after a tense battle, wins the gold medal.

Once again, town and country are a vital juxtaposition – a happily backward rural paradise, all sunny fields and friendly carters, contrasted with the bustle of the big city, where even an honest country boy has to duck and dive (and lie) in order to make it. The divide between the rural and urban Finland, of course, was more than just geographical – it tended to reflect the stand-off between whites and reds in the Finnish Civil War, and even today, often marks the line between conservative and socialist voters.

Urho Karhumäki’s novel Avoveteen (literally Into Clear Water, but referenced in English sources as Towards a New Horizon) was an obvious choice for a Finnish movie, having won the gold medal for “epic literature” at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which featured an artistic achievement category. The film went into production shortly after Japan gave up on the idea of hosting the 1940 Olympics, claiming that it had better things to do with the money. The Olympics were instead awarded to Helsinki, creating a little cul-de-sac in history of commemorative 1940 Helsinki Olympics memorabilia, and inspiring director Orvo Saarikivi to make a film adaptation. However, the 1940 Helsinki Olympics were fated not to happen, either. Avoveteen, like Lapatossu and Vinski in Olympic Fever, was made and released in the brief 12-month window between Helsinki receiving and cancelling the Olympics after the November 1939 outbreak of the Winter War, making the near-future finale of this film a brief moment of alternate-universe science fiction. Or, considering that Finns also win silver and bronze, fantasy…

The film is notable for its scenes of athletes in training, and for something oddly rare in early Finnish films: a sequence filmed in a sauna. Yrjö’s Olympic victory is filmed in a real stadium, cunningly steered to sound Olympic through cutaways to the radio announcer and drop-ins of a crowd watching some real-life event, and through occasional glimpses of foreign flags (including, notably, a Nazi one), and foreign press (including a Japanese cameraman). Yrjö and his fellow runners are never shown running with the crowd in the background, although the camera does sneakily get a good shot of them passing the distinctive tower of the Helsinki Olympic stadium, which would not get to host the Games for real until 1952.

Jonathan Clements is the author of An Armchair Traveller’s History of Finland.