Winter war beetles

"Ground Beetles (Carabidae) of Fennoscandia. A zoogeographic study" is a three-volume study by Carl H. Lindroth, originally published in German in 1945. (Lindroth himself was Swedish.) This English translation from 1988 was made by the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and the National Science Foundation as part of a program to translate valuable foreign-language scientific literature. Apparently, the original was published with the support of Längmanska Kulturfonden. Thank you.

Lindroth must have been some kind of grand old man of carabid studies, since he also wrote "The Ground Beetles of Canada and Alaska", something the editor Terry L. Erwin fondly remembers in a foreword to this translation of Lindroth's work on Scandinavian beetles. Erwin met Lindroth when the Swede was in Alberta, collecting...well, ground beetles (what else?).

The three volumes of "Ground Beetles of Fennoscandia" are divided as follows. The first volume contain species presentations, the second volume only contain range maps, while the third and concluding volume has the subtitle "General Analysis, with a Discussion on Biogeographic principles". There are both maps and graphs in these volumes, but - curiously - not a single illustration of a ground beetle!

The books cover Fennoscandia: Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Russian sectors of Lapland and Karelia, east as far as the line Swir-Onega-Lake Wyg (Uikujärvi)-Wyg River-Soroka. The book also covers Denmark, which is not really part of Fennoscandia. The old national borders (1939) are used, despite the book being published in 1945. Was the author a secret admirer of Mannerheim?

I don't deny that this work is a veritable treasure-throve of information for revanchist entomologists who want to resurrect Greater Finland, but it's not suitable for the general reader. Still, I give citizen Lindroth's work four stars for the effort. The effort to describe the ground beetles, obviously!