Linna, Väinö

Finnish author born in Urjala as the seventh child in a working class family of ten children. His father, a butcher, died when Väinö was seven years old and his mother provided for the family by working at the Honkala estate. Väinö went to school for six years and started working when he was fifteen as a farmhand, lumberjack and sawmill worker, and between 1938 and 1954 as an industrial labourer at the Finlayson textile factory in Tampere. During this period he spent most of his spare time in the local library.