Scandinavian Sniper – Finnish and Swedish Marksmen

By an interesting coincidence, both the Finnish Defence Forces’ official podcast Radio Kipinä as well as Sweidsh author/historian Lars Gyllenhaal’s Militärt med Gyllenhaal-podcast dealt with today’s snipers in their respective defence forces. As such, this felt like a good opportunity to compare and contrast the training, equipment, and employment of these.

A short note on the podcasts. The links above go to their respective iTunes-pages, but they are also found e.g. on YouTube. The language is Finnish for Radio Kipinä and Swedish for Militärt med Gyllenhaal. For their sniper episodes, both interviewed an officer who has a long background as a sniping instructor, Major Tapio Saarelainen of the Finnish Army Academy and Captain Håkan Jorsell of the Swedish Army Ranger Battalion (AJB).

A Swedish sniper from the army ranger battalion during an exercise in Gotland last year. Source: Mats Nyström/Försvarsmakten Let’s first get Simo Häyhä out of the way…