University of Turku

Farting on the Front Lines: Playing with Flatulence during World War II

This paper by Jaakko Suominen and Elina Vaahensalo examines farting games played by Finnish soldiers during World War II, drawing on the "Dugout Tradition" archive, a collection of over 12,000 pages of veteran oral histories gathered in 1973 by the Finnish Literature Society.

• The study draws on the 'Dugout Tradition' archive, over 12,000 pages of Finnish WWII veteran oral histories collected in 1973 by the Finnish Literature Society, to argue that farting games were a neglected form of self-organized bodily and social play on the front lines.
• The archival evidence falls into three categories: Thursday pea soup meals that sparked loud farting contests, 'fart flames' in which a notable participant could ignite expelled gas, and timed or rhythmic competitions such as imitating machine gunfire, where the longest 'gunfire' won.
• Veterans treated fart humor as a coping mechanism for wartime hardship, alongside extreme pastimes such as heavy drinking and cold-weather races, and silent farts were disapproved of while top performers were remembered long after the war.