Suoma af Hällström

[1][2][3] Suoma Helena Lindsted was born on 10 March 1881 in Kuopio, Northern Savonia, Finland to Hilma (née Nyholm) and Wilhelm Lindstedt, a county vicar.

[1] About 70,000 Finns changed their surnames between 1906 and 1907 in response to a call from author Johannes Linnankoski to mark the centenary of the Finnish nationalist, philosopher and statesman Johan Vilhelm Snellman.

Her husband, Ernst af Hällström, was an active member of the radical Finnish nationalist, fascist, pro-German and anti-communist political Lapua movement in the 1920s and 1930s, and she took a supportive view of the organisation.

In 1921 she was elected a member of the central board of the Lotta Svärd, and the following year she was appointed head of the organisation's medical section, a post she had previously held in 1921.

With Greta Silvenius, she drew up the rules of procedure for the medical section at the very beginning of the Lotta's activities in 1921. af Hällström resigned from the central board at the 1924 annual meeting, probably because of disagreements within the nascent organisation.

[1] In 1942, at the age of 61, Loimaranta-Airila resigned from the central executive committee and stepped down as head of the medical section of Lotta Svärd, at which time she was invited to become an honorary member of the organisation.