As a consequence to the German occupation of Estonia during World War II (1941–1944) and fleeing the Soviet occupation of Estonia (1944), Ole left as a refugee to Finland in 1943, where he continued to paint portraits of personalities of Finnish cultural life, such as the ones of the linguist Lauri Kettunen and of Viljo Tarkiainen, biographer of Aleksis Kivi, and landscapes.
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August Ahlqvist (A. Oksanen), poet, critic, linguist and professor of Finnish at the University of Helsinki; strongest critic of the Finnish national writer Aleksis Kivi and his novel Seven Brothers
Published in 1870, Seven Brothers ended an era dominated by Swedish-speaking authors, most notable of which was J.L. Runeberg, and created a solid basis for new Finnish authors like Minna Canth and Juhani Aho, who were, together with Aleksis Kivi, the first authors to depict ordinary Finns in a realistic way.