The article discusses Finnish avant-garde and modernist writers’ and intellectuals’ positioning in the 1920s and 1930s in relation to the international movements of the time and to the Finnish cultural and political field. The focus is on articles in journals, essays and travel-writing (written both in Finnish and in Swedish) that show how the appropriation of avant-garde and modernism was a manifold project: historical reconstruction, contemporary critical interpretation and translation into the domestic context, reflection on Finland’s place in the map of Europe and, finally, interrogation of the very nature of modernity.