The Battle of Salla was fought between Finnish and Soviet troops near Salla in northern Finland during the Winter War. The Soviets had orders to advance through Salla to Kemijärvi and Sodankylä, and from there to Rovaniemi in just two weeks. From there they were to advance to Tornio and cut Finland in two. The Finnish troops managed to stop the Soviet advance just east of Kemijärvi. During the last days of February 1940 the Finnish troops were replaced with the Swedish, Norwegian and Danish volunteers of the Stridsgruppen SFK. Background Opposing plans Soviet preparations By 1938 the Soviet Union had decided to conquer Finland. Relying in part on the information provided by Finnish communists, detailed intelligence on Finnish infrastructure had been prepared by the summer of 1939 in a 200-page book that was distributed to the invasion force. The Soviet 14th Army was tasked with invading Finland between Kuhmo and Salla and cutting the country in half by advancing to the shores of the Gulf of Bothnia. As part of the 14th Army's offensive, the 122nd Rifle Division, having arrived from Poland on 8 November 1939, was supposed to capture Salla and Kemijärvi and advance to Rovaniemi within two weeks, from where it would continue to Tornio near the Finnish border with Sweden. The Soviets were only expecting light resistance and the troops were ordered not to cross the Swedish frontier. The Soviets began building a railroad from Kandalaksha to the Finnish border in 1939 using 100,000 prisoners as slave laborers. In the late 1930s, existing roads were improved and new ones had been built from the Murmansk Railway to the Finnish border, such as the road from Kandalaksha to Alakurtti. Finnish preparations The improvements in Soviet infrastructure and demographics near the border that made it possible to supply 40,000 troops in the region had little effect on Finnish operational planning in northern Finland. The Finnish general staff did not believe the Soviets would launch a major offensive from the White Sea region to Finland. As a result, work on fortifying key road choke-points in northern Finland only began in the autumn of 1939. The forces in northern Finland were under the command of the staff of the Lapland Group, which in turn was led by the North Finland Group. The Finns had one detached battalion (Er.P 17) and one company (Er.K Kojonen) near Salla that were supposed to