The imperial government’s attacks on the autonomous rights of the Grand Duchy of Finland had a significant impact on the life and oeuvre of the national writers, including Kyösti Wilkuna (1879-1922). His literary works are valuable historical sources that contain information about some aspects of building the Finns’ cultural memory, but they have not yet been studied from this point of view. The purpose of the article is to analyse some denotative and connotative meanings of Kyösti Wilkuna’s historical adventure novels depicting the Finnish aspect of the wars between Sweden and Russia, especially the period of the Great Wrath, or Isoviha. The author concludes that these novels’ contemporary reader not only learned an interpretation of the past, but also discovered connotative meanings in the text that were constitutive of an element of the image of the Other for the Finnish identity.