The Tales of Ensign Stål (Swedish title: Fänrik Ståls sägner, Finnish: Vänrikki Stoolin tarinat) is a Finnish collection of poems written in Swedish by the poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg and published in two parts, the first in 1848, the second in 1860. The poems tell the story of the disastrous Finnish war (1808-1809), a part of the Napoleonic Wars where the Russian empire defeated the Swedish armies and conquered Finland, which had been a part of Sweden since the middle ages. Finland would not become a independent nation until 1917, but during the Russian domination, both Finnish- and Swedish-speaking Finns developed a strong sense of nationalism. In the genre of this nationalistic Finnish literature, The Tales of Ensign Stål is second only to The Kalevala.