Suomalainen piru. Paholainen kansanperinteessä

In Finnish folklore the Devil has borrowed features both from ancient popular belief and from the Christian faith. Unlike the devil of Christianity, the Finnish devil is not wholly evil, and the relation between man and devil may sometimes recall a contractual relationship: man can benefit from his link with the devil without losing his soul. In the mythological stories the devil is a a creature that supports the values of village society, who punishes misdemeanours and with whose help inexplicable phenomena like surprisingly good luck or illness can be explained. Finnish folk belief contains a numerous group of lesser magical figures such as elves and sprites. The devil has also borrowed the powers of the ancient gods, such as good luck in hunting from Tapio, and in fishing from Ahti. The folk archives of  the Finnish Literature Society contain a collection of devil-themed stories from the 1880s to the 1960s.
Translated by David McDuff

Suomen Turku julistaa joulurauhan. Åbo kungör julfred

This bilingual book offers a broad interpretation of a unique Christmas tradition upheld by the Finns: at 12 on Christmas Eve a large proportion of the population falls silent to listen to the declaration of the Christmas peace from Turku cathedral. After its bells have rung noon, the deputy mayor ceremonially opens a manuscript prepared according to mediaeval tradition and reads the announcement in both Finnish and Swedish. After the announcement, the land settles down to celebrate Christmas following traditions dating from the 13th century. The Christmas peace has been announced in Turku almost without interruption since the Middle Ages. The last time it went unread was in 1939, during the Winter War. The Finnish Broadcasting Company broadcasts the occasion to all the member countries of the European Broadcasting Union EBU. The Christmas peace is also sent out into the world by Swedish radio, reaching a total of some 140 countries.
Translated by Hildi Hawkins

Tuolit, sohvat ja jakkarat. Renessanssista 1920-luvulle

Could it be that chairs are the most important pieces of furniture in our daily lives? The history of furniture in Finland – not much has survived from earlier than late 16th century – is made up of Swedish, Russian and Finnish parts. Furniture-making in the Kingdom of Sweden, of which Finland formed a part until 1809, was modelled on European trends, and that was also the case in St Petersburg – which is close to Finland – during the period when Finland became a Russian-governed Grand Duchy (1809–1917). Finnish peasant furniture has always been of high quality, despite often harsh circumstances. Finnish furniture-makers adapted both Swedish and Russian styles; for example, Empire (in England, Regency) and Biedermeier chairs were either of the Russian or the Swedish type. Gustavian furniture (c. 1775–1810), from the period of King Gustav III, was popular and abundant, and in the past decades the style has become extremely favoured by collectors. Detailed, beautiful photography in this book supports the concise, informative text. Kari-Paavo Kokki, director of Heinola City Museum, is an antiques specialist.

Lappalaisten mytologian katkelmia

The Swedish pastor Lars Levi Laestadius (1800–1861) is known as a preacher who criticised the dead dogma of the church and as the founder of Finland’s largest charismatic sect – although Laestadius did not even live in Finland. He was also a journalist who was active in the temperance movement and wrote a great deal of religious literature; Laestadius may be the best-known Sámi of all time. As well as an ecologist and botanist, he was also a philologist with a knowledge of the dialects of the Sámi language, and as an ethnographer Laestadius studied the history of the Sámi, collecting their beliefs into a system he called the Lapps’ mythology. It is only now that this work has been published in its entirety in Finnish. An expedition funded by Louis Philippe, king of France, in 1838–1840, played a decisive part in the birth of the work: Laestadius was appointed guide to the expedition, and a study of Lapp ‘history’ was commissioned from him. Part of the manuscript was long lost, but in 1946 it was discovered in the library of Yale University.
Translated by Hildi Hawkins

Cornflower and ear of oats: one of the several Fabergé gemstone ornaments now owned by Queen Elizabeth of England (gold, rock crystal, diamonds, enamel, ca 18 cm)

Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm
Fabergén suomalaiset mestarit
[Fabergé’s Finnish masters]
Design: Jukka Aalto/Armadillo Graphics
Helsinki: Tammi, 2011. 271 p., ill.
ISBN 978-951-31-5878-1
€57, hardback

In its online shop, the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg sells a copy of a most delicate, enchanting little nephrite-and-opal lily of the valley that perfectly imitates nature, sitting in a vase made of rock crystal that looks like a glass of water.

These small flowers made of gold and gemstones were manufactured by the jeweller Fabergé a hundred years ago. The lily of the valley was the most frequently used floral motif in the Fabergé workshops ­–  it was the favourite flower of Empress Alexandra (1872–1918), and the imperial family was the the foremost client of the world’s foremost jeweller.

The replica (13.5 centimetres high) is available at the Hermitage as a ‘luxury gift’ for the price of mere  $3,300. (N.B. Since we published this review, the ‘luxury gift’ items seem to have disappeared from the Hermitage online shop selection, so we have removed the link. Several Fabergé egg replicas are available though, ranging in price from $200 upwards – link below.)

For those who feel the price is excessive, there is  also a rather modestly-priced little bay tree (original: gold, Siberian nephrite, diamonds, amethysts, pearls, citrines, agates and rubies as well as natural feathers, about 30 centimetres tall, featuring a little bird that emerges flapping its wings and singing when a small key is turned) at just $ 219,95. Despite its form, it is classified as one of the famous imperial Easter eggs. (However, as I write, this item is unfortunately sold out…)

In the world of the unfathomably rich, in this instance the imperial family and their circle, it was not just the obvious items  – jewellery and ornaments such as the famous Easter eggs, gifts of the family members to each other – that were made of the most precious materials. Naturally also the handles of parasols had to be loaded with diamonds, golden cigarette cases studded with rubies, thermometers made of coloured gold and jewels.

Siberian aquamarine: Albert Holmström's design of 1909. The pendant could also be used as a brooch

The last imperial family of Russia in 1914: from left, Grand Duchesses Olga and Maria, Tsar Nicholas II, Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna, Grand Duchess Anastasia, Prince Alexey and Grand Duchess Tatyana. The elder daughters wear necklaces designed by the Finnish designer Alma Pihl

So, St Petersburg of the late 19th and early 20th century offered plenty of work for goldsmiths, clocksmiths, gem-cutters and jewellers. The most famous of them, Karl Fabergé (1847–1920), was a son of the French goldsmith Gustave Favry (Fabergé after he established a business in St Petersburg in the 1840s). Karl was well-trained and well-travelled; as the century changed, he had become the purveyor of fine jewels not only to the Tsar but also to the rulers of Sweden and Norway. He employed more than 500 people.

Fabergé’s first and closest business partner was a Finn: Hiskias Pöntinen (1823–1881, later Pendin) was originally a poor lad from the small town of Mikkeli in eastern Finland, who had come to St Petersburg to look for work. He eventually became a skilful jeweller, and it was he who taught Karl the basics of his trade.

Bolshaya Morskaya 24, 1903: Master August Hollming is in the centre of the photograph

Karl Fabergé worked with 24 goldsmiths, all of whom led their own workshops, and 14 of them were Finnish: he regarded Finns particularly skilled craftsmen as well as honest and reliable employees. The workshops were fully employed by Fabergé, and their production was sold to him exclusively.

Clock with a cockerel: Mme Beatrice Ephrussi, a heiress of the Rothschild family, gave this clock topped with a cockerel (by Mikhail Perkhin of Fabergé) to her brother as an engagement present in 1902

After the outbreak of the Revolution in late 1917 and the murder of the imperial family the following year, Fabergé’s trade was finished, and he left the country. As most of the Finnish craftsmen had no more work either, many of them  returned to their now independent homeland.

Among them was jewellery designer Alma Pihl (1888–1976). Alma’s father was the Finnish goldsmith Knut Oskar Pihl, and she was born in Moscow. She began to work in her uncle Albert Holmström’s workshop in St Petersburg and without any formal training became a skilful and remarkable Fabergé designer: a very rare career for a woman.

Alma designed many pieces of jewellery for Emanuel Nobel, the head of the Nobel oil industries, who ordered dozens of brooches, necklaces, bracelets and pendants, all decorated with Alma’s inventive ice-crystal and snowflake designs. Nobel donated them to his business associates and guests all over Europe.

The greatest achievement of her career, however, is the Winter Egg of 1913, a gift from the Tsar to his mother, the dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna: a staggering 1308 diamonds are set on the eggshell, and a further 1378 in the basket of tiny white anemones inside the egg, made of white quartz. The egg stands on a pedestal of Siberian mountain crystal. Alma’s design was excecuted by her uncle, and it was the most expensive of the 50 imperial Easter eggs made by Fabergé.

The  Revolution dispersed them all – the people, the eggs, the jewellery, the clocks and the parasols. The pictures of these priceless luxuries inevitably bring to mind the masses of people in vast old Russia: those who lived in serfdom and exploitation and whose slavery had provided the ruling class with the means to live the lives they chose.

After the Revolution, Alma and her husband had to return to Finland to find work. From 1927 until her retirement in 1951 she held a post as an arts teacher at a secondary school. She never spoke of her flourishing career as a jewellery designer in imperial St Petersburg.

A rare gem: Alma Pihl (1888–1976), Finnish self-made woman whose career at Fabergè was brilliant but short

Alma Pihl’s designs were fresh and new, inspired by Art Nouveau and modernism. It is a pity her career was cut short, writes Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm, an art historian who is herself a Finnish goldsmith of the fourth generation. Her book, which is an edited version of an earlier work – Fabergé, a limited edition published in 2008. Fabergén suomalaiset mestarit concentrates on the craftspeople who designed and manufactured the objects which were realised with the buyers’ unlimited financial resources – an Easter egg might require the work of one man for a whole year.

3,046 diamonds: the Winter Egg (platinum, gold, rock crystal, moonstone, white quartz, nephrite, demantoid granates, ca 14 cm, 1913) was an Easter present from the Tsar to his mother

Tillander-Godenhielm points out that Finnish goldsmithing benefited greatly from the skill and experience of the tradespeople who moved to Finland after the Revolution. The art of jewellery that flourished in St Petersburg and was passed on by apprenticeship became practiced in Finland, too.

Fabergén suomalaiset mestarit is a thoroughly well-researched, handsomely illustrated, beautifully printed work. (An English-language version would probably find an interested  readership.) It turns the spotlight on to the numerous anonymous hands that made so many precious objects for emperors and lesser princes – and not just Finnish hands; the book offers a wealth of information about the turbulent years of the late 19th and early 20th century when money was no obstacle, and when the lack of it set the world on fire.

Most of Fabergé’s artefacts disappeared from Russia. Some of the now incredibly expensive and coveted collectors’ items have also now returned to Russia – after the years of Revolution and the Soviet Union. Alma Pihl’s magnificent Winter Egg is now owned by a private collector in Qatar.

I.K. Inha – Valokuvaaja, kirjailija, kulttuurin löytöretkeilijä

I.K. Inha (1865–1930) was a photographer, a writer, a translator and a journalist. He is known particularly for his photographic journeys in Finland and Russian Karelia. Both the texts and the photographs in Inha’s landscape and nature works are of a high aesthetic standard. This book focuses on Inha’s lesser-known works and the various phases of his life. Inha’s travel diary documents the cycle journey he made as a student in 1886 to Germany and Switzerland. In 1897 Inha was appointed Finland’s first-ever foreign correspondent; from Athens he reported on events such as the Greco-Turkish War. In 1899 and 1901 Inha was posted to England, where he observed Queen Victoria’s funeral and the coronation of King Edward VII. Aamu Nyström, the niece of Inha’s brother, has had access to letters, photographs and written and oral recollections of family members.
Translated by Ruth Urbom

Suurten tunteiden talo. Kohtauksia Kansallisoopperan vuosisadalta

2011 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Finnish National Opera. This richly illustrated and entertaining book describes events that have been absent from previous ‘official’ historical accounts. Readers will encounter over a hundred opera denizens who have made audiences – and, according to many anecdotes, each other – laugh and cry. The initial stages of the opera and ballet were modest in scope when viewed from outside, but the trailblazers involved were tremendous talents and personalities. The brighest star was the singer Aino Ackté, who enjoyed an international reputation. Gossip about intrigues and artistic differences at the opera house over the decades is confirmed in candid interviews with performers. The content of the book is based on archival sources, letters, memoirs, interviews and stories told inside the opera house. Juhani Koivisto, the Opera’s chief dramaturge, clearly has an excellent inside knowledge of his subject. Translated by Ruth Urbom

Kansallisen tieteen ja taiteen puolesta. Kalevalaseura 1911–2011

In 1911, the Finnish national epic Kalevala (1835, 1849), compiled by Elias Lönnrot and based on Finnish folk poetry, inspired the artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela, the sculptor Alpo Sailo, Professor E.N. Setälä and the folklorist Väinö Salminen to found the Kalevala Society (established in 1919), aimed at uniting Finland’s national science and art into a harmonious whole. As Russia tightened its grip on the Grand Duchy during the latter part of the nineteenth century, it awakened a desire to demonstrate the vitality of the Finnish language and national spirit. This book maps out the effect of the changing social and political situation on the Society’s activities. In the 1920s and 1930s the Kalevala Society remained largely outside the political and linguistic conflicts of the time. This was a period of extreme Finnish nationalism, but in the Society there was little inclination towards ‘Greater Finland’ thinking or anti-Russian or anti-Swedish sentiment. During Finland’s wars with the Soviet Union some members nonetheless had hopes of a Greater Finland, as many of the regions where the Kalevala poems originated lay on the Soviet side of the border. In recent years the Society has participated with other organisations in projects devoted to the regeneration of Russian Karelian villages and the protection of the last traditional Finnish landscapes.
Translated by David McDuff

Paholaisen biografia. Pahan olemus, historia ja tulevaisuus

This book is a chronological study of the Devil, seen through the history of ideas and cultural history. As the Devil is mainly a concept in Christian theology, the most profound studies of his essence have been carried out by experts of this field. The book also studies the Devil’s ‘disciples’, demons, and beliefs related to them. The main theme of the work consists of the history of diabology and demonology, from the Old Testament to contemporary theology. Another central theme is the theological dilemma of why God allows evil and suffering. In the cultural history section the author concentrates on the practical implications of belief in the Devil in different ages as well as parallel phenomena such as possession and belief in witchcraft. Folk tales about the Devil and descriptions of his putative looks as well as some classic works of fiction featuring the Devil are discussed. Kari Kuula is doctor of theology and priest who has published several non-fiction books on the Bible and Christianity.

Jumalainen nainen. Neitsyt Mariaa etsimässä

This book is about the Virgin Mary and in particular her role in women’s religious experience. Theologian Elina Vuola considers that the doctrines concerning the Virgin Mary have quite a lot in common, as the principal dogmas were formulated in the early centuries of Christianity. As a partial explanation of the difference between the Mary of the Church and the Mary of popular faith, the author adduces the fact that with few exceptions women in Finland did not begin to receive theological training until the second half of the twentieth century. The central question in the book is whether or not Mary is the crowned queen of a patriarchal religious faith that is hostile to women, a harmful role model. Vuola avows herself to be a representative of the trend in women’s religious studies that takes a more positive and multifaceted view of Mary. In the section devoted to the Mary of Karelian folk religion it becomes evident that in Finland and its surrounding regions there are interpretations that are surprisingly similar to those found in Latin America.
Translated by David McDuff

Goddess of victory: charioteer and runner Nike (constructed from the damaged statue of Nike of Paionios, from ca. 420 BCE). Photo: Wikimedia

No one should ever start a piece with ‘already the ancient Greeks…’ , but here goes:

Already the ancient Greeks practised the noble arts of sport. The Romans extended the cultivation (their word!) of culture to leisure, amusing themselves by throwing Christians to the lions. Formula F1 came a couple of thousand years later, as did post-modern art, sitcoms and reality TV, whose presenters take the place of lions and whose celebrities are today’s Christians.

The Olympics, founded by the Greeks, were in full swing as early as the seventh century BCE, until the Christian Roman Caesar Theodocius I banned them as irretrievably pagan in the year 393. However, they were revived 1,500 years later.

In Europe, the various tribes organised themselves and began to form societies; the continent divided into nation states which, in addition to fields and sports, began to cultivate their own languages and, through them, science and art.

In his new non-fiction book, Urheilukirja (‘A book about sport’), novelist Tuomas Kyrö examines sport in Finland through history and his own experience. After an active early youth, Kyrö is now more of an armchair sportsman, but he seems pretty omnivorous in his tastes. According to him, sport is essential to the survival of nation states because of the constant competition for growth among nations. Of which, of course, the Olympics is the ultimate stage, or stadium.

In the Finnish nation state, sport and the arts are not merely juxtaposed but sometimes set against one another, certainly where state sponsorship is concerned. Fortunately, in addition to the niggardly hand of the government, the cultivation of matters of the spirit are funded via the lotto and the football pools, in other words directly from the generous (or greedy) hand of the people.

A new comparison has sparked debate in the Finnish media: the True Finns party, which is seeking power in April’s parliamentary elections – and, according to the polls, is likely to get it – has announced in its manifesto that ‘The fine paintings of Edelfelt and Gallen-Kallela and Sibelius’s world-famous symphonies are internationally recognised…. The True Finns feel that the preservation of the Finnish cultural heritage is of primary importance compared to supporting post-modern contemporary art. Government arts funding should be directed in such away that it strengthens Finnish identity. Faux-artistic post-modern experiments, on the other hand, should be left economically to individual sponsors and the free market.’

The party’s website also states: ‘Funding for excellence in world-class sport should be increased at the expense of the arts. It would, in the end, be a question of extremely small sums. To ensure the London (Olympics) project and one gold medal, all that would be needed would be around three million euros of extra funding for effective training…. For sport is the circus entertainment that interests the people more than the state-funded arts, which are also in a certain sense elitist…. Prowess in world-class sport and keep-fit for ordinary people  always go hand in hand. Olympic sports have always played an important role in our national identity.’

The winner's game: since the 1928 Summer Olympics, the obverse face of the Olympic medals bear Nike's figure. Photo: Wikimedia

So three million is the price of one Olympic gold medal? Of course, there is no guarantee of one, even with this sum. Prowess in world-class sport and keep-fit absolutely do not ‘go hand in hand’. Democracy does not mean that everyone has to be interested in the same cultural matters. Quantity is no guarantee of quality; what ‘the people’ like cannot be more ‘right’ per se than what interests the ‘elite’. Feeding Christians to the lions is not admirable in human terms, however much the people liked it.

There’s much to mock in this new admiration of the cultural heroes of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The ‘Finnish national’ artists Albert Edelfelt and Axel Gallén (later Akseli Gallen-Kallela) and the composer Jean Sibelius were also mondaine cosmopolitans seeking their training and a large part of their inspiration abroad (and their mother tongue was not Finnish, by the way, but Swedish).

Finnish identity and Finland’s national heritage were not born out of powers primordially ‘Finnish’. A return to an idealised past is not possible, not now, not ever. ‘National identity’ remains a notoriously debatable subject.

Ever onwards: Nike of Paionios (the Archaeological Museum of Olympia, Greece). Photo: Wikimedia

But aren’t sports and arts both such fun! Coming up on the Books from Finland site next are extracts from Tuomas Kyrö’s sports fan book, and in it, he also talks about the arts: ‘Competition, dance, theatre, rally-driving, literature, ball-games, individual sports, video installations. What they are is play. Immaterial and pointless activity. But, to their makers and participants, perfectly meaningful…. Completely pointless, and damned important.’

‘Why do some people choose to expend what is often a great deal of effort hammering images in the bedrock itself, while others conjure up, in the blink of an eye, brilliantly radiant pictures on a rock-face that was empty yesterday but is now peopled by mythological animals, spirits and shamans?

‘I think about this often – I who love painting but who still chose a career that involves me sitting and hammering away, day in and day out, like a true rock-carver,’ writes author and ethnologist Ulla-Lena Lundberg in her new book on the art of the primeval man

When the children of Israel went into Babylonian captivity, hanging up their harps on the willow-trees and weeping as they remembered Zion, my sister and I were already sitting by the rivers of Babylon. We knew how they felt. Our father was dead and we had been sent away from our home. We sat there clinging to each other, or rather I was the one clinging to Gunilla, and she had to try to rouse herself and find something for us to do, to give us something else to think about.

‘Come and look!’ she would say.  And I would go and look, because I wanted so much to be distracted, to be a bit happier. When my father died I had only just begun to talk. His death put a stop to that, and we had to start from the beginning again. Gunilla taught me what everything in the world was called, and when I got a bit older she knew the answers to all my whys and hows. Everything I knew I had learned from Gunilla. She had arrived in the world fully-formed, whereas I was a wet, shapeless lump that needed serious work if it was ever to amount to anything. My sister loyally shouldered that responsibility.

Long afterwards, when she was already seriously ill, she read Martin Andersen Nexø’s memoirs. She related how he had been forced to drag his little sister around with him throughout his childhood. Tears came to my eyes.

‘And that’s just what you had to do too!’ I said.

She looked at me kindly.

‘No,’ she said. ‘That was different.’

‘Different how?’

‘Because you were the one who was my sister,’ she said.

That’s certainly one way of looking at it, because there may well be some compensation to be had from someone who believes in you unquestioningly and who agrees to everything you suggest. Everything Gunilla liked I liked too. It was fortunate for me that she was an intellectual, deeply interested in nature and culture. Thanks to her, I didn’t have to make any time-consuming detours before working out where my own inclinations lay.

We shared each other’s experiences, and, because there were two of us, we were a bit braver, a bit more adventurous, than if we had each been alone. As a child I was always scared: without Gunilla I would hardly have dared move. But together we ventured out into the world, me slightly behind her, but still able to see what was going on. It was a good position in which to grow up and muster courage. And I learned an incredible amount; thanks to Gunilla, I had a two-year head-start in many different areas.

The great advantage when I started school was that it meant Gunilla could borrow twice as many books. I was too shy and timid to pick out a single book for myself from the school library, but Gunilla borrowed books for both of us, taking half of them out on my card. Then we would walk home with the books in our school-bags, scarcely able to contain ourselves until we could start reading. Our cheeks glowing, we would lie on the floor, each of us reading a book, and then, when we had finished, we would swap with each other.

During the summer we would go on geographic expeditions in the rowing boat, and learn to identify birds and plants. It was quite natural that archaeology – what we called ‘in the olden days’ – became one of our great interests. We spent our earliest years on the site of the medieval Franciscan monastery on the island of Kökar. Not far from there is the recently excavated Bronze-Age dwelling of Otterböte. In Granboda, where our grandfather lived, Iron-Age burial sites exist alongside the current settlement. Our mother grew up on the heavy clay soil of Gammelgård in Esbo, on what had been the seabed during the Stone Age. Someone once dropped a stone axe in the sea, and it turned up in the middle of one of our fields.

All the while that you take an interest in various things, learning and talking, thinking and fantasising about them, you calm down and start to imagine what your future life might be like. As adults we lived in different places, but stayed best friends and were in very regular contact. Gunilla became a librarian and, after her years in Africa, married and settled in England, a country we had got to know from Enid Blyton as a magical place riddled with secret passageways and full of tinned food. In reality it consists of layer upon layer of archaeology and history, wherever you look. Every one of my visits to Gunilla involved prehistoric sites, an abiding shared interest.

For my part, I wrote and read and travelled and imagined that my life would always be like that. You go through life as best you can, first on healthy legs, then suddenly one day with a limp in your left leg and a terrible back. Sitting down is difficult, lying down is difficult: from experience I know that the princess in the fairy-tale with the pea in her bed suffered from a slipped disc. Long journeys and ambitious clambering were no longer feasible. It was time for comfortable and well-organised archaeological trips in Europe, and I spent the following years working my way through the great Ice-Age caves in the South of Europe armed with a stick and a supporting corset, with Gunilla at my side.

Doing sensible things gives you time to get well again, and over time I was almost back to normal. We could revert to making our own expeditions, and were hopeful that this would continue for a good while yet. But towards the end of 2002 Gunilla was diagnosed with multiple system atrophy, a name which describes exactly what the disease involves. In a very short time she was badly disabled, and Nigel Kelly, her husband, and I started to organise wheelchair trips. Two months before she died we travelled to Brittany, for a successful exploration of the great mystery left by the region’s prehistoric inhabitants in the form of processional roads and barrows. We managed to get all the way out to the island of Gavrinis and inside the magnificent passage grave with its richly ornamented stonework, not only a grave but a centre of the universe.

There we stood on the edge, unafraid. She was having trouble talking by this time, I was the one calling ‘Come and look!’, just as she had taught me to look at the world around me when we were young. In Gavrinis we had reached a conclusion – complicated, unintelligible. No answer, but a vast space for insight and farewells.

Gavrinis

Do you think the grave is too deep?

Passage grave: the entrance of the cairn on Gavrinis Island, Brittany. Photo: Wikipedia

From now on I will be evaluating archaeological sites according to the wheelchair principle. If I can manage to push a wheelchair then the site is okay. If not, then it’s useless.

Carnac is okay. We’ve reached April 2005, and Gunilla is confined to a wheelchair. And I, who so want to give her the wings of the morning, walk behind and push, or hold her under the arms for the short stretches that she can walk. It is what it is, in other words, a thoroughly successful trip, and the one which turned out to be her last….

We reach Roscoff, then there is a car trip down through Brittany, an astonishingly wild and beautiful landscape with mountains, vast areas of heathland, the smell of herbs, and, in the south-east, Carnac, the central point of an extensive and spatially arranged sacred landscape which has no equivalent in modern architecture. We stay at a B&B just outside the town, owned by a true Breton, where we have a whole little floor to ourselves and are served magnificent breakfasts. We’ve never stayed anywhere as nice as this on our travels, and the three of us often forget how ill Gunilla is: we’re on one of our usual archaeological trips, making the most of everything we see….

We manage to see a deeply satisfying number of ancient monuments in Carnac, both the big, official ones that indicate the presence of a central authority out of all proportion to the relatively modest population of farmers and fishermen who lived in the area, and quite a number of almost private burial mounds, some small stone circles and some standing stones that seem to have had a more local function. The whole chronology of Carnac is anchored in the Stone Age: no metal tools were used here. Even so, immense stone projects were undertaken, projects that few people would have seen completed in their lifetime. Here long-term planning was combined with the short perspective of individual lives. How did this society really fit together? Who had the necessary oversight, the authority for this sort of all-encompassing central planning, stretching over several generations? How could the immense outlay of labour be justified among people who were relatively short-lived? Something drove them to it. Religious devotion? Slave drivers? Priests, seers and oracles who were convinced it was necessary to ensure the continuation of our wretched existence on earth?

I admit that I find it easier to understand cave art and art on rock-faces and under overhangs than the predominantly abstract art associated with vast stone projects like grave chambers and processional roads. Maybe the explanation is simply that I am happy to imagine myself painting, and even carving, but I could never break my back on these insane stone-shifting projects.

I was hoping that Gavrinis might supply some answers. It is a huge passage grave, on an island outside Larmor-Baden, where an entire landscape has been constructed around the meticulously carved stone walls of the burial chamber. During the Neolithic Age the sea-level was a good deal lower than today, which meant that Gavrinis was part of the mainland and thus connected to the many stone monuments and barrows of Locmariaquer, across the Auray River.

It is by no means certain that we are even going to get there, and we nervously check the weather and timetables. A small pleasure boat takes visitors to the island, and if they say there’s no space for a wheelchair then we’re finished. We didn’t check beforehand, so that they couldn’t say no in advance. But everything goes well on the quayside. The wheelchair folds flat and Gunilla is light as a feather. It’s nice being out at sea, and we get the chance to see the Er Lannic stone circle, half visible above the water, a good illustration of how much higher the sea-level is today. It acts as a reminder of the fact that many less spectacular ancient sites, like the foundations of huts and other secular constructions, have been lost to the sea.

In those days Gavrinis was perched even higher than it is today, but pushing the wheelchair up the gravel track is still tough. But then we are there, confronted with a multi-layered mystery. It has been dated to approximately 3500 BCE, slightly older than Newgrange and Knowth [County Meath, Ireland], but it had an even shorter life than Newgrange: after just five hundred years, around 3000 BCE, the entrance was blocked off. The corridor was filled with stones, a wooden construction in front of the entrance was burned down, and the whole façade was covered with rocks, soil and sand. After that the site was abandoned, another sign that is simply isn’t possible to talk about a single culture, or even any continuity in the way religion was practiced, during the 3000 years or so that the area functioned as a sacred landscape.

Gavrinis stones: replica of a part of the passage, Bougon Museum. Photo: Athinaios@en.wikipedia

In later times grave-robbers broke into the burial chamber from outside. It was empty when restoration work began in 1979. Compared with the vast size of the mound, 50 metres in diameter and seven metres high, the chamber itself is tiny, just 4 x 4 metres, while the corridor leading to it is 17 metres long. If it was a burial chamber, was it reserved for a single ruling family and then sealed when the family’s time was over? We have no idea; but we stand and blink like moles at the ornamentation which stands out, neatly carved and confident, on the large stone-blocks that form the walls of the corridor and its only slightly wider culmination, the chamber itself. The blocks are stone, but look like clay: tight circles stand out, as though they were made by a finger running round and round through considerably softer material.

They look almost like massively enlarged fingerprints, but naturally have another function. Among all these roundels and half-roundels there are also bordering areas of ornamentation and other types of decoration: elegantly plaited bands, snakelike zigzag patterns, and very delicately carved narrow, pointed stone axes. And yes, up on the ceiling, on the underside of the massive block of stone that covers the whole chamber, the oxen with great horns taken from one of the megaliths in Locmariaquer. And, tucked in among the larger blocks forming the walls, a smaller stone with a carving of an axe with a handle which probably also comes from one of the stones there.

The concentration of all these carvings, largely non-figurative or stylised, makes an overwhelming impression, as if all the artistic skill of Carnac were concentrated here, below ground. It looks incredibly organised and calculated – yet at the same time there are small incongruous elements that suggest haste and even sloppiness.

How else do we explain why five of the wall-stones in the corridor are undecorated, and why a couple of them aren’t completely covered in engravings? Some of the stones were carved on site, others made elsewhere and brought here already decorated. Not to mention the fact that they made use of the megaliths at Locmariaquer to get hold of the massive roof stone with its engraved image. The opening to the passage faces southeast, but not so that the sun ever reaches the passage or the chamber; maybe this was never the intention, and Newgrange is the exception, but it could also be a mistake.

Like fingerprints: a decorated slab within the passage. Photo: Athinaios@en.wikipedia

Somehow you get a sense of terrible haste, as if the foreman was running late and was trying desperately to get everything finished so as not to come to a premature end himself. Ancient sites usually make a tranquil impression, but at Gavrinis it is as if one is witnessing the arrival of haste into the world. The more you hurry, the more things go wrong, and the more time you need to put it right. In the end the foreman stands there breathing shallowly at the entrance, telling the torch-bearers not to light up certain places during the inauguration.

And after those hints of crisis, the calmness of the art itself shines through. These stones have stood facing one another for five thousand years, in deep darkness, absorbed in their twisting lines and skeins, and now they emerge into the light, as vivid as skin, as fresh as if the hand that carved and engraved them had brushed the dust off them and given them a satisfied pat only a short while ago.

Life is short, art long – it gets no clearer than that. But that is no reason for us to be disheartened, because the hand behind the art is our own. Gunilla and I stand in Gavrinis happy and triumphant. ‘We made it!’ we say. It’s hard work getting out again, and the wheelchair leaves deep tracks on the damp ground on the way down to the boat. There are several passengers in it, one going farther than the rest of us. From a distance it isn’t possible to see either my happiness at having had her in my life, or my sorrow that I can’t pull her back from her approaching death. It is things like this that art deals with, and it is in this arena that we leave our mark.

Translated by Neil Smith

More on Gavrinis at  http://www.culture.gouv.fr/fr/arcnat/megalithes/en/index_en.html

Ulla-Lena Lundberg

‘Knowledge enhances feeling’ is a motto that runs through the whole of Ulla-Lena Lundberg’s oeuvre – both her novels and her travel-writing, covering Åland, Siberia and Africa.

In her trilogy of maritime novels (Leo, Stora världen [‘The wide world’], Allt man kan önska sig [‘All you could wish for’], 1989–1995) she used the form of a family chronicle to depict the development of sea-faring on Åland over the course of a century or so. She gathered her material with historical and anthropological methodology and love of detail. The result was entirely a work of quality fiction, from the consciously old-fashioned rural realism of the first volume to the contradictory postmodern multiplicity of voices in the last – all of it in harmony with the times being depicted.

When Lundberg (born 1947) takes us underground or up onto cliff-faces in her new documentary book, Jägarens leende. Resor i hällkonstens rymd (‘Smile of the hunter. Travels in the space of rock art’), in order to consider cave- and rock-paintings in various parts of the world, she also reveals a little of the background to this attitude towards life that takes such delight in acquiring knowledge – an attitude that is familiar from many of the protagonists of her novels.

Jägarens leende is both an introduction to the subject by an extremely knowledgeable amateur and a loving memoir in honour of the author’s travelling companion in the world of this art, her sister Gunilla Lundberg–Kelly (1945–2005).

The book opens with a captivating portrait of two small girls, the victims of a family catastrophe. The younger one is a feeble, speechless little creature  while the older one is determined to survive. ‘Come and look!’ is the big sister’s command to the feeble younger one, and eventually this would become a sort of leitmotif in the latter’s authorship.

In Siberien. Ett självporträtt med vingar (‘Siberia. A self-portrait with wings’) Lundberg successfully managed to tell a story of infatuation, using the richness of expression, the exaltation and reproduction rituals found in the world of birds as her main motifs. Jägarens leende depicts the story of two sisters through their shared journeys together: the reader follows the two women on numerous interesting trips, practically able to hear those eager voices, ‘Come and look!’

Gunilla Lundberg-Kelly was afflicted with a muscular sickness that proved fatal, and their last journeys were made to places accessible by wheelchair. Between her brief depictions of the beginning and end of her sister’s life, Ulla-Lena Lundberg opens up an engaging world of ancient artistry, magic, social communication – in Zimbabwe, Altamira, Bohuslän, Valcamonica…

We also learn a lot about the questions that occupy researchers into rock art, both professionals and laymen. On the disputed issue of whether or not the animal motifs of rock art – the eland antelope in Africa, the elk and bear in the north, mammoths in Ice-Age southern France – express a form of hunting magic or shamanism, Lundberg adopts a neutral position. Does one necessarily preclude the other? Art always has many meanings. Aesthetics and magic can be united in the same artistically inscribed line. Myths have a realistic dimension, realism a mythical one. Human beings are ‘communicative and secretive, never easy to pin down’. When you read Lundberg’s description of reindeer herding in Alta, you realise how multi-layered the narrative is, both documentary and imaginary.

And in spite of the long distance of time, and everything we can never know about the origins of the images, it is still possible to imagine a common denominator – the need to record your experience somehow – between the person who long ago made the painting or carving, and someone wanting to translate their sensory experiences into words.

One of Lundberg’s main concerns throughout her entire writing career has been to get us to see the differences and similarities between us, her readers, and the distant times and places she brings to life in her texts.

As so often in her writing, Lundberg also shows how the objective exterior and the subjective experience, with all its clutter of experiences, disappointments and needs, are always blurring into each other. Whose feelings, for instance, is she conveying to the reader when confronted with a few slapdash lines painted at the far end of a claustrophobic tunnel in Santian? ‘Never have I seen a painting that so strongly expresses loneliness and desperation…. I hope they express some sort of meaning. But to me they mean the end of the road,’ she writes.

And the clumsily depicted elk in Astuvansalmi, on a rock in Lake Saimaa, eastern Finland, speaks to her directly, through her engagement with it back through the centuries – the elk’s torso is decorated by a mark that represents the beast’s heart: ‘I am moved when I see it, perhaps because I myself have had to learn not to wear my heart on my sleeve.’

Encouraged by her big sister’s smart attempts at distraction, the little sister put her bleeding heart in her pocket, wiped her nose on her sleeve and set out to take a look and be enchanted. She became one of Finland-Swedish literature’s most important reminders of the fact that the world is interesting, multifaceted, and worth writing about.

And you can write about the heart, our loving, bleeding hearts, in so many different ways.

Translated by Neil Smith

Suomalainen aarniometsä

This book explains the cultural significance of forests – particularly virgin forests – to Finns. That term is used to refer to old-growth forests in their natural state, characterised by trees of different ages, an abundance of decaying tree remains, and continuous incremental changes. Nowadays around four per cent of Finnish forests are in a natural or near-natural state, and light is being shed on their ecosystems and the history of the slowly vanishing virgin forests. They are associated with deep-seated values and a multiplicity of roles throughout history. To many artists forests have been a significant elemental force, worthy even of worship; peasants and the timber industry have exploited the virgin forests. The authors also consider whether answers to key environmental issues will be found in old-growth forests: safeguarding natural diversity and slowing climate change. In addition to illustrative material from the authors, the book contains photographs by award-winning photographers Ritva Kovalainen and Sanni Seppo.

Adam and Eve, or the elephants: Osmo Rauhala’s sketch of The Fall of Man. As the bull eats the apple, evil rises from the ground in the form of a plant with eyes: a ‘misbreed’, a cross of two species alien to each other

Kuutti Lavonen – Osmo Rauhala – Pirjo Silveri
Tyrvään Pyhän Olavin kirkko – sata ja yksi kuvaa /
St Olaf’s Church in Tyrvää – One Hundred and One Paintings
Toim. / Edited by Pirjo Silveri
Translations: Silja Kudel, Jüri Kokkonen
Helsinki: Kirjapaja, 2010. 143 p., ill.
ISBN 978-952-247-103-1
€44.30, hardback

The old shingle roof of the early 16th-century stone church of St Olaf in Tyrvää, in the province of Pirkanmaa, southern Finland, was repaired by village volunteers in 1997. Three weeks after they completed their work, a drunken arsonist set the church on fire.

An atmosphere destroyed: the 18th-century wooden interior of St Olaf before the fire of 1997

The 18th-century master painter Andreas Löfmark had decorated the wooden panels of the gallery with portraits of the Apostles, images of the Passion of Christ and a portrayal of the Last Judgement.

Valued as a treasure of national importance, the whole interior, including the Löfmark paintings and the newly repaired roof, vanished into thin air.

But the local community and its volunteers didn’t give up: six years later the wooden interior, hand-carved, was rebuilt. Architect Ulla Rahola was responsible for the design of the reconstruction work.

The parish board made a decision to commission new paintings, following figurative style of the the original pictorial scheme. The interior committee invited two eminent artists, Kuutti Lavonen and Osmo Rauhala, to join the project, working with a group of assistants. The materials had to be carefully researched and tested, as there is no heating in the stone church, and humidity and temperatures vary enormously.

It took the artists five years to finish the job: 101 panels were painted, 29 by Lavonen and 79 by Rauhala.

After the fire: following completion of the restoration with its hand-carved wooden fixtures, St Olaf was reconsecrated in 2003

Tyrvään Pyhän Olavin kirkko – sata ja yksi kuvaa/ St Olaf’s church in Tyrvää –  One Hundred and One Paintings tells the story of the painstaking process of renovation.

When the artist Osmo Rauhala (born 1957) began planning his pictorial scheme for St Olaf, the Story of Creation and the birth of life, he found himself engaged in a dialogue with the contemporary world and the scientific explanation of life; his images ‘allude to the big bang theory (or the Creation of Light), the role of DNA and the creation of the animal kingdom. The theme of the pulpit, In the Beginning Was the Word, poses the question: might the first word have been DNA? I am not speculating as to who created DNA. Perhaps God created DNA as the first word.’

The sixth day by Osmo Rauhala: the beasts of the earth and the large mammals were created. The Birth of Milk (oil on wood, 60 x 30 cm)

The seven paintings in Rauhala’s the Story of Creation have a common motif: an eye. But after deciding not to include any human figures in his work, he found himself facing the problem of how to depict the appearance of humankind.

For the panel portraying the sixth day Rauhala painted a doe with her calf and called it The Birth of Milk, as ‘a deer is a mammal just like we are’. Rauhala is known for his paintings of animals –  deer in particular.

According to him, modern science theorises precisely the same order as the book of Genesis: ‘first came water organisms and fish, then reptiles and birds and finally land-dwelling animals and mammals, with humans last of all.’

Rauhala chose to portray the Creation of Man on the Seventh Day by depicting wet human footprints, on a beach, suggesting the evolutionary transition from water to land: the first man pauses to stand on the sand and honour God’s day of rest.

The seventh day by Osmo Rauhala: Man stands on the beach, respecting God’s work (oil on wood, 60 x 30 cm)

The Fall of Man was another problem. The 18th-century church painter Mikael Toppelius had placed an elephant in his painting of the Fall in Haukipudas church. Rauhala sees the elephant as an intelligent creature, a denizen of Eden, and capable of using its trunk like a hand: ‘it is a biological fact that the cow elephant attracts the bull by offering fruit.’

If Rauhala is an animal painter, the graphic artist and painter Kuutti Lavonen (born 1960) has gained his fame for his bold human (and angel) figures, faces in particular.

His method in St Olaf’s included sketching his compositions on the primed pine panels in red chalk. ‘I believe in the power of imagery. I use the cross motif as a contemporary artist does, more as a symbol than a concrete object. – The cross is a powerful symbol – so potent that its mere shadow makes an impact.’

Lavonen has long been drawing inspiration from the legends of the saints and the archangels. In St Olaf, however, there is only one panel depicting heavenly figures.

Lavonen’s colour scheme includes red and black; again a strong contrast to Rauhala’s muted colours. The turqoise base was made with the mixture of yellow ochre and Prussian blue and used throughout in the woodwork.

Human suffering by Kuutti Lavonen: ‘Veronica wipes the face of Jesus’ (tempera on wood, 79 x 59cm)

Both artists had the content of each painting approved by the supervising committee, mainly consisting of theologians and art historians, and Lavonen says that he and his colleague were given ‘a great amount of artistic freedom’. Rauhala’s elephants caused no disagreement.

The Last Judgement was the most difficult work for Lavonen to conceptualise – and it posed a serious challenge for the committee. Lavonen’s second sketch depicted a female figure holding a set of scales and a lily. Lavonen explained that this would make the viewer to consider justice, or grace: is it better to pass judgement or show mercy?

In medieval church art the Last Judgement is depicted as the moment of rebirth; the female figure was a topic of debate, too. In the third version and final painting there is a lily and  a dove, symbolising the Holy Spirit, descending upon the scales, but not tipping them.

‘Man is not the measure of all things – we must see our rightful place in the ecosystem, which the lily represents as flora, the bird as fauna’, says Lavonen. ‘I wanted to include the plant and animal kingdoms…. Man is not the king of all creation, but equal with everything else.’

The sun also rises: Osmo Rauhala’s sun appears to ascend from the altar as the viewer approaches down the aisle

The handsome book gives the reader an informative and interesting acccount of this rare project of artistic creativity, both spiritual and physical commitment and willpower. The numerous photographs, as well as the carefully constructed layout by graphic designer Ville Heinonen introduce the project in its entirety.

For someone who is not able to assess these new works of sacred art from a religious point of view, Rauhala’s two-dimensional, serene paintings, untouched by signs of human suffering, appear  to have a mythical, mystical and universal quality in their profoundly rich symbolism. Inspired by Italian Renaissance and Baroque painters (he is currently writing a thesis on Bernardo Cavallino), Lavonen seems to interpret this suffering through a deeply personal, emotional language of powerful contrasts, with colours of blood and tortured flesh.

An atmosphere restored: the resurrected form of St Olaf in 2009, complete with the artwork by Kuutti Lavonen and Osmo Rauhala

There certainly are impressive stories told in these pictures, for any visitor to this small, beautiful medieval church, with or without Christian faith.

From Catholic to Lutheran: St Olaf (1506–1516) was consecrated by the last Catholic bishop of Turku; it became a Lutheran church in the early 17th century

The extraordinary contrast created by the approaches of two very different artists makes the reader want to go and witness it – the beginning and the end –  with his or her own eyes.