Gothic Art in Spotlight: Giant Toys and a Giant's Church

This post is another combination of Gothic Art in Spotlight and Road Trip 2015. Before Finnish nature I feature art that examines products of pop culture and among them are the characters of Sin City and Edward the Scissor hands and they do appeal goths.

Please click photos for larger view, otherwise it can be hard to recognize all the characters, especially in "Family portraits" as the artists refer to the group displays. :)

On the left is a photo were you can see the largest toy giant. It was about 4 meters long but the others were mostly 1 - 2 meters long.





Gigantic Toys

Exhibition Toygiants in the Pori Art Museum is composed of photographs of toy figures in enormous scale. The individual photographs have no name nor are there labels telling at what year the photo was taken. It is a collection, not separate works, just like the toys in the photos. However, the photos are taken between 2004 and 2008 and instead of "an exhibition" I could also call this art project, because it kind of is that too.

All toys are from a private collection of Selim Varol. Collections and collecting are themes that characterize the whole exhibition. Many photographs portray groups of figurines and when one wanders around the exhibition, it is more like a collection itself: no photo is individual. They are as individual as Batman or Joker figures. They stand alone but they belong to the same series.

If you are wondering about the name Toygiants and have I written it correctly, the answer is yes. The artists behind this exhibition sized work are German Daniel and Geo Fuchs. In English many (closed) compound words are actually written separately but that is not the case in German, nor is it in Swedish or Finnish. A simple example is the word "school bus". In German it is der Schulbus. The artists have chosen to write Toygiants instead of Toy Giants. I actually am slightly puzzled by the secret rules of closed compound in English: why a school bus separately but a football together?

Oh, and just so you know, the last name of the artists is not a rude word but means a Fox as far as I know. :)

Lastly, a photo of the wall of fame with action figures of famous characters from the movies.

Giant's Church

To continue the theme of Giants, I am now going to write about the Giant's Church. There are approximately 30 giant's churches in Finland, mostly on the West area. They are massive formations of stones and are very likely man made. They are from about 2 000 BCE so, that means they are from the middle of Neolithic Age.

When driving from Oulu down towards Vaasa we noticed a sign on the side of the road telling that there is a Giant's Church 8 kilometers away from our route, so we decided to make a little detour.

I had never visited a giant's church before so I was really excited. Must say though, that the route from the main road to the castle was curvy and at some point I was slightly worried we had taken a wrong turn. There were signs, but often bushes and tree branches had grown in front of them.

When we arrived to a small parking lot (for about 5 cars) we noticed the Neolithic tourist attraction called "Vanha kastelli" was not the only thing to see.

"Viinapolku" is not as old, it is from the 18th century. Polku means a small footpath or a trail and viina is a strong and colorless alcohol beverage, like vodka, for example. During the 18th century and in this case it most likely meant a spirit that was brewed at home. To shorten the name, "Vodka Trail" was created by two elderly men and their friendship. They walked that trail to see each other, to talk and to drink a little. The trail was and still is between two old estates. It used to have crossings but now it is overgrown from here and there.

It was evident that the local village association was lively, because there were boards about the local history and about old superstitious. At the beginning of the trail was a board that had a spell written on it and the passers-by were kindly asked to read it out loud for their own protection. It was a spell against the demons / goblins of the forest, to prevent them from making humans lost or captured by evil forces. The spell was only in Finnish I am afraid, and I am not going to even try to translate it! When walked down the trail, there were other spells to, for good luck in hunting among other things.

We walked the Vodka Trail and after that took another road and headed to the Giant's Church.

Nobody knows for sure what these huge stonewall circles were for. There is evidence that people had homes around it. This particular Giant's Church has six holes or gates in its walls. Naturally, if there were structures of wood, they have long gone and disintegrated.

I took a photo of the information board's map so that you can really see what shape this ancient church is.

"Jätinkirkko" means the Giant's Church and "kivikautinen asuinpaikka" is where they've found ruins of habitation from the Stone Age.

The name Giant's Church was invented by the humans who later inhabited the area. They were farmers and other not so highly educated people so they sthought the odd and enormous ruins were made by giants. Giants are actually in bigger role in Norwegian and Swedish folklore than in Finnish. Probably partly because Norway and Sweden have more mountains than Finland. Mountains call for bigger beasts, don't you think?

In the old Finnish folklore the deity of woods and hunting, Tapio, could change his size and be taller than pine trees but if he was to interact with humans, he would often be their size and come to rest at their campfire. The goblin creatures and other evil forces of forests in Finnish folklore are no bigger than human, usually. Some are as tiny as ants, when they roam around woods but that is not a good thing. The legend says that if you cross a path of the goblin creatures you might accidentally get "caught" and are forced to walk in the woods for all eternity with no way out. The tiny ant size creatures walk so tiny roads it is hard to be aware of them!

I must write another post about old folklore, because the Baltic-Finnic tales (Finland and Estonia) do differ from the tales in Norway and Sweden.

Here you can see me, apparently dancing tango all by myself on the wall of the church. Nah, actually I was just in the middle of telling some juicy story or blabbing about something and I was caught in mid-sentence.

Notice also that the stone walls are partly soil. Probably because of the 4 000 years that have passed since they were build but I am not sure if soil really was used to tie the rocks together. I am in noway an expert on Stone Age.

The stones were a bit loose here and there, especially on the top parts of the walls. I was really happy I had good boots on when we went there, not summery ballerinas!

I just have to say it was really hard to try to take a decent photo of this huge stone wall square and I can honestly admit I did not succeed. The area is roughly the shape of a small football field and about the same size (62 X 36 meters). The walls are 2 meters high and 7 meters wide.

Next up: Personal life changes because I am moving to a new apartment next week!

Gothic Art in Spotlight: disturbing findings from Vaasa and a bat exhibition

This post is under label Gothic Art in Spotlight, although I am at the same time writing a bit about the road trip of mine. The simple reason for this is that I encountered the works during my road trip and in the same city these were was an exhibition of bats too!

Main stars of this post are artworks by Tapani Kokko, and Eemil Karila. The were in Kuntsi, the Museum of Modern Art in Vaasa. The exhibition was called Out of the box and it was the annual summer exhibition, featuring the newest work of well known Finnish artists.

The self portrait

The work by Karila was put as a teaser in the previous post, so let's start with it. The name of this sculpture is Self portrait as a reindeer and it was made 2014. It is mixed media work, so when visiting the art museum of Vaasa the visitor will not know any more about the materials used to create this work.

I am a law obeying citizen, so I did not touch the artwork to figure if the fur is genuine reindeer.  The head is 1:1 size and I am ready to bet money that the antlers at least are of a reindeer. Like many deer animals, reindeer drop their antlers yearly. Tedious fun fact No. 13: Reindeer antler is the fastest growing bone in the world. It can grow up to two centimeters in 24 hours.

This self portrait looks a bit like the Wolf Man in the first black and white movies, doesn't it? I love the fact that instead of making himself a majestic reindeer galloping in the wild, the artist features himself as a mount on the wall.

Karila was born in Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland province in Finland but he has moved to Berlin.

In April I featured a horned self portrait by an American artist, so if humanoid heads with antlers or horns interest you, go and check it out!


You better watch out, you better not cry...

Then the more disturbing and creepier one. This fine sculpture is made by Kokko year 2014. The statue is carved of wood. Kokko has used wood as material for many of his works. The works tend to be naivistic but there is usually a more gruesome aspect to them. It is said that Kokko brought carnivalism into the wood carved art in Finland.

The statue is hidden in a separated room from a larger exhibition area. You can see the room is dark, except for a source of light on the left. You boldly step into the room and gaze the opposite wall. Nothing. You turn to see if something is placed close to the light. No. The light is the only object in the room.

And then you flinch and some curse words might taint the air.

The light is a disturbingly grinning elf from Santa Claus' workshop. 

The name of this sculpture is A Gnome. So, instead of being a creepy little helper of Santa, it might be a regular garden gnome, ready to ambush you from under the rhubarb bush!

It is hideous and if you look closely, is that blood dripping down its beard?

I apologize for the poor quality but you are not usually allowed to use flash in museums and using another source of light would've lessened the creepyness of this creature hunching in a dark room.

That is it about the disturbing sculptures, I would love to know what you thought of them!

The bat exhibition

Vaasa has many museums and it is a nice place for a tourist to spend some days. There is an amusement park, possibilities to shop and experience culture, and the Kvarken Archipelago on the coastline of Vaasa is on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The natural history museum conserving material of the Archipelago is called Terranova. Since I have a tiny sci-fi freak inside me, I can't help but to smile for this.

In the same facilities is the Ostrobothnian Museum, concentrating on nature too, and they had an exhibition called Shadowed by the vampires - the secret world of bats. I actually had already seen it, since it is produced by the Finnish Natural History Museum in Helsinki and I had seen it at their museum almost three years ago.

I wanted to refresh my memory on bats and my travel companion had not seen the bat exhibition so we went to explore. The exhibition is really good, they have covered bats and their habits from many aspects. There is a lot of information about the creatures, why they are so misunderstood and what can people do to help keeping bats from becoming endangered species.

Again, all material is in three languages, Finnish, Swedish, and English. You can see from the photo above the information boards are cut into the shape of a resting bat.

The title of the display mentions vampires but they are in a teeny tiny role. one of the major points of the exposition is that the vampire legends have caused a lot of harm for all different bat species, because superstitious humans try to kill them even though they are not only harmless, they often have an important role in the ecosystem and polluting patches of vegetables humans rely on.

Above is a close-up of one of the cabinets that featured the way people have mistreated bats and had all kinds of superstitious beliefs about them. The title of this section is "Dark forces and witchcraft".

The exhibition is a travelling show, meaning that different museums and places can rent it to have at their facilities. It has mostly traveled in Finland but due to the three languages, I can't see why it could not be taken abroad.

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed the artworks!

Next up: Art featuring giant toys, odd phenomena from the Neolithic age and Finnish folklore.

Road trip: Western Finland, world's oldest diving suit and goth rock

Here is the second part of my road trip around Finland. I will probably divide it into two or more parts, because we visited more cities on the coast area and if I squeeze them all into this one post, nobody will have the patience to read it.

As mentioned in the previous post about eastern Finland, it differs from western Finland because they have had different influences for centuries. East is closer to Russia and west is closer to Sweden. And if you look at the map can you blame them? It is much easier to sail through a small sea than to strut through woods, especially during the time before automobiles.

I threatened to continue to tell fun facts about languages and wildlife in Finland, so here we go:

Languages

For several centuries Finland was under Swedish throne and when Sweden handed Finland over to Russia, the Russian Tzar decided Finns could continue to use Swedish as their official language in governmental things and legal things etc. Do not get me wrong, Finns spoke Finnish, especially the lower classes. The noblemen and merchants spoke Swedish, Russian, and German, mostly.

Today, if at least 3000 persons or 8% of the population in a municipality are Swedish-speaking Finns, the municipality is required to have all the street names in both Finnish and Swedish. If the municipality has majority of Swedish-speaking citizens, then Swedish may come first, like in this street sign. The name of this street is Big River's Road.  Some small municipalities can be almost solely Swedish-speaking.

That traffic sign underneath the street's name means that the vehicle approaching an intersection is obligated to give way to other vehicles coming both from left and right and pedestrians too. When I was in Washington D.C. I noticed Americans do not have this sign, instead they can have STOP signs on all roads leading to an intersection. We do too have STOP signs in Finland, but they are used only in crossroads with extreme poor visibility. Otherwise that triangle is sufficient.

Almost all municipalities in Finland have both Finnish and Swedish name. Helsinki in Swedish is Helsingfors, Oulu is Uleåborg. Yet another tedious fun fact: Borg means a castle or a fortress in Swedish. 

Dangerous wildlife

Source

When driving around Finland there will be several times one will see a warning sign depicting an elk. Elk is the most dangerous animal in Finnish nature. Year 2010 there were 1302 collisions between a car and an elk. during 2000-2009 76 humans died in a car accident involving an elk. To compare: in Finland a bear has killed one human during the whole 20th century. The last time a wolf killed a human was in 1881. The second most dangerous animal in Finnish nature is a wasp. It has killed seven humans in 10 years.

These elk signs are common in Sweden and Norway too and at some point some German tourists had a tendency to steal elk signs on their vacation in Sweden. Maybe they thought they were exotic, but it is very dangerous to steal or sabotage a warning sign and it could lead to somebody else's death. Smartly, many tourist shops sell elk sign stuff these days!

Now to more touristy and less educational material!

Oulu has been featured a bit already, so not much more about it. We drove from east Finland to Oulu, spent there two days and then started to drive down the coastline. The first stop we made was in the city of Raahe.

Raahe has the first local museum in Finland. As you probably know, museums are bigger versions of cabinets of curiosities. They were first private collections of odd things and souvenirs people showed off to their acquaintances.

A Finnish doctor & physician Carl Robert Ehrström loved culture and decided to found a museum open to public in 1862. Before 20th century it was not easy to travel, especially if one was not from a wealthy family, so a museum that showed a bigger glimpse of the world was an amazing thing back then. I think it still is today.

Raahe was a big city when considering sailing and commerce and many of the things exhibited were from sailors, especially things they had brought from all over the world as souvenirs. Here are exotic creatures in glass jars, human skulls and a human fetus, and some apothecary's trinkets.

In another museum in Raahe one can see the world's oldest diving suit from the 18th century. And when saying oldest, I mean oldest that still exists. There were probably multiple suits like this back in the day. Its name is Wanha Herra, which means an old chap or sir. It is made out of calfskin and it looks pretty weird. In the stomach area is a hole where the human crawls in. the loose leather is then rolled tightly and attached on waist. The air to breath is pumped through the upper part and when the air is used it exits from the back.

This old diving suit has toured around the world in different expositions, the last time was 1998. After that they noticed that travelling strained the suit too much. Now Wanha Herra is in a glass cage but they have made a replica of him with the methods that were use in 18th century. The new suit is called Nuori Herra, which means a young chap or sir, and they have successfully tested if one can actually dive in it and survive. The longest diving session with Nuori Herra lasted 40 minutes.

Obviously visitors are not allowed to touch the old chap but they did have a metallic diving helmet to take the disappointment away. The instructions were clear. 1. Stand below the helmet. 2. Remove eyeglasses etc. 3. BE CAREFUL. 4. Slowly pull the helmet over your head.

I managed to bump my forehead on the helmet while putting it on.

In this museum they had also an exhibition of Raahe's local rock bands and among them was one goth rock band! I am not featuring photos of this much, because it was all in Finnish and I can't imagine you being all thrilled with a photo of an informational board in strange language. In this photo you can see there were boards and dummies dressed in selected bands' gig clothes and other things. You could sing karaoke, the best songs of the bands from Raahe.

Charon was founded 1992 and originally they played death metal but everything changes through time and so did the artistic desires of the band's members. Their goth rock is nice, melancholic and romantic, beautiful.

I love the fact that their final compilation album in 2010 was named A-sides, B-sides & Suicides. Especially because when it was released, hardly anyone was listening music from a cassette or anything with A- and B-side. And that it was the last album of Charon so the suicide part is not just a rhyme. There is something funny and poetic about it. Oh, and all members continued their musical career with other projects, mind you.

I tried to find a specimen of Charon's music with decent voice/video quality. I was not completely successful, but no matter. Here is their song Worthless from album Tearstained. Album was published 2000.

Next up: Self-portrait as a reindeer and other disturbing art!

Road trip: Eastern Finland, pretty cafes and natural beauty

This post is about the first half of the road trip I was on last week. As shown on a previous post, me and my other road tripper (who wishes to stay more or less anonymous and I am going to respect that) drove to the municipality of Mänttä-Vilppula. After the Gösta art museum and its amazing content, we headed towards Kuopio.

Kuopio is the capital of the province called Northern Savonia (Pohjois-Savo). It is a large area of the Eastern Finland. We do not really talk about "Middle Finland", it is always either west or east. :D Especially the Eastern Finland has a disturbing amount of lakes. Of Nortern Savonia's area 17,7% is inland water, in Southern Savonia 26,6%.

It is fair to say that the scenery was beautiful. These photos are not modified in any way. They are from a small pond and a lake on our route. We needed a break from driving so we stopped at the first "break place" we saw. there are many places to take a break beside the roads of Finland.

 The first two photos are from the small pond. It was so still the pond acted as a perfect mirror.

This third photo from the bigger lake makes me understand, why some painters from 18th and 19th century wanted to paint solely clouds.

To balance this overexposure of natural beauty, here is me causing havoc in a lake. Notice how a city person can not let go of her phone even when in water.

When we reached Kuopio, we stayed at friends' place. These two too are not so interested of featuring themselves in my blog, so no much other material about them. You may wonder, are Finnish people reluctant to appear in public, or am I actually just a weirdo without friends. Well, at least you can see that the photos taken from a moving vehicle are taken from the passenger seat, not behind the wheel. ;)

Even though Finland has a small population, there are distinguishable differences between eastern and western areas. East being next to Russia, has more Russian influenced cuisine. More cream, more stews etc. We did not go and eat anything really traditional, but we did go to the Moomin Pancake House in Kuopio. They had a huge selection of sweet and salty pancakes and the decoration was themed with the Moomins.

Moomins are fairy tale characters created by Swedish-speaking Finn Tove Jansson and they are known in many countries. They are super popular in Japan, for example.

I had a salty pancake with reindeer meat and my rather anonymous companion had cold smoked salmon pancake. Delicious!

In the photos are also shown a glimpse of the menu, and decor. the right upper corner is of a lamp they had. All lamps had Moomin decorations and yes, those are sold to ordinary folk too. In the lamp one of the main characters called Moomintroll is painting. Underneath him is Little My a really tiny yet feisty girl. Notice she is only just bigger than an ant next to her.

Finland got its independence 1917 and if I exaggerate a bit, before that it was a vast land area between Sweden and Russia. Both Russian and Swedish throne were interested to claim that area and during the Middle Ages the most common way was to ride to the borderlands and convert the humans who might be inhabiting the areas. That is why the Eastern Finland has a longer history with Eastern Orthodox Church. Lutheran church arrived from the west.

In Kuopio you can visit the Orthodox Church Museum of Finland - RIISA. As they sum up on their webpage: they continue the purpose of the Museum of Antiquities founded in the Valamo Monastery in 1911 by preserving, studying, and displaying the cultural heritage of the Orthodox church.

The photos show the bell tower outside the museum and church, the entrance to the museum and church, a detail of a red carpet-like religious equipment, and some holy texts and other equipment needed in a sermon.

It was very interesting to visit this museum, since it is an awful long time since I was in secondary school and was educated on religions. Plus, most of Finns have been christened to Lutheran church so they only teach cultural basics about the other church in school, unless you are orthodox yourself.

Kuopio is a good city for tourists, the centre is compact, it is an old city so the architecture is pretty, and there are several museums (12 to be precise!) and other ways to pass one's time. I am a museum person myself, so on my list were Kuopio Art Museum and Kuopio Natural History Museum.

If you check the webpages of the museums you will notice that the language options are Finnish, English and Russian. Finland has two official languages, Finnish and Swedish but in Eastern Finland the amount of Swedish-speaking Finns is much smaller (compared to coastline area) and the amount of tourists and immigrants from Russia is more significant. More fun facts about Finland's languages in the next post! Whether you like it or not.

In this photo collage frim the museum of natural history you can see one of the exhibition areas. It is a winter scenery with birches. On the walls are boxes where are animals. The boxes depict the natural environment and behavior of the animals during winter. That means there are scenes with taxidermy animals and information boards next to them. Other two are of two bears arguing over honey, and a Saimaa ringed seal with its offspring. They only live in a small area of Saimaa in Finland.

I mentioned in the previous post that despite not reaching Lapland, we did drive trough an area where reindeer are herded. Those areas are marked and on roads you will see signs warning about reindeer. They are half tamed animals so they might not necessarily be aware of cars and a collision with one will be ugly. More fun facts about the dangers of wildlife in Finland in the next post!

To conclude this post, some tourist photos of the center of Kuopio, featuring art, little design shops and a really nice cafe we went to. Their decor was mostly from small local designers and even though it is not straight up goth, there are elements you could easily incorporate to romantic goth style, or the modern witch style. The name of this cafe was Kahvila Kaneli, which means Cafe Cinnamon. It is situated close to the market square, on a nearby street.

In the photos you can see the outside of the cafe. They have a lot of green plants and it really made the place extra nice and homey. That whole day had short but violent rain showers interrupting our trotting around the city of Kuopio. I do not know if you notice straight away, but in the outside pic the ground is completely wet and so are the tables and stools. We actually ended up going to Cafe Cinnamon by accident, because we had no umbrellas with us and we were in front of this cafe when it started raining.

I have to say I was super pleased we went there, because the place was awesome! The cafe had two floors, here is a view from the upper level. As you can see the decor is lovely romantic with a dash of rustic touch.

Last but not least, me ready to attack my hot chocolate. They had a gorgeous selection of salty and sweet pastry products but unfortunately we had just eaten our breakfast so there was no room for food.

2014 Kuopio ordered seven sculptures by artist Pekka Kauhanen. The statues are positioned in the centre area. In the photos you can see Oksapoika, which means a "branch boy" or a "twig boy".

Kauhanen is from the Savonia area and his works are described as humorous and that they express especially Savonian humor. It is hard to describe, but Savonian humor, compared to the humor Finns in west areas have, is a touch more twisted. It has a dash of horseplay in it but that it is not maleficent, a Savonian bloke has a good heart.

The yellow building is the old market hall of Kuopio. It is filled with little shops of delicacies. Meat, bread candy, etc and also local design and crafts.

Next up: the world's oldest (and possibly creepiest) diving suit and other wonders of Finland!

Gothic Art in Spotlight: a creepy sculpture by artist Essi Korva

I was going to post this on Friday but decided to speed things up so that I can soon write more about the road trip itself. :D

As advertised in the previous post, I am now going to tell more about a really creepy and beautiful sculpture I saw on my road trip. The sculpture is made by Finnish artist Essi Korva.

The work of this young artist  was in OMA, the Oulu Museum of Art. I am going to be slightly travel blogger and writer just a few words about Oulu too. It is a lively city with lots to do and see. It has a lot of design shops and culture events, and innovation ( lively university) and business.

Oulu is the capital of one of Finland's provinces. Finland is a long and narrow country: the total length is about 1 000 kilometers and Oulu is approximately 600 kilometers from the most south of Finland. From this map you can see where Oulu is. It is on the coastline and much closer to Sweden than Eastern Finland. Hence big cultural and lingual differences in Finland, but more about that in later posts.

The city of Oulu

When I confess this is the northernmost I've been, many Finnish people probably laugh a bit. Most families have a habit of going (slalom) skiing and hiking in Lapland.

When comparing internationally, Oulu being the northernmost place where I've been is not that lame: Oulu is 65°N, the only not-Nordic city at that latitude is Fairbanks in Alaska. There are cities further up north but they are mostly Nordic, Canadian, and Russian cities.

I should've gone about 100 km more north to reach Lapland, where you can find the fells (small mountains typical for North, also one of the reasons people want to go to hike and slalom ski there), Santa Claus and a loads of reindeer. I did reach the area where one can spot reindeer (not Santa, mind you) and in my next post I am going to write about Finland, it's customs and regions, hopefully from a goth-y perspective. And I am not forgetting to feature some lovely photos!

Back to art: The name of the creepy girl statue is Murhelma (Sad Dream) though the Finnish word is not solely translated to that. It is actually a made up word, a new combination, and it would not be found in an official dictionary. It consists of murhe (sadness, grief) and unelma ( a day dream, a dream) but it could also contain a hint of näytelmä ( a theater play). In the museum only the Finnish name shown, so I did not know the other part of it was "dream" and I for some reason instantly thought of the Finnish word for theater play. I guess because the being looks like a mythological creature ans elves are often menacing little tricksters. And from there another close association was Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream.

Essi Korva graduated 2010 and has attended multiple environmental art happenings both in Finland and abroad. Her art usually interprets and examines strong emotions like fear and loneliness. Korva's art is said to be rather subjective, though I feel that it is very easy to "step in" to her works and their emotions and world. Even though they are often about negative feelings, they are easy to approach.

The way this sculpture is situated in the gallery room is so that one can not see it close instantly. It is further away and you have to creep closer to see what this hunched creature is doing.

That hair is real hair, though not from a human. It is from cloven-hoofed animals. Other ingredients for this human child sized creature are plaster, metal net, and urethane foam. I am guessing the surface might be processed with something but I do not know for sure.

Although mourning and sadness are the strongest emotions this sculpture radiates, it does seem a bit scornful too, or so I feel. And this creature the size of a nine-year-old does seem a tiny bit threatening.

Essi Korva has a distinguished style and her sculptures are simply fascinating! You should check her website for more dreamlike creatures. The website is both in Finnish and English, just scroll past the Finnish text and you will find translations.

You really have to peek to see the face of this creature. I had to kneel to get a photo of the eyes. I am not sure why I actually call this being a girl. It has the body structure of a child so we can't really see if it even has a gender or if it is unisex. It does have petite features and big eyes and those are associated with femininity, as is a long hair. Does not mean that I should make hasty interpretations about this characters sex, though. After all, the name of the statue is more about an emotion, not about physical creature. Anyhow, the craftsmanship of this statue is magnificent and it is very lifelike.

Next up: post about Eastern Finland and then another about Western Finland!

Bears at the city of Kuopio, Eastern Finland