Profane art (or secular art) had its hesitant origin in Finland in the 18th century Isak Wacklin’s rococo portraits and in Nils Schillmark’s paintings, which employed the Neoclassical idiom. Elias Martin’s landscape paintings documenting the fortification of Viapori represent a unique curiosity from the same period. At the turn of the nineteenth century, Finnish artists absorbed influences from the […]

The influence of plein-air painting The adoption of the plein-air method drove Finnish artists out into the midst of the peasantry and into the natural landscape. Artists, who usually had an upper-class background, began to make excursions into the “original Finland” that was supposed to lie in the forest wilderness of Karelia. Romanticism Landscape painting […]

Kalevala Day (Finnish Culture Day) is full of magic and it is celebrated in Finland on the 28th of February. The Finnish national epic, the Kalevala, teaches ancient wisdom through the stories and spells of mythical heroes and heroines. The Kalevala was compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology in the […]

In 1808, Russia invaded Finland. One year later Finland was ceded to Russia, and Helsinki was destroyed by a huge fire. More importantly, in 1812, Czar Alexander I declared Helsinki the new capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland. All this paved the way for a new town plan drawn up by Johan Albrecht Ehrenström. […]

Finland suffered great hardship during the World War II, and the post-war reconstruction effort was not completed until the 1950s. With the burgeoning growth of the city in the 1950s and 1960s, the focus of new building shifted to the suburbs. Tapiola Garden City was built among pristine forests and meadows in Espoo, west of […]

Nouveau ideas Helsinki’s architecture offers many examples of turn of the century Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) and the classicism that followed. These styles can be studied in numerous public buildings. The National Museum, the National Theatre, and Eliel Saarinen’s Central Railway Station are some of the landmarks of this period. Of the original interiors that still […]

The hectic construction that took place in the closing decades of the nineteenth century is evident nearly everywhere in central Helsinki. Four- and five-storey commercial buildings and residential blocks were erected on Pohjoisesplanadi, Bulevardi, and Erottaja, designed in a style that emulated the architecture of Vienna and Berlin. The so-called period of Eclecticism produced many […]

Finland was part of the Swedish empire until the early nineteenth century. Helsinki was founded in 1550 by King Gustavus I Wasa at the mouth of the River Vanda, to compete with the Hanseatic port of Tallinn across the Baltic, and to boost trade with Russia. In 1640, the town was shifted close to the […]

Finland’s Centenary Year 2017 is a major milestone for Finland as the country marks 100 years of independence. The year is celebrated through an extensive and varied programme. FINLAND BECAME INDEPENDENT on 6 December 1917 when it rejected its status as an autonomous Grand Duchy of Russia, which it had been since 1809. Before that, the area […]