Month: September 2024

In my last post I wrote about the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic and about Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), one of the poem’s most famous illustrators. I mentioned the tale’s major themes: battles, magical adventures, a virgin birth, a miraculous child, and so on, but I didn’t include vengeance, incest, betrayals, jealousy, shamans, murder, blood feuds, suicide, child abuse, shape-shifting, fratricide, magic spells, kidnapping, theft, heroes, incantations, “nameless diseases,” sacred groves, death and resurrection, thwarted loves. And the Sampo.

In this image, Gallen-Kallela has painted Väinämöinen, a godlike shaman, and his crew, defending the Sampo from Louhi, an evil witch from Pohjola, the dark, cold, and dreaded North. (Of course, Pohjola also happens to be the home of beautiful, inaccessible women.) Louhi has changed herself into a predatory bird and, like everyone else in the story, she wants to possess the Sampo.

Why? It’s not a ring like that in Tolkien’s epic, but it is a magical artifact, a talisman, a vessel that confers nourishment, wealth and power on whoever has it. It was forged by a human blacksmith, but it always remains enigmatic. It’s never illustrated because it’s never clear exactly what it is, or looks like.

As you might imagine, not even its magical powers and magnetic attractions for humans can save it from destruction: In the battle painted here, it breaks apart and the fragments sink below the waves, lost forever, like thwarted loves, and other human dreams.

“The Kalevala” is Finland’s national epic poem. It unfolds in a harsh and beautiful landscape of dense green forests and snow-covered lakes. Of course, it contains all the elements of epics: shipwrecks, magical visions, the imprisonment of the sun and moon, bloody battles, a virgin birth, a miraculous infant, etc, all flowing toward an inconclusive outcome, like a dream. It exerted a deep influence on J.R.R. Tolkien and it worked its spell on me.

I visited Finland for two reasons: to research the origins of the poem and to see the paintings of Finland’s most famous artist (and illustrator of the epic), Alexi Gallen–Kallela (1865-1931). The artist’s home/studio/museum is located in Tarvaspää, on the outskirts of Helsinki. During one long afternoon, I was its only visitor.

I had admired the artist’s work for years, but what captivated my imagination in the studio was his piano. So I sat with it in silence and then made a detailed sketch in pencil. When I’m drawing I can be wide awake or in a dream, its hard to tell. The piano felt like a magical animal, asleep, like a sphinx, but full of power. There was no candelabra in the room, it appeared from nowhere, in the energy field of the piano. The shoes appeared out of nowhere too, grounding the instrument, even as it rose up from the floor, as light as my breath.

The artist’s home is small, but when I left, exhausted, it had felt like a cathedral. A long time passed before I was able to add the colors. The drawing is still not finished. They rarely are.