Travelling Back Home – Opening the Door | Kaija Savinainen Mountain

Cousins: Sirpa, myself and Seppo

It was a memorable, exciting trip back to Finland and Sweden. This was the land I hail from, where my roots are and I still feel a deep connection to the place even though our family emigrated to Canada when I was twelve years old. My oldest daughter Lara travelled with me on this voyage back to my familial roots. I was so grateful to her - she had organized the trip itinerary and she been the moving force in making this trip become a reality. Both of us were looking forward to meeting cousins, aunts, uncles and other distant relations.

I was on pins and needles wanting to reconnect with a number of relatives. It is exciting to spend time with people who you share your lineage with. It was incredibly emotional to be back, back to where I have come, to be with likeminded people, to be with people who look like me, to stand and breath in the landscape of my childhood, to smell and eat the Finnish food I am so familiar with.

Lara at outdoor market

It was incredible to be home. My home, my ancestral land – a place called Karelia. Our original ancestral farmstead though, taken over during Stalin’s time – this is where my story begins; born out of a troubled, turbulent past, evacuees two times over, my family has been. My grandfather, wanted by Stalin for his resistance and espionage for Finland when Russia tried to take this small resilient country over, had to escape to Sweden with his family - my father included - just after WW2. Our story is a mix of adventure and heart ache. And to be there with my daughter was doubly exciting. I could talk endlessly about things as I shared memories with her. Memories, recollections came naturally flooding back, little nuggets uncovered from a distant past, learned more about my parents, my grandparents and I reconnected.

Me, Dad and Mom 1955

Lara and I visited a number of museums and art galleries throughout our trip. Everywhere we went something reached out and touched me. Just so much to learn, to understand, to absorb in a few short weeks. I was like a sponge, hungry to rediscover my place in history. 

The Karelia or Karjalan Museum located in Joensuu traced back the history of the Karelian peoples to the 6th century BC, the story of the 1939 Winter War against Stalin that my grandfather was so involved in, Finland’s economic rise post war from ashes, the great strides made in becoming a major designer, the incredible development of the forest industry, on and on it went.  The list is endless of what such a small country has accomplished and continues to today. All of it incredibly emotional to see my history of my people, the place that has deeply, profoundly shaped me.

It was during the final leg of our trip that I had a profoundly moving experience. I came face to face with myself as an artist. I could directly see my influences, that my voice is for real, my vision is my own, and that I draw from my history. It was all right there staring right back at me, for me to understand, to recognize, to grasp. My road as a creative person has a beginning, I now see that with clarity.

Of course ,I found a horse sculpture.

Earlier in the day we had rented bikes, had visited the outdoor market for food and we decided to visit a very famous art gallery, Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki. It is a grand and beautiful building filled with wonderful works of art. “Ateneum is Finland’s best-known art museum and the home of Finnish art. The well-loved works in the collection cover the period from the 19th century to Modernism. Hugely popular special exhibitions of Finnish and international art open up new perspectives into the past and the present” (https://www.helsinkicard.com/helsinki-attractions/ateneum-art-museum.html).

The Orphan

There in the collections you could find French Impressionist, Expressionists, and a number of other significant art works. Particularly moving were paintings of the Kaleva, a 19th-century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology. The paintings by Akseli Gallen-Kallela were incredible, beautiful moving figurative works set in the landscape I know so well. The story of my people, my roots. My own mother, who has recited parts of the ancient Kalevala - Finland’s epic founding story - to me during a deeply sad time in her life. She brought the magic of the runes to life. Her voice as she recited was somber, reverential and stoic. As she recounted deeper into the runes, I watched her face change becoming someone I had never met before. Her voice had power, a mystique I had not know previously. Where did this come from, I asked after she finished? She replied an old relative had taught her these Kalevala runes. A deep distant memory held within I had known nothing of. Oral traditions run deep for Karelians.

 At the gallery other painters such as Eero Järnefelt, moved me deeply. The colors, shapes, forms describing a rugged land was another revelation. Järnefelt created a number of landscape paintings located in eastern Finland called Koli. Koli, now a National Park, is a stone’s throw from where both my parents were born and raised. I myself have travelled on a previous occasion to Koli. From this experience I created several drawings as inspired by this magnificent landscape. It is primordial ancient place. You can feel the energy, the history that has occurred in this land. As a side note I learned that my romantic father proposed to mom under the midnight sun in Koli. They had attended a midsummer festival dance; I think he was indeed affected by the power of this ancient place.

Conveying a Child’s Coffin by Albert Edelfelt, 1879

Back to Järnefelt. We know or we should know of the Group of Seven in Canada but here was their genesis, their origins of inspiration to what we know and understand as the Nordic Landscape.  Rocks, trees, sky, water there it was looking right back at me! This is where you come from, this is who you are! It is no wonder I feel so comfortable painting the northern landscape of Ontario and now the North West Territories.  There were other painters who made me stop, reflect on the subject at hand. One small painting of an orphan child was troubling and yet beautiful in its execution. Another painting depicting a scene of a family rowing with a small casket was deeply, deeply moving.  My heart hurt. Tears, and more tears cascaded down my cheeks. What had elicited such emotions? I was spent, drained, emotionally rung out, shaking with excitement of finally reconnecting with myself, with my history. I had come home at last.

Lake Keitele by Akseli Gallen-Kallela

Daughter Lara commented somewhere toward the end of our trip with I believe to be heartfelt meaning and perhaps some resolution in attempting to understand her mom. “Mom, I finally get you, I understand why you are the way you are, yeah I get you now…” I smiled back, and wondered what it was that had tipped open the door to seeing, recognizing her mom as part of a larger Finnish mosaic ryijy (woven tapestry). Was it the passionate artist, the determined runner that I am, or is it the Finnish mother spirit that I embody, or the painfully honest person to a fault that I am? Don’t know, I didn’t ask for an explanation, but I’m glad she took the time to speak those words.

Akseli Gallen-Kalella, winter landscape