Let the Trees Be My Temple: Forest Mythologies in Finnish Sacred Architecture

Sofia Nivarti
University of Cambridge, UK
sas97@cam.ac.uk

Introduction

This paper interrogates forest mythologies in Finnish sacred architecture. Paying particular attention to modern sacred spaces designed and constructed in the 20^th and 21^st centuries, the paper demonstrates how pagan and folkloristic myths related to the forest have persisted in Finnish sacred architecture to this day, despite and within centuries-long traditions of Christianisation. 

Scholars have remarked that, “in the Finnish mental landscape, church-buildings are not always needed to experience the sacred and God,” because the forest itself is sacred, and thus renders man-made sacred architecture obsolete.(1) Nonetheless, forest myths have penetrated directly and deeply into the Finnish sacred building tradition. The paper begins by outlining the ancient history of forest mythology in Finnish sacred space, and how it hybridised with Catholic and Protestant conceptions of sacral architecture from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution. It then moves onto a more detailed analysis of 20^th– and 21^st-century sacred spaces as exemplars of forest myth in Finnish sacred architecture.

This paper identifies and critically evaluates the architectural means by which forest myths have been interpreted in space, form, material and construction, and suggests that the intermingling of forest myth with Christian theology constitutes a typically Finnish register of sacred space, especially relevant and resonant in light of the global ecological disaster of the 21^st century. 

Roots of Forest Sacrality

Archaeological, historical and folkloristic evidence shows that the forest has been a locus of Fennic conceptions of the sacred and of godliness for centuries. Pagan, pantheistic and place-rooted folkloristic mythologies hold that the forest is not just the home of the sacred as a cultural category, or of sacred beings and knowledge, but is sacred itself.(2) In contrast to Germanic Romanticism or theories of the sublime, in which the forest is typically characterised as a locus of imposing mightiness, darkness and density which evokes awestruck submission and even fear in the individual, Fennic folklore depicts the forest as a shared, idealised nest of comfort, homeliness and peace for all, a vision of paradise on Earth. In the Christian context, the Finnish forest becomes a Northerly metaphor for the Garden of Eden.

In Fennic forest folklore, trees acquire particular significance as carriers of sacred wisdom, and as silent witnesses to the march of time; they are described as the “people” of the ancient forest polity, governed by gods such as Tapio, King of the Forest, and Mielikki, Mistress of the Forest. Beyond trees, the animals of the forest—especially the elk and bear—and snow are associated with conceptions of the sacred, the former as divine intercessors and the latter as an embodiment of sacral silence.(3)

Then a part of the Swedish Kingdom, Finland was initially Christianised in the late 11^th century, and became Lutheran in the late 16^th century, as a consequence of the Swedish Reformation. Despite centuries of Christian cultural suffusion and direct allegiance to Christian church-building conventions and regulations—laid out by the Vatican and later Protestant Germany—the architecture of Finnish Christian churches retained conspicuously non-Christian characteristics for centuries. In the Middle Ages, forested, floral and animalistic motifs melded with Christian iconography in stone and timber ornamentation, wall and ceiling paintings, and eventually, stained glass. 

Rather than waning step-in-step with urbanisation and other processes of modernisation, the “forested” qualities of Finnish sacral architecture only strengthened in the 20^th century. After 1917, when Finland gained Independence, the forest was underscored as a decisively Finnish cultural topos in line with broader patriotic and National Romantic impulses. For example, “forest churches” became a recurrent cultural trope in the late 19^th and early 20th centuries, initially in prayers, poetry and hymns, before seeping into architecture, as well. The ancient pagan tradition of worship in forest clearings was Christianised into a newer model of so-called “forest churches,” low-walled, open-air clearings in dense forests, with rough-hewn pews and, typically, a wooden cross substituting an altarpiece. Forest churches were popularised especially during Finland’s wars with the Soviet Union, when worship had to be arranged ad hoc during battle. 

Figure 1: A 21^st-century forest church in Kallunmäki, Savonlinna. Photograph by Teemu Mökkönen, Finnish Heritage Agency, 2019. Copyright: CC BY 4.0.

Perhaps the most famous example of forest sacrality in modern Finnish architecture is Otaniemi Chapel, designed by Kaija and Heikki Sirén in the 1950s, which seminally replaces a traditional pictorial altarpiece with a view to the woodland outside, a lone white cross standing amidst tree trunks. The term “forest dreaming” has become shorthand to describe the intensity and significance of forest-related metaphors, materials, and motifs in Finnish building art in the 20^th century, associated particularly with the work of modernists Alvar, Aino and Elissa Aalto.(4) More recently, in the 21^st century, the prevalence of timber textures and structures in new-build churches has been interpreted as an abstracted successor to previous’ centuries more literal forest dreaming.

Forest Futures

The paper concludes by arguing that worship of the forest has long been, and continues to be, a constituent basis of Finnish sacred architecture—including, and particularly, its Christian architecture. Finnish sacred spaces thus offer valuable vantage points into mythologies of place—in this case, mythologies of the forest—at the intersection of ancient belief systems and institutional modern religions. It testifies to the endurance of myth in modern and contemporary building practices.

The paper suggests that, rather than fading out in time, forest dreaming is only gaining more momentum and significance in the design of sacred space in Finland in the 21^st century, as traditional forest myths cross-pollinate meaningfully with eco-theological readings of the sacredness of nature. 

References

• Helander, Eila. “Suomalaisen uskon mielenmaisema.” In Uskon tilat ja kuvat, edited by Arto Kuorikoski. Suomalainen Teologinen Kirjallisuusseura, 2008).
• Kariniemi-Willamo, Annikki. Metsä Elää: Kertomuksia Pohjoisesta. Otava, 1958.
• Singler, Sofia. “Silva Urbs Est.” AA Files, no. 80 (2024): 31–38.
• Tarasti, Eero. Snow, Forest, Silence: The Finnish Tradition of Semiotics. Indiana University Press and the International Semiotics Institute of Imatra, 1999.

Footnotes

1.  Eila Helander, “Suomalaisen uskon mielenmaisema,” in Uskon tilat ja kuvat, ed. Arto Kuorikoski (Suomalainen Teologinen Kirjallisuusseura, 2008), 55–66.
2.  Annikki Kariniemi-Willamo, Metsä Elää: Kertomuksia Pohjoisesta (Otava, 1958).
3.  Eero Tarasti, Snow, Forest, Silence: The Finnish Tradition of Semiotics (Indiana University Press and the International Semiotics Institute of Imatra, 1999).
4.  Sofia Singler, “Silva Urbs Est,” AA Files, no. 80 (2024): 31–38.