Myötäpäivään
natural materials collected from the Finnish forests (painting: colour pigments extracted from moss, lichen, northern Labrador tea, birch bark and mushrooms on glass / installation: deer bones), glass, metal
2021–2025, 152×76×65 cm
Myötäpäivään (sunwise) continues, in dialogue with the Metsänpeitto installation, the research into protective magic practiced against metsänpeitto. In Finnish nature worship, metsänpeitto (lit. forest's cover/blanket) meant the disappearance of people and cattle into the forest's otherness: one did not get lost in the forest but drifted out of sight of this reality. To protect domestic animals from metsänpeitto, protective magic was practiced in the spring by circling the animals twice sunwise and once widdershins. In the act of circling, one sunwise round had to be intentionally left “over.” Through this, the animals were granted protection within the this-worldly realm – beyond the reach of metsänpeitto.
Installation views: for Galerie Jochen Hempel, 2026 / Photographer: Joe Clark
Circling twice sunwise and once widdershins is a negotiation between this world and the otherworld. Magic belongs to the domain of the otherworld and requires a widdershins, magically potent movement; yet the intention is to keep the cow firmly within this-worldly realm through the sunwise turns. The opposite procedure – leaving one widdershins turn “over”– would likely have carried the cows entirely into the otherworld, into metsänpeitto.
Risto Pulkkinen, Suomalainen kansananusko, 2014