Numerous media reported on the death of the pine known from Järnefelt’s work, but is it dead?

The pine tree standing on top of Mäkrävaara is considered the most famous in Finland, as the tree has a great symbolic value. With its help, a nation has been built, because it stands at the forefront of the national landscape in one of the most famous Finnish works of art.

The pine tree located in Lieksa in Koli National Park appears in numerous tourist photos, which is thanks to one work of art. Or actually two: a copy of the painting can also be found in a central location at the Helsinki railway station.

Another work of art found in Ateneum’s collections, Heikki Ahon and Björn Soldanin photo from the 1930s, seems to be located in approximately the same place on the top of Mäkrävaara, but a possible pine tree is hidden from view by a naked man standing in front of it.

So now the pine tree has dropped its needles and is standing still like a coil, which was noticed by a Yle reporter who was hiking there. The employees of Metsähallitus had not noted the loss of the tree.

However, a photo found in Sanoma’s archives from 20 years ago shows the same pine tree in a quite similar outfit to the one in Yle’s story this year.

News cycle in the subject seems exceptionally slow. In the intervening decades, no media has reported on the tree’s death or otherwise monitored its condition.

Metsähallitus also tells HS that individual trees, no matter how iconic, are not monitored individually, but the forest as a whole is more interesting.

So what is it all about, Metsähallitus nature services team leader Suvi Haapalehto? When can a tree be said to be dead?

“A pine tree dies slowly and eventually drops its last needles. After that, it can remain upright as a coil for a hundred years. Even when it falls to the ground, it provides a place to live, for example, for endangered woodpeckers.”

It seems that it is much more difficult to declare the exact time of death for a pine tree than, for example, for a mammal like a human. Even a dead pine lives on in the succession of the forest, i.e. in long-term development. You have to see the forest for the trees, as the saying goes.

Artists like Eero Järnefelt, who drew on national romanticism, may have made it difficult to see the forest by framing individual trees with clear lines and iconic landscapes.

If nature seen only as aesthetics or even as an image that should not change, its diversity and invisible processes do not receive the attention they deserve. On the other hand, Järnefelt’s contemporaries probably did not have the same knowledge about these as we do today.

by Annika Waenerberg and Ville Lukkarinen research From a picture of Finland to a mental landscape (2004), the image of Finland was not always created as a conscious construction of national identity, but rather the individual artist’s experience of the spirit of the place often influenced its creation.

However, a well-defined, handsome sample of our country’s many tyres was selected for the photos.

That is why the death of one tree is news, even if the rumors of the death are exaggerated. At the same time, the destruction of entire forests can be offset more easily by shoulder harvesting.