Ruovesi and its surroundings in Pirkanmaa have attracted artists since the 1820s. All the artists who have operated in the region are linked by an interest in the spirit of the place, its nature, people and culture. How has this influenced the art of those who have worked in Ruovesi? The exhibition is curated by the keeper of prints and drawings at the Ateneum, Anu Utriainen. The first visual artist to make trips around Ruovesi was Werner Holmberg (1830–1860), whose works depicted local nature, landscapes and scenes of rustic life. In the mid-1890s, Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865–1931), who fell in love with the landscapes in Ruovesi, built his Kalela ‘wilderness studio’ there, which is where he created his iconic Kalevala-themed works. Kalela was visited, among others, by Hugo Simberg (1873–1917), whose work features devil figures, death and natural mysticism, which were inspired by the rustic culture of the region surrounding Kalela. Ellen Thesleff (1869–1954) also had a studio villa of her own design built in Murole in Ruovesi. Throughout her life, Thesleff explored the landscapes and moods of Murole in her art. The other artists featured in the exhibition include Lauri Anttila, the artist couple Elga Sesemann and Seppo Näätänen, and Louis Sparre, who have all lived or worked in Ruovesi. The exhibited works date from the 1850s to the 1980s. This is the third iteration of a seemingly annual event which Bellingcat writes is called the ‘White Boy Summer Fest’ named after an internet meme used in international far-right circles A similar meetup was held last year at a rented property in the southern Finnish city of Hämeenlinna which included performances by far-right bands as well as a combat sports tournament This year's event was organised by the Finnish far-right group Tulenväki as well as a combat sports organisation called Veren Laki (‘Law of Blood’) The attendees included both Finnish and foreign members of neo-Nazi and far-right extremist groups the event was held on 14–15 June at the Tuuhonen campsite which is owned by the municipality of Ruovesi The campsite is located in Tuuhoskylä on the shores of Lake Näsijärvi about 95 kilometres northwest of the city of Tampere a few smaller cottages used for accommodation A spokesperson for Ruovesi municipality told Helsingin SanomatOpens an external website that the authority was unaware when the rental booking was made that it would be used to host the ‘White Boy Summer Fest’ event The municipality only became aware of the event when contacted by Bellingcat a postdoctoral researcher on extremist organisations told Yle last year that events such as 'White Boy Summer Fest' are important for extremist movements as they allow members to network and develop solidarity with each other He added that music gigs are often used as a low-threshold means of encouraging people to become part of the movement's activities and that many people first come into contact with neo-Nazi and far-right groups through such events Although the event organisers kept the exact location secret it was widely promoted in far-right circles as a "weekend of music and fighting." He leads Bellingcat’s work researching and monitoring the transnational far right Teemu Nieminen is a Global Authentication Project member based in Finland A group of Finnish neo-Nazis and a few international friends have convened once again in Finland’s picturesque lake district for a secretive summertime festival Last month, a campground about three-hours drive north of Finland’s capital Helsinki played host to the third edition of what the organisers call the ‘White Boy Summer Fest’, named after an internet meme co-opted by the international far right.  Bellingcat first investigated Finland’s ‘White Boy Summer Fest’ (WBS) in 2023. With the help of Bellingcat’s Global Authentication Project and Discord community we geolocated the 2022 and 2023 WBS festivals to two separate rural campgrounds in the Kanta-Häme region in the southern lake district of Finland.  Observers warn that neo-Nazi groups use events like these to network “WBS is…an essential part of neo-Nazi networks in Finland,” Tommi Kotonen a political scientist at the University of Jyväskylä and a specialist on Finland’s far right told Bellingcat The most recent WBS event took place as worries grow about far-right extremism and violence in Finland along with far-right combat sports group Veren Laki (‘Law of Blood’) Despite what appear to be considerable efforts by organisers to hide the exact location  of WBS 2024 — including editing and re-uploading a promotional video to blur out background details — Bellingcat was still able to geolocate the event to an island campground approximately 150 kilometres away from the locations of WBS 2023 and 2022 The organisers of WBS 2024 did not respond to Bellingcat’s requests for comment Organisers publicly announced WBS 2024 months in advance they indicated it would take place in the Pirkanmaa region of Finland a sprawling area surrounding/near the country’s third-largest city The Finnish lake districts are a popular summer tourism destination thanks to the region’s numerous lakeside resorts Similar to its predecessors in 2022 and 2023 WBS 2024 featured musical performances by a number of neo-Nazi bands One of these bands was previously known as the ‘Hammer House Band,’ a regular performer at a venue affiliated with the Finnish branch of the Hammerskins; The band is also scheduled to perform at a Finnish Hammerskins’ annual event in July 2024 and met frequently with some of its members.  Active Clubs have emerged as prominent actors in the far-right network with many popping up across Finland including Helsinki, where Finnish Hammerskins and an affiliated group Active Helsinki, have been geolocated. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Bellingcat (@bellingcatofficial) Representatives of Active Clubs were out in full force at WBS 2024 After a Friday night of performances from several neo-Nazi bands Saturday featured combat sports in a makeshift outdoor ring during which some participants displayed flags of their local group Active Club Estonia posted on Telegram about the event stating in English that “Finnish and Estonian Active Clubs met up for a weekend full of music and fighting.” The combat sports events were hosted by Veren Laki (‘Law of Blood’), one of WBS’ co-organisers. According to Tommi Kotonen, an expert on far-right extremism in Finland, Veren Laki is linked to the now-banned Finnish branch of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) “NRM links with Veren Laki are quite clear members and trainers,” Kotonen told Bellingcat In June 2024, the US Department of State designated the Sweden-based NRM as a terrorist organisation It was only the second international far-right group to be designated a terrorist organisation by the United States the first being the Russia-based Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) in 2020 Reviewing photos and video posted by organisers about the event Bellingcat observed that considerable steps had been taken to hide the identity of the event’s participants and the location Buildings and background features in videos and images were blurred presumably to impede identification.  the Telegram page of co-organisers Tulenväki published a video from the previous weekend’s event and Bellingcat immediately downloaded the video to analyse it.  But just a short time later the video had been taken down more structures seen in the background had been blurred out compared to the original towards the start of the video first uploaded a green house with a red roof is visible for a brief second However in the second video that was uploaded this house was entirely blurred out This indicated to Bellingcat that the green house with a red roof and chimney could likely be used to geolocate the event; we hypothesised that the organisers would not have taken the time to blur the house if they did not think they could allow the event to be geolocated Bellingcat began searching online for imagery of campgrounds in the Pirkanmaa region given that organisers had indicated the event would take place there and had instructed participants to bring tents and sleeping bags with them to the festival led Bellingcat to conclude the event took place at a campground Bellingcat searched through Google Maps images of numerous campgrounds in the region keeping an eye out for green houses that resembled those visible in the video We eventually noticed images from a campground in the northeastern part of the region Further imagery of the campground that we found on social media showed more angles of the house The features of the green house matched exactly the features of the house briefly seen in the video indicating it was indeed the same property allowed Bellingcat to conclude that WBS 2024 took place at this campground the organisers also blurred out what appears to be a white flagpole in the background as well as another chimney on the same house Further comparisons of other images from the Ruovesi campground and the organiser’s social media posts allowed us to confirm the location of the event can also be seen in user-uploaded footage from the Ruovesi campground along with a large boulder that is also visible in the fight footage Comparing photos and video taken indoors at WBS 2024 to other imagery from the campground confirmed that indoor events (musical performances and a discussion seminar) also took place at the Ruovesi campground Multiple points of comparison, from light fixtures to knots in the wood on the wall, allowed Bellingcat to confirm that WBS 2024 took place at this campground. We used a similar process to locate the previous WBS event The images below are from different occasions unrelated to the WBS event but show the same unique details as visible in the image above The Ruovesi campground appears to be owned by the municipality, given that information about and booking for the campground is done through the municipality’s website Bellingcat sent questions to contacts listed for the campground and to the Ruovesi municipality asking for clarity about the campground’s ownership status and whether they were aware a neo-Nazi event took place there A private person made the reservation,” a municipality representative told Bellingcat by email Bellingcat contacted the organisers of WBS 2024 Active Club Finland and Active Club Estonia but none responded to Bellingcat’s requests for comment.  organisers and supporters took to social media to boast about their future plans One supportive post from a Finnish neo-Nazi blog promised “there will be more to come,” from a fourth version of WBS in 2025 to other gigs across the country It’s a milieu whose ambitions worry observers like Tommi Kotonen.  “In three recent terrorism investigations in Finland in all those cases participants were also linked to [the far-right] subcultural and music scene either as consumers and attending concerts and other events or in some cases also producing far-right music,” the political scientist at the University of Jyväskylä told Bellingcat Mysterious fingers of green light reaching across the sky are a new type of aurora Amateur northern-lights photographers first spotted the unusual patterns in Finland and called them "the dunes." The patterns seem to come from electricity in space that creates waves in Earth's atmosphere which spread down vertically from main ribbons of light In a study published Tuesday in the journal AGU Advances scientists at the University of Helsinki offer their analysis of the phenomenon They think the dunes could be a visible manifestation of atmospheric waves — undulations of air responding to regions of different temperatures or densities in the atmosphere.  These waves occur at an altitude that's notoriously difficult to study: about 50 to 75 miles above sea level which is too high for balloons or planes and too low for satellites So watching the dunes could help scientists learn more about the atmosphere at those altitudes Aurorae appear when energetic particles from the sun react with molecules in Earth's atmosphere creating colorful patterns across polar skies That pink ribbon (which is not technically an aurora) was also discovered by aurora hunters Citizen scientist Kari Saari shot the video above in Savojärvi Finland; it shows the dunes extending from the main arc of the aurora The aurora chasers who first spotted these lights reached out to Palmroth in October 2018 The group told her that they had searched through her aurora-watching guidebook and found no mention of the type of aurora they'd seen.  "They told me I had excluded one auroral form from the book," Palmroth said But it turned out that scientists had never seen the aurora the amateurs had found So Palmroth asked the group to photograph the new aurora from multiple locations on one night: October 7 "One of the most memorable moments of our research collaboration was when the phenomenon appeared at that specific time and we were able to examine it in real time," Matti Helin one of the aurora enthusiasts and a study co-author Palmroth and her colleagues used the photos to calculate the dunes' altitude and collected more measurements in order to better theorize about how the atmosphere creates them "Different auroral forms are like fingerprints," Palmroth said you know basically from that form what's happening further out in space." The scientists think the dunes come from a type of atmospheric wave that ripples through the atmosphere making horizontal curls and folds in the air that spread across the sky They also found that the dunes appear when charged particles from space transfer energy into Earth's upper atmosphere Palmroth thinks these particles send electrical currents flowing through the air creating heat that produces the atmospheric waves that cause the dunes "This is a totally new topic," Palmroth said he would move to Batignolles and study at the Académie Julian with William Bouguereau and Tony Robert Fleury he enrolled at the studio of Fernand Cormon whose history painting he very much admired even though he had a large circle of friends He also painted a self-portrait and other portraits He took part in the Salon de la Société des artistes français in 1886 using a brilliant blue to highlight Lake Jamajärvi and taking great care to reproduce the golden brown reflections of the birches he painted the legendary land of Karelia in The Great Black Woodpecker a painting in which the bird seems to breathe life into the natural setting around it Gallén brings together a realistic representation of the waterfall and an abstract element: five golden strings that divide the painting vertically suggesting a musical echo to the cascading water The location Imatra with is spectacular waterfalls was already a tourist attraction; Gallén turns it into an icon of the Finnish countryside.The artist also produced numerous paintings in the region of Ruovesi influenced by the German movements Phalanx Gallén's landscapes were full of shimmering colours and became highly stylised who lived in Pori: his only daughter Sigrid died at the age of 11 It was designed by Josef Stenbäck in a neo-Gothic style Juselius wanted the interior to be magnificently decorated The main part of the iconographic programme was entrusted to Gallén he did numerous preparatory studies for fresco paintings they were restored in 1930 by Jorma Gallen-Kallela.In his frescoes Gallén depicted the cycle of life and death taking the theme of its close relationship with the rhythm of the seasons threatens the simple happiness of the children Death also hovers in Construction : the woman is giving her older child the milk that was intended for her dead newborn and also designed the interiors and the furniture This was Gallén's approach in 1894-1895 for his house and studio Kalela Gallén also made the furniture for Kalela himself.In 1900 he designed the Iris room in the Finnish pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Paris The restrained elegance of the furniture set it apart from Primitivism Gallén also created a textile work called a ryijy in Finnish: the ryijy Flame evoking both the world of plants - ferns - and fire The Iris room marks the birth of Finnish art in the international arena The ryijy Flame became one of the earliest examples of Finnish design This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Read on for a glimpse of some of the best examples in between freestanding belfries—generally connected to a nearby church through an underground gate—became common architectural features on Scandinavia’s Gulf of Bothnia The belfry and church of Ruovesi near Tampere the Wealden house—a box-framed layout with twin two-story structures that flank a double-height hall—emerged as a popular style between the 14th and 16th centuries a medieval townhouse in France’s Loire Valley is decorated with a crosshatch lattice of thin timber strips and a frame with carved-wood sculptures of contemporary life has a wood-framed façade with windows in a continuous linear strip that wraps around the building they constructed simple wood meeting houses for their services; only in the 18th century did they begin referring to them as churches Gamble of Proctor and Gamble commissioned Arts and Crafts architects Charles and Henry Greene to build a shingled house in Pasadena with its garden façade and timber construction referenced Japanese buildings that the architects would have seen in 1893 at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago bears the classic features of other Queensland houses in Brisbane and verandas that run the length of the house is an elaborate timber palace with striking corner pavilions Open image viewerScreenshots from a video that far-right groups shared about the 'White Boy Summer Fest' event in June The faces are blurred in the original video Image: Kuvakaappaus järjestön videoltaYle News19.7.2024 15:04The number of combat sports clubs associated with far-right ideology increased in Finland last year according to the Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) "Such activities are important for networking and recruiting people linked to the far-right One example is Active Club Finland, which organised combat sports events at the 'White Boy Summer Fest', a neo-Nazi and far-right extremist gathering held in Ruovesi in June. Other organisers of the events included the extremist group Tulenväki and the far-right combat sports club Veren Laki. The investigative journalism group Bellingcat reported on this gathering these far-right groups in Finland organise demonstrations Although the several extremist groups have different names their activities are "network-like" and include the same individuals Pyrhönen said that members of the Nordic Resistance Movement The Nordic Resistance Movement is Sweden's largest neo-Nazi group, which also operates in Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. In Finland, the Supreme Court ordered PVL to be disbanded in 2020 Supo confirmed that some former PVL members continue to actively engage in and promote far-right activities in Finland the groups operate as a network because the disbanding of the PVL has made it difficult for them to function under a single common name "It is also harder for authorities to intervene in the groups' activities when there are multiple organisations," he said Open image viewerSupo reports that the Finnish far-right is relatively active in organising ideological events One of them was a gathering at the Tuuhonen camping centre in Ruovesi in June Photo by Sanni Isomäki / Yle Image: Sanni Isomäki / YleNew names to attract followersPyrhönen said Finland's far-right groups use newer names to attract more people — this also allows them to claim their activities are different from PVL's This logic also applies to how the groups brand themselves Active Club members highlight their athletic and healthy lifestyles which are strongly associated with combat sports "These are things that even people who are not members of the movements but who are interested in their activities on some level will find easy to grasp," Pyrhönen said Active Club has adopted an ideology known as Nationalism 3.0 which has been launched within far-right circles and aims to spread white nationalism in a more concealed manner than before and preparation to defend the white race against outsiders Despite the presence of multiple extremist groups in Finland Pyrhönen believes far-right groups in Finland lack the means to achieve their fantasised social order