Tutta Runeberg : Koivu = Birch

The birch's soft summer greenery and the delicate black tracery of its branches in winter are essential features of the Finnish landscape. As the “sacred tree”, it also plays an important part in mythology and the national psyche. It is rare, though, for a myth to become integral to everyday life in the way that the birch has—in furniture and paper, as a drink and as sugar, for axe handles, bowls, shoes, rings, postcards, wallpaper and sauna vihtas; and of course in the pulp and paper industries.

This vast diversity is what fascinated Tutta and Kristian Runeberg, bringing them to make this profound myth in words and pictures of the birch in its many forms. Their search set them through folk poetry archives, art galleries and carpentry workshops, and introduced them to modelers, modern designers and biologists involved in birch cloning. Most frequently, though, their path took them into the countryside, to the Finnish birch forest.