Tutta Runeberg & Kristian Runeberg : Koivu

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 the way that the birch has - in furniture and paper, as a drink and as sugar, for axe handles, bowls, shoes, rings, root cards, wallpaper and sauna whisks, and more.

This vast diversity is what fascinated Tuitta and Kristian Runeberg, bringing them to make this profound study in words and pictures of the birch in its many forms. Their search has taken them to museums, public archives, art galleries and carpentry workshops, and into individual craftpeople, modern designers and biologists involved in birch cloning. Most frequently, though, their path took them into the countryside, to the Finnish birch forest.