On a wooded peninsula in a suburb of Helsinki, this museum is dedicated to the great Finnish artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931), who built his studio here between 1911 and 1913, calling it his “castle in the air.” Gallen-Kallela had a restless, fanciful personality, and his reputation is based mainly on his paintings, especially those inspired by the Kalevala (Land of Heroes).
This Finnish national epic, first published in 1835, derived from a much older oral tradition that originated during the Middle Ages in Karelia, one of the provinces that Finland lost to the Russians after World War II. The museum houses a large collection of his paintings, graphics, posters, and industrial design products. Beside the museum is a cafe in a wooden villa dating from the 1850s.