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To find Hvitträsk, you first have to pass through the pine forest; across the silent, bouncy forest floor, across grey rocks overgrown with clusters of fat moss and past an endless repetition of cracked, reddish pine trunks. This is a world of shades, with occasional sunlight filtering down between the trees, and cone after cone after cone dropping down from the sky.

Then you step into another world, into a magnetic field: somebody has created a different kind of nature; carved a hole in the forest, moved trunks around and laid out sweeping, gravelled paths that lead past delicate herbaceous borders towards the edge of a slope. Here, at the point where the ground dips abruptly towards the lake, lies Hvitträsk, a conglomerate of idiosyncratic building volumes, built from the forest’s own materials. In this cross field, midway between forest and city, between high ground and slope, between the budding, nervous restlessness of fin de siècle and national romanticism, an opening appeared where a vibrant community could immerse themselves, live and work, contemplatively and ecstatically, giving form to everything around them, all the ingenious utensils of everyday life, dreaming of a new Helsinki.

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‘Finlandia’, the tone poem by Sibelius, opens with a warning, beautiful and furiously blasted by the wind section: a pent-up force is unleashed, the sound resonating in all directions. The power-packed music is heavy with thundering timpani. And then the strings come sweeping in, gentle and airy, until the entire orchestra breathes all at once in a heroic, celebratory hymn.

Conceived at the turn of the century, this resistance piece challenged the Russian Tsar regime, which was intensifying its dominant position in Finland. Afraid of losing their autonomy, the Fins seek affirmation in music, arts, architecture and literature, and finding a shared cultural identity becomes a matter of principle for local artists. Consolidating, they look to the past and to the north. Beyond the Finnish/Russian border lies Karelia, a remote region which is unaffected by Swedish and Russian hegemony. This was the cradle of Finnish mythology, traditionally handed down from mouth to ear with rhythmical verses propelled by parallelisms and allitterations. The myths and legends are accummulated in the national epic The Kalevala, which has profound implications for the new cultural departure that manifests itself as Finnish national romanticism.

Karelia’s traditional wood architecture ‘reproduced by budding’. Step by step, extensions were added to the original building core as required. Being vulnerable to fire, the buildings were often short-lived. Entire villages burnt down and were rebuilt, but never according to the exact same pattern. The fire offered an opportunity for something new to happen.

This was where Saarinen spent the summers of his childhood.

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My grandmother believed that ghosts are the accummulated presence of those who inhabited the spaces before us, felt them, pervaded them. I imagined the air in my grandmother’s parlour in Ærøskøbing being saturated with their phantom bodies; that we inhaled their shadowy flocks. They tickled our noses as we played cards across Louis Seize.

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The architects Herman Gesellius (1874-1916), Armas Lindgren (1874-1929) and Eliel Saarinen (1873-1950) studied together at Helsinki University of Technology, the three of them forming an alliance so strong that they decided to set up a joint office in 1897, and a few years later relocate together with their families to the lake in the forest.

In the beginning, the Kalevala myths were embedded in their work. Their first designs, in the middle of Helsinki, are massive, national romantic fantasies with medieval references. Rough troll-like gargoyles and trunk-like ressauts adorn the facades of the Pohjola insurance building., while foxes and ravens roguishly observe the street-life from their vantage point on cornices. This is a far cry from Southern Europe’s sunny Art Nouveau with its crisp foliage and coquettish convolutions. Here, the raw, greyish-white building mass is heated from within.

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The forest is an elastic space. There is a resistance in the forest, it refuses to be commanded. The forest points in all directions, like an eccentric. Saarinen, Gesellius and Lindgren stand behind the pine trunks, scratching the bark with their nails. Their sectional drawings of Hvitträsk have a sweet, smoky, moist smell. The outline of the building volumes is indicated by a thin line. Arranged within the contours of this line are the individual spaces, each of them painstakingly represented with vaults, fixtures and fresco paintings evoked in skin- and honey-coloured hues, as if these tiny, pulsating dioramas were already illuminated by the glow from the fireplaces.

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The arrival at Hvitträsk is a carefully choreographed sequence. The place appears, not in its entirety, but via its beacon, the tower, from which a single window below the roofline watches every movement in the landscape. As in a medieval castle, you enter the courtyard, the peaceful and civilized interlude between the north and the south wings, which tower imposingly above the slope, and the small villa on the fringe of the forest. The studio lies as a hinge between the wings, with a door in either side. Saarinen designed the north wing, Lindgren the south wing while Gesellius hovered between the two, his domain was to be the small villa. 

The base on the south wing is made of rocks with ragged, blasted edges. Above this is the plaster that forms a generic interval before the shingles soften the shape of the roof. The architectural idiom is still sturdy, but more sophisticated than before. The trolls and the animals have gone, the architecture is now more dynamic and broken up by a variation of platforms, balconies and terraces.

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Saarinen increasingly works alone. Fist on Helsinki Central Railway Station, then on urban planning and his transatlantic ticket: Chicago Tribune Tower. Characterized by intermittent changes of style. Now he travels across Europe to meet with Peter Behrens, now he designs a tenth furniture suite for Hvitträsk. Now he thinks in glass and steel. And now he is alone, as his wife, Mathilda Gyldén, falls in love with Herman Gesellius. Herman’s sister, the sculptor Loja, comes on a visit from her exile in Paris. Now she and Hvitträsk and Eliel fall in love with each other. Then Lindgren has to move on. He wants to remain connected with national romanticism, but not with all the fuss.

One day, Gustav Mahler arrives by boat from across the lake. He writes a euphoric letter to his wife, Alma, in which he compares Hvitträsk with Hohe Warte in Vienna: a place of ever-changing vistas. Mahler describes the architects as young and cheerful, and writes that, after having been married for one year, they have decided that life without variation is just empty existence, and so they swopped wives. Thus, yet another story is added to Hvitträsk’s magic circle of anecdotes. When Gesellius and Saarinen terminate their professional collaboration, the split-up is manifested in a partition that runs right through the studio space. This partition prevents the fire from spreading as the north wing burns down. Only Loja’s white pigeons perish in the fire.

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The delight of having Hvitträsk all to myself is overpowering. A feeling of greediness sets in. I fantasize about taking possession of the fireplace. Of sitting there, quite unaffected, watching the museum visitors come and go. I want to stay there behind the iron doors. I want to sniff my way around the dark cave with my ears hanging down my back. I want to explore the space with my tongue, gather a ball of spit and dust and push it forward across the slabs and the cool copper, until it grows large and sticky. Then I will pick it up again and save it in my cheek like a squirrel.

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The air stagnates around the plants in Loja’s room. Orchids, complete with leathery leaves and heavy flowers, stand in line on tall pedestals below the bay windows. Light filters through the gauzy curtains that Loja made herself. The whiteness of the room settles like powdery ashes across my eyes. Behind the woven material lies the yard, rough and unpredictable, with people coming and going. The exotic plants in the foreground, delicate and difficult, turn their backs on all the commotion. Their snake-like, pointy yellow tongues capture the pervading dampness of the room.

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The photograph is black and white and mounted on cardboard. So are all the pictures in the drawer. The photo shows the gable of the south wing and the back facade. It is overgrown with thick layers of ivy, the architectural hierarchies completely hidden from view. Precise openings are cut around windows and doors, the rabbets throw shadows across the window glass. The wind seem to have rustled the outer leaves as there are blurred areas in the foliage. Loja has pencilled her name on the back and the year 1903.

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All surfaces at Hvitträsk are differentiated. The objects seem to be posing, as if challenging each other’s beauty and neuroses. The cummulative work goes beyond conformity, beyond probability and convention. The originality lies in its cohesiveness, in the mobility of the forest, the houses, the residents and ambitions, and the way these have been allowed to pervade each other. Hvitträsk is at once order-creating and pattern-breaking. The space is catapulted into the body via the senses. The ecstatic human being becomes one with the work.

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The flow in Saarinen’s house is like a weightless waterfall. Small changes of level put obstacles in the stream of rooms, one step up, three steps down. Then you are in a different world. The flower room. Grandfather’s room. This is like walking in Helsinki where the rocky ground pushes the streets up and down below the sky.

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I lie on my back in Eliel and Loja’s bed. The headboard is decorated with Loja’s emblem: the tower encircled by roses on stalks, folded to form an origami garland. The bedspread is dark brown and coarsely textured, smoothed down. I squeeze my fingers down into the narrow gap between the edge of the bed and the mattress until they they are stuck and tingling. I can hear the distant sound of dragging feet in blue shoe covers. A faint rustle that travels through the house.

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A thick ryivy carpet slides from the foreground of the picture across the varnished wooden floor until it reaches the edge of the couch where it settles on the seat below the window. Dangling from the edge of the couch are two small feet. I see the shoe soles and, extending from these, a pair of legs dressed in leggings. The rest of the body tilts to the left, the head resting on a large velvet cushion. Eero looks at Loja. His lazy presence in the artwork is wonderful. Loja notices. Separated from the couch scene by a balustrade are six oak chairs around a dining table. The backlight from a leaded sunset window forms small, white empty areas in the picture. On the table are the remains of a meal.

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The acoustics at Hvitträsk are said to be wonderful. Saarinen and Sibelius have coffee together in the living room. Saarinen says: the interaction between the mental space and the body’s response, that is the human aura. Man carries his aura around, it influences places and other people. The essence of the room is its aura. The essence of a room can be either stronger or fainter than the human aura. It is up to man himself to modulate the essence of the room by means of a strong organic symmetry. Sibelius nods his assent. Nature is a constant variable. Doors to fireplace. Up.

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