C.E. Sjöstrand:
Kullervo talks to his sword, 1868
City’ s winter garden courtyard, Eläintarha

”Advice from Sword”

CE Sjöstrand’s sculpture ”Kullervo speaks to his sword” is located in the city garden yard in Taka-Töölö. The fenced area was required for Kullervo as the youth expressed their sympathy to him by hanging from his sword. Before it used to snap from time to time.

Sjöstrand’s Kullervo is dressed in furry bearskin like an ancient Finnish huntsman with a faithful dog at his feet. Here depicted Kullervo is a combination of a Nordic mythological character and an athletic hero of antiquity.

In Kalevala, Kullervo arrived to a meadow, where he had unknowingly defiled his sister. He asks his sword, "would it accept the guilty flesh, drink foul blood." The sword answers to the tragic hero's question, and Kullervo, the son of Kalervo places his swordhandle into fabric. He would turn the tip of the blade to his chest, and plunge to it.

Kullervo's lonely suicide had an impact on, for example, JRR Tolkien's Silmarillion-work.

Sjöstrand was a Swedish-born sculptor, who is considered as the founder of Finnish sculpture art. Sjöstrand produced a number of Kalevala works. Kullervo sculpture was completed in 1868.