Alpo Sailo:
Larin Paraske, 1949
Hakasalmi Park, Mannerheimintie, Etu-Töölö

Larin Paraske

Alpo Sailo’s Larin Paraske statue became in 1949 the first public monument for women. It is still the city's only realistic depiction of a historic woman. Sailo designed the statue of the famous singer and Ingrian poet statue in 1936 as one in the series of Finnish Kalevala bards. Sailo’s life-long dream about the Kalevala house, a kind of Kalevala culture of the Pantheon, was never fulfilled.

A symphatetic statue in Hakasalmi Park had attempts since to relocate it near the Karelia house. ArvoTurtiainen has described a busy, "cold-hearted" modern man and the age-old poetry conflict in his poem called ”Larin Paraske” in 1962:

"One hundred cars per minute”

"At the crack of dawn"

”A thousand a day tram”

"All evenings till very late"

"Stream of men"

"Utterly alien, hard-eared, cold-hearted"