Hilda Flodin:
Northern Devils, 1901
Aleksanterinkatu, Kluuvi

Northern Devils

The ”Fire Insurance Limited Company Pohjola”- building located on Alexander Street was completed in 1901. It was designed by architects Gesellius, Armas Lindgren and Eliel Saarinen. This granite construction represents the same nationalistic as well as romantic style trend as, for example, the National Museum and the National Theatre of Finland. The house has an imposing entrance decorated with the grinning Northern Devils.

” By the way, these ornamental characters are not meant to portray any of our ladies in our office,” proclaimed Pohjola’s Chairman of the Board, Baron Sebastian Gripenberg during the house inauguration in December 1901. Pohjola’s Nordic Devils are indeed designed by a woman, an artist named Hilda Flodin, who at the time, had been to Paris studying under one infamous sculptor Rodin.