Sculpting Support
Leaping ahead into week three, I wanted to share a Finnish ecclesiastical, material peculiarity: the concept of ‘vaivaisukko’, which has been translated by some as the pauper statue. The etymology suggests ‘vaiva’, which can be ailment, disfigurement, or a general trouble or burden a person bears, while ‘ukko’ is a kind of (anthropomorphised) male humanoid. The statues are carved from wood, often of a single large log, and are usually just below a life-size human scale, and represent a tradition that emerged around the time of the reformation’s arrival in the kingdom of Sweden. These carved decorative male figures served as collection boxes and were placed outside churches, often alongside or underneath a plaque encouraging charity. Based on pictures I’ve seen, Proverbs 17:19 is exceptionally popular; “whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.”
Slots for alms were placed on the chest, the heart, or outreached hands of the character, and the need of recipients were depicted in the form – some vaivaisukot were given peg-legs and bandages. While the oldest remaining figures date to the 1600s, following the Finnish War of 1808 they became strongly associated with veterans, both by increasingly disabled appearance matching rising disability in younger men, and in terms of who received the donations. The statues bear an interesting relationship to our readings, not only in because Lutheranism and capitalism may be present, but as an extension of the themes of fetishism discussed in week two – why, for example, were there hundreds of these statues in western Finland, but only a handful of examples in Sweden? Why did the carving tradition peter out in the mid-1800s?
In a sense, the appearance of decorative statues and alms seems counterintuitive to some tenets of the reformation. Do Luther’s vehement rejection of financial deeds or the purchase of indulgences through sola fide/gratia-principles, as well as the iconoclastic aesthetic asceticism of Protestantism not stand in opposition? One of the probable explanations given by local historians is that of the perceived or claimed backwardness or uneducated illiteracy of the Finnish-speaking population by ruling classes. The physical object, resembling a person – and what’s more, an impoverished or pitiable person – was more evocative and appealed to the better nature of passers-by, regardless of their language or understanding of credo. Through a power or autonomy, a kind of magic, perhaps? Indeed, while the bible had been translated into Finnish by the mid-1600s, those in positions of higher power (clerical and social) were Swedish or at least Swedish-speakers, and the linguistic oppression carried on well into the 1800s- unlike the vaivaisukot. As in the reformist notion of demonstrating brotherly love through duty and obligation as detailed in Weber’s work, the obligation towards the poor that had previously rested with the specific church of a bounded parish became more institutionalised, and newly established boards and committees for social care swiftly took statues out of business.
There’s a drive to preserve and restore vaivaisukot, and to acquire UNESCO World Heritage status through the appropriately named “Save the Vaivaisukko”; the characters have featured in jewellery design, stamps, and in folk art revivals quite prominently in the last few years. Unfortunately, a lot of the website may be incomprehensible, but they do have some great pictures under “kuvagalleria”.
http://www.vaivaisukot.fi/gall.htm
Contributed by EveliinaKuitunen on 23/01/2018
