Veijo Rönkkönen Sculpture Garden in Parikkala

After plentiful breakfast by our host, we left Pellinki island and drove to see Emäsalo island. Hubby has sailed around it several times in a sailing competition. Then we went to Taidetehdas in Porvoo, where we saw two exhibitions: Reima Nevalainen and Aura Hakuri. After lunch we continued our journey to Parikkala.

I have wanted to visit Veijo Rönkkänen Sculpture Park in Parikkala many many years and today my dream came true! That sculpture park is very special place.

Veijo Rönkkönen worked for 41 years at a paper mill and barely went anywhere throughout his life except to work and back home to his farm. He was never trained as an artist, but when he died in 2010, he left behind what is basically an outdoor museum.

The forest surrounding his home is packed with sculptures of human figures of all ages and cultures portraying every type of emotion you can imagine.

Born in 1944, Rönkkönen began his career at the mill at the tender age of 16. Local legend says that he used his first-ever paycheck to buy apple seeds and a bag of concrete and so began his sculpture garden, which he nurtured tirelessly for half a century.

Now known as the Veijo Rönkkönen Sculpture Garden, the site attracts around 25,000 people each year. Visitors are drawn in not only by the art, but by the atmosphere of the woods themselves, haunted by the community of figures that Rönkkönen’s own hands so thoughtfully moulded.

There is even an area that is home to 255 near-naked figures practising yoga. Yoga is actually one of Rönkkönen’s only hobbies that we know about, apart, of course, from making art.

The svulpture forest is unquestionably quite magical, an amalgamation of many different worlds coming together all in one place. This feels especially meaningful considering that it’s an outside world the artist never quite experienced in real life.


After magical visit, we drove via beautiful Punkaharju esker to Kerimäki, to our next pit stop. We’ll stay over in idyllic guesthouse called Wanhan Apteekin Majatalo.



+17,5 C, partially sunny