Pictures of our Landscapes Tartu Group 3
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Triin Orav, Anne Erik
Images
Lake, forest and sauna
Manor and apple garden
The golf course
Description
The three characters that describe the landscape of Southern-Finland the best for our group are lakes and forests, old manors and people’s activities.
On the first picture there is a house situated on a lake shore. Finnish people are always looking for privacy, especially when it comes to setting up their home. A typical Finn would like to live next to the lake and have a forest near the house. It is also very important to have their own sauna as going to the sauna and having a swim after it is a traditional Finnish action. The people in Finland are characteristically to Northern countries shy, and it has also transmitted to the landscape – there is urban sprawl in the cities, and most of the villages are with dispersed settlement. The typical color for the houses especially in countryside is red, the Falu red, which is a name for a Swedish deep red color. People started using it in the 17th century to imitate buildings with brick surface and it has remained very popular until today in the Nordic countries.
Another thing that people usually associate with Finland are forests and that is correct, because there are a lot of woods in here. Everyone is allowed to go to a forest and pick the berries and mushrooms they want, they can go jogging there, have a picnic etc, only thing people are not allowed to do in the forests is to cut the trees, throw rubbish or contaminate it in any other way. There is a law in Finland that is called the Every Man’s Right that allows people to go to the forest and next to the lake or any other waterbody from the sunrise until the sunset.
On the second picture there is a schoolhouse with an apple garden next to it. The schoolhouse used to be a manor and after the landlord died he gave the buildings of his manor to the government so that they could make a school here, HAMK University’s Lepaa division. For our group this picture describes the past and the present of Finland, there is a house that used to be a manor and there are apple trees next to it, which shows what people are doing here nowadays. People are growing apples and there is also a winery not so far away where they are making wine of these apples. It describes how people are using land facilities.
The third picture is in a way connected to the second one, because there is a field and a golf course. With that we are trying to show the activities of Finnish people – the field represents their fondness to agriculture and the golf course shows their favourite leisure activity, playing golf. Golf is the most popular sports activity in Finland, there are a lot of golf courses all around the country and people are playing it with almost every weather conditions – whether it is a hot summer, rainy and windy autumn or even frozen winter time.