The partners of A Europe of Tales are the Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur la Littérature Orale of Brittany, the Parco Nazionale del Cilento e Vallo di Diano in Italy, Nordic House in Iceland and the National Museum of Scotland. National working groups in the respective countries served as local experts and developed ideas and concepts for the programme. Contact information for the national working groups is given the Europe of Tales programme under the Info menu in connection with the respective tales and legends of each country.

The Finnish partners are the Gallen-Kallela Museum, the City of Espoo, the Kalevala society, Musta Taide Publishers, the Savonlinna Arts High School, Studio Manus, the Finnish Literature Society and Tapiola School. The multimedia programme was made by Kroma Productions Ltd. of Porvoo.

The Gallen-Kallela Museum and the history of cooperation in this project

The Gallen-Kallela Museum is an art museum in Espoo, Finland, maintained by the Akseli Gallen-Kallela Museum Foundation. It operates in the Tarvaspää studio and home of the artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865-1931) which he designed and built for himself in 1911-13. In addition to its extensive exhibition activities, the museum takes an active role in art pedagogy, publications, and international cooperation involving exhibitions and research. A shared focus of content in these areas has been the investigation, analysis and presentation of the national and international elements of Finnish art history and culture.

Art pedagogy on the Internet

Since 1995 the Gallen-Kallela Museum has maintained its own web pages and in collaboration with the Freenet unit of the Helsinki University of Technology it has developed art-pedagogical applications for the information-network environment. In 1996-1998 the Gallen-Kallela Museum, Freenet and the Graafiset Neliöt graphic design office prepared Kulta-aika (Golden Age) a www-based set of educational materials, presenting the history of Finnish art from the close of the nineteenth century to the middle of the 20th through the life and works of Akseli Gallen-Kallela. (www.freenet.hut.fi/taide)

History of cooperation

The Gallen-Kallela Museum has staged numerous important exhibitions of foreign art in its own premises, in addition to producing exhibitions of Finnish art abroad. The present project has involved cooperation as follows with the various partners:

Iceland
In 1988 the exhibition Karelía - Kvaedalandid was held at Nordic House in Reykjavik, featuring illustrations to the Kalevala epic by Akseli Gallen-Kallela and photographs by Vilho Uomala, Väinö Kaukonen and I.K. Inha. In 1999 the Gallen-Kallela Museum’s exhibition Long Live the Kalevala went to Nordic House as part of its series of events presenting various mythologies.

Italy – Cilento
An important role in establishing and forging relations with Italy has been played by the Finnish chapter of the PONTES – Bridging Marginal Europe association , with sister organizations in Cilento and Estonia. The Parco Nazionale di Cilento e Vallo di Diano and the Fondazione Alario are the leading forces of PONTES in Cilento.

France – Brittany
In 1998 The Gallen-Kallela Museum held the exhibition The Brittany of Artists, with the Province Museum of Brittany as the French partner. This exhibition presented Nordic works of art painted in Brittany in the 1880s and Breton ethnographic material from the Province Museum. Collaboration continued with the planning of an exhibition on the theme of the Kalevala epic. This exhibition concept, however, soon expanded to become the much broader Europe of Tales project.

Great Britain – Scotland
In 1986 the MacRobert Arts Centre was the venue for Finland - The Land of Song, and exhibition of Akseli Gallen-Kallela’s illustrations to the Kalevala and photographs by Vilho Uomala, Väinö Kaukonen and I. K. Inha. Contacts with the current partner – the National Museum of Scotland – evolved in cooperation with the City of Espoo and the school authorities’ Learning City network.