Natural History Museum

This guide to the Natural History Museum in Helsinki opens with taxidermist Jussi Mantynen smashing his own unfinished sculptures with a sledgehammer in nineteen thirty-nine. It follows his rise from a preparator's assistant in nineteen ten to the man who reinvented Finnish taxidermy, building animals mid-stride instead of stuffed with straw, and to the nearly four-meter bronze elk he modeled after the Elk of Hiisi from the Kalevala. You'll hear what happened between him and his supervisor after a triumphant London exhibition. Look for that elk just outside the entrance.