Suviranta

The Järnefelts’ house Suviranta was built on the shore of Lake Tuusula in 1901. The plot used to be pastureland but soon transformed into a green oasis thanks to diligent gardening. Both Eero Järnefelt and his wife Saimi were born into remarkable Finnish-minded families whose members contributed to Finnish culture at many levels.

Painter Eero Järnefelt (1863–1937) was particularly known for his portraits of prominent contemporary people. He was thus referred to as “Finland’s official portrait painter”. In addition, he depicted the Finnish nature in the Lake Tuusula area and elsewhere in Finland. Particularly the paintings of the hilly Koli area in South Karelia have affected the Finnish people’s view of an ideal landscape.

Koli is now known as one of Finland’s national landscapes. Eero Järnefelt also painted several warm paintings of his family, depicting pleasant moments reading books and making summer trips, for example to Sarvikallio by Lake Tuusula

Saimi Järnefelt (née Swan, 1867– 1944), was the third oldest of the Swan family’s nine daughters. The girls were raised to be independent and confident. She was an actress at the Finnish Theatre in Helsinki and had a strong need for self-expression. She married Järnefelt in 1890 and continued working at the theatre for a few more years but it was difficult to combine family life with her work as an actress. She then found an outlet for her creativity in writing and translating literature. She translated, for example, Charles Dickens’ novel “A Tale of Two Cities” into Finnish.