The Kuopio Museum is an

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

-style museum building completed in 1907 on the edge of Snellman Park in Vahtivuori,

Kuopio Kuopio (, ) is a Finnish city and municipality located in the region of Northern Savonia. It has a population of , which makes it the most populous municipality in Finland. Along with Joensuu, Kuopio is one of the major urban, economic, and cult ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

. The Kuopio Museum is the third oldest specially built museum building in Finland after the

Helsinki Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the Capital city, capital, primate city, primate, and List of cities and towns in Finland, most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of U ...

's Ateneum (1887) and the

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

's Art Museum (1904). It has national romantic features and was inspired by Finnish castles, such as

St. Olaf's Castle Olavinlinna (also known as St. Olaf's Castle; sv, Olofsborg; german: Olafsburg; literally ''Olof's Castle'') is a 15th-century three-tower castle located in Savonlinna, Finland. It is built on an island in the Kyrönsalmi strait that connects the ...

and Vyborg Castle. The building's architect was J. V. Strömberg, who designed a significant number of Kuopio's public buildings at the turn of the 20th century. The Kuopio Museum houses the exhibition facilities of the Kuopio Museum of Natural History and the Kuopio Museum of Cultural History. The museum is visited by an average of about 30,000 visitors a year.

New extension

The City of Kuopio organized an invited architectural competition for the renovation and expansion of the Kuopio Museum in 2016. The competition was won by architects Aki Davidsson and Jaana Tarkela with their entry called "Hila". The new extension was opened in 2021.

Mammoth

One of Kuopio Museum's main attractions since around the beginning of the new millennium has been a restored

mammoth A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus ''Mammuthus'', one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, ...

called Häkä. The installation was completed in connection with the renewal of the main exhibitions of the Natural History Museum in 1999. The name "Häkä" was derived from Kari Häkämies, at that time the

Minister of the Interior An interior minister (sometimes called a minister of internal affairs or minister of home affairs) is a cabinet official position that is responsible for internal affairs, such as public security, civil registration and identification, emergency ...

, and formerly the Mayor of Kuopio, who officiated the unveiling of the exhibit on 3 June 1999. Woolly mammoths are said to have once lived in the Kuopio region. An accurate model for the mammoth was the carcass of a well-preserved frozen mammoth found in 1799 by O. Šumahov, a local hunter and ivory collector, in the

Lena River The Lena (russian: Ле́на, ; evn, Елюенэ, ''Eljune''; sah, Өлүөнэ, ''Ölüöne''; bua, Зүлхэ, ''Zülkhe''; mn, Зүлгэ, ''Zülge'') is the easternmost of the three great Siberian rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean ...

valley of

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a part of ...

. It was estimated that on its death it would have been about 30 years old and weighed 5,000 to 5,500 pounds. The height at the withers was over three meters. The mammoth exhibit was made by conservator and artist Eirik Granqvist.

Sources

References

External links

Kuopio Museum
(in Finnish)
Kuopio Museum of Cultural HistoryKuopio Museum of Natural History
(in Finnish) Buildings and structures in Kuopio Tourist attractions in North Savo Museums in Finland {{Finland-struct-stub