Lost Two Years 2016-17

Whooa.. Is this channel working? Has Ragnarøk retired from the fields of arctic arts..? Of course not.
We're just partly cut from the internets for a while, but we haven't been lazy in the sculpting scene.
 -Let's take a look to lost two years and what we've been doing!




Snow Sculpting National Championships, Ojakkala 2016

2016 Ragnarøk didn't participate any big competitions as a team, but we acted in sculpting business on organisation level. Our members were a crucial part in Finnish championship contest at Vihti Ski Center, Ojakkala.

Janne worked as a head of the competition. This means contracts, sponsors, rules and all the bureaucratic shit.
Arto acted as our contest's construction foreman. He was in charge of mold techniques and all building.
Leevi was our general secretary. He took care of communications, web-pages and held strings at the office.
Matti had the shortest, but the most difficult task as a judge. He was the artist member of the contest jury.

We leaded our small, but efficient contest organisation together. The contest was also the first national event that our sculpting union Ikitalvi ever composed.

 

The constructions at the sculpting site took about four long and sweaty days. The weather was a bit hostile to our project during the mold works, half of our workers had a local super-flue and the rest were working in the freezing rain. It took all of our strength to finish the site in time.  

We used three molds and build 19 snow cubes; 9 for the solo sculptors and 10 for teams.

But luck favours the brave; at the eve of the event mother nature served us a beautiful winter weather with new fresh snow coating, sunshine and few gentle minus degrees. -Let the snow battles begin!

After the carvings were over it was time for the awards ceremonies. The jury had a hard task; only few hours time to write the commentary and put the participants in order. Our awards got very nice audience as the jury rewarded three best solo sculptors and three best teams. We also had a vote for the audiences favourite works in both series. Alpo Siira won the solo contest and Vesselit the team series. As the Finnish Champions, Vesselit would represent Finland at Sapporo Snow Fest 2016.

Snow sculpting Finnish champions 2016: Lumistit, Vesselit & Tuulispäät at the podium.

Snow Sculpting National Championships, Juuka 2017

Once again we drove few light years away towards the annual snow sculpting Finnish championships. Except the last years contest, these events are mostly held as far away from people as possible. -at least from our perspective.
Once again we cast our plans to clay model, prepare our tools and lend a car big enough for our tools and egos. We drove to Juuka on Thursday, to get some rest before the action. Might be, that Juukalaiset had heard of our reputation; we got our own apartment at the east wing, while other teams got to sleep in bunk beds in one room. But we were polite and invited many sculptors to visit our quarters.

The theme of this contest was "Finland 100 Years", as most of the events had this year. Our plan got influence from the legendary war movie Tuntematon Sotilas (Unknown Soldier), as we carved one particular scene from the film.We named our piece "Kovennettua", which could be translated as "Corporal Punishment".

We finished our statue about half an hour before the contest time was over. This would normally be the time for the traditional Sheriff Jaloviina, but this time we settled for milder options.

This time we didn't won the race, but came second only few points after the champion team Lumistit. This was somehow acceptable, because Lumistit are a great team and also very nice folks. -Respects to the winners! 

Snow sculpting Finnish champions 2017: Ragnarök, Lumistit and Puun Sielu.

Now we're gathering our forces to face new challenges of winter season 2018.
Stay tuned, more to come soon. We got a plan..

Pics by: Rasha Said, Arto Manninen, Riika annala, Sari Purola