Oulu is located on the northwestern coast of Finland, at the mouth of the River Oulu. It is the largest Finnish city with a sub-arctic climate: cold and snowy winters; short and mild summers. The name Oulu derives from the Finnish dialectal word oulu, meaning floodwater, related to the southern Sami åulo = melted snow, åulot = thaw.
Oulu has a large population (215 000). It is also important as one of Europe’s living labs, where residents experiment with new technologies, such as near-field communication (NFC) tags and ubiquitous computing (ubi) screens on a community-wide scale, often involving thousands of users.
Street furniture
Yes, there are four of these units, all in a row: green, yellow, pink and blue. None of the stalls were in use, so it was not possible to know, with certainty, the intended use. One suspected use is a place for mooring/ hitching a bicycle.Some bicycle hitching posts were in use. At the far left of the photograph, one can see Tiernapojat = Star Boys sculpture. It is discussed at the end of this weblog post.It is suspected that these two components could provide seating, but only if some other components, including a back and seat, were installed.
Corporate Identity
Alasdair and I ate our second sushi dinner of the trip at Luckie Fun’s Sushi Buffet. I have managed to survive the first 75 years of my life without a tattoo, and have no intention of enduring one now. However, I find tattoo parlor names and signs interesting. I collect images of the signs.
Statues
Kaarlo Mikkonen (1920 – 2001), Toripolliisi (Finnish) = The Bobby at the Market Place, Oulu. Unveiled in 1987. Photo: Tve4 (2006-05-26). The translated title is a bit too British for a north American. I would have preferred it to have the title: The policeman at the market place.Yes, an image of birds, possibly four herons. However, I have not been able to discover the artist, or time period for its construction, or even its title.Sanna Koivisto (1955 – ), Tiernapojat = Star Boys. Unveiled 2014, moved to its permanent location 2016.
Tiernapojat, or star boys, is a song play based mainly on the Gospel of Matthew. It tells about the journey of three wise men from the East to the baby Jesus and about King Herod, who orders his soldiers to kill all the little male children, hoping to then also kill the newborn Jesus, the King of the Jews. The performance is estimated to be a centuries-old tradition, but the first reliable written record of the Oulu tiernapoika tradition is from 1873. The song came to Oulu from Sweden.
