Over the last two decades, the province of Lapland has been the venue for a range of outdoor productions in which winter has played the leading role as a stage for fantasy and drama. I have studied these productions by collecting newspaper articles on them and interviewing the key people involved. What has emerged from the material is a picture of the potential that the environment here has as a stage. Winter has provided spectacular surroundings for tens of performances but its significance for the whole goes beyond its function as a backdrop. The season imbues the performances with an entire culture of the North. It brings it within reach of the audience, offering them a chance to see what that culture looks like and how it functions and to experience the stories and beliefs associated with it.

I study winter as a stage for fantasy and drama largely through the productions of Lilja Kinnunen-Riipinen's Winter Theater and the winter events performed in the Pyhätunturi area. Those who have created the productions can be credited with pioneering work in highlighting the elements of winter in outdoor performances. The narrative in the works often reflects popular traditions associated with holidays. Religion and the mythologies related to spirits of nature have also proven to be an inexhaustible source of material. In addition, the stories spring from the environment and nature: darkness and light, cold and snow provide not only a framework but also very often content for the stories. In the Winter Theater, the forest and the rich Finnish mythology surrounding it are the prominent theme alongside religious ones. The works are characterized by the charm of a traditional Finnish folk tale.

Noitarumpu [Shaman's Drum] (called Tulirumpu [Fire Drum] since 2002), which has been put on for over ten years at Pyhätunturi, has drawn from the very outset on the unique and rugged environment. It is Pyhätunturi Fell itself and its tales that have inspired the work. The location has not been chosen as the stage for a work produced elsewhere; it was the site that came first. The same is true for Turjan taika [the Magic of Turja], a production of the Art Workshop based on winter, snow and ice, and for other winter events produced in the area in recent years.

Site-specific art has been a focal element in not only environmental art but in different happenings and performances since the 1960s. The environment and the site have figured significantly in the expression and form of the events I have
studied. How site-specific a work is naturally varies across this diverse range of winter performances. Not a single one of them can be considered a work that dominates the site. They are clearly characteristic of the site, and have been planned with due consideration for how well the performance fits the site. Some of the works can be described as defined by the site, with the form, material and even process of creation taking the site into account. The creation of the work requires the artists to familiarize themselves with the site in a diversity of ways and often to develop a sensitivity to the history, stories and meanings associated with it.

A striving to offer something genuine and authentic can be seen in the themes and realization of the productions put on by the Winter Theater and Pyhätunturi Art Workshops. This ambition can be seen above all in the choice of venue and the time, and of the winter environment. Lilja Kinnunen-Riipinen recalls the origins of the Winter Theater thus: “I realize what the beauty of cold means, what snow is, what it means that it is so dark for so long, how it cleanses and how it provides the set for a sort of new perspective on the universe. This immense darkness, all this snow – they are a set.”

According to the long-time visualist of the Winter Theater, the most challenging thing has been the demands which nature makes. When you have many meters of snow and freezing cold, it takes “a stern spirit to trudge through all that snow and make those paths”. More than anything else, however, the performances are dependent on nature; artificial snow can never match the elegant touches that the cold and frost create. Nature always has exciting and spectacular surprises in store.

As cultural products for the tourist, winter events seek to provide an authenticity in terms of origin and theme, this being a central phenomenon in tourism and tourist typologies. What we are dealing with is the tourist's natural desire for authenticity and originality and a response to this longing in a staged form. Tourism has been seen as part of the modern western lifestyle and modern societal development. The modern person has lost contact with the authentic and the genuine. Although the events in fact offer staged authenticity to the tourist, the intention in some of the events is to activate the audience, the local community or at least the people involved in putting on the production. Authenticity is also involved when an art object with fixed boundaries becomes a spatial or temporal spectacle complemented by the interpretation of the viewer. The productions I have studied can be classified in these terms as well.

In analyzing the form of the performances, I have applied the concept of tourism as a modern ritual. The ritual transition rite of the performances can be described using a tripartite structure. The first part is detachment, which takes place by walking the planned route, preparing oneself to experience the grandeur of winter nature and a world of tales and mythology. The second part is the liminal state in which the performance occurs - where the world is turned upside down and conventional social rules and relations are temporarily suspended. This is often the high point of the drama and the most dramatic part of the event. In the third part, rejoining, the viewer leaves the site along a different route and returns to civilization and everyday life. The audience does not actively influence the course of the events but is made to experience the work through a variety of senses by the winter journey. The audience functions as an important element of the performances, part of the event. Yet, it is the cold and snow, the winter environment and nature itself that take on the leading role in the performances; the fantasy and drama primarily serve to enhance these.

Many other organizations besides the Winter Theater or the Pyhätunturi Art Workshop have put on outdoor productions. Although the new winter events being designed do not have people trudging through the pristine snows of Lapland, every new project will hopefully leave fresh marks in our winter artistic landscape. Work done in the magnificent winter surroundings offers in and of itself a rich basis for realizing a variety of performances where both the form and content of the works are concerned. Many of the pioneering works I have studied have stood the test of time and still offer superb visual experiences precisely because of the sensitivity of their relationship to the environment in which they are performed.