14 Heart Attacks, 3 Mental Breakdowns, and a Forest of Concrete: The Factory Worker Who Built a Surreal Park
Veijo Rönkkönen was not a formally trained artist. Born in 1944 in a tiny Finnish village, he grew up in a family of factory workers at a nearby pulp mill and followed them into the same job, working as a press operator. After his parents died when he was 16, a bank came knocking to collect the house. He managed to keep the home by taking out a loan, and he kept working at the factory while, at night, he began turning his land into a studio. His plot was 50 sotka (0.5 hectares) of land, mostly forest—a gift that carried the weight of debt, history, and a stubborn dream.
From Debt to a Forest Studio: The Half-Hectare that Became a World
On his half-hectare plot, Veijo started clearing the forest to sell timber and pay off the loan. He didn’t lose his balance or humor—he kept working at the factory, practiced yoga, and swam daily. Then he began turning the land into a studio, carving figures from wire frames and liquid cement and painting them. At first neighbors thought it was whimsical; soon the yard filled with figures that crept into the woods and deeper into the forest. By now his skill grew, and the works began to resemble real people, even gaining teeth from a dentist and, for the first sculpture, a jaw from his father.
A Living Diary of Concrete: 476 Figures, a Park, and a Nation's Curiosity
By the end, Veijo’s land housed 476 figures—mostly human or hybrid forms—whose features ranged from gentle smiles to unsettling expressions. The park includes dozens of life-size “smiling” statues, yoga and acrobatic figures, animals, and mythic creatures, as well as nearly 200 self-portraits of the artist himself. A sound system filled the air with birdsong and nature, heightening the park’s otherworldly atmosphere. Veijo died at 66, and the municipality opened the site as a park with a modest entrance fee of five euros. Since 2010, visitors have suffered 14 heart attacks and three people reportedly lost their grip on reality. Locals joke that the park has a character of its own: in the evenings, machines fail to start, and some visitors even build a brick pyramid in the dim light. Today the park is recognized as Finnish cultural heritage—a diary of one man’s relentless pursuit, and many say the artist’s spirit still lingers among the figures.
