Every museum is full of stories waiting to be told. Finland's museums offer a culturally contextualised gateway to the past - through numerous exhibitions, artefacts and diverse collections. Today we reveal one story, seemingly small but significant, hidden in the National Museum of Finland. This story is called "The Secret of the Aquarium".
The Finnish National Museum, a handsome Art Nouveau castle in the Töölö district of Helsinki, is a familiar monument to many, a destination for field trips, tourists and history lovers. Almost all of us have wandered through its grand halls, gazed at ancient stone cherubs, admired Iron Age jewellery or stepped inside a 17th-century room interior. But few people know that beneath the cool exterior of the museum, one of the objects on display contains something more valuable than expected.
An old, wooden aquarium is a central part of the museum. It's not the biggest or most impressive attraction, but its secret lies just inside. The story behind the aquarium is about the beauty of life, human curiosity and the wonder of scientific discovery.
The aquarium was donated to the museum in the early 1900s. Its creator is unknown, but it is known to be the work of a Finnish master smith. The aquarium is quite simple in style, but carefully made - the material is hard oak, the glass is cleaned and the joints are a pure handicraft.
The secret is the contents of the aquarium: its clear water is not water, but liquid amber, which has slowly hardened over the years. The liquid amber has been collected from the shores of the Baltic Sea and brought into the aquarium to give its water a golden hue. The amber also contains numerous insects and plant parts that have remained unchanged for thousands of years.
This aquarium, simple and unpretentious, conceals a time capsule that tells the story of the meeting between nature and man, art and science in a unique way. It allows us to sense the past and the future simultaneously, to see traces of a time that has gone before us, and to wonder what kind of mark we ourselves will leave.
The secret of the aquarium reminds us of how within the walls of Finnish museums there are countless stories that open up to curious onlookers. They tell of the past, present and future, the relationship between man and nature, art and science. All these stories are part of our common cultural heritage.
Like the aquarium, the National Museum is a time capsule. The thousands of objects, documents and photographs it contains all tell their own stories of precious moments, of people's lives, which have left their mark on the history of our country. They are the national treasures of the collection, through which we can sense, see and learn from our past - and perhaps better understand our present and future.