André Prah: Ice Horses in Ladoga

Italian war correspondent and surrealist writer Curzio Malaparte describes the war between Finland and the Soviet Union in his work "Kaputt".

Winter was harsh when he went to the front in December 1941, where he witnessed something remarkable. In his book, he tells how Finnish troops on the shore of Ladoga in Karelia surrounded a Soviet artillery regiment with its horses. The Finns set the forest on fire. Nearly a thousand terrified horses rushed into the sea of flames and broke through the fire and machine-gun fire to run into the lake. The fire burned the backs of the horses closest to the shore and they reared up on their hind legs, trampled each other, and tried to move further into the lake by biting and kicking.

In the chaos, the cold paralyzed the horses. During the night, a north wind that had formed over the Barents Sea in the Murmansk region swept across Ladoga, and the earth suddenly became dead. Nearly a thousand frozen horses form an ice monument to the horrors of war.

André Prah has interpreted Malaparte's story and recreated the ice horses - using pieces of wood, roots, trunks, and branches.

Helsinki Cathedral Crypt

2.-21.6.2026

Mon-Sat 10.00-17.00

Sun 11.00-17.00

Free admission