Where does it all happen?
Echoes of the Ancient is a project based on collaboration between dozens of great artists and experts with different approaches, skills and ideas. Besides the human resources, another basic element are the locations.
Heinävesi, Finland
Heinävesi is a small rural community in Eastern Finland. It’s known for its beautiful nature and for the water route which has been one of the best known national landscapes in Finland ever since it was chosen as the symbol of Finland for the world exposition 1895. Heinävesi is also known for its orthodox monastery Valamo and convent Lintula, the only ones in Western Europe.
By number of inhabitants, just a little over 3000, Heinävesi is small but as an area it’s rather large, 1319 km2. About 20 % of the area is covered by water. With little population and no noisy industry or flight routes Heinävesi is mostly very silent, which is one of its strengths when it comes to recordings in exterior milieus. Heinävesi has quite a rough topography with a lot of rocks, cliffs and boulders. Those elements together with numerous water routes are a key to the acoustic specialties of the area.
Examples of the acoustic spots in Heinävesi
Heinävesi is a large area and it probably still has a lot of promising, unfound sweetspots but Heinäveden Muinaisseura ry has already over ten locations in its registers potential for open air studio activities:
Pilppa
Pilppa is the northernmost spot of the Great Saimaa water pool. The forest around Kolovesi national park hides several locations with clear signs of stone age culture and special acoustic features. One of them is a pair of offering stones which have a clear acoustic corridor between them and a strong echo.
The bigger one of the stones also features a stomping stone, sort of an ancient version of a church bell. When stepped on it makes a strong stomping sound and if you look under it, you can see a complicated mechanism of several smaller stones which make it possible to move the rock in its place.
The offering stones are in an area which serves forest industry and therefore there’s a road which ends only about metres from the stones. There’s no traffic on the road but it makes logistics easy.
Väntinkangas
Väntinkangas close to the south border of Heinävesi has a unique, manmade structure with a history unknown. The structure features two boulders with perimeter a little over one metre on top of each other and on top of a flat, hollow rock plate. Although the boulders weigh several tons each, it requires quite little effort to make them both move, producing a low and loud rumbling sound which comes back as an echo from different directions in the environment.
Humalniemi
Humalniemi on the south shore of lake Iso-Vihtari is an acoustic treasure. In the middle of the cape there's a rock formation which has a rock painting on the south wall. The echo by the painting is noticeably strong and right under the painting there’s also a stomping stone which can make the surroundings rumble.
On the north bank on Humalniemi there’s a place named Jumppasen luola, the cave of Jumppanen. The name refers to the last inhabitant of the cave, the last person to pay lapinvero, lapp tax, which was collected from those whose livelihood was based on hunting and gathering. According to the church registers Jumppanen moved from Heinävesi to Inari, to Northern Lapland, where he’s still known in the oral tradition as a powerful witch.
There’s also an interesting fact the same name, Jumppanen, is also featured in Savonian versions of poems the Karelian versions of which were made widely known in the national epic Kalevala. In the Savonian version, Jumppanen or Jompanen is the same character who in the official version of Kalevala is called Joukahainen.
Even without knowing anything about Jumppanen himself, the cave named after him is a fascinating place. It’s a naturally formed well which goes about five metres inside the steady rock and then opens to several chambers down below. If there’s someone singing with a low voice inside the cave, you can hear the whole rock resonate outside.
Although Humalniemi is literally in the middle of a forest, several kilometres away from the closest houses, it’s easy to reach because there’s a harvester road which is just 10 metres away from the rock painting and about 100 metres from the cave.
Kytöjoki area
Kytöjoki is an interesting place both from an archeological and acoustic point of view. By the sources of Kytöjoki river there’s a narrow cape named Hiekkaniemi (sandy cape) which has been inhabited already in the stone age which was noticed a year ago when Heinäveden Muinaisseura ry found four stone age dwelling places in the end of the cape and a series of hunting pits on a small island opposite to the cape just about 20 metres away.
In addition to the archeological dimension, Hiekkaniemi also has unique acoustic features. In the end of the cape there’s a spot where a human voice bounces at least 5-6 times from different directions.
Close to Hiekkaniemi there’s also a tafone, a hole formed by thousand years of erosion on the side of a boulder. The tafone is big enough for an adult - or even two small adults to sit in - and it creates a special, isolated acoustic space in which you start to hear your own heartbeat if you sit there for a while.
About 200 metres from the tafone there’s also a rock painting which was found last spring by Heinäveden Muinaisseura ry. The technique and material of the painting refers to stone age but the figure - a hexagon - is confusingly modern which makes the age of the painting unknown. Despite that open question the echo by the painting is really strong which is a common feature when it comes to rock paintings in general.
A few kilometres away from the tafone and Hiekkaniemi there’s a hill named Jouhtenisenvuori - the mountain of a swan - which has clearly been a sacred place for the tribes inhabiting the area. On the top of the mountain in the old forest you can find several stomping stones and a circle of stones which refer to a meeting place. According to locals the echo on lake Levänen next to Jouhtenisenvuori is impressive and unique.
About three kilometres south of Jouhtenisenvuori there’s another mountain named Polvilammenvuori. It has a stiff cliff, about 50 metres high which features a cave with a stone age quartz mine. The echo in front of the cliff is incredibly strong and perfect for recording.
Monchique, Portugal
Monchique is a municipality in the Algarve with around 5,000 inhabitants in 400 km2. It has suffered greatly from desertification (in 1960 the population was 15,000), especially since the 1974 revolution.
It is a rural area, with traditional activities and no major infrastructure.
Fóia is the highest point in the Algarve at 902 metres. The surrounding area is made up of magmatic rock, syenite, from which buildings are constructed.
Due to the abandonment of the population for the cities on the coast, there are many abandoned houses in ruins. The roofs have collapsed, but the buildings dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries retain their stone walls, which are a typical 50 cm wide. They were mostly abandoned in the 1970s and 1980s.
You can feel the memory of the times when the houses were inhabited and many of them still have utensils and even some personal objects.
The surroundings are very quiet, as there is little human occupation, and many of these ruins are far from the tourist routes.
To make the recordings, the musicians will be inside the ruins, with the sound being captured simultaneously inside and out. In addition to the acoustic environment inside, caused by the irregular stone walls, there is the propagation to the outside, as well as the natural sound environment.
Resounding places in Latvia
“Ruķeļi” and “Lazdas”
The “Ruķeļi” and “Lazdas” farmsteads are in Amata administrative parish in Amata region. This area is located in the Mežole Hills in the northern part of the Vidzeme Uplands. The two neighbouring farmsteads stand at a relatively high elevation, in a place where several small hills rise very close to each other. There is a steep slope north of “Ruķeļi”, at the bottom of which lies a large, very wet area through which the Kaķenīte Stream flows. A mixed forest grows on both sides of this treeless band as well as in the depression at the bottom of the hill, forming acoustic walls of various forms and at various distances.
Midsummer hill on the “Ruķeļi” farmstead. When singing, the sound waves tumble softly and slowly down the gradual slope towards the forest, filling this large natural space with powerful sound.
Ancient Hillfort Sāviena
Sāviena Hillfort is located in Ļaudona administrative parish in Madona region. The hillfort and surrounding area are part of an esker, or oss – a ridge several kilometres long consisting of loaf-shaped hills formed as the result of water flowing from melting glaciers. This is called the Madona-Trepe Ridge. Sāviena Hillfort (9th–12th century CE) was built on one of these hills.
The outline of the hillfort is still clearly visible today, with a wider section at the top of the hill and several concentric ridge-like structures further down the slope. A sparse forest of mature pines grows on the slope. A small lake, called Līnītis, is located approximately 150 metres in front of where the singers stood. Dense stands of young birches, osiers and willows alternating with reeds form a dense wall of vegetation all around the lake.
However, an old firebreak leading through the lakeshore vegetation directly to the water forms an ideal corridor for sound, connecting the hillfort slopes with the acoustic environment of the lake. The elongated lake (total area: 2.1 hectares) lies east of Sāviena Hillfort. Its banks are beginning to become boggy, with plants (sphagnum moss, cranberries, sedges, etc.) growing out from the shore and over the surface of the water, forming a dense mat several metres wide. Nevertheless, during recording the echoes bounced back unevenly, at different rates and intensities, from all sides of the lake.
Like the slopes of Sāviena Hillfort, the nearby area is also covered with a sparse forest of mature pines, except the hill to the south, which has been logged and where new trees are now growing. An area of forest about half a kilometre south of Sāviena Hillfort where the hills form a gentle wave-like structure.
They deemed a small incline covered with a mature forest of pines and spruce with lichen and bilberries and cowberries dominating the undergrowth to be the most suitable location to sing in terms of acoustic qualities.
“The End of the World” in Rožu Bog
“The End of the World”, or “Pasaules gals” is located in Sala and Sēlpils administrative parishes in the southeastern region of Latvia known as Sēlija. Even though “The End of the World” is not included in the surrounding Natura 2000 site of Rožu Bog, this unusual feature is quite rare in Latvia.
The meadows are located along the spine of the ridgeshaped peninsula and rise ten to fifteen metres above the surrounding bog. A band of mixed forest grows around the edges of the meadows and bog, forming a dense and high wall of trees. The echo on the recording most likely bounced off of these trees, while the surrounding bog landscape gave a feeling of distance and depth to the recording. The proximity of a bog was necessary for the singers to sing and respond to the calls of cranes.










