Ostara

Contribution for The Sunday Challenge #479: Anything at all to do with Easter

I wanted to challenge myself. So, I went out to shoot Viktor Jansson's sculpture Kajastus (Dawn).

By publishing the shot online, I thought I would infringe the Finnish copyright law. But I now learned some more about "freedom of panorama" concerning art in public places in Finland:

"A work of art may be reproduced in pictorial form [..] if the work is permanently placed at, or in the immediate vicinity of, a public place. If the work of art is the leading motive of the picture, the picture may not be used for the purpose of gain. (FINLEX 2005.)"

So, I assume the amateur photographer's derivative work shared here is not used for the purpose of gain (other than possible faves and praises).

And what does this photo has to do with Easter? Well, that is because:

"This Ostarā, like the Anglo-Saxon Eįstre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries. [..] Ostara, Eástre seems therefore to have been the divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could be easily adapted by the resurrection-day of the Christian's God. (Grimm 1882:290-291.)

Sources:

➽ Copyrighted monuments in Finland. Why Finnish works of art are not widely represented in Wikipedia by Vitaly Repin
➽ Copyright Act, Section 25a (821/2005) - FINLEX [PDF]
➽ Ēostre at Wikipedia
➽ Grimm, Jacob (James Steven Stallybrass Trans.) (1882). Teutonic Mythology: Translated from the Fourth Edition with Notes and Appendix Vol. I. London: George Bell and Sons. Available at Google Books.