Lutheran Icons

As some of you may recall, the department I'm in, Central Eurasian studies, has Hungarian and Finnish as well as Mongolian, Central Asian, Turkish, and Tibetan studies. So in our departmental office we often have journals, posters, and things from Finland lying around.

Finland is a fascinating area, where Swedish-based Lutheranism met Russian-based Orthodoxy; it's been a major site of Lutheran-Orthodox dialogue (which is seen in this book; reviews here and here). The latest issue of Universitas Helsingiensis has an article on Lutheran icons that may be of interest to some of my readers. (Like, Chris, I'm sure Nokia needs more soft-ware engineers!) Unfortunately the picture I've pasted here is the only one on the web site (the dead-tree version is lavishly illustrated). But the article by Arja-Leena Paavola (gotta love those double vowels!) is a brief summary of the Juha Malmisalo's dissertation, which you can purchase on line.