Museum Shop

The entryway leading to the Riihisaari museum shop and customer service is an experience in itself. You will meet figures from the past and walk across our very own bed of fossils. Don’t forget to take a look at the floor hatch!

The Riihisaari museum shop offers an excellent collection of gifts and souvenirs across a wide price range, including magnets, key rings, games, postcards, sweets, t-shirts, home textiles, jewellery, and books on local history. Our impressive selection of soft toys representing Finnish wildlife delights both children and adults alike. We also sell the Finnish Museum Card.

We choose our selection with a preference for high quality local and domestic suppliers and the principles of sustainable development.

Books in English

Bird Villas in Savonlinna Created by Grave Digger Ruuskanen

Our very own bestseller book—and now something of a phenomenon—Bird Villas in Savonlinna Created by Grave Digger Ruuskanen is now also available in English.

You often hear people mourning the loss of beautiful wooden houses in cities and how they have been replaced by ugly concrete boxes. The sorrow is certainly real—even if, in time, someone will come and admire the boxes too.

In Savonlinna, the issue has been solved in an insightful way. Grave digger Marko Ruuskanen has crafted birdhouses resembling old buildings, which have been hung along the streets in places where the original houses once stood. Birds have gained new homes, and people have been given a glimpse of what the old wooden town of Savonlinna used to look like.

The book documents Ruuskanen’s extensive and culturally significant work. At the same time, it tells the stories of the original buildings, illustrated with old photographs. It offers a compact yet versatile journey through the architectural history of Savonlinna and showcases a unique art project unlike anything done elsewhere! The book can even serve as a guide for taking a walk through the town as it once was.

Bird Villas in Savonlinna Created by Grave Digger Ruuskanen was chosen as Museum Publication of the Year in 2024 and received an honourable mention in the Iittala art book competition.

Contributors: Ville Vilén, Kimmo Heikkilä, Nikke Kaartinen, 2023
Translated into English by: Kirsti Nurmela-Knox, 2025
Published by: Riihisaari – Savonlinna Museum
ISBN: 978-952-68482-5-9
128 p.
Price: 25 €

Secret Seitsonen – Urpo Seitsonen’s Photographs of Savonlinna

“Life is like a camera, focus on what’s important.”

Urpo Seitsonen was a photographer and the owner of the Foto-Posse studio, and well-known to people of Savonlinna. He photographed the highlights and portraits of many of the town’s inhabitants. Seitsonen also documented images of Savonlinna, which was changing due to urbanisation and the economic boom especially in the 1960’s.

Seitsonen’s camera was just as eager to capture the sad loss of the old buildings as the arrival of shiny new modern buildings. His studio was in a street level shop in the heart of the town in those turbulent times. Buildings were, however, not the only important subjects of Seitsonen’s photographs; he also took pictures of events, little moments in life, and people. Like the great photographer he was, he saw more through his camera lens than his contemporaries.

This book is dedicated to the life work of Urpo Seitsonen, and to photographer Timo Seitsonen, who understood the importance of his father’s photographs and brought them for us to see.

Ville Vilén

Abstract of the author’s foreword for the reader.

Created by: Ville Vilén and Kimmo Heikkilä, 2022
English translations: Kirsti Nurmela-Knox
Published by: Riihisaari – Savonlinna Museum
ISBN: 978-952-68482-2-8
144 p.
Price: 40 €

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