Every self-respecting city should have at least one equestrian statue. In Helsinki the role of the bronze horseman is admirably filled by Marshal Carl Gustaf Mannerheim who, according to national myth, saved Finland's in-dependence at least three times.      In 1918, in newly independent Finland, this snobbish officer of the Russian tsar led the White army, and defeated, in the Finnish civil war, the Red hirelings of Soviet Russia ­ his former fatherland. In the Second World War, as chief commander of the army, Mannerheim repelled the overwhelming attacks of the Russians without for a moment compromising his careful manicure routine.      In gratitude for this, a statue to him was erected in the centre of the capital, whence he still surveys the most important entry to Helsinki. This statue has been regarded as sacred. For this reason, too, it has constantly been the object of attack by attention-seeking intellectuals. 'When you put a penny in the Mannerheim statue, it starts trotting,' quipped the poet Pentti Saarikoski in the 1960s. The writer Jörn Donner, on the other hand, suggested the statue be mounted on wheels so that it could handily be moved from place to place.      Donner's suggestion acquired a new relevance when the American architect Steven Holl won the design competition for a new museum of contemporary art. Construction was begun too close to the Mannerheim statue, provoking old war-horses of the human variety to roll out of their nursing homes and demand that the entire museum project be put on ice, fearing that the iconic stature of the equestrian statue would be compromised when juxtaposed with contemporary art. Tens of thousands of signatures accompanied their petition.      Steven Holl had aptly named his museum building Kiasma, or crossing-point.      Construction of the splendid museum building was, however, duly completed. It opened its doors to its café, its theatre and, of course, its exhibition spaces, from which life also flows out of the museum, to the surrounding streets. Once again, for the first time in many years, the accidental passer-by notices Mannerheim's equestrian statue, whose shadow etches itself against the shining metal wall of the museum.      Modern architecture and the traditional monument are in dialogue, so that both take on new meanings. The equestrian statue suddenly looks like a familiar, sympathetic figure whose appearance on the Helsinki street scene tells of the ending of an age: beside the museum of contemporary art trudges the knight of the sorrowful countenance, Don Quixote. To me he means the birth of a poetic consciousness.      I should like to give the horse a gentle pat on the nose, and offer it a lump of sugar.      Jyrki Kiiskinen      Editor-in-chief   Top of page