I Dreamed About the World

Anna Lehespalu

2019 -2022 — Iceland, Greenland, Estonia

About this series

Some say that if you whistle at the Northern Lights, they will dance for you. Some say don’t whistle when the northern lights are high, let them lift you into the luminous sky. 
In Sami Northern lights are called guovssahas, the audible light. That refers to the electroacoustic sound heard under the polar lights. In other words, it’s an audiovisual experience. There is a belief among Indigenous peoples of the North that spirits are seen in the aurora, and Inuit mythology tells of spirits kicking around a walrus’ skull similar to soccer. It is the ballgame of the departed souls that appears as the aurora borealis, and is heard as a whistling, rustling, crackling sound. The noise is made by the souls as they run across the frost-hardened snow of the heavens. If one happens to be out alone at night when the aurora borealis is visible, and hears this whistling sound, one has only to whistle in return and the light will come nearer, out of curiosity.” (Knut Rasmussen in 1932 about Greenlandic Inuit belief)

Photographer: Anna Lehespalu
Nationality: Estonian
Based in: Tallinn, Estonia
Instagram: @annalehespalu

Anna Lehespalu is an Estonian visual artist. She was born in Tallinn, Estonia. She studied cinema at Baltic Film and Media School from 2012 to 2014, then at Escola Superior Artistica do Porto in 2015. She uses photography and video in her practice. Music has a significant influence on her work. She discovered photography and video as tools to visualise and document her emotions. Her process is intuitive and helps her to research and understand the human mind, particularly her own. She spent a long time in Nordic countries (Iceland and Greenland), whose landscapes and isolation strongly influence her work.