The design contest for a new coin commemorating A. Nordenskiöld has ended and a winner chosen. The winning entry was by Reijo Paavilainen, who has designed a number of other recent commemorative coins. Here is the design:



Here is the press release :

Thanks! Interesting design - I like the "icy" style. As for that euro-star logo, well, in my opinion this year's motto "European Achievements" is very vague. I wonder about the future of that program ...

Christian

I was able to get some photos taken of some of the other entries. I have not had a proper chance to review the photos as to quality, so some may be blurry, dark, etc. I have been extremely busy recently and it will continue through this week as I have to study for an exam. Hopefully I will be able to attack this over the weekend or next week some time.

No need to attack - we tend to be peaceful here. But thanks for doing that! I am surely interested in seeing the other designs. You may have a point though in that exams could possibly sometimes be theoretically more important than coins ...

Christian

Another picture of the coin design is here; seems that a few (minor) details were modified. The coin looks good - what I find a little strange though is the English(-only) text "North-East Passage". Must admit that I had not really noticed that in the first picture you posted ...



And here http://www.mint.fi/en/press-releases/1747/ is the press release about the coin being issued.

Christian

I guess by putting "North East Passage" in English they make it marketable to those of us without the Sisu?

You may have a point there. I still find it odd that it's English only. But maybe using English and Finnish and Swedish would have made the design look too busy or cluttered ...

Christian

it's all about the design for me.

Not only is the text there, but it was in many of the other entries as well. I can only speculate as to why it is in english. Perhaps for practical purposes; it was easier to go with only English as opposed to putting both the Finnish and Swedish text equivalent on the coin. Or perhaps the english phrase "north-east passage" was common for the time and most explorers used it then?

Some photos of the other entrants as promised. Since I just casually take these photos, they are not of the best quality. The first three were also the top three in the competition. The next two received honorable mention. The rest are random photos of some -though not all- of the other entrants.

The images are paired up-first with the obverse then reverse. There is one image with both obv and rev in the same image.
Slide show

Thanks for taking and posting the pictures, Harri! In my opinion the best design won. Well, actually the side that I like best is this one http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a243/Sir...ls/5018c010.jpg ... Would be great for a medal, but I don't know what it would look like on a (lower relief) coin.

This one http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a243/Sir...ls/cfcd5421.jpg looks very interesting because of the "aerial view" effect. And this design http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a243/Sir...ls/981b7dcb.jpg is also nice but maybe a little too overdramatic.

Christian