Magnus Enckell was born in 1870 and grew up in Hamina, in the Kymenlaakso province. He was the youngest of six to his parents, a docent of Greek and vicar Carl Wilhelm Enckell and his second wife, Alexandra Fredrika Appelberg. Carl Wilhelm didn’t think Hamina would offer appropriate school education for his youngest son, so in 1881 Magnus was enrolled at the Borgå Lyceum in Porvoo. Magnus was a withdrawn child, and only at Borgå Lyceum he made his first proper friend, Yrjö Hirn, who had a great influence on him. Hirn became later known as an aesthete and a literature scholar. Magnus Enckell was interested in drawing from an early age on, but it was the cultured atmosphere of Porvoo and especially the acquaintance with Albert Edelfelt...