Canoeists battling octopus help NWT snow carvers win Finnish medal

Three artists from Yellowknife have won bronze – and nearly snagged the audience choice award – at a snow sculpture competition in Finland.

Niki Mckenzie, Kris Schlagintweit and Ruth Bowen represented the UK and Canada at last month’s Nallikari Snow Fest in Oulu, Finland.

Their entry in the competition was titled Aotearoa, the Māori name for New Zealand, where Mckenzie is from. The sculpture featured two canoeists battling an octopus and was inspired by the traditional story of how the first ancestors came to Aotearoa.

“I really like to draw on my Māori heritage for stories. My people were all storytellers,” Mckenzie said.

In the legend, Muturangi, a high priest who was banished by villagers, had a pet octopus that was taking all of the villagers’ fish. Navigator Kupe, accompanied by his wife, then decided to hunt the giant octopus, chasing it across the ocean and discovering Aotearoa.

The NWT-based artists competed alongside nine other international teams at the Nallikari Snow Fest, with a three-member jury evaluating the entries.

The judges’ top prize went to Spain while the Czech team placed second. The Polish team won the artists’ choice award, while the audience choice award went to team Finland – three votes ahead of the NWT.

“It felt very, very cool,” Mckenzie said of winning third place, adding she “squealed like a little girl” when she found out.

“The field of artists was so strong. The works were all incredible. And just to be a player on that field was enough for me, and then to also be placed was a huge honour.”

She said placing third means the team will be invited back to next year’s competition.

“We were so excited to be included with the first and second place winners in the judges’ eyes,” Schlagintweit added. “They had hard choices to make and we were absolutely thilled to be presented some hardware.”

Finnish spirit ‘similar to Yellowknife’

Bowen said four days spent sawing, shaping, chiselling, chipping and shovelling snow were worth it. She said a particular challenge were the suckers on the octopus’ tentacles, which involved a four-part process.

This was the team’s first time at the competition in Nallikari, a seaside resort near Oulu city centre. Oulu, home to more than 210,000 people, is the European Capital of Culture for 2026.

Schlagintweit described taking a beautiful five-hour train ride from Helsinki to Oulu “through snow-dusted forests, snow-covered fields and pastures, and through various sizes of towns, villages and small cities.”

“Finland is really, really amazing,” Mckenzie said. “The community spirit there felt very similar to the Yellowknife community spirit.”

She added that she enjoyed Finnish humour, people and culture.

Schlagintweit and Mckenzie have been carving snow together for a decade.

The pair cut their teeth at the Snowkings’ Winter Festival in Yellowknife and won the people’s choice award at the 2022 Kiruna Snow Festival in Sweden. They have also carved together in Austria and Greenland.

“Volunteering and working at the castle gave us exciting chances to learn among other creative people, working with very high quality snow, and we remain grateful for that,” Schlagintweit said.

“Yellowknife winters are long and if you don’t find something fun to do outside, they can be incredibly oppressive,” Mckenzie said of what keeps her going.

“I’m very lucky that I happened to fall in with the Snowcastle crew early on in my Yellowknife life and it’s turned into a whole new world for me.

“If you choose not to find joy in snow, you will have less joy in your life – but still the same amount of snow.”

YK’s own contest begins

Schlagintweit said she likes working with a team to “transform 1,000 cubic feet of pristine snow from a cube into a sculpture.” She described snow carving “as a magical process that celebrates winter and creativity.”

“I cannot think of another material that is so suitable for large-scale, quick and ephemeral creativity,” she said.

Mckenzie said Yellowknife has some of the best snow in the world and the snow in Oulu was “almost as good.” Schlagintweit said carving conditions at the Nallikari festival were “perfect” with the temperature between -12C and -20C.

Mckenzie is the artistic director of the 2026 Snowkings’ Winter Festival – or Snowking XXXI – in Yellowknife. The festival gives its workers winter-related monikers, and hers is Queen Van Snow.

Nine teams are set to compete in the festival’s 10th international snow carving symposium.

Artists from across the globe will carve giant blocks of snow into magical sculptures outside the Snowcastle on Yellowknife Bay from March 5 to 8. People can cast their vote for the people’s choice award as the festival continues throughout the month of March.

“I’m really excited to bring everything that I’ve learned from these competitions all over the world into our symposium, to sort-of level us up and get us on par with the rest of them,” Mckenzie said.