This was the worst of the duck images! I felt slightly snow blind after finishing, and we haven’t even had the first snow in Helsinki yet. Somehow, the left part (both snow and sky) was easier than the right side. I had about a third of the pieces left when I sorted them by shape, but the shades of white helped a bit even after that. Also, the cut was excellent, with some distinct shapes that helped a lot. It was less painful than I expected it to be.

The duck in this painting looks happy and not at all cranky, and I also think it’s a female duck (has hair in a bun and wears a skirt).

One final thing, the title. In Finnish, it’s an elaborate word game, because it has two different meanings. The Finnish title is “(Läpi) ajan, tulen ja jään”, and that can be translated either as “I drive (through), I come and I stay”, or as “Through time, fire and ice”. For the second meaning, you really need that word in parentheses.

Back to the Stenvall ducks! This is one of the very few Stenvall paintings with only an English title (most of them have Finnish titles as well). The image shows a cranky duck holding up a candle against a city with no lights. The sofa is covered with what looks like a combination of the US and Finnish flags – the stars in the US flag have been replaced with a Finnish flag. The painting is from 2003, which means this must be a reference to the Northeast blackout of 2003 – surely anything else would be too much of a coincidence. But I have no idea what – if anything – the artist is trying to say, and I also don’t understand what Finland has to do with the blackout.

This was the second time I’ve done this puzzle, I did it in 2017, and it was the first Stenvall puzzle I did. It was a few years later when I decided to collect all the puzzles. The puzzle quality is good, although the fit is quite loose, which I know many people dislike, but I don’t mind. No false fits, though!