Gossip Mirrors, Porvoo
As I wrote in my previous post, last weekend I went to Porvoo. It's a lovely place full of charming buildings, cobbled nooks and wooden crannies.
But perhaps the most intriguing were the strange mirrors that were mounted on metal legs jutting out from house windows and into the street.
Here's a photo.
Further investigation (Google) explained that they were Gossip Mirrors.
In the UK we have Curtain Twitchers, the stereotypically pointy-faced old women standing at their net curtains waiting to pass judgement on the neighbours' comings and/or goings.
Presumably in Porvoo, some gossip also had the mind of Archimedes and cunning of Edison and decided that being nosy would be much easier if mirrors were mounted outside the windows allowing for easier viewing and greater range.
This is all supposition on my part. Perhaps the mirrors were for Submarine captains on shore-leave scared of the vastness of the world when not viewed through a periscope. Or perhaps the Porvoo winters were just too cold to risk hanging around by the window for too long, better to stay next to the fire like a cat ready to react to a flash of a movement in the mirror.
Who knows? But fair play to these nosy pioneers who forwent the normally secretive peeping of the gossip and instead badgered their husbands into the workshop to forge metal mounts then told them exactly where to mount them and sent the eldest son out to pretend to be a sneaking ne'er-do-well whilst they got everything lined up.
I guess kids today wouldn't believe how difficult it was to be a psychopath before the invention of Facebook.
N.B. It's probably terribly sexist of me to suggest that this is all about women being gossips. Maybe the system was devised by the man of the house hiding from debt collectors. Maybe it is also sexist to suggest that it was just the men that handled (however badly) the finances of the house. If so, I apologise and offer a final (hopefully) non-sexist suggestion that the mirrors were for looking out for angry bears. Male or female. Or Trans.
But perhaps the most intriguing were the strange mirrors that were mounted on metal legs jutting out from house windows and into the street.
Here's a photo.
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| Gossip Mirror, Porvoo |
Further investigation (Google) explained that they were Gossip Mirrors.
In the UK we have Curtain Twitchers, the stereotypically pointy-faced old women standing at their net curtains waiting to pass judgement on the neighbours' comings and/or goings.
Presumably in Porvoo, some gossip also had the mind of Archimedes and cunning of Edison and decided that being nosy would be much easier if mirrors were mounted outside the windows allowing for easier viewing and greater range.
This is all supposition on my part. Perhaps the mirrors were for Submarine captains on shore-leave scared of the vastness of the world when not viewed through a periscope. Or perhaps the Porvoo winters were just too cold to risk hanging around by the window for too long, better to stay next to the fire like a cat ready to react to a flash of a movement in the mirror.
Who knows? But fair play to these nosy pioneers who forwent the normally secretive peeping of the gossip and instead badgered their husbands into the workshop to forge metal mounts then told them exactly where to mount them and sent the eldest son out to pretend to be a sneaking ne'er-do-well whilst they got everything lined up.
I guess kids today wouldn't believe how difficult it was to be a psychopath before the invention of Facebook.
N.B. It's probably terribly sexist of me to suggest that this is all about women being gossips. Maybe the system was devised by the man of the house hiding from debt collectors. Maybe it is also sexist to suggest that it was just the men that handled (however badly) the finances of the house. If so, I apologise and offer a final (hopefully) non-sexist suggestion that the mirrors were for looking out for angry bears. Male or female. Or Trans.
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