Photos: Flurry of interest for Finnish snow art work

Espoo, Finland: At ground level it looks like a mess of footprints across a snowy golf course, but from above, a stunningly intricate piece of snow art comes into view.

Measuring 160 metres across, it is believed to be the Nordic country's largest snow work, and has seen creator Janne Pyykko deluged with interest and media requests since he led a team of 12 volunteers to tread out the design at the weekend.

"It was a social challenge for me to explain everything and keep everybody enthusiastic about the project," the IT consultant told AFP, "and it worked!"

Inspired to "create something beautiful" in the 30 centimetre (nearly 12 inch) deep snow, Pyykko designed a geometric image made up of interlocking circles on his computer, and recruited collaborators from a Finnish snowshoeing Facebook group.

The group followed a printed-out map and used ropes to trace out perfect circles in a pattern reminiscent of needlepoint on a snow-covered driving range in Espoo, on the outskirts of the capital Helsinki.

"We spent three hours laughing together and walking," volunteer Elena Ceccarelli told AFP in the minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit) sunshine." Any more than that and it would have started to get cold, but Janne was very good with the timing," she added.

"While we were doing this it was very hard to understand what this art will look like," snowshoeing enthusiast Petri Teralainen told AFP. "So it was great to see the picture from above, it was perfect."

Pyykko says he has further projects in mind, though "a bit smaller, perhaps". "But because people are now so enthusiastic, I think there will be new snow drawings in the coming weeks."