The competition was the "initial impulse" for The Building of the Boat, the 1893–1894 project in which Sibelius had aspired to write a mythological, Finnish-language  on the subject of Väinämöinen. But Sibelius's opera foundered on the shoals of self-doubt and artistic evolution.
Sibelius's ambitious project "The Building of the Boat," intended as a mythological Finnish opera about Väinämöinen, faced difficulties due to self-doubt and artistic evolution. The competition served as an initial impetus for this endeavor.