HELD IN TURKU AUGUST 26-30, 2013 Excursions At the Conference on Church Archaeology in the Baltic Sea Region Text and Photos by Markus Hiekkanen if not mentioned otherwise. Plans: In Hiekkanen, Markus (2007) Suomen keskiajan kivikirkot, SKS, Helsinki. Layout: Tanja Ratilainen.
1 DESCRIPTIONS OF THE EXCURSIONS MONDAY 26th Cathedral of Turku The Cathedral of Turku has been characterized as the national shrine of Finland and since the 17 th century it has drawn the interest of scholars. The present building consists of several parts, from around 1400 to the 18 th century (the length of the present church is c. 85 m). The first parts were two consecutive sacristies, built against a wooden cathedral and later removed, while the oldest, still standing part is the nave with three aisles (later the main aisle was made higher as to give the church the form of a basilica) from c. 1400 or a little earlier. Later the main building was enlarged towards E with a large choir. At the same time a tower was built against the W wall of the nave. During and after these main building phases chapels were built on almost all sides of the church between the 1450s and 1520s, which caused that no part of the nave can be seen outside the church. The number of chapels is 10 and there are also a sacristy and two porches. Most of the chapels are covered with different kinds of rib vaults. The only fragments of wall paintings are preserved either in the aisle vaults or in the chapels. Even medieval wooden sculptures are few, mostly because of the many fires, which have destroyed the church, the latest being in 1827. During the restoration of the church in the 1910s and the 1920s large scale excavations were carried out in which important structural and architecture details were found. Figure 1. Plan of the Cathedral.
2 TUESDAY 27th Holy Ghost Church The ruins of the Holy Ghost Church were revealed in archaeological excavations in 1960s and 1980s. However, the evaluation of the results and the dating project was realized only in spring 2013. The mixed reality -experience of the Holy Ghost church includes both inside and outside presentation of the church. Mixed reality covers both virtual and augmented reality solutions. Building of the Holy Ghost brick church begun in 1588, but was never entirely completed. The church, however, was probably in use a couple of years until it was severely damaged in a fire in 1593. Then the ruins were used as a cemetery. Probably no other stone or brick churches were erected in the 16 th century Finland. In 1650s the last visible remains of the church were cleared to make way for the realization of the new street plan of the town. (Kari Uotila) THURSDAY 29th Sastamala The Congregation of Sastamala is one of the oldest in Satakunta founded presumably between 1225 and 1250. Iron Age (in Finland c. 0 1200 AD) cemeteries have been found in the vicinity of the present church one being on the spot of the church. The first churches of Sastamala were made of wood; the first being from the time of founding the congregation, the second from the middle of the 14 th century and the third from around 1450. The present stone church, with a rectangular plan of c. 37 x 19 m was built between 1497 and 1505. Outside the northern wall there was the sacristy, now a ruin, but another was erected in the 1510s to the east of the first one. The plan of the church indicates that it was to be vaulted in two aisles, but this never happened. In 1913 the church was left out of use because of the new church was built in the village of Karkku. Presumably because of being unfinished no wall paintings have been made inside, but there are couple of paintings in the choir windows outer jams. There is a nice collection of wooden sculpture from the 14 th to the 16 th century in the church as well as a funt from the 13 th century. Figure 2. Plan of Sastamala Church.
3 Tyrvää The parish of Tyrvää was part of Sastamala and became independent in the beginning of the 15 th century. Because the present stone church was erected between 1506 and 1516 only perhaps one or two generations of wooden churches have stood on the place before that. Also in Tyrvää there are traces of Iron Age inhabitation in the vicinity of the church and even under the church floor several penannular brooches from 1000 1100s were found in the excavations in 1964. The church building is smaller than Sastamala (c. 27 x 15 m) with a sacristy on the northern and a porch on the southern side. All the windows and doorways have preserved their original form as well as the gable ornaments. The interior was planned to be vaulted with brick vaults, but because of economic problems the plan was never carried out. The church was left to its own in the 1850s when the new church of Vammala was erected. In 1997 parts of the church were destroyed in arson, but all the wooden parts were rebuilt. There are some interesting paintings on the outer walls. Figure 3. Plan of Tyrvää Church. Kokemäki The legendary missionary bishop of Finland from the 1150s, Henry, is said to have spent his last night in Kokemäki parish from where he travelled south to Köyliö area to be killed there by a peasant named Lalli. Since the Middle Ages a modest log cottage in Kokemäki has been respected as the place where he stayed and it stands even today surrounded by a memorial chapel of brick built in the 1850s. There are logs from several periods from the 1400s onwards, but none that go back to the 12 th century.
4 Figure 4. Timber building in Kokemäki (Source: http://www.nba.fi/fi/file/711/pyhan-henrikin-kappeli.pdf). Rauma The town of Rauma seems to have been founded in the 1410s even though it received its privileges only in the 1440s. It is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites. In Rauma two churches were built during the Middle Ages namely the Church of the Franciscan Convent (Holy Cross) and the town church (Holy Trinity). The Franciscan church was built in the 1510s just outside the town. The plan (c. 24 x 18 m) is asymmetrical with a choir to the south of the nave. A long building part, presumably the sacristy extends towards south. Medieval paintings have preserved in the choir and there is a beautiful altar piece from the middle of the 1400s. No archaeological excavations have been carried out in the church itself, but to the N and the S the remains of the house or the cloister of the mendicants have been sought for, though without results.
5 Figure 5. Plan of the Holy Cross Church in Rauma (Fransiscan convent). FRIDAY Koroinen From the middle of the 12 th century the center of the missionary bishopric of Finland seems to have situated in Nousiainen, c. 20 km N of present Turku. In 1229 a letter from the pope to certain ecclesiastical dignitaries gave them the responsibility to relocate the center to a more suitable place. According to the most reliable interpretation the new place was Koroinen, a cape between the rivers Aurajoki and Vähäjoki c. 1,6 km to the NE of the present Cathedral of Turku. Koroinen was the seat of the bishop until to the late 1200s, when it was moved to the newly founded town of Turku. The place was not abandoned, but stayed as a curia of the bishop until the late 14 th century. At the turn of the 20 th century important archaeological excavations were carried out there. Remains of a wooden church, two ruins of stone buildings and a vast amount of graves and artefacts were discovered. Since 2012 the material has been studied by a group of archaeologists (Janne Harjula, Visa Immonen and Tanja Ratilainen) Figure 6. Plan of the Koroinen Church.
6 Figure 7. The site of Koroinen (source: Google Maps). Maaria The former parish church of Maaria is situated only 0,9 km from Koroinen to N and thus 2,5 km from the Cathedral. The parish was presumably founded between 1225 and 1250 perhaps even a few years earlier than Koroinen and its first churches, chronologically following each other, must have been made of wood. The present stone church from the 1440s has a rectangular plan (c. 34 x 16 m), a sacristy to the north, a porch to the south and a small tower to the east. In the nave there are cross vaults and, in the chancel, elaborate star vaults. The walls and the vaults are covered with paintings, partly enigmatic in nature and difficult to interpret, made perhaps by the builders of the church and not by professional painters. Figure 8. Plan of the Maaria Church.
Nousiainen The area surrounding the present church is rich with tradition of St Henry and the place has been characterized to have functioned as a mission center in c. 1150 1229 (see above Koroinen). The first church (or churches) from this period must have been of wood as well as those later ones, which probably also had the status of episcopal see. After the see was moved to Koroinen, Nousiainen became a parish church. The present stone church (c 26 x 15 m) was built in the 1420s or 1430s according to an elaborate plan, the only one in its kind in medieval Finland. There is a reason to believe that it was made because the diocese wanted to emphasize the importance of St Henry as his burial place which is firmly anchored to the past of the church. In 1429 (?) a beautiful sarcophagus, made in present Belgium, was placed over the grave. The side plates as well as the cover, all cast in brass, are covered with episodes of Henry s life and martyrdom. It is one of the most important pictorial contributions of medieval Finland. On the walls and vaults of the church the same kind of builder paintings can be seen as in Maaria. During the archaeological excavations several hundred coins and other artifacts were found, but nothing in the grave of St Henry. 7 Figure 9. Plan of the Nousiainen Church. Vehmaa Kappelmäki A few km to E of the medieval stone church of Vehmaa is a place called Kappelmäki or Chapel Hill, where remains of a churchyard wall and, in the middle, the remains of a small building can be seen. The place has attracted the interest of the scholars and it has been interpreted to have been one of the very early points of parish organization in Finland, probably from the 12 th century. In the first years of the 2000s a new hypothesis was presented according to which the remains were not Iron Age or Early Medieval period, but they belonged to a later phase in which the parish of Vehmaa was partly divided into new chapels either in the 1400s or later. This hypothesis was put into test in 2006 as the whole church remain was excavated by MA Jouni Taivainen (Department of Archaeology, University of Turku). While there were very little left of the interior the artifacts found were clearly from the Early Modern Period. Especially the coins found support the new hypothesis as none of them are earlier than the 1550s.
8 Figure 10. Excavations at Kappelmäki in 2005. Naantali The Bridgettine Convent of Naantali was founded in 1438 and in 1442 it settled in its present place. According to the privileges of the convent also a town was founded to support it and its visitors. There is very little left of the convent above the ground, but very interesting archaeological finds have been made in the 1870s and later in 1960s and 2000s. The first church building of which remains were found during the archaeological excavations in 1963 1964, was made of wood, perhaps already in 1443 1444. The present stone church was erected with an overall plan though with alterations mostly in the 1480s as one of the most monumental stone churches of the medieval Diocese of Turku. The nave is quadrangle in plan and it measures c. 44 x 29 meters. To the west there is the choir of the monks (a tower was erected in 1794 1797 above it) and to the east that of the nuns. There are only a few wall paintings from the Middle Ages. A fine altar piece, made around 1500, is standing in the eastern part of the nave. Figure 11. Plan of the Naantali Church.
Figure 12. Sites on Thursday. 9
Figure 13. Sites on Friday. 10