My roadtrip east took a holy turn when we saw a sign for Valamo monastery coming up ahead. I knew pretty much nothing more about the place other than that it has a long history, and one of my favourite gins comes from there, that was enough for me to get curious.
While there was still about 20 kilometers to the monastery, I used the ever so trusty Wikipedia to read up on history of the orthodox monastery of Valamo, with its history dating back all the way to 1717. The original Valamo monastery was located in the biggest island in lake Laatokka (I'm using Finnish names in this post btw), its northern parts used to belong to Finland until we lost it to Russia during the wars. Monks fled from the monastery during the Winter War, with some of the precious artefacts and writings.
I found this to be very interesting since my grandfather is from Laatokka and fled too when he was little. The other interesting little fact was that the older monks that fled from Laatokka, were taken to safety in a small town in central Finland, very near where my homehome is. After moving about in Finland for a bit, they found a new location for their monastery in Heinävesi and established the new Valamo monastery in 1940.
The original Valamo monastery in Laatokka is still standing after the wars, but it was not used for its original purpose for some 50 years, but worked as a hospital and army base under the Soviet Union, and wasn't kept up too well. The monastery was back in business 1990. I wish to visit it some day, mostly because a part of my heritage is from that region.
Valamo monastery area is really gorgeous, all surrounded by forests and fields, lush green this time of the year. The main church is easily recognised for the onion dome traditional to Orthodox churches, but most of the other buildings are timber frame and wood clad, fitting well into the Finnish countryside. I'd very happily live in a far like this.
The brotherhood in Valamo monastery is very small these days and the place was really struggling for a long time, trying to get by with donations and agriculture. They are doing a bit better now with tourism and distillery being the main sources of income for Valamo.
Our wonderful country is pretty good but sometimes it feels like it's still prohibition when it comes to our alcohol laws. The hard liquors they produce in the monastery’s distillery, can not be sold in there, Alko (government owned liquor store) has the monopoly on hard alcohol. The monastery can sell the wine they make, but for the wine they wanna use in their church service, they have to ship to Alko's main warehouse, and order from there. Fucking ridiculous. I did buy a small bottle of dessert wine and honey as a souvenir for myself, I'll let you know how the wine is when I pop it open.
Overall, Valamo was one of the most interesting historical places I've ever visited in Finland, even though I'm really a pagan and don't care much about religion. I only peeked in at the church since my shorts were super short and I did not want to put on a scarf and a skirt they would have provided at the church entrance.
