the spire of the Tampere cathedral
We have already seen a few curious churches, amongst them the dug-out Temppeliaukio Kirkko in Helsinki and the spectacularly modern-design St. Henry’s Ecumenical chapel outside Turko. But now we are in for some more traditional countryside churches, as well as the fabulous cathedral in Tampere, taking us back to the Art Nouveau era.
the church is Sastamala
well-tended cemetery with iron crosses
well-restored window
the wooden bell tower (perhaps)
First, just outside Sastamala, we found the Saint Mary’s Church, a stone church built at the end of the 15th Century. It was closed – nothing in Finland opens before 11 am – but the outside was impressive enough, as well as the cemetery in the church yard. Lots of graves go back to the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, but are obviously still well looked after. Some have new grave stones, even with flowers, some maintain their old, now rusted, metal crosses. A little away from the church is a wooden tower, what we interpret as the wooden bell tower of the church – something we have seen before, in several Eastern European countries. But there is no indication around the church that this is indeed the case. Nice tower, though.
the cathedral in Tampere
Art Nouveau door of the cathedral
Then Tampere, where we should have ended up last night. Good that we didn’t, because it didn’t look such an interesting town after all. But it is home to the Tampere Cathedral, built between 1902 and 1907 in what they call here the National Romantic style, which has a lot of Art Nouveau in it. Inside, it is the frescos that impress, in a fairly bare church – Lutheran, to be sure. There is all around the central area a ‘Garland of Life’, a string carried by naked child-like apostles in different poses. The altar piece represents the Resurrection, but in a similar style, lots of naked and white-clad figures as if in a dream. Individual frescos are equally weird, with skeletal figures tending plants, or are they graves? A serpent on the ceiling, horse riders in the stained glass windows, all very unusual for church decoration, and no doubt very controversial at the time. In other words, not to be missed!!
the Resurrection painting
and the skeletons tending plants, or graves
inside the cathedral, the Garland of Life painted all around
a lovely lake just outside Petajavesi
the wooden church across the water
We moved on to spend the night at Jyvaskyla, another thirteen-in-a-dozen town. The main objective traveling in this direction was for visiting the Gösta Serlachius museum, about which more later. But before Jyvaskyla, in the village of Petajavesi, we encountered a real wooden church, completed in 1765. Unfortunately, it was closed, too; it is winter season now, and the church only opens by prior appointment, starting with a ‘door opening fee’ of 20 Euros, which is waived if you come with a group of between 1 and 10 persons, then you just pay a flat fee of 80 Euros. Apparently, the inside is real nice, too, but we had to content with the outside only, because we didn’t have an appointment (and in any case were not going to fork out 80 Euros for the two of us).
Next: Gösta Serlachius Museum, in Mantta
the the full view of the church
