Valaam Monastery
Interesting facts
- According to legend, the Apostle Andrew sailed across Ladoga and set up a stone cross on Valaam's hills, on the spot now occupied by the Resurrection skete.
- In the early twentieth century the monks set out to make the island a New Jerusalem, naming places Gethsemane, Kedron, Zion and the Mount of Olives.
- A bell named after Saint Andrew and weighing 1,000 poods, about 16 tonnes, first rang from the monastery belfry in December 2005.
- Six monks returned to the island on 13 December 1989, the feast day of Saint Andrew the First-Called.
- Monks leaving in 1940 carried the original Valaam Icon of the Mother of God to Finland, where it remains at New Valamo.
- Under Finnish rule the services switched from Church Slavonic to Finnish and to the Gregorian calendar, sparking disputes among the monks for decades.
- In 1940 the empty monastery buildings were used to house a Soviet school for boatswains and ship's boys.
- Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow had visited Valaam several times as a child, when the island belonged to Finland.
- The skete of the Prophet Elijah on Lembos island, about 10 km east of the monastery, was destroyed in the 1970s and rebuilt in 2006.
- Valaam is a stauropegic monastery, answering directly to the Patriarch of Moscow rather than to a local bishop.
Why it is worth it
Valaam Monastery stands on a rocky, pine-covered island in the north of Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe, with its cathedral at the centre of a square of monastic buildings and smaller hermitages, or sketes, scattered across coves and outlying islands. The archipelago counts more than fifty islands with a combined area of 36 square kilometres; Valaam, the largest, gives the monastery its name.
Its beginnings are wrapped in tradition. Local legend credits two monks, Sergius and Herman, with the founding, sometimes placing it as early as the 10th century; historians favour the end of the 14th, and a manuscript found in 1989 points to the years around 1389–1393, under Archbishop Ioann II of Novgorod. Standing on the frontier between Orthodox Novgorod and Sweden, the community paid for its position: Swedish troops attacked in 1578, and after a later raid the island lay deserted from 1611 to 1715. Rebuilt on a grand scale in the 18th century, Valaam passed in 1812 to the Grand Duchy of Finland and after 1917 became the leading monastery of the Finnish Orthodox Church. In 1940, during the Winter War, about 150 monks left for Heinävesi in Finland, where their community lives on as New Valamo. The old monastery was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1989 and has since been restored.
Much of what stands today is 19th-century work. At the invitation of Hegumen Damaskin, the architect Aleksey Gornostayev rebuilt the monastery and its hermitages, reviving the tented roofs of the Russian North and pairing them with Romanesque arches and vaults; his work includes the All Saints skete (1850), the St Nicholas skete at the mouth of the Monastery Bay (1853) and the St John the Baptist skete (1858–61). The Transfiguration Cathedral, built by Ivan Silin from 1887, holds two churches, one above the other. Emperors Alexander I and Alexander II came here, as did Tchaikovsky and Mendeleev. The monastery also has its own music, the Valaam chant, a two-part singing that sets a sustained drone in the Byzantine manner beneath diatonic melodies close to old Russian znamenny chant.
Getting there
Valaam lies in the northern part of Lake Ladoga in the Republic of Karelia and is reached by water. The nearest town on the mainland is Sortavala, about 38 km away; boats also sail to the island from St Petersburg. The nearest major airport is Pulkovo Airport (LED) in St Petersburg, about 181 km away.
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From the encyclopaedia
The Valaam Monastery is a stauropegic Orthodox monastery in Russian Karelia, located on Valaam, the largest island in Lake Ladoga, the largest lake in Europe.
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