Karelia. Lumivaara. Abandoned Lutheran church.
#karelia #lumivaara #abandoned #church #history #lutheranism
Friends, if you remember, I spent March 8th and 9th, 2020, in Karelia... On the second day, we visited the abandoned Sortavala Finnish cemetery, then the Finnish bunker in Mount Owl... We also visited the abandoned Finnish church in Lumivaara, a video of which I'm only now posting.
I'd already been to this place in 2017 and tried to convey the difference in impressions three years later... Watch, subscribe, comment, and share with friends!
Lumivaara separated from the Jaakkima parish in 1923. Accordingly, if not immediately, then some time later, the question of having its own parish church arose. Ilmari Launis was commissioned to design it. In 1935, construction of the church on Rokkanata Mountain, towering over Lumivaara, was completed. It was also consecrated on July 7th of that year. It was quite a large building, measuring just over 20 meters wide and almost 30 meters long. On the eve of the war (1939), Lumivaara had a population of 5,000. As of 2013, the population was 135.
The church's construction utilized both traditional stone construction materials—brick for the walls, vaults, and arches, wood for the rafters, door panels, and the bell tower staircase—and the latest, most modern materials of the time: galvanized metal for the roof, concrete and reinforced concrete for the building's plinth, choir lofts, and staircases, and metal profiles for the window frames. Naturally, the architect couldn't forget the material that is emblematic of this region: granite. The exterior platforms are constructed from it: one in front of the central entrance to the church from the west, and two in front of the side ones (to the north and south), leading to the altar area of the church. The granite inset above the schematized lancet entrance to the church, on which the year of its construction is engraved, is also made of granite.
To the west of the church is a traditional bell tower with a cubic base, which houses the central entrance, designed as a portal recessed toward the main church (katholikon), as if ushering us into the church even before we enter its vaults. This unique and original architectural element, in my opinion, is one of the church's highlights. Firstly, the central nave of the katholikon is covered with an elliptical vault. The two side naves, adjoining the main nave from the north and south, are semi-elliptical. That is, having passed through the schematic, pointed-elliptical entrance portal, seemingly receding into perspective, we realize we've arrived where we wanted to be—under the identical vaults of the main church building, corresponding to the entrance portal. And then, on the altar wall of the church (right before our eyes!), where the Lord is depicted (and the frescoes in the church are partially preserved), we see an identical pointed-elliptical portal, receding into the distance, which should lead us out of the church. Somewhere there, to Him. Otherwise, why is He—the Lord—depicted at the center of this portal receding into the distance? Secondly, the vaulted elliptical element, repeated many times in a wide variety of architectural details (false windows—flat recessed niches in the octagonal pillar of the belfry and the tier of bells, arched openings and windows in the longitudinal walls of the katholikon), dismembers the entire structure into a multitude of similarly small elements, somehow imperceptibly, gradually, making it a single and indivisible whole. Adjoining the main cube of the bell tower from the north and south is the western part of the main church space, containing staircases leading to the "U"-shaped choir loft, located above the narrow side aisles of the katholikon and the western part of the central nave (above the entrance). From the choir loft, a wooden staircase leads to the ringing platform, where one of the old, Finnish bells still hangs intact. The northern and southern walls of the church are reinforced by vertical, two-tiered buttresses, between which stretch lancet windows reaching heavenward. In this upward striving, toward the stars and clouds adorned with angels, the windows are supported by dormer windows on the roof. These dormer windows, along with the windows in the altar area, abundantly illuminate the central nave. Light enters the side naves from large windows between the buttresses. The church is abundantly lighted. And considering its considerable size, the soft, muted light creates an airy feeling inside. It feels as if everything... You're no longer on earth. But somewhere up there, in the clouds. From which angels will now emerge and lead you... Who knows where. Or into the bright distance. Or to the Last Judgment.
What you can see in Lumivaara cannot be seen anywhere else.