Qualla: St. Olaf's Church, Ulvila

St. Olaf's Church, Ulvila: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe K., CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1932 the parish of Ulvila threw a party for its church's six hundredth birthday. Fifty years later it threw another one for the six hundred and fiftieth. On the best current evidence, the building was not yet five hundred years old on either occasion. Few churches in Finland have had their age revised so often, so publicly, or so painfully, and the argument says as much about Finnish archaeology as it does about the low grey building standing among the birches two kilometres outside modern Ulvila.

Image: Joe K. | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. Olaf's Church, Ulvila: A Birthday Nobody Can Agree On

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pihamies, CC BY-SA 4.0. The trouble began with a plan to celebrate. In the 1920s the archaeologist Juhani Rinne dated the stone church to just after a fire that destroyed its wooden predecessor in 1429, and the parish set about organising five-hundredth-anniversary festivities for 1929. Iikka Kronqvist ...

Image: Pihamies | CC BY-SA 4.0

St. Olaf's Church, Ulvila: The Town That Isn't There

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Urjanhai, CC BY-SA 3.0. King Albert of Sweden granted Ulvila a town charter on 7 February 1365, making it one of only six medieval towns in Finland and the third oldest. The Kokemäenjoki still reached the sea here then, and the trading post at its mouth was one of the two most important markets in the r...

Image: Urjanhai | CC BY-SA 3.0

St. Olaf's Church, Ulvila: The Master from Dalarna

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pihamies, CC BY-SA 4.0. Around 1495 Olof Drake, who owned the nearby Isokartano farm, hired a master builder thought to have come from Dalarna in Sweden. The sacristy went up first, the nave either side of 1500, the porch last at about 1510 — a single coherent plan carried through in one campaign, which...

Image: Pihamies | CC BY-SA 4.0

St. Olaf's Church, Ulvila: Fourteen Hundred and Seventy-Four Silver Coins

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pihamies, CC BY-SA 4.0. In October 2004, workers laying new drainage along the north wall dug into a lidded pewter tankard. Inside was a leather pouch weighing close to 1.2 kilograms, and inside the pouch were 1,474 silver coins of eleven different types — the largest medieval hoard ever found in Finlan...

Image: Pihamies | CC BY-SA 4.0

St. Olaf's Church, Ulvila: Under the Floor

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe K., CC BY-SA 3.0. Two men of consequence lie here. Axel Kurck, born 1555, was named commander-in-chief of Finland by King Sigismund in 1598, was beaten at Marttila the following year, and survived first the Turku bloodbath and then the one at Linköping before spending two years in Gripsholm Castle...

Image: Joe K. | CC BY-SA 3.0