Nighttime Wonders in A Medieval Church

After our trip to Tampere, we ended the day with a special candle church event in Sastamala. By 8:00pm I was on the bus and headed from Karkku to the nearby Sastamala Church. Built many hundreds of years ago, the stone and wood church was built high up on a hill overlooking the surrounding lake and fields so that it could be seen by the villagers living far off.

 When we first arrived we were greeted by the very tall stone walls which have been weathering for the past several hundred years, but still standing tall. It was my first time going to a medeival church, so I was quite excited to explore the grounds then see the inside.

As with many churches, there was also a fairly good size cementary which surrounded two sides of the church. I didn't really go through and look at a lot of the tombstones, but some of the ones I did see were over two hundred years old. I was quite interested in seeing what some of the Finnish names looked like, and the dates of life which were written differently from ours.

 While we had time to explore, I walked around a bit with my roomate and we found the old bell tower (or so that's what we thought it was) a little ways off from where the church is. You could walk up to where it was, but the door was locked, so no one could enter.

After that, we followed a little pathway down to the lake and saw some old boats. In the medieval ages, the church was very important to the people living nearby. Everyday there would be a ceremony, the bell tower would come in to use and the bell would let everyone know to come. Then most of the villagers would come across the lake by boats.

 The inside of the church was quite nice, but very old of course. The floors were dirt, but there were nice seats and a new stage. We were there for what we'll call a candle church ceremony. What exactly does that mean? It means that is was just all of us exchange students and counslers from Karkku camp there at night 'under the candlelight' singing songs and playing instruments. The acoustics in the church were literally amazing, and everything sounded so good. We all sang one slightly religious song at the beginning and then we sat and watched the performances by other exchange students.  There was a  ukulele song, some guitar songs, and many people singing. It was so nice and we spent a few hours there. Then before long it was time to say goodbye, and return back to Karkku.