Saint Arseny 

Saint Arseny founded a monastery on the island of Konevets in lake Ladoga around 1393 when he returned from three years at the Holy Mountain (Athos). Here he is portrayed carrying the icon of the Mother of God which, according to tradition, he brought with him from Greece. 

A lecture by Mr. Torsten Kälvemark, Chairman of the Board of the Swedish Institute at Athens  

"Our Greek Finns"- Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Byzantine legacy in the North. 

Elias Lönnrot, the famous philologist and collector of traditional Finnish oral poetry, described the Orthodox population of Eastern Finland in the early 19th century by using the term ”our Greek Finns”. It was a witness to the fact that the province of Karelia with its mix of Finnish and Russian peasants was a borderland between two Christian traditions with their roots in the Greek East and the Latin West, respectively. 

When Sweden conquered part of the province in the 17th century the Orthodox population was seen as a political problem. Monasteries were destroyed and people fled to Russia. When Finland was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1809 the Orthodox church was able to reassert its presence in the area. 

The lecture by Torsten Kälvemark will focus on the political and religious confrontation between East and West in the province over the centuries. The Orthodox legacy in Karelia has been manifest not only in folk poetry but also in cultural trends since the mid 19th century, often labelled as ”Karelianism” or ”Byzantinism”.