Monastery
The New Valamo Monastery
Heinävesi
Valamo Monastery - What to do?
In Valamo Monastery you can attend worship services, take folk community school courses, and educate yourself in the monastery's library. Nowadays, Valamo Monastery is a well-known destination where it is possible to peek into the life of an authentic monastery.
In the monastery of Valamo, Finnish culture is booming. This is the only orthodox monastery in the Nordic countries offering varied exhibitions and the opportunity to look at the everyday lives of monks. Today, the monastery is the most important Orthodox cultural center in Finland. The monastery continues its traditional work by conserving icons and artwork.
The Cultural Center offers, among other things, spaces for various exhibitions and monastery's historical artefacts. The Valamo Monastery also maintains a library where conservation work is done and also serves all monastery visitors. In the tranquil atmosphere of the monastery, it is possible to calm down and enjoy orthodox art.
Valamo Monastery Distillery
The Valamo Monastery is the only monastery in the world where the whiskey is distilled. During the Crusades, middle-European monks also brought the concept of distillation to Europe from the Middle East. The monasteries had an exclusive right to distill until the 16th century. This centuries-old tradition has made a come-back in the in the 21st century. Valamo Monastery whiskey has been launched at the beginning of the 2010s and monastery batches have been distilled by using local raw materials and the ready products are sold in limited batches in Alko around Finland.
Valamo Cultural Center and Library
The Valamo Monastery began in the 1980s to be more open to the surrounding society and became a popular destination. Now the Valamo Monastery invests in cultural education and orthodox religious education such as icon painting and research. Citizens' courses in the Valamo Monastery are very popular and the subjects of the courses are very topical. Visiting teachers bring great variation in course content. The courses range from basic icon painting to worship services and to philosophical lectures.
The library of Valamo has the largest collection of books in Western Europe dealing with Western Russian Orthodox literature. The books can be borrowed during office hours for reading room use and researchers can get separate contracts for their own loans. The library serves all visitors of Valamo Monastery during office hours.
