Heinävesi, North Karelia, Finland, April 12, 2024
Photo: googleusercontent.com
New Valaam Monastery in southeastern Finland has been awarded a grant from the Kordelin Foundation for work with its manuscript archives.
The foundation, which awards grants for science, arts, public education, and cultural projects, reports that “Valamo monastery will receive 100,000 euros [$107,125] to transfer its manuscript collection to a database, which will make the monastery’s unique material widely available digitally. The project increases our understanding of Finnish history, Orthodox tradition, and promotes the appreciation of cultural diversity.”
The monastery is one of 5 grant winners out of 163 applicants. With its Virtual Valaam project, the monastery will digitalize its manuscript collection, which will then be made publicly available.
The monastery’s collection includes, among other things, the lives of saints, Church Slavonic translations of the works of St. Ephraim of Syria, as well as the journals and memoirs of Valaam inhabitants, explains the Finnish Church.
“Immeasurably valuable and unique materials from Valaam Monastery will become widely available and suitable for use in digital format by both researchers and anyone interested in the Orthodox monastic tradition and the history of the Valaam Monastery. The digital format will make it possible in the future to provide texts with search links and the possibility for the technical processing of materials in the framework of historical research,” says researcher Pasi Hutiainen, Doctor of Theology from the University of Helsinki.
“For centuries, monks have been writing and rewriting texts, and this project continues this tradition in our time: thanks to the project, the monastery’s works will become the property of the new millennium,” said Virva Suvitie, librarian of the Valaam Monastery.
The project is planned to be implemented in cooperation with the Finnish Literary Society, the National Archives of Finland, the University of East Finland and the University of Freiburg.
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