The Encounter of the Orthodox and Lutheran Original Population with the Evacuees in North Karelia
Abstract
Finland as a whole is a place of the encounter of western and eastern European cultural areas, although we can consider the eastern part to be strongly under the influence of the western one. The link to Eastern Europe was the Orthodox religion of the original population, especially in the border districts of the farthest eastern parts of Finland (known as Raja-Karjala, ie "Border Karelia") before the wars of 1939-44. These areas were lost to the then Sovict Union in the above-mentioned wars. ln the farther west, in today's North Karelia, there were some Orthodox villages originally, some kind of islands in the midst nf the main Evangelical Lutheran population. The village I will describe is one of them with Greek Orthodox or Orthodox population living there amongst the Evangelical Lutherans already from the Middle Ages. As the result of the wars, evacuees from the ceded Karelia, both Orthodox and Lutheran, settled down in the same village.
