Nõva church
Nõva church
Nõva church, located on the higher end of the beach ridge, is one of the smallest churches in Estonia (13.6 x 7.1 m) and the fourth oldest wooden church in Estonia. The wooden church on Ruhnu (1644), Sutlepa chapel (1627 or 1699) at the Estonian Open Air Museum and the Church of Our Lady of Kazan in Tallinn (1721) are the only ones predating Nõva church.
Nõva church is a simple horizontal log house with a low-sitting steeple in the style of a beach chapel. The structure is covered by wooden cladding on the outside. According to local tradition, the church building was built in 1636, but a dendrochronological analysis of the wall beams in the early 2000s showed that the trees were cut in 1749. This makes the church more than a hundred years younger than previously thought. The local lore is not necessarily wrong, because a chapel once stood on the same site. It is also possible that a part of the current church building does indeed date from 1636, but was later renovated or partially restored.
The interior of the church is simple. The inside of the church is also covered with wood panels, though these were installed at the end of the 19th century. The fact that the walls were left uncovered for a long time is evidenced by the back wall of the church, where people have buffed the logs smooth with their backs. The interior of the church was restored to its original appearance and colour scheme during the 2018-2019 restoration.
The most valuable details of the church are the rare early 19th-century (1836) faux stained glass elements covering the windows of the east wall. These are actually images printed on incredibly thin parchment and placed between two panes of glass. Not many examples of such old faux stained glass have survived in Estonia or elsewhere in Europe. One of the images imitates Corregio’s ‘The Holy Night’, the other Raphael’s ‘The Transfiguration’.
The altar of Nõva church is probably from the late 19th century. The author of the altar painting of Jesus and his disciples is unknown. The wooden lace of the altar, however, was made personally by Josefine Baggehufwudt (1839-1917), the lady of Nõva manor who was fond of woodwork.
The pews, which differ on the north and south sides, are another curious feature of the church. According to the tradition of beach chapels, the benches on the north (the women’s) have no backrests, while the benches on the south (the men’s side) do.
The organ of the church was built in 1885 by Kustas Targamaa, a native of Nõva. It was a showpiece made by Targamaa, who had just moved from Nõva to Tallinn and set up his own organ company there. As an Estonian, Targamaa was unable to get a patent for his organ factory in Tallinn until he had changed his name to a more German form – Gustav Terkmann – for 100 rubles.
There is a unique wooden sun cross on the wall of the church underneath the steeple, dated 1860. It is the only wooden sun cross in Estonia that has survived this long.
There are two bells in the church tower, the larger of which was donated to the church in memory of Juhan Pillapart in 1891, while the smaller was donated in memory of Ado Rosman in 1893.
Nõva cemetery makes for yet another fascinating attraction with iron crosses made by local blacksmiths, each one different. Nearly 300 of the grave markers (202 of them made by blacksmiths) were installed before the end of World War II. The lady of Nõva manor, Josefine Baggehufwudt, is also buried in the cemetery. It is said that she made her own cross before her death.
Legends of Nõva
Rooster shows the way
According to folk tales, there was already a chapel of St. Olaf in Nõva in the year 1200. Legend has it that there were Norwegian sailors lost at sea in a thick fog. They vowed that if they made it to land alive, they would build a shrine to show their gratitude to God. The sailors then heard a rooster crowing, and as they made their way towards the sound, they reached Nõva beach.
As promised, they built a chapel on the highest hill on the coast, next to the windmill of the local manor, and dedicated it to St. Olaf, the martyr king of Norway. In honour of the rooster whose crowing guided them in the right direction, there is a gilded statue of a rooster on top of the steeple instead of a standard cross.
According to another version, the man who was lost at sea was Oolu, a fisherman from Nõva. Caught up in a storm, the fisherman had no hope of reaching the shore. In fear of drowning, he prayed for God to save him. Then, after giving up hope, he heard a rooster crowing on the beach. That very sound helped guide him to shore. In gratitude, the fisherman had a church built and a statue of a rooster placed on top of the steeple. The church and rooster are still there today. ERA II 226, 559 (1) Madis Liivanõmm Risti, Kürema v., Liiva f. 77 y August Niinemets, 6th grade pupil of Variku elementary school 1939
At one time, Nõva chapel was only half its current size. It is said that a stranger arrived and upon seeing that the congregation had such a small building, and with a thatched roof no less, he immediately got all the men together and had the chapel made twice as big and covered with a boarded roof. Süiste Jüri was the bell-ringer at that time. The Süiste family lives yonder behind the woods, on the meadow. The stranger said: “What kind of a bell-ringer are you if you can’t even see the chapel?” Then he had the men cut a wide pathway through the forest, so that Jüri Süiste would see the chapel. There were three farm seats available in Süiste. The stranger decided to take them all for himself. The Süiste pigs then went rummaging through the manor’s fields, so he killed the pigs and hung them on a birch tree. But the stranger was fined for this and didn’t get the seats in Süiste after all. The islanders eventually killed the crazy bugger. You see, he stripped the islanders of their wages. Now, the islanders are the witching sort and put a right beast inside of the stranger. When the beast moved, the stranger was heard saying that he’d finally have a baby. When the stranger died, a hedgehog emerged from inside him. ERA II 159, 292/3 (27) Juhan Prantstiibel Risti, Nõva m, Variku v., Sookna f. b. 1874. Collected by Enda Ennist, 1937
St. Olaf
Nõva church is consecrated to St. Olaf, who is also the patron saint of Norway and whose death is celebrated as Olsok (Olaf’s Wake/Vigil) on 29 July.
St. Olaf was King Olaf II Haraldsson of Norway, who reigned from 1015 to 1028. A series of 11th-13th-century chronicles survive about his life and doings. In his younger days, Olaf was a successful Viking who is said to have raided England, destroying London Bridge. In 1008, he also tried to conquer Saaremaa, but failed. He was baptised in Rouen in Normandy in 1014 and returned to Norway in 1015, where he proclaimed himself king. Olaf is seen as the man who united Norway and brought Christianity to the land. In 1028 he lost his country, and a year later was forced to flee to Kyivan Rus. In 1030, he allied with the King of Sweden to return to Norway in an attempt to regain power, but was defeated by the Norwegian force made up of pagans, peasants and Danes at the Battle of Stiklestad on 29 July.
Olaf’s body remained in the town of Nidaros (now Trondheim), where he was buried. Soon miracles started to happen near his grave. A year after Olaf’s death, his body was exhumed and historical sources report that the crowd was surprised to see that his remains had not decomposed. It was considered such a wonder that the Pope himself confirmed Olaf’s canonisation.
The cult of St. Olaf quickly spread all over Europe, including the British Isles, the Netherlands, Russia and beyond. The St. Olaf’s Church in Tallinn as well as the churches on Vormsi and on both of the Pakri islands are also dedicated to St. Olaf in Estonia.
Plague made Nõva Estonian-speaking
Historian, ethnographer and folklorist Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Russwurm, who studied the history of the Estonian Swedes in the middle of the 19th century, writes in his seminal work ‘Eibofolke’ that at the time of publication, the inhabitants of Nõva were all Estonians, but in the old days they were largely Swedish-speaking. During the visit in 1694, it is clearly mentioned that sermons in Nõva chapel are held in Estonian and Swedish, as the coastal inhabitants are Swedish.
The plague took a heavy toll on the Nõva region, which is why tales of the Great Plague feature prominently in local folklore. Entire villages died and were repopulated over time. Locals knew of two plague pits even in the 20th century – one of them in Tusari village and the other on the so-called Kõlguta hill near Nõva.
According to folk tales, when the great plague struck, the population of Nõva dropped dramatically. Only three unmarried women were left in the entire municipality. One day a hunter from Pilistvere came to the vast woods in this area and saw one sitting on a rock. First he thought it was a bear, but then realised that the sitting figure was a woman. He decided to marry her.
In connection with the Great Plague, there are also stories of hidden treasures in the Nõva area. Usually the people hiding the treasure in the stories have robbed it from people who died of the plague and end up getting sick themselves, as though being punished for their crime.
Russwurm further writes in ‘Eibofolke’ that during the plague, almost all the peasants of Nõva died and new settlers were brought here from Hiiumaa, Risti [Harju-Risti] and Osmussaar, and that many people still know where their ancestors came from. In terms of clothing, however, they took after their coastal neighbours and retained the Swedish dress until around 1815.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the Estonian-speaking peasants living on the border of Vihterpalu could all understand Swedish. The building style of houses in some villages, especially in Tusari, as well as in Musa or Moise village, Tõldsilla and Veskiküla was still rather Swedish in the 19th century.