St Olav’s Church of Vormsi is the main monument of the island’s history and culture. After the Swedes fled from the island at the end of World War II, the church, which locates in Hullo, stayed empty for a long time. The church was reauspicated on the St Olav’s Day in 1990.
Be sure you look the one of a kind square shaped nave and explore the old ceiling paintings in the ceiling of the choir room. The peculiarity of St Olav’s Church is that it is missing a tower and the bell hangs above the door behind a tall roof ridge. At the church gate there are two tuvid pines where the pillory located. The biggest collection of wheel crosses in the world is in Vormsi. Wheel crosses were started to use in the 17th century.
The oldest extant cross is from 1743, newest from 1923. All the crosses are farmers’ own work. Lots of the wheel crosses have clear writings on them, but many are very primitively processed and they have a lot of grammar mistakes on them. Often there are village names on the crosses, sometimes farm names, but almost always they have family marks on them. Wheel crosses often have many years on them, which all show dates of death. The date of death was probably marked on the old family cross when the wooden cross placed on the grave was decomposed.
Art ministery started to take stock on wheel crosses in 1977. At the entrance of churchyard you can see a monument for War of Independence put up there on 2 June in 1929. It is one of the few monuments that stayed during the Soviet time. The monument is made of local granite and on that there are the names of three Vormsi men who died in the War of Independence in 1919: J. Liljebäck, H. Timmerman and L. Sträng.
July 2024 opening times:
St. Olav’s Church in Vormsi is open from Friday to Sunday from 13:00 to 15:00.
At other times, you can call and make an appointment to open:
ANTS RAJANDO 5187957
ENE RAND 53421992
KRISTINA RAJANDO 56616395
