The Pernaja Agricola Society maintains the Agricola Museum in Pernaja’s parish village. The museum offers an opportunity, unique in Finland and indeed the world, to explore the childhood, the life and work of the founder of Finnish written language, translator of the New Testament and reformer of Finland. The museum’s opening was celebrated on 10 April in the Agricola jubilee year 2007, when 450 years had passed since Mikael Agricola’s death. At that time the museum was housed in a part of Pernaja’s old vicarage, in premises rented from the parish.
In 1996 the municipality of Pernaja and the archaeology department of the University of Turku launched a project to investigate whether archaeological methods could yield more information about the Pernaja parish village of Mikael Agricola’s time in the 16th century. Archaeological excavations in the countryside were rare and usually connected only with churches and manors. The Agricola archaeology project launched in Pernaja was in many ways a pioneering undertaking in Finland: the municipality of Pernaja funded the excavations for eleven years together with the University of Turku. Under the direction of archaeologist Hanna-Maria Pellinen, a museum was assembled in which archaeological objects were displayed near the places where they had been found. The objects are owned by the Finnish Heritage Agency and remain on loan to the Agricola Museum.
A wayside-inn corner with tables was built in the museum from old boards to show how Agricola himself might have dined on his travels or at home. A reading corner brought together books about Agricola and facsimiles of his works. Wax tablets were also made for the museum: students wrote on their soot-darkened beeswax with wooden- or bone-handled, metal-tipped writing sticks known as styluses. The museum’s walls were filled with educational displays and other material presenting Agricola’s life’s work.
The Agricola Museum was open in its first premises for just under three years. The municipality of Pernaja paid the rent to the Pernaja parish, and the Pernaja Agricola Society ran the museum together with the municipality. As early as January 2010 the museum was dismantled in due to the merge of Pernaja into the town of Loviisa, as there was no longer anyone to pay the rent. The archaeological objects were stored in the Loviisa museum, and the rest of the Agricola material was displayed in the Agricola memorial room opened in the Pernaja library.
Within the Pernaja Agricola Society, however, the plan of reopening the museum lived on. Various locations were discussed, but no suitable premises could be found in Pernaja’s parish village. The old vicarage was out of the question, as the parish intended to sell the property for private use. Eventually the society found a former bank office in Koskenkylä (Forsby) that met the Finnish Heritage Agency’s requirements for displaying the archaeological objects it owns. The medieval objects found in the soil of Pernaja’s parish village could thus be brought before the public once again. The other material acquired for the museum about life in Agricola’s time was likewise assembled in the new premises. The society also bound and duplicated the excavation reports from the eleven years of digs, which in the turmoil after the municipal merger had been forgotten in a plastic bag in the library’s cellar, where they were eventually found.
The museum had its grand opening in Koskenkylä on 10 July 2020, thirteen years after its first opening. A caretaker was hired with a wage subsidy. The museum attracted considerable interest: in its first six months, the Agricola Museum and the ABC primer exhibition held there at the end of the year received more than a thousand visitors.
The Agricola Museum opened for the third time in August 2023, when it was able to move back to Pernaja’s parish village after the society rented the former Kyrkoby skola school building from the town of Loviisa. The society purchased the property in 2024. One of the former classrooms now serves as the Agricola Museum, which is open all year round. It welcomes travellers interested in Agricola and the Middle Ages, groups, local residents and schoolchildren. Together with Pernaja’s greystone church, the museum opens a window onto medieval Pernaja.
Tuovi Putkonen
