It is not clear when the monastery was founded, as the cloister is not mentioned in documents before the 16th century. Dates from the 10th to the 15th centuries having been suggested. According to one tradition, the monastery was founded by a 10th-century Greek monk,
Sergius of Valaam, and his Karelian companion,
Herman of Valaam.
Heikki Kirkinen dated the foundation of the monastery to the 12th century. Contemporary historians consider even this date too early. According to the scholarly consensus, the monastery was founded at some point towards the end of the 14th century. John H. Lind and Michael C. Paul date the founding to between 1389 and 1393 based on various sources, including the "Tale of the Valamo Monastery", a sixteenth-century manuscript discovered in 1989, which has the monastery founded during the archiepiscopate of
Ioann II of Novgorod. The monastery was a northern outpost of the
Eastern Orthodox Church against pagans and, later, a western outpost against the
Catholic Church from
Tavastia,
Savonia and
Karelia Province. The power struggle between
Russians and
Swedes pushed the border eastwards in the 16th century; in 1578 the monastery was attacked and numerous monks and novices were killed by the
Lutheran Swedes. The monastery was left desolate between 1611 and 1715 after another attack by the Swedes, with buildings being burned to the ground and the Karelian border between Russia and Sweden being drawn through Lake Ladoga. In the 18th century the monastery was magnificently restored, and in 1812 it came under the Russian
Grand Duchy of Finland. edited by
Zacharias Topelius and published 1845–1852. In 1917,
Finland became independent, and the
Finnish Orthodox Church became autonomous under the
Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; previously, it had been a part of the
Russian Orthodox Church. Valaam was the most important monastery of the Finnish Orthodox Church. The liturgic language was changed from
Church Slavonic to
Finnish and the liturgic calendar from the
Julian to the
Gregorian calendar. These changes led to bitter decades-long disputes in the monastic community of Valaam. monastery in
Heinävesi, Finland. The territory was fought over by the
Soviet Union and
Finland during
World War II. Due to the
Winter War, the monastery
was evacuated in 1940, when 150 monks settled in
Heinävesi in
Finland. This community still exists as
New Valamo Monastery in
Heinävesi. Having received evacuees from the
Konevsky Monastery and
Pechenga Monastery, it is now the only monastery of the Finnish Orthodox Church, alongside the
Lintula Holy Trinity Convent located just 14 km away. From 1941 to 1944, during the
Continuation War, an attempt was made to restore the monastery buildings at Old Valaam, but later the island served as a Soviet military base. Since the original Valaam Monastery was bequeathed back to the Orthodox Church in 1989, it has been enjoying the personal patronage of
Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow, who frequented the cloister as a child. The monastery, whose buildings have been meticulously restored, has gained significant legal power over the island in a push to return to a state of spiritual seclusion. After years of fruitless legal proceedings with the monastery, many residents of the island chose to leave, though a few still remain. The present Father Superior of the community is Bishop Pankraty (Zherdev) of Troitsk. ==Valaam chant==