On the Origins of Churches and Churchyards of Southern Estonia: The Evidence of Early Grave Finds

Abstract

Data about the earliest history of medieval churches of southernEstonia are fragmentary, being limited to the first mentions ofthe parish, priest or congregation, or to mostly scanty historicalinformation about the architecture. Some information can also beprovided by archaeological grave finds, which often date back furtherthan the first data about the churches.The article presents a brief survey of the finds from the churchyardsof southern Estonia, the area of medieval diocese of Tartu, frombefore ca. 1450 AD. The finds, mostly jewellery and fragments ofcremated bones, show that churches were often built on top of oldcemeteries from the Final Iron Age, whereby the pre-Christianjewellery items, mostly brooches, rings and bracelets, date mainlyfrom the 11th to the early 13th centuries. If the cases in which thearchaeological information is limited or non-existent are excluded,60% of the rural churches of southern Estonia (9 out of 15) were builton pre-Christian cemeteries. The percentage may even be higher,since archaeological data for more than half of the churchyards iseither missing or insufficient for drawing any conclusions. In thecases where major temporal gaps exist between the Final Iron Agefinds and the first written or architectural data about the church,the cemetery probably functioned continuously as a village cemeteryin the Christian period.The pre-Christian origins of the cemeteries in the churchyards indicatethat the local communities were actively involved in choosing thelocations for the churches at the time of Christianization. Place continuityalso shows that, despite the violent nature of Christianization,the natives of southern Estonia did not oppose having Christiansanctuaries built on pre-Christian cemeteries, and evidently, thecontinuous use of the former burial site was considered important.