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The Hietamäki Chapel (Finnish: Hietamäen kappeli) was wooden chapel by the River Laajoki in the Hietamäki village of Mietoinen in Finland under Swedish rule. The chapel was built on the west side of the village, on Chapel Hill (Kappelinmäki), where burials had take place as early as during the Iron Age. The chapel itself is first mentioned in written sources in 1366, although the parish is probably older. The chapel and its cemetery fell into disuse after the Mietoinen Church was constructed in the 17th century. The last rite in the Hietamäki Chapel took place in 1731, after which the chapel was abanoded and left to rot. Some of the items housed in the chapel were relocated to the Mietoinen and Mynämäki Church. The remains of the chapel and its yard were fully destroyed in the 1920s when the site became a gravel quary. In the 1950s, however, a stone memorial for the chapel was erected on the south side of Chapel Hill and the site has hosted church services.

Archeological excavations on the site have uncovered coins, bones, and other items.

History

Prehistory

The Hietamäki village housed a residential and trading post probably as early as the Iron Age. According to an article by Juho Sjöros, published in the 1887 annal of the Finnish Antiques Association, there have been numerous ancient graves on the Chapel Hill. On the southeast side there have been two dozen graves and on the north side a long string of graves of at least 31 graves. Based on post-glacial rebound, the graves have been dated to the Iron Age. Therefor, the Hietamäki Chapel has probably been erected on ground that was regarded holy already in prehistoric times. In the Vakka-Suomi region, other old churches have been built on similar sites including the church of the Untamala village of Laitila, and the churches of Kalanti and Vehmaa.

During the Iron Age, the Chapel Hill was just by the seashore, by the Mynälahti Bay and the mouth of River Laajoki. The area where the Mynämäki Church stands today was back then already above the level of the Raukkaa Rapids due to post-glacial rebound. It is for this reason that the commercial and the ecclesiastical centers of Mynälahti are believed to have been located at the location of Hietamäki and the villages of Pyhä and Valaskallio one kilometer away. Viking Age archeological discoveries dating from the 9th century have been made in the areas of three villages.

Time of the Chapel

Hietamäki was probably originally a parish of its own, but it was relegated to a chapel parish of Mynämäki already in the 14th century. It is possible that the first wooden church in Mynämäki has been built as early as 13th century. The first written record of the parish of Hietamäki is from the ''Registrum ecclesiae Aboensis'' in 1366. It is thought that Hietamäki has housed a wooden chapel dedicated to St. Jacob at least since the end of the Middle Ages. The chapel was built near a busy trade post and held church service on market days and all holidays. What happened to the chapel for the next two hundred years is not known, and the next record of it is not until 1558 when Gustav Vasa confiscated church property. Back then, silver artifacts, among others, were ceded to the state. Silver items used for Eucharist, however, were not confiscated, with the exception of the gilded chalice.

It is not known whether the building used in the 16th century is the same one that was used during the 14th century. It is, however, very likely that later descriptions, from the 18th and 19th century, are of another wooden church on the same spot at some other time. Markus Hiekkanen, a scholar of Finnish Medieval churches, contrary to popular belief, most parishes have seen more than one generation of churches. Historical and archaeological information about Medieval wooden churches is, however, sparse.

Because there are also few sources about Hietamäki, the churches cannot be dated reliably. Out of four chapels of the Mynämäki Parish (Mietoinen, Kajala, Hietamäki, and Vehmainen Chapel), however, one destroyed in the 1920s is probably the oldest. According to Sjöros, the Mietoinen Chapel and the Kajala Chapel were two of the newest church buildings of Hietamäki at the time he was writing. On the other hand, Antti Lizelius, the vicar of Mynämäki wrote in the 1780s that the Mietoinen Chapel is infarct older than the Hietamäki one, though in the light of modern sources he was mistaken. At any rate, the Vehmainen Chapel was the newest of the four, having been consecrated during Lizelius' tenure in 1771.

Property of Hietamäki has included, in addition to the chapel and its grounds, probably the estate of Vähä-Saari in the Saari Village. Vähä-Saari was not a clergy house of the chapel, but simply property of the Church in use by its clergy. The estate was probably transfered to the Mynämäki Church in the 14th century after the Hietamäki Parish had been relegated to a chapel. When the Västerås Diet decided to confiscate Church property in 1529, Vähä-Saari and the nearby Iso-Saari were merged to form the Saari Estate that still exists today. After the merger, the estate became a Kungsgård (Royal Estate).

Disappearance of the chapel

When the construction of the Mietoinen Church was complete in 1643, the Hietamäki Chapel fell into relative disuse. At around the same time, burials at Hietamäki ceased as well. The chaplain of the church even forbade the use of the chapel so as to relieve priests of the parish from overwork. The chapel still hosted services on the liturgical days of the Apostles and every other Wednesday; eventually the chapel would be used only during summertime due to its poor condition. The Hietamäki Chapel was ultimately closed for good in 1702, but the final rite was held on the "day of the Apostles Simon and Jude" on 28 October 1731 when the then-chaplain of Mynämäki, Gustaf Pacchalenius, held a sermon, according to a 1738 doctorate by Gregorius Hallenius. Burials on church grounds ended around the same time. The last deceased to be buried at Hietamäki was the long-time churchwarden of the chapel, peasant Johannes Anttila, whose grave remained without blessing for three years despite his relatives pleas because on the orders of the chaplain. Lizelius describes the last days of the chapel in his book Tiedustus:

On the other hand, so was a wooden chapel built on the grounds of the Hietamäki estate's heath, three versts [3.2 km] from the big church. In this Hietamäki Chapel only the occasional service was held each year, lastly only on the Feast of St. Jacob, on which a fair was also held on the hill. Afterwards the chapel was deemed unnecessary because the villages whose people attended it for services appear to go to Emäkirkko [Mynämäki Church] and Mietoinen Chapel; it was therefor closed down entirely. W. and afterwards no services have been held there. Its bell and property were moved to Emäkirkko. And the chapel has been entirely rundown and been defeated.

Toisexi, nijn rakettin Hietamäen kartanon Nummelle yxi kappeli puusta, puolen kolmatta wirstan paika isoista kirkosta. Täsä Hietamäen kappelisa pidettiin waan joskus Jumalan palvelus wuodesa, wimeiseltä ainoasti Jacobin päivänä, jona sen mäellä myös markinat pidettiin. Sitte se nähtin tarpettomaxi, siiliä ne kylät sen ympäristöllä, jotka sijnä kävit kirkon menoisa, taitavat huokiasti sekä Emäkirkosa, että Mietoisten kappelisa käydä; suljettin sen tähden kokonansa. W. ja ei sitte enää ole sijnä Jumalan palvelusta pidetty. Otettin myös sen kello ja muu omaisus Emäkirkkoon. Ja on se kappeli kokonansa rämstynyt ja kukistunut.

By 1731, the windows of the timber-built building were broken and its corners were rotten and water and snow got in. Still, during an inspection by the bishop that same year, locals had petitioned to use the chapel as their church. Their request was denied because no repairs had been carried out since 1701. According to the dissertation by Hallenius in 1741, peasants were still observing the memory of the chapel on the Feast of St. Jacob, even though by that time the fair had been relocated to the village. The chapel was, according to Hallenius, in very bad condition by then. The graveywad had been repurposed to a road and a pasture. To Hallenius' surprise, the two bells of the chapel remained in their original location.

In 1767, there was a proposal to the parish council of Mynämäi that the timbers of the chapel should be sold for firewood. The proposal did not pass and the timbers were left to rot so that some of the remains of the the church could still be seen in the 19th century. According to Sjöros, the under timbers were still in place in 1881 and the northwestern corner had more than one fathom (about two meters) worth of timbers. The entire floor, on the other hand, was fully decomposed ja there were tall and bushy spruces growing in the middle of the chapel. According to Sjöros' book, the chapel must have been 44 feet (13 m) long and 30 feet (9.1 m) wide and it has had a shingle roof. His esimation is that there has been a graveyeard enclosed by a wooden fence next to the chapel, the size of which has later been estimatd at 24 by 29 meters. Nothing further is known about what the chapel looked like.

There had been gravel collecting in the area already in Sjöros' day that had uncovered bones and fragments of caskets about 16 meters from the chapel. The last remnants of the chapel were destroyed in the 1920 during the construction of Uusikaupunki railway, when a large gravel collecting site was dug where the chapel had stoold. When the track began to be operated, human remains were found by the tracks near Hietamäki Station. The predecessor of the Finnish Heritage Agency forbade all gravel collection in the area and archaeological excavations in the site began. Only the stone foundations and a few timbers from the walls of the chapel where what had remained of the chapel.

Archaelogical findings and objects

In 1918, before the gravel collection, small-scale excavations were performed in the chapel site, uncovering a very small number of objects. According to the records, four coins from the 16th to 17th centry were dug up: two quarter öres from the 17th century, a one-sixth öre from 1677 and one öre from 1591. Additionally, 166 small beads that were probably part of headgear, iron nails, and a three-fold bronze ring with a piece of finger bone were menioned.

In 1924, after gravel collection had been forbidden, excavations were performed at the chapel site under the direction of Iikka Kronqvist. On the east sie, many bones were unearthed from a depth of 40–70 centimeters. Because bones from separate bodies were found right next to one another, it is presumed that the deceased had been buried in a row without caskets. In a 1963 book on the history of Mynämäki, Mynämäki 1260–1960, historian Väinö Perälä thinks that these graves are those of soliders who had fallen in a battle near the village of Ravea east of Mynämäki, but offers no date for the presumed battle or a source for this assumption. Perälä also cocludes that the old pathway to the chapel had been on the western side.