Details
Founded: 1846Category: Religious sites in Finland
Historical period: Russian Grand Duchy (Finland)
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First seaman chapel was built to Jurmo probably in the 12th century and it has been a center of near archipelago people for centuries. According the legend Jurmo residents assisted ships to wreck purposely and robbed their cargo in the 16th century. That’s why Gustav Vasa, the king of Sweden, ordered to destroy the whole island and all inhabitants. All forests were burnt and only couple of local people survived alive.
The present chapel and cemetery were founded in 1846. There are anyway much older artefacts inside the chapel, like the wooden statue of St. Anna from the 15th century.
Easter Aquhorthies stone circle, located near Inverurie, is one of the best-preserved examples of a recumbent stone circle, and one of the few that still have their full complement of stones. It consists of a ring of nine stones, eight of which are grey granite and one red jasper. Two more grey granite stones flank a recumbent of red granite flecked with crystals and lines of quartz. The circle is particularly notable for its builders' use of polychromy in the stones, with the reddish ones situated on the SSW side and the grey ones opposite.
The placename Aquhorthies derives from a Scottish Gaelic word meaning 'field of prayer', and may indicate a 'long continuity of sanctity' between the Stone or Bronze Age circle builders and their much later Gaelic successors millennia later. The circle's surroundings were landscaped in the late 19th century, and it sits within a small fenced and walled enclosure. A stone dyke, known as a roundel, was built around the circle some time between 1847 and 1866–7.