Sauvo

Sauvo [ sɑu̯vɔ ] ( swedish Sagu ) is a municipality in south-western Finland with 3034 inhabitants ( 31 December 2012). It is located on the Baltic coast in the landscape Varsinais -Suomi 35 km east of Turku. The community is monolingual Finnish speakers.

The community center of Sauvo is a few miles inland. The territory is surrounded on three sides by the sea, the total length of the coastline is over 140 kilometers. The near Turku by car in around 20 minutes away, so many residents commute into the largest city of Varsinais- Suomi. In the summer, the population of Sauvo doubled by the many holiday-makers: in the municipality there are 1,400 vacation homes.

Sauvo was already permanently settled during the Iron Age, whether there is a continuity to the medieval settlement, but it is unclear. The first mention of Sauvo dates from the year 1335. At this time there was already a church in the place, it was probably a wooden church from the 13th century. The stone church of Sauvo preserved to this day was built around 1470th

End of the 17th century Karuna was released as a chapel community of Sauvo after the Lord of the manor of Karuna had donated in 1685 a wooden church. Between 1908 and 1910 a new granite church was built in the National Romantic style in Karuna by the architect Josef Stenbäck. After completion of the new church the old church of Karuna was dismantled and the Open Air Museum Seurasaari in Helsinki again. The municipality Karuna existed until 1969, when it was incorporated in Sauvo and to a lesser extent in Kimito.

Interior of the Church of Sauvo

The Church of Karuna

The old church of Karuna, now in Seurasaari