Qvidja has a long and rich history, its residents’ lives closely interwoven with the history of Finland

The archipelago of the Gulf of Finland began to take shape as the land slowly rose from the sea after the Ice Age. The former seabed provided fertile soil, and the steep cliffs that once resisted the ice offered naturally defensible places to settle.

Qvidja lies on the island of Lemlahti in Parainen, where the land still rises by almost half a metre each century. On the island’s northern side stands a large stone jetty, now 7–8 metres above sea level. Its position suggests that Lemlahti was permanently inhabited as early as the 5th–7th centuries.

The first written record of Qvidja dates back to the 15th century. At that time, the sea level was still nearly three metres higher than it is today, and the Piitto Strait north of the estate was a wide and active waterway. The area was likely more forested than now, though the steep-sided island was probably similar in size as it is today.

Qvidja is mentioned in an early-1400s document recording the sale of the estate by Peter van der Linden, a German-born merchant from Turku, to the Bishop of Turku, Maunu Olavinpoika Tavast. The bishop paid 400 marks and half a pack of Ypres cloth — a high price that shows the estate’s importance even then.

In 1439, Bishop Tavast divided his inheritance between the Turku Cathedral and his relatives. Qvidja passed to his brother, Jöns Olofsson Tavast, and his wife, Marta, daughter of Klaus Djäkn.

By 1477, the estate had passed to their grandson, Joakim Henriksson Fleming, the district judge of Vehmaa. In 1396, Queen Margaret I — ruler of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and founder of the Kalmar Union — had forbidden nobles from building stone manors. The ban was lifted in 1483, and it is quite possible that Joakim Fleming began constructing Qvidja’s stone castle soon after.

Joakim later became a member of the Privy Council and castellan of Turku Castle in 1488, though he soon lost his position. After his death, the estate’s management between 1496 and 1517 is unclear, but it was likely overseen by his widow or a local steward.

In 1517, Joakim’s eldest son, Erik Fleming, inherited Qvidja. Having risen to the Privy Council, Erik was a close ally of King Gustav Vasa and the most influential man in Finland. It is likely that he improved the manor’s buildings during his tenure. Erik died at Qvidja in 1548, and the estate passed to his son, Joakim Eriksson Fleming.

Joakim was only 13 or 14 at the time, so his mother, Hebla Sparre, managed the estate. She retained several properties but kept Qvidja as her seat manor. When King Gustav Vasa visited Finland in 1555, Hebla hosted him at Qvidja — an event that probably prompted upgrades to the property.

Joakim died in 1563, and the estate was inherited by his younger brother, Klaus Eriksson Fleming. Hebla likely continued managing the estate for some time, as she appears in sources as its holder. She died around 1571, and a few years later Klaus married Ebba Stenbock, who took charge of Qvidja while Klaus focused on politics in Stockholm.

Like his father, Klaus became one of Finland’s most powerful men of his time. He was made baron and admiral in 1569 and Marshal of the Realm in 1590, serving as governor and commander-in-chief of Finland and Estonia until his death in 1597.

Klaus’s wife, Ebba, was the sister of Katarina Stenbock, the last wife of King Gustav Vasa. When a power struggle arose between King Sigismund and Duke Charles, Klaus sided with the king. Duke Charles eventually prevailed — but Klaus died in 1597 before he could be punished. The duke instead executed Klaus’s only surviving son in revenge.

If Hebla Sparre had managed Qvidja with skill, her daughter-in-law was no less formidable. After her husband’s death, Ebba Stenbock took command of Turku Castle and led its defence against Duke Charles, but was captured and imprisoned in Stockholm along with her daughters. Duke Charles granted Qvidja to his favourite, Hieronymus Birckholtz, a German-Swedish diplomat and frequent rival of Klaus Fleming. Birckholtz had married Klaus’s niece, Anna Fleming, but his tenure at Qvidja was brief — Ebba regained the estate in 1608. She died in Sweden in 1614.

Klaus and Ebba’s daughter, Hebla Fleming — named after her grandmother — married Count Peter Banér in 1615 and inherited Qvidja. The family mainly lived in Sweden, leaving stewards to manage the estate. After Peter Banér’s death in 1644, the estate passed successively to his brothers Nils, Klaus, and Gustav Banér, none of whom lived there. In 1674, Gustav Banér sold Qvidja.

In 1674, Governor Carl Falkenberg af Trystorp purchased Qvidja for himself. After decades of decline, the manor’s stone castle and wooden outbuildings were in poor condition, but Falkenberg’s investment is documented in a 1683 reduction commission report.

King Charles XI’s reduction decree of 1680 required noble lands granted after 1632 to be returned to the Crown, prompting inventories of estates. Falkenberg’s improvements included a 12-room log house, a combined brewery and kitchen, two stables, and a well-built cowshed. The brewery still stands today — now serving as a chapel.

From 1697 to 1738, Qvidja was managed by Falkenberg’s daughters, Elisabet Gustaviana and Catharina Charlotta Falkenberg. Historian Kari Suistoranta, chronicler of Parainen’s history, described the manor during their tenure as largely self-sufficient, with extensive farmland, three fisheries, a new garden, and forest holdings. The estate also employed a blacksmith, miller, tailor, and linen weaver.

In 1738, Elisabeth Falkenberg sold Qvidja to Governor Carl Johan Creutz, whose family was registered as Finland’s first comital line in the House of Nobility. In 1758, the estate was inherited by his son, Baron Carl Johan Creutz, a diplomat.

The younger Creutz later pledged Qvidja’s title deeds as collateral for a loan from Simon Petter Rothstein. The mortgage deed was converted into a bill of sale in 1769.

Because Rothstein was not of noble birth, he required royal permission to own a manor, which he received in 1776. Those intervening years were difficult: the local peasants and villagers regarded him coolly. A letter from 1772 describes the stone castle as “unnecessarily large” and soon to be demolished.

Phar­macist Lars Henrik von Mell helped Roth­stein into the clear by buying Qvidja from him in 1777. von Mell made remarkable effort to renovate the deteri­orated estate, partic­u­larly the castle, which received its current shape during his time as the owner. The manor’s garden was also expanded in the course of the 1770s and 1780s. It is known that von Mell owned a tobacco plant­ation and a medi­cinal garden, but they may have been located outside of Qvidja.

After von Mell died, the estate was passed on to his widow, Hedvig Dorotea, and when she died in 1800, the estate was inherited by von Mell’s daugh­ter’s husband, captain Anders Johan Prytz. Captain Prytz and his family lived at Qvidja. When the estate was owned by the Prytz family, prop painter Hellstén from Turku was commis­sioned to create wall paintings in the large hall of the main building, which could indicate the elev­ation of the status of the building to that of the main building.

After Captain Prytz died in 1824, his widow – phar­macist von Mell’s daughter, Hedvig Maria – remained as the owners of the estate. She managed the estate for another 40 years. Hedvig Maria Prytz constantly organised lively social events. Several authors and artists visited the estate. During her time, the habit of weighing each visitor was started, and the grey­stone castle’s large grain scales were used for this purpose. Each visitor’s weight was recorded in Qvidja’s book of scales, where they still exist today.

The book reveals that Johan Ludvig Runeberg weighed eight lispounds and five pounds, or just over 70 kilo­grams, when he visited the manor in 1827. The signi­ficance of the estate is also denoted by the regular steamboat connection, which started oper­ating from Turku to Qvidja in 1859. By 1922, the steamboat pier had been moved to Kassori, two kilo­metres away.

When Hedvig Maria Prytz died in 1863, the manor ended up in the possession of her grand­daugh­ter’s sons, Carl Johan Wolmar and Lars Oscar Wilhelm af Heurlin. The brothers, Wolmar and Wilhelm af Heurlin, commenced renov­a­tions, which were probably the largest in the manor’s history. The new main building was completed in 1866. Wilhelm gave up running the estate already in the 1870s, but Wolmar continued by adding a stew­ard’s house in the courtyard in the 1870s, a new gardener’s house in the 1880s and a dairy in the 1890s. Most of the buildings in the current courtyard date from the era of Wolmar af Heurlin.

Wolmar af Heurlin concluded his military career in 1868 and focused on devel­oping agri­culture at Qvidja. He acquired new plant vari­eties, combined small strips of fields and under­drained new fields. Cattle rearing was made more effi­cient by constructing a modern brick-built cowhouse, which still stands in a visible location in the house­keeping yard. Mech­an­isation of the estate was commenced by acquiring a modern harrow and a mower, as well as a seeder in the 1890s.

In 1872, a steam-powered sawmill and a steam-powered mill were constructed on the estate, as well we as a tar burner by 1906. For his devel­opment work, Wolmar af Heurlin was appointed as the Coun­sellor of Agri­culture. The same honorary title was also granted to his son and grandson, which indicates the quality and value of the work carried out at Qvidja.

Wolmar af Heurlin’s son, Alex­ander Vilhelm af Heurlin, became the owner of the estate in 1908. The estate continued to grow and new resid­ential buildings were constructed for its employees. According to the invent­ories, a bake­house, a carriage shed, storage for agri­cul­tural machinery and a workshop inside the former brewery were added by 1924. Addi­tionally, a cemetery for the af Heurlin family was estab­lished on the island’s northern shore in 1919.

By the 1920s, there were already 600 hectares of cultivated fields. The steam-powered sawmill had become unprof­itable so oper­a­tions were ceased in 1918, but a brick factory was founded in 1928 and a bridge was built to connect the island to the mainland. The workshop in the courtyard was converted into a chapel in the beginning of the 1930s.

Wilhelm af Heurlin’s widow, Margareta af Heurlin (née Aminoff) managed the estate in 1934-1949. During her time, renov­ation work was concen­trated on the main building. In 1949, agro­logist Håkan af Heurlin and his wife Elly Aminoff, who had inherited the estate, also made extensive changes in the main building.

When the land was redis­tributed after the wars in 1952, approx­im­ately 40% of the estate, mainly forested land, was sectioned off to resid­ential farms. At the end of the 1950s, there was a survey comprising the manor estate and the stone castle and the older cellars of the main building were measured. The manor was named as a historical and cultural protected site in 1967 and as a nationally signi­ficant historical and cultural envir­onment in 1979.

Starting from 1976, the estate was owned by Håkan and Elly af Heurlin’s son Anders af Heurlin, who engaged in agri­culture and expanded beef cattle production. At the end of the 1990s, an altern­ative to keeping beef cattle was sought in the hotel and leisure centre, which was being planned for the vicinity. The construction invent­ories and the partial master plan created for the centre resulted in a signi­ficant portion of the farm’s buildings being marked as protected. However, the project never mater­i­alised and the cultivated land has since been mostly rented out to outsiders.

Saara Kankaan­rinta and Ilkka Herlin bought Qvidja in 2014. The estate’s history continues as a living farm. It was acquired with the intention to turn it into a pilot farm, where exper­i­mental agri­culture could be carried out by cycling nutrients and seques­tering carbon and other emis­sions without burdening the Baltic Sea. The purchase came with cultural heritage comprising a Medieval stone castle, approx­im­ately 30 buildings in need of renov­a­tions and history that is tightly entwined with the country. The castle has seen a lot during its existence of over the past half a millennium, becoming now the symbol of sustainable and modern agri­culture and forestry.

Highland cattle and horses arrived on the farm in the spring of 2017 and the farm’s fields will be used following the crop rotation prin­ciple. The main product of the farm is biomethane, which is manu­fac­tured at the new energy production units. Heating, elec­tricity, fertil­isers and transport fuel will be derived from the farm’s own bioenergy.

Qvidja provides space for as many species as possible, both above ground and under­ground. Everything at Qvidja is done by nurturing the diversity of nature.