The Ehrensvärd grave is the final resting place and memorial of

Augustin Ehrensvärd Field Marshal count Augustin Ehrensvärd (25 September 1710 – 4 October 1772) was a Swedish military officer, military architect, artist, creator of the Suomenlinna (Sveaborg) fortress, Svartholm fortress and the Swedish archipelago fleet. He ...

, the founder of the

Suomenlinna Suomenlinna (), or Sveaborg (), is a sea fortress composed of eight islands, of which six have been fortified. Located about 4 km southeast of the city center of Helsinki, the capital of Finland, Suomenlinna is a popular destination for bot ...

island fortress in

Helsinki Helsinki () is the Capital city, capital and most populous List of cities and towns in Finland, city in Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About people live in the municipali ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

, at the Linnanpiha yard on the island of Susisaari in Suomenlinna. Ehrensvärd was buried at the yard in 1783 but the memorial was only completed in its current form in 1805.Ehrensvärdin hauta
Helsinki Art Museum. Accessed on 9 December 2013. After Ehrensvärd's death in 1772 king

Gustaf III of Sweden Gustav III (29 March 1792), also called ''Gustavus III'', was King of Sweden from 1771 until his assassination in 1792. He was the eldest son of King Adolf Frederick and Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden. Gustav was a vocal opponent of what he s ...

gave an order that he should be buried at the yard at the heart of the fortress of Sveaborg (later known in Finnish as Suomenlinna). Construction of the tomb took eleven years, during which time the body of Ehrensvärd rested in a temporary grave at the cemetery of the Ulrika Eleonora Church in Helsinki. Ehrensvärd's coffin was moved to Suomenlinna and placed into the fortress tomb on 5 July 1783 in a solemn event attended by the king himself.

Memorial

King Gustaf III sketched a design for Ehrensvärd's memorial himself. The sketch was finished by Ehrensvärd's son

Carl August Ehrensvärd Count Carl August Ehrensvärd (5 May 1745 – 21 May 1800) was a Swedish naval officer, painter, author, and neo-classical architect. Ehrensvärd was born in Stockholm, and died in Örebro. Though active as a naval officer during his entire ...

and the memorial was made by the most famous sculptor in

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

Johan Tobias Sergel Johan Tobias Sergel (; 7 September 1740 in Stockholm – 26 February 1814 in Stockholm) was a Swedish neoclassical sculptor. Sergels torg, the largest square in the centre of Stockholm and near where his workshop stood, is named after him. Life ...

. The metal used for the bronze ornaments in the memorial was melted down from

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n cannons obtained as war bounty from the

battle of Svensksund The Second Battle of Svensksund (; ) was a naval battle fought in the Gulf of Finland outside the present day city of Kotka on 9 and 10 July 1790. The Swedish Empire, Swedish naval forces dealt the Imperial Russia, Russian fleet a devastatin ...

in 1790. The memorial was finally completed in 1805. The pedestal of the Ehrensvärd memorial is made of

granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

. The memorial consists of an oblong rectangular granite slab with a bronze ship bow at both ends. On the top of the slab are a shield, a sword, a helmet and a chain of the

Order of the Seraphim The Royal Order of the Seraphim (; ''Seraphim'' being a category of angels) is the highest order of chivalry of the Kingdom of Sweden. It was created by Frederick I of Sweden, King Frederick I on 23 February 1748, together with the Order of the ...

, all cast from bronze. The southern and northern sides of the memorial bear an inscription in 18th-century

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

: Although the memorial does not bear a personal portrait, its classicist style resembles the conventions of its contemporary memorials of European war heroes.Lindgren, Liisa: ''Monumentum, muistomerkkien aatteita ja aikaa'', p. 24.

Finnish literature society The Finnish Literature Society ( or ) was founded in 1831 to promote literature written in Finnish. Among its first publications was the ''Kalevala'', the Finnish national epic A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic s ...

2000.

References

External links

* {{coord, 60, 8, 39.22, N, 24, 59, 6.34, E, display=title Burial monuments and structures Monuments and memorials in Finland Statues and sculptures in Helsinki Suomenlinna