New Valaam: The Hermitage on Spruce Island

Between roughly 1808 and 1818 St. Herman withdrew from Kodiak to the small forested island he named New Valaam, after the great monastery of his formation. There, as a simple unordained monk, he lived the remainder of his life in a discipline of extreme asceticism — the deerskin smock, the sixteen-pound chains, the wooden-board bed — and twice over refused the offered elevations to the priesthood and the rank of archimandrite. This file describes the hermitage and the ascetic regimen as the Valaam Life attests them.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (glorified by the OCA and ROCOR, 1970)

The Withdrawal to Spruce Island

After the broken years on Kodiak — the conflict with the Company, the house arrest, the death of nearly all his fellow missionaries — Herman sought the solitude for which he had become a monk in the first place. He crossed to Spruce Island, a small spruce-covered island lying just off the northeast coast of Kodiak, and there established the hermitage he called “New Valaam” (Russian Novyi Valaam), naming it for the island monastery on Lake Ladoga where he and the other missionaries had been formed under Abbot Nazarius (OCA, Chronology of the Life of St. Herman of Alaska; orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska).

[Disputed: the date of the move is not fixed by any document. The OCA chronology places it within the decade 1808–1818, stating only that “at some undetermined date within this ten-year period, Father Herman leaves Kodiak and establishes himself on Spruce Island” (OCA, Chronology of the Life of St. Herman of Alaska). Other lives narrow it to 1811–1817 (orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska; cf. the date “between roughly 1811 and 1817” used in the repository’s mission history). The figure “1808” appears in some popular accounts as the start of the hermitage, but the underlying records do not support a single year; the safest statement is “c. 1808–1818, the precise year unrecorded.”]

His first shelter was the barest possible. By the tradition preserved in the Life, “with his own hands Father Herman dug a cave into the ground, and in it he lived his first full summer” (orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska). Only afterward were a small cell, a wooden chapel, and a wooden building serving as schoolhouse and guesthouse raised near the cave (orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska; fatheralexander.org, Saint Herman of Alaska the Wonderworker). New Valaam was never a monastery in the institutional sense — it had no community of tonsured brethren — but a hermit’s settlement gathered around one ascetic and the orphaned children he taught.

The Cell and the Wooden-Board Bed

The interior of Herman’s cell is described in the Life with a precision that has fixed it in the Church’s memory. He owned almost nothing, and what he owned was instrument of penance rather than comfort. His bed was a bench:

“A small bench, covered with a time-worn deerskin, served as Father Herman’s bed. For his pillow he had two bricks, which were hidden under the deerskin and thus unseen by visitors. He had no blanket. This was replaced by a wooden board which lay on his stove. Fr. Herman called this board his blanket, and willed to have his mortal remains covered with it.” (1867 Valaam Life; Little Russian Philokalia vol. 3, St. Herman Press; cf. orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska)

The two bricks hidden beneath the worn fur, the board he called his “blanket” and asked to be buried under — these details are not decoration but the substance of the hagiographic witness: the Life records them as the things a visitor would have seen had he known where to look, and as the dispositions of a man who had made his cell a continual rehearsal of the grave.

The Deerskin Smock and the Sixteen-Pound Chains

Herman’s clothing matched his bed. Over many years he wore a single garment next to the skin and did not change it:

“He wore a smock of deerskin, which he did not take off for several years at a time, nor did he change it, so that the fur in it was completely worn away and the leather became glossy.” (orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska, from the Valaam Life)

Over the smock he wore the monastic habit — a faded and much-patched cassock, the inner podriasnik and outer riasa, and his klobuk — and he went out in this same clothing in every weather, in rain, snow, winter storm, and the severest frost, often barefoot (1867 Valaam Life; Little Russian Philokalia vol. 3; fatheralexander.org).

Beneath all of this, unseen, he bore chains (Russian verigi). The Life records that “his body, worn out by labors, vigils, and fasting, was weighed down by chains weighing about sixteen pounds,” and that he wore them under his deerskin smock so that no one knew of them until his death (fatheralexander.org, Saint Herman of Alaska the Wonderworker; stinnocentmonastery.org, Life of St. Herman of Alaska). [Disputed: the weight of the chains is given variously in the translations of the Life. The most common English figure is sixteen pounds; one widely circulated translation reads “fifteen-pound chains,” and a metric rendering gives “about 7 kg” (≈ 15.4 lb) (orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska; orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska). The figures are reconcilable — all cluster around fifteen to sixteen pounds — and the variation reflects rounding between Russian funt, pound, and kilogram rather than a genuine disagreement in the sources.] The chains themselves are preserved as relics and are kept to this day on his reliquary in the Holy Resurrection Cathedral on Kodiak (orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska; Atlas Obscura, St. Herman’s Reliquary in Kodiak).

The Garden and the Ascetic Regimen

For all its severity, the life at New Valaam was not idle but industrious. Herman cultivated a garden, raising potatoes and other vegetables, and the produce of his own toil was the means by which he fed, clothed, and supplied books to the orphaned Aleut children of his school (orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska; see Orphanage and Flock). His ascetic regimen joined this manual labor to long vigils and continual prayer: he slept very little and only on the bare bench, ate sparingly, and gave the great part of the night to prayer — the pattern of the Egyptian and Athonite fathers transplanted to a North Pacific island. The Life presents him as a man whose entire economy, material and spiritual, was ordered to two ends: the love of God and the care of his flock.

The Refusal of Ordination and Higher Rank

The most theologically pointed feature of Herman’s life is what he declined. Twice the Church sought to elevate him, and twice he refused, choosing to remain to the end what he had been at the beginning: a simple monk, neither priest nor abbot.

From the very arrival of the mission in America, Herman had out of humility refused ordination to the priesthood and the rank of archimandrite, in order to remain always a simple monk (orthochristian.com, The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska). The Life is explicit that this refusal was deliberate and was the ground from which he then “worked for God with all his zeal, without the slightest fear of those in power” — that is, his very lack of office freed his advocacy. A later attempt to elevate him is recorded as well: the authorities “had wanted to ordain him to the holy priesthood and elevate him to the dignity of archimandrite, but the humble monk refused any exaltation and remained a simple monk until the end of his days” (orthodoxcanada.ca, Saint Herman of Alaska). [Disputed: the lives differ on how many distinct offers there were and on their dating; some place a proposed elevation around 1808, while the OCA chronology and the Life present the refusal as a settled disposition maintained from the mission’s beginning. The substance is not in doubt across the sources: Herman declined both ordination and the archimandritical rank and remained an unordained monk for life.]

The refusal is the key to the man. He had become for the Alutiiq their teacher, catechist, and defender; he led the mission in fact for a period even though he was not a priest (OCA, Chronology); yet he would not be clothed in the authority that would have made these things official. In an enterprise founded on rank — the imperial Church, the chartered Company — Herman’s whole witness was that the lowest place is the true one. The unordained monk in the worn deerskin, weighed with hidden chains on his board bed, is the same man who called himself the nurse of the native peoples and stood unafraid before Baranov (see Conflict with the Company).

References

The Life of Our Holy Father Saint Herman of Alaska (the 1867 Valaam Life), reprinted in Little Russian Philokalia, vol. 3: St. Herman of Alaska. Platina, CA: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood / St. Herman Press. Online edition: orthochristian.com/47984.html.
Canadian Orthodox History Project. “Saint Herman of Alaska.” orthodoxcanada.ca (used to locate the cave, the deerskin smock, the 7 kg / chains figure, the refusal of rank, and the 1811–1817 dating).
Orthodox Church in America. “Chronology of the Life of St. Herman of Alaska.” oca.org (used to locate the 1808–1818 window for the move to Spruce Island).
Saint Herman of Alaska the Wonderworker. fatheralexander.org (used to locate the sixteen-pound chains and the worn habit).
Life of St. Herman of Alaska. stinnocentmonastery.org (used to locate the sixteen-pound chains worn unseen until his death).
“St. Herman’s Reliquary in Kodiak.” atlasobscura.com (used to locate the present keeping of the chains in the Holy Resurrection Cathedral, Kodiak).
Korsun, Sergei, and Lydia Black (trans./ed.). Herman: A Wilderness Saint — From Sarov, Russia, to Kodiak, Alaska. Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Publications, 2012.