Every design for Haapavesi

Haapavesi was still called Haapajärvi when it was a chapel of the Pyhäjoki parish, and the river Pyhäjoki still runs through it, the waterway that once carried the town's tar down to the coast. Settlers came mostly from Savo to farm, fish and hunt on its banks.

What makes the town unusual is its music and its skiing. Haapavesi is Finland's national kantele village and hosts a folk music festival, while the long, narrow Haapavesi ski developed here carried local racers to fame and Tapani Niku won the country's first Olympic medal in skiing. The Valio dairy makes Oltermanni cheese, and a tall guyed TV mast ranks among the tallest structures in Finland.

Grow up here and summer means swimming at Kokkoniemi and Kylpyläsaari, the island where mud baths were once given. Winter means the Hiihtomänty and the Hiihtäjäpatsas, reminders of whose tracks you are following.