Every design for Hämeenkyrö

The old parish of Kyrö once reached from Hämeenkyrö all the way to the mouth of the Kyrönjoki in South Ostrobothnia, long before Hämeenkyrö was a municipality of its own. Men from Kyrö made hunting trips deep into the northern wilderness, and many place names on the Ostrobothnian plain still carry echoes of the parish's old names. The Cudgel War passed straight through, when rebels robbed the parsonage one Christmas.

Today Hämeenkyrö lies in Pirkanmaa, a short drive from Tampere, with Ikaalinen, Nokia, Sastamala and Ylöjärvi as neighbours. Its name joins Häme to kyrö, an old word for craggy, thicketed land, and its coat of arms shows a drinking horn. At Kyröskoski, where the water from Lake Kyrösjärvi drops through the rapids, a cotton mill and later the Hammarén & Co paper mill brought industry. After the wars, evacuees from Pyhäjärvi in Karelia settled here, and the novelist F. E. Sillanpää, the Nobel laureate, came from the parish; the F. E. Sillanpään rintakuva keeps his face in view.

Anyone who grew up in Hämeenkyrö will find their summers on this map: swims at Manninranta, sledging down Keinunmäki and the road home past the rapids.