Every design for Kalajoki

Kalajoki is known around Finland as a holiday town, yet the people who live here know it just as well as a place of farms, sawmills and metalwork. The name means "fish river", and for centuries the river and the sea fed the parish, through fishing, seal hunting and, above all, the tar that Kalajoki once controlled across the whole region.

The town sits at the mouth of the Kalajoki, right by the Gulf of Bothnia, in the southern part of North Ostrobothnia. Villages such as Plassi, Rautio and Pohjankylä make up the town, Rahja harbour links lorries and ships, and in spring and summer a weekly market brings local farmers and traders into the centre. Out at sea, Maakalla rose from the water and became a fishing base with dozens of huts, a story told in the Kalastusmuseo and the Kalajoen Kotiseutumuseo.

The Jokeen uponneen kirkon muistomerkki, a memorial to a church lost to the river, says a good deal about life here: the water gives and it takes, and people stay all the same. That is the Kalajoki worth having on your chest.