Every design for Nakkila

River lamprey pulled from the Kokemäki River is a local tradition in Nakkila, not a curiosity. The river flows through the middle of the municipality, a short run south-east of Pori. The village has plenty more to set it apart, starting with the first functionalist church built anywhere in Finland, a clean-lined landmark in the church village.

The Juustomeijerimuseo, a cheese dairy museum, recalls how farm milk was turned into cheese here, and the Nakkilan kotiseutumuseo gathers the older life of the villages. Then there is Villilä, a film studio sometimes nicknamed the Hollywood of Finland, where scenes for Sibelius and FC Venus were shot. Archaeology runs deep too, from Bronze Age burial mounds at Selkäkangas to the settlement at Rieskaronmäki. The Sankarimuistomerkki "7 miehen hiihtopartio" honours a ski patrol from the war years, and the village of Järvikylä remembers the only Soviet air raid on Satakunta.

The main road from Helsinki to Pori and the Tampere line both run through, so plenty of people pass by. If Nakkila is where you learned to swim in the river and ate lamprey at the kitchen table, you already know it was never just a stop on the way.