Every design for Orimattila

Orimattila lies at the southern tip of Päijät-Häme, so close to Lahti that the city's southern edge runs into the village of Pennala. The ground here holds the oldest known settlement in Finland, and the written story begins with a farm: Matti Laurinpoika's estate, Orih-Mattila, whose first part is an older form of ori, the Finnish word for stallion. That is why the coat of arms shows a stallion carrying a scythe. The chapel community grew into a parish of its own once it was separated from Hollola.

Orimattilan kotiseutumuseo keeps that long past within reach, and the church hill at the heart of town is listed as a nationally significant cultural environment. Orimattilan taidemuseo and the curious Orimattilan Pullomuseo, a museum of bottles, add their own chapters. After the Continuation War many families from Kirvu settled here, and they even rebuilt their home village of Tietävälä in Orimattila. Artjärvi joined later, bringing more villages with it.

Grow up in Orimattila and the map is a web of village names you knew by heart long before you could read them.