Every design for Pielavesi

At Lepikon torppa, a log cabin in the forests of Pielavesi, Urho Kekkonen was born in 1900. He went on to serve as President of Finland for twenty-six years, and the cabin is still the place visitors ask for first.

For people who grew up here, Pielavesi is more than one famous birthplace. It is the lake of the same name on the north-western side of the village, the summer evenings of Muikkuvestivaalit, and the volleyball of Pielaveden Sampo, a club whose success has carried the parish's name around the country. The history goes deep: in the seventeenth century this was a thinly settled borderland between the mother parishes of Iisalmi and Rautalampi, home to fishermen and slash-and-burn farmers along the shores. The birchbark horns on the coat of arms recall the days when such horns carried signals across the scattered forest settlements and kept predators away from grazing cattle. The church, designed by Ferdinand Öhman, was finished in the late nineteenth century, and Pielaveden kotiseutumuseo keeps the older story.

If you know the road past Sankaripatsas Vartiosotilas and down to the water, you know Pielavesi. Wear it with the same quiet pride the parish has always had.