Every design for Siilinjärvi

Siilinjärvi is all but wrapped by Kuopio, a lakeland municipality just north of the city where over a hundred lakes, Kallavesi and the long Juurusvesi–Akonvesi among them, take up a fifth of the map. The name reads as Hedgehog Lake, but it comes from a Sámi word for a winter dwelling.

Life here is split between two centres more than ten kilometres apart, the church village and Toivala-Vuorela, and much of it moves along the main road south to Kuopio. Kuopio Airport is at Rissala, home of the Karelian Air Command. The Yara apatite mine shapes both the landscape and the jobs, with its gypsum heaps rising east of the centre, and the municipality has the lowest unemployment in North Savo. It is a young place too: nearly a quarter of the people are under fifteen, and two schools serve the older pupils, one downtown and one in Suininlahti. Harjamäen sairaalamuseo keeps the story of the old district hospital.

Tarinaharju, where ski jumps and beach volleyball courts fill an old gravel pit, is a childhood landmark for anyone raised here, and the gilded figure on the rock at Kasurila always meant the drive home was nearly over.