Every design for Uurainen

The first settler in Uurainen was Paavo Minkkinen, who arrived in 1548 and cleared a farm called Salmela in the wilderness at Heinäjoensuu. For a long time afterwards the parish went by other names, Kuukkajärvi and Minkkilä among them, and Uurainen only took hold later, after the lakes Iso-Uurainen and Vähä-Uurainen.

Puuaukio is a familiar spot in the church village today, but the place has a longer sense of itself. Uurainen elected Sirpa Rautio as its municipal manager in 1976, making her the first woman to hold such a post in Finland. The church stands on the site of an earlier one, beside a bell tower drawn by Alfred Cavén. Around it the land is hilly and granite-backed, a quarter of it peat bog, and there are well over a hundred lakes, the largest being Kyynämöinen, Sääkspää and Iso-Uurainen. Jyväskylä is close enough for a daily commute.

For anyone who grew up here, the map is full of small names that mean something: Kelloperä and Kotaperä, Hirvaskangas, the shore of Kyynämöinen, the road back to the church village.