Ikaalinen (Swedish: Ikalis) is a Finnish city located in the
province of Pirkanmaa. The municipality is home to 6,894 people and
covers an area of 843.40 km2, of which 92.99 km2 are water bodies.
The population density is 9.19 inhabitants / km2. The neighboring
municipalities of Ikaalinen are Hämeenkyrö, Jämijärvi, Kankaanpää,
Parkano, Sastamala and Ylöjärvi. The former neighboring
municipalities are Kuru, Suodenniemi and Viljakkala.
Ikaalinen uses the coat of arms of the former countryside. It was
designed by Pentti Papunen, and it was confirmed in 1956. The coat
of arms of the store, confirmed in 1961, was also written by
Papunen.
Ikaalinen is known for the Ikaalinen Spa, the
international summer Sata-Häme Soi festival and the once successful
Ikaalinen baseball team. Ikaalinen has been and still is a place of
education, trade and administration.
The Ikaalinen parish
belongs to the diocese of Tampere and the county of Hämeenkyrö.
The central settlement of Ikaalinen, a former church village and
township, now the Vanhakauppala district, is located on a peninsula on
the shores of Lake Kyrösjärvi. The municipality extends east-west on
both sides around the northern end of the lake. Lake Kyrösjärvi, like
the entire municipality, is part of the Kokemäenjoki watershed. Most of
Ikaalinen belongs to the Kyrösjärvi watershed, but some lakes in the
eastern part of the municipality flow into Lake Näsijärvi. Ikaalinen is
located in the middle of the old Upper Satakunta, and for centuries,
until the 1990s, it belonged to the province of Satakunta and the
provinces of Turku and Pori. At that time, due to the growing influence
of Tampere, the municipalities of Upper Satakunta became part of the
province of Pirkanmaa and the province of Häme. Traffic in the area is
mainly directed to Tampere, and the Upper Satakunta dialect of the Häme
dialects is spoken in the region. Ikaaliste's neighboring municipalities
include the northern Parkano and western Kankaanpää, which were formerly
part of Suur-Ikaaliste. Other large neighboring municipalities include
the southern Hämeenkyrö and the eastern Ylöjärvi. Tampere is a little
over 50 kilometers from Ikaaliste.
The Seitseminen National Park
extends to the northern part of Ikaaliste from the side of Lake Ylöjärvi
(formerly Kuru). The highest point in the city area, at almost 200
meters above sea level, is located in the northeastern part in the
village of Juhtimäki. The southern part of Ikaaliste is dominated by the
Hämeenkangas ridge, the highest point of which is Vatulanharju, which
reaches 188 meters above sea level. The ridge continues west to
Kankaanpää and east to Hämeenkyrö.
Haapimaa, Heinistö, Heittola, Helle, Höytölä, Iso-Röyhiö, Jauhokuononmaa, Juhtimäki, Jyllinmaa, Kallionkieli, Kalmaankylä, Karhoinen, Karttu, Kiiala, Kilvakkala, Kolkko, Kovelahti, Kurkela, Leppäsjärvi, Leutola, Luhalahti, Läykkälä, Mansoniemi, Miettinen, Myllykarttu, Niemi, Pukara, Riitiala, Sammi, Sarkkila, Saukko, Sisättö, Sikuri, Sipsiö, Tevaniemi, Vahojärvi, Varessalmi, Vatsiainen, Vatula, Vehuvarpe, Viljala, Vähäröyhiö and Välikylä.
Artifacts have been discovered in various parts of the city of
Ikaalinen, which prove that the area was inhabited as early as the Stone
Age. Judging from the place names, permanent settlement came to
Ikaalinen from the south, from the direction of Karku and Hämeenkyrö,
the core area of the ancient Sastamala parish. According to tradition,
people used to visit Karku Church, a few kilometres away, from Ikaalinen
and Parkano. The Kyrösjärvi watercourse and Hämeenkangas were often used
routes, possibly as early as two thousand years ago. The historical
Kyrönkankaantie road from Häme to Ostrobothnia ran along the latter.
Church boats continued the tradition of travelling by water until the
early decades of the 20th century, and one church boat from Ikaalinen
has been donated to the Seurasaari Open Air Museum in Helsinki.
Ikaalinen became independent from Hämeenkyrö in 1641 as its own parish,
Ikaalinen Kyrö. Before this, Ikaalinen had been the chapel of Hämeenkyrö
for over a hundred years. The Ikaalinen parish thus formed also included
the present-day Jämijärvi, Kankaanpää, Karvia, Kihniö, Parkano and
Honkajoki. The first church in Ikaalinen was probably built in the
Middle Ages. In its place, a second church was completed in the 1640s,
located in the area of the current northern cemetery, which is known
to have been a long church with an angular choir section. The church had
two vestibules on the south side and a sacristy on the north side. The
current church was built in 1799–1801.
During the years of great
death in 1696–1697, it is said that over a thousand residents of the
parish died in Ikaalinen, and the devastating consequences of the famine
were increased by the Great War that broke out a little later. During
the winter of 1714, both Swedish and Russian troops passed through
Ikaalinen on their way to Ostrobothnia. During the Little War some
thirty years later, military forces were also active in the Ikaalinen
region. The largest cache of money in Finland dates back to these times,
which was found in a field in the village of Vatsiainen in 1966. The
find contained 127 pieces of Swedish “copper coins” from the years
1711–1740, with a total weight of over 211 kg.
In the late 1850s,
Finland’s economic development required new shopping centers. So in
1858, a large estate was separated from the municipality of Ikaalinen to
become the township of Ikaalinen. The charter was signed on 21 April
1858. The township established at that time only included the area that
is now called the Old Town and is now the Vanhakauppala district. In the
early stages, there were only a few dozen residents, who were mainly
well-off civil servants and other Swedish-speaking gentry. Ikaalinen was
the oldest township in Finland, but it was also the smallest. The area
had no need for an economic centre, and the nearby metropolis of Tampere
was taking away the population. Ikaalinen hardly developed at all; in
the 1920s, the population of the municipality of Ikaalinen was around
12,500, but that of the township was barely 250. The position of the
township of Ikaalinen was also hampered by the fact that it differed
from other towns in that it was a non-independent township. The township
had only limited self-government rights. The Ikaalinen rural
municipality also taxed the residents of the township, who had the right
to vote in municipal elections in both the township and the rural
municipality. The township's own tax revenues were very small, so the
rural municipality granted annual grants for, among other things,
municipal technical work. In the late 1960s, Ikaalinen was the only
Finnish-speaking township in which the bourgeois parties had a 3/4
majority in the council. The Ikaalinen parish included both the township
and the rural municipality.
Still, there was also economic life
in the area. The first bathhouse in the town was established as early as
1884, and it was the first rural municipality in Finland to have a
school in 1902. The school was also Finnish-language. However, the
Ikaalinen co-educational school did not become an educational
institution leading to university until the early 1930s. Transport
connections also improved, so as the number of passengers increased,
more and more people departed to the Kirkonkylä village of Ikaalinen on
the shores of Lake Kyrösjärvi. Even today, the busy Tampere–Vaasa
section of the three-way road runs right past the town. A railway was
also sought, and both in the late 19th century and in the 1950s there
were hopes that the Ostrobothnian railway would run along the western
shore of Lake Kyrösjärvi like a highway, but this did not happen. The
Tampere–Seinäjoki section of the new Ostrobothnian railway winds through
the sparsely populated eastern part of Ikaalinen, far from the centre,
and its only transport point in the Ikaalinen area, the indoor railway
station, functions exclusively as a train junction. In terms of
transport connections, the northern neighboring town of Parkano has
clearly taken a longer lead. The Haapamäki–Pori railway, completed in
1938, runs along the northwestern border of Ikaalinen, but its
significance for Ikaalinen has been very limited from the start. This
section of the railway, which was removed from public use years ago, is
now used only occasionally by military trains between Parkano and
Niinisalo. The long-standing steamship traffic on Kyrösjärvi ended in
the late 1940s.
During the Civil War, the town of Ikaalisten
became one of the most important strongholds of the Whites on the
Satakunta front, and fierce battles were fought in the region between
February and March. The Reds, who came from the direction of Kyröskoski,
tried to capture the town and the village. The town was already on the
verge of being blockaded, until on March 10, 1918, the Whites led by
Colonel Ernst Linder, supported by Ostrobothnian auxiliary forces that
arrived in Ikaalisten, pushed the Reds back to the Hämeenkyrö side and
from there towards Tampere.
After the last wars, Ikaalisten was
settled by immigrants from Kaukola and Pyhäjärvi.
After World War
II, the town of Ikaalisten began to be an unnecessary speciality.
according to whom? When the state began to grant city rights to
municipalities and towns again after 1960, the twin Ikaalisten began to
work on a municipal union. In 1972, the entire municipality of Ikaalinen
was transformed into an independent township, which received the coat of
arms of the old Ikaalinen rural municipality. The population of the old
non-independent township before the unification was still under 800.
This final phase lasted only five years, when by decision of the
government all towns became cities from the beginning of 1977. Over the
past 30 years, Ikaalinen has gradually industrialized and its economic
structure has changed to a service-oriented one.
In 1972–2023,
the Sata-Häme Soi accordion music event was organized in Ikaalinen,
which included the Golden and Silver accordion competitions and the
Primus Ikaalinen international variety accordion competition.
The
Kalmaa farm owned by the Helsingius family came into the ownership of
the Gylling family through marriage, and Edvard Gyllinging's childhood
family moved there.
The mayor of Ikaalinen is Eeva Viitanen, a Master of Public
Administration. The chair of the city government is Marjo Heikkilä and
the chair of the city council is Arto Ojakoski. The city council has 27
seats. In the 2021–2025 term, the largest parties are the Centre Party
and the Finns Party, both with seven seats.
In the autumn of
2007, Ikaalinen and Parkano held negotiations on a municipal merger, but
the negotiations did not reach sufficient consensus to implement the
project. The unresolved disagreements concerned, among other things, the
name of the future city and the location of the administrative bodies.
In 2009, Jämijärvi invited the municipalities of the former
Suur-Ikaalinen to conduct a possible merger study. However, Ikaalinen
withdrew in the early stages. Parkano, Jämijärvi and Kankaanpää
continued the study and decided in 2012 that there would be no new
municipality. Municipal cooperation along the 3-way axis is important to
Ikaalinen, of which Hämeenkyrö is the most important partner candidate.
Ikaalisi is home to the Ikaalisi unit of Tampere University of
Applied Sciences, which trains trade professionals in the tourism
industry, business administration and information technology. The junior
high school education ended in spring 2014, but adult education leading
to a degree continues, as does the development unit. The same premises
also house the Ikaalisi College of Commerce, an educational institution
offering basic vocational education, where you can study business
administration (business administration) and information technology
(data science).
Ikaalisi College of Arts and Crafts organizes
education in object design and manufacturing (for example, special
metalwork, musical instrument making), textile and clothing design and
manufacturing, graphic design, and environmental design and
construction. It also has the country's only gunsmithing program. The
glass industry education that previously operated in Kihniö moved to
Ikaalisi in autumn 2014.
Ikaalisi is home to Ikaalisi Upper
Secondary School, which has been part of the SASKY education consortium
since 2020. The upper secondary school is located on the same campus as
the Ikaalinen College of Commerce and the College of Arts and Crafts.