Ikaalinen

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.

 

Geography

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.

 

Villages

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.

 

History

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.

 

Administration

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.

 

Education

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.