Where to stay in Uurainen
The right area depends on your trip. Here's who each one suits — pick the place, then the hotel.
Uurainen holds very few beds of its own. The village centre by Uuraisten kirkko carries little more than a guest room or two, and travellers who want to stay in the parish itself usually look to a farm stay or a lakeside cottage among the fields and forests of Central Finland. Beds are scarce here.
The lakes of the municipality draw summer visitors to a handful of cottages, a quiet base in the lakeland of the country's interior, but the choice is small and the season short. Most visitors to this part of Central Finland base themselves in a larger town and reach Uurainen by road. The industrial town of Äänekoski to the north carries hotels and services, and the regional centre further off holds the wider hotel network, both within an easy drive of the church village.
Stay in town for choice. Keep Uurainen for a quiet country night by the lakes, when a farm room or a cottage near Uuraisten kirkko suits a traveller touring the parishes and waters of this corner of the lakeland.
About Uurainen
What is Uurainen known for?
Uurainen is a quiet farming municipality in Central Finland, in the lakeland of the country's interior. It is known for its lakes, its forests and its church village, the kind of small inland parish that lives by farming, forestry and the water. The land sets the pace.
Uuraisten kirkko and its separate belfry, the Uuraisten kirkon tapuli, mark the village centre among the fields and lakes, a short way from the industrial town of Äänekoski to the north.
What are the main landmarks in Uurainen?
Uuraisten kirkko is the chief landmark of Uurainen. The wooden parish church stands at the heart of the village among the fields and lakes of Central Finland, the protected centre of the small community. The church anchors the village.
Beside it the Uuraisten kirkon tapuli, the separate belfry, rises within the church grounds, and the surrounding cultural landscape of farmland and water completes the parish scene in the lakeland of the country's interior.
What is the history of Uurainen?
Uurainen grew as a farming parish in the lakeland of Central Finland. The settlement spread among the lakes and forests of the country's interior, its life ordered by farming, forestry and the timber worked from the surrounding woods, the scattered farms gathering around the church for worship and trade. Farms came first.
The parish was set apart as its own municipality in 1868, drawing the lakeside villages under a single administration, and Uuraisten kirkko served as the steady centre of the new parish. The wooden church and its belfry, the Uuraisten kirkon tapuli, anchored the village through the generations that followed, while the farms and forests carried the small community. Industry grew nearby rather than in the parish itself, the mills and works of Äänekoski drawing labour from the surrounding country.
Forestry held on. Uurainen kept its rural character through the changes, a quiet district of lakes, fields and forest in this corner of the lakeland, with the church village as its lasting heart.
Where is Uurainen?
Uurainen lies in the lake and forest country of Central Finland, in the lakeland of the country's interior. The municipality spreads across low, wooded ground broken by lakes, the village gathered around Uuraisten kirkko among fields and scattered farms. Water and forest fill the land.
The parish sits inland north of the regional centre and a short way south of Äänekoski, away from any large town, in a quiet stretch of the interior lakeland.
What is the climate of Uurainen?
Uurainen has a cold inland climate typical of Central Finland. Winters are long and snowy, the lakes of the interior freezing hard and the forests around Uuraisten kirkko lying deep in snow through the dark months. Summers are short but warm.
The long northern daylight thaws the lakes and brings a brief, bright growing season to the fields and woods of the parish before the cold returns to the lakeland.
How do you get to Uurainen?
Uurainen is reached by road. Inland in Central Finland, the parish lies off the main lines, and most travellers drive out from the regional centre or from Äänekoski to the village around Uuraisten kirkko. The car is the way here.
Rail and air links lie in the larger towns of the region, and the country roads run the short distance on through the lakeland to Uurainen and its church village.
Where Uurainen sits
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