Where to Stay in Suomussalmi, Kainuu

Suomussalmi is known for the Winter War battles fought across its forests and the writer who lived on its shore, a broad municipality of Kainuu in northern Finland. The Hulkonniemen taistelujen muistomerkki marks the fighting around the centre, one of several memorials to the war years in the parish. War and forest shaped the place.

Turjanlinna, the lakeside home of the writer Ilmari Kianto, stands as the literary landmark, while the Ämmänsaaren kirkko keeps the church centre at Ämmänsaari, the main village of this far northern parish.

Turjanlinna is the landmark that gives Suomussalmi its literary fame, the lakeside home built for the writer Ilmari Kianto in this corner of northern Kainuu. War memorials mark the forests around it. The Hulkonniemen taistelujen muistomerkki recalls the Winter War battles near the centre, the Trohkimaini Soavan muistomerkki and the memorial to the Suomussalmen rajakomppania honour the men of those years, and the Ämmänsaaren kirkko keeps the church centre at the village of Ämmänsaari in this far reach of northern Finland.

Suomussalmi's history runs from a backwoods parish to a name written into a war. The municipality was chartered in 1867, a scattered community of farms and fishing shores set deep in the forests of Kainuu, far from any town of the south. Forest and lake fed the people.

It was here, on the lakeside, that the writer Ilmari Kianto built Turjanlinna and drew on the northern country for his books, the literary heart of an otherwise remote parish. The Winter War made the name known. In the bitter winter of 1939, the battles around Suomussalmi turned back an invading column in the snow, and the Hulkonniemen taistelujen muistomerkki and the other memorials of the parish now mark that fighting across the forest.

Hard years followed the war. The church centre rebuilt at Ämmänsaari, where the Ämmänsaaren kirkko stands, and Suomussalmi settled into its modern role as a wide forest-and-lake municipality of northern Finland, its history held in the memorials of the Winter War and the writer's home of Turjanlinna.

Suomussalmi lies in the forest-and-lake country of eastern Kainuu, in northern Finland, hard against the Russian border. Lakes, bogs and pine forest fill the vast municipality, among the largest in the land, the village centre gathered at Ämmänsaari while water and woods spread for miles on every side. The forest runs deep here.

The lakeside home of Turjanlinna sits on its own shore, and the battle ground of the Hulkonniemen taistelujen muistomerkki lies among the woods near the centre of this far northern parish of Kainuu.

Suomussalmi has a hard, cold inland climate, its seasons set by the forests and lakes of far northern Kainuu. Winters are long, dark and deeply snowed, the cold that froze the Winter War battlefields gripping the lakes and woods of the parish from autumn until the late thaw. Summers are short and bright.

The long northern daylight warms the water and the pinewoods around Suomussalmi through a brief growing season, before the snow returns to lock the forests of this far reach of northern Finland.

Suomussalmi is reached by road through the forests of eastern Kainuu. The main highway carries most of the traffic to the village centre at Ämmänsaari, and visitors come by car or bus across the long northern distances. There is no station in the town.

Buses link Suomussalmi to the larger towns of Kainuu, and travellers from farther afield reach northern Finland through the regional cities before driving the last forest stretch to the parish around Turjanlinna.