Qualla: Hiidenlinna https://qualla.com/hiidenlinna en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:39:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/b/b/hiidenlinna-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Hiidenlinna https://qualla.com/hiidenlinna Hiidenlinna: Introduction https://qualla.com/hiidenlinna/ Photo credit Motopark, CC BY-SA 4.0. In Finnish folklore a hiisi is what was left behind after Christianity arrived. The word originally meant a sacred place — a grove, often a burial site, usually on high ground — and after the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the beings said to live there were recast as giants, trolls and things best not disturbed. Boulders, ravines and lonely headlands across Finland still carry the name. So when Reino Koivuniemi finished a three-storey building of natural stone and concrete on the shore of Lake Särkijärvi in 1992 and called it Hiidenlinna, the hiisi's castle, he was making a fairly bold claim about what he had built. Nobody had asked him to build it.

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/b/b/hiidenlinna-wp/udbb-hiidenlinna-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Hiidenlinna: The Self-Taught Man https://qualla.com/hiidenlinna/ Photo credit Motopark, CC BY-SA 4.0. Koivuniemi was born in Urjala in 1940 and had no architectural training, nor any formal artistic training either. Finnish has a word for what he was — kansantaiteilija, a folk or self-taught artist — and it is applied to him without a trace of condescension. He worked in wood, ca...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/b/b/hiidenlinna-wp/udbb-hiidenlinna-the-self-taught-man.mp3 0:06 2 full Hiidenlinna: Eleventh in the Whole Region https://qualla.com/hiidenlinna/ Photo credit Motopark, CC BY-SA 4.0. So the castle became a gallery. Koivuniemi showed his own carvings there and brought in changing exhibitions, and people came. By 2006 Hiidenlinna ranked as the eleventh most-visited tourist destination in all of Varsinais-Suomi — a region that also contains Turku, the archipelag...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/b/b/hiidenlinna-wp/udbb-hiidenlinna-eleventh-in-the-whole-region.mp3 0:06 3 full Hiidenlinna: Looking for a Successor https://qualla.com/hiidenlinna/ Photo credit Motopark, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 2008 Koivuniemi had reached retirement age and began searching for someone to take the place on. Not simply a buyer — a buyer who would keep the exhibition activity going. That search took five years. In 2013 Hiidenlinna was sold to Sami Uotila, a skier who ran a ski resort bu...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/b/b/hiidenlinna-wp/udbb-hiidenlinna-looking-for-a-successor.mp3 0:06 4 full Hiidenlinna: The Castle Now Has a Zip Line https://qualla.com/hiidenlinna/ Photo credit Motopark, CC BY-SA 4.0. From 2015 the site turned into a summer amusement park, and it has been expanding ever since. Around five hectares now hold an adventure park, zip lines, a pumptrack, skate and scooter ramps, a bike park, buggy karting, gold panning, a troll forest, an animal park with reindeer, ...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/b/b/hiidenlinna-wp/udbb-hiidenlinna-the-castle-now-has-a-zip-line.mp3 0:06 5 full Hiidenlinna: Somero, Which Is Emptier Than It Sounds https://qualla.com/hiidenlinna/ Photo credit Motopark, CC BY-SA 4.0. Somerniemi stopped being its own municipality in 1977, when it merged into Somero. Somero itself became a town on the first day of 1993, though it had been known as a trading place since the fourteenth century. The whole municipality holds 8,339 people across nearly 700 square ki...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/u/d/b/b/hiidenlinna-wp/udbb-hiidenlinna-somero-which-is-emptier-than-it-sounds.mp3 0:06 6 full