Kangasniemi

Kangasniemi grew around a chapel of Pieksämäki established in 1573. It became a separate parish in 1654, giving the surrounding scattered farms a common religious centre. The village took shape during the seventeenth century from the Toivari farms and the chaplain's lands, rather than beginning as a densely built town.

The first church was completed in 1659. A later church and bell tower burned in August 1808, destroying religious books and population tables kept in the church chest. Rebuilding began in 1811 under the master builder Matti Salonen; the new wooden church was completed in 1814 and consecrated on New Year's Day 1815. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the settlement still consisted largely of the church, the chaplain's residence and a few roadside buildings. Parish institutions consequently gave this dispersed Savonian landscape a shared focus long before a larger municipal centre developed.