Kyyvesi

Kyyvesi lies in the lake country of Savonia, north of Mikkeli, among wooded shores, islands and long bays. It belongs to the headwaters of the Mäntyharju water route in the Kymijoki drainage basin. Around Haukivuori, water journeys helped connect scattered settlements with Pieksämäki, the mother parish to which local inhabitants belonged. The lake thus formed part of the routes by which a dispersed rural population reached its religious centre and neighbouring communities.

In 1737 the inhabitants of the Haukivuori area asked permission to build a prayer house. The cathedral chapter approved the request, beginning the development of a nearer centre for worship. Haukivuori became a chapel congregation in 1782, and a new church was built in 1794–1798 and consecrated in April 1798. These changes gave the lake district a more substantial local institution before the end of Swedish rule in Finland. Kyyvesi's bays and shores provided the setting for this growing parish life. The water stood higher than it would after nineteenth-century drainage works, so the later pattern of exposed rocks and shallow shore meadows does not fully represent the lake these communities knew.