Taivalkoski

Taivalkoski takes its name from a steep rapid on the upper Iijoki. Boats could not pass the rapid, so travellers had to haul them overland along a portage maintained by local inhabitants. More permanent settlement began to spread through the surrounding country after the middle of the sixteenth century, with newcomers arriving particularly from Savonia. The rapid was recorded in a survey of Ostrobothnian rivers commissioned by King Charles IX in the early seventeenth century.