History
Tyrnävä in Pre-Historic Times
Around 3,000 years ago most of Tyrnävä was under water as a result of the Ice Age. The Oulujoki river waters also made their way through Tyrnävä into the sea. Some 2,500 years ago, as the land gradually rose, the plains settled into being a shallow bay of the sea. It took centuries for the land to be revealed as the sea retreated. The silt left by the water gathered over the deep-lying bedrock to create a fertile flatland.
The First Permanent Settlements
The riverbanks in the Tyrnävä area were until the end of the sixteenth century used as hunting grounds by the people living on the coast. Permanent settlers began to arrive in the area in the 1550s, and Tyrnävä is first mentioned as its own village in historical sources from 1581.
The times were uneasy and enemies razed the Tyrnävä area as early as the 1590s. But it was the time of the Great Northern War (1714-1721) that was especially bleak for the region: 706 people from Tyrnävä were killed and 165 were taken to Russia as prisoners.
The Independent Municipality
Tyrnävä was a dependent parish of Liminka between the 1650s and 1889, when it was granted the title of an independent parish. As a municipality the release from Liminka took place earlier, between 1865 and 1867. The times were not easy, as they were marked by the worst losses of the 1860s, a decade marked by crop failures.
A lesson from that decade was that it was more profitable to invest in stock raising than in planting grain, which was susceptible to frost. Cowsheds grew in size and people were interested in stockbreeding. Village dairies appeared around the municipality. In the beginning of the twentieth century the people of Tyrnävä decided to combine forces to create a cooperative dairy in the town. The year 1906 saw the beginning of the growth of the Tyrnävä dairy, which was to become one of the most famous in the country. It produced butter and Emmental cheeses, and there was even enough milk for these products to be exported to England amongst other countries. The surroundings of the dairy also attracted the construction of a flourmill and a sawmill as well as a leather and shoe factory on the other side of the river. This area formed the heart of the lively Tyrnävä lifestyle of the 1920s and 30s.
The story of the Tyrnävä dairy came to an end in 1947, when the milk from most Tyrnävä farms began to be taken directly to Valio’s industrial dairy in Oulu. Due to the overproduction of milk, most producers in Tyrnävä gave up their cattle during the 1980s, turning instead to the cultivation of grains or potatoes. Tyrnävä became a true potato-growing region when the Finnish Seed Potato Centre was located in the municipality. Another factor that increased the fame of the potato region was the foundation of a potato spirit factory to refine excess potatoes into ‘Tyrnävä Liquor’ and other such products.