The History of Heikkilä’s Pirtti, the Competition Center for the Kainuu Orienteering Week 2025, Reaches Back Centuries

Published: 29.04.2025

This year, the competition centre of the Kainuu Orienteering Week will be located at Heikkilä’s Pirtti in Ohravaara. This summer, orienteers will get to explore a historic Kainuu hill landscape that has been inhabited since the 1800s. What echoes of the past can be felt in these surroundings?

The small Heikkilä cabin was built in 1945 to replace the old Heikkilä farmhouse. In 2005, the family expanded the main building by relocating an old cabin from Uusitalo in Korvanniemi. This extension is known as the "Simo Hurtta’s Room," originally built around the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. But who was Simo Hurtta, who once owned the Turunkorva estate in the Korvanniemi region?

Simon Affleck, known in Finnish as Simo Hurtta, was of Scottish descent and served as a tax official in Finland at the end of the 1600s and the beginning of the 1700s. In Finnish folklore, he is remembered as a cruel and merciless man. His area of responsibility in Kainuu and North Karelia was impoverished, and Affleck strictly enforced tax collection and military duties. Life on the Russian border at that time was extremely unsettled.

In 1704, Affleck purchased the Turunkorva estate in Sotkamo, one of the largest farms in the region, covering 2,000 hectares. The estate was referred to as the Turunkorva Manor and was located along the shores of Lake Nuasjärvi. To live there in peace with his family, Affleck exempted nearby tenant farmers from taxation.

However, the family faced severe hardship during the war years of the early 1700s and the period known as the Great Wrath: Russian forces and local peasants raided the manor, burning it down and taking Affleck’s wife and children captive to Russia. Some of them eventually returned alive. Affleck sold the estate in 1724.

According to one legend, local peasants sealed Simon Affleck alive inside a structure on an island in Lake Nuasjärvi, which later became known as “Muuraussaari” (Masonry Island).

Interested in local history? In Sotkamo, you can visit the Makasiini Museum during the summer, located near the center of Sotkamo. Learn more about the local heritage museum on YouTube: A Museum Trip from Home | Kainuu | Sotkamo’s Makasiini Museum.

Today, Heikkilä’s Pirtti in Ohravaara is owned by Mervi Hakkarainen. She runs a café and lodging business at the location and also owns Satama Cafe, located on the shore of Lake Pirttijärvi near the center of Sotkamo.

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