Spillways open at the Kyröskoski dam in the eponymous town, in Hämeenkyrö, 40 km northwest of Tampere in Vaasa direction.
Kalevala, the Finnish national epic, doesn't have especially many actual places mentioned by name, but this is actually one of them! Supposedly the 22 m waterfall here used to be called Hälläpyörä. These days, with floodgates closed, it normally looks like that:
"Three, the water-falls in number, three in number, inland oceans,
Three in number, lofty mountains, shooting to the vault of heaven.
Hallapyora's near to Yaemen, Katrakoski in Karyala;
Imatra, the falling water, tumbles, roaring, into Wuoksi."
The first Kalevala English translation, from 1888 by John Martin Crawford, mangles the names considerably. Kalevala is difficult to translate into English, and later translations stopped attempting to reproduce the Kalevala meter, the peculiar trochaic tetrameter characteristic of Finnish folk poetry.
"Страшных три есть водопада и озер огромных столько ж;
— Енот Кваркенский (@enotogorsk) November 10, 2022
Также три горы высоких под небесным этим сводом:
Хялляпюёря у Хяме, Катракоски у карелов,
Вуокса неукротима, Иматра — непобедима." ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/lHYRq75eRF
In the original Finnish:
Kolme on koskea kovoa, kolme järveä jaloa,
kolme vuorta korkeata tämän ilman kannen alla:
Hämehess' on Hälläpyörä, Kaatrakoski Karjalassa;
ei ole Vuoksen voittanutta, yli käynyttä Imatran.
Nowadays all three of these waterfalls are blocked by hydro power dams. Imatra is by far the most famous (and the biggest) one of them, and rapid shows there are much more common. I should have a picture somewhere, but could only find one in dry state.
And Ka[a]trakoski is nowadays called Pankakoski, and is located near Lieksa in Finnish North Karelia. There are no rapid shows there to my knowledge, and not much to look at other than the hydro power plant.
Rapid shows at Kyröskoski/Hälläpyörä are held only four times a year, and it took me a few years to successfully catch one, on 1.5.2022 (schedule: kyroskoskenvoima.fi). The landscape around is dominated by a small, 12 MW of power, hydro power plant, and a cardboard factory of Metsä Board company.
A curious sight in the park by the dam is an abandoned mill.
Kyröskoski itself is a quite ordinary small Finnish industrial town.
By accident I also saw there a rally of the local Social Democratic Party branch, which was of course quite appropriate on May 1, the Labor Day :)
