Möysä is the 16th district of the city of

Lahti Lahti (; ) is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Päijät-Häme. It is located in the Finnish Lakeland. The population of Lahti is approximately , while the Lahti sub-region, sub-region has a population of approximately . It is the mo ...

, in the region of

Päijät-Häme Päijät-Häme (; ) is a Regions of Finland, region in Southern Finland south of the lake Päijänne. It borders the regions of Uusimaa, Kanta-Häme, Pirkanmaa, Central Finland, Southern Savonia, South Savo and Kymenlaakso. The biggest city in t ...

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

. The population of the statistical district of Möysä was 6,712 in 2019.

Etymology

The (antiquated) word ''möysä'' means a sauna doubling as a shelter, constructed in a partly underground hole. It may be of

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ne ...

origin, but the area has also been favored by Tavastian hunter-gatherers. It is presumed that the shores of lake Joutjärvi had numerous ''möysäs'' for use by travellers during the village of Lahti's time as a significant place of commerce during the 1600s.

History

Möysä was traditionally part of the village of Järvenpää, which is presumed to be the oldest permanently inhabited area in Lahti. It took until the 1800s for these residencies to spread from the eastern shore of Joutjärvi to the area that currently constitutes Möysä, towards the village of Lahti. The Louna manor was built in the mid-1800s by the road that is presently known as Harjulankatu. Towards the end of the century, estates were mostly founded by the roads leading to Vyborg and Heinola, in addition to a community that sprung up on the turn of the millennium on the lands of Harjunaro, by the road now known as Seppälänkatu. Thanks to the steady growth of the area, a '' kansakoulu'' was founded in Möysä in 1906. As the Finnish army was split up and effectively absorbed by the

Imperial Russian Army The Imperial Russian Army () was the army of the Russian Empire, active from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was organized into a standing army and a state militia. The standing army consisted of Regular army, regular troops and ...

during the first period of Russification, the first Russian company to arrive in Lahti at the end of 1909 was temporarily housed in the Ionoff '' valenki'' factory in Möysä. This later led to the foundation of the garrison in Hennala. During the Battle of Lahti of the

Finnish Civil War The Finnish Civil War was a civil war in Finland in 1918 fought for the leadership and control of the country between Whites (Finland), White Finland and the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (Red Finland) during the country's transition fr ...

, the hilly surroundings of Möysä around the Joutjärvi saw battle as Detachment Brandenstein of the Whites advanced from the east towards the city, having cut off the Riihimäki–Saint Petersburg railway in Villähde. Möysä was annexed to the city of Lahti from the parish of

Hollola Hollola () is a municipality of Finland, located in the western part of the Päijänne Tavastia region. The municipality is unilingually Finnish and has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . ...

in 1933.

References

Districts of Lahti {{SouthernFinland-geo-stub