The story
The area of Orimattila contains Finland's oldest known settlement.
Orimattila gets its name from a local farm, established by Matti Laurinpoika in 1539. His estate was known as Orih-Mattila. As a village, Orimattila was first mentioned in 1561 as Orihmattila. A chapel community was established in the late 1500s, and it became an independent parish after it was separated from the neighboring parish of Hollola in 1636. The parish and its main settlement were still known as Orihmattila until the 19th century. Orih is an older pronunciation of the word ori meaning "stallion", though the loss of the h in place names was prevented by the element after it, in this case -mattila (cf. Orivesi, also called Orihvesi until the 19th century).
During the Great Northern War, which was caused by the Russian occupation of Finland, the parishes of Orimattila and Hollola were temporarily united. The following year, the bishop of Orimattila was forced to collect taxes from the neighboring parish of Hollola, which was then taken over by the bishop of Stockholm.
On 1 January 1956, the city of Lahti annexed the district of Renkomäki, which previously belonged to Orimattila.
Many immigrants from the Kirvu region were settled in Orimattila as a result of the Continuation War. Orimattila became a city in 1992. In 2009, the municipality decided not to participate in the merger negotiations between the municipalities of Artjärvi and Orimattila, and on 22 March 2010, the two municipalities merged.
From Wikipedia’s article on Orimattila, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5