The wooden church of Soini municipality was built by Yrjö Lepistö and in completed in 1793. The present appearance date mainly from the restoration made in 1885. The bell tower was erected in 1795. There is an old cemetery surrounding the church with a monument erected for people died of starvation in the 19th century. National Board of Antiques has defined Soini church site as a national built heritage.
The unique detail in the Soini Church is wooden “poor woman” statue. Typically these statues are always been men, but the one in Soini is the only remaining woman sculpture in Finland.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.