Helsinki

Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city's urban area has a population of , making it by far the most populous urban area in Finland as well as the country's most important center for politics, education, finance, culture, and research; while Tampere in the Pirkanmaa region, located to the north from Helsinki, is the second largest urban area in Finland. Helsinki is located north of Tallinn, Estonia, east of Stockholm, Sweden, and west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It has close historical ties with these three cities.

Together with the cities of Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen (and surrounding commuter towns, including the eastern neighboring municipality of Sipoo), Helsinki forms the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, which has a population of over 1.5 million. Often considered to be Finland's only metropolis, it is the world's northernmost metro area with over one million people as well as the northernmost capital of an EU member state. After Copenhagen and Stockholm, Helsinki is the third largest municipality in the Nordic countries. Finnish and Swedish are both official languages. The city is served by the international Helsinki Airport, located in the neighboring city of Vantaa, with frequent service to many destinations in Europe and Asia.

Helsinki was the World Design Capital for 2012, the venue for the 1952 Summer Olympics, and the host of the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest in 2007.

Helsinki has one of the world's highest standards of urban living. In 2011, the British magazine ''Monocle'' ranked Helsinki the world's most liveable city in its liveable cities index. In the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2016 liveability survey, Helsinki was ranked ninth among 140 cities. In July 2021, the American magazine ''Time'' ranked Helsinki one of the greatest places in the world in 2021 as a city that "can grow into a sprouting cultural nest in the future," and which has already been known in the world as an environmental pioneer. An international ''Cities of Choice'' survey conducted in 2021 by the consulting firm Boston Consulting Group and the BCG Henderson Institute raised Helsinki the third best city in the world to live, with London and New York City ranking the first and the second. Also, together with Rovaniemi in the Lapland region, Helsinki is one of Finland's most significant tourist cities in terms of foreign tourism. Due to the large number of sea passengers per year, Helsinki is classed as a Large-Port City .

Etymology

According to a theory presented in the 1630s, at the time of Swedish colonisation of coastal areas of Finland, colonists from Hälsingland in central Sweden had arrived at what is now known as the Vantaa River and called it ''Helsingå'' ("Helsinge River"), which gave rise to the names of Helsinge village and church in the 1300s. This theory is questionable, because dialect research suggests that the settlers arrived from Uppland and nearby areas. Others have proposed the name as having been derived from the Swedish word ''helsing'', an archaic form of the word ''hals'' (neck), referring to the narrowest part of a river, the rapids. Other Scandinavian cities at similar geographic locations were given similar names at the time, e.g. Helsingør in Denmark and Helsingborg in Sweden.

When a town was founded in Forsby village (later known as ''Koskela'') in 1548, it was named ''Helsinge fors'', "Helsinge rapids". The name refers to the rapids at the mouth of the river. The town was commonly known as ''Helsinge'' or ''Helsing'', from which the contemporary Finnish name arose.

Official Finnish Government documents and Finnish language newspapers have used the name ''Helsinki'' since 1819, when the Senate of Finland moved itself into the city from Turku, the former capital of Finland. The decrees issued in Helsinki were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in written Finnish. As part of the Grand Duchy of Finland in the Russian Empire, Helsinki was known as ''Gel'singfors'' (Гельсингфорс) in Russian.

In Helsinki slang, the city is called ''Stadi'' (from the Swedish word ''stad'', meaning "city"). People from other areas of Finland might use ''Hesa'' (short for Helsinki). ' is the Northern Sami name of Helsinki.

History

Early history

Since the end of the Ice Age, after the retreat of the ice cover, first colonizers came to the area around Helsinki at about 5000 BC. Their presence was documented by archeologists in Vantaa, Pitäjänmäki and Kaarela.
Permanent settlements appeared only at the beginning of the 1st millennium AD, in the Iron Age, when the area was inhabited by Tavastians. They used the area for fishing and hunting, but due to a lack of archeological finds it is difficult to say how extensive their settlements were. Pollen analysis has shown that there were cultivating settlements in the area in the 10th century and surviving historical records from the 14th century describe Tavastian settlements in the area.

The early settlements were raided by Vikings, later substituted by Christianized colonists from Sweden. They arrived mostly from the Swedish coastal regions of Norrland and Hälsingland, which especially intensified by the years of 1100. Swedes colonized the coastline of the Helsinki region permanently in the late 13th century after the successful Second Crusade to Finland, which led to the defeat of the Tavastians.

Written chronicles of 1417 mentioned Koskela village near the rapids close to the mouth of the Vantaa River, near which Helsinki would be founded.

Founding of Helsinki

Helsinki was established as a trading town by King Gustav I of Sweden in 12 June 1550, as the town of Helsingfors, which he intended to be a rival to the Hanseatic city of Reval on the southern shores of the Gulf of Finland (today known as Tallinn). In order to populate his newly founded town in the mouth of the Vantaa River, the King issued an order to resettle the bourgeoisie of Porvoo, Ekenäs, Rauma and Ulvila into the town. Shallowness of the bay did not permit the building of a harbor, and the king allowed settlers to abandon the unfortunate place. In 1640, Count Per Brahe the Younger moved the city center with few descendants of the original settlers to the Vironniemi neighborhood, where the Senate Square and Helsinki Cathedral are now located.

In the course of the second half of the 17th century Helsinki, as a wooden town, suffered from regular fires, and by the beginning of the 18th century its population was below 1,700 inhabitants. For a long time, Helsinki was mainly a small administrative city of the governors of the Nyland and Tavastehus County, but its importance began to grow as a more solid naval defense began to be built in front of the city in the 18th century. Little came of the plans as Helsinki remained a tiny town plagued by poverty, wars, and diseases. The plague of 1710 killed the greater part of the inhabitants of Helsinki. In the end of the Great Northern War in 1721, the retreating Swedish administration burned Helsinki down. Despite of that, by the beginning of the 19th century the number of the city inhabitants grew to 3,000. The construction of the naval fortress Sveaborg (in Finnish ''Viapori'', today also ''Suomenlinna'') in the 18th century helped improve Helsinki's status, but it was not until Russia defeated Sweden in the Finnish War and annexed Finland as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 that the town began to develop into a substantial city. Russians besieged the Sveaborg fortress during the war, and about one quarter of the town was destroyed in an 1808 fire.

Emperor Alexander I of Russia moved the Finnish capital from Turku to Helsinki on 8 April 1812 to reduce Swedish influence in Finland, and to bring the capital closer to Saint Petersburg. Following the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, the Royal Academy of Turku, which at the time was the country's only university, was also relocated to Helsinki and eventually became the modern University of Helsinki. The move consolidated the city's new role and helped set it on a path of continuous growth. This transformation is highly apparent in the downtown core, which was rebuilt in the neoclassical style to resemble Saint Petersburg, mostly to a plan by the German-born architect C. L. Engel. As elsewhere, technological advancements such as railroads and industrialization were key factors behind the city's growth.

Twentieth century

The population of Helsinki was already over 100,000 in the 1910s, and despite the tumultuous nature of Finnish history during the first half of the 20th century (including the Finnish Civil War and the Winter War which both left marks on the city), Helsinki continued its steady development. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were approximately the same number of Finnish and Swedish speakers in Helsinki; the majority of the workers were Finnish-speaking. The local Helsinki slang (or ''stadin slangi'') developed among Finnish children and young people as a mixed Finnish-Swedish language from the 1890s, and it was also influenced by the Russian language, and from the 1950s onwards, slang began to become more Finnish. A landmark event was the 1952 Olympic Games, held in Helsinki. Finland's rapid urbanization in the 1970s, occurring late relative to the rest of Europe, tripled the population in the metropolitan area, and the Helsinki Metro subway system was built. The relatively sparse population density of Helsinki and its peculiar structure have often been attributed to the lateness of its growth.

Geography

Called the "Daughter of the Baltic"
or the "Pearl of the Baltic Sea", Helsinki is on the tip of a peninsula and on 315 islands. The inner city is located on a southern peninsula, ''Helsinginniemi'' ("Cape of Helsinki), which is rarely referred to by its actual name, Vironniemi, but as a whole Helsinki's population density of ranks the city as rather sparsely populated in comparison to other European capital cities. Outside of the inner city, much of Helsinki consists of postwar suburbs separated by patches of forest. A narrow, long Helsinki Central Park, stretching from the inner city to Helsinki's northern border, is an important recreational area for residents. The City of Helsinki has about 11,000 boat berths and possesses over 14,000 hectares (34,595 acres; 54.1 sq mi) of marine fishing waters adjacent to the Capital Region. Some 60 fish species are found in this area and recreational fishing is popular.

Major islands in Helsinki include Seurasaari, Vallisaari, Lauttasaari, and Korkeasaari – the latter being the site of Finland's largest zoo called Korkeasaari Zoo. Other noteworthy islands are the fortress island of Suomenlinna (Sveaborg), the military island of Santahamina, and Isosaari. Pihlajasaari island is a favorite summer spot for gay men and naturists, comparable to Fire Island in New York City.

There are 60 nature reserves in Helsinki with a total area of . Of the total area, are water areas and are land areas. In addition, the city owns seven nature reserves in Espoo, Sipoo, Hanko and Ingå. The largest nature reserve is the Vanhankaupunginselkä, with an area of . The city's first nature reserve, Tiiraluoto of Lauttasaari, was established in 1948.

The title plant of Helsinki is the Norway maple and the title animal is the red squirrel.

Metropolitan area

The Helsinki metropolitan area, also known as the Capital Region ( Finnish: ''Pääkaupunkiseutu'', Swedish: ''Huvudstadsregionen'') comprises four municipalities: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen. The Helsinki urban area is considered to be the only metropolis in Finland. It has a population of over 1.1 million, and is the most densely populated area of Finland. The Capital Region spreads over a land area of and has a population density of . With over 20 percent of the country's population in just 0.2 percent of its surface area, the area's housing density is high by Finnish standards.

The Helsinki Metropolitan Area (Greater Helsinki) consists of the cities of Helsinki Capital Region and ten surrounding municipalities: Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Kerava, Kirkkonummi, Nurmijärvi, Sipoo, Tuusula, Pornainen, Mäntsälä and Vihti. The Metropolitan Area covers and has a population of over 1.4 million, or about a fourth of the total population of Finland. The metropolitan area has a high concentration of employment: approximately 750,000 jobs. Despite the intensity of land use, the region also has large recreational areas and green spaces. The Greater Helsinki area is the world's northernmost urban area with a population of over one million people, and the northernmost EU capital city.

The Helsinki urban area is an officially recognized urban area in Finland, defined by its population density. The area stretches throughout 11 municipalities, and is the largest such area in Finland, with a land area of and approximately 1.2 million inhabitants.

Climate

Helsinki has a humid continental climate ( Köppen: ''Dfb'') similar to that of Hokkaido or Nova Scotia coastal. Owing to the mitigating influence of the Baltic Sea and North Atlantic Current (see also Extratropical cyclone), temperatures during the winter are higher than the northern location might suggest, with the average in January and February around .

Winters in Helsinki are notably warmer than in the north of Finland, and the snow season is much shorter in the capital, due to it being in extreme Southern Finland and the urban heat island effect. Temperatures below occur a few times a year at most. However, because of the latitude, days last 5 hours and 48 minutes around the winter solstice with very low sun (at noon, the sun is a little bit over 6 degrees in the sky), and the cloudy weather at this time of year exacerbates darkness. Conversely, Helsinki enjoys long daylight during the summer; during the summer solstice, days last 18 hours and 57 minutes.

The average maximum temperature from June to August is around . Due to the marine effect, especially during hot summer days, daily temperatures are a little cooler and night temperatures higher than further inland. The highest temperature ever recorded in the city was , on 28 July 2019 at Kaisaniemi weather station, breaking the previous record of that was observed in July 1945 at Ilmala weather station. The lowest temperature ever recorded in the city was , on 10 January 1987 although an unofficial low of was recorded in December 1876. Helsinki Airport (in Vantaa, north of the Helsinki city centre) recorded a temperature of , on 29 July 2010, and a low of , on 9 January 1987. Precipitation is received from frontal passages and thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are most common in the summer.

Neighbourhoods and other subdivisions

Helsinki is divided into three major areas: Helsinki Downtown ( fi, Helsingin kantakaupunki, sv, Helsingfors innerstad), ( fi, Pohjois-Helsinki, sv, Norra Helsingfors) and East Helsinki ( fi, Itä-Helsinki, sv, Östra Helsingfors). Of these, Helsinki Downtown means the undefined core area of capital, as opposed to suburbs. The designations business center and city center usually refer to Kluuvi, Kamppi and Punavuori. Other subdivisional centers outside the downtown area include Malmi ( sv, Malm), located in the northeastern part of city, and Itäkeskus ( sv, Östra centrum), in the eastern part of city.

Cityscape

Neoclassical and romantic nationalism trend

Carl Ludvig Engel, appointed to plan a new city centre on his own, designed several neoclassical buildings in Helsinki. The focal point of Engel's city plan was the Senate Square. It is surrounded by the Government Palace (to the east), the main building of Helsinki University (to the west), and (to the north) the large Helsinki Cathedral, which was finished in 1852, twelve years after Engel's death. Helsinki's epithet, "The White City of the North", derives from this construction era. Most of Helsinki's older buildings were built after the 1808 fire; before that time, the oldest surviving building in the center of Helsinki is the (1757) at the intersection of Senate Square and the Katariinankatu street. Suomenlinna also has buildings completed in the 18th century, including the Kuninkaanportti on the (1753–1754). The oldest church in Helsinki is the Old Church (1826) designed by Engel.

Helsinki is also home to numerous Art Nouveau-influenced ( Jugend in Finnish) buildings belonging to the Kansallisromantiikka ( romantic nationalism) trend, designed in the early 20th century and strongly influenced by ''Kalevala'', which was a common theme of the era. Helsinki's Art Nouveau style is also featured in central residential districts, such as Katajanokka and Ullanlinna. An important architect of the Finnish Art Nouveau style was Eliel Saarinen, whose architectural masterpiece was the Helsinki Central Station. Opposite the Bank of Finland building is the Renaissance Revivalish the House of the Estates (1891).

The only visible public buildings of the Gothic Revival architecture in Helsinki are St. John's Church (1891) in Ullanlinna, which is the largest stone church in Finland, and its twin towers rise to 74 meters and have 2,600 seats. Other examples of neo-Gothic include the House of Nobility in Kruununhaka and the Catholic St. Henry's Cathedral.

Helsinki's neoclassical buildings were often used as a backdrop for scenes set to take place in the Soviet Union in many Cold War era Hollywood movies, when filming in the USSR was not possible. Some of them include '' The Kremlin Letter'' (1970), '' Reds'' (1981), and '' Gorky Park'' (1983). Because some streetscapes were reminiscent of Leningrad's and Moscow's old buildings, they too were used in movie productions. At the same time the government secretly instructed Finnish officials not to extend assistance to such film projects.Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, Political Department:   Rarely has Helsinki been represented on its own in films, most notably the 1967 British-American espionage thriller '' Billion Dollar Brain'', starring Michael Caine. The city has large amounts of underground areas such as shelters and tunnels, many used daily as swimming pool, church, water management, entertainment etc.

Functionalism and modern architecture

Helsinki also features several buildings by Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, recognized as one of the pioneers of architectural functionalism. However, some of his works, such as the headquarters of the paper company Stora Enso and the concert venue Finlandia Hall, have been subject to divided opinions from the citizens.

Functionalist buildings in Helsinki by other architects include the Olympic Stadium, the Tennis Palace, the Rowing Stadium, the Swimming Stadium, the Velodrome, the Glass Palace, the Töölö Sports Hall, and Helsinki-Malmi Airport. The sports venues were built to serve the 1940 Helsinki Olympic Games; the games were initially cancelled due to the Second World War, but the venues fulfilled their purpose in the 1952 Olympic Games. Many of them are listed by DoCoMoMo as significant examples of modern architecture. The Olympic Stadium and Helsinki-Malmi Airport are also catalogued by the Finnish Heritage Agency as cultural-historical environments of national significance.

When Finland became heavily urbanized in the 1960s and 1970s, the district of Pihlajamäki, for example, was built in Helsinki for new residents, where for the first time in Finland, precast concrete was used on a large scale. Pikku Huopalahti, built in the 1980s and 1990s, has tried to get rid of a one-size-fits-all grid pattern, which means that its look is very organic and its streets are not repeated in the same way. Itäkeskus in Eastern Helsinki was the first regional center in the 1980s.Ilonen, Arvi: Helsinki, Espoo, Kauniainen, Vantaa – arkkitehtuuriopas. Helsinki: Otava, 2009. . Efforts have also been made to protect Helsinki in the late 20th century, and many old buildings have been renovated. Modern architecture is represented, for example, by the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, which consists of two straight and curved-walled parts, though this style strongly divided the opinions from the citizens. Next to Kiasma is the glass-walled Sanomatalo (1999).

The start of the 21st century marked the beginning of highrise construction in Helsinki, when the city decided to allow the construction of skyscrapers; prior to this, Hotel Torni (), built in 1931, has generally been called Finland's first skyscraper, and was at time the tallest building in Finland until 1976. there are no skyscrapers taller than 100 meters in the Helsinki area, but there are several projects under construction or planning, mainly in Pasila and Kalasatama. An international architecture competition for at least 10 high-rises to be built in Pasila is being held. Construction of the towers will start in 2023. In Kalasatama, the first 35-story (; called Majakka) and 32-story (; called ) residential towers are already completed. Later they will be joined by a 37-story, two 32-story, 31-story, and 27-story residential buildings. In the Kalasatama area, there will be about 15 high-rises within 10 years. Even higher skyscrapers under the name ''Trigoni'' are planned for the Central Pasila area near the Mall of Tripla shopping centre; the highest of which is to become about 200 meters high, and it can be seen even in good weather all the way to the Estonian coast.

Statues and sculptures

Well-known statues and monuments strongly embedded in the cityscape of Helsinki include the Keisarinnankivi ("Stone of the Empress", 1835), the statue of Russian Emperor Alexander II (1894), the fountain sculpture '' Havis Amanda'' (1908), the Paavo Nurmi statue (1925), the ''Three Smiths Statue'' (1932), the Aleksis Kivi Memorial (1939), the Eino Leino Statue (1953), the Equestrian statue of Marshal Mannerheim (1960) and the ''Sibelius Monument'' (1967).

Government

As is the case with all Finnish municipalities, Helsinki's city council is the main decision-making organ in local politics, dealing with issues such as urban planning, schools, health care, and public transport. The council is chosen in the nationally held municipal elections, which are held every four years.

Helsinki's city council consists of eighty-five members. Following the most recent municipal elections in 2017, the three largest parties are the National Coalition Party (25), the Green League (21), and the Social Democratic Party (12).

The Mayor of Helsinki is Juhana Vartiainen.

Demographics

At 53 percent of the population, women form a greater proportion of Helsinki residents than the national average of 51 percent. Helsinki's population density of 2,739.36 people per square kilometre makes Helsinki the most densely-populated city in Finland. The life expectancy for men and women is slightly below the national averages: 75.1 years for men as compared to 75.7 years, 81.7 years for women as compared to 82.5 years.

Helsinki has experienced strong growth since the 1810s, when it replaced Turku as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland, which later became the sovereign Republic of Finland. The city continued its growth from that time on, with an exception during the Finnish Civil War. From the end of World War II up until the 1970s there was a massive exodus of people from the countryside to the cities of Finland, in particular Helsinki. Between 1944 and 1969 the population of the city nearly doubled from 275,000 to 525,600.

In the 1960s, the population growth of Helsinki began to decrease, mainly due to a lack of housing. Some residents began to move to the neighbouring cities of Espoo and Vantaa, resulting in increased population growth in both municipalities. Espoo's population increased ninefold in sixty years, from 22,874 people in 1950 to 244,353 in 2009. Vantaa saw an even more dramatic change in the same time span: from 14,976 in 1950 to 197,663 in 2009, a thirteenfold increase. These population changes prompted the municipalities of Greater Helsinki into more intense cooperation in areas such as public transportation – resulting in the foundation of HSL – and waste management. The increasing scarcity of housing and the higher costs of living in the capital region have pushed many daily commuters to find housing in formerly rural areas, and even further, to cities such as Lohja, Hämeenlinna, Lahti, and Porvoo.

In 2015, there were about 3,500 homeless people in Helsinki. About a thousand of them are foreigners.YLE: Asunnottomien määrä on vähentynyt Helsingissä
(in Finnish) 700 of the homeless are under the age of 25, which is 400 less than in 2013. According to Taru Neiman, Head of Housing Support in Helsinki, homelessness has decreased because there are more places in temporary housing units than before. In 2015, there were more than 800 places in Helsinki's housing units and the queuing times were on average one year.

Language

Finnish and Swedish are the official languages of Helsinki. 77.1% of the citizens speak Finnish as their native language. 5.6% speak Swedish. The remaining 17.3% of the population speaks a native language other than Finnish or Swedish. The fastest growing languages are Arabic and Somali. Just 64 people speak the Sami languages as their mother tongue, though 527 people are of Sami background. 93 Tatar

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