Border drawn by 200-year-old Treaty of Fredrikshamn is nonexistent in practice

Finnish Tornio and Swedish Haparanda are almost one and the same city

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By Tapio Mainio in Tornio
     
      The aim is that communication in the valley of the Tornio and Muonio rivers will again be as easy as it was before a new border was drawn between Sweden and Russia in 1809.
      The above was stated in a manifesto published jointly by Samuel Salmi, Bishop of Oulu, and Hans Stiglund, Bishop of Luleå, at a commemorative event called Rajaton raja (”Border Without Borders”) that was organised in Muonio from September 17th to 20th.
      One could say that the two bishops’ wish has almost come to pass, when seeing what is going on at the border of Tornio and Haparanda.
      ”I went to Haparanda to buy some snus”, says student Mika Vähä, 37, from Tornio.
     
Vähä walks from one country to another along a new street that goes past the new Ikea store, north of Tornio’s new shopping centre.
      There are no border formalities whatsoever, as the old Finnish customs station is some 500 metres away on the southern side of the shopping mall.
      Before Finland joined the European Union, one could once in a while have a guilty conscience: ”Gosh, I hope I did not pack too much butter into the boot of my car.”
     
”About 90 per cent of customs officials have left the western border. The Tornio Valley customs station does only remote monitoring and makes spot checks”, says Mika Koponen, Chief of Investigation at the Northern Customs District.
     
The border without borders is symbolized by the huge cube-shaped Haparanda customs station that stands alone and useless in front of Ikea.
      The new streets and light traffic routes have been purposefully built so that they do not even accidentally direct anyone to the customs post, as only a few customs officials are sitting on the second floor of the building.
      ”In the past, there was a pub on the ground floor, but I have heard that it was closed following some disputes”, stoneworker Jukka Savilampi, 38, from Haparanda says.
     
Savilampi is finishing the paving work on a new roundabout that is provided with a fine fountain.
      Haparanda’s new shopping centre should go up within a stone’s throw from the roundabout.
      The two consumer oases will be located near each other, which will confirm the illusion of the borderless twin-city of Tornio-Haparanda.
      Reportedly, the sales of the stores in Tornio and Haparanda have grown by more than 800 per cent over the past 12 months.
     
Pupils from the Tornionseutu School have gone for a walk to Sweden.
      ”We crossed the border to Haparanda at the golf course, and then walked back to Finland along another street”, says Tiina Hamari, teacher of physical education.
      There is no visible border on the Meri-Lappi golf course between the two cities, either.
      ”During a full eighteen holes of golf, one can hit twice over the national frontier. That over there is where the border should be”, says Pekka Neitola, 49, from Rovaniemi, pointing at the assumed boundary line. He is playing golf with his wife Arja Neitola, 46.
      The only way you might know which side your ball was on is if you called out and asked another player what the time was: Sweden is an hour behind Finland.
      In practice, a national frontier simply does not exist between Tornio and Haparanda.
      Living in one country and going to work or to school in another, local residents hardly stop to think about the border at all.
     
     
BACKGROUND: 200 years since Sweden lost Finland
     
     
According to the Treaty of Fredrikshamn, a peace treaty concluded between Sweden and Imperial Russia on September 17th 1809, Sweden lost six of its eastern provinces to Russia, a third of its land, and a quarter of its population, and the border between Sweden and Russia moved from the Kymi Rover to the Tornio River.
     
The ceded territories were to constitute the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, within the Russian Empire, with its own administration and institutions.
     
The new border separated people and families who had been living together for hundreds of years, while some 40,000 Finns remained on the Swedish side of the border.
     
After having lost Tornio, Sweden founded a new market town named Haparanda in 1821.
     
At present, Tornio has some 22,500 residents, while the population of Haparanda is slightly more than 10,000.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 21.9.2009


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Swedish PM says Finland and Sweden do not need to apologise to each other over common history (16.1.2009)
  War of Finland 1808-1809 (26.2.2008)

See also:
  Health Commissioner reprimands Astrid Thors for snus liberation campaign (11.12.2008)
  Finnish Tornio and Swedish Haparanda to start building work on common city centre (28.4.2004)
  Haparanda residents defend their right to speak Finnish (30.8.2007)

Links:
  Treaty of Fredrikshamn (Wikipedia)
  Haparanda-Tornio
  Finnish Customs

TAPIO MAINIO / Helsingin Sanomat
tapio.mainio@hs.fi