Helsinki Day will invite people to get up and dance

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This year, Helsinki Day, June 12th, will be celebrated on a Saturday, while the events of the Helsinki Week that surrounds it will begin already on Thursday June 3rd.
     
Helsinki Week will offer an expanded programme of events. In the space of a few years, Helsinki Week has become a diverse cavalcade of events and festivals. The title "Helsinki Week" is in fact a little misleading, as events are in store for two weeks - in fact right through to June 20th.
     
On this year’s Helsinki Day, celebrations will revolve around dance, and the programme includes as many as five dance events.
      For example the Korjaamo Culture Factory in the district of Töölö will be the setting for summer dancing and tango lessons.
     
More than before, events will also spread out beyond the city centre, including an open day at Finland's oldest golf club in Tali, the opening ceremony of a new coastal route for pedestrians and cyclists in the Kalasatama district, an Ostarifestari (”Shopping Mall Festival”) in the district of Kontula, and many more.
      The traditional Helsinki Samba Carnival will provide Latino rhythms already for the 20th time.
      In honour of the jubilee year, Helsinki’s samba schools will not compete against each other this time, but they will join forces and arrange a samba parade that is to be the ”showiest in Finnish samba history”.
     
The budget of Helsinki Day has grown from EUR 150,000 to EUR 170,000. The spirit of the festival has remained the same as before, but this time attempts will be made to appeal to youth and young adults more than in previous years, says producer Susa Nokelainen from the Events Division of the Helsinki City Tourist & Convention Bureau.
      Guests will have free admission to most events.
     
In case anyone is wondering why June 12th is "Helsinki Day", it is generally taken to be the day in 1550 when Helsinki was founded by King Gustav I of Sweden, in a vain Swedish attempt to stem the power of the Hanseatic League city of Reval (now Tallinn).
      As it happens, The Swedes picked up Reval for themselves in the late 16th century (so making the original exercise a little irrelevant), and the choice of location by Gustav's advisors was not awfully good in the first place.
      Helsinki struggled for a long time (the harbour silted up, for a start) until the centre was moved southwards, and it is only really from the 19th century - when the Russian Czar moved the capital here from Turku - that Helsinki has bloomed and grown.


See also:
  A king´s disappointment moves a city (6.6.2000 - in connection with Helsinki´s 450th anniversary)

Links:
  Helsinki City Official Tourism Website
  Helsinki the Venue - Helsinki Week

Helsingin Sanomat