In the annexing department, Helsinki has a history of getting its way

The capital's area has grown throughout its 456-year history

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By Riku Jokinen
     
      Helsinki has set its sights on taking over a large chunk of neighbouring Sipoo, and Sipoo is doing its best to fend off the capital's advances.
      In the light of history, there is nothing very new about Helsinki's expansionist behaviour. Whether the request has gone to the Swedish king, to the Imperial Russian Senate, or to the government, Helsinki has generally got what it wanted.
     
When Helsinki was founded in 1550, on the initiative of King Gustavus Vasa of Sweden, there was no talk of studies by independent counsels from the Ministry of the Interior or of hearing the grievances of residents at town-hall meetings. It was enough that the monarch ordered the job done.
      Gustavus Vasa wanted a new city at the mouth of the Vantaa River so as to compete with the Hanseatic League's Tallinn as the trading hub of the Gulf of Finland.
     
The 16th century equivalent of a compulsory purchase order was slapped on the villages of Kumpula and Koskela (for grazing land), and on the islands of Mustikkamaa, Sompasaari, and Korkesaari (for fishing grounds). These last three belonged to the village of Töölö, now of course itself an inner-city suburb of the capital.
      The traders to run the proposed rival to Tallinn were brought in from Rauma and Ulvila on the West Coast, and from Tammisaari and Porvoo, located respectively to the west and east of the new town on the shores of the Gulf. The burghers did not have much choice in the matter: they were summarily ordered to move to Helsinki, which they did with considerable reluctance.
      The city's boundaries were initially rather unclear. The Swedish king had for instance donated to Helsinki a part of Kumpula that had earlier been handed over to a private landowner. This error was corrected, and as a result the old city's farming land had a curious pizza-slice taken out of it, making things inconvenient. The swatch of land was eventually incorporated into Helsinki only in 1906.
     
What we know today as the inner city, the headland protruding into the Gulf of Finland, was then the village of Töölö, and was incorporated into Helsinki in 1643.
      It was about time, really: the first decades in Gustavus's brave new metropolis were pretty dreadful, not least because the river silted up so much that it made navigation nigh on impossible.
      In 1640 the city fathers bit the bullet and moved everything down to what is known historically as Vironniemi, and today is represented by Kruununhaka and the Senate Square area. From here it was a good deal easier to access the sea.
      Even so, practically throughout the entire time of Swedish rule until 1809, Helsinki struggled on amidst famines, plagues, and regular bouts of war and conflagration. In the mid-eighteenth century, the island fortress of Suomenlinna was a considerably more vibrant place than the city behind it.
     
The annexation of new districts only became a necessity in the 1890s, by which time the former hick town had become a capital city (from 1812 onwards) growing at a phenomenal rate.
      Outside the city limits of the time were a collection of suburbs, in which the working population lived in shack-like dwellings. Then again, it was not all shanty-town: some of the suburbs were occupied by wealthy patricians in their villas and second homes.
      A Senate decree in 1906 brought in the "slice" referred to earlier, on which the suburbs of Hermanni and Toukola had sprung up. The same ruling added the area of Meilahti and part of Ruskeasuo, and the island of Seurasaari (now an open-air folk museum) just off shore.
      Thereafter the pace picked up. Pasila (the western part, across the railway tracks) was joined to the capital in 1912, parts of Ruskeasuo were added in 1926, and in the following year the western sea-area of Merholmen, next to the West Harbour.
     
But the really big bang was in 1946, when a government ruling swelled the city's area to five times what it was before.
      This annexation brought in all the suburbs that had grown up in the early decades of the 20th century, some of which had managed briefly to become independent municipalities in their own right.
      "Helsinki Rural District", now known as Vantaa, was the victim for the largest annexations of residential areas, with places like Malmi, Pitäjänmäki, Pukinmäki, Mellunkylä, Viikki, and Herttoniemi all being swallowed up.
      In addition, Helsinki took on Haaga, then a small town with its own council and all, and the rural boroughs of Oulunkylä, Kulosaari, and Huopalahti. Huopalahti brought with it the fashionable area of Munkkiniemi and the large residential island of Lauttasaari, then largely undeveloped. The name means "Ferry Island", but after a bridge connection was opened in 1935 it was only a matter of time before the city would have designs on the place, seeing how close it is to the main downtown area.
     
The most recent large addition to the city was when Vuosaari was added in 1966, again from "Helsinki Rural District" or Vantaa. Helsinki wanted this land for itself as it assumed the people living in the new residential suburbs there would mainly be going to work in the capital.
      The government had no objections to the proposal this time, either, and so Vuosaari and Meri-Rastila became part of Helsinki in 1966.
      This track-record suggests a tough task for Sipoo, as Helsinki attempts to add the land on both sides of the main eastern motorway, Porvoonväylä. Helsinki would also like a small sliver of Vantaa in order to form a contiguous block of land.
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 3.9.2006
     
Note: Though Espoo and Vantaa are now respectively the second-largest and fourth-largest cities in Finland by population, and they have been around in some form or other for hundreds of years, they have only held city status for just over three decades, being "elevated" in 1972. In the 1920s Espoo was a sleepy rural municipality of around 9,000 people, a far cry from the 230,000 of today. Likewise, Vantaa only had a population of around 15,000 in 1950 - partly because half the people had just been made Helsinki residents - but is now nearing 190,000.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Helsinki City Council endorses proposal for changing eastern city line (22.6.2006)
  Helsinki wants to expand to western parts of Sipoo (20.6.2006)

Links:
  Sipoo (Wikipedia)

RIKU JOKINEN / Helsingin Sanomat
riku.jokinen@hs.fi