Helsinki Daily: House of the Main Guard

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The guard of the Guard and walking along

The house of the Main Guard always has a ... well a guard posted by the entrance. I admire these young men, who can stand there like statues for long periods at a time no matter what wheather it is, hot or cold. If it was me I think I would just start swaying back and forth after a while until I would topple over completely long before my duty was done. Not sure how frequently the changing of the guard takes place.

Passing the Main Guard house we turn towards the Senate Square through this bit of street running up from the seaside.

The Senate square houses, apart from the Helsinki cathedral, also other buildings of importanse but that is the post for tomorrow.

Welcome to HD

Brief history:

Helsinki was first founded by order of king Gustav Wasa of Sweden around the waterfalls of were the river Vantaa runs into the sea, today called The Old Town, in 1550. It was to be a harbour town competing with the city of Tallin, the Estonian capital. It was later on decided that this area did not work well as a harbour site and Helsinki was moved to an other part closer to today's city center in 1640.
In those days the capital of Finland was the town of Turku more to the west along the south coast.
Helsinki has had a history of turmoil and bloodshed due to many wars between Sweden and Russia and has been burned down a few times. The first time was 1570 during an attack from the Russians. In the old days houses were mainly made of wood.
In 1695-1697 was the great hunger years and a huge number of the population succumbed to cholera and starvation.
The black death decimated two thirds of the whole population in 1710. It came to Finland due to the lively hansa connections and in those days Helsinki was a multinational and multilingual town. Something that then dissapeared during the Russian occupation until these days when the same status has again been reached.
The Sveaborg fortress was built by order from the Swedish king for protection against the Russians in 1748-50 as the Russians had managed to occupy Helsinki six years earlier.
In 1808 Sveaborg was finally forced to capitulate to the Russians and Finland became an autonomic part of the Russian empire.
A year after, in 1809 Helsinki was granted capital status as there had been a great fire in Turku previously and the rebuilding work was taking very long.
In 1828 the university was removed from Turku to Helsinki (allthough these days there is a university in Turku too).
The first newspapers started coming out in 1829.
In 1877 the first telephone network started operating.
In 1884 the electricity works started to operate.
In 1891 the first horse drawn tram started trafficing. Trams are a common sight on the streets of Helsinki even today but obviously not drawn by horses any longer. The tram network became electric in 1900.
In 1896 the first public showing of a movie took place.
In 1917 during the Russian revolution Finland was granted indipendancy on the 6th of December.
In 1918 there was an internal war in Finland and also German forces occupied Helsinki.
During the second world war in 1939 the Russians attacked Finland and through the war years many buildings in Helsinki were bombed down.
After the second world war in 1946 Helsinki grew significantly as many of the surrounding villages were incorporated into Helsinki.
In 1950 the amusement park Linnanmaki was founded. It's still operating today but looks very different from the original. Some original features still exist.
In 1952 was the olympic games in Helsinki.
In 1982 the first mobile phone network was taken into use in Helsinki. Also the underground (Metro) started trafficing in that year.
In 1995 Finland became a member of the European Union .
In the year 2000 Helsinki celebrated its 450th birthday.

Helsinki Daily

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The guard of the Guard and walking along

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