Suomenlinna

Interesting facts

Houses on Suomenlinna have no street addresses: each carries a letter for its island and a number, so C 83 means house 83 on Iso Mustasaari.

Volunteer inmates of a minimum-security labour colony on the islands work on maintaining and rebuilding the historic fortifications.

Ehrensvärd planned a grand baroque square on Iso Mustasaari, partly modelled on the Place Vendôme in Paris, but only half of it was ever built.

By 1755 some 7,000 men were working on the fortifications, while Helsinki itself then had only about 2,000 inhabitants.

When the fortress capitulated in May 1808, almost 7,000 men surrendered, and historians still debate why commander Carl Olof Cronstedt gave up.

The Anglo-French bombardment of 9–10 August 1855 went on for 47 hours and badly damaged the fortress, yet failed to silence its Russian guns.

The name Suomenlinna became official on 12 May 1918, when a red-and-yellow lion flag was raised over Kustaanmiekka to an eight-shot salute.

Of about 10,000 Red Guard prisoners held on the islands in 1918–1919, more than 1,000 died of hunger and disease.

From 1921 the State Aircraft Factory built aeroplanes and propeller-driven ice sleighs here for the Finnish Air Force, before moving to Tampere in 1936.

As a college student, George R. R. Martin wrote a short story, The Fortress, about the 1808 surrender; it appeared in his 2007 collection Dreamsongs.

Why it is worth it

Suomenlinna is a sea fortress spread across eight islands at the mouth of Helsinki's harbour, six of them fortified, and it is still a lived-in neighbourhood of the city, with about 900 permanent residents. Sweden began building it in 1748, when Finland was part of the Swedish realm, as a naval base and bulwark against a Russia that had grown into a Baltic power after the founding of St Petersburg. Admiral Augustin Ehrensvärd directed the work, adapting the star-shaped bastions of French military engineering to a rocky archipelago; by 1750 more than 6,000 men were at work. The Swedes called it Sveaborg, the Fortress of Sweden.

For all its reputation as the Gibraltar of the North, it surrendered to a Russian siege after only two months, on 3 May 1808, and that loss opened the way for Russia's takeover of Finland in 1809. Under Russian rule it was bombarded by an Anglo-French fleet during the Crimean War in 1855 and later served as a Baltic Fleet base in the First World War. After Finnish independence it was renamed Suomenlinna, the Fortress of Finland, in 1918, and in the aftermath of the civil war it held a prison camp for captured Red Guards. The Finnish military handed most of it to civilian administration in 1973, and it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.

A walk from the main quay leads across bridges linking the central islands. Along the way are barracks, powder stores and old officers' houses, the Great Courtyard that Ehrensvärd laid out in the 1760s, with his tomb and the Ehrensvärd Museum, and Finland's oldest dry dock, one of the oldest basin docks still working anywhere, now used to restore wooden sailing ships. Kustaanmiekka, the island with the greatest concentration of fortifications, faces the open sea, and about 1.5 km from the main pier stands the King's Gate of 1753–1754, the symbol of the fortress, carrying Ehrensvärd's inscription urging posterity to stand on its own foundation. Moored on shore is Vesikko, the last surviving Finnish submarine, and there are several small museums. Suomenlinna Church, built in 1854 as an Orthodox garrison church and later made Lutheran, has doubled as a lighthouse since 1929, its beacon still serving ships and aircraft.

Helsinki residents come here to picnic as much as tourists come to sightsee; in 2009 the islands drew a record 713,000 visitors.

Getting there

Suomenlinna lies about 4 km southeast of central Helsinki. The HSL ferry, part of the city's public transport network, sails year-round from the eastern side of the Market Square (Kauppatori) to the main quay, a crossing of about 15 minutes, with departures several times an hour in summer and at least hourly in winter. The Market Square is about 1 km from Helsinki Central railway station and is served by several tram lines. Helsinki-Vantaa Airport (HEL) is about 19.5 km from the fortress.

From the encyclopaedia

Suomenlinna, or Sveaborg, is a sea fortress composed of eight islands, of which six have been fortified. Located about four kilometres (2.5 mi) southeast of the city center of Helsinki, Finland, Suomenlinna is a popular destination for both tourists and locals, who enjoy it as a picturesque picnic site.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Suomenlinna

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia