City Museum curators will be pleased to answer questions about the history of Helsinki. Please submit your question here.

What is the origin of the name of the Kolera allas/Cholera Pool?
Vanha kirkkopuisto or Vanhankirkon puisto?
Last execution in Helsinki?
"The Sipoo Church"?
Mannerheimintie?
Imperial street names?
The grave of "the unknown soldier" in Lauttasaari?
Sörkka or Sörkkä?
Which is older, Vanha kirkko (the Old Church) or the Church of Holy Trinity?
Who is the Hermanni after whom Hermanni district is named?
Munkkiniemi, Munkkivuori, Munkkisaari?
History of Helsinki in a nutshell

A skipper died of cholera (in Finnish kolera) during Helsinki's autumn market in 1893. The western basin (in Finnish allas) has ever since been called Kolera allas (Finnish for Cholera Pool), for the dead skipper's ship was put in quarantine and kept in the basin, which was under surveillance for a while, because people feared the ship had contaminated the water.

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Cemeteries in Helsinki were a current topic during the entire later half of the 18th century. A 1786 church assembly decided to make a new cemetery outside the developed city in Kamppi, where the old Kamppi cemetery, dating back to the 1690s, already was. What is more, a Swedish artillery cemetery had been in Kamppi since the 1740s.

The most difficult years of crop failure, 1695, 1696 and 1697, were also felt in Helsinki. Another area, the so-called Kampinmalmi, was inaugurated as another cemetery since there was not enough room in Kamppi to bury all the country people who, after making their way into the city, had died of starvation. During this period, Helsinki lost 540 people or 25% of its population.

From the beginning of August until December 1710, plague raged in Helsinki. A total of 1185 city dwellers and refugees dead of plague were laid to rest in the Kamppi cemetery. During this period, the city was home to less than three thousand permanent residents. The future generations started calling the Vanha kirkkopuisto "Plague park" from the 1970s onward.

The military cemetery and the Kamppi cemetery areas were inaugurated in 1790 as the city's new cemetery. In 1826, a wooden church, meant to be only temporary, was built in the Kirkkopuisto and was later called the Old Church. The Kirkkopuisto was used as a cemetery until 1830 and it has been a public park from the beginning of the 20th century.

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Literary sources indicate that the last person executed in Helsinki was Lena Greta Nystedt, a hired man's wife, who on 3 January 1817 had murdered a shipper's widow Anna Lena Laxström. Nystedt was executed on 20 April 1819 in Kamppi, "the city execution site", located approximately around the present-day Fredrikinkatu street 54.

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The personnel of Raitiotie- ja Omnibus Osakeyhtiö, a streetcar and bus company, went on strike in February 1904. The strike ended with the crushing defeat of the workers, because the company fired the personnel and replaced them with scab labour from Sipoo and the surrounding area. Swedish-speaking strike-breakers were purposefully hired for language-political reasons. The company aimed to securely sign up the new personnel and commissioned architect Valdemar Aspen to design them a residential building in Töölö. Since the building, completed in 1905, was as astonishing as a church with towers, people in Helsinki ridiculed it and called it the "Sipoo Church". The scab labour speaking Finnish mixed with Swedish were called "Sipoo people". The Art Nouveau house on Mannerheimintie street 76 was demolished in 1978.

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Already in the 17th century, a highway from Helsinki to Espoo and Turku in the west was beginning to form at the place of the present-day Mannerheimintie. The road was then called Töölöntie (in Swedish Tölövägen), the Espoo highway and the Turku highway (in Swedish Landsvägen till Åbo/Esbo).

The street section from Erottaja street all the way to Arkadia (and from 1928 to the National Museum) was, from 1836, officially called Västra Henriksgatan and Östra Henriksgatan. The street became known in Finnish as Henrikin Läntiskatu and Henrikin Itäkatu. In 1909, the street names were validated as Länsi- and Itä-Henrikinkatu with Henrikin puistikko (Henrik's park area), or Henriksallén in Swedish, in between.
In 1928, the names Heikinkatu - Henriksgatan and Heikinpuisto - Henriksallén were validated.

The street section from the National Museum toward north was called Läntinen Viertotie (Västra Chaussén) from the 1860s. The name was changed into Turuntie in 1928.

In 1942, a section of the road was extended all the way to Ruskeasuo. The section was named Mannerheimintie on 4 June 1942, on the date of Marshal Mannerheim's 75th birthday.

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The imperial family became known by the people of Helsinki in the beginning of the 19th century through new street names. Elisabeth, the spouse of Alexander I, was the first to have a street named after her (Liisankatu, "Liisa" being a Finnish version of "Elisabeth"). Alexander I refused the said honour and named the main road from St. Petersburg "Unioninkatu" as a reminder of the Finno-Russian union. After his death, the former Suurkatu became officially known as Aleksanterinkatu, because the Imperial Alexander's University, named after the emperor, was built along the street. The university is today known as Helsinki University.

Sofiankatu and Mariankatu are still named after the mother of Alexander I, widow empress Maria Feodorovna, who was born Sofia, princess of Württemberg. The central cross streets were named after the emperor's brothers Mikael, Nikolai and Konstantin, and his sisters Katarina and Helena. Nikolainkatu and Konstantininkatu were changed in the 20th century into Snellmaninkatu and Meritullinkatu.

Vladimirinkatu, Annankatu, Yrjönkatu and Antinkatu were named after the order of St. Wladimir, St. Anne, St. George ("Yrjö" in Finnish) and St. Andreas. The names of Vladimirinkatu and Antinkatu were changed into Kalevankatu and Lönnrotinkatu after Finland gained its independence.

For more information on Helsinki's street names, consult the three-volume book "Helsingin kadunnimet" (The street names of Helsinki) available at most of the museum branches.

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Josef Johan Israelinpoika Back (b. 4 July 1826 in Pirttikylä, Närpiö), a sharpshooter of the Finnish Grenadier Battalion, was killed in the battle of Särkiniemi on 9 August 1855 as a combined English-French naval squadron was bombarding Viapori and attempting a landing in Särkiniemi, Lauttasaari. Back is buried at the end of Gyldenintie street by Länsiväylä.

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Both are correct.

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The Old Church was inaugurated in 1826, the Church of Holy Trinity in 1827. Both churches were designed by C. L.Engel.

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In 1892, Baron Herman Sigfrid Standertskjöld-Nordenstam (1854-1934) rented out land surrounding the Kumpula manor he owned. The city bought the manor in 1893 and the area was annexed to Helsinki in 1906.

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Munkkiniemi and Munkkisaari are Finnish translations for old Swedish place names Munksnäs and Munkholmen, known from sources dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries. Munkkivuori was named in the 20th century after Munkkiniemi. The "Munkki" (Finnish for monk) part of the name may be connected to a Cistercian monastery active in Paadiste, Estonia, in the 14th - 16th centuries. The monastery owned land on the coastlines of Uusimaa in the 14th and 15th centuries.

In 1351, the King of Sweden, Magnus Ericson, or Magnus IV of Sweden, granted, for political reasons, the monastery salmon fishing rights for River Vantaanjoki. This caused continuous disputes with the peasants living by the river. In the end, the monastery sold the fishing rights to the Archdiocese of Turku in 1428. The Cistercian monks rarely left their monastery and since there was no monastery in Helsinki during the Medieval period, it is highly unlikely that any monks lived in the area. Munkkisaari and Munkkiniemi are therefore possibly places the hired fishermen used as their harbours and storage places when they came to fish for salmon.

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Several general presentations on Helsinki’s history are available at the Helsinki City Library. Multi-volume "Helsingin kaupungin historia" (1950-67) and ”Helsingin historia vuodesta 1945" (1997-) are the most comprehensive. Eino E. Suolahti’s "Helsingin neljä vuosisataa" (1949, 1972), Bo Lönnqvist and Marja-Liisa Rönkkö’s "Helsinki kuninkaankartanosta Suomen suurkaupungiksi" (1988) as well as the City Museum’s "Aika, trilogia Helsingistä" (1996) are concise and fairly easy to read. Asmo Alho’s "Helsinki ennen meitä" (1947, 1962) includes plenty of old photos whereas the museum’s publication "Rakas Helsinki" (1986) includes old art work presenting Helsinki. The "Helsinki horizons" exhibition in the museum’s main building on Sofiankatu 4 also provides a clear introduction to the city’s history.

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