Turku
Turku is a city in Finland and the regional capital of Southwest Finland. It is located on the southwestern coast of the country at the mouth of the River Aura. The population of Turku is approximately, while the metropolitan area has a population of approximately. It is the –most populous municipality in Finland, and the third–most populous urban area in the country after Helsinki and Tampere.
Turku is Finland's oldest city. It is not known when Turku was granted city status. Pope Gregory IX first mentioned the town of Aboa in his Bulla in 1229, and this year is now used as the founding year of the city. Turku was the most important city in the eastern part of the Kingdom of Sweden. After the Finnish War, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire in 1809, and Turku became the capital of the Grand Duchy. However, Turku lost its status as capital only three years later in 1812, when Tsar Alexander I of Russia decided to move the capital to Helsinki. It was only after the last great fire in 1827 that most government institutions were moved to Helsinki along with the Royal Academy of Turku, founded in 1640, which later became the University of Helsinki, thus consolidating Helsinki's position as the new capital. Turku was Finland's most populous city until the late 1840s and remains the regional capital, an important business and cultural centre, and a port.
Due to its long history, Turku has been the site of many important events and, as a former capital, has had a major influence on Finnish history. Together with Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, Turku was named European Capital of Culture for 2011. In 1996, the city of Turku was declared the "Christmas City" of Finland. Turku has also been officially declared the Food Capital of Finland, as it is home to some of Finland's oldest and highest-quality restaurants, as well as a historically famous fish market held twice a year. Turku's canteen and café culture has often been compared to French food culture, which is why Turku is sometimes known as the "Paris of Finland", and explains the existence of the Swedish saying "Varför Paris, vi har ju Åbo!".
Turku is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages. The population consists of Finnish speakers, Swedish speakers, and speakers of other languages, which is well above the national average.
Due to its location, the Port of Turku is an important commercial and passenger seaport, with over three million passengers travelling to Stockholm and Mariehamn each year.
Names and etymology
The Finnish name Turku is related to the word torg, which is found in the Scandinavian and modern Russian languages and means "market". Although direct borrowing from Old Russian tŭrgŭ is often assumed, it is more likely that the word spread through Varangian trade networks than through the presence of Russian merchants in Finland. According to linguist, the word likely entered Finnish via Estonian, where turg still retains the meaning "market". Over time, the original meaning faded in Finnish, and by the Middle Ages, turku had become synonymous with the town's name. Today the word survives primarily in idiomatic expressions.For the Swedish name, the most widely accepted interpretation holds that Åbo is a simple combination of å and bo, referring to a settlement by the Aura River. Nevertheless, several alternative interpretations have been proposed. One suggests that the name derives from the personal name Abraham, possibly in a shortened form such as Abo. Another theory considers Åbo a reinterpretation or translation of the Finnish name Turku. A third possibility links the name to monastic naming traditions, particularly the Dominican monastery at Åhus in Skåne, which may have served as a model when the Dominican order established a monastery in the area during the 13th century. Linguist Mikko Heikkilä has also proposed that Åbo developed from an earlier, unattested form Aborg, which would have originally referred to the Vanhalinna hillfort in nearby Lieto.
In Finnish, the genitive of Turku is Turun, meaning "of Turku". The Finnish names of organizations and institutes of Turku often begin with this word, as in Turun yliopisto for the University of Turku.
History
Turku has a long history as Finland's largest city and occasionally as the administrative center of the country, but for the last two hundred years has been surpassed by Helsinki. The city's identity stems from its status as the oldest city in Finland and the country's first capital. Originally, the word "Finland" referred only to the area around Turku.Early history
Settlement in the Turku area is relatively recent, for southwestern Finland remained below sea level for an extended period due to the Ice Age. Due to tectonic uplift, the Turku region transformed from an outlying archipelago to a shoreline during 3000-2000 BCE. The area was densely populated during the Iron Age as it was the most important agricultural region in the region. Ancient cemeteries dating from 550 to 1150 have been discovered in the region. Some cemeteries were utilized during the initial migratory phase, while some were solely utilized during the Viking Age, and others were established in the 12th century. There are also remains of houses and villages and old forts from the late Iron Age.According to legend, the English bishop Henry baptised the first Finns into Christianity in 1150. However, the first Christian graves date from the 10th and 11th centuries, and the first archaeological evidence of a church dates from the 12th century. In the 11th century, the Turku region began to develop as a port. The oldest known road, Hämeen härkätie, connected to region and the Old Castle of Lieto to Tavastia in the 9th century at the latest. Early literary sources such as Al-Idrisi's world map from 1154 mention Turku.
Swedish era
According to the permission granted by Pope Gregory IX on 23 January 1229, the episcopal seat was moved from Nousiainen to Koroinen, which is located near the current center of Turku. There is nothing to suggest that the actual city of Turku still existed at this point; however, the city was not founded on uninhabited land, but there were fields and probably also a peasant village. Since no reliable document has survived about the year of the city's founding, it has also been speculated that the city was founded in the 1280s or 1290s by the joint initiative of the king, the bishop, and the, which itself was founded in 1249.Turku Cathedral was consecrated in 1300. During the Middle Ages, Turku was the seat of the Bishop of Turku, covering then the eastern half of the Kingdom of Sweden until the 17th century. Even if Turku had no official capital status, it was for a long time the most important city in Finland as part of the trade and shipping of the Hanseatic League. In the 14th century, two-thirds of the city's burghers were German, but gradually the proportion of domestic burghers increased. In addition to the ecclesiastical authority, the only lawspeakers in Finland operated in Turku, and from the 15th century to the 16th century, the court exercising the country's highest judicial power, the, met in the city.
At the beginning of the 16th century, in connection with the disputes of the Kalmar Union, the Danes destroyed the city twice, in 1509 under the leadership of Admiral Otte Rud and in 1522 under the leadership of Admiral Søren Norby, until Erik Fleming's troops expelled the Danes from Finland in 1523. After the beginning of peace, Gustav Vasa, who had just become king, thoroughly got to know different parts of his kingdom, the center of the king's first visit to Finland being Turku Castle, where he lived during his visit. The new king also brought with him the religious reformation, and the first to preach the new doctrine was Petrus Särkilahti. Särkilahti's student Mikael Agricola, who is known as the "father of Finnish literary language", continued the religious reform first as the headmaster of the cathedral school and later as the Bishop of Turku. Duke John, the son of Gustav Vasa, received the title of Duke of Finland and ruled his territory from Turku Castle before becoming next king of Sweden after his brother, Eric XIV.
In the aftermath of the War against Sigismund, the city was the site of the Åbo Bloodbath. After that, the 17th century began as more peaceful period for Turku, when the focus was mainly on emphasizing Turku's position as the center of a wide area by establishing numerous new administrative and school institutions. In 1640, the first university in Finland, the Royal Academy of Turku, was founded in Turku by order of Queen Christina. This project was also supported by Count Per Brahe, the Governor General of Finland, and Isaacus Rothovius, the Bishop of Turku. Turku was also the meeting place for the States of Finland in 1676.
File:Turun akatemian vihkiäiset.jpg|thumb|700px|center|Inauguration of the Academy of Turku in 1640, by Albert Edelfelt from 1902
Grand Duchy of Finland (Russian rule)
After the Finnish War, Sweden ceded Finland to Imperial Russia at the Treaty of Fredrikshamn in 1809. There was no resistance of any kind in Turku when the Russians marched into the city in October 1809 in connection with the Finnish War. Despite the occupation, life in Turku continued peacefully. The Court of Appeal of Turku continued its session when the Russians arrived, and later in the spring Jacob Tengström, the Archbishop of Turku and Finland, and the teaching staff of the Turku Academy swore an oath of loyalty to their new ruler.Turku became briefly the official capital, but soon lost the status to Helsinki, as Emperor Alexander I felt that Turku was too far from Russia and too aligned with Sweden to serve as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland. The change officially took place in 1812. The government offices that remained in Turku were finally moved to the new capital after the Great Fire of Turku, which destroyed a large portion of the city in 1827. After the fire, a new and safer city plan was drawn up by German architect Carl Ludvig Engel, who had also designed the new capital, Helsinki. The new city plan, based on a regular grid plan, was more spacious and fire-safe than before, and after the reconstruction, Turku was one of the most unified architecture in Europe. Turku remained the largest city in Finland for another twenty years.
In the middle of the 19th century, Turku was, after Helsinki, the most important craft city in Finland, but the Industrial Revolution with steam and electric machines was experienced in Turku only around 1900. The First World War provided a boost to the city's industry, as the export difficulties affected the wood industry, which Turku didn't have much of, and it was easy to get much-needed raw materials from neutral Sweden.