Loviisa
Loviisa is a town in Finland, located on the southern coast of the country. Loviisa is situated in the eastern part of the Uusimaa region. The population of Loviisa is approximately, while the sub-region has a population of approximately. It is the most populous municipality in Finland.
Loviisa is located from Helsinki and from Porvoo. The municipality covers an area of of which is water. The population density is.
The neighboring municipalities of Liljendal, Pernå and Ruotsinpyhtää were consolidated with Loviisa on 1 January 2010.
Loviisa 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.
Loviisa was founded in 1745, as a border fortress against Russia. Most of the fortifications have been preserved. Loviisa was originally called Degerby, but king Adolf Frederick of Sweden renamed the city after his spouse Lovisa Ulrika after visiting the town in 1752.
Loviisa is the site of two of Finland's nuclear reactors, two VVER units each of 488 MWe, at the Loviisa Nuclear Power Plant. The other operating reactors are at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant.
History
18th century
The town of Degerby was founded on the grounds of the Degerby horse stable in Pernå in 1745 as a frontier and fortress town. Eastern Finland needed a new staple town because the eastern border had shifted in the 1743 Treaty of Åbo. The only staple town in eastern Finland, Hamina, was left beyond the border. King Adolf Frederick of Sweden visited Degerby in 1752 and renamed the town as Loviisa after his wife, Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. The first mayor of Loviisa from 1747 to 1765 was Jacob af Forselles, who had fled from Hamina and bought the Petjärvi ironworks together with Anders Nohrström.In 1748 construction of the Loviisa fortress started, but it soon ground to a halt because of financial difficulties in the kingdom of Sweden. Only part of the outer battlements were constructed. The bastions Rosen and Ungern to the east of the current city centre serve as reminders of the history of the fortress town. The Svartholm fortress to the south of the town was built at the same time as the Loviisa fortress. This marine fortress was meant to protect the town from the seaside and provide a safe harbour for the coastal fleet of Sweden. The Swedish era in Svartholm ended in 1808 when the fortress surrendered to the Russians almost without resistance.
19th century
The year 1855 during the Crimean War was a dramatic time in Loviisa. Late in the evening on 5 July a fire broke out in the town, which destroyed a large part of the old town blocks in the centre. As well as about 70 residential buildings, the wooden church of Loviisa was also destroyed in the fire. During the previous day, the English fleet had started firing at Svartholm, and on the day of the fire the fortress had exploded into ruins. The gunfire from the English warship was not actually connected to the fire in the town, and the actual cause of the fire remains a mystery. The events of summer 1855 are depicted in Runar Schildt's 1916 novel Sateenkaari, with certain artistic liberties.After the fire there was a proposal to move the town to the south, but the Imperial Senate decided in April 1856 to rebuild Loviisa at its original site. The reconstruction was done according to Ernst Lohrmann's zoning plan, which was largely based on Georg Theodor Chiewitz's proposal made before the fire. At the same time, in the early 1860s, Loviisa started to consciously develop into a spa town. The main building of the waterworks was built in 1865 at the site of the current Kappelinpuisto park. A restaurant was founded in the same greenspace, and the local "health springs" were put back into use.
In the 1880s Georg Öhman, the senior doctor at the spa, recommended Myllyharju as a suitable walking site for spa guests. A viewing pavilion was built in the early 1890s at the hill. At the end of the decade the Mossebacken pension and the summer restaurant Casino, both designed by Lars Sonck, were built near Kukkukivi. The wooden pavilion at Kukkukivi was replaced with the current cast iron tower in 1906. Loviisa remained a popular spa town up to World War I. The spa activity had a significant effect on the economy of the town, and the town also developed a rich cultural life particularly in terms of music.
Up to the 1880s the most important sources of income in Loviisa were trade and handicraft. What little there was of industry was concentrated on seafaring and stimulants. Loviisa had had a tobacco factory already since the 1750s, and in the late 1770s a state alcohol distillery was started in Loviisa. In 1858 count Carl Magnus Creutz formed a beer brewery in Loviisa. According to historian Olle Sirén, Creutz's entry into the business was based on his need to secure the sales of barley at the Malmgård manor. In 1874 the brewery was transferred to the Bavarian Heinrich Lehmann, and his family continued to brew beer for almost a century.
Industrialisation began in earnest in 1882 when the merchant Arseni Terichoff built a steam-operated sawmill at the current site of Sahaniemi. In the 1890s the sawmill had about fifty employees, and over a hundred in the early 1900s. A cardboard factory started in 1912 and soon became the second largest employer in the city. At the turn of the century a railway connection from Loviisa to Vesijärvi in Lahti was completed, and the cardboard factory was the first significant industrial company founded in Loviisa to make use of the railroad. The sea lane underneath the bridge was not deep enough for steamships, so harbour activity was moved first to Tullisilta and then to Valko upon the completion of the railroad.
1900 to 1950
World War I affected Loviisa as unemployment and rising food prices. The activity of the sawmill ended in 1914, and the activity at the harbours decreased. In 1917 the Loviisa workers' association made demands about the seating of the important food committee. Despite amends made by the city council a political strike started in August. Socialist workers demanded properly paid jobs for all citizens of Loviisa as well as at least half of the seats in the food committee. In its meeting on 18 August the city council only agreed to the first demand. On the same day the workers declared a "state of full strike", cut of telecommunications and occupied the railway station. The city council held a meeting in the evening, deciding to form a guard.On 19 August 150 citizens of Loviisa signed up for the guard, received white arm ribbons and marched onto the city square. The strikers retreated to Uusikaupunki. The socialists tried in vain to seek Russian military help from Helsinki, and during the same evening there was an attempt at the Workers' House to declare the strike as finished. But inspired by the Russian Revolution, a new strike began in Loviisa on 15 November, and only three days later the socialists called Russian soldiers for help. In addition to them, Red Guard members from Kotka arrived in Valko, and on 19 November 200 to 300 armed men marched from Valko to Loviisa. The police station, the telephone centre and the railway station were occupied. The red flag was hoisted at city hall, and 20 to 30 executive members of the city council were taken to Uusikaupunki as prisoners. A compromise about the police station was reached at the end of the year, and the situation calmed down.
Loviisa was among those places in Finland that the battles of the year 1918 affected closely. There was a civil war going on in Loviisa right from the start: part of the population supported a socialist revolution. Agitation played a part, but according to Sirén, in Loviisa lack of food and unemployment played the most important role. Preparation for the civil war included Jaeger training in Germany, and the first Finn to travel there was Georg Öhman, referred to as "Jäger Eins", the son of a doctor in Loviisa. Other Jaegers included Ragnar Nordström, the son of a customs officer. The guards at the Loviisa region were organised at New Year and at the end of January the guards numbered almost 200 people. Their armament left much to desire.
At the start of February the Red Guard in Loviisa numbered almost a hundred men. They had received weapons from the Red Guard in Kotka and from Russian soldiers. The civil war broke out on 27 January, and a bit more than a week after that the whites controlled the eastern part of the Uusimaa region from Sipoo to Loviisa. From the whites' viewpoint it was important that the Uusimaa guards could hold their positions. They were far away from the main frontlione but could hold off against red troops. On 6 February the reds attacked Loviisa from Kotka. The attackers numbered almost 550, of which about 50 were Red Guard members from the Loviisa area. After receiving news of the advance of the reds the whites in Loviisa moved about three kilometres east from the centre. There was an armed battle, after which the whites - threatened by a blockade - retreated to the Rosen and Ungern fortresses. There was another battle in the evening, where the whites lost ten men. The whites ran nearly out of ammunition and thus they retreated to the west. The reds moved to Pyhtää.
On the next day on 7 February the reds marched to Loviisa, hoisted a red flag at the city hall and founded their headquarters at the City Club. The reds engaged in violence resulting in more deaths of the whites than in the armed battles on 6 February. The revolutionary court of the reds issued over 70 sentences to members of the guard and to other "counter-revolutionaries". Many of the accused were sentenced to civil service and/or fines, so the reds would benefit financially. At the start of April, Mannerheim's troops occupied Tampere, and the German Detachment Brandenstein numbering 3000 men landed in Valko, advancing to Uusikylä and Lahti. The detachment left Loviisa on 16 December 1918 after Germany had lost World War I.
The spa reopened in 1919. The Russian soldiers had left after the October Revolution in 1917, but the spa still had 250 to 400 annual visitors in the early 1920s. In 1926 a fashionable beach life became accessible by transporting large amounts of sand to the Plagen beach. However, visitor numbers decreased in the late 1920s. An announcement about discontinuing the spa was made in 1929 when the city decided to continue operations in the spa. Loviisa failed to restore its reputation at the turn of the century, the spa had become badly deteriorated and there was intense competition from Hanko. In 1931 visitor numbers dropped below a hundred, and finally the city council decided in January 1935 not to open the spa any more. The women working at the spa protested and received permission to continue work under their own responsibility. The spa season in 1935 was a huge success, but in January 1936 the main building of the spa was completely destroyed in a fire. The spa was not rebuilt.
The land fronts in the Winter War and the Continuation War were a safe distance away from Loviisa. Nevertheless there was fear of an enemy landing, and the archipelago had guard stations and cannons. After the end of the Winter War there was a Danish battalion of 600 volunteer men on the archipelago for a few months. There were about 800 air strike alarms from 1939 to 1944, but the bombers mostly targeted Helsinki, Lahti or Kotka. During the Winter War Loviisa was bombed twice, and two citizens died. The bombings in the Continuation War were concentrated on the summers of 1941 and 1944, there were also two casualties. There is no record of the total number of Loviisa citizens killed during the wars. The new cemetery has 92 war hero graves, but not all of them were registered in Loviisa. In spring 1941 the Finnish Brother-in-Arms Association started to produce a Military Village project to the southwestern side of Myllyharju together with Ragnar Nordström. About 20 residential buildings were built at the Military Village, of which Nordström financed the most. The 200th anniversary of Loviisa was celebrated in 1945 with President of Finland Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim attending.
Nordström had already started a successful business career in the 1920s. In 1922 he founded a corporation named Lovisa Stevedoring, and during the next years he bought the majority of Lovisa Ångfartyg A.B. The company acquired its first steamship meant for international traffic in 1927. Around 1930 Nordström's shipping and cargo businesses started to form an entire concern. In spring 1931 he founded the company Loviisan Kalastus Oy and equipped his ships to catch herring at the Icelandic waters. In August the first shipment of herring reached Valko. Except for the war years, the catch of herring on Nordström's ships continued for over twenty years. The Nordström concern was at its largest in the 1950s when it employed 1700 people, of which over 700 lived in Loviisa.