Vuosaari

Vuosaari ( sv, Nordsjö) is a neighbourhood in the City of Helsinki, Finland. It is located by the sea in East Helsinki and with its area of is geographically the largest district in the city. It also has two Helsinki Metro stations, Rastila and Vuosaari

Vuosaari is one of the fastest-growing areas in Helsinki. The number of inhabitants has been increasing rapidly since early 1990s and it continues to grow as new residential areas are being built.

Among other things, Vuosaari is noted for its nature and large, relatively unspoilt recreational seashore areas. One of these is Uutela, a popular nature park located in the southeastern corner of Vuosaari. The continual planning of new residential zones has in fact raised criticism, as many people would rather preserve Vuosaari's closeness to nature.

Vuosaari is the location of a new major seaport in Helsinki, the Vuosaari Harbour.

As of 2005, 7.7% of the population of Vuosaari are foreign citizens and 11.6% were born outside of Finland. This has given the neighbourhood an overtly multi-cultural image in Finnish folklore, even though the percentage is higher in many other places in the Capital Region.

The two natural gas power plants of Helsingin Energia, the power utility of the city of Helsinki, are located in Vuosaari.

Etymology

The original Swedish name of the area was ''Norsö'', which can be translated as "string island". The word ''nor'' (''nors'' in the genitive case) in the name properly means a string, but in this connection it is a geographical term, meaning a long and narrow flowing strait. Vuosaari was an island up to the 16th century, with this kind of a long and narrow strait separating it from the mainland. The middle part of the strait was so shallow that tectonic uplift has since caused it to become dry land, changing Vuosaari into a peninsula. The current bays of Vartiokylänlahti and Porvarinlahti are remnants of this ancient strait. During time, the name of the area also changed from ''Norsö'' to ''Nordsjö'', as if referring to a northern sea. In maps from the early 20th century the area was sometimes marked with a Finnish name ''Pohjoisenmerenmaa'' ("Northern sea land"). In 1957 the Finnish name was confirmed as Vuosaari, referring to the original meaning of the Swedish name of the area.''Helsingin kadunnimet'', publications of the city of Helsinki #24, 1970.

History

Vuosaari has been populated continuously since the Iron Age. In prehistoric times it was used as a fishing area by the Tavastians, but they did not live permantently in the area.

The first written record of the inhabitants of the area comes from a document dating back to Magnus IV of Sweden in the 14th century. During the Swedish colonisation of Finland in the Middle Ages Vuosaari received Swedish inhabitants either directly from Sweden or through Länsisalmi.

By the 16th century, Vuosaari had regained its connection to the mainland and the former island had two Rustholl mansions, Nordsjö and Rastböle respectively, formed from the numerous farmsteads in the area,Vuosaari, Itämeren tyttärentytär – 50 vuotta osana Helsinkiä
''Kvartti'' 23 November 2016. Accessed on 2 October 2021. several small villages and a military shipyard. Officers from Suomenlinna built houses on the peninsulas. This process was further amplified after a regular steam boat connection between Helsinki and Vuosaari was established in the 19th century.

Villa inhabitation in Vuosaari increased in the 1880s when steamship traffic to the area started. The areas of Kallahdenniemi and Ramsinniemi got their first villas in the early 20th century. Vuosaari was a Swedish-speaking agricultural area up to the 1930s, when the company Saseka started industrial production near the current residential area of Kallahti. Saseka produced Kahi calcium silicate bricks and Siporex light concrete. Production of these materials in Vuosaari ended in 1978 when the production moved to Ikaalinen.

Of military historical interest is that Russians built fortifications in Vuosaari during the First World War in 1917. During the Second World War, Vuosaari was used as a decoy Helsinki to divert the bombs away from the city. This was done by lighting bonfires and concentrating anti-aircraft guns on the island. The bombing of Helsinki lasted three nights, and in the end, only four percent of the bombs had actually hit their intended target in Helsinki.

Later, during the fast construction phase in the 1990s, the diversion of Soviet bombers led to halts on building sites, as unexploded aerial bombs were discovered hidden in the ground.

After the war, most of the lands in Vuosaari were owned by Oy Saseka Ab, a brick and stone company that had its factory on the island. Big lots of underdeveloped land at a close proximity to the capital prompted Saseka to start a zoning and building process to increase the value of land there. The Asuntosäästäjät Union ''(lit. apartment-savers)'' started to build houses in the 1960s, thus creating what colloquially is now known as Old Vuosaari. Some of Finland's most famous architects participated in the planning, most notably Viljo Revell. Vuosaari was incorporated into Helsinki from the Helsinki rural municipality, now known as Vantaa, on 1 January 1966. At that time the majority of apartment buildings in Keski-Vuosaari had already been built.Keski-Vuosaari – maisema- ja kaupunkikuvallinen kehitys
City of Helsinki 2006. Accessed on 29 September 2021. The rural municipality agreed to the transfer, as the joint board of the city and the rural municipality thought the rural municipality could not afford the construction of the infrastructure needed by the rapidly growing inhabitation.
''Helsingin Sanomat'' 15 May 2001. Accessed on 30 September 2021. The Vuosaari bridge was built in July 1966, decreasing the travel time from Vuosaari to the city centre. There was a dumping ground at Vuosaarenhuippu in the northern part of Vuosaari from the middle 1960s to the late 1980s. A Valmet dock was built in the place of the current Vuosaari harbour in the 1970s, which was active in Vuosaari until 1987. The Rastila camping site was opened in 1971.

In the early 1970s the population of Vuosaari reached 15 thousand. After this, the increase in population stopped for almost 20 years. The population of Vuosaari has since increased again because of the new construction in the early 1990s. The residential areas of Kallahti, Meri-Rastila and Aurinkolahti shopping centre between Keski-Vuosaari and Kallahti. The extension of the Helsinki Metro to the Vuosaari metro station was opened for passenger transport on 31 August 1998. The opening ceremony was attended by President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari with his wife Eeva.

As the first real influx of refugees and immigrants to Helsinki coincided with the building of Meri-Rastila in the beginning of the 1990s, the quarter quickly became home to an above average population of recent immigrants by Finnish standards. Russians, Estonians, Kurds and Somalis still form the basis of the immigrant population there - some 11% of the total population. The main street in Meri-Rastila became colloquially known as Mogadishu Avenue, which subsequently became the title of a Finnish television series that sought to deal with the intercultural differences between immigrants and native Finns from a comic point of view.

In 2006 Vuosaari had about 34 thousand inhabitants and it is estimated to have about 40 thousand inhabitants in the middle 2020s. The Cirrus high-rise building built to the south of the shopping centre was the tallest residential building in Finland at the time of its completion. The cargo harbour activity in Helsinki moved from the city centre in Vuosaari when the Vuosaari Harbour was taken into use in 2008.

Aku Louhimies's 2012 film is named after the district.

Geography and nature

Vuosaari is a peninsula on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, with an area of 17 square kilometres. There are many large greenspaces on both the northern and the southern parts of the area. The district also includes numerous small islands in front of the peninsula, such as Pikku Niinisaari, Iso Villasaari and Kalliosaari.Tikkanen, Tea (ed.):
Helsinki alueittain
', city of Helsinki 2013. .Helsinki alueittain 2012
information centre of the city of Helsinki. The Vartiokylänlahti bay to the west of Vuosaari and the Porvarinlahti bay to the north are remnants of an ancient strait which has dried up because of tectonic uplift. The Kangaslampi lake, about a hectare in size, is located in the northern part of Keski-Vuosaari and is one of the few lakes located inside Helsinki. The soil in the middle of Vuosaari is mostly made of sand, whereas the lands in the eastern and western parts are made of till, cliffs and clay at some parts. The dominant mineral in the bedrock is gneiss, but there are also more rare minerals in the area, such as gabbro and pillow lava formed from ancient undersea volcanic activity.Paikkatietoikkuna
Finnish geography institute. Accessed on 9 October 2021.

There are three peninsulas reaching out to the Gulf of Finland in the southern part of Vuosaari: the oblong peninsulas of Ramsinniemi and Kallahdenniemi and the wider and rounder Uutela. Of these, Kallahdenniemi is an esker populated with pine forest, formed about 12 thousand years ago by melting waters from flowing glaciers. It continues underneath the sea as sandbanks and a sandy bottom, and its highest undersea parts form islands such as Santinen and Iso Leikosaari.Kallahden harju-, niitty- ja vesialueet
Accessed on 9 March 2018. Kallahdenharju is a nature preservation area, similarly to the multi-species grove forest located in Ramsinniemi. In the western part of Meri-Rastila is a forest area consisting of many forest types and an ancient shingle beach formed of ancient beach rocks.Luontotietojärjestelmä
city of Helsinki. Accessed on 9 October 2021. The Uutela area has many kinds of forests, beach cliffs, traditional biotopes and the Särkkäniemi nature preservation area. As well as Kallahdenniemi, the areas of Rastila and Aurinkolahti