The story
History
Etymology
Before the time of the Swedish colonisation, Espoo was inhabited by Tavastians, a Finnish tribe, and the area in which the city lies on did most likely have a different name. The name of Espoo is believed to have derived from the Medieval Swedish village of Espaby (or Espoby), which was located in the western part of the present-day city. It may refer to aspens that grew on a nearby riverbank, as the archaic Swedish word for the tree is "äspe", and the word for a river is "å", with the suffix "-by" meaning village.
The coat of arms of Espoo features a gold horseshoe topped by a gold crown on a blue shield. The crown refers to the old kungsgård of Espoo and the horseshoe refers to the obligation to transport officials, military or prisoners that parishes along the King's Road fell under. Many roads in Espoo still follow the old medieval King's Road. The King's Road in Finland, stretching from Turku in the west to Vyborg in the east, was formed in the 1340s or 1350s and was the most important road in Finland at the time.
Prehistory
Present-day Espoo was first settled by hunter-gatherers around 8,000 years ago, a few thousand years after the end of the Last Glacial Period. Stone Age settlements have been found from Nuuksio and Perinki. Settlements from the Early Metal Age have been found from Mikkelä and from Morby dating from the Pre-Roman Iron Age, of which the latter is an important subject relating to research of cattle husbandry. Traces of early settlement in the area remain in the place names. For example, the original name for Soukka was Soukko.
The first settlers lived in the northern parts of the current city, around the lakes Pitkäjärvi, Bodomjärvi, and Loojärvi, as the southern parts were still largely covered by the sea. In the Stone Age, people in Espoo lived on south-facing shores and slopes, which provided shelter from cold continental winds. Living close to water bodies also made hunting and fishing easier. The way of life was dictated by seasonal changes, and people rarely stayed in one place throughout the year.
During the Bronze Age (c. 1500–500 BCE), human settlement shifted southward. Known settlements from the era are few, but more than 70 cairn-like burial sites from the period have been discovered, mostly from southern Espoo, which formed an archipelago at the time. When ironwork was introduced to Finland around 500 BCE, it gave people access to materials that were far more versatile than materials used before. However, the climate grew colder at the beginning of the Iron Age, and it seems that human settlement in Espoo disappeared during the era. Only two discoveries from the time have been made in Espoo.
Medieval Espoo
Most of the original villages of present-day Espoo were founded by Tavastian Finns according to place names. By the 12th century, there were Tavastian houses on the shore of Kaukjärvi (now known as Pitkäjärvi), in Kauklahti, Karvasmäki, Bemböle, Haapalahti and Finnevik.
The first Swedish settlements in Uusimaa were established during the 12th or 13th century. Swedish settlers moved to the area through the current site of Kirkkonummi, and then to the Esboby area. From there, they continued northeast to Kauklahti, Bemböle and Vanhakartano. In later stages, settlers might also have arrived in Espoo directly from Sweden, most likely from Svealand. The Swedish name for Espoo, Esbo, dates from this period. The settlers changed the Finnish names used by the Tavastians to Swedish ones: for example Kauklahti became Köklax and Karvasmäki became Karvasbacka. The current Finnish names might also have changed from the original ones in this process. For example, the place name Välli might have been changed into Vällskog, which has since led to the current Finnish name Velskola. The Swedish settlements were so extensive that the entire area became Swedish-speaking, except for its northernmost part and possibly the Haapalahti-Mäkkylä area.
Palynological analyses indicate that agriculture was already practised in Espoo around the 11th century, but no historical records from the era survive. Until the late 13th century, Espoo was part of a borderland region between the Southwestern Finns and Tavastian Finns. Some artefacts found in Espoo have also been traced to ancient Savo-Karelian Finnish costumes, and the Late Iron Age and Early Medieval women in the area have had similar jewellery as in the region around present-day Mikkeli.
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In the Middle Ages, there were about 70 village lots in Espoo. Ancient fields and many passageways have been discovered near the remains of ancient villages. Espaby (at which site the Espoo manor was later founded) was probably the oldest Swedish-speaking village in the area. The name Espoo likely refers to the name of the river Espoonjoki (Swedish: Esboån, originally Espå / Espåå), which in turn is thought to have come from the aspen trees on the shores of the river (the Swedish word for "aspen" is äspe). The name was first mentioned in 1431. Originally, the current river Gumbölenjoki was renamed Espoonjoki after the village located along the river. When a church was founded near the village of Södrik, the name Espoonjoki was given to a river running from lake Kirkkojärvi to Kauklahti.
Espoo became an independent parish in the 15th century. Previously Espoo had been a chapel parish under Kirkkonummi. The stone Espoo Cathedral was built in the 1480s by initiative from the peasants. Up to the 1670s the eastern parts of Espoo belonged to the Helsinki parish, after which they were officially annexed to the Espoo parish and the slottslän of Raseborg.
After the Second Crusade to Finland, settlers from Sweden established permanent agricultural settlements in Uusimaa. Espoo was a subdivision of the Kirkkonummi congregation until 1486–1487. The oldest known document referring to Kirkkonummi is from 1330; Espoo as a subchapter has been dated to the 1380s, although the first document directly referring to Espoo is from as late as 1431. The construction of the Espoo Cathedral, the oldest preserved building in Espoo, marks the independence of Espoo. Administratively, Espoo was a part of Uusimaa. When the province was split to Eastern and Western provinces governed from the Porvoo and Raseborg castles, respectively, the eastern border of the Raseborg province was in Espoo. The 13th-century road connecting the most important cities in Finland at that time, the King's Road, passes through Espoo on its way from Stockholm via Turku and Porvoo to Viipuri.
Gräsa manor
The oldest frälse stead in Espoo, the Gräsa manor, apparently received frälse rights in the late 15th century. Gräsa is one of the oldest settlements in Espoo and the oldest in southern Espoo, as it was probably founded already in the early 14th century as Swedish settlement moved inland. From the beginning, the settlement was located at the site of the current Olari Church on both sides of the Gräsanoja river. The absence of Finnish names in the area reveals that the population was Swedish-speaking from the beginning.
Early modern period
In 1556, King Gustav Vasa decided to stabilize and develop the region by founding a royal mansion in Espoo. The government bought the villages of Espåby and Mankby (Finnish: Mankki) and transferred the population elsewhere, and built the royal mansion in Espåby. (Mankby was eventually abandoned and was never repopulated.) The royal mansion housed the king's local plenipotentiary (vogt), and collected royal tax in kind paid by labour on the mansion's farm. The administrative centre Espoon keskus has grown around the church and the Espoo railway station, but the municipality has retained a network-like structure to the modern day.
In the 16th century Espoo changed into a parish of many large farmsteads. The war between Sweden and Russia in the late 16th century attracted farmstead owners to found horse steads in hopes of reduced taxation. Horse stead owners were required to uphold a rider in the wars fought by the realm. In the late 17th century the crown had donated lands to noblemen with success in wars, and during a few decades, the lands in Espoo had been dealt to seven noble families.
In the early 18th century the Great Northern War and the Great Wrath caused poverty among the people. During this time, many members of the estates in Espoo moved to Sweden. The foundation of Sveaborg in front of Helsinki increased the traffic in Espoo and many officers bought villas in Espoo. Construction of the fortress required transport of bricks from factories in Espoo. In the same century, agricultural novelties such as the potato and various fruits spread from the manor houses to the peasants.
Grand Duchy of Finland and early industrialisation
Swedish rule in Finland came to an end in 1809, when the Kingdom of Sweden ceded all of its remaining territory in Finland under control of the Russian Empire after the Finnish War. When the city of Helsinki became the capital of the newly established Grand Duchy of Finland in 1812, it brought novel developments to the neighbouring parish of Espoo. Many government officials as well as members of the growing merchant class bought summer houses from Espoo.
Throughout the 19th century, most of Espoo's inhabitants worked in agriculture. The population was around 4,000, while most of the people lived in over 60 small villages. Halfway through the century, almost 90% of the population spoke Swedish as their first language. The wealthy estates and mansions of the parish required maids, farmhands and tenant farmers as their workforce to raise cattle, farm crops and raise vegetables in the kitchen gardens. Fishing was also common in the coastal areas. The Glims farmstead in Karvasmäki has been preserved as a museum to present rural life in Espoo during this period when industrial development was still minute in Finland.
The rural community in Espoo began to change in the latter half of the 19th century. Some brickyards had already been built in the 18th century on the grounds of Espoonkartano manor, located in the western part of the present-day city, but it was not until the economic reforms of Emperor Alexander II that the Industrial Revolution started to gain momentum in Finland. As the Russo-Finnish trade legislation liberalized, new brickyards were established in Espoonlahti and Kauklahti, as the shores of Espoo Bay provided high-quality clay for their use. The bricks were mostly carried with steamboats to the neighbouring Helsinki, the growing capital city of the grand duchy.
The most prominent industrial facility in 19th century Espoo was the steam-powered Bastvik Sawmill, founded in 1876. In addition to the growing lumber and brick industries, a joiners' workshop was established on the island of Staffan in 1886. Staffan Island became a home for a highly skilled and renowned community of joiners, colloquially known as the "University of Espoo" or the "University of Soukka".
World War I
World War I had an effect on the Russian Empire and the Grand Duchy of Finland when the German Empire declared war on Russia on 1 August 1914. Russia immediately started preparing for war against Germany. At the start of the war, the main forces of the Russian Baltic Fleet had been concentrated at Sveaborg in front of Helsinki. The Russian military feared that Germany would use southern Finland to attack Petrograd, so Russia started building a fortification chain of over 20 kilometres (12 mi) surrounding Helsinki to protect it. Construction of the fortification started in 1915 and took almost three years.
Construction of the fortification chain required a huge amount of workforce. The construction was led by the engineering administration of Saint Petersburg, but in practice, the actual work was led by the engineering military staff in Sveaborg. The local engineering office was located in Leppävaara in Espoo. Although the Russian military tried to keep the construction of the fortification chain secret from the enemy, there are German intelligence reports with descriptions of the Russian fortification chain.
Because of the lack of available workforce, the Russians turned to expropriation allowed by Russian military law. The manor houses in Espoo were ordered to send one man and one horse each to work on the construction. The total number of workforce at the fortification is not known, but the expropriation resulted in 4,000 men, of which 1,300 were situated in Leppävaara and 1,500 in Tapiola in June 1916.
16-year-old Annukka Koskinen, who lived at the Bergans farm in Suur-Leppävaara, wrote about the expropriation in June 1916:
It was really shameless. Last year [the Russians] took control of three large buildings, and they would have taken the last one too, had we not complained to the office of the governor. For all of summer, they built fortifications all over the hill. Trees were cut down and new ones planted in their place. You know that only very few of these newly planted trees will survive. – This spring, [the soldiers] have shot at our fields during practice. Two days ago we received an order that the house, the large woodshed and the sauna have to be empty by noon on the next day.
The Russian Revolution in 1917 stopped work at the fortification. Finland declared its full independence in December 1917, and the fortifications were never actually needed to protect Saint Petersburg from a German attack. The fortifications only ever saw action in one battle during the Finnish Civil War, when the red forces in Leppävaara fought the German forces who had come to the aid of the whites on 14 April 1918. The fortifications were later used as ammunition storage and civil protection during World War II.
Power vacuum
After the February Revolution in 1917, Finland went through a power vacuum. The imperial rule had fallen, general order had broken and the police had been dispensed. Upholding the general order moved to a local level, and local militias, citizens' guards, fire brigades and security forces were founded. These forces were not originally founded for military purposes but to uphold the general order. The activity was voluntary-based, and the forces were organised for example during strikes.
In autumn 1917 the nature of the organisation became more military and the number of local workers' guards increased rapidly. The armed organisation was influenced by an acute lack of food, disappointment with the loss of the majority position of the Social Democratic Party of Finland at the 1917 Finnish parliamentary election, the Senate's desire for renovation, the fight for municipal power and fear of an armed uprising of the bourgeoisie.
Red and White Guards in Espoo
In Espoo, particularly Leppävaara was a restless area. The workers' association of Alberga founded an unarmed militia of ten people to uphold the general order. During summer and early autumn in 1917 there were local conflicts between the bourgeois guards and the workers' militia. In middle November the guards in Espoo on both sides had already started arming themselves.
In July 1917 the first bourgeois order guard was founded in Kauklahti, under the guise of a voluntary fire brigade. A little later a similar organisation was founded in Kilo, and these organisations joined forces in August to September. The guards had about 160 members in total at this point.
After the Finnish Civil War had broken out, many young men left Espoo to join the White Guards all over the countryside in Uusimaa. The most important of these was the Sigurds Guard in Kirkkonummi, of whose members 40 came from Espoo.
Red Espoo
At the start of the Civil War in January 1918, the Red Guards took control of Espoo. There were no actual battles between the Reds and the Whites during the revolution, as Espoo was in practice already under Red control. Municipal power was transferred from the municipal council and the municipal board to a social democratic municipal organisation. The Reds took control without bloodshed and strengthened their position by sending patrols all around Espoo to confiscate any weapons found in the houses they visited.
By order from the Finnish People's Delegation, a revolutionary court was founded in Espoo, with the Kauklahti-based worker Aleksi Aronen serving as its judge. The court sessions were held in Villa Odenwald in Kauniainen. Most of the sentences given by the court were prison sentences or fines. In addition, the Red Guard in Leppävaara had its own comrade court. The general staff of the Red Guard in Uusimaa had installed a curfew forbidding going outside after nine o'clock in the evening. Meetings were held in workers' houses assembling lists to provide support for the Red Guards. Patrols consisting of young men looking for food and weapons could take justice in their own hands in the typical form of red terror. In the spring, the Reds killed nine people in Espoo, of which six were civilians. Rumours of these acts of violence spread out, spreading fear among the people. Many people saw the municipal rule of the Reds as a reign of terror.
During the Civil War, many bourgeois people in Espoo, whom the Reds in power saw as a threat, fled to neighbouring municipalities, hidden cabins in the archipelago or forests in northern Espoo. For example, Hans Heimbürger, the speaker of the Espoo municipal council, fled to Degerö in Ingå in January together with his family. Two people from Espoo are said to have fled into caves to flee from the Red power.
After the war
The damages of the Civil War in Espoo were minimal, except for one primary school which had been hit by German bombing. However, many houses in Espoo suffered from famine after the Civil War. The war had cut off a large part of the foreign trade in Finland, which worsened the famine. Particularly the price of grain and other necessary foodstuffs had risen significantly, which caused price limits for the most important products. The situation eased out in 1919, but food regulation was only finally discontinued in 1921.
After the end of the war, the White Guards went out to look for Reds fled into the forests in Espoo for a long time. In June 1918 the White Guards appealed to the municipal council of Espoo to ask for funds to travel to prison camps in order to provide expert help in judging reds from Espoo. 12 members of the Red Guard in Espoo had been sent to prison camps.
Under the 1918 peasant law, peasants were freed from the power of their private masters, which led to a widespread settlement of steadless population in Finland. From 1919 to 1925 about 150 peasants and crofters in Espoo bought land for themselves with the grant given by the Finnish state. The new farms thus acquired still remained small, which caused the need to acquire further income through forestry and handyman work.
20th century
In 1920, Espoo was only a rural municipality of about 9,000 inhabitants, of whom 70% were Swedish speaking. Agriculture was the primary source of income, with 75% of the population making their living from farming.
Kauniainen was separated from Espoo in 1920, and it gained city rights the same year as Espoo, in 1972. However, the border between Espoo and Kauniainen was only defined in the late 1940s.
Espoo started to grow rapidly in the 1940s and 1950s. Shortly after the end of the Continuation War, the population of Espoo grew by four thousand as frontline soldiers and evacuees from ceded territories (including the Porkkalanniemi peninsula, leased to the Soviet Union between 1944 and 1956) were settled in the city.
Economic history
Still in the middle 19th century, Espoo was a rural community living in subsistence economy. There was hardly any industry, the villages were small and situated evenly across different parts of the parish. There was some population concentration at the location of the current district of Espoon keskus and along the Suuri Rantatie road, and some dense population on the shore of the Gulf of Finland. In 1865 farming was the primary source of income for about 90% of the men in Espoo. There were about seventy craftsmen and about twenty people working in the industry. Of the women in Espoo, over one fifth worked as maids.
The economical history of 19th-century Espoo also includes some small-scale mining activity. There was ore mining at the lands of the Kilo mansion around 1840, and this activity continued to the 1850s. The ore was of good quality but poor, and the ore streaks were fragmentary. In the end, the amount of ore mined from Kilo was very small. A new discovery of ore was made at the lands of the Alberga manor in the early 1840s. At most seven people worked at the site, but the amount of ore mined in Alberga ended up very small as well. The mining activity slowly waned and stopped completely in 1851.
The Espoo parish was not a neighbour of the city of Helsinki in the 19th century – there were lands of the Helsinki parish in between. The rapid growth of Helsinki attracted people from Espoo: despite the short distance, travel between Espoo and Helsinki was so slow, that moving into Helsinki was almost unavoidable if one happened to get a job there.
The rapid growth of Helsinki started also showing outside the administrative borders of the city. The first industrial area in Espoo was born near the shore of the Espoonlahti bay. In the late 19th century there were three brick factories and a steam-powered sawmill in the area. Clay from the Espoonlahti bay was well suited for making bricks, and the bricks were easy to transport to Helsinki over sea. For example, the Uspenski Cathedral in Katajanokka has been built from bricks from the Stensvik brick factory. The village of Mulby (Muulo in Finnish) became the industrial centre of Espoo, and its population grew manifold. Other villages in southwestern Espoo also grew through the industry. When the Rantarata railway was completed in the early 20th century part of the industry moved to the railway track, and the railway also enabled people to commute for work from Espoo to Helsinki.
There was also glass industry in Espoo. Pehr Appelgrén founded a bottle glass factory near the Espoo railway station in 1912. The factory closed down in 1922. The Kauklahti glass factory started in 1923, and by the 1930s it was the largest illumination glass factory in Finland. The factory closed down in 1951. Glass industry in Espoo altogether waned in the 1950s.
By the late 1930s, there were about thirty businesses in Espoo. In addition to glass and brick industry, the parish included machinery workshops, sawmills and metallurgy workshops. There was industrial clothing manufacturing in Kauklahti and a clock factory in Viherlaakso. The steam-powered sawmill in Bastvik, founded in 1876, was economically quite stable; its saw equipment was moved to the Hanko Peninsula in the 20th century. The merchant F. F. Sjöblom founded the first shop in Espoo in Stensvik soon after founding of shops had been liberated in 1868. At the time when Finland became independent, there were about 40 shops in Espoo, most of them general stores.
Despite the increase in industry and service jobs, Espoo was still a predominantly rural parish in 1920. About two thirds of the population got their primary income from farming. Rye and barley had been the primary crops in Espoo for centuries. By the 20th century the significance of cattle herding increased, and the farming of oats became more popular.
Construction and services became the basis of the economy in Espoo in the 1950s, when the rapid growth in population in Espoo started. In the 2010s, the primary industries counting by number of jobs are trade, accommodation and food and beverage industry as well as specialist services. The proportion of information and communications technology is about one tenth. About one sixth of the jobs are in industry and construction. The public sector is large: about one quarter of jobs were in the public sector in the middle 2010s.
The transition from a medieval rural parish into an integral part of the Helsinki metropolitan area has dropped the proportion of farming and forestry jobs to about a fifth of a percent.In 2024, Espoo placed second in the European Commission's Capital of Innovation Awards (iCapital), recognised for its collaborative innovation ecosystem and youth-focused initiatives.
Cultural history
The cultural landscape in Espoo started developing in river valleys and on plantations cleared on bays revealed by upthrust of land. The largest plantations were already in the map drawn in the middle 18th century mainly in the same form as in the late 20th century. Tightly built, small groups of buildings started developing on the edges of the plantations, at some places also on hills in between them. The large landscape of Snettans and Röylä stretches to the north of Lake Bodom, with the Pakankylä manor located in its southern part. There is a significant landscape to the west of the Espoo manor, There is a large plantation landscape stretching over the Velskola manor in northern Espoo.
The large cultural landscape of Bemböle-Karvasmäki is located to the northeast of Espoon keskus and the clearly defined landscape of Söderskog is located to the south of it. The well preserved village landscape of Gammelgård is located on the shore of lake Pitkäjärvi in eastern Espoo.
The most historically valuable landscape is located at Espoonjokilaakso near the Espoo Cathedral. The valley, surrounded by steep cliffs, was probably cleared for plantation use already in ancient times. As well as the cathedral, the landscape includes many other culturally significant buildings.
The typical rural village in Espoo was small: two or three houses in an asymmetric group on a hill. A notable exception was the village of Gammelgård: the village had thirteen houses in 1540. Because of the small number houses, the Great Partition in the late 18th century had little effect on the traditional cultural landscape in Espoo. The building tradition in Espoo remained old-fashioned for a long time: low paired houses were common up to the late 19th century. The storm in August 1890 brought upon a change, when new buildings according to the style at the time were built from thousands of logs felled by the storm.
Manor houses started appearing when one of the houses of the village grew larger than the others and developed into a riding farm, which ended up as property of the gentry. Thus almost all of the manor houses in Espoo are located at the site of an old peasant village. The Espoo manor was founded at the start of the new era, but most of the manor houses in Espoo had formed without an official founding in the late 18th century. The officers in Suomenlinna bought farms near Helsinki, resulting in so-called officer manor houses such as Bodom, Hovgård and Träskända. The late Carolinian appearance of the main buildings of the manor houses has been preserved the best in Bodom and Backby. The manor houses in Alberga and Kilo represent the style ideals of the late 19th century, while Träskända represents the start of the 20th century.
The owners of the manor houses started selling their lands to the municipality and to construction enterprises in the 20th century. The manor houses in southern Espoo were mostly torn down to make way for new buildings and roads. The medieval Gräsa manor, the only so-called old frälse in Espoo, was located in the Olari area. Gräsa is seen as a textbook example of the rapid and fundamental change in the cultural landscape in Espoo. The main buildings of the Hagalund and Matinkylä manor remain, while hardly anything remains of the Frisans and Finno manors. The Soukanpohja manor is the only manor house in Espoo to remain as a contiguous group of buildings. It also forms a small rural landscape in the middle of new development in the late 20th century.
The effect of the roads on the cultural landscape of Espoo is indisputable. Villages were founded along the King's Road and the road brought cultural influences along with it. The rural landscapes in Espoo started gradually changing in the late 19th century as new villas were founded on the coast because of regular steamship traffic. There is a well preserved summer villa milieu on the island of Iso Vasikkasaari. Many of the villas are known by their famous architects or commissioners, such as Villa Carlstedt designed by Lars Sonck.
Many villas were also founded in Kilo and Leppävaara. The Karhusaari villa was built in southeastern Espoo in the 1890s, as well as Villa Rulludd in Kaitaa. The first villas in Suvisaaristo were built on the island of Tallholm in the 1860s, before that the area had mostly consisted of fishing villages. The most architecturally valuable villa in Espoo is Villa Miniato in Soukka.
The Pasila-Karjaa railway, completed in 1903, had a significant impact on the cultural landscape of Espoo. Industrial buildings were built near the railway stations, attracting working class settlements. The first suburban areas also appeared along the railway: tuberculosis was a common cause of death among the Finns in the early 20th century, and the dry and bright hills in Espoo along with the pines growing on them were seen as suitable to prevent and treat the disease. Espoo was seen as a healthy alternative to Helsinki, but new settlement coming from the east was diverse and new residential areas were very different from each other. The city of Kauniainen developed into a showy area, while the district of Leppävaara developed into a more modest one.
Parks and recreation
The city's 880 ha (2,200 acres) Central Park is located directly in the middle of the city, and it consists of natural forests, meadows, cliffs, wetlands as well as recreational routes. Central Park is the second-largest natural area in Espoo, after Nuuksio National Park, located in the northern part of the city. The park consists of two separate areas, Central Park I and II, approved by the City Council in 1996 and 2004, respectively.
From Wikipedia’s article on Espoo, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5