The prolonged heat wave is slowly drying up the Mätäjoki creek that runs through our Marttila village in Pitäjänmäki Helsinki. This used to be an ancient route up from the sea which monks from the Baltics used already in the middle ages. The uplift of land that started after the Ice Age and still slowly continues has of course had its own effect.
If the name of the creek is translated directly into English it would be the Rotten River. For long I thought it was indeed so that the rather unflattering name with its not so nice connotations had its reasons.
Only this year I heard from a city expert that this is in fact a misunderstanding. The Swedish name Rutiån from which the Finnish one has been adapted is actually not based on ’rotten’ – that is ’rutten’ – but comes from an ancient and forgotten German word for a dog…
So we learn something every day.
The hot weather continues here with daily temperatures up to 30C. Luckily we have been spared from the kind of huge forest fires that ravage Sweden but the risk is always there.
In this (still) bilingual Finland also most names exist in the two national languages. This means that Helsinki is Helsingfors, the city region Pitäjänmäki is Sockenbacka and the Marttila village is Martas in Swedish.