Yesterday we felt like going a bit outside our usual nature targets in the Helsinki metropolitan region. So we ventured some 40kms westwards, to the Gulf of Finland coast at Kopparnäs in Ingå – Inkoo. The two names are used here as this is a bilingual Finnish-Swedish part of the country.
Not exactly mild, with 0 C temperatures and a brisk wind the weather gave a freshening taste of northern late autumn climate. Some years there is already snow at this time, but more seldom now. If air temperature goes well below 0 C for some time, the Gulf of Finland freezes as it is less salty than the water of the high seas.
Our excursion started with some moments at the shoreline, watching the waves come in and enjoying the view of the open sea. Even for us northerners it soon got a bit chilly so the walk continued for 3 kilometers on a trail through the forest area of this national park.
When I was a child we could never have gone here as the Porkala – Porkkala region was ’rented out’ as a military base to the Soviet Union between 1944 and 1956. Originally the rental period was set for 50 years, The only Finns allowed in were passengers in the Helsinki – Turku-Åbo trains which transited through with a Soviet locomotive and the windows covered with wooden boards. The base was close, with the border only some 20 kilometers from the downtown city centre.
After our big neighbours did not succeed in occupying the country’s capital Helsinki through the wars of 1939-44 they forced Finland to cede a large area just outside the city. They even paid a symbolic rent for this land and sea base from where they felt able co control both the city and the waterways to St Petersburg.
In January 1956, just under three years after Stalin died, the Soviets gave up the base. It did of course reflect the fact that Finland was not considered an immediate threat anymore, but equally much that they could not afford to keep these expensive military bases outside the country. Also technology and weapons had developed so the Porkkala area lost much of its strategic importance.
Now peace and quet has settled also in this coastal region on the outskirts of Helsinki. Down at the sea there was a lonely person fishing from the cliffs and another walking in the distance along the shoreline. During our one hour noon-time forest walk we did not meet anyone else, once again realising how sparsely populated this country is even in the big southern population centres.
