Turku Finland to the Ferry

There was a layer of ice on everything this morning when we left Helsinki, including the car, which took much scraping on Kim’s part. The overpasses are icy and it’s vacillating between snow, sleet and rain. 

Helsinki is the capital of Finland, known for its innovative art, unique culture, and modern architecture. The city was originally founded in 1550 and served as a strategic military center for King Gustavus Vasa of Sweden. It was annexed by Russia for a period and ultimately declared its independence in 1917.

Don’t plan to sightsee much – it’s not really that type of city. Helsinki does not have an impressive or even particularly nice old downtown. It’s just another really large city, so we opted to forego spending much time here and instead head to Turku where we are booked on the overnight ferry to Stockholm. Sweden. 

We’ll go to Market Hall and Market Square in Turku to see if we can find any things Finnish we can’t live without before boarding the ferry and leaving the land of a thousand lakes. Actually, at last count there were 187,888 of them - more lakes in relation to a country's size than any other. With a population of about five million, Finland has one lake for every 26 people. We drove through the Lakelands but couldn’t see much of the water for the trees. We also never saw any of the over 200,000 reindeer living here or the aurora borealis for which they are so famous. However, there are the landscape marring wind turbines. I didn’t take a picture because you know how I feel about the effect they have on the wildlife. Just know they are here too. Those, of course, we did see. 

It’s amazing how many cars we’ve seen pulling trailers. This one pulling this huge boat is pretty funny. Sorry the pic is not very good. I took it through the rear view mirror. 

Market Square

The Market Square in the city of Turku, hosts a market on weekdays, and there are several cafés and restaurants on the square.

The buildings around the Market Square are also part of the city's central business district. They include, for instance, the Hansa and Forum shopping centres, the Wiklund department store, an Orthodox church, a private medical clinic, and several instances of media such as an office of Finland's major newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, locally most significant newspaper. 

Turku Market Hall was built to address the disorderly 19th century trade taking place on the squares of Turku, where hygiene was not of a high enough standard. Gustaf Nyström had already completed the first market hall in Finland, namely the Helsinki Market Hall, in 1889. He had traveled Europe to research their construction. Thus it was natural that he was assigned with the task. The construction plan called for more than 300,000 bricks and over 42 tons of iron parts. The construction was nonetheless completed and the hall was opened to the public in 1896.

Originally the hall featured 151 shops, of which 53 were dedicated to fresh meat products. The hall was lit with gas lamps as the hall did not have electricity until 1932. On the other hand, running water was installed already in 1905, which meant that the hall had aquariums with live fish for sale, such as pikes, eels, breams and flounders.

However, in the 1950s the hall was still almost unchanged and it had fallen behind the times, lacking modern refrigeration and storage space. In 1957 the first refrigerated counters finally arrived to the hall and the first florist and stationery opened shop there.

The fate of the Market Hall hung in the balance in the 1960s. The KOP was organizing a design competition for a new office building in the spring of 1960. The competition brief mentioned the demolition of the neighboring Turku Market Hall, which was to be replaced with a new market hall along with the new office building. Viljo Revell won the competition with his proposal "Kolme koputusta" (English: Three knocks). This plan featured a large triangular building, the KOP-kolmio (English: KOP-triangle), with another adjacent office building, occupying the lot of the Turku Market Hall. The adjacent building was supposed to share a side wall with the KOP-kolmio, thus the facade facing the market hall is relatively plain.

Against the odds, and only after a long deliberation the plan for the hall's renovation was approved on 6 January 1976. The renovation was done in two phases, leaving one end of the hall continuously open for business. The renovation works were extensive, and  the old marble counters had to go, replaced with stainless steel, however, the facade was left unchanged. The renovation also meant that the number of shops was cut down by half as the lots had been enlarged and some of them had been replaced with cold storage. The pics below are from inside the market. 

Beautiful looking sweets

Sacre tort and princess cake. 

The building is beautiful inside. The original woodwork has been maintained. You’ll have to zoom in to see it. 

This is where we ate lunch. There was a line to get the soup so we figured it must be good. 

Fish soup, Kim really liked it. 

Fried herring. I had not planned to try herring in Finland even though people say you must. Kim wanted us to try two different things and the guy was waxing eloquent about the fried fish plate, saying it was delicious (pronounced with a hard “c”). I didn’t hear him say herring, if he did. Regardless, herring is what we got. It was very salty but not bad. 

These are Karelian pasties (in the center). Karelia is a region in eastern Finland bordering Russia. The area is famous for its traditional and tasty pasties. They feature a thin rye crust with a rice filling. However, they have some variations on the filling with potato and barley as well. 

Turku City Hall is a Neo-Renaissance building located on the bank of the Aura River. The City Council of Turku convenes at Turku City Hall.

It was originally designed by Charles Bassi from 1810-1811 as the restaurant Seurahuone. The building survived the Great Fire of Turku in 1827. It was redone 1879-1883 as the city hall under plans by Frans A. Sjöström.

The first floor used to have the register office of Turku up until 1975 and Turku district court until 1997. After the district court of Turku moved to the new Turku courthouse, the first floor was replaced by work, meeting and legislative spaces. The second floor of the building is decorated with gold and massive crystal crowning. 

The public can enter the building during specific events such as Turku Day. The public is also permitted to witness the city council assembly.

At the foot of Turku's rebuilt Myllysilta, a set of four bronze sculptures by sculptor Kari-Petteri Kakko were unveiled in 2013. Each of the sculptures placed at one of the four corners of the bridge depicts one human age. 

In the sculpture 'Tomorrow', a little crawling girl points to the sky. In 'Today', a teenager with headphones is sitting in a lotus position. In the sculpture 'A moment ago', a middle-aged male figure is resting on the steps and leaning on his briefcase. In 'Yesterday', a smiling old woman sits and looks at the sky with curlers on her head (and naked as a jay-bird, as my dad would say). They were very odd sculptures. 

The Aura River (Finnish Aurajoki) is a river in south-western Finland. Its sources are in Oripää, and it flows through Pöytyä, Aura and Lieto before discharging into the Archipelago Sea in the middle of the city of Turku. The waters of the Aura river are brown. The total length of the river is about 70 kilometres (43 mi), and it contains eleven rapids, the biggest of which is Nautelankoski at Lieto. The reserve tap water for Turku Region is drawn from the Aura.

The spire of the Turku Cathedral 

The detail on all the buildings is incredible. 

Turku Cathedral (Finnish: Turun tuomiokirkko) is the only medieval basilica in Finland and the Mother Church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.

Considered to be the most important religious building in Finland, the cathedral has borne witness to many important events in the nation's history and has become one of the city's most recognizable symbols. The cathedral is situated in the heart of Turku next to the Old Great Square, by the river Aura. Its presence extends beyond the local precinct by having the sound of its bells chiming at noon broadcast on national radio. It is also central to Finland's annual Christmas celebrations.

The cathedral was originally built out of wood in the late 13th century, and was dedicated as the main cathedral of Finland in 1300, the seat of the Catholic bishop of Turku. It was considerably expanded in the 14th and 15th centuries, mainly using stone as the construction material. The cathedral was badly damaged during the Great Fire of Turku in 1827, and was rebuilt to a great extent afterwards.

Together with Turku Cathedral, Turku Castle is one of the oldest buildings still in use and the largest surviving medieval building in Finland. It was founded in the late 13th century and stands on the banks of the Aura River. 

The castle served as a bastion and administrative centre in Eastland, as Finland was known during its time as a province of Sweden. Only once did the castle figure in the defense of the realm, when Russian invaders from Novgorod destroyed Turku in 1318. It more frequently played a role in internal struggles for power within Sweden and the Kalmar Union. The castle's heyday was in the mid-16th century during the reign of Duke John of Finland and Catherine Jagellon. That was when the Renaissance Floor and King's and Queen's hall were built, along with other features. It lost its status as an administrative centre in the 17th century after Per Brahe's period as governor-general of Finland came to an end. Turku castle is today Finland's most visited museum, with attendance reaching 200,000 in some years. In addition, many of the larger rooms are used for municipal functions.

Lots of green algae in the stream by the castle. 

Four yellow painted log buildings on the castle/museum property. 

Supper while waiting on the ferry.

Ferry coming in 

The sun sets while we wait to drive on. 

Norway is still the favorite country we’ve visited with Iceland a close second. 

Only four more sleeps until we are home 🙁. It’s always good to be home with friends and family, but I’m sad our trip is coming to an end.

"You don’t have to worry about whether your world is under control. God rules. You just have to learn to trust him when his rule isn’t evident."  PDT