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city in the region of Uusimaa in Finland
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Vantaa (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈʋɑntɑː]; Swedish: Vanda, Finland Swedish: [ˈvɑnːdɑ]) is a city in Finland. It is located to the north of the capital, Helsinki, in southern Uusimaa. The population of Vantaa is approximately 253,000. It is the 4th most populous municipality in Finland. Vantaa is part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, which has approximately 1.6 million inhabitants.
The administrative centre of Vantaa is located in the Tikkurila district. Vantaa lies in Southern Finland and shares borders with Helsinki, the Finnish capital, to the south, Espoo to the southwest, Nurmijärvi to the northwest, Kerava and Tuusula to the north, and Sipoo to the east. The city covers a total area of 240.35 square kilometres (92.80 sq mi), of which 1.97 km2 (0.76 sq mi) is water.
Vantaa's significant attractions include the Vantaa River (Vantaanjoki), which runs through the city before flowing into the Gulf of Finland. The Helsinki Airport, situated in Vantaa, serves as the largest airport in Finland and the primary airline hub for the Helsinki metropolitan area. Companies headquartered in Vantaa comprise Finnair, Finavia, R-kioski, Tikkurila Oyj, Veikkaus, and Metsähallitus. Additionally, Vantaa is home to Heureka, a science center.
Vantaa is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages. The population consists of 68% Finnish speakers, 2% Swedish speakers (the lowest percentage out of any bilingual municipality in Finland), and 30% speakers of other languages, which is well above the national average. According to the 2025 disturbance index used by the Finnish Police, Vantaa is currently the most unsafe city in Finland.
Colonists arriving from Sweden in the 14th century settled in the area what is now Vantaa and named the river in the area as Helsingå or Helsingaa. The etymology of this name is not known for sure, but according to an old tradition it probably comes from colonists who originally arrived at the Hälsingland area in Sweden.
The same river has also been known as the river Vantaa (Vanda å in Swedish). Unlike the name Helsingaa, the name Vantaa comes from the Finnish-speaking Tavastian inhabitants upstream of the river. There is a village named Vantaa near the source of the river, at the area which now belongs to the city of Riihimäki. According to a theory, the name comes from the Finnish words vanan taka, where vana means a riverbed and so Vantaa (possibly originally spelled "Vanantaa") means a place behind a riverbed. Only later did the name also came to use also downstream and replace the old name Helsingaa.
The Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids at the mouth of the river Vantaa were originally known as Helsinge fors ("Helsinki rapids"), which also gave the name Helsingfors to the city founded along the rapids.
The Vantaa blast furnace founded at the shore of the Vantaankoski rapids in 1837 gave the name "Vantaa" to its entire environment.
By the new municipal law in 1865 the Finnish name of the municipality became Helsingin maalaiskunta ("the rural municipality of Helsinki"), when the concept of sockens in Finland was discontinued. The Swedish name remained as Helsinge, in contrast to Helsingfors, the Swedish name for Helsinki proper. When Helsingin maalaiskunta became a market town in 1972, proposed new names included Helsingin kauppala, Helsinginjoen kauppala and Vantaanjoen kauppala. The accepted name was Vantaan kauppala after the river Vantaa. Two years later Vantaa received city rights.
Vantaa has a rich history that dates back to the Stone Age. The area was inhabited by Tavastians and Finns proper until the so-called second crusade to Finland and Swedish colonisation of the area.
Remains of an ancient rectangular dwelling dating to 6700 to 6500 BCE have been discovered in Brunaberg in Vantaa. At the time, the dwelling was located at the seashore near the mouth of the Keravanjoki river. The dwelling had been used for decades, apparently mostly in wintertime. A graveyard-like dwelling dating to the Mesolithic has been discovered in Jönsas, which was located at the mouth of a seaside bay at the time. In the Stone Age, people in Vantaa sought their food mostly from the sea. Seals were an important quarry, but remains of harbour porpoises have also been found at the numerous Neolithic dwelling sites at Jokiniemi. Remains of permanent dwellings found from Stenkulla in Hakkila date from the same period.
There are considerably many findings from the Comb Ceramic culture in Vantaa. Many ancient clay figures representing humans have been found in Jokiniemi in Vantaa. They have been estimated to be of various ages from 5300 to 5500 years old. During the typical Comb Ceramic time, large amounts of flint were brought to Finland from the south and southeast, which was made into blades and points, as well as amber. The Comb Ceramic era humans also knew how to use bows and arrows as weapons.
Iron Age history in Vantaa is not very well known, but the entire Uusimaa area was still a sparsely populated backland of Tavastia at the end of the Iron Age. The most researched Iron Age dwelling in Vantaa is located at the same site as the earlier Stone Age dwellings of Jönsas and Palmu. Remains of Morby ceramics have been discovered at these sites, and iron slag has also been discovered in Jönsas. Remains of fireplaces dating to the Iron Age have also been researched in Jönsas. Remains of dwellings dating to the 10th century have been discovered in Gubbacka in Länsisalmi as well as remains of ironworking sites from the 12th and 13th centuries.
Information about ancient villages located in the Vantaa area can be found in concentration of soil visible in palynological analysis as well as retroactive reasoning based on nomenclature and historical documents. According to historian Saulo Kepsu, Finnish population has spread from Tavastia to the Helsinki and Vantaa area in the 11th to 14th centuries, possibly even earlier. The Tavastians had fishing places and other pleasure grounds in the area.
Prior to the name Vantaa being taken into use in 1974, the area was known as Helsingin pitäjä (Swedish: Helsinge; "Socken of Helsinki"). The rapids of river Vantaa were known as Helsingfors, from which the current Swedish name of Helsinki derives. Early settlement in Vantaa was centered around the river, in Helsingin pitäjän kirkonkylä ("Helsinki Parish Village"), and from it the city's current coat of arms derived its imagery.
The Swedish colonisation in Vantaa started in connection with the colonisation in the rest of Uusimaa in the late 13th century after the Second Swedish Crusade. The Swedes called the area Ny land ("new land"). There was permanent settlement in the area of the branching point of the rivers in the 14th century.
The history of Helsingin pitäjä stretches at least to the 14th century. For a long time it was thought that the earliest record of the area was as Helsinge in 1351 when king Magnus IV of Sweden granted salmon fishing rights on the river Helsingaa (now known as the river Vantaa) to the Estonian Padise Abbey. However, according to current knowledge, the first mention of Vantaa was in a document given by king Magnus IV in Västerås on 14 September 1331, describing episcopal tithes, requiring a pound of butter for the bishop from every citizen of age 7 years or older.
Since the 14th century, the road between Turku and Vyborg, King's Road, has run through Vantaa. The road brought significant attention to the city, and its location on the salmon rich river led to a permanent population.
The river Helsingaa soon gave its name to the entire area, and also inspired the coat of arms of Vantaa. The Helsinki socken was born from the 1370s to the 1390s, and the Church of St. Lawrence was built there in 1460. The church was located in a transport hub near the rivers of Vantaa and Kerava. Many roads also ran through the clerical centre: the King's Road from Turku to Vyborg and the Häme road to the Häme Castle and to the coast in the south. The first vicar in Helsingin pitäjä was mentioned in 1395. Helsingin pitäjä is seen as having established itself as a clerical and administrative parish in the 15th century, and the first mention of a church dedicated to Saint Lawrence in the area is from 1401. A local frälse family donated a land worth one skattmark from Rekola to the church of St. Lawrence. The name Helsinge was first mentioned in 1428. In the same year, fishing rights in the area were moved over to the Archdiocese of Turku, which helped the construction of a stone church to replace the old wooden one.
Justice in Helsingin pitäjä was the responsibility of its own district court. It is known that the parish had its own district court in the 16th century. The court could be held by deputies hired by high-ranking judges, so-called lawreaders. The use of lawreaders was common from the late 16th century to the 1680s.
Because of its poor location, Porvoo could not compete with the Hanseatic merchants in Tallinn, so in 1550 king Gustav Vasa decided to found the city of Helsinki at the site of Helsingin pitäjä at the mouth of the Helsingaa river. Helsingin pitäjä had already developed into a significant centre of marine trade in Uusimaa in the 1530s. However, the Vanhakaupunki area in Helsinki never became the city centre Gustav Vasa wanted during his lifetime.
In 1570, the 25-year Russian war also affected life in Helsingin pitäjä. Increased stress, additional military tax and enemy attacks had their toll on the population and often led to farmsteads being deserted. In 1577 there were 51 farmsteads burned and raided by the enemy. Serving food to and accommodating the military departments was the responsibility of police chief Olof Mårtensson, who lived at the Malmi horsestead. The largest department served by the police chief consisted of 40 horsemen from the Uppland unit in January 1576. As well as the Malmi horsestead, Helsingin pitäjä was also home to the horsesteads of Pukinmäki, Herttoniemi, Haltiala, Kirkonkylä, Meilby, Kulosaari and Heickby.
After the Treaty of Stolbovo, the Diet of Helsinki granted the rights of a staple town to Helsinki for foreign trade in 1617. The wars against Poland and Germany in the 1620s led to many large manors for the nobility being built in Helsingin pitäjä to support the cavalry, including Westerkulla and Hakunila. In autumn 1640, it was decided to move Helsinki from the Vanhakaupunki area to its current location at Vironniemi. The village of Töölö was annexed from Helsingin pitäjä to Helsinki proper in 1644, and in 1652 the parish congregation lost its independent status, and in order to support the economy of the Helsinki congregation, the entire church parish of Helsinki was annexed to the city congregation of Helsinki.
The Great Famine of 1695–1697 also had its toll on Helsingin pitäjä. Successive years of crop loss caused famine and mortality was high. As well as the peasants, the famine also affected servants of the crown, both the noble and the common estates, and the bourgeoisie.
During the Great Wrath Russian troops invaded Helsingin pitäjä in 1713. Some of the inhabitants fled to the mother country of Sweden or into nearby forests, some fought back against the invaders. As the invasion grew long, circumstances slowly settled and the Treaty of Nystad was made in autumn 1721. A second, shorter invasion, known as the Lesser Wrath, happened from 1742 to 1743.
Circumstances in Helsingin pitäjä started improving in the 1720s, as it became one of the most important centres of early industry in Finland. Water-powered sawmills were built in the area, forming a significant concentration of export industry at the time. This export was directed both to central Europe and also far way to the Mediterranean Sea in the late 18th century. A significant export target for Helsingin pitäjä was located just near its coast: the construction of the Sveaborg fortress, started in 1748, required large amounts of workforce and agricultural and industrial products such as foodstuffs, wood, brick and lime.
Helsingin pitäjä was a Swedish-speaking area. From the middle 18th century to the early 19th century, only about a tenth of the population of the parish spoke Finnish.
Ore deposits in Helsingin pitäjä had been discovered in the 1700s, but weren't utilized until Finland transferred to Russian control in the early 1800s. Ore extraction and processing lead to rapid industrialization in the area, with communities forming around locations like Tikkurila and Kerava. The industrial community in Tikkurila included an expeller pressing plant, which currently operates in the area as the paint manufacturer Tikkurila Oyj.
The capital of autonomous Finland was moved from Turku to Helsinki in the early 1800s and Helsingin pitäjä fell behind the growing population development of Helsinki proper. Helsingin pitäjä gained municipality rights in 1865 because of the first municipal law enacted in Finland, after which it was named Helsingin maalaiskunta/Helsinge kommun ("Rural Municipality of Helsinki"). In 1805 Helsingin pitäjä had 4840 inhabitants, Sveaborg had 4606 and Helsinki had 4337. After six decades Helsingin pitäjä had about 7000 inhabitants while Helsinki already had 23,000.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Vantaa”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.