Finnish fashion designer makes ecoluxury

Arts & culture Design

When Finnish-born, UK-based Minna Hepburn recounts her path from war studies graduate to internationally renowned fashion designer, it forms an inspiring tale. In just four years she has built an ecologically minded brand, Minna, that catches readers’ attention in top fashion mags such as Vogue and Elle.

Born in Joensuu, eastern Finland, Minna Hepburn moved to London in 1998 after meeting the man who is now her husband. She enrolled in war studies at King’s College London and worked in the banking sector.

When she graduated and got married in 2003, the newlyweds decided to go backpacking across Asia for four months. The trip marked an important turning point in Hepburn’s life. While travelling, she met people who introduced her to the clothing business, and upon her return to the UK, she started her own shop – without any formal training in fashion.

Becoming a fashion designer

Minna Hepburn may be the only fashion designer whose career started with a degree in war studies.Photo: courtesy of Minna

Minna started out selling clothing in her own boutique at Borough Market and at other London locations, including the clothing chain Topshop. The idea for the Minna brand originated in 2005 when she took time off from work after the birth of her first child. For a year, Minna conducted market research and developed a business plan for her brand.

While running her first clothing business, she had grown increasingly disturbed by mass production and the short lifespan of high-street clothing. When planning her new business, she decided that her designs would utilise environmentally friendly, sustainable, locally sourced materials. When she discovered Scottish lace produced near Glasgow by local workers, she knew she had found her material.

In launching her first self-designed Minna collection in 2008, she had to start from scratch. Branding and PR have played an important role from the very beginning. As she explains, it isn’t enough to have a good product – if nobody knows about it, it isn’t going to succeed.

The Minna brand maintains a strong internet presence through social media and an online store. She truly succeeds in getting people’s attention globally. At the prestigious London Fashion Week her designs have been shown on the Estethica runway, which revolves around ethical fashion production.

Hepburn’s designs have also been seen on the likes of actress Laura Bailey and Livia Firth, who started the Green Carpet Challenge, aimed at bringing sustainable style to red-carpet events internationally.

Ethically produced luxury

The Tory dress can be worn to a wedding or on other, less formal occasions.Photo: Courtesy of Minna

Hepburn describes her design as eco luxe, referring to the luxurious quality of her environmentally friendly designs. However, she emphasises that she isn’t an “ecofanatic.” Rather, she is hoping that through her work people will become more aware of the waste of environmental resources and other issues that mass-produced clothing raises.

According to Hepburn, sustainable fashion shouldn’t just be an elitist “fashion phenomenon,” but something that any fashion-loving person can relate to. She wants her designs to be multifunctional so that even her popular bridal collection pieces can also be worn for occasions other than weddings. The Minna brand aims to capture the imagination of consumers who are determined to buy beautiful clothes that are also durable and ethically sound.

Though she is marketing her brand internationally and is based in the UK, Hepburn still has strong ties to Finland and is happy about the attention that her work receives in her home country. In 2011, she won the Elle Style Awards 2011 in Finland.

By Henrietta Hautala, July 2012

Moving pictures from Schjerfbeck’s world

Arts & culture Visual arts

On the occasion of her 150th birthday, Finnish museums honour Helene Schjerfbeck, a bold artist who was ahead of her time – and whose paintings are now worth millions of euros.

More than six decades after her death, the work of Helene Schjerfbeck (1862–1946) is more vital than ever. Her career mirrored – and presaged – the arrival of modernism. It began with realist village scenes from France and Cornwall in the 1880s and climaxed with haunting, cartoonish self-portraits during the Second World War.

Schjerfbeck’s international stock has been rising since a milestone New York show two decades ago. Her works have fetched auction prices previously unseen for Finnish artists, such as nearly four million euros for her Dancing Shoes at Sotheby’s in London.

In 2012, several Finnish museums are saluting her 150th anniversary with exhibitions. The biggest takes place at Helsinki’s Ateneum, while museums in Tammisaari on the south coast and Vaasa on the west coast are also in on the action.

Rediscovering her originality

At Ateneum, the largest-ever Schjerfbeck retrospective features nearly one third of the roughly 1,000 paintings she created during her lifetime. The show also includes work by artists who inspired her. Schjerfbeck paintings influenced by 16th-century Spanish master El Greco will for the first time be shown beside his originals.

“Of course, Schjerfbeck was influenced by other artists, but their influence is difficult to pinpoint as she filtered her impressions of others’ work and drew her own artistic conclusions,” notes curator Vesa Kiljo of the Provincial Museum of Western Uusimaa, known by its abbreviation, EKTA. It houses a more modest, intimate permanent exhibition on Schjerfbeck in the south-coast town of Tammisaari, where the artist lived between 1918 and 1941.

Photo: Finnish National Gallery, Central Art Archives/Kari Lehtinen Helene Schjerfbeck: Dancing shoes (1939 or 1940), Private collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery, Central Art Archives/H. Aaltonen Helene Schjerfbeck: Red Apples (1915) Photo: Finnish National Gallery, Central Art Archives/Hannu Aaltonen Helene Schjerfbeck: The Convalescent (1888)

Helene Schjerfbeck: Dancing shoes (1939 or 1940), Private collection. Photo: Finnish National Gallery, Central Art Archives/Kari Lehtinen

Helene Schjerfbeck: Red Apples (1915)Photo: Finnish National Gallery, Central Art Archives/H. Aaltonen

Helene Schjerfbeck: The Convalescent (1888)Photo: Finnish National Gallery, Central Art Archives/Hannu Aaltonen

“Recognition of her originality is the basis on which respect for her as an artist has constantly increased over the years both at home and abroad,” says Kiljo.

Her studio has been partially recreated at the museum. On display are her easel and a rocking chair that features in many of her pictures. Films, photos and letters help to explore Schjerfbeck’s world. Local actor and guide Anne Ingman impersonates Schjerfbeck, and is on hand on July 10, 2012 as the museum celebrates the painter’s birthday with cake and free admission.

Frida Kahlo, Edvard Munch and Schjerfbeck

That kind of hoopla would no doubt have horrified Schjerfbeck, described by her neighbours as shy and introverted. The Independent has written of her: “Imagine the life of Frida Kahlo yoked to the eye of Edvard Munch, and you’ll begin to get the measure of this oeuvre.”

Helene Schjerfbeck paints at her home in Tammisaari in 1937.Photo: H. Holmström FNG/CAA/Coll. Gösta Stenman

While Schjerfbeck’s life was not as dramatic as Kahlo’s, she too had a tough one. After breaking a hip in a childhood accident, Schjerfbeck became a recluse who walked with a limp and battled illnesses most of her life. She never married, despite one engagement and a long-term unrequited friendship, and spent many years caring for her ill mother – who was Scherfbeck’s other primary model besides herself.

Schjerfbeck is best known for her self-portraits, shown at EKTA as a row of reproductions of 36 works from 1878 to 1945. “Now that I so seldom have the strength to paint, I’ve started on a self-portrait,” she wrote to a friend in 1921. “This way the model is always available, although it isn’t at all pleasant to see oneself.”

While her early self-portraits were naturalistic, the last ones are just a few stylised strokes. Some other portraits – such as The Californian and The Gipsy – show eyes downcast or turned away, which can paradoxically reveal a great deal about a subject.

“She wanted to capture the inner person, not just the exterior,” says Kiljo.

By Wif Stenger, June 2012

Good taste with passion – 21 years rewarded

Business & innovation Technology

Linus Torvalds, a Finnish open source software engineer, has won the prestigious Millennium Technology Prize together with stem cell scientist Dr Shinya Yamanaka. Torvalds’ Linux operating system and Yamanaka’s stem cell research are both unparalleled and revolutionary in their respective fields.

The world’s most prestigious technology prize has been awarded to Torvalds in recognition of his work initiating the development of the open source operating system Linux kernel – used today by an estimated 30 million people worldwide.

Linux is the operating system behind most of our digital existence. Drawing cash from an ATM, watching a movie on board of a plane, or playing with your Android smartphone – all these devices have Linux at their core, making work and social life ever so much easier and more pleasurable. According to Torvalds himself, it all comes down to having “good taste” in visual planning and code. And the passion to give it all away for free.

Developing the Linux operating system has involved the equivalent of 73,000 person-years of work so far – most of it voluntary and unpaid. Linus Torvalds has worked around 21 years on the system himself. This award praises his achievements as having “significantly influenced not only the development of other major operating systems, but the online networking culture and ethical questioning as a whole, as well as the openness of the internet to everyone.”

Our article on Torvalds in 2000:

master programmer

Written by Patrick Humphreys
Drawing by Pekka Vuori

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

This year is turning out to be an extraordinary one for computing. Perhaps not a very enjoyable time for the richest man on the planet, Bill Gates, with his programs under virus attack and his Microsoft empire facing possible break-up. But all the better for the world’s best-known programmer, Linus Torvalds, who surely also bears the title of best-known Finn.

It’s hard to trump the achievement of writing a world-class computer operating system at the age of 21. Yet this year Torvalds was back in the headlines as one of the team that has produced a revolutionary new computer chip. And while the Linux operating system is a challenge to Microsoft’s Windows, the Crusoe chip could threaten the other computing giant, Intel.

The story of Linux is one of the great fables of computing, yet it begins as recently as 1991. That was when Linus Torvalds, a 21-year-old student at Helsinki University, decided to write his own computer operating system. Only a nerd would try; most folk buy their computers with the operating system already installed. And only a master nerd would succeed.

In some important respects, Torvalds’ Linux is better than the world’s principal operating system, Windows. It is more compact and it runs faster. It is also more stable, so it is preferred for use on the Internet, powering web servers that can be left unattended, without operatives to “turn off and then start again”, as Windows still so often requires.

The Love-letter virus that raced around the world at the start of May was another reminder of the dangers of dependence on Microsoft programs. It was designed to attack features of Windows and its popular e-mail application, Outlook. Linux users were unaffected. In the 1990s the world’s computing stock became a monoculture, like a forest with just one type of tree. Any disease can decimate it.

But Linux is not just another operating system. It is the outcome of a completely different philosophy, which has made its author into such a cult figure. Torvalds did not copyright his computer code so as to receive payment for his work. Instead, he published it on the Internet and invited other programmers to improve on it and to send their results back to him. By e-mail, of course.

Linux therefore was and remains a free program. Anyone can use it without charge, on condition that any improvements they make are also uncopyrighted and freely available. The nerds of the world took up Torvalds’ challenge. Of Linux today, only about 2% was written by the master himself, though he remains the ultimate authority on what new code and innovations are incorporated into it.

Again, the contrast with Windows is striking. How that system works is a proprietary Microsoft secret. An operating system is what controls a computer, but finding out how it does so is a lot harder than looking at the engine of a car. Computers translate everything into ones and zeroes. It is impossible to see what is happening from this digital stream.

Because the original quantities and instructions that make up Linux have been published, any programmer can see what it is doing, how it does it and, possibly, how it could do it better. Torvalds did not invent the concept of open programming but Linux is its first success story. Indeed, it probably could not have succeeded before the Internet had linked the disparate world of computing experts.

In making Linux an open language, Torvalds gave up the opportunity of growing rich from his work. This too is part of nerd culture, which thrives on the satisfaction of authorship and the respect of one’s peers rather than a portfolio of shares and a sports car in the drive. Today Torvalds lives in a rented bungalow though, admittedly, in California, where he moved in 1997 to work for a mysteriously secretive company called Transmeta.

The results of that project were unveiled in January this year, prompting some observers to suggest that the Finnish dragon-slayer was now taking on the world’s foremost chip manufacturer, Intel. Transmeta’s new Crusoe chips contain an array of computing tricks, allowing it to run programs intended for Intel processors but using a fraction of the power. For mobile devices this will be ideal. The first applications are expected this summer.

Linus Torvalds did not invent the Crusoe, of course, just as most of his Linux system was written by others. But this computing genius has quite a knack for being in the right place at the right time.

Original article by Patrick Humphreys, 2000
Foreword by Anna Leikkari, June 2012

Åland treasures maritime memories

Life & society Society

The greatly expanded Maritime Museum of Åland can be found in the town of Mariehamn. It represents a must-see for anyone interested in sea travel or the unique history of Finland’s autonomous Åland Islands.

Seafaring has naturally been central to the lives of the Åland islanders in their labyrinthine Baltic archipelago, located between mainland Finland and Sweden. “To understand Åland and its people you really have to look into our maritime history,” says museum director Hanna Hagmark-Cooper.

In the middle ages, islanders used to sail to Stockholm, Turku and Tallinn to sell surplus fish and buy goods they could not produce themselves. As the Baltic region industrialised, several major shipping companies grew up and thrived in Åland. “Mariehamn was the last port in the world to continue running a large fleet of sailing ships, even into the 1940s,” says Hagmark-Cooper. Åland’s maritime museum was first founded when local people realised that the great age of sail was coming to an end.

Putting the museum in ship shape

Old favourites such as well-preserved figureheads are still on display.Photo: Fran Weaver

“Over the decades people kindly brought more and more objects in, which were put on display with little planning,” says Hagmark-Cooper. “The museum became so cluttered that we clearly needed to expand and redesign the whole exhibition. “During reconstruction lasting more than two years, the museum has doubled in size and its exhibits have for the first time been systematically organised and labelled– in Finnish and English, as well as Swedish (Åland’s main language).

Hagmark-Cooper is particularly proud of the museum’s new interactive exhibits. Visitors can learn the ropes, climb replicated rigging, stand on a stern deck, lift dockside loads and use simulators to steer vessels into port. Kids clearly enjoy spying on the antics of Ruby the ship rat through peepholes around the museum.

“But our local visitors have been relieved to find old favourites such as model ships, our well-preserved figureheads and the beautiful captain’s saloon from the old sailing ship Herzogin Cecilie, all still here – and placed better in context,” says Hagmark-Cooper. “Nautical enthusiasts can also find a wealth of information using our library and e-info points.”

Eye-catching exhibits

Moored by the quayside outside the museum is the Pommern, a splendid four-masted sailing barque built in 1903.Photo: Fran Weaver

Moored by the quayside outside the museum is the Pommern, a splendid four-masted sailing barque built in 1903. Owned by Mariehamn-based shipping company Erikson in the 1930s, the Pommern twice won the annual Great Grain Races sailed by ships bringing wheat from Australia to Europe. Onboard exhibits and films give visitors a salty taste of a sailor’s life in bygone days.

Another striking part of the museum is a Cabinet of Curiosities containing exotic souvenirs brought by seafarers from distant ports. Exhibits include aboriginal boomerangs, an enormous stuffed albatross and a genuine skull-and-crossbones flag that flew over a fearsome pirate ship off the Barbary Coast in the 1700s.

A genuine skull-and-crossbones pirate ship flag from the 1700s.Photo: Maritime Museum of Åland

The museum also spotlights modern aspects of nautical life including maritime safety, war at sea and shipbuilding methods. In recent years sailing enthusiasts in Åland have built several wooden vessels using traditional local designs. Examples can be seen in Mariehamn’s Maritime Quarter by the town’s eastern harbour.

“In the museum we also want to show how the shipping industry is still vital for Åland’s economy today,” says Hagmark-Cooper. The huge cruise ferries that call at Mariehamn en route between Finland and Sweden combine necessity and luxury: giving Åland a vital link to the outside world, while also bringing in tourists on scenic archipelago cruises. Hagmark-Cooper hopes that up to 50,000 visitors a year will discover Åland’s colourful history and thriving nautical traditions in the newly opened museum

By Fran Weaver, June 2012, updated July 2014

Pedal power: Helsinki likes bikes

Life & society Sports

It’s healthy, it’s environmentally friendly and it’s cheap. More and more citizens and visitors in the Finnish capital are discovering the benefits of a two-wheel run-around, especially with a new crosstown bike path opening.

Summer in Helsinki is always a heady time for cyclists. The city offers some exquisite rides, out into the thickly forested Central Park, for instance, across the string of islands of Lehtisaari and Kaskisaari to the west, or following the banks of the Vantaa River.

June 12, 2012 marks the annual Helsinki Day celebrations, but also the opening of a new crosstown bike path nicknamed Baana. Built over the old freight rail connecting the Töölö Bay area and the suburb of Ruoholahti, it forms a source of excitement for cyclists and further raises the profile of cycling culture.

Good things are happening

As cycling cities go, Helsinki scores reasonably highly. “Good things are happening,” says Petteri Nisula of HePo, an acronym for Helsingin Polkupyöräilijät (Helsinki Cyclists). “We have the go-ahead for the first advance cycle stop lines, where cyclists can go ahead of cars in traffic at crossroads.

“Within a couple of years there will be one-direction cycling lanes along the central part of Mannerheimintie, running from the Swedish Theatre to the main post office and Kiasma [the museum of contemporary art]. And another new route will open across the new Aurora Bridge linking the Olympic Stadium with Central Park.”

Even so, says Nisula, a few challenges remain to be tackled before Helsinki can claim to be a truly great cycling city, on a par with the likes of Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

“Most of our cycle paths in the city run alongside pedestrian paths,” he says. “At the moment this leads to problems for both cyclists and walkers. A different kind of traffic system is needed.” Another typical hazard, he says, occurs when a car is turning at crossroads and the motorist may not always see cyclists about to cross or pass.

HePo, which represents Finland in the European Cyclists Federation, does all it can to promote the cycling cause, holding breakfasts for people riding to work and organising regular group ride events.

Cycling is healthy, cheap and environmentally friendly. Photo: Visit Finland, flickr.com,ccby2.0

A bike trip through the forests of Central Park in Helsinki is like a ride in the countryside. Photo: Tim Bird

Water break: A group ride event brings numerous cyclists to Helsinki’s Senate Square. Photo: Tim Bird

Winter wheels, too

On the face of it, cycling might seem to be exclusively a summer pastime, but Nisula sees no reason why more people should not consider cycling in the winter, although this too requires a mindset shift.

“There are more winter cyclists in other Finnish cities like Oulu and Jyväskylä, where the winters are much longer and more severe than in Helsinki,” he says. “It’s a bit of a paradox. But if the roads are managed well, if you wear the right clothes and if you look after your bicycle, it’s not so hard to cycle in winter.”

He welcomes the fact that more central Helsinki hotels are loaning out bicycles, although bike rental is still limited to a few outlets. A common summer sight downtown these days is the convoys of cruise ship passengers on cycling excursions – a function that the classic gearless Finnish Jopo city bike serves perfectly.

In summers past, Helsinki had a “deposit only” city bike loan scheme. It may start up again in a summer or two using credit card deposits or some other system, a move that Nisula would welcome.

Money makes the wheels go round

HePo is involved in lobbying for better cycling facilities. Although Helsinki installs a number of new bike paths each year, there’s always room for improvement.

“We have good ideas but we need money to make them happen,” says Nisula. “In Finland we have been concentrating much of our investment in car lanes and motor traffic, and now for climate reasons we have to change our attitudes and recognise that cycling can form an important part of our traffic system and invest in it.”

Nisula takes an optimistic view of the future of cycling in the capital and in Finland as a whole. “Attitudes are changing and the statistics show it, too. You can see more cyclists every year.”

By Tim Bird, June 2012

Finnish-Korean design duo shares secrets

Arts & culture Design

Finnish-Korean couple Johan Olin and Aamu Song form one of the most ubiquitous presences on the current Finnish art scene.

Their designs and installations attract a wide variety of audiences, and spectators may also become performers. In one famous work, Reddress,you can slip into one of the pockets of a colossal red gown spread out on the ground and listen to live music.

The Helsinki-based creative duo, known as COMPANY, has been successfully designing, exhibiting and touring since 2000. It all began when Song and Olin were hit with the thunderbolt during their student years, and since then this design collective has consistently done well.

Some of their projects have spellbound a set of international loyal COMPANY devotees. For a few years, the spotlight has shone on their humoristic set of sculptures Sounds of Sea in Auckland, New Zealand, and on the now world-famous Reddress performance installation in the shape of a giant dress. In Reddress, 238 members of the audience can nestle into huge pockets in the hem of the dress’s 550 metres of fabric and gaze up at a singer or musician.

Song explains how important it is for her to give the audience not just a close, fun experience through designs and ideas, but also a kind of “happy energy,” a very visible characteristic in most of COMPANY’s products and projects. In 2010, COMPANY received Finland’s prestigious State Prize for Design.

Revealing secrets

Designer Johan Olin, one half of COMPANY, confers with a Russian matryoshka doll maker at her workplace.Photo: Courtesy of Kiasma

COMPANY recently got back from Russia where they were working on their latest exhibition, Secrets of Russia – a project that was born from Top Secrets of Finland, a magnificent sales exhibition celebrating the traditional skills and local materials of Finnish artisans.

“We’ve been doing these Secrets projects since 2007,” says Olin. “Our process begins by visiting manufacturers and learning their traditions and skill sets. We then design new products based on their traditions.”

According to Song, they seldom try to find a new idea but rather “try to learn from masters who have been living and developing one craft for years and that often belong to a long line of craftsmanship.” Both Song and Olin enjoy visiting remote places and seeking out artisans.

Their ideas are based on the way they like to live; they work with “good people and travel to exotic places.” Song adds, “To work with people who like what you do is almost like heaven.”

Secrets of Finland subsequently gave way to the Secrets of Helsinki, and in 2011 Song and Olin embarked on a quest to find manufacturers and artisans working within the borders of Helsinki.

The results of their journey to Russia form the basis of a show at Helsinki’s Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. Secrets of Russia was on display within a larger exhibition called Camouflage.

COMPANY’s products have found a permanent home near Kiasma: Salakauppa (Secret Shop), a cube-shaped walk-in kiosk with glass walls, stands on the corner by the Main Post Office, in plain view from the Kiasma entrance. It beckons to people looking to discover – or purchase – Song and Olin’s creations, the results of the couple’s numerous trips.

By Carina Chela, June 2012

Movies and midnight sun in Sodankylä, in the Finnish far north

Arts & culture Film

The festival brings filmmakers and discerning movie fans from all over the world to Sodankylä in the Finnish far north to watch films day and night while the magical midnight sun circles in the sky.

The screenings, morning discussions, concerts and other festival events gather a total of about 30,000 visitors each year. Here’s a taste of what awaits you: The guests include top filmmakers, cinematographers and award-winning directors from across the globe.

Window to the roots of Finland

The festival programme is always innovative, even surprising, a mix of old classics and rising stars.Photo: Maiju Saari

The festival has been drawing crowds since 1986. What is the magic behind the success? It all starts with the programme: always innovative, even surprising, a mix of old classics and rising stars. According to project manager Ari Lehtola, this is thanks to the artistic ambitions and high quality criteria of the professionals who choose the films and invite the special guests.

Then there’s that inimitable Sodankylä spirit, the unique atmosphere that charms everyone. Lehtola says that the festival concept was not planned – it came naturally: “This festival is all about love for the cinema. The spirit we try to grasp and communicate comes mainly from the way Mr Aki Kaurismäki tells stories.”

The festival organisation wants to maintain the romantic, nostalgically Finnish atmosphere of the event. “We try to create a window to the roots of Finland,” says Lehtola, “to the golden age of Finnish dancehalls with Olavi Virta and Finnish tango, and the structural changes of the Finnish countryside in the 1950s and ’60s. These sources of inspiration help us create a unique brand and an identity to cherish. Being genuine works, and is a value in itself.”

Don’t forget to sleep

Down to earth and full of midnight sun – this makes a unique festival atmosphere.Photo: Santeri Happonen

For an event this big, you need some help. Each year nearly 300 volunteers keep Midnight Sun going strong. Food, accommodation and free entry to the screenings are provided – plus, you get to know a lot of fun people.

Annu Suvanto, a student from Turku, southwestern Finland, has volunteered five times. “I come back for the films and the people,” she says. “I have made many friends here. Sodankylä is relaxed, free of hierarchies. The staff and the guests mix together quite well. It makes the festival special.”

Non-Finnish speakers can also volunteer. Franziska Zimmermann from Germany and Raquel Uzal from Spain, both students, came to volunteer as cleaners. “The best thing here is that they show films 24 hours a day,” says Zimmermann. “You can go to a screening whenever you want.” Uzal agrees: “You meet other international people who are crazy enough to come up here to work as cleaners!”

For many festivalgoers the journey to Sodankylä is an essential part of the festival experience. Emilia Rüf, a student from Helsinki, has travelled with five of her friends in a 40-year-old Volkswagen minibus for three days and nearly 1,200 kilometres. “It goes only 80 kilometres per hour so we took the smaller roads. We came here the same way last year, probably next year as well.”

Rüf attends the festival because it’s so down to earth and full of midnight-sun exoticness. “You lose track of time because you watch films around the clock. This is a perfect place for film fans!”

By Suvi Tuominen, June 2012, updated March 2023

Go with the flow along the Vantaa River

Life & society Slideshows

The Vantaa River (Vantaanjoki) forms one of Helsinki’s most charming and versatile (and to visitors, least-known) leisure-time assets. It meanders from its source at Lake Erkylä along a 100-kilometre course to the sea at the rapids at Vanhakaupunki (Old Town), where Helsinki was founded in 1550. The river makes a hook around the north and east of the capital area, skirting the verdant Keskuspuisto (Central Park).

In summer, the river comes into its own, providing one of the area’s best cycling routes – bike paths run along both banks. It also attracts anglers, kayakers and picnickers, as well as swimmers and sunbathers at a number of sandy beaches.

Our picture series takes a colourful summer voyage along the river, reflecting its moods and revealing some of the annual attractions close to its banks.

Taking the plunge at Pikkukoski Beach, a popular party haunt for Helsinki youngsters. Photo: Tim Bird

New housing at Kartanonkoski in Vantaa has taken the unique riverside landscape into account. Photo: Tim Bird

The café at the Haltiala farm could be in any rural corner of Finland – but it’s barely 30 minutes from central Helsinki. Photo: Tim Bird

Bike trails run along the Vantaa River from the rapids at Pitkäkoski in the north downstream to Vanhakaupunki, making a superb half-day outing. Photo: Tim Bird

Every July traditional haystacks are built in the fields near the bridge at Tapaninvainio and a celebratory summer dance takes place at the Tuomarinkylä manor house. Photo: Tim Bird

The banks of the river on the northern edge of Helsinki are converted to a golden blaze when some fields are turned over to free, pick-your-own sunflowers in late summer. Photo: Tim Bird

After the spring flood, the rapids at Pitkäkoski, on the edge of the Keskuspuisto (Central Park), revert to a restful tumble. Photo: Tim Bird

The slow descent of the sun on long summer evenings provides spectacular sunsets which are eerily reflected in the still waters of the Vantaa River. Photo: Tim Bird

A number of beaches along the banks of the river – this one is at Tapaninvainio – provide refreshing relief on sultry summer days. Photo: Tim Bird

Moonlight on the river lilies: The Vantaa River possesses a unique and restful magic on summer nights. Photo: Tim Bird

Canoe contests are held on the Vantaa River when the rapids are at their liveliest. Photo: Tim Bird

The rapids at Vanhakaupunki, where the river meets the sea, are popular with serious anglers and hopeful hook-danglers alike. Photo: Tim Bird

Text and photos by Tim Bird

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