Suomenlinna

One of my first images after researching Finland was of the island fortress of Suomenlinna. Since viewing the beautiful images that I found, I knew that it was a place that I truly wanted to see when I went to Finland. This is why I was so excited and eager to tour the island on Wednesday afternoon after the already impressive scheduled morning that had passed. After our tram tour we stopped back near the Havis Amanda statue and the market square which was where all large docks were in Helsinki.

From these docks we were able to take a 15 minute ferry over to the Suomenlinna fortress which was visible from the dock shores.

It was very exciting since from the ferry, we grabbed some upper deck seats and while the wind was blowing through our hair, we had an exceptional view of both the Helsinki skyline and the Suomenlinna border.


Suomenlinna is an island fortress off the coast of Helsinki that has now turned into a great tourist area as well as picnic and recreation area for Finnish citizens.

Once we were on the island we had a little time before our tour and followed suit with the relaxing atmosphere and bought some ice cream and sat at the coastal docks to view Helsinki from a distance.

Before starting our tour, we received a little history lesson which shed insight into the background of the island.


My initial assumption of Suomenlinna being founded to protect Helsinki was entirely incorrect. The history of the island fortress actually predated the entire settlement of Helsinki.

Under Swedish rule, the island on which Suomenlinna was built was chosen since it geographically was exactly inbetween St. Petersburg and Stockholm in the Baltic sea. This detail was so surprising to me and revealed so much importance and inquisitive facts about the history and prominence of the fortress' location.


Being in the center of the Baltic, as well as directly North of Tallinn, the prime landmarking of the fortress allowed the Swedes to have full knowledge over who was traveling where and why. This domination was crucial in history inbetween Scandinavian and Russian relations.


However, in the early 1800's Russia gained the territory of Finland going through Suomenlinna after beating Sweden in war.
The history was fascinating and walking through the fortress everything pieced together and made the connections more vivid and tangible.


The fortress had hills and tunnels, stone walls and a canal. As a matter of fact, the canal was especially interesting to see since it was so old, but the technologies used to operate it were still functional today.

One training area of the Finnish marines actually were based on the island itself ( even though the fortress has ceased to be used as any location for warfare or defense).


Walking around, many of us really enjoyed viewing the construction of the fortress barriers and walls ( which were mainly built by Finns through uncontested devotion to the Swedish king). One of the most gorgeous parts of the island was the southern beaches which were lined with large, weathered flat rocks along the coast which provided great places for picnics, sunbathing and swimming.

It was fully obvious why the area was so popular with the Finns.

After our tour through many areas of the fortress, we met up at a restaurant near the front entrances of the island. Here we met up with many YFU Finland staff members as well as a few host families including mine, the Kiukkonen's, who were coming since we all were going to have a special meal together.

It was very nice to be able to meet everyone else's host families as well as sit down and enjoy some time with my own.

The day had been long with a lot of walking, but it was entirely worth it since we were able to experience so much, and being later in the afternoon I was looking forward to heading back home to spend time with my host family and sisters.