From: taipale@kiloapo.tele.nokia.fi (Pekka J Taipale)
Subject: Re: Baltic Sea area demographics and geology
Organization: none
	<168cp9INN98o@agate.berkeley.edu>
	<1992Aug11.193017.3946@dscomsf.desy.de>
	<1992Aug12.040754.27948@morrow.stanford.edu>
	<1992Aug12.095651.11359@hellgate.utah.edu>
	<1992Aug13.154715.1277@corax.udac.uu.se>
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 10:47:38 GMT

In article <1992Aug13.154715.1277@corax.udac.uu.se> andersa@Riga.DoCS.UU.SE (Anders Andersson) writes:

>Lee Choquette writes:
>> The Finland-Swedes live along the south and west coasts of Finland.  There are

>I assume also Viborg had a mostly Swedish-speaking population 

I have no hard data to back my opinion, but I think that you assume
wrong.  The Karelian Isthmus, where Viborg is located, was inhabitated
by Finnish-speaking people; there was no Swedish population there as
of old. The same goes, by the way, for location of St. Petersburg
before Peter the Great; I think the original name for island where St.
Paul's Fort in St. Petersburg is J{nissaari . (Note that the original
claim that Finland-swedes only occupy south and west coasts of Finland
is maybe a bit inaccurate.  There is still Swedish population in
Myrskyl{/M|rskom and I think even further to the east).

However, Viborg was founded by some Swedish warlord (the name that
pops to my mind is Torkel Knutsson, please correct if I'm wrong; his
statue was destroyed by the Russians but Torkkelinpuisto/Torkelsparken
is still there).  Being founded as a Swedish fort against Russia, and
in an area where constant fighting with Sweden and Russia was present
as well as old German influences of the Hansa trade, Viborg became the
most international city in Finland with mostly Finnish population
but many Swedish, German and Russian people as well.

Before Russia took over Finland, all Finnish towns, like all the
country, were ruled by Swedish-speaking people and in Swedish.
I believe that before independence all major signs in Finnish cities,
for example, were in Swedish only. 

I think that the concept of bi-lingual cities, towns and
municipalities got a legal status in the 1920's and 1930's, and at
that time all major signs started to appear in two languages where the
population is bilingual (and in Viborg there were enough
finlandssvenskar to qualify that) and in one language only in areas
where the population is essentially monolingual.

I'm quite sure, however, that the majority of people in Viborg has
always been Finnish-speaking, unless one counts as "Viborg" only the
inside of the fortress, or something equally limited.

>However, it surprises me that in spite of the major move of the
>inhabitants from Viborg when the USSR annexed the area in WWII, such
>things as signs in Swedish may still exist on public buildings there.

It may be simply because the Russians put a lot of effort into making
everything Finnish disappear in Viborg, to justify their claim that it
is an "old Russian city loberated from the fascists". Some Swedish
signs here and there wasn't a threat to that claim, so they were
probably too lazy to destroy them all.

>Is the present population entirely Russian, or are there perhaps
>Karelian or other minorities living in the town?  Can anyone shed
>some light on this?

Now Viborg is populated entirely by Russians, and is really in a lousy
shape.  Karelians and other minorities were too suspectible for the
Soviet government to be located so near to foreign border; instead
many of them live now somewhere behind Ural...

>Btw, is Aurora Charlotta Stjernvall, aka Madame Aurore Demidov,
>generally known in Finland today?

Well, not very generally. I think that Aurorankatu/Auroragatan in
Helsinki is named after her but I am not sure.

--
Pekka.Taipale@hut.fi

Software Engineering
Helsinki University of Technology
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic