Haparanda
Haparanda (Finnish: Haaparanta, meaning aspen beach) is a locality and the seat of Haparanda Municipality in Norrbotten County, Sweden. It is adjacent to Tornio, Finland.Haparanda is, despite its small population, for historical reasons often still referred to as a city. Statistics Sweden, however, only counts localities with more than 10,000 inhabitants as cities. Haparanda is located at the northerly extreme of the Swedish coastline, and far removed from large cities. Its summers are very mild for a coastal location so far north, and winters are normally not extremely cold in spite of the relative proximity to the Arctic Circle.
When Sweden ceded Finland to Russia in 1809, the Finnish–Swedish border was drawn along the Rivers Tornio and Muonio. The town of Tornio, located on the island Suensaari in the river delta became part of the Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire as demanded by czar Alexander I. (Finland declared independence in 1917).
At that time the town of Tornio was dominated by Swedish-speaking merchants and craftsmen, forming a linguistic island in a Finnish-speaking countryside. After the war many of the Swedes started to develop the small village Haaparanta across the border instead (Haparanda and Tornio are within walking distance), eventually leaving Tornio unilingually Finnish. Haparanda was made a market town (köping) in 1821 and received its city charter in 1842.
Into the early twentieth century Haparanda enjoyed commercial and political significance out of proportion to its size because of its position at the mouth of the Torne river at the head of the Gulf of Bothnia. Timber and furs from across northern Scandinavia and Russia arrived by water for shipping on to the rest of the world via the Baltic. Arctic and Antarctic expeditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, including that of Admiral Peary of the US, wore furs supplied by Hermansons, whose shop still stands in Haparanda, albeit closed now. Haparanda was the only open railway border crossing at the border to Russia during World War I.
