Vaasa

Seafarers from central Sweden settled the coast here in the 14th century, and the stone fortress of Korsholm became the seat of the surrounding county. King Charles IX founded a town called Mustasaari on 2 October 1606 by the old harbour near Korsholm church, and in 1611 chartered it and renamed it after the royal House of Vasa. Shipbuilding and trade, above all in tar, made it prosper in the 17th century, and Finland's first library opened here in 1794.

The Finnish War hit Vaasa harder than any other town. Russian troops occupied it in June 1808, repelled a Swedish attack after heavy street fighting, and then plundered the town for several days, killing 17 civilians. On 3 August 1852 a fire that began in a barn destroyed almost the whole wooden town: of 379 buildings, only 24 private houses and a few public ones survived. A new town, designed by Carl Axel Setterberg on a grid of broad avenues, rose about seven kilometres to the north-west by the sea in 1862, named Nikolaistad after Tsar Nicholas I. The old name returned in 1917.

From late January to early May 1918, during the civil war, Vaasa was the de facto capital of the Whites, and the Senate met in its town hall. The city was given the Cross of Freedom for its coat of arms and became known as the White City. Finnish speakers became the majority in the 1930s, and after the war the electrical firm Strömberg, later part of ABB, made Vaasa an industrial centre.

Vaasa is the most significant cultural centre of the Swedish-speaking Finns. About a quarter of residents speak Swedish as their first language and many more are bilingual; the surrounding municipalities such as Korsholm have Swedish-speaking majorities, and the city has both Finnish- and Swedish-language schools, theatres and universities.

The 1918 legacy is visible in the city's nickname, the White City, and in the Statue of Liberty on the market square, unveiled in 1938. The cultural year is busy for a city of its size: an international choir festival around Ascension Day, the Night of the Arts with free events across town, and the Korsholm Music Festival, one of the country's best-known chamber music festivals, in late summer. Art collections range from Degas and Picasso in the Tikanoja home to contemporary work at Kuntsi in the harbour.

Ice hockey is the main spectator sport — Vaasan Sport, founded in 1939, plays in the Liiga — and VPS plays football at Hietalahti. On the islands, many of the old fishing camps are now summer cottages.

About 71,000 people live in the city, the 14th most populous municipality in Finland, and about 112,000 in the wider Vaasa region. The population is diverse for Finland: about 14 per cent had a foreign background in 2024, above the national average, and the most common foreign languages are Ukrainian, Arabic, English and Russian.

Post-war industry grew around the electrical firm Strömberg, later part of ABB, and the Vaskiluoto power stations supply the national grid and heat the city. Many workers commute from Korsholm, Laihia and other nearby municipalities. Education is the other pillar: the University of Vaasa, two universities of applied sciences and units of Åbo Akademi, Hanken and the University of Helsinki give the city about 13,000 university students, many of them in Palosaari.

The day centres on the grid of the town: shops and offices around the market square, lunch at noon, and evenings in the parks along the waterfront in summer. Since 2013 Vaasa has also included Vähäkyrö, an exclave entirely surrounded by other municipalities.

Ostrobothnian cooking is farmhouse food. Leipäjuusto, bread cheese, comes originally from Southern Ostrobothnia, northern Finland and Kainuu: a mild fresh cheese, set in a round disk and baked or grilled until it has brown marks, which squeaks against the teeth. Traditionally it is sliced and eaten with coffee — sometimes with the coffee poured over it, which is why Swedish speakers call it kaffeost — or served with cloudberry jelly.

The sea supplies Baltic herring, whitefish and salmon, salted, smoked or fried, and Swedish-speaking households keep Scandinavian habits such as pickled herring at Midsummer and cardamom buns with coffee. The market hall, with its fishmonger and the Wasa Konditori café, is the place to see local produce, and at the old fish harbour of Kalaranta a moored boat serves drinks and dinner on the water.

Everyday eating out means lunch: set menus and buffets are cheap and filling, the university restaurants in Palosaari are open to all, and the streets around the market square hold most of the city's restaurants. Strong coffee and pulla, the cardamom-scented sweet bread, appear at every visit.