City rivalry in Finland
Encyclopedia
In Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...

, there is a kind of tradition of good-natured rivalry between different cities
City
A city is a relatively large and permanent settlement. Although there is no agreement on how a city is distinguished from a town within general English language meanings, many cities have a particular administrative, legal, or historical status based on local law.For example, in the U.S...

, most notably between Helsinki
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...

 (the most populous city), Tampere
Tampere
Tampere is a city in southern Finland. It is the most populous inland city in any of the Nordic countries. The city has a population of , growing to approximately 300,000 people in the conurbation and over 340,000 in the metropolitan area. Tampere is the third most-populous municipality in...

 (the third most populous city) and Turku
Turku
Turku is a city situated on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River. It is located in the region of Finland Proper. It is believed that Turku came into existence during the end of the 13th century which makes it the oldest city in Finland...

 (the fifth most populous city). The inhabitants of any two of these cities can be said to have rivalry between them, because of different reasons.

Overview

Inhabitants of Helsinki are well aware that their city is by far the most populous and most famous in Finland. This can make them seem arrogant and contemptuous to people in other cities, especially Tampere and Turku. Some people in Helsinki refer to Kehä III
Kehä III
Kehä III is an important highway in Southern Finland. It is the outermost of the three beltways in the Helsinki region, and the first one to be built. It lies across the four Finnish municipalities of Kirkkonummi, Espoo, Vantaa and Helsinki...

, the outermost of the two ring road
Ring road
A ring road, orbital motorway, beltway, circumferential highway, or loop highway is a road that encircles a town or city...

s surrounding the Greater Helsinki
Greater Helsinki
Greater Helsinki and the smaller Helsinki Metropolitan Area or Capital Region refer to two regions of different size surrounding Helsinki, the capital of Finland...

 area, as a "wolf border" (susiraja), outside which there is no civilisation. Outsiders refer to inside of Kehä III as the biggest psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospital
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, are hospitals specializing in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialise only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients...

 in Finland.

Those from Helsinki view people from Turku either as naïve and simple-minded, or arrogant and impudent. In Helsinki they have a saying that the only good thing in Turku is the highway leading to Helsinki. Another version is a joke: What is the best place in Turku? - Turku Railway Station. You can take there a Pendolino
VR Class Sm3
The Sm3 Pendolino is a class of high-speed body-tilting trains operated by VR Group. It is a member of the Pendolino train family; its design is based on the ETR 460. The first two trainsets were assembled in Finland by Rautaruukki-Transtech in the mid-1990s...

 to Helsinki.
It is also said, that on that same highway, the only place where you can do an U-turn is at the "Turku" sign. Inhabitants of Turku see Helsinkians as presumptuous and parvenu.

Rivalry between Helsinki and Tampere mainly concerns ice hockey
Ice hockey
Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

. Both cities have two famous ice hockey teams - HIFK
HIFK (ice hockey)
HIFK is an ice hockey team based in Helsinki, Finland. The team plays at Helsinki Ice Hall. It was founded in 1897...

 and Jokerit
Jokerit
Jokerit is an ice-hockey team from Helsinki, Finland, playing in the Finnish Elite League, SM-liiga. The team has won 6 league championships...

 in Helsinki, Ilves
Ilves
Ilves is a Finnish sports club nowadays mostly known for their youth work. The ice hockey team plays in the SM-liiga at the Tampereen jäähalli in Hakametsä...

 and Tappara
Tappara
Tappara is an ice hockey team in the SM-liiga. They play in Tampere, Finland at Tampereen jäähalli. The team have won 15 league championships ....

 in Tampere. Ice hockey fans in each city say that the teams in the other city are worthless. Also football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...

 is important, HJK Helsinki
HJK Helsinki
Helsingin Jalkapalloklubi , internationally known as HJK Helsinki, is a Finnish football club, based in the capital Helsinki...

, the most successful club in Finland is hated especially in smaller cities but also in Turku and Tampere.

Finally, Turku and Tampere also share a rivalry. Turku is far older and has had a greater impact on history and Finnish culture, whereas Tampere is more populous and has a greater significance as an industrial
Industry
Industry refers to the production of an economic good or service within an economy.-Industrial sectors:There are four key industrial economic sectors: the primary sector, largely raw material extraction industries such as mining and farming; the secondary sector, involving refining, construction,...

 city, lately also in the Information Technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 business. Inhabitants in both Turku and Tampere view the people in the other city as uncivilised. A popular joke in Turku asks why children in Tampere have a flat nose. The answer is that there is a Turku midwife working in a Tampere hospital. After delivering a child, the midwife holds him/her into the glass of a window and says: "Look now, child. That way is Turku, there is civilisation." Students across Tampere go to the border of Turku and nail wooden nails to the ground, in order to make the city drift off the mainland someday, and also go to the center of the city and jump there, so that the city would someday sink back to the sea.

Still, one of the most famous rivalries in Finland is between cities of Pori
Pori
Pori is a city and municipality on the west coast of Finland. The city is located some from the Gulf of Bothnia, on the estuary of the Kokemäenjoki river, which is the largest in Finland. Pori is the most important town in the Satakunta region....

 and Rauma
Rauma, Finland
Rauma is a town and municipality of ca. inhabitants on the west coast of Finland, north of Turku, and south of Pori. Granted town privileges on May 17, 1442 , Rauma is known of its high quality lace , and of the old wooden architecture of its centre , which is a Unesco world heritage...

 in Satakunta Region (Western Province). One of the things that make the difference is the language which is very different although they're only 50 km apart. Rauma has its own dialect while Pori has a very different kind of lingo. Especially in ice hockey there is a huge rivalry: Pori has a two-times champion Ässät
Ässät
Ässät is an ice hockey team in the Finnish elite league, SM-liiga. They play in Pori, Finland at the Porin jäähalli.-Team history:...

 and Rauma a one-time champion Lukko
Lukko
Lukko is an ice hockey team in the SM-liiga, formed 1936. The full name of the club is Rauman Lukko. They play in Rauma, Finland at the Äijänsuo Arena. They have won the national championship once, in 1963...

. Local derbies tend to be very hectic. Inhabitants also like to make very humiliating jokes about each other. Although it would be very wise to make more co-operation between the cities, it is likely an impossible task. Still, one step forward was taken when ports of both cities started planning more co-operation between one another.
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