Lapland Walk: Tornio & Haparanda, July 2023, Finland & Sweden [4K]

Walking from Haparanda to Tornio. Tornio is a city and municipality in Lapland, Finland. The city forms a cross-border twin city together with Haparanda (Finnish: Haaparanta) on the Swedish side. Tornio is unilingually Finnish with a negligible number of native Swedish speakers. Haparanda has strong connections to Tornio and the Finnish side of the river and bilingualism of Swedish and Finnish is common although Swedish is the sole official language and the mother tongue of a vast majority of inhabitants. In 2010, it was estimated that 70% of Haparanda's inhabitants spoke Finnish as a second language.

The delta of the Torne river has been inhabited since the end of the last ice age, and there are currently. Until the 19th century, inhabitants of the surrounding countryside spoke Finnish, and Kemi Sámi, a language of the Eastern Sami group, while those of the town were mainly Swedish-speaking. The name 'Tornio' is an old Finnish word meaning "war spear": the city is named after the river.

Tornio was the scene of some fierce street fighting at the onset of the Lapland War between Finland and Nazi Germany. The rapid liberation of the town by Finnish forces may have saved it from being burned down like so many other towns in Lapland. As a result, the wooden church from 1686 can still be seen today.

Time & degree: Thursday 27th July 2023, afternoon, 19℃ / 66°F

00:00 Walk begins from Swedish side in Haparanda near the old watertower from 1919
21:00 Finnish side Tornio
36:08 Wooden Tornion kirkko / Tornio Church built in 1686

Approximate route:
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/65.83...

Shot with DJI Pocket 2 in 4K.

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