Viborg - Finland´s second largest city before 1944

In 1293 the Swedish lord Tyrgils Knutsson built the great fortified Viborg castle as an outpost against the Muscovites.

Viipuri (Viborg in Swedish, Выборг in Russian), which was ceded to the Soviet Union in 1944, was Finland´s second largest (pop. 72.680 in 1939) and most cosmopolitan city. In addition to the majority of Finnish speakers, there were also Swedish, German and Russian speaking communities in the city. Economically the city was also of great importance to Finland. It was e.g the country´s largest port for the the country´s main export industry.

A Finnish guard in front of the castle in the late 30s

A map of  the Viborg city centre (1910)

Ships loading in the Viborg harbour in the 1920s.

The American author Hudson Strode, who visited Viipuri just before the Soviet attack on Finland (1939) that led to the Winter War, describes the city in his book "Finland Forever", published in 1941:

"Of all places in Finland Viipuri has suffered most from gunfire. Its blooming gardens and shadowed parks have been more rankly fertilized with human blood than those of almost any other town in Europe. Yet Viipuri was noted for being the gayest of Finland´s cities, and the Karelian Finns who inhabited the surrounding districts were said to be the lightest of heart and the quickest to laugh and forget of any of the Finnish people.

Like Finland´s capital, the second city of importance was set flatteringly in the midst of water. Parts of it were broken off into islands and peninsulas, with bridges grappling the green chunks together. Even more than Helsinki, Viipuri was a city of contrasts. Memorials of a medieval city wall and narrow, secretive streets merged into boulevards with modern shops and modern architecture. Cobbled streets wound purposefully down the separate quays where the harbors were jammed with ships of a hundred different models. For Viipuri did a big export business and was the outlet of wood products for eastern Finland. The city had the look of a seaport to which sailors had brought home the idea of architecture and decoration f rom other lands. Here Russians, Swedes, and Germans as well as Finns had erected structures, and yet iron balconies that belonged to the tradition to none of those nationalities adorned second stories of blocks of houses. Although redolent of many centuries of age and change, Viipuri was happily in repair, and the past and present amiably linked arms together in the shade of flowering chestnuts."

The famous Municipal Library designed by Alvar Aalto

The Viborg southern harbour

The SOK flour mill. "Utilitarian in function, co-operatively turning out the stuff that sustained life at the lowest possible price for Finland´s wage earners, the flour mill of Viipuri was audacious with originality and classical economy. Against the bright Finnish night sky, with the electrical illumination of the town twinkling like the Milky Way behind it, the seven towered flour mill was as startling and impressive as some fantastic monument reared on the plains of India in memory of a maharaja´s dead love." (Hudson Strode)

The magnificent railway station, designed by Eliel Saarinen

An idyllic cobbled street in the Viborg old town

The business and navigation college

The Viborg castle in a festive light show

A view of one part of the harbour area

"For coffee and liquers the townspeople of Viipuri went back to medieval times. In the southwest corner of the market square stood the famous Round Tower, built in 1550 beside the former cattle gate in the city wall. The Tower, later nicknamed Fat Catherine after the full-bodied Russian empress, had been converted into a restaurant in 1923." (Hudson Strode)

The short film "Our Old Viipuri" from 1940 shows life in the former capital of Finnish Karelia (with commentary in Finnish and music - the Karelia suite - by Jean Sibelius):