Helsinki, until about 1930 known in English by its Swedish name of Helsingfors, is the capital and largest city of Finland. It is on the shore of the Gulf of Finland and is the seat of southern Finland's Uusimaa region. About 694,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.3 million in the capital region and 1.6 million in the metropolitan area. As the most populous urban area in Finland, it is the country's most significant centre for politics, education, finance, culture, and research. Helsinki is 80 kilometres (50 mi) north of Tallinn, Estonia, 400 kilometres (250 mi) east of Stockholm, Sweden, and 300 kilometres (190 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. Helsinki is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages.
Together with the cities of Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen—and surrounding commuter towns, including the neighbouring municipality of Sipoo to the east—Helsinki forms a metropolitan area. This area is often considered Finland's only metropolis and is the world's northernmost metropolitan area with over one million inhabitants. Additionally, it is the northernmost capital of an EU member state. Helsinki is the third-largest municipality in the Nordic countries, after Stockholm and Oslo. Its urban area is the third-largest in the Nordic countries, after Stockholm and Copenhagen. Helsinki Airport, in the neighbouring city of Vantaa, serves the city with frequent flights to numerous destinations in Europe, North America, and Asia.
Helsinki has one of the highest standards of urban living in the world, and often ranks highly in various city quality of life indices. In the Condé Nast Traveler magazine's 2023 Readers' Choice Awards, Helsinki was ranked the 4th-friendliest city in Europe. Helsinki, along with Rovaniemi in Lapland, is also one of Finland's most important tourist cities. Due to the large number of sea passengers, Helsinki is classified as a major port city, and in 2017 it was rated the world's busiest passenger port. Helsinki has hosted the 1952 Summer Olympics, the first CSCE/OSCE Summit in 1975, the first World Athletics Championships in 1983, and the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 and was the 2012 World Design Capital. The city is recognized as a "Design City" in 2014 by UNESCO's Creative Cities Network.
The origin of the name is uncertain. According to a theory put forward in the 1630s, at the time of Swedish colonisation of the Finnish coast, colonists from Hälsingland in central Sweden arrived at what is now the Vantaa River and called it Helsingå ('Helsinge River'), giving rise to the names of the village and church of Helsinge in the 1300s. This theory is questionable, as dialect research suggests that the settlers came from Uppland and the surrounding areas. Others have suggested that the name derives from the Swedish word helsing, an archaic form of the word hals ('neck'), which refers to the narrowest part of a river, the rapids. Other Scandinavian towns in similar geographical locations were given similar names at the time, such as Helsingør in Denmark and Helsingborg in Sweden.
When a town was founded in the village of Forsby (later Koskela) in 1548, it was called Helsinge fors, 'Helsinge rapids'. The name refers to the Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids at the mouth of the river. The town was commonly known as Helsinge or Helsing, from which the modern Finnish name is derived.
Official Finnish government documents and Finnish language newspapers have used the name Helsinki since 1819, when the Senate of Finland moved to the city from Turku, the former capital of Finland. Decrees issued in Helsinki were dated with Helsinki as the place of issue. This is how the form Helsinki came to be used in written Finnish. When Finland became the Grand Duchy of Finland, an autonomous state under the rule of the Russian Empire, Helsinki was known as Gel'singfors (Гельсингфорс) in Russian, because the main and official language of the Grand Duchy of Finland was Swedish.
In Helsinki slang, the city is called Stadi (from the Swedish word stad, meaning 'city'). Abbreviated form Hesa is equally common, but its use is associated with people of rural origin ("junantuomat", lit. "brought by a train") and frowned upon by locals. Helsset is the Northern Sami name for Helsinki.
After the end of the Ice Age and the retreat of the ice sheet, the first settlers arrived in the Helsinki area around 5000 BC. Their presence has been documented by archaeologists in Vantaa, Pitäjänmäki and Kaarela. Permanent settlements did not appear until the beginning of the 1st millennium AD, during the Iron Age, when the area was inhabited by the Tavastians. They used the area for fishing and hunting, but due to the lack of archaeological finds it is difficult to say how extensive their settlements were. Pollen analysis has shown that there were agricultural settlements in the area in the 10th century, and surviving historical records from the 14th century describe Tavastian settlements in the area.
Christianity does not gain a significant foothold in Finland before the 11th century. After that, a number of crosses and other objects related to Christianity can be found in archaeological material. According to the traditional view, the Kingdom of Sweden made three crusades to Finland, thanks to which the region was incorporated into both Christianity and the Swedish Empire. Recent research has shown that these expeditions, to the extent that there were even three of them, were not the crusades that had been imagined. Later, the conquest of Finland was justified in terms of "civilisation" and "christianisation", and the myth of the Crusades was developed. It is more likely that it was a multidimensional combination of economic, cultural and political power ambitions.
The early settlements were raided by Vikings until 1008, and the Battle at Herdaler was a battle between the Norse Viking leader Olav Haraldsson (later King Olaf II of Norway, also known as Saint Olaf) and local Finns at Herdaler (now Ingå), not far from Helsinga, around 1007–1008. The Saga of Olaf Haraldson tells how Olav raided the coasts of Finland and was almost killed in battle. He ran away in fear and after that the Vikings did not raid the coasts of Finland.
Later the area was settled by Christians from Sweden. They came mainly from the Swedish coastal regions of Norrland and Hälsingland, and their migration intensified around 1100. The Swedes permanently colonised the Helsinki region's coastline in the late 13th century, after the successful crusade to Finland that led to the defeat of the Tavastians.
In the Middle Ages, the Helsinki area was a landscape of small villages. Some of the old villages from the 1240s in the area of present-day Helsinki, such as Koskela and Töölö, are now Helsinki districts, as are the rest of the 27 medieval villages. The area gradually became part of the Kingdom of Sweden and Christianity. Kuninkaantie, or the "King's Road", ran through the area and two interesting medieval buildings were built here: Vartiokylä hillfort in the 1380s and the Church of St. Lawrence in 1455. In the Middle Ages, several thousand people lived in Helsinki's keep.
There was a lot of trade across the Baltic Sea. The shipping route to the coast, and especially to Reval, meant that by the end of the Middle Ages the Helsinki region had become an important trading centre for wealthy peasants, priests and nobles in Finland, after Vyborg and Pohja. Furs, wood, tar, fish and animals were exported from Helsinki, and salt and grain were brought to the fortress. Helsinki was also the most important cattle-breeding area in Uusimaa. With the help of trade, Helsinki became one of the wealthiest cities in Finland and Uusimaa. Thanks to trade and travel, e.g. to Reval, people could speak several languages, at least helpfully. Depending on the situation, Finnish, Swedish, Latin or Low German could be heard in the Helsinki area.
Written chronicles from 1417 mention the village of Koskela near the rapids at the mouth of the River Vantaa, where Helsinki was to be founded.