ASIANOVERLAND.NET RUSSIA SCANDINAVIA

DAY 12/236 1981 – BALTIC SEA (FERRY) TO HELSINKI, FINLAND

After a night on the ferry from Stockholm partying, drinking, and generally making merry, we crawl off the ferry to the ferry terminal for immigration checks into Helsinki, Finland. But Mark Bannerman our driver is nowhere to be seen. The rumour is that our driver has been arrested for bootlegging alcohol into Finland and that our bus has been confiscated. From the top of the hill above Helsinki Immigration and ferry terminal, we can see our Top Deck bus parked on the tarmac, but no sign of our driver Mark or courier Carmel Smith. I can vividly remember that, 12 months ago on a London to Kathmandu overland, I stayed at Quetta, Pakistan, where another Top Deck driver was arrested for bootlegging Johnny Walker Scotch whisky into Pakistan, and was in jail for about 12 months.

Fortunately, Mark and Carmel manage to talk their way out of it with Mark’s freedom and our bus – but the bad news was that our duty free grog was confiscated!!! How would we ever survive in Svcandinavia, with horrentously notorious high alcohol taxes, and no more reserves of duty free from the Heinekin and Carlsberg breweries at Amsterdam and Copernhagen respectively??? There was doom and gloom all around.

Helsinki was established as a trading town by King Gustav I of Sweden in 1550 as the town of Helsingfors, which he intended to be a rival to the Hanseatic city of Reval (today known as Tallinn).[30] In order to populate his newly founded town, the King issued an order to resettle the bourgeoisie of Porvoo, Ekenäs, Rauma and Ulvila into the town.[31] Little came of the plans as Helsinki remained a tiny town plagued by poverty, wars, and diseases. The plague of 1710 killed the greater part of the inhabitants of Helsinki.[30] The construction of the naval fortress Sveaborg (in Finnish Viapori, today also Suomenlinna) in the 18th century helped improve Helsinki's status, but it was not until Russia defeated Sweden in the Finnish War and annexed Finland as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland in 1809 that the town began to develop into a substantial city. Russians besieged the Sveaborg fortress during the war, and about one quarter of the town was destroyed in an 1808 fire.[32]

Russian Emperor Alexander I of Russia moved the Finnish capital from Turku to Helsinki in 1812[33] to reduce Swedish influence in Finland, and to bring the capital closer to Saint Petersburg. 

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