Sipoo (Swedish: Sibbo) is a municipality in the Helsinki region
of Uusimaa. Sipoo's neighboring municipalities are Helsinki, Vantaa,
Kerava, Tuusula and Järvenpää in the west, Porvoo and Pornainen in
the east and Mäntsälä in the north. The municipality has 21,488
inhabitants and covers an area of 698.60 km², of which 339.70 km²
is land and the remaining 3.01 km² is inland water areas. Sipoo is
part of the Helsinki metropolitan area.
The municipality is
bilingual. 63 per cent of the residents state Finnish and 33 per
cent Swedish as their mother tongue.
At the beginning of
2009, an area of approximately 30 square kilometers was
transferred from Sipoo to Helsinki. The transferred area includes
Östersundom, Karhusaari and Landbo, among others.
There are
popular summer islands off the coast of Sipoo, the largest of which
are Löparö, Norrkullalandet, Simsalö and Kaunissaari (Swedish:
Fagerö). The settlement focuses on the municipality's small towns
(Box, Martinkylä, Söderkulla, Talma and Västerskog) and Nikkilä. The
population of Sipoo has increased in the 1980s and 1990s due to
migration in the Helsinki metropolitan area. However, the residents'
employment is mainly directed to Helsinki.
Sipoo joined the
HSL area on 1 January 2012, so the travel card used in Helsinki,
Vantaa, Espoo, Kauniainen, Kerava and Kirkkonummi is also valid for
Sipoo bus traffic.
The planned eastern extension of the
Helsinki metro from Mellunmäki would initially be extended to Sipoo
Majvik and possibly to Sipoonlinna.
Some stone age artefacts have been found in Sipoo. Coal stoves remain
from the Bronze Age. It is thought that the Hämälä people moved to the
area around the year 1000 at the latest. However, based on pollen
studies, land has been cultivated in the area as early as the 8th–10th
centuries. Strong old Hämälai villages have been Paipis, Savijärvi and
especially Linnanpelto or Borgby. There have also been original Hämälai
houses in Mårtensby, Savijärvi's daughter village Nickby and Borgby's
daughter village Härtsby.
It is estimated that the first Swedish
immigrants came to the area from the 14th century. The Swedish
settlement spread along the Sipoonjoki to the north and populated its
banks most strongly in the area of the Sipoo church, where the traces of
the old Finnish settlement have almost completely disappeared. The
Swedish settlement is younger on average in the north than further west,
which is indicated by the fact that the largest villages of the holder
have names containing Christian first names.
Sipoo was initially
a chapel congregation in Porvoo. The parish of Sipoo was founded in
1425. In the 17th century, numerous noble estates such as Östersundom,
Hitå and Eriksnäs were founded. In the 17th century, there was also a
saltpetre kitchen in the keep, and in the 18th century, lime mining and
brickmaking began. In the 18th–19th centuries, shipbuilding and peasant
sailing were also livelihoods. Sipoo, which was previously entirely
Swedish-speaking, became bilingual in 1953, with Swedish as the majority
language.
Since 2003, Finnish has officially been the
municipality's majority language.
In the summer of 2006, the City of Helsinki proposed to the
Government Council that approximately 50 square kilometers of land from
western Sipoo would be annexed to Helsinki. The municipality of Sipoo
opposed the motion and considered the reasons for the association
illegal. On June 28, 2007, the State Council decided by a vote of 8-4 to
annex the southwest part of Sipoo, an area of approximately 30 square
kilometers according to the proposal of liquidator Pekka Myllyniemi, to
Helsinki from the beginning of 2009. Several appeals were filed against
the decision to the Supreme Administrative Court, which, however,
rejected them on January 15, 2008.
Livelihoods
Sipoo is a
commuting municipality, where you come to work and from there you go to
work in neighboring municipalities, especially Helsinki, Vantaa and
Porvoo. Workplace self-sufficiency has been around 60 percent, but
efforts are being made to improve it with the help of new workplace
areas. The employment situation in Sipoo has traditionally been good.
Traditional agriculture now employs just under 3% of Sipoo's working-age
population. Well-known products from Sipo have been, for example,
Ingman's dairy products and Lival's lamps, but service jobs are clearly
the most (around 80%). Sipoo's business structure includes a typical
entrepreneurial structure, where about 95% of the companies are
micro-enterprises.
Kerava Energy and Sipoon Energy
Keravan
Energia is owned by the municipalities of Kerava and Sipoo, in whose
area the company is responsible for electricity distribution. The
operation was incorporated in 1992 and in 1995 Sipoon Energia oy was
born. The company buys nuclear power from the Olkiluoto power plant.
Keravan Energia invests EUR 17 million in the Fennovoima nuclear power
plant. The CEO of Keravan Energia has been the CEO of Fennovoima's
parent company since August 2015.
Congregations
According to
the 2018 regional distribution, Sipoo has the following parishes of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland:
Sipoo's Finnish congregation
Sibbo svenska församling
These parishes make up the Sipoo parish
association (Swedish: Sibbo kyrkliga samfällighet).
Among the
member congregations of the Pentecostal Church of Finland in Sipoo,
Sipoo Bethania congregation and Simsalö Sion congregation operate.
Among the congregations of the Finnish Orthodox Church, the Helsinki
Orthodox congregation operates in the Sipoo area.
Former parishes
In the following list, parishes that have been dissolved in historical
time in the current area of Sipoo municipality are mentioned.
Sipoo parish (divided into Sipoo Finnish and Swedish parish in 1965)
Sipoonjoki
Sipoonjoki is about 37 kilometers long, multi-branched
river, about 30 km of which is located in Sipoo. At the end of the 19th
century, the river was still so wide and deep that even ships could
navigate it to the Söderkulla manor. Today, it resembles a ditch in some
parts due to the low flow. Sipoo's second high school, Sipoonjoki
School, is named after the river.
Sipoo's brick church (T. Decker, 1885) and the old gray stone church
of St. Sigfrid (from the beginning of the 15th century), the village
church of Paippisten, the manors of Savijärvi and Söderkulla.
Sipoonkorvi National Park
Sibbesborg
Vainudden
Coat of arms of
Sipo
The coat of arms of Sipoo municipality was designed by herald
Olof Eriksson. The coat of arms has a silver wolf's head on a wavy Parru
against a black background. The municipal council approved the municipal
coat of arms on June 16, 1954, and the Ministry of the Interior
confirmed it on February 25, 1955.
The night of ancient fires at the Joensuu farm at the end of August
Summer theater (Sipoon theater), July-August
Run of the she-wolf, at
the end of August
Food culture
In the 1980s, fried slices of
liver with onion and bacon, various boxed dishes, meat soup, rice
porridge, plum soup and buttermilk pancake were named Sipoo's signature
dishes.
Well-known people from Sipo
Georg Borgström
(1842–1920), agricultural adviser, owner of the Östersundom manor
Erik Borgström (1882–1951), agricultural adviser, owner of the
Östersundom manor
Nils Gustaf Borgström (1918–2002), agricultural
adviser, owner of the Östersundom manor
Hjalmar Ingman (1904-1981)
was the founder of the Ingman dairy industry (now Ingman Group)
Hjalmar Lindqvist was a well-known boat sculptor from Sipoo who built
boats in two shipyards on the island of Simsalö between 1910 and 1962.
Jan Stenfors, musician
Jukka Gustavson, musician
Hjallis Harkimo,
MP, businessman
Elina Salo, actress
A. I. Virtanen, Nobel
Prize-winning scientist-chemist