Theme Week Lapland – Tornio

24 August 2022 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General Reading Time:  13 minutes

View from Suensaari water tower © Estormiz

View from Suensaari water tower © Estormiz

Tornio is a city and municipality in Lapland, Finland. The city forms a cross-border twin city together with Haparanda on the Swedish side. The municipality covers an area of 1,348.83 square kilometres (520.79 sq mi), of which 161.59 km² (62.39 sq mi) is water. The population density is 17.97 inhabitants per square kilometre (46.5/sq mi), with a total population of 21,000. It borders the Swedish municipality of Haparanda (in Finnish: Haaparanta). Tornio and Haparanda have a history as twin cities, and are currently set to merge under the names TornioHaparanda and HaparandaTornio. A new city centre is under construction on the international border and several municipal services are shared. The towns also share a common golf course, situated astride the border. The new IKEA store in Haparanda has signposting in Finnish as well as in Swedish, and all prices are signposted in two currencies. In spite of being a border city Tornio is unilingually Finnish with a negligible number of native Swedish speakers, although this does not count vast numbers of bilinguals who speak Swedish as a second language, with an official target of universal working bilingualism for both border municipalities.   read more…

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