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Yesterday I completed the assignment of guiding people around Sveaborg (1748 – ), the naval fortress which resides just outside of Finland's capital – Helsingfors. The client was Helsinki friends, a subsidiary of Helsingfors city which supports foreigners who arrive in Finland to integrate and make friends. That means that the guests/audience came from at least 10 different countries – Belgium, Canada, France, India, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, Somalia, Turkey, Uganda.
The back story of Sveaborg is that what is now called Finland was once the eastern part of the Swedish kingdom. Mainstream historians typically place the starting point around 1250 when Birger Jarl (1510 – 1566) is said to have conducted his crusade – the second, to defeat the pagans of Tavasteland.
Another historical view starts with migration into Fennoscandia, which happened after the ice sheet had retreated, which in turn was a consequence of three so-called melting pulses (14,400 – 7000 before present).
The migrants were a mix of hunters and gatherers, nomads, and farmers. ~5000 years before the present, farmers from Sardinia and hunters and gatherers from lake Baikal lived in what is now southern Sweden. Most people in northern Europe, including Fennoscandia originate from a mix of these migrations. 3500 years before the present, nomads from northern Siberia migrated into Fennoscandia (Haak et al. 2015; Lamnidis et al. 2018; Reich, 2018; Skoglund et al. 2012).
200 – 700 AD, that's before the viking period (750 - 1066 AD), socio-cultures formed in Fennoscandia. One such socio-culture was formed by Svear in Tiundaland (in present day Uppland), with epicenters in Uppsala, Valsgärde, Vendel, and Östra Aros. Their kingdom was called Svitjod.
Their culture was marked by entrepreneurial thinking, which is about the “knowledge structures” that people use to make judgments and decisions that involve the evaluation, creation and growth of opportunities (Cacciolatti och Lee, 2015; Mitchell et al. 2002; Österberg, 2012).
At that time, there were no roads. That means they used the waterways; transportation took place via lakes and seas. Svearna's trading network stretched from Gårdarike and Särkland (that's today Russia and all the way to the Black and the Caspian sea), to the Franks (present day France and Germany). They also established trading hubs, e.g. Holmgård, which today is called Novgorod. Because of their success, neighboring kingdom applied to become part of Svitjod; People in Götaland in south of Sweden, and Satakunda in current day Finland, integrated to Svitjtod, eventually becoming the eastern part of the kingdom of Svitjod. Svearnas language became the trade language around the Gulf of Bothnia and the Baltic sea.
Between 1200 – 1600 century, more than fifteen cities was founded in the eastern part of the Swedish kingdom: Åbo (~1290), Borgå (~1346), Björneborg (1365), Raumo (~1442), Nådendal (~1443), Viborg (~1403), Helsingfors (1550), Uleåborg (1605), Vasa (1606), Nystad (1617), Kymmenegård ( föregångare till Fredrikshamn; före 1620 (försvunnen stad)), Tavastehus (1639), Kexholm (1640s), Villmanstrand (1649), Kristinestad (1649), Gamla Karleby (1620), Jakobstad (1652).
In 1640, the Royal Academy of Åbo was founded.
In 1748, Sveaborg was founded, and eventually became the second, unofficially, city in the eastern kingdom. 5000 – 7000 people lived and worked on the islands (n=6).
In 1808, tsar Alexander I (1777 – 1825) of Russia decided to invade their arch enemy Sweden, and they aimed at the sea fortress Sveaborg. Vice admiral Carl-Olof Cornstedt (1756 – 1820) surrendered, probably saving the lives of people living on the islands. Between 1809 – 1917, Russia occupied the eastern part of the Swedish kingdom.
In 1828, the Royal Academy of Åbo was moved to Helsingfors, and in 1917, it became the University of Helsingfors.
In 1863, many sources claim, Alexander I's successor Alexander II, imposed a second language to challenge Svearna's trade language. For some reason, he did not choose Russian, but a Uralic language which was spoken in different ways by different tribes inland. In 1880, street names were added to the existing Swedish names in Helsingfors. For example, Hagnäs got a Uralic name – Hagnääsi. Note the connection to the trade language.
In 1909, Hagnääsi was replaced with Hakaniemi, which is still in use. In Ulrikasborg, Södra Röddäldsgatan got its first uralic addition – Etelä Notkonkatu.
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| Original street sign for Södra Röddäldsgatan from 1909. Note two things: the prefix södra/Etelä (southern) and the order of the names. |
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| Current street sign. Note two things. The prefix Södra, Etelä (southern) and the Russian translation have been removed, and the order of the names has been changed.. |
Somewhere between 1910 – 1940, the Uralic language reached break-even. This coincided with the language strife, and in 1940, a stagnation started in Finland.
It was a beautiful sunny day to visit Sveaborg but it was windy. I had decided that our first destination should be the dry-dock; since 2019, the family have visited Sveaborg, but the first visit to the dry-dock happened in 2022 when they were flooding the doc to release some of the ships which had been resting there over the winter.
But when we arrived, a fence prohibited us from coming closer to the edge of the dock. Disappointed, we headed towards the next target – the ridge of the bastion of Gustavsvärd, from which you view the Gustavsvärd Strait (Gustavsvärdsundet), where the cruise ships to Sweden pass by every morning and afternoon. But the ridge was also closed. Fortunately, we went through a tunnel in the wall before ending up at the Kings gate. After standing and admiring the view for a while, the tour was over and we returned to the port for the return trip to Helsingfors.
On the boat back to the city, we started to discuss entrepreneurial thinking and the connection between food and health. I said that in my research project, I had concluded that meat, eggs, and whole dairy are crucial for kids' physical and mental development, and for adults to sustain physical and mental development. Then happened what often, but not always, happened. One person said:
– what about cholesterol?
Cholesterol has become a global meme – an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. Finland has a very special relationship to cholesterol. But as it seems, it also started in Sweden.
In the 1940s, Haqvin Malmros (1895 – 1995), a physician, medical doctor, and professor in medicine at Lund university, conducted a study to answer the question why atherosclerosis had become so prevalent. Despite having war-time in the title of the paper, Malmros concluded that saturated fats were to blame, because it raises serum cholesterol (Malmros, 1950). This became the diet-heart hypothesis.
In 1958, Ancel Keys (1904 – 2004) launched a global project to test the diet-heart hypothesis – the Seven countries study. Finland, but not Sweden, became one of the seven countries from which data was sampled from two cohorts – Åbo in the southwest, with a typically Swedish-speaking population, and north Karelia, with a typical Uralic-speaking population. In Finland, this became known as the North Karelia Project, and it probably put the university on the global academic map. As late as March 2022, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare wrote this on their home page:
“From the outset, the goal was to lower cholesterol and blood pressure levels through dietary changes, including a reduction in the use of butter and salt”.
Link to source
Is that true? (Important academic question).
In 2006, the largest study on women's health, which in particular targeted the diet-hearth hypothesis, was published. It found no relationship between consumption of saturated fats and cardiovascular disease. But on page 661, there's a table showing that if women with a history of health issues lowered their consumption of saturated fats by 10%, the risk of contracting cardiovascular disease increased by 28% (Howard et al. 2006).
In 2014, Nina Teicholz, an investigative journalist, published the result of her analysis of nutrition studies, concluding that saturated fats are not bad for health, rather the opposite (Teicholz, 2014).
In 2016, a research group led by Christopher Ramsden published the result of forgotten data from the Seven countries study. It's considered the largest randomized controlled trial (RCT) in nutrition, and they tested the diet-heart hypothesis. They found no connection between consumption of saturated fats and CVD (Ramsden et al. 2016).
In 2023, Nina Teicholz, now with a PhD in nutrition, published A short history of saturated fat: the making and unmaking of a scientific consensus (Teicholz, 2023).
In 2023, EU/OECD published a report, where they had screened causes of death in the 27 member countries. That included Finland and Sweden. Because of their common history, Finland and Sweden share ancestry. That means the biology between the countries are more similar than dissimilar. The countries have RCT – character between them. Here's the catch. Death by:
ischemic heart failure:
- Finland: 15 %.
- Sweden: 10%.
Alzheimer's/Dementia:
- Finland: 20 %.
- Sweden: 10%.
Why?
Part of that answer is culture. During his third Gifford talk (2019), Mark Pagel talked about tribalism. His example, Finland.
Culture is explained by language (Reich, 2019). It's likely that the Uralic language which many people say was imposed by Russia, brought tribalism with it. Tribalism is the opposite to entrepreneurial thinking, which was the socio-culture which Svearna, with their trade language, spread in their kingdom and trade network, and which brought affluence to the eastern part of the kingdom (since 1917, Finland).
It's likely that language is the reason why the diet-heart hypothesis is still popular among Finnish researchers. Years ago, some administrators decided that uralic-finnish should be the prime language at the University of Helsingfors. Instead of university, or universitet, the uralic translation, Yliopisto, should be used.
In August 2023, Helsingin sanomat, Finland's largest tabloid, reported that the research at the University of Helsingfors had collapsed (Bäckgren, 2023).
Link to source.
And in December 2024, the head of Sitra fund, Atte Jääskeläinen, said that entrepreneurship and innovative thinking in Finland is at a record low. Why is Sweden doing so much better?
Conclusion. Sveaborg was an excellent destination for an excursion, and it was interesting to tell people from 10 countries about Finland's and Sveaborg's Swedish origin, and Sweden's entrepreneurial history. The discussion about cholesterol wasn't the first one; the cholesterol myth is prevalent across the globe, but my guess is that it is stronger in Finland due the North Karelia Project. This is marked by the huge difference in heart failure and Alzheimer's between Finland and Sweden. Language seems to be the cause, and has not only influenced health, but also research. 8 pages.
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Executive coaching for CEOs/managers and workshops to facilitate Organizational Performance, Learning, and Creativity for Problem Solving | Lectures: Nutrition for physical and mental health | Course/lecture: children's emotional and social adjustment and cognitive development | Language training - Swedish | Academy Competency | CV | Teaching skills and experience | Summary of research project | Instagram | Linkedin | YouTube-channel | TikTok | Twitter
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