A trip to Vyborg
Russian city with a Scandinavian feel
This is not the first year we have been advised that a trip to the nearby city of Vyborg would be a worthwhile one. Friends that we met last year had also proposed to make a trip up there together with us though, at the time, we were not in a position to do so. We passed near the city last year on our trip back to the U.S. when we took the bus from St. Petersburg to Helsinki airport. But only this year did we actually get there.
As the name Vyborg might suggest, this city was actually founded by the Swedes. Sweden was a major power in the region of the Baltic Sea for a few centuries and ruled over the territory we now know as Finland for a substantial segment of its recent history. Russia fought several territorial wars with Sweden going back a few centuries, including expelling the Swedes from a fortress they had built and occupied on the site of what is now the city of St. Petersburg, thus allowing for the founding and expansion of the city.
In that same era, Russia captured the city of Vyborg and surrounding territory from the Swedes. About a century later the Swedes were expelled from all of Finland, which was then ruled as an autonomous Duchy, though still beholden ultimately to the powers of the Russian Imperial Empire. With the disintegration of the Russian Imperial Empire and associated events of the Bolshevik Revolution, Finland saw its opportunity finally to declare independence, along with which it reclaimed the city of Vyborg and surrounding territory.
This was a situation with which the new Soviet authorities were not happy— understandable to a certain extent, owing to the proximity of Vyborg to the second most populous Soviet city, Leningrad (as the city of St. Petersburg had been renamed by the Soviets). Just prior to their entry into the Second World War, the Soviets undertook a military campaign against Finland which, by some accounts failed to meet the ostensible goal of conquering all of Finland, but that did result in the recapture of Vyborg and surrounding territories. The area has remained a Soviet, then Russian, territory up to the present day.
As will be clear from some of the accompanying photographs and videos, the character of the city has a quite Scandinavian feel. I’ve also included a few narrated videos documenting parts of our driving trip to Vyborg as well as a couple taken of the city and its surroundings.
To begin, here are a couple of video clips taken on the city bus in St. Petersburg as we made our way to the meeting spot with the driver who would be driving us up to Vyborg:
The following clip and shots were taken from the car along the highway leading to Vyborg:
Below is a video made outside our hotel just after arrival:
Photos taken walking around in Vyborg:
Below, a stroll along a street in the older part of town:
We took a short boat trip around the area. The video and photos below show parts of it.
Below, back on dry land in Vyborg outside the restaurant where we had lunch:
Below, a couple of shots from our return trip to St. Petersburg the next day. In the final photograph the new Lahkta Center skyscraper, purported to be now the tallest building in Europe, built near St. Petersburg is just coming into view.
