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While predominantly Finnish-speaking, Uusimaa has the highest total number of native speakers of Swedish in Finland even at a much lower share than two other regions.
History
The place name of Nuuksio derives from the Sami word njukča which means 'swan'.[4] Later Finns proper and Tavastians inhabited the area. Some place names have traces of Tavastian village names, like Konala, which likely derives from the older Tavastian village name Konhola.[5]Estonians inhabited the region to a smaller extent, specifically for seasonal fishing.[6]
Swedish colonisation of coastal Uusimaa started after the second crusade to Finland in the 13th century.[7][8] The colonisation was part of converting pagan areas to Catholicism. Eastern Uusimaa had its first Christian Swedish colonialists earlier than the western part, which got its colonialists in one mass transfer of people to Porvoo in the 14th century. The colonisation was supported by the Swedish kingdom and the immigrants were provided with grain seeds and cattle. They also got a four-year tax exemption from the crown.[6] All the Swedish place names of Uusimaa date back to this period.[9]
The names Uusimaa and Nyland, meaning 'new land' in English, derived from the Swedish colonisation era. The Swedish-language name Nyland appears in documents from the 14th century. The Finnish-language name Uusimaa appears for the first time in 1548 as Wsimaa in the first translation of the New Testament to Finnish by Mikael Agricola.[10] Much of Uusimaa is literally new – it has risen off the Baltic sea due to post-glacial rebound.
The gross domestic product (GDP) of the region was 91.2 billion € in 2018, accounting for 38.9% of Finnish economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 43,500 € or 144% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 120% of the EU average.[12] The employment rate is 76% as of 2022, second highest in Finland. There were 836,000 workplaces in Uusimaa in 2021, over 35% of the workplaces in Finland. The most common sectors were health and social services, wholesale and retail trade as well as professional, scientific and technical activities.[13]
Uusimaa is a bilingual region, with municipalities both bilingual in Finnish and Swedish, and monolingual in Finnish. Uusimaa's coastal areas tend to be Swedish-speaking. The traditional regional dialects of Swedish (nyländska) are currently[when?] mostly spoken in Eastern Uusimaa, while in the rest of the Uusimaa Swedish dialect has become more standardised.
The Finnish-speaking population started to grow when the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland was moved from Turku to Helsinki by the Emperor of Russia Alexander I in 1812, and the region attracted settlers from other parts of Finland. Helsinki's slang first evolved in the late 19th century. 7.6% of the population of the region speaks the Swedish language natively.
Due to immigration, many foreign languages[note 1] are spoken in Uusimaa. 16.6% speak a foreign language as their mother tongue, the highest proportion in Finland and 58% of all foreign-language speakers in Finland. The figure was 1.1% in 1990, 3.9% in 2000, 8.0% in 2010 and 14.7% in 2020. Meanwhile, the proportion of Finnish and Swedish speakers has decreased from 87.6% and 11.3% in 1990 to 75.9% and 7.5% in 2021 respectively. On a municipal level, the highest shares of foreign speakers are in Vantaa (24.8%), Espoo (21.9%), Helsinki (18.3%) and Kerava (14.6%). The lowest share is in Pukkila (3.0%).
In late March 2020, the region of Uusimaa went into lockdown to be isolated from the rest of Finland due to the global COVID-19 pandemic (2020/21).[16]
Regional council
The regional council is the main governing body for the region and focuses primarily on urban planning. Like all regional councils, it is mandated by law.[citation needed]
The coat of arms of the province is Azure, a boat Or between two fesses wavy Argent[citation needed] (a golden boat which is a symbol for the coastal areas, and two silver wavy fesses which are the symbol for rivers.)
Uusimaa received its coat of arms at the end of the 16th century. There is an image of the coat of arms made in 1599. In 1997, the traditional coat of arms became the official coat of arms of the region.
