City Sherpa Program
 

International Travel News (ITN) had a brief article on the City Sherpa program offered by Helsingin Sanomat which is a publication in Helsinki. I went to their website but the English language portion contains no description of that program and I have no Finnish.

My wife is descended from Swedish-speaking Finns and we plan to visit Abo and Helsinki next year. The City Sherpa program supposedly allows travelers with special interests to contact people in Helsinki with similar interests. I thought it might be interesting to pursue meeting some Swedish-speaking Finns on our trip to learn more about their lives and particularly about life in Sweden in the late 1800s. Any ideas?

Many thanks,
BigBlue

As is often the case, if one looks hard enough, one can find the answer to one's own questions. In this case, I was successful in doing so and thought I would share the results:

http://www2.hs.fi/extrat/citysherpa/

BigBlue

" I thought it might be interesting to pursue meeting some Swedish-speaking Finns on our trip to learn more about their lives and particularly about life in Sweden in the late 1800s."

They were Swedish-speaking Finns, so why do you want to learn about life in Sweden? Life in Finland at the late 1800s was very different from life in Sweden. Finland was under Russian rule and late 1800s was a heavy Russification perid. Which made many people move somewhere less suffocating.

Elina, your posting is one more solid reason why one should read carefully what one posts: I definitely did not want to learn more about life in Sweden but, rather, in Finland.

My apologies for my poor proofreading.

BigBlue

OK, I looked through those Sherpas, and Masa (the older man) seems to have been the one you want, but it says that he has quit. None of them is Swedish-speaking (Finnish-speakers plus a Japanese and maybe Irish or a Scot). But Swedish-speaking and Finnish-speaking lived in a same way. Most of the Swedish-speakers who left for US in late 1800´s were fishermen, farmer´s younger sons or seal hunters from the western coast.

But I know Nuppu personally, so if you just want a charming, very nice guide, she certainly is one. But last I heard of her she was touring Mexico.

Today I read about city sherpas in Helsinki too. And I had same problem not to find anything than this in the web.

I think the idea to live in a town is best to know it, but life is to short to do this everywhere. So the idea of this programm is great. Getting the chance seeing authentic local life and meet people. And having the chance to dop this viceversa here in Hamburg.

on 15 November 2011 I will be for some days in Helsinki a second time in my life. It would be great to get the chance to find by this way a charming nice guide for finding local life. I'll be happy to get a positive answer.