| Uusimaa | |
| Native Name: | Swedish: Nyland |
| Official Name: | Region of Uusimaa |
| Settlement Type: | Region |
| Flag Size: | 75px |
| Blank Emblem Type: | Logo of the Regional Council |
| Blank Emblem Size: | 125px |
| Anthem: | Uusmaalaisten laulu |
| Mapsize: | 150px |
| Subdivision Type: | Country |
| Subdivision Name: | Finland |
| Subdivision Type1: | Historical province |
| Subdivision Name1: | Uusimaa |
| Seat Type: | Capital |
| Seat: | Helsinki |
| Parts Type: | Other cities and towns |
| Parts: | Espoo, Hanko, Hyvinkää, Järvenpää, Karkkila, Kauniainen, Kerava, Lohja, Loviisa, Porvoo, Raseborg and Vantaa |
| Area Total Km2: | 9,568 |
| Population Total: | 1,734,000[1] |
| Population As Of: | December 31, 2022 |
| Population Density Km2: | 181 |
| Leader Title: | Regional Mayor |
| Leader Title1: | President of the Council |
| Leader Name1: | Eero Heinäluoma |
| Blank Name Sec1: | NUTS |
| Blank Info Sec1: | 181 |
| Blank Name Sec2: | Regional bird |
| Blank Info Sec2: | Blackbird |
| Blank1 Name Sec2: | Regional fish |
| Blank1 Info Sec2: | Zander |
| Blank2 Name Sec2: | Regional flower |
| Blank2 Info Sec2: | Windflower |
| Blank3 Name Sec2: | Regional animal |
| Blank3 Info Sec2: | European hedgehog |
| Blank4 Name Sec2: | Regional stone |
| Blank4 Info Sec2: | Hornblende |
| Blank5 Name Sec2: | Regional lake |
| Blank5 Info Sec2: | Lake Tuusula |
| Blank3 Name: | – HDI (2021) |
| Blank3 Info: | 0.960[2] |
| Population Demonym: | uusmaalainen (Finnish) nylänning (Swedish) |
| Demographics Type2: | GDP |
| Demographics2 Footnotes: | [3] |
| Demographics2 Title1: | Total |
| Demographics2 Info1: | €105.831 billion (2022) |
| Timezone1: | EET |
| Utc Offset1: | +2 |
| Timezone1 Dst: | EEST |
| Utc Offset1 Dst: | +3 |
| Iso Code: | FI-18 |
| Website: | uudenmaanliitto.fi |
Uusimaa (in Finnish ˈuːsimɑː/; Swedish: Nyland, pronounced as /sv-FI/; both lit. 'new land') is a region of Finland. It borders the regions of Southwest Finland, Tavastia Proper (Kanta-Häme), Päijänne Tavastia (Päijät-Häme), and Kymenlaakso. Finland's capital and largest city, Helsinki, along with the surrounding metropolitan area, are both contained in the region, and Uusimaa is Finland's most populous region. The population of Uusimaa is 1,734,000.
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.
From the time of the Vikings in the 8th century, an eastern road ran along the Gulf of Finland. The first inhabitants were nomads.[4] The place name of Nuuksio derives from the Sami word which means 'swan.[5] 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.[6] Estonians inhabited the region to a smaller extent, specifically for seasonal fishing.[7]
Swedish colonisation of coastal Uusimaa started after the second crusade to Finland in the 13th century.[8] [9] 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. All the Swedish place names of Uusimaa date back to this period.[10]
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.[11] Much of Uusimaa is literally new – it has risen off the Baltic Sea due to post-glacial rebound.
The Finnish provinces were ceded to Imperial Russia in the War of Finland in 1809. After this, Uusimaa became the Province of Uusimaa in the old Finnish: [[Län|lääni]] system of the newly established Grand Duchy of Finland. From 1997 to 2010, Uusimaa was a part of the Province of Southern Finland. In 1994 it was divided into the regions of Uusimaa and Eastern Uusimaa, but in 2011 the two regions were merged as Uusimaa.[12]
The coat of arms of the province is (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.
See main article: Municipalities of Uusimaa. The region of Uusimaa consists of 26 municipalities, 13 of which have city status (marked in bold).[13]
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Uusimaa, the region surrounding Finland’s capital Helsinki, offers many sights and attractions, from historical landmarks to natural wonders.[4]
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.[14] 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.[15]
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 are currently 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 are spoken in Uusimaa. 18% 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 (26.9%), Espoo (23.6%), Helsinki (19.6%) and Kerava (16.2%). The lowest share is in Pukkila (3.4%).
The most spoken foreign languages are Russian (2.8%), Estonian (1.9%), Arabic (1.4%), Somali (1.2%) and English (1.2%). Other languages include Albanian, Chinese, Persian, Kurdish, Vietnamese, Spanish, Turkish, Thai, Tagalog, German, Nepali, Bengali, French, Romanian, Urdu, Hindi, Portuguese, Ukrainian, Italian, Polish, Tamil, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Swahili, Amharic, Serbo-Croatian, Latvian, Japanese, Dutch, Sinhalese, Tigrinya, Uzbek, Greek, Punjabi, Pashto and Telugu, all with over 1,000 speakers.[16]
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).[17]
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.
See also: List of newspapers in Finland. The largest subscription newspapers published in the region are and Hufvudstadsbladet in Helsinki, Aamuposti in Hyvinkää, in Lohja, and Östra Nyland in Loviisa, Uusimaa and Borgåbladet in Porvoo, Västra Nyland in Raseborg, and in Tuusula. Also two popular tabloid newspapers, Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat, are published there.
Yle's local radio stations in the western part of the region are the Finnish-language and Swedish-language Yle Vega Västnyland, in the Helsinki metropolitan area the Finnish-language and Swedish-language Yle Vega Huvudstadsregionen, and in the eastern part the Finnish-language (discontinued) and Swedish-language Yle Vega Östnyland.
The results of the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election in the Uusimaa constituency are:[18]
The results of the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election in the Helsinki constituency are:[19]