HS Vantaa The father of the Järvinen family walked four kilometers in the rain for a job interview “Behind God’s Back” – Then no one would have believed that that remote Kolkka would become popular with families

In Syria time exactly where he now lives Markku Järvisen sister, was once a pigsty. There wasn’t much else there.

On the lake is a house fifty meters from his sister ‘s house, and in the time of the pigsty there was still a bushy birch tree. Next to Järvinen, where Järvinen’s daughter and son’s houses are now, there were greenhouses.

The noise of the old Lahdentie did not disturb the pigs, as the road had not even been built yet. At that point, a grain field flowed.

When three-month-old Markku Järvinen moved to Nikinmäki, or Nissbacka, in 1946, as it was then called, there were probably more pigs than people.

The statistics of the city of Vantaa do not extend to the 1940s. However, Järvinen has been writing Nikinmäki’s history and estimates that there were a couple of hundred inhabitants at the end of the 1940s.

“Even a fifth of these were summer residents. People came here from Helsinki on holiday. ”

When the summer residents jumped on a bus leaving Helsinki twice a day, the final stop was Sikalanmäki.

Now there probably don’t be any more pigs in Nikinmäki, there are enough people instead. The Nikinmäki district is located in the northeastern part of Vantaa.

At the end of last year, the district had 4,216 inhabitants. A considerable number of them are children: 27.3 per cent of the population of Nikinmäki are under 16 years of age. More children (27.6 per cent) can only be found in Ylästö, which has wedged ahead of Nikinmäki in recent years.

When Markku Järvinen started school at the old school in Jokivarri, there were 40 children.

And yes, the school was indeed always skied in the winter.

“It was a must when I was skiing at school three times a week.”

In the summer, however, there was no need to ski, but people went to school on foot in snowless times. At times, the route to school was windy, as spring floods lifted the water from the Keravanjoki to plots, fields and roads.

“In the early years, the Old Lahdentie in front of the school was under water every spring.”

The popular Jokivarren Esso could not be reached in the spring, even in the 1960s. Esso’s location now houses the garden shop Vihervimma.

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In the 1950s, people lived next to the gas station Oskar Engberg, which had once operated Lenin as a groom. Now all that remains of his house is a stone foot.

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Markku Järvisen as a child, Nikinmäki was still part of Kerava. According to Järvinen, the union was annexed to the rural countryside of Helsinki, now Vantaa, as the union did not arouse great emotions, as nothing changed in people’s daily lives.

On the other hand, Järvinen was only nine at the time, and he was more enthusiastic about the new invention, television.

“When the first television came to the neighbor, the children of the whole village went there to watch Lassieta. ”

Otherwise, time was spent on outdoor games. One of the playgrounds was an old fox garden with only a wire mesh left in the 1950s.

In the 1930s, the orchard had been the “Korkeasaari” for Nikinmäki’s children. The children had enjoyed watching the 3,000 foxes in the shelter. The operation of the shelter came to a halt when the owner, who lived a great life, drove it into bankruptcy.

“He reportedly had several cars and also a plane at Malmi Airport.”

According to Järvinen his father Olavi Järvinen hesitated to go “behind God’s back” to Nissbacka at one time. When Olavi Järvinen came for a job interview at a company called Sianravinto oy, he had to walk four kilometers from Korso station in the rain.

“Then it didn’t rain on the way back, and Dad thought maybe this wasn’t such a bad place.”

Olavi Järvinen was a hortonomist by training, and he was responsible for managing the greenhouses and gardens connected to Sianravinto oy. Despite its name, the company did not make food for pigs, but sold pigs for food.

Initially, the family lived in a house built in the early 20th century, and in 1969 they made themselves a new house.

Järvinen’s sister now lives in that house.

Pig activities ceased in the early 1960s and horticulture in the 1980s.

Nowadays Nikinmäki residents pick up their milk and bread from the Nikinmäki K-supermarket, which opened in 2012. In the run-up to grocery store chains, a couple of hundred residents were enough to support several merchants. During Järvinen’s childhood, Nikinmäki had at least the Koskinen house store, the Palmén store, the Häkkinen store and Elanto.

The Palmén store did not close down until 2019. The pizza place Nikinmäki Tähti currently operates in Elanto’s premises. Häkkinen’s and Koskinen’s houses are now private apartments.

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Although almost everything in Nikinmäki has changed since 1946, when Järvinen’s family settled there, some buildings have survived.

One of them is the Peltola workshop. It opened its doors in 1945, and the business continues – though not quite the same as before. At one time, Peltola’s workshop was a real multi-functional company. When the village bus driver needed a plow in front of the car, it was done by Peltola’s workshop. Ambulance? Peltolan paja. Heating system for greenhouses? Well, the workshop will take care of it.

“For us, they made a central heating boiler for the house,” says Järvinen.

Once, a few pigs also got to see the workshop. Järvinen’s father’s car broke a tire in the middle of a slaughterhouse trip, and he had to drive the pigs to the repair shop.

At the Peltola workshop handsome red and white patterns were also painted on Alfa Romeo, a car man from Nikinmäki. This car man used to run out of the river for Esso in such a way that the handbrake turns of the others were second.

Spent time with Esso Eero Karjaluoto remembers that once the men in the café bragged about who had driven the fastest in the morning rush hour from Esso to Helsinki. The carman said he would drive them all there faster.

“The matter was bet on and he drove to the Arabia factories where he was working faster than anyone else before,” says Karjaluoto.

Later, in 1982, the same car driver became Finland’s first F1 world champion. Still a legend in the early 1970s Keke Rosberg lived with his first wife in a semi-detached house in Nikinmäki. The house is still standing on Pistiäisentie.

To the same When Rosberg moved to Nikinmäki, Markku Järvinen moved out of Nikinmäki. He did not return until 1985, when his own plot of land was demolished from his parents’ plot. For that he built a detached house, where he still lives.

By 1985, Nikinmäki had already changed considerably. There were about 1,300 inhabitants, and the first terraced houses had risen in the area.

Apartment buildings could be expected for the next generation, as the first low-rise apartment buildings were not built in Nikinmäki until the 2010s. At the same time, in the mid-2000s, Markku Järvinen gave his children plots next to his own house.

At that time, a construction boom of new detached houses was underway in Nikinmäki. Many families with children moved to the area, building large detached houses for themselves. Of the homes built in 2011, 76 percent had more than four rooms. Only two percent of the apartments built were studios.

Nikinmäki is still a very detached area, with about 82 percent of the apartments being detached. There are about 14 percent of townhouses. In the adjacent Jokivarre, the share of detached houses is 95 per cent.

For new ones thanks to the residents, the services in the area have improved. There are two kindergartens and a school in Nikinmäki. Buses also now travel to Helsinki a little more often than twice a day.

However, something has also been lost.

“In the past, almost everyone was involved in an association or club, and they organized joint events. The whole village went to the Midsummer party, ”says Markku Järvinen.

Järvinen does not personally suffer much from the loss of communality, as he has created his own community around him. In addition to the family members mentioned at the beginning, the nephew and his family live in Nikinmäki. When the whole group gathers to celebrate, there are 15 of them.

There is nothing left of the pig farm itself, not even the name of the bus stop. Today, the former pig farm is left out at the Siirakuja stop.

There are no more greenhouses that brought Father Olavi Järvinen to Nikinmäki. But the little gardener lives in posterity. There is a small greenhouse in the yard of both Markku Järvinen and the daughter.

The source used in the story is the one published by the Nikinmäki Homeowners’ Association Nikinmäki’s history book.