In the northern part of Vantaa is a village called Reuna. There, residents borrow milk from a neighbor, do each other’s snowwork, and greet the streets. How is this idyll possible?
Greetings From the edge!
Or really from the Edge, the locals know how to fix right away.
We are in a small village called Veike, the outermost northern part of the Helsinki metropolitan area, right on the border between Vantaa and Nurmijärvi.
The distance to the center of Helsinki is 25 kilometers, but now you don’t miss the center.
Our purpose is to get to know the small village and its people.
What kind of place is Edge?
First fall dogs.
They bark, squeal and growl curiously behind the fences.
There are old detached houses and large courtyards on the side of the narrow road, and a curly fur coat howls at almost every gate.
But where would local people be found?
First Mr. peeks curiously from the stairs.
The journalist and the photographer have already been noticed, as strangers immediately catch the eye here.
“We’re from Hesar,” I managed to moan as the man approached from the gate.
He doesn’t want useless tourists, but that’s what he says Edge is a quiet place.
The man then advises the address of the official chairman of the village. If later we would get there too.
Leila Laurentti-Lavonen on the steps of her childhood home.
I regret on the other side of the pale detached house in the yard of the snow work just happens to be Leila Laurentti-Lavonen.
“Oh, I don’t live here anymore, I moved out in 1984. But I go to my mother every other day to help, ”she says.
His parents, now his 95-year-old mother and already deceased father, built a house behind Laurentti-Lavonen on a busy plot six decades earlier.
Laurentti-Lavonen’s childhood at Edge was wonderful.
The neighbors were familiar, the environment was safe. Even as a teenager, I still enjoyed the edge, even though getting a driver’s license eventually changed everything: I finally got my own help out of the edge.
Such is the life of many young people in Finnish small villages.
There are three roads at the edge: Edge Road, Edge Street, and Edge Road
Edge looks like a very traditional detached area in the middle of fields and forests.
There are wooden stables, trampolines and apple trees at the back of the yards. There are clothes racks, berry bushes and playhouses. Country cellars and birdwatchers.
And yet the courtyards are spacious. In newer areas, many houses would probably have been built on plots of the same size.
The first houses on the edge were built at the turn of the 1960s and 1950s. A wing, if any, was later added to the small bars. The newest houses in the village have been built in recent years.
According to the latest accounts, there are a total of 68 properties in Reuna, although some of them are cold. The village has a population of approximately 130.
There are three roads on the Edge: Edge Road, Reunakuja and Reunarne. Now, of course, they are covered in snow, but in summer the road surface is cracked and lumpy.
From there, along the Edge Road, the couple hikes Anneli and Pentti Konttinen.
What kind of place is Edge exactly?
“This is a cool man,” says Pentti Konttinen with thick stad slang.
Containers have been marginal for the past 34 years. That’s why they’re the right guides for Edge Tour.
The familiar walk of the containers circles through the forests on the east side of the village. There, the couple can showcase the best side of the Edge: nature.
Pentti and Anneli Konttinen’s life on the edge is not boring. There are plenty of activities from nature trips to gardening and snowmaking. “I spend 6-7 hours a day doing snow work,” Pentti Konttinen praises.
In the forest they have seen deer, hares and all kinds of birds. They also once saw the footprints of a lynx on a hoe.
And lo and behold, now Eduna is definitely shining at its best: the sun is shining brightly and the snow is white.
This is a real country idyll! Even the fields are behind the trees.
Then the plane flies from low to low, and a narrow path becomes computed.
What else can you do on the edge than walk in the woods?
“Logging and mowing the lawn,” laughs Pentti Konttinen.
When The Konttinen family moved to Reunion from Kaivoksela, Vantaa, in 1987, the sons of the family had one condition: they would agree to move if there was a sports field in the village.
Fortunately, such a thing was found.
The sports field is still the heart of the village. In the middle of everyday life, it does fall asleep, as Rema’s children are at school, some in Seutula and some in Kivisto.
All the youngest residents of the village are no longer known to the 75-year-old Containers. Containers are becoming the seniors of the village, as families with children have found Rema in recent years.
The center of the edge has been a sports field for decades. In winter there is ice skating on the field and in summer it plays volleyball. Sometimes there are village parties in the field.
To the edge can usually accommodate one topic at a time. In the 1990s, it was a power line that crossed the village.
Tall, up to forty-meter steel columns were built through the Edge, although residents opposed the power line.
After all, the power line still protrudes massively over the houses, but the residents are already slowly getting used to it.
What is the point, once the landscape is ruined, many people think.
At the moment, the villagers are talking about two things: the light traffic bus finally being built on the adjacent Riipiläntie, and the municipal technology that will be built in connection with the new bus.
The long-needed light traffic route will finally be made to Riipiläntie. According to the residents of the edge, Riipiläntie has become even more dangerous in recent years, as traffic volumes have increased and many people drive at high speeds on the road.
Anneli Konttinen says that the light traffic route was promised on a busy and dangerous road as early as 1994.
Municipal technology is also expected. Thanks to it, the Edge will finally be connected to the general water and sewerage network, and the streets will be put in order, but what else does that mean for the village?
“I hope no apartment buildings will be built here,” Konttinen said.
“We have been here as in the purse of the Lord.”
Reunan the guided tour has come to an end. There is already a bright green house in Konttinen.
“We were supposed to paint the house the very next summer,” says Pentti Konttinen.
It so happened that somehow the family got used to the color. Now the walls have got the same green surface three times.
There is one more point on the container tour: their garage.
It’s full of motorsport-related props: helmets, caps, photos, and newspaper clippings. Tickets, tools and other hassles.
“Don’t introduce them all now,” Anneli Konttinen laughs at her husband, laughing.
Container it was important for the family to have space in the new home to play motorsports. And there is enough space on the edge.
In my own yard and garage I was allowed to race, oil and adjust the engines. It was a common thing for the whole family.
Pentti Konttinen drags the pride of the garage out into the sun.
Pentti Konttinen’s eye blade is a motocross bike resting in the garage.
The green motocross bike looks like it can still ride a thousand and a hundred, even though the last time the bike was raced decades ago.
“This has won one Finnish Championship medal,” says Pentti Konttinen proudly.
A few The chairman of the Reunan Home Association lives in the house from Konttis Juha Lapinkiviit’s the village’s official president.
He’s just leaving for a business meeting, but he has time to chat about the village for a little while.
According to Juha Lapinkivi, many people on the edge praise the tranquility and nature of the area. His own family moved to Reunion in 2006: “It was built twice, for the first and last time. But it was a good and educational experience. ”
Lapinkivi says that investments have been made in Raja’s living comfort in recent years.
A small courtyard has been built on the village’s sports field, where villagers can use sports equipment, various games, chairs or barbecue equipment.
And then there is that new bike path on Riipiläntie, along which you can easily get to Kivistö or the nearby village of Männikko. Maybe the area could become a popular place for sports, Lapinkivi plans.
The edge seems too good to be true. What’s the secret?
“Working together and doing common things. I myself have strived for encouraging activities in the association, ie we take care of things in the area together with joy and learn something new, ”says Lapinkivi.
Lapinkivi the neighbor hears how the shovel hits the snow. Snowmobile is done by one of the longest-lived residents of the Reunion, 86 years old Helmi Ahonen.
Helmi Aho does not mind doing snow work. It is annoying that the light traffic route will only be built on Riipiläntie when Ahonen is no longer in the best physical condition.
The project should get the route dug at least to the bird board and the ground cellar door, but there has been an extraordinary amount of snow.
The neighbor has already done snow work on a large area of the yard, but Ahonen doesn’t have to ask the neighbor to create all the snow.
That’s the kind of life Edge seems to be: others are helped. The streets are greeted and eggs are borrowed.
Let’s keep an eye on each other.
Ahonen moved with his family from Helsinki’s Munkkiniemi to Reunion more than 50 years ago.
The neighboring plots at that time had only small cottages, which gradually expanded into large detached houses.
Ahoset also initially lived in a smaller bar on the other side of the Edge.
Later, the family built the current, large brick house.
At that time, the top services were found closer, Ahonen recalls. There were several shops in Riipilä, and there was a kiosk in my own village.
At some point, the number of visits to the commercial vehicle became less frequent and ceased altogether. The library car also visited for the last time in the summer of 2015.
“Now there’s nothing here anymore,” says Ahonen, 86.
“Except the ice cream truck goes in between,” he smiles and grabs the shovel again.
Sun shines. Idyll is all right.
Read more about other Vantaa areas that few people know:
“There is a good mood here” – an idyll of 85 inhabitants hides in Vantaa, which one would not believe to see in the metropolis
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
There is an unlikely oasis in this village environment in Vantaa: It is a pizzeria run by the Turks, where people walk hundreds of kilometers away.
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