Gender: Feminine
Origins: Welsh/Old Norse
Meaning: “snow; snow white; white as snow; or “protection; mercy; help.”
(Ay-rah South Wales; I-rah North Wales; AYR-wen South Wales; IRE-wen North Wales. Swedish/Finnish I-rah)

Eira can be of two different etymologies and origins, in Welsh, it is related to the word eir, meaning “snow”, the offshoot of Eirwen is composed of the elements eir and gwen, (which either means fair, blessed or white), in which case, Eirwen would roughly translate as “white as snow”, “snow white” or “white snow.” A reverse of Eirwen, is Gwyneira, which virtually means the same thing, pronounced (gwyn-AY-rah) South Wales, and (gwyn-EYE-rah) North Wales.

Eira can also be connected to an Old Norse element. It is believed to be a variation of the Old Norse female name, Eir, which was the name of the Norse goddess of healing. Eir means, “protection; mercy; help.”

It is also the name of a neighborhood in Helsinki which its name from a hospital. Its designated name-day in all Scandinavian countries, including Finland, is August 9. Other forms of this version include

• Eiri (Faroese)
• Eira (Finnish/Norwegian/Swedish)
• Eir (Old Norse: used in Iceland and on the Faroe Islands)
• Eirin (Norwegian: possibly also a Norwegian phonetic spelling of the English pronunciation for Irene).

It’s a November Saturday in the northern hemisphere. We all know what that means. Although most shopkeepers are desperate to get people in, not everyone is welcome. According to YLE a shopping centre in Lahti has apparently decided now is the time to try a techno-fix to get rid of adolescents who hang around, not being nice and not buying stuff. The gadget emits a high-pitched noise that adults can’t hear but young people with good hearing can. It has already been tried in Britain and Holland at least. Unsurprisingly it also has a good number of oppenents, like the campaign group Liberty, who view it as an infringement of young people’s rights.

But our concern is Helsinki. Here a few Ullanlinna/Eira window displays – photographed before any of them had time to hang up the fairy lights and other “seasonal” decorations.

Korkeavuorenkatu has long had a reputation as a top-end shopping street. Well, by some standards it’s quite small as an area, but for all that rather lively.

Older, newer, home decoration and antiques, fashion for him and her, old and not-so-old, a few cafes, flowers, chemist, goldsmith/watch repair shop, a few restaurants. Many of them “atelje”, “boutique” and so on, all of them kivijalka or “foundation” shops, that is independently run, of course.

It’s not obvious who the people are who have the opportunity to wear the creations on display here, but whoever they are, the window shopping isn’t unpleasant at all.

O lume. O lume rasteiro. O lume
ainda. Vem de tão longe. Da casa
térrea sobre a eira,
casa onde qualquer coisa pequena
pulsava: um coração,
a água no cântaro,
o trigo a crescer.
Era tão pequeno que nem sabia
como pedir uma laranja,
um pouco de pão.
Menos ainda, um beijo.
Parecia só saber
estender as mãos para aquele sol
rasteiro e para o olhar
que dos sortilégios do lume
o defendia.

An ancient pastime in Helsinki, walking around the peninsula. Even as October turns cold a lone carpet washer was in Kaivopuiston ranta scrubbing away.

Low-rise and quality of light make it special. The wrong scale, for instance on the plot in Katajanokka where the Swiss cross is being proposed, would be devastating. For now the cathedral is still the biggest and in-your-facest, a feature that somehow warms the heart. The only competitor really is the Orthodox Uspenski cathedral. (In the background of the last post’s photo).

I found what I thought I had lost, older pictures of Helsinki. Here, for example, are some pics of Eiran Ranta and its ads for “star homes” from 2007. This one shows Helsinki folks doing what they’ve been doing on their extensive, if rocky, shoreline for decades – grabbing some rays and relaxing. In the background you can see the rise of an exclusive piece of residential development/regeneration/renewal, very much in line with the international trend of “capturing” value from nice views and wealthy lifestyles.

Moving along a little, to the right of where the picture above was taken, is the row of older buildings from when Eira was planned and executed as a Finnish version of the garden suburb, though not really in the suburbs, just a few kilometres from the town centre but, indeed, on what would now be called “green field”, that is, previously unbuilt-on land.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, you can see what we mean in Helsinki by mansard roofs (as in my earlier post) – these things that fold in the middle as it were. Not quite the French chateau-look, but the principle is the same.

And here the adverts for the “star homes” on land that was, as most would admit, for years a bit of an eyesore, land in-between nicely manicured park and garden in Eira and the slowly emaciating harbour functions of Hernesaari. It needed something doing to it clearly, but there were more alternatives than homes for the super-rich vs. age-old eye-sore.

Exlusive is what we got (=it is not for everybody) but at least a doggy park is to be constructed next to it, and the former SLOAP (“space left over after planning”) to be landscaped for more inclusive use. The photo below is from 2009.

Inequality will, as a famous Jewish man once sort of said, always be with us. I just never thought that the super-rich would be so well catered for in this particular place. But then that’s why the news about Jätkäsaari (see yesterday’s entry) was so interesting.

And, finally, because I’m happy with the images, here, in the same place last week, a sign of our times: the secure vehicle for transporting that expensive commodity, one’s offspring.

These are couple of images of folks watching fireworks on this land, whose future is still rather obscure to too many of us.

]]> http://jeesjees.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/the-rich-dont-get-to-be-regenerated/ Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:51:39 +0000 JeesHelsinki http://jeesjees.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/the-rich-dont-get-to-be-regenerated/

When I was a school child, we moved to a small town in England. I was quite often home-sick for Finland, even after I’d learned the language, made friends and, as they say, settled down. But when my dad asked me who were the people I most missed, I said it wasn’t people and took some time to explain that it was bricks and mortar, streets and townscapes that I missed. His reply was not what I expected nor what I wanted to hear. He said I must have an odd psyche to miss geographical space more than flesh and blood.

Well, I lived with that sense of attachment to physical space despite my father’s comments. For years, maybe decades, at any given moment, an image or a cocktail of sensory memories would pop into my head out of nowhere. Perhaps something unspectacular, a street like this say. A photographic image is not an impression formed within a person, but perhaps it conveys some of the quality of that internal sensation, at least its visual part.

Many of those memories, in fact the vast majority, are rooted somewhere in Eira or nearby. Lukcy as I was, this is the place of my first ever memories. Because of its privileged history, not just in terms of wealth but as one of the first planned urban neighbourhoods, building conservation has been a priority. The good remains because a) it was loved and looked after but also b) because the experts in architectural history insisted it should. What you see below is Architecture with a capital A, and doesn’t the city tourist board know it!

Not that all has been a success. In the 1960s Helsinki went through a period of demolition that was criticised heavily at the time. Vilhelm Helander and Mikael Sundman, two young architects, published an angry pamphlet called “Whose Helsinki?” and laid bare some of the indefensible as well as incomprehensible crimes against not just architecture but civilised living, that the city had been responsible for. One of the buildings they mentioned was this one, here seen from the back. It replaced another decorated but, apparently slightly smaller building at a time when speculative interests in land and construction took over.

But as in so many parts of the world, the rich have the luxury not to get moved around, improved, regenerated or renewed “for their own good”, and so it is here. I can only express my gratitude and wonder whether this experience was what gradually nurtured my interest in urban life as a more academic hobby.

So I know to report the fact, for instance, that 1/3 of small flats in Helsinki are now going to investors (at least according to this morning’s paper. No reason in this instance to suspect it’s not accurate). People looking for their first own home don’t even have time to get to see the places before investors, individuals and companies, have been alerted by agents. So much easier to sell with one viewing than to have to do several.

Eira is a garden city near Kaivopuisto park.

In a legendary Aki Kaurismäki movie Calamari Union a large group of men, all called Frank with one exception, try to escape the “miseries” of working class Kallio by migrating to the wealthy Eira. In real-life the journey would be quick and simple but in the movie they face many difficulties: Frank dies, Frank gets married and Frank needs to work.