Finland reopens train service to Sweden, putting Europe in reach

OULU, Finland - A new passenger train service linking Finland to Sweden began running on Aug 10, creating a rail route stretching from northern Finland to southern Europe for the first time since the 1990s.

The atmosphere at the Oulu train station in northern Finland was filled with excitement as passengers boarded a train headed for neighbouring Sweden early on Aug 10.

Vaino Jalkanen, 37, woke up at dawn to witness the “historic” resumption of Finnish cross-border trains that were discontinued in 1988.

“Now, it will be possible to travel from Paris to Rovaniemi, for example,” he told AFP as he had found his seat, referring to a city deep in central Finland.

Services will run from Oulu on Finland’s north-west coast to Haparanda, Sweden, twice a day.

From Haparanda, passengers can transfer to trains and routes that run west to the Norwegian sea or south through Stockholm as far as Portugal.

The transfer is necessary because Finland uses the same track widths as in neighbouring Russia, which are wider than the European standard – a legacy of when the Nordic country was part of the Russian Grand Duchy in the 19th century.

After crossing a bridge over the Torne river from Finland’s Tornio, the inaugural train on Aug 10 was welcomed by a crowd of people waving Finnish and Swedish flags at the red-brick station in Haparanda.

“It’s about security, it’s about the future, it’s about economy,” Finland’s Transport Minister Lulu Ranne told AFP.

She added that cooperation between the two countries was growing “all the time”.

Elisa Markula, chief executive of Finland’s state-owned railway operator VR, said she was hopeful the service would attract passengers because “travelling via land is very popular at the moment”.

“Train travelling in all Europe is having a renaissance. Also in Finland, our passenger numbers are increasing a lot,” Markula added. AFP