Photos

This tiny lake Gallträsk is in the middle of town Kauniainen (Grankulla in Swedish), which is surrounded by the city of Espoo.
The history of Kauniainen begins in 1906 when a company was founded to sell building sites for houses. This followed the same pattern as in many other residential suburbs around the turn of the century. Near Stockholm, Danderyd, the twin town of Kauniainen, started in the same way. Pine forests and moors were considered healthy surroundings to live in. These could be found in Kauniainen as well as direct railway connections to the capital Helsinki. The coastal railway had been opened for traffic in 1903.

Kauniainen received the status of a market town in 1920. Then it had a population of 1300 with a Swedish-speaking majority. It was decided to keep Kauniainen a green, idyllic, rural community and industrial buildings were banned. Most of the villas were built in neoclassical style or in the late 1920s functionalism.

Kauniainen has been officially bilingual since 1936 and the Finnish name Kauniainen was made official beside the Swedish name Grankulla in 1949 by the market town’s council. The era of the villas ended with the Second World War and was replaced by reconstruction. Kauniainen received town privileges in 1972 and in the following year the majority of the population was Finnish-speaking. Today Kauniainen has about 8600 inhabitants.

The lake Gallträsk is about 650 m long, 250 m wide and its maximum depth is 1.7 m. The first villas of Kauniainen were located around this lake. The lake has been polluted by sewage discharge since 1920's till 1970's. Nowadays the condition of the lake is way better than 30 years ago, because of various improvement measures, but still the water quality is only fair, not enough good for swimming. When I was walking around the lake, there were 2 fishers and one of them got a big pike . See WS.

In the western end of the lake is a protected Träskmossen marsh area, which has been 7000 years ago
a bay of Litorina sea. The marsh was created, when the bay changed to a lake and the lake area reduced.

I was lucky to catch a few photos in sunshine. The clouds hid the sun most of the time during my walk around the lake. This is taken from the eastern end of the lake. See the map view.

Edit 31.08.2008
The old railway station of Kauniainen, built 100 years ago, caught fire yesterday and its western part was about totally burnt down. One part of Finnish railway history and also cultural history is gone. I never photographed this station, but you can see it here. The station has not been in its original use for some time, but has been as a protected object.