The grave of Augustin Ehrensvärd, the Swedish officer who oversaw the construction of the fortress (too bad I did not notice the cement pump at the background when I was taking the picture...)The reasons that made the garrison commander capitulate are still a matter of debate. The garrison was 7000 men strong - about a third of the besieging force, which is an excellent ratio.
In any case, the surrender of the Sveaborg meant the effective end of any swedish hopes to successfully defend the province of Finland (north and eastern Finland was inaccessible because of its dense woods that a swedish officer had called "Adam's exile" - the key to Finland's defense lay in the south).
Indeed, at the end of the war, Sweden lost Finland which became a Grand Duchy in Imperial Russia.
When Finland succesfully gained its independence after the October Revolution and the Finnish Civil War the great leader of the Finns, Field Marshall Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim inaugurated the birth of the Finnish State by addressing Sveaborg (meaning swedish fortress) as Suomenlinna (Finnish Castle).
Nowadays, the fortress is a museum and the complex of islands upon which it is built a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A few minutes by boat from Helsinki, it is a very pleasant excursion that is well recommended to anyone who visits the Finnish capital.
I will forgo the more cliche pictures I took when I visited Sveaborg in 2005 (with the exception of Augustin Ehrensvärd's grave) :
Shield from the prow of a Russian ship, with Czarist insignia (from the Suomenlinna museum)
The romantic gun: Young couple above one of the better preserved pieces of coastal artillery from the latter days of Suomenlinna's use as a naval fortress.
The real treat: The only "surviving" finnish submarine, the Vesikko, and one of the very few surviving U-boats (this one is a Type-II).
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