Early Modern Finland Research Articles

Understanding and motivation for reading in eighteenth-century Finland

Reading skills were part of Christian education in early modern Finland. According to the church law (1686), it was a task of parents to teach their children to read. If they were unable to do it, for example because they were illiterate themselves, they could receive help from their parish. It was important for a Christian to acquaint him/herself with the basics of Christianity by reading the Catechism.
 The ability to read was not sufficient. People were also supposed to understand the text they read. If they did not understand it, they were not motivated to read. Among the understanding strategies memorising was used most frequently. It was based on repetitive reading, which was a common reading strategy in early modern Finland – not least because the amount of books in vernacular was still small. The same texts were read again and again. The strategy is also called intensive reading. Better readers even used observation strategies. They estimated their knowledge and understanding during the reading process.
 According to Deci and Ryan (Motivation, Personality and Development within Embedded Social Contexts: An Overview of Self-Determination Theory, 2012), there are three fundamental psychological needs, which bring not only well-being but also motivation to people. They are competence, autonomy and relationship. In early modern Finland these needs were satisfied in various ways. In general, those who were more familiar with religious speech and reading, as a result of their family background or because of their friends, learnt quickly, made better progress and proved their competence and autonomy in reading. Others, who had less support from their family or community, had poorer religious vocabulary, more difficulties to understand what they read and less motivation to read. They were afraid of the examinations in the Catechism and of the social pressure in such circumstances. They also felt inadequacy in reading.

Motivation to Read? Reading among the Upper-Class Children in Finland during the 17th and 18th Centuries

In the early modern Finland, the Catechisms were the only literature intended for children. Otherwise, the children from all classes had to read adults’ literature. Finland was a part of Sweden until 1809 and the reading of Swedish literature was possible especially among the upper classes and even the common people in the Swedish-speaking western coast. Three case studies of Finnish upper-class children from the 17th and the 18th centuries tell us about children’s reading habits, attitudes to reading and reading motivation in this situation. Richard M. Ryan’s & Edward L. Deci’s theory of self-determination has been used as a theoretical basis for this study. It highlights the combination of three basic psychological needs as means to motivation: autonomy, competence and relatedness.
 Autonomy was the most limited during the 17th century and emerged step by step towards the end of the 18th century. Relatedness would depend on circumstances in the family. If the family led an active social life, it would also reflect in the reading habits of the household members. All the children in this research belonged to the upper class, so they could read, and they studied diligently. Therefore, they felt competence. The relatives exhorted them in studying, which still increased their self-confidence. Motivation was mostly external at the beginning, but in some cases it gradually grew towards internal motivation. According to these cases, upper-class girls were freer to read what they liked than boys. Comparing to boys they were less educated, but at the same time they experienced less pressure to make progress in literary reading. If the domestic duties permitted, they would be able to use their free time for reading fiction. Boys had to concentrate on thinking about their future careers and subjects relevant to that.

Wraths of Fire

The way people understand and encounter illnesses include influences from human cognition as well as from their cultural surroundings. A conception of illness termed “the wraths of fire” (tulen vihat in Finnish) was a general explanation for severe skin burns in early modern Finland and Karelia, and it included ideas about personified fire and its magically contagious essence. However, the academic conversation on this notion has mostly concentrated on the socio-cultural influences behind it. In this article, I argue that the intuitive level of human cognition (e.g., Kahneman and Frederick 2005; Evans and Frankish 2009) has formed the basic guidelines for this conception of illness. The research materials consist of approximately six hundred archive units of narrated memories on healing events and healing instructions. As the materials are not based on empirical observations by the author, the article also introduces certain methodological questions important for connecting the cognitive perspective with historical materials, such as questions on the reliability of the descriptions of past events.

Boys learning craft skills. Rural artisan apprenticeships in early modern Finland

Research on handicrafts has generally concentrated on the study of urban artisans and guilds. However, not all artisans operated in towns, nor were rural artisans always small marginal groups. For instance, the majority of Finnish artisans lived and worked in the countryside. They had the right to take on apprentices; therefore, most rural artisans received their training from artisans working in the same environment. This article characterizes apprentices in the early nineteenth century in Finland and studies how rural artisans organized their occupational training. A single large Finnish parish was selected as the subject of this research, in order to study artisans and their apprentices more individually, and to examine details such as the duration of apprenticeships, completion rates, and the social backgrounds and ages of apprentices.

Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft, ed. Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Raisa Maria Toivo

This book originated in a conference in 2010, and brings together, under the editorship of Louise Nyholm Kallestrup and Raisa Maria Toivo, an international group of scholars to investigate the many different ways in which religious orthodoxy might be contested in the later medieval and early modern periods. The thirteen chapters are divided into three sections, on ‘Heresy’, ‘Magic’ and ‘Witchcraft’, and they interpret these concepts very broadly to include a range of activities and beliefs which did not fall obviously into these categories but which, nonetheless, did not seem entirely orthodox. For example, Nancy Mandeville Caciola’s chapter argues that the medieval church tolerated a wide variety of beliefs about the dead which were neither fully orthodox nor clearly heretical, while Raisa Maria Toivo argues that, in early modern Finland, activities related to the medieval cult of the Virgin Mary were often more likely to be viewed by the clergy as ignorance, superstition or old wives’ practices than as witchcraft.

Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland. By Raisa Maria Toivo. Pp. ix, 183, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, $99.00.

The Heythrop JournalVolume 58, Issue 3 p. 464-465 BOOK REVIEW Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland. By Raisa Maria Toivo. Pp. ix, 183, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, $99.00. Norman Tanner, Norman Tanner BournemouthSearch for more papers by this author Norman Tanner, Norman Tanner BournemouthSearch for more papers by this author First published: 07 April 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.12514Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume58, Issue3May 2017Pages 464-465 RelatedInformation

Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland by Raisa Maria Toivo

Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland by Raisa Maria Toivo

Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe (Kathryn A. Edwards, ed.)

<i>Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe</i> (Kathryn A. Edwards, ed.)

Abuse of Parents in Early Modern Finland

In the early modern courts of law in Finland—then a part of Sweden—physical and verbal violence by (teenage or adult) children against their parents was theoretically a capital crime. Nevertheless, in practice, extenuating circumstances were sought and punishments were mitigated. One of the common extenuating circumstances was that the parent had provoked the abuse through overdisciplining the child or misusing parental authority in the household. In the trials, each party tried to excuse and if possible legitimize their own behavior. In this article, I investigate the phenomenon of the abuse of parents in the law courts of seventeenth-century Finland and the argumentation of parental power and its refutation in those trials. In the trials, values and expectations of parenthood and parental authority were discussed, used, and played on by different parties in cases dealing with the abuse of a parent.

Street mirrors, surveillance, and urban communities in early modern Finland

This article discusses street mirrors or ‘gossip mirrors’, in terms of urban social relations and surveillance. Street mirrors were introduced to coastal towns in Sweden and Finland in the 18th and early 19th centuries and may still be found in well-preserved towns with historic wooden centres. The authors argue that the introduction of monitoring and spying devices, such as street mirrors, occurred in the 18th century due to increased urban populations and feelings of insecurity caused by greater regional and transnational mobility. Mirrors, in this sense, were one material mechanism in the process of modernization and the development of individuality.

Violence between parents and children: courts of law in early modern Finland

This article studies the attitudes and significance of violence between parents and children as they appear in court records of lower courts and Courts of Appeal in early modern Finland. The paper discusses four kinds of violence: 1) the deliberate killing of children by their parents, 2) neglect of children or their upbringing by the parents and 3) physical or verbal violence by the children towards their parents. These were categories of forbidden violence between parents and children. Fourthly, 4) this paper discusses instances when violence was considered legal and even accepted, the so-called disciplinary violence committed by parents against their children. The important concepts in talking about violence are codes of honour and social hierarchy, the emphasis placed on social order and peace in society. The importance of peace and order emerge particularly when discussing concealment and publicity, responsibility and guilt, as well as of hierarchy. Emotional considerations seem to have been extremely important in violence between parents and children.

Female serial killers in the early modern age? Recurrent infanticide in Finland 1750–1896

This article examines multiple infanticide in early modern Finland in which the same woman killed several newborns after repeated hidden pregnancies and childbirths. A well-documented case in Lohja, Nummi and Pusula Court of Assizes in 1874 is compared with nine other recurrent infanticides in Finland in the period 1750–1896. The context of the series of crimes and the reasons why it took so long to apprehend the murderers differed from the majority of reported infanticides, which were quite unplanned and the perpetrators of which were apprehended within days of the act. These offenders were serial killers who experienced a need to kill even if they were not literally serial killers according to modern conceptions of male-oriented serial killing. They did not deliberately get themselves pregnant with men in order to obtain psychological gratification from killing newborn babies. Rather, they resorted to killing several of their illegitimate babies as a solution of birth control because their first such crime went unreported or unprosecuted, probably as a result of the complicity of others. Such a perpetrator in the early modern age is labeled a ‘love-child murderess’ or a ‘burker of newborns’, depending on her relationship with the father or fathers of the victims. Serial killings of newborn babies as a solution of birth control continue to exist in modern times as serial neonaticide. It is suggested that a perpetrator of this category of crime in all ages be labeled a ‘birth controller’.

Living (with) Things: Relational Ontology and Material Culture in Early Modern Northern Finland

This article discusses relational ontology and its significance for interpreting archaeological material from post-medieval contexts. The general theory of the relational constitution of the world is first introduced and some of its implications discussed in relation to the ‘meaning’ of artefact biographies. Second, by drawing from folk beliefs, the article considers how people in early modern Finland recognized the relational constitution of the world, which in turn provides new insights into the local mode of perceiving and engaging with the material world. The case of household spirits and human relationship with buildings is taken as an example. The archaeological material discussed in the article derives from the seventeenth-century town of Tornio in northern Finland.

Folk beliefs, special deposits, and engagement with the environment in early modern northern Finland

It is widely recognized that folk beliefs flourished in early modern Finland which had formally been Christianized for centuries. These folk beliefs seem to propose, in the modern view, that people in the past believed in the existence of non-human beings, such as trolls and spirits, and considered a variety of material things from artefacts to landscape elements to have special properties, such as agency, consciousness, and personality. Folk beliefs, however, may have been misrepresented due to the assumption that they originate in religious-like thinking. This paper reconsiders the nature of folk beliefs, their relationship with religion, and their significance to archaeological interpretation both theoretically and through a case study. It is argued that folk beliefs in early modern northern Finland – and in other similar contexts – can be understood in terms of local perception and engagement with the material world. Folk beliefs, in this view, were embedded in the dynamics of everyday life, and they are, at least in the specific case discussed in this paper, indicative of two-way relatedness between people and various constituents of the material world. The archaeological implications of this view are discussed in the context of the 17th-century town of Tornio on the northern Gulf of Bothnia.

Classical and humanist works in the libraries of early modern Finland between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries

This article examines the presence of classical, humanist and neo‐humanist works in the libraries of the Magnus Ducatus of Finland between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In this period, Sweden went from being a member of a Scandinavian union dominated by Denmark to an imperial power administering large areas of north‐central Europe, only to be subsequently demoted to the role of a regional player increasingly tossed about by her neighbours, especially Russia. Despite economic, political, religious and cultural turbulence, international trends seem to have reached the Magnus Ducatus Finlandiae, both through Finns studying at key centres of learning and culture, and through reading books purchased or borrowed. The establishment of the Academia Aboensis in 1640 ensured continuous contact with the rest of the Res publica litterarum. Members of the nobility, the officer class, the clergy and merchants gained access to older and more recent literature on a great variety of subjects, including work by ancient and humanist authors and scholars. Due to the rise of neo‐humanism, the Classics formed the back‐bone of school and university curricula until well into the nineteenth century, and seem to have been strongly represented in the standard stock of private libraries, if not in the original languages, then in French, German or Swedish translations.

Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Society: Finland and the Wider European Experience (review)

Reviewed by: Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Society: Finland and the Wider European Experience Lola Sharon Davidson Toivo, Raisa Maria, Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Society: Finland and the Wider European Experience (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World), Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008; hardback; pp. 242; 4 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £55.00; ISBN 9780754664543. When Agata Pekantyär’s husband died in 1670, leaving her with two young daughters, his relatives threw her off the family farm. She built a cottage on the common land, resisted attempts to drive her from it and challenged her parents-in-law’s will. The quarrels lasted for the next four years but the [End Page 198] court ruled in favour of Agata’s daughter, as the child of the eldest son. The relatives, compensated but resentful, moved out and Agata moved in. Within a few months she was accused of practising magic. She paid the customary 40 marks fine. Next year she was charged and fined again. The following year, she was sued for slander by the woman she had earlier claimed had taught her how to make women infertile. Another fine. In 1676, she was fined for forcing her 13-year-old daughter into bed with a man. The couple married and her son-in-law defended her with force when the court ordered her publicly whipped for witchcraft. In 1686, a male neighbour sued her for slander for saying he used magic and accused her of riding to the witches’ Sabbath on a calf. Her son-in-law was fined for magic. In 1698, Agata paid costs after a rumour that a certain woman had flown to the Sabbath on a broom was shown to have originated in Agata substituting the woman’s name for her own. Over these thirty years, Agata appeared regularly in court on matters connected with her management of her daughter’s farm. Clearly we are far from the terror and torture of the witch-hunts of Germany, Switzerland and France. Apart those involving Agata, there were 26 cases of magic and witchcraft in the village of Ulvila between 1674 and 1698. None of them resulted in anyone being burnt at the stake, nor do they appear to have greatly affected the defendants’ reputations or livelihoods. Rather they formed part of the interminable squabbling of the villagers over resources and reputation. Raisa Maria Toivo uses Agata’s case to examine the position of women in Early Modern Finland in relation to the wider scholarship on gender and witchcraft. She argues convincingly that excessive emphasis has been placed on a modern/pre-modern dichotomy and on the power of patriarchal rhetoric. Toivo’s comprehensive review of gender and witchcraft theories provides a useful scholarly service but at the expense of the book’s focus. How far can we can extrapolate from one instance? Agata’s case provides an excellent basis for examining the status of women and the functioning of both village society and the legal system in seventeenth-century Finland. Women were not merely oppressed by men and confined to the home as domestic servants. Rather they were valued and accorded status for the contribution their work made to the household and the community and were active participants in society at these levels. Agata’s case also demonstrates the banal way witchcraft accusations were used in village power struggles and demolishes the image of the witch as a marginalized outcast doomed to destruction. However, it [End Page 199] cannot provide, as Toivo seems to imagine, a critique of scholarship on the murderous waves of witch burning since really it has nothing to do with them. If anything, Toivo’s study would seem to support theories that religious conflict, state-building and an inquisitorial judicial system were crucial factors in the witch craze, and that consequently where these were absent or weak the earlier pattern of witchcraft/slander accusations as relatively inoffensive weapons in rural politics continued. For this reason, I would have welcomed closer examination of the shift to an inquisitorial system as part of the strengthening of the Swedish state, leading to increased prosecution of beneficent magic. The relationship of Agata...

PLAGUES AND GOVERNMENTS

This paper examines the range of preventive means at the authorities' disposal by describing the public policies which were adopted against plague in early modern Finland. Interest is focused on the question whether the various actions taken by the authorities had other aims than just the prevention of plague. The paper raises questions about the extent of social breakdown and resistance to government regulation in time of plague, and whether or not the methods adopted were effective. The general argument taken in the article is that human action played a major role in the disappearance of the disease.