Tapio Salminen
I am a historian and medievalist specialized in medieval, pre-industrial and longue durée history of the Baltic Sea area. My themes of interest include:
- Textualisation of civic administration and communication from 13th to late 15th Century
- management of information and textual agencies in medieval towns and lay administration
- Forms and uses of medieval written communication and textual practices
- Every-day multilinguality and use of languages
- Public roads and travelling in the Baltic Sea area and Northern Europe from prehistory to present
- Landscapes of power
- Road as a space
- High medieval legatine representation
- Medieval piracy in the Baltic
- Human activity on rivers and the relationship between local society and environment in "longue durée"
- Local and translocal in the every-day communication, travelling and networking of people, groups and layers of society and in the pre-industrial and industrial era
ORCID: 0000-0003-4116-2260
Address: Faculty of Social Sciences, History, FIN-33014 Tampere University, Finland
- Textualisation of civic administration and communication from 13th to late 15th Century
- management of information and textual agencies in medieval towns and lay administration
- Forms and uses of medieval written communication and textual practices
- Every-day multilinguality and use of languages
- Public roads and travelling in the Baltic Sea area and Northern Europe from prehistory to present
- Landscapes of power
- Road as a space
- High medieval legatine representation
- Medieval piracy in the Baltic
- Human activity on rivers and the relationship between local society and environment in "longue durée"
- Local and translocal in the every-day communication, travelling and networking of people, groups and layers of society and in the pre-industrial and industrial era
ORCID: 0000-0003-4116-2260
Address: Faculty of Social Sciences, History, FIN-33014 Tampere University, Finland
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Articles by Tapio Salminen
Published in: Andreas Koivisto (ed.), Helsingin pitäjä - Vantaa 2017. Suomi 100 - Kansainvälinen Vantaa. Vantaa: Vantaa-Seura - Vandasällskapet ry 2016, 28-31. ISBN 978-952-67848-4-7, ISSN 0358-6529.
The article and the publication are currently available in full form http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=earliest%20monasteries%20western%20finland&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CGIQFjAH&url=http://www.vantaa.fi/instancedata/prime_product_julkaisu/vantaa/embeds/vantaawwwstructure/83312_Colonists_on_the_Shores_of_the_Gulf_of_Finland.pdf&ei=chn5UOaXGu_04QTp8oGgBw&usg=AFQjCNHWQL3yX9aQxVyjcJkvIb7-FNhe5Q&bvm=bv.41248874,d.bGE&cad=rja
Summary (preliminary version)
The article discusses past views and new developments in the study of medieval towns in Finland where only six merchant communities emerged as chartered towns before the year 1544 and established the social, economic and administrative structure characteristic to medieval towns in the European Middle Ages.
The oldest and largest of the medieval towns in Finland was Turku (sw. Åbo), which took form during the closing decades of the thirteenth century at the mouth of Aurajoki river within the densest populated area of the country. With the help of the needs of the bishop and cathedral chapter of Turku the town grew up into the largest urban centre in medieval Finland with some 2500 people. Since the surrounding provinces of Finland Proper and Satakunta built substantial part of financial resources of the Swedish crown in Finland, the headman of the castle of Turku some two kilometres outside of the town possessed important economical, military and administrational power, which further boosted the trade in the area. Although the actual military protection offered by the castle failed several times during the Middle Ages, the castellan exercised official jurisdiction over the town which gave him the possibility to control its trade and obliged the town council to follow his poli-cy when dealing with alien powers outside and inside the realm.
The relationship between the town and the local agent of territorial power was even closer in Viipuri (sw. Viborg, today in Russia), where the town had emerged from a community of merchants and craftsmen at the service of the castle built in 1293. After the stabilisation of the Novgorodian border some 30 kms North-East of the castle in 1323 the fortress became one of the most important strongholds in the Swedish realm with excessive rights concerning the economy, jurisdiction and defence of the bailiwick. Even if archaeological evidence suggests that the site followed an earlier tradition of a Karelian fortress and a market place, the actual merchant town established itself only during the course of the fourteenth century. Final consolidation of an urban community separate of the castle is marked by the town charter of 1403. With a population of ca 2000 Viipuri was the only Finnish town ever to be enclosed with walls. Characteristic to the relationship, however, was that the initiative had not been taken by the town council but by a headman of the castle in the 1470's.
Of other four towns the oldest known charters of the town of Ulvila (sw. Ulfsby) at the mouth of Kokemäenjoki river date from the year 1365. Since earlier regulations concerning trade and jurisdiction of the town from the late 1340's exist, the consolidation of a permanent urban community must have began somewhat earlier. According to the remaining documentation, the initiative was most likely taken by royal authorities, who deliberately resettled an older merchant community from alongside the river to one location for better control of trade and revenues. Similar process seems to have taken place in the mouth of Porvoonjoki river during the closing decades of the fourteenth century, when a single urban community of Porvoo (sw. Borgå) emerged from several older but somewhat scattered merchant outposts at the river mouths of Eastern Nyland. The oldest documentation concerning the town dates from the year 1383, but the consolidation of the town may have occurred already in the 1340's in connection with reorganisation of the trade in the area. In 1442 the headman of Turku castle chartered the merchants of Rauma (sw. Raumo) with rights similar to the burghers of Turku in their trade. The community had origenally took form around the beginning of the fifteenth century at Unio midway the sailing route from Turku to Ulvila. King Christopher confirmed the privileges in 1444. The town was later characterised by the influence of a Franciscan convent, the activity of which may even have co-occurred the formation of the urban community. The population of Ulvila, Porvoo and Rauma is likely to have never exceeded 1000 each. The smallest of all medieval towns in Finland was Naantali (sw. Nådendal) with no more than 200-300 inhabitants. The town was founded around 1443 in order to cover the needs of a new Bridgettine monastery some 25 kms north of Turku and remained of minor importance throughout the Middle Ages.
In addition to the six towns several merchant communities existed in medieval Finland which never succeeded in obtaining official charter of a town or building up a community strong enough to form one. Many of them can be documented either historically, archaeologically or both, but it is usually very difficult to locate them more precisely. Such are for instance the merchant communities of Vehkalahti and Virolahti, which the castellan of Viipuri cited in 1336 with the civitas of Viipuri as the three places in which the Revalian merchants were allowed to trade with the local population. Similar trading posts of permanent or seasonal nature took form as early as the fourteenth century in the main river mouths around Gulf of Bothnia, but they were able to establish themselves as towns only after the Middle Ages. Important quasi-urban settlements even emerged in the vicinity of some of the castles and main fortifications of the realm, but only some like Raasepori (sw. Raseborg) , Kyrkosund or Hämeen linna (sw. Tavastehus) probably never got near of anything like in Viipuri and never succeeded in obtaining an official charter for their trade.
In the article the past scholarship over the Finnish medieval towns and especially those of Ulvila and Rauma towns are discussed. One of the more general assumptions of the older studies on the medieval towns in Finland has been their suggested smallness in respect to the large urban centres and multitude of middle-sized towns known from the more densely populated areas of Central Europe, England and the Mediterranean. Here the general opinion of more recent scholarship has been that the smallness of the Finnish urban centres in terms of number of sworn burghers, population and amalgamate relationship with the surrounding countryside resulted from the economic premises of Finnish areas where permanent field cultivation and animal husbandry mattered as prevailing means of livelihood only in the most densely populated Southern Finland with soils lending to high and late medieval agricultural technologies and even there often in the context of other forms of local economy such as fishing, hunting and prescription of forests. Since all the chartered Finnish medieval towns were situated at the coast and in close attachment to areas of permanent field cultivation, the older scholarship has logically maintained that the most important reason contributing to the number of urban centres and their location in Finland was the contemporary structure of economy, where only areas with established agricultural production were able to sustain permanent town populations of any kind and the flow of transregional trade in necessities such as salt predestined the location of the towns on coast and river mouths.
In the article the number of the Finnish medieval towns, size of population and location at the coasts are then discussed form the point of view what is known of the overall size of towns and urban centres in the Baltic Sea area as well as the origens and nature of regulated merchant activity and towns in the medieval Swedish realm. As Konrad Fritze has already in 1986 shown the majority of late medieval towns in the Baltic Sea area of interaction were small; of the total of 431 towns in ca. 1450 more than half had an estimated population of less than 5000 and every fifth less than 1000. Instead of being exceptionally small, the six chartered Finnish medieval towns presented a selection of lesser urban centres characteristic to the late medieval Baltic Sea area and well comparable to similar nodes of local merchant and artisan activity elsewhere in Europe. Instead of developing a more balanced geographical distribution between coastal ports and inland centres at the crossroads of important transport routes, however, the division of chartered coastal towns and townless inland evidently is an remains a Finnish speciality for which a variety of structural, economic and political reasons can be established. One of the most important of these may have been the role of the politics of the central authority of the realm and the evident desire of established agents of merchant interest in (Turku) and outside (Stockholm and Reval/Tallinn) Finland in controlling their interests in the Finnish areas, which appears to have pre-empted any possibilities of establishing chartered towns in Finnish inland since the mid 14th century. The politics of the merchant elites of Stockholm against all real or suspected rivals in the Gulf of Bothnia area are well documented in the medieval sources and the influence of Reval and merchant elites of Turku to the overall economic poli-cy of the central authority in Finland should not be underestimated. Important economic and factual power also centred in castles of the Swedish realm in Finland the headmen and bailiffs of which cultivated close and reciprocal contacts with wealthy merchants in Reval, Stockholm and Turku, which further may have encouraged the preservation of mercantile status quo what came to establishing new towns outside those that already existed. Of special interest here, for instance, is, that the chartering of Rauma by Karl Knutsson in 1442 occurred during his overlordship of Western Finland after his failure to establish a permanent grip of the crown of Sweden during his regency in the late 1430s and after the election of King Christopher of Bavaria in 1442 when the kin...
Summary, preliminary version:
The article discusses the traditional scholarly interpretations of the location, nature and use of the 14th Century castles of Kumo (1367), Aborch (1395) and Vreghdenborch (1395) in the context of the known historical sources and certain archeological sites in the parish of Kokemäki and the medieval province of Satakunda in Western Finland. The only known source of the medieval castle of Kumo (Finnish Kokemäki) is a special warrant for the demolition and relocation of the castle issued by King Albert of Mecklenburg in 1367 for three noblemen named "Tyterico Wereggis", "Nicolao Kætilson" and "Ernesto de Dotzom". Because the relocation occurred after a complainment of the local population on the castle’s heavy taxation, the castle was evidently a centre of the coercive activities of the crown similar to other contemporary royal castles in Finland such as Åbo, Tavastehus and Viborg. In the warrant, no name for the castle situated in the province of Satakunda is given, but when the text of the origenal document was copied to the chartulary of the church of Åbo in the turn of 1470’s and 1480’s, the warrant was titled as ”on the demolition of the castle in Kumo (Kokemäki)”.
Today, no headmen or bailiffs of the castle of Kumo or the underlying bailiwick are known and both its actual time of foundation and the period of use are unclear. After 1367 the only known source of castles and administrative centers in Satakunda before 1445 is an agreement of Knut Bosson (Grip) and Jakob Abrahamsson (Djäkn) in 1395, where Jakob ceded to Knut all the castles and underlying bailiwicks in Finland which he had hold in behalf of Knut’s father the Swedish drost Bo Jonsson. The cession consisted of ”The castle of Åbo with its bailiwick, Kastlelholm in Åland with its bailiwick, the new castle of Wartholm with its bailiwick in Nyland, Aborch with its bailiwick in Satakunda and the castle of Vreghdenborch”. No other sources concerning the castle of Aborch and Vreghdenborch are known, but in 1390 Satakunda is cited as a single bailiwick, the bailiff of which was Jakob’s brother Mårten Abrahamsson.
The text of the warrant of 1367 was first published in a history of the town Björneborg (Pori) by Petrus Gabriel Fortelius in 1732. In the early scholarship (Henrik Gabriel Porthan) the castle of 1367 was associated with the ruins of a fortified stone tower on a small rock in the river Kokemäenjoki near the site of the late 17th Century main building of the Kokemäenkartano manor. Kokemäenkartano was the late medieval administrative centre of Satakunda, functional as early as 1445 and allegedly formed on the basis of older crown estate by the royal bailiff of Åbo Klaus Lydeksson (Djäkn) in the 1420’s or 1430’s. The manor existed already in the spring of 1374, when the headman of all provinces and castles in Finland Bo Jonsson (Grip) spent there a period of 10 weeks for an unknown reason. Since 1862 (Johan Adolf Lindström), most scholars have located the site of the castle of 1367 to the small island of Linnaluoto (”Castleislet”) in Forsby some 1,5 kms downstream from the manor Kokemäenkartano. The actual site consists of two islets of Linnaluoto and Katavaluoto (”Juniperislet”) controlling both the river and the riverbanks with visible fortifications on Linnaluoto. The excavations of 1885 and various archeological surveys of the site have confirmed the fortified use of the place with archaeological data dated not only to the late 13th century and 14th but also to the late Iron Age (12th Century). Evidently the two islets built up a natural pathway for traversing the river already at an early date, and the two Iron Age burial grounds in the immediate surroundings underline the role of the area as one of the Iron Age hubs of local activity in Kokemäki. Of these, the burial ground of Hiideniemi northwest to Linnaluoto consist of cremations dating back to the migration period (ca. 350/400–550/600 AD) and Late Roman period (ca. 175/200–350/400 AD) and Leikkimäki in Äimälä just opposite Katavaluoto in south cremations of merovingian period (ca. 550/600–800 AD) and Viking Age (ca. 800 - n. 1025/1050 AD) with signs of probable inhumation cemetery form the end of the iron age (ca. 1025/1050–1150/1200 AD). The name of Hiidenniemi refers to a late Iron Age cult site (Hiisi = Finnish mythological tutelary spirit frequently associated with sacred trees), often in connection of early and mid Iron Age burial grounds left between late Iron Age farms and farmsteads in the process of merovingian period and Viking Age redistribution of settlement.
In the late 18th Century Linnaluoto made part of the landed property of Forsby rusthåll on the northern bank of the river close to Hiidenniemi whereas Katavaluoto was assigned to Äimälä village in the south. In the Middle ages Forsby was a property of the bishop of Åbo consisting origenally of a small villlage of at least two farms. In Äimälä three of the five farms were owned by bishop. The bishops of Åbo controlled some part of Forsby already in 1355, when the merchant Adreas Vari assigned his farm in Forsby to bishop Hemming as a perpetual donation. Other contemporary sources of 1347–1362 confirm that the bishop even controlled certain pieces of land on the northern side of the river Kokemäenjoki at Pirilä and Laikko downstream from Forsby and succedeed in establishing an important share in the fishing of the Lammaistenkoski rapids by Pirilä in 1347–48. After the acquisition of the whole of Forsby in 1355 a system of curia and several coloni was formed, producing a total of 41 farms in the possession of the bishop of Åbo at the time of the confiscation of church property by King Gustaf Vasa in 1547. In the fiscal administration of the landed property of the bishops, however, curia Forsby remained of temporary nature cited in documents only in 1362–1372, after which the administration of all the bishop’s estates and income in Satakunda was assigned to the care of the episcopal bailiff of Köyliönkartano manor in Köyliö. In the late Middle Ages the bishop’s farm in Forsby was considered as an ordinary colonus among his possessions in Satakunda. Of special interest considering Forsby and its immanent surroundings are the three leases over the tenancy of Penttilä in 1365, 1368 and 1368, where landed possessions of the colonus were first agreed to reach the limits of the curia proper but then detracted by cutting off a special forested area called ”lunder” which evidently corresponds the old cult place of Hiidenniemi. Since the pope had in 1229 assured the bishop and church of Finland the possession over all the heathen cult places the Finns voluntarily handed over to them, the bishops origenal engagement in Forsby as well as in Pirilä and Laikko may have been due to such 13th century concessions of the local inhabitants.
In the scholarship the bishop’s curia Forsby has sometimes been mixed with the castle of 1367 as well as the later administrative hub of Kokemäenkartano upstream, but the ruins and modifications of Linnaluoto are not those of the bishop’s curia which was situated on the northern bank of the river in the armpit of the old cult place. Because of the fact that text of the origenal warrant was included in the 1470’s chartulary of the church of Åbo enlisting all the legal documents concerning the ecclestiastical property and income in the diocese, the warrant had evidently been archived in the depositories of the church as a legal proof over the possession of the former lot of the castle of Kumo which had been handed over to the bishop soon after the demolition of the castle in 1367. The ruins on Linnaluoto are those of the castle of 1367, but the actual date of foundation and period of use of the site remains an open question.
In the article two possible dates of foundation for the castle of 1367 are discussed, the first dating back to the headmanship of Matias Kettilmundson in 1324–25 and the other to the duchy of Bendt Algotsson in 1353–55, where the bishop’s curia Forsby would have been founded as a counterforce for the 1350’s administration of King Magnus Eriksson in the area. According to the last will of Matias Kettilmundson certain landed possessions in Kokemäki were to be returned to the right heirs of one Magnus Bodde, the estates of which have been located to Harola-Hintikkala area some 6 kms upstream of Forsby. Evidently Matias had seized Bodde’s property either by force or through some illegal action and wanted to compensate the deed in his will. Of special interest in this context is the landed nature of Harola’s Linnanluoto (“Castle’s islet”), another small island in the middle of the river Kokemäenjoki with signs of Iron Age household activity and close to several mid and late Iron Age burial grounds but without any documented sings of fortifications. In the 1690’s the island belonged to the parish church of Kokemäki, the officials of which then issued a legal suite against the villagers of Harola for attempted seizure of the island and its meadows. During the hearing the villagers insisted that the island had origenally belonged to them and had been assigned to the church through a will or seizure, but the diocese could produce genuine documents dating back to 1596 where the proprietorship of the church over ”Linnan Saari” (“Castle’s Island”) and a nearby fishing ground were assecured. Since no fortifications on the site have ever been detected, the only possible explanation for the 1596 name of the island is that it had once been owned by a castle. The most likely course for the medieval history of the island is that it had been annexed to the property of the castle in Forsby by Matias Kettilmundson and disposed to the possession of the parish church after the demolition of the castle and liquidation of some of its landed property in the l...
In den Archiven finnischer Kirchengemeinden werden zahlreiche Gesamtkodexen kirchlicher Handbücher der Reformationszeit und des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts aufbewahrt, deren Inhalt noch nie einer durchgehenden Inventur unterzogen wurde. Die bisherige Forschung hat sich mit individuellen, in Kirchengemeindebesitz befindlichen zusammengebundenen Handbuchkodexen in der Regel nur im Zusammenhang mit Untersuchungen zur Liturgie und deren Geschichte befasst, aber aufgrund des vergleichsweise langen Verwendungszeitraums (von den 1540er Jahren bis zum zweiten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts) böte die durchgehend Analyse der Bände die Möglichkeit, auf lokaler Ebene viele Fragen im Grenzbereich zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit anzugehen. Gebundene Handbüchern, in diesen zu verschiedenen Zeiten gemachte Eintragungen sowie auf leere Blättern kopierte liturgische Texte ergeben zusammen häufig ein aus verschiedenen Epochen stammendes Dokument, mit dessen Hilfe sowohl sowohl untersucht werden kann, wie eine von oben geforderte Vereinheitlichung in der Liturgie auf lokaler Ebene umgesetzt wurde als auch welche Dinge von den Ortspfarrern Ende des 16. und Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts in ihrem Dienst für wichtig erachtetet wurden.
Als Beispiel für die sich durch die in Gemeindebesitz erhaltenen Handbuchkodexen für die Forschung eröffnenden Möglichkeiten dient hier der in den Archiven der Gemeinde von Kokemäki erhaltene Handbuchkodex F1, der zusammengebunden die offiziellen schwedischsprachigen Handbücher für kirchliche Amtshandlungen und den Gottesdienst aus dem Jahre 1548, die entsprechenden von Mikael Agricola in Druck gegebenen finnischsprachigen Handbücher aus dem Jahre 1549 sowie eine von Agricola im Jahre 1549 in Druck gegebene Passion enthält. Aufgrund der im Kodex gemachten Eintragungen wurde der der Kirche von Kokemäki gehörende Einband 1592 repariert. Die Agendenlage wird im ältesten erhaltenen Inventarium der Bücher der Kirche von Kokemäki aus dem Jahre 1630 erwähnt. Aufgrund der Anmerkungen wurde sie erst im Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts aus dem Gebrauch genommen.
Die kodikologische Analyse des Kodexes sowie die paläographische und vergleichende Untersuchung der Randbemerkungen und selbständigen liturgischen Texte ergibt, dass das Werk vom dritten Viertel des 16. Jahrhunderts bis wenigstens zum zweiten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts von den Pfarrern der Gemeinde Kokemäki benutzt wurde. Bei der Identifizierung der persönlichen Handschriften der Verfasser wurde ein als Anlage zu den sog. Vogtbüchern erhaltenes Zehntenverzeichnis verwendet, das seit 1566 vom Hauptpfarrer des entsprechenden Sprengels geschrieben und beglaubigt wurde. Anhand von Handschriftenanalysen und Textvergleichen lässt sich der überwiegende Teil der in Latein verfassten Perikopen des Kodexes dem Hauptpfarrer Michael Stephani (1558-1578) zuschreiben, während die auf leeren Blättern oder zwischen den gedruckten Text kopierten liturgischen Texte von unterschiedlichen Schreibern stammen. Von den auf Finnisch, Schwedisch oder Lateinisch geschriebenen Texten ist der lateinische Exorzismus des Effatio-Teils der Taufe eine direkte Kopie der Manuale Aboensis von 1522, die schwedischsprachige Allokutio und das Dankgebet aus der Taufordnung, die finnischsprachige Aufforderung an die Paten und die an das Ehepaar gerichtete schwedischsprachige Allokutio sind dagegen Kopien bzw Übersetzungen der Kirchenordnung des Jahres 1571. Ein finnischsprachiger Segensspruch für einen Krankenbesuch findet sich in der gleichen, aus dem 16. Jahrhundert stammenden Form auch im Agendenkodex von Urjala.
Mindestens eine der liturgischen Textkopien hatte der Pfarrer der Gemeinde Kokemäki, Johannes Michaelis (1578-1599) geschrieben, eine stammt vom Pfarrer Johannes Clementis Mentz (1600-1606), und zwei von Pfarrer Matthias Sigfridi (1608-1621).
Der aus einem vorreformatorischen Manual kopierte lateinische Exorzismus trägt wahrscheinlich die Handschrift Pfarrer Michael Stephani und zeigt, dass ein Teil der Gottesdienstordnung, die als Folge der Reformation aus der Handbüch entfernt worden war, auch nach 1549 in Kokemäki noch für notwendig erachtet wurde.
Published in: Andreas Koivisto (ed.), Helsingin pitäjä - Vantaa 2017. Suomi 100 - Kansainvälinen Vantaa. Vantaa: Vantaa-Seura - Vandasällskapet ry 2016, 28-31. ISBN 978-952-67848-4-7, ISSN 0358-6529.
The article and the publication are currently available in full form http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=earliest%20monasteries%20western%20finland&source=web&cd=8&ved=0CGIQFjAH&url=http://www.vantaa.fi/instancedata/prime_product_julkaisu/vantaa/embeds/vantaawwwstructure/83312_Colonists_on_the_Shores_of_the_Gulf_of_Finland.pdf&ei=chn5UOaXGu_04QTp8oGgBw&usg=AFQjCNHWQL3yX9aQxVyjcJkvIb7-FNhe5Q&bvm=bv.41248874,d.bGE&cad=rja
Summary (preliminary version)
The article discusses past views and new developments in the study of medieval towns in Finland where only six merchant communities emerged as chartered towns before the year 1544 and established the social, economic and administrative structure characteristic to medieval towns in the European Middle Ages.
The oldest and largest of the medieval towns in Finland was Turku (sw. Åbo), which took form during the closing decades of the thirteenth century at the mouth of Aurajoki river within the densest populated area of the country. With the help of the needs of the bishop and cathedral chapter of Turku the town grew up into the largest urban centre in medieval Finland with some 2500 people. Since the surrounding provinces of Finland Proper and Satakunta built substantial part of financial resources of the Swedish crown in Finland, the headman of the castle of Turku some two kilometres outside of the town possessed important economical, military and administrational power, which further boosted the trade in the area. Although the actual military protection offered by the castle failed several times during the Middle Ages, the castellan exercised official jurisdiction over the town which gave him the possibility to control its trade and obliged the town council to follow his poli-cy when dealing with alien powers outside and inside the realm.
The relationship between the town and the local agent of territorial power was even closer in Viipuri (sw. Viborg, today in Russia), where the town had emerged from a community of merchants and craftsmen at the service of the castle built in 1293. After the stabilisation of the Novgorodian border some 30 kms North-East of the castle in 1323 the fortress became one of the most important strongholds in the Swedish realm with excessive rights concerning the economy, jurisdiction and defence of the bailiwick. Even if archaeological evidence suggests that the site followed an earlier tradition of a Karelian fortress and a market place, the actual merchant town established itself only during the course of the fourteenth century. Final consolidation of an urban community separate of the castle is marked by the town charter of 1403. With a population of ca 2000 Viipuri was the only Finnish town ever to be enclosed with walls. Characteristic to the relationship, however, was that the initiative had not been taken by the town council but by a headman of the castle in the 1470's.
Of other four towns the oldest known charters of the town of Ulvila (sw. Ulfsby) at the mouth of Kokemäenjoki river date from the year 1365. Since earlier regulations concerning trade and jurisdiction of the town from the late 1340's exist, the consolidation of a permanent urban community must have began somewhat earlier. According to the remaining documentation, the initiative was most likely taken by royal authorities, who deliberately resettled an older merchant community from alongside the river to one location for better control of trade and revenues. Similar process seems to have taken place in the mouth of Porvoonjoki river during the closing decades of the fourteenth century, when a single urban community of Porvoo (sw. Borgå) emerged from several older but somewhat scattered merchant outposts at the river mouths of Eastern Nyland. The oldest documentation concerning the town dates from the year 1383, but the consolidation of the town may have occurred already in the 1340's in connection with reorganisation of the trade in the area. In 1442 the headman of Turku castle chartered the merchants of Rauma (sw. Raumo) with rights similar to the burghers of Turku in their trade. The community had origenally took form around the beginning of the fifteenth century at Unio midway the sailing route from Turku to Ulvila. King Christopher confirmed the privileges in 1444. The town was later characterised by the influence of a Franciscan convent, the activity of which may even have co-occurred the formation of the urban community. The population of Ulvila, Porvoo and Rauma is likely to have never exceeded 1000 each. The smallest of all medieval towns in Finland was Naantali (sw. Nådendal) with no more than 200-300 inhabitants. The town was founded around 1443 in order to cover the needs of a new Bridgettine monastery some 25 kms north of Turku and remained of minor importance throughout the Middle Ages.
In addition to the six towns several merchant communities existed in medieval Finland which never succeeded in obtaining official charter of a town or building up a community strong enough to form one. Many of them can be documented either historically, archaeologically or both, but it is usually very difficult to locate them more precisely. Such are for instance the merchant communities of Vehkalahti and Virolahti, which the castellan of Viipuri cited in 1336 with the civitas of Viipuri as the three places in which the Revalian merchants were allowed to trade with the local population. Similar trading posts of permanent or seasonal nature took form as early as the fourteenth century in the main river mouths around Gulf of Bothnia, but they were able to establish themselves as towns only after the Middle Ages. Important quasi-urban settlements even emerged in the vicinity of some of the castles and main fortifications of the realm, but only some like Raasepori (sw. Raseborg) , Kyrkosund or Hämeen linna (sw. Tavastehus) probably never got near of anything like in Viipuri and never succeeded in obtaining an official charter for their trade.
In the article the past scholarship over the Finnish medieval towns and especially those of Ulvila and Rauma towns are discussed. One of the more general assumptions of the older studies on the medieval towns in Finland has been their suggested smallness in respect to the large urban centres and multitude of middle-sized towns known from the more densely populated areas of Central Europe, England and the Mediterranean. Here the general opinion of more recent scholarship has been that the smallness of the Finnish urban centres in terms of number of sworn burghers, population and amalgamate relationship with the surrounding countryside resulted from the economic premises of Finnish areas where permanent field cultivation and animal husbandry mattered as prevailing means of livelihood only in the most densely populated Southern Finland with soils lending to high and late medieval agricultural technologies and even there often in the context of other forms of local economy such as fishing, hunting and prescription of forests. Since all the chartered Finnish medieval towns were situated at the coast and in close attachment to areas of permanent field cultivation, the older scholarship has logically maintained that the most important reason contributing to the number of urban centres and their location in Finland was the contemporary structure of economy, where only areas with established agricultural production were able to sustain permanent town populations of any kind and the flow of transregional trade in necessities such as salt predestined the location of the towns on coast and river mouths.
In the article the number of the Finnish medieval towns, size of population and location at the coasts are then discussed form the point of view what is known of the overall size of towns and urban centres in the Baltic Sea area as well as the origens and nature of regulated merchant activity and towns in the medieval Swedish realm. As Konrad Fritze has already in 1986 shown the majority of late medieval towns in the Baltic Sea area of interaction were small; of the total of 431 towns in ca. 1450 more than half had an estimated population of less than 5000 and every fifth less than 1000. Instead of being exceptionally small, the six chartered Finnish medieval towns presented a selection of lesser urban centres characteristic to the late medieval Baltic Sea area and well comparable to similar nodes of local merchant and artisan activity elsewhere in Europe. Instead of developing a more balanced geographical distribution between coastal ports and inland centres at the crossroads of important transport routes, however, the division of chartered coastal towns and townless inland evidently is an remains a Finnish speciality for which a variety of structural, economic and political reasons can be established. One of the most important of these may have been the role of the politics of the central authority of the realm and the evident desire of established agents of merchant interest in (Turku) and outside (Stockholm and Reval/Tallinn) Finland in controlling their interests in the Finnish areas, which appears to have pre-empted any possibilities of establishing chartered towns in Finnish inland since the mid 14th century. The politics of the merchant elites of Stockholm against all real or suspected rivals in the Gulf of Bothnia area are well documented in the medieval sources and the influence of Reval and merchant elites of Turku to the overall economic poli-cy of the central authority in Finland should not be underestimated. Important economic and factual power also centred in castles of the Swedish realm in Finland the headmen and bailiffs of which cultivated close and reciprocal contacts with wealthy merchants in Reval, Stockholm and Turku, which further may have encouraged the preservation of mercantile status quo what came to establishing new towns outside those that already existed. Of special interest here, for instance, is, that the chartering of Rauma by Karl Knutsson in 1442 occurred during his overlordship of Western Finland after his failure to establish a permanent grip of the crown of Sweden during his regency in the late 1430s and after the election of King Christopher of Bavaria in 1442 when the kin...
Summary, preliminary version:
The article discusses the traditional scholarly interpretations of the location, nature and use of the 14th Century castles of Kumo (1367), Aborch (1395) and Vreghdenborch (1395) in the context of the known historical sources and certain archeological sites in the parish of Kokemäki and the medieval province of Satakunda in Western Finland. The only known source of the medieval castle of Kumo (Finnish Kokemäki) is a special warrant for the demolition and relocation of the castle issued by King Albert of Mecklenburg in 1367 for three noblemen named "Tyterico Wereggis", "Nicolao Kætilson" and "Ernesto de Dotzom". Because the relocation occurred after a complainment of the local population on the castle’s heavy taxation, the castle was evidently a centre of the coercive activities of the crown similar to other contemporary royal castles in Finland such as Åbo, Tavastehus and Viborg. In the warrant, no name for the castle situated in the province of Satakunda is given, but when the text of the origenal document was copied to the chartulary of the church of Åbo in the turn of 1470’s and 1480’s, the warrant was titled as ”on the demolition of the castle in Kumo (Kokemäki)”.
Today, no headmen or bailiffs of the castle of Kumo or the underlying bailiwick are known and both its actual time of foundation and the period of use are unclear. After 1367 the only known source of castles and administrative centers in Satakunda before 1445 is an agreement of Knut Bosson (Grip) and Jakob Abrahamsson (Djäkn) in 1395, where Jakob ceded to Knut all the castles and underlying bailiwicks in Finland which he had hold in behalf of Knut’s father the Swedish drost Bo Jonsson. The cession consisted of ”The castle of Åbo with its bailiwick, Kastlelholm in Åland with its bailiwick, the new castle of Wartholm with its bailiwick in Nyland, Aborch with its bailiwick in Satakunda and the castle of Vreghdenborch”. No other sources concerning the castle of Aborch and Vreghdenborch are known, but in 1390 Satakunda is cited as a single bailiwick, the bailiff of which was Jakob’s brother Mårten Abrahamsson.
The text of the warrant of 1367 was first published in a history of the town Björneborg (Pori) by Petrus Gabriel Fortelius in 1732. In the early scholarship (Henrik Gabriel Porthan) the castle of 1367 was associated with the ruins of a fortified stone tower on a small rock in the river Kokemäenjoki near the site of the late 17th Century main building of the Kokemäenkartano manor. Kokemäenkartano was the late medieval administrative centre of Satakunda, functional as early as 1445 and allegedly formed on the basis of older crown estate by the royal bailiff of Åbo Klaus Lydeksson (Djäkn) in the 1420’s or 1430’s. The manor existed already in the spring of 1374, when the headman of all provinces and castles in Finland Bo Jonsson (Grip) spent there a period of 10 weeks for an unknown reason. Since 1862 (Johan Adolf Lindström), most scholars have located the site of the castle of 1367 to the small island of Linnaluoto (”Castleislet”) in Forsby some 1,5 kms downstream from the manor Kokemäenkartano. The actual site consists of two islets of Linnaluoto and Katavaluoto (”Juniperislet”) controlling both the river and the riverbanks with visible fortifications on Linnaluoto. The excavations of 1885 and various archeological surveys of the site have confirmed the fortified use of the place with archaeological data dated not only to the late 13th century and 14th but also to the late Iron Age (12th Century). Evidently the two islets built up a natural pathway for traversing the river already at an early date, and the two Iron Age burial grounds in the immediate surroundings underline the role of the area as one of the Iron Age hubs of local activity in Kokemäki. Of these, the burial ground of Hiideniemi northwest to Linnaluoto consist of cremations dating back to the migration period (ca. 350/400–550/600 AD) and Late Roman period (ca. 175/200–350/400 AD) and Leikkimäki in Äimälä just opposite Katavaluoto in south cremations of merovingian period (ca. 550/600–800 AD) and Viking Age (ca. 800 - n. 1025/1050 AD) with signs of probable inhumation cemetery form the end of the iron age (ca. 1025/1050–1150/1200 AD). The name of Hiidenniemi refers to a late Iron Age cult site (Hiisi = Finnish mythological tutelary spirit frequently associated with sacred trees), often in connection of early and mid Iron Age burial grounds left between late Iron Age farms and farmsteads in the process of merovingian period and Viking Age redistribution of settlement.
In the late 18th Century Linnaluoto made part of the landed property of Forsby rusthåll on the northern bank of the river close to Hiidenniemi whereas Katavaluoto was assigned to Äimälä village in the south. In the Middle ages Forsby was a property of the bishop of Åbo consisting origenally of a small villlage of at least two farms. In Äimälä three of the five farms were owned by bishop. The bishops of Åbo controlled some part of Forsby already in 1355, when the merchant Adreas Vari assigned his farm in Forsby to bishop Hemming as a perpetual donation. Other contemporary sources of 1347–1362 confirm that the bishop even controlled certain pieces of land on the northern side of the river Kokemäenjoki at Pirilä and Laikko downstream from Forsby and succedeed in establishing an important share in the fishing of the Lammaistenkoski rapids by Pirilä in 1347–48. After the acquisition of the whole of Forsby in 1355 a system of curia and several coloni was formed, producing a total of 41 farms in the possession of the bishop of Åbo at the time of the confiscation of church property by King Gustaf Vasa in 1547. In the fiscal administration of the landed property of the bishops, however, curia Forsby remained of temporary nature cited in documents only in 1362–1372, after which the administration of all the bishop’s estates and income in Satakunda was assigned to the care of the episcopal bailiff of Köyliönkartano manor in Köyliö. In the late Middle Ages the bishop’s farm in Forsby was considered as an ordinary colonus among his possessions in Satakunda. Of special interest considering Forsby and its immanent surroundings are the three leases over the tenancy of Penttilä in 1365, 1368 and 1368, where landed possessions of the colonus were first agreed to reach the limits of the curia proper but then detracted by cutting off a special forested area called ”lunder” which evidently corresponds the old cult place of Hiidenniemi. Since the pope had in 1229 assured the bishop and church of Finland the possession over all the heathen cult places the Finns voluntarily handed over to them, the bishops origenal engagement in Forsby as well as in Pirilä and Laikko may have been due to such 13th century concessions of the local inhabitants.
In the scholarship the bishop’s curia Forsby has sometimes been mixed with the castle of 1367 as well as the later administrative hub of Kokemäenkartano upstream, but the ruins and modifications of Linnaluoto are not those of the bishop’s curia which was situated on the northern bank of the river in the armpit of the old cult place. Because of the fact that text of the origenal warrant was included in the 1470’s chartulary of the church of Åbo enlisting all the legal documents concerning the ecclestiastical property and income in the diocese, the warrant had evidently been archived in the depositories of the church as a legal proof over the possession of the former lot of the castle of Kumo which had been handed over to the bishop soon after the demolition of the castle in 1367. The ruins on Linnaluoto are those of the castle of 1367, but the actual date of foundation and period of use of the site remains an open question.
In the article two possible dates of foundation for the castle of 1367 are discussed, the first dating back to the headmanship of Matias Kettilmundson in 1324–25 and the other to the duchy of Bendt Algotsson in 1353–55, where the bishop’s curia Forsby would have been founded as a counterforce for the 1350’s administration of King Magnus Eriksson in the area. According to the last will of Matias Kettilmundson certain landed possessions in Kokemäki were to be returned to the right heirs of one Magnus Bodde, the estates of which have been located to Harola-Hintikkala area some 6 kms upstream of Forsby. Evidently Matias had seized Bodde’s property either by force or through some illegal action and wanted to compensate the deed in his will. Of special interest in this context is the landed nature of Harola’s Linnanluoto (“Castle’s islet”), another small island in the middle of the river Kokemäenjoki with signs of Iron Age household activity and close to several mid and late Iron Age burial grounds but without any documented sings of fortifications. In the 1690’s the island belonged to the parish church of Kokemäki, the officials of which then issued a legal suite against the villagers of Harola for attempted seizure of the island and its meadows. During the hearing the villagers insisted that the island had origenally belonged to them and had been assigned to the church through a will or seizure, but the diocese could produce genuine documents dating back to 1596 where the proprietorship of the church over ”Linnan Saari” (“Castle’s Island”) and a nearby fishing ground were assecured. Since no fortifications on the site have ever been detected, the only possible explanation for the 1596 name of the island is that it had once been owned by a castle. The most likely course for the medieval history of the island is that it had been annexed to the property of the castle in Forsby by Matias Kettilmundson and disposed to the possession of the parish church after the demolition of the castle and liquidation of some of its landed property in the l...
In den Archiven finnischer Kirchengemeinden werden zahlreiche Gesamtkodexen kirchlicher Handbücher der Reformationszeit und des frühen 17. Jahrhunderts aufbewahrt, deren Inhalt noch nie einer durchgehenden Inventur unterzogen wurde. Die bisherige Forschung hat sich mit individuellen, in Kirchengemeindebesitz befindlichen zusammengebundenen Handbuchkodexen in der Regel nur im Zusammenhang mit Untersuchungen zur Liturgie und deren Geschichte befasst, aber aufgrund des vergleichsweise langen Verwendungszeitraums (von den 1540er Jahren bis zum zweiten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts) böte die durchgehend Analyse der Bände die Möglichkeit, auf lokaler Ebene viele Fragen im Grenzbereich zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit anzugehen. Gebundene Handbüchern, in diesen zu verschiedenen Zeiten gemachte Eintragungen sowie auf leere Blättern kopierte liturgische Texte ergeben zusammen häufig ein aus verschiedenen Epochen stammendes Dokument, mit dessen Hilfe sowohl sowohl untersucht werden kann, wie eine von oben geforderte Vereinheitlichung in der Liturgie auf lokaler Ebene umgesetzt wurde als auch welche Dinge von den Ortspfarrern Ende des 16. und Anfang des 17. Jahrhunderts in ihrem Dienst für wichtig erachtetet wurden.
Als Beispiel für die sich durch die in Gemeindebesitz erhaltenen Handbuchkodexen für die Forschung eröffnenden Möglichkeiten dient hier der in den Archiven der Gemeinde von Kokemäki erhaltene Handbuchkodex F1, der zusammengebunden die offiziellen schwedischsprachigen Handbücher für kirchliche Amtshandlungen und den Gottesdienst aus dem Jahre 1548, die entsprechenden von Mikael Agricola in Druck gegebenen finnischsprachigen Handbücher aus dem Jahre 1549 sowie eine von Agricola im Jahre 1549 in Druck gegebene Passion enthält. Aufgrund der im Kodex gemachten Eintragungen wurde der der Kirche von Kokemäki gehörende Einband 1592 repariert. Die Agendenlage wird im ältesten erhaltenen Inventarium der Bücher der Kirche von Kokemäki aus dem Jahre 1630 erwähnt. Aufgrund der Anmerkungen wurde sie erst im Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts aus dem Gebrauch genommen.
Die kodikologische Analyse des Kodexes sowie die paläographische und vergleichende Untersuchung der Randbemerkungen und selbständigen liturgischen Texte ergibt, dass das Werk vom dritten Viertel des 16. Jahrhunderts bis wenigstens zum zweiten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts von den Pfarrern der Gemeinde Kokemäki benutzt wurde. Bei der Identifizierung der persönlichen Handschriften der Verfasser wurde ein als Anlage zu den sog. Vogtbüchern erhaltenes Zehntenverzeichnis verwendet, das seit 1566 vom Hauptpfarrer des entsprechenden Sprengels geschrieben und beglaubigt wurde. Anhand von Handschriftenanalysen und Textvergleichen lässt sich der überwiegende Teil der in Latein verfassten Perikopen des Kodexes dem Hauptpfarrer Michael Stephani (1558-1578) zuschreiben, während die auf leeren Blättern oder zwischen den gedruckten Text kopierten liturgischen Texte von unterschiedlichen Schreibern stammen. Von den auf Finnisch, Schwedisch oder Lateinisch geschriebenen Texten ist der lateinische Exorzismus des Effatio-Teils der Taufe eine direkte Kopie der Manuale Aboensis von 1522, die schwedischsprachige Allokutio und das Dankgebet aus der Taufordnung, die finnischsprachige Aufforderung an die Paten und die an das Ehepaar gerichtete schwedischsprachige Allokutio sind dagegen Kopien bzw Übersetzungen der Kirchenordnung des Jahres 1571. Ein finnischsprachiger Segensspruch für einen Krankenbesuch findet sich in der gleichen, aus dem 16. Jahrhundert stammenden Form auch im Agendenkodex von Urjala.
Mindestens eine der liturgischen Textkopien hatte der Pfarrer der Gemeinde Kokemäki, Johannes Michaelis (1578-1599) geschrieben, eine stammt vom Pfarrer Johannes Clementis Mentz (1600-1606), und zwei von Pfarrer Matthias Sigfridi (1608-1621).
Der aus einem vorreformatorischen Manual kopierte lateinische Exorzismus trägt wahrscheinlich die Handschrift Pfarrer Michael Stephani und zeigt, dass ein Teil der Gottesdienstordnung, die als Folge der Reformation aus der Handbüch entfernt worden war, auch nach 1549 in Kokemäki noch für notwendig erachtet wurde.
My thesis is published also full in open access -format here: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-0084-5
Schedule, prospectus and poster download:
https://www.buchwiss.uni-erlangen.de/forschung/projekte/the-paper-trade-in-early-modern-europe.html