The Church and Medieval Finland

Chapter 1 The Church and Medieval Finland Like most studies of the sixteenth-century Reformations, this one begins with a survey of the relevant medieval background. From the twelfth century onward, the Roman Catholic Church established Finland as its northeastern frontier. In addition to advancing Roman Catholic Christianity, the medieval church contributed to Finland’s development in three ways that endured into the Reformation era and beyond. First, the church advanced the interests of temporal power. Second, it contributed to the creation of Finland as a distinct entity. Third, the church served as a major importer of European cultural inno- vations. Moreover, the church had been engaged in significant and meaning- ful reform for decades before the arrival of Lutheran reform in the sixteenth century. Land and People The medieval Diocese of Turku encompassed the territory of modern-day Finland except for its most northern and eastern parts: Lapland, northeastern Oulu Province, Kainuu, and Northern Karelia. It reached into the western half of the Karelian Isthmus, which no longer belongs to Finland. The diocese was about the size of the American state of Utah, slightly smaller than Romania and slightly larger than Belarus. Forests covered most of this land. Much of the rest was and is filled with water—lakes, swamps, and rivers. In the early seventeenth century, a Dutch traveler, Andreas van Wouv, wrote that “this land [Finland] is rich in water. One cannot go a mile without encountering a lake or river, all filled with fish.”1 The country’s waterways provided the transpor- tation infrastructure for Finland’s churches: about three-fourths of medieval Finland’s churches lay by rivers and lakes.2 Those seeking a church often had to travel a long way. In his history of Scandinavia published in 1555, Olaus Mag- nus mentions that long distances limited Finns’ church attendance to once or 1 Sune Hildebrand, ed., En holländsk beskicknings resor i Ryssland, Finland och Sverige 1615– 1616 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1917), 220–221. 2 Jukka Korpela, The World of Ladoga: Society, Trade, Transformation, and State Building in the Eastern Fennoscandian Boreal Forest Zone c. 1000–1555 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2008), 197. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004354708_003 the church and medieval finland 23 twice a year, usually for baptisms.3 Over a half-century later, Andreas van Wouv described the eastern Savo (Savolax) region as one in which “churches are very few in this land. I believe fully and firmly, that many of the inhabitants have never seen, much less been in a church. Over the course of the seventy miles that we traveled we saw four at the most five churches; they are made of wood or stone and are built as shabbily as a peasant barn. Once a year an examiner or preacher comes through the land to preach and baptize, but he cannot reach all people.”4 By 1570 Finland’s population had reached at least 300,000.5 The population during the previous centuries had grown slowly but steadily. An abundance of unsettled arable land allowed a growing population to feed itself. To an even greater degree than medieval and early modern Europeans on average, Finns lived from agriculture. Exports consisted of agricultural items, such as butter, fish, pelts, horses, and hides. Only in the seventeenth century would Finland become a major exporter of pine tar and other wood products.6 The country avoided frequent outbreaks of catastrophic population loss from protracted wars, widespread crop failures, and epidemics. For the most part, Finland was largely spared from the most devastating epidemic in European history: the Black Death that spread over Europe in the years 1347–1351. Until the out- break of the Black Death, immigration contributed significantly to Finland’s population growth. Swedes first migrated to Finland’s southwestern regions. From the late twelfth century onward, they colonized the south-central coastal region of Uusimaa (Nyland). Most Swedish settlements arose in largely unin- habited areas along the coastal regions. Swedish as well as German merchants migrated to Finland’s cities in the medieval era.7 No reliable numbers exist concerning the total number of immigrants or the linguistic makeup of Finland’s medieval population. Probably less than 3 Olaus Magnus, Pohjoisten kansojen historia: Suomea koskevat kuvaukset, ed. Kustaa Vilkuna, trans. Kaarle Hirvonen (Helsinki: Otava, 1977), 73–74. 4 Hildebrand, Holländsk beskicknings resor, 221 5 Kari Pitkänen, “Suomen väestön historialliset kehityslinjat,” in Suomen väestö, ed. Seppo Koskinen (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 1994), 48; Jouko Vahtola, Suomen historia jääkaudesta Eu- roopan unioniin (Keuruu: Otava, 2003), 60. 6 Sven-Erik Åström, From Tar to Timber: Studies in Northeast European Forest Exploitation and Foreign Trade 1660–1860 (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1988); Yrjö Kaukiainen, “Suomen asuttaminen,” in Suomen taloushistoria, vol. 1, ed. Eino Jutikkala et al. (Helsinki: Tammi, 1980), 106–114; Raimo Ranta, “Ulkomaan- ja kotimaankauppa,” in Suomen taloushistoria, vol. 1, ed. Eino Jutikkala et al. (Helsinki: Tammi, 1980), 266–293. 7 Korpela, World of Ladoga, 274–275; Pitkänen, “Suomen väestön historialliset kehityslinjat,” 48; Vahtola, Suomen historia, 60..

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