The Wars, Anger and Persecution, Hunger and Epidemics, as well as Unfavorable Conditions

My attitudes have been transferred to me from the past

When I make the question: ”Are my attitudes mine?”, it’s easy to see that I’ve "inherited" at least some of them from my parents. When I think further, there are many things that have been inherited or passed from one generation to another, such as habits and patterns, tendencies and abilities, orientation of career, poverty or richness and, of course, genetic diseases. We receive from our parents the world, which they’ve built, with its limits, as well as the basic tone of life, with its joys and sorrows.

My ancestors and their families have had to experience the wars, persecution and even hunger. Some of them have suffered from epidemic diseases. While others have been more fortunate, others have lived in poverty. The “frames” of life, barriers and experiences they have had in their lifetime have for its part shaped their lives and attitudes and had an effect on their interests, way of thinking and the way they react to for example spiritual and political issues.

Wars:

Over generations there has been wars and battles, near and far.

Among others, the Cudgel War (1596-1597), Battle of Isokyro (19.2.1714), the Finnish War,the Battle of Ruona (1808-1809), the Finnish Civil War (1918) and the Winter War (1939 - 1940) - the Continuation War (1941-1944) have greatly afflicted my ancestors and their children either in their own neighborhoods or further away.

One of my ancestors, the chief Pentti Piri, has fought against the nobility of Sweden during 1596-1597. He fought together with peasants from Lapua and elsewhere Ostrobothnia chief Jaakko Ilkka as their commander. All the captains were arrested and sentenced to death by beheading which was carried out in Kontsaansaari in Kyrö at the end of January 1597.

The Battle of Isokyro was very sad for the families in Laihia and Kyrö. Many wives lost their husbands and children their fathers in the battle. Peasants formed the Swedish-Finnish army reserve force and they fought with only spears as their weapon. They experienced a bitter defeat.

Heikki Klemetti has written in a great local history book, "Kuortaneen vaiheita sanoin ja kuvin", about Heroja’s landlord, juror Lauri Heroja who was in military service for five years in the 1600s and froze his feet in a military expedition in Trondheim, a Norwegian town. I wonder if Lauri has been a member of Charles X Gustav's army in the War of Denmark, 1657 - 1658 ? This question is a good example of the many exciting things a hobbyist genealogist is interested to find out.

The Swedish Army attack on Trondheim Norway in 1718 – 1719 wasn’t successful either. There were many men from Kuortane and Ostrobothnia involved in the invasion attempt led by commander Armfeld. When retreating from the attack the weather in the northern mountains turned very cold and stormy. Many of the men froze to death. In Finland we know the event as “Carolines’ death march”.

Also the Battle of Ruona and Salmi, part of the Finnish War, made the life of the local people in Kuortane difficult. The battle was fought between Swedish and Russian troops on 1.-2.9.1808. The Swedish army was led by Carl Johan Adlercreutz with 5000–6000 men under his command against the Russian army of 9000 men under the command of Nikolay Kamensky. Some of the locals bravely hid themselves in the nearby forest and watched the troops fight.

Obviously the battle had an effect on people during that time and also after that. In Sanna Koivisto’s Pro Gradu – thesis ”Kuortanelainen väestökriisi” , published by the University of Jyväskylä, you can read more about the tribulations of the local people.

My two grandfathers Sulo Aho and Jussi Tuomisto were both defending our fatherland in the Winter War and the Continuation War. Both of them were wounded during the war but as they became healthy they went back to fight and they survived. Together with all the others who fought on behalf of Finland, they helped to save Finland's independence. At my early ages I remembered that they didn’t tell much about the wars, they were silent when children were around. I have gathered some information about their tribulations of the wars from books, war diaries and newspaper articles.

The battle in Terenttilä in 16.12.1939, during the Winter War, was very hard for the communities of Töysä and Kuortane. Many of their men died, wounded or got lost. One man, who got lost, was my grandfather Sulo Aho. The attack of his group wasn’t successful, Sulo was wounded and was left behind on the enemy territory. There he was; motionless on the ground, acting dead, enemies all around him, under shellfire. The weather was very cold and he was freezing. But he survived thanks to his persistence, “sisu” as we Finns say, and faith in God. After four days he was finally free to return to his own troops.

Here you can read more about what happened in Terenttilä: Sulo Aho says the worst battle in which he has been and how he survived.

Here you can find more information about the wars in Finland: ” List of wars involving Finland”

The Anger and Persecution

After the victorious Battle of Isokyro in 1714 the commander of Russian troops, prince Galitzin, was ordered to destroy 100 kilometers wide area in Ostrobothinia to increase security in Sweden’s direction. With such intentions Galitzin continued to march north from Isokyro giving his troops permission to kill all male inhabitants in the region. Then began the era of "Great Wrath". In 1713-1721, during the Great Northern War (1700-1721), the Russians aggressively occupied Finland. Those years are called the “Great Wrath”. The families in Ostrobothnia faced violence and terror. Family members, including women and children, were taken into slavery to Russia.

Destruction of Ostrobothnia and the terror against the civilian population

The Russians terrorized and tortured the civilians in Ostrobothnia systematically during the Great Wrath. Civilians and priests were taken into custody and treated violently. In the 1700s rapes and mass rapes were an established method of warfare. Women were captured and transported to military camps in Turku and Pori. Ostrobothnia wasn’t occupied but about 6 100 lives were lost which was about a quarter of the whole population of the region. There were fast moving units of Cossacks, formed by a few hundred cavalrymen, travelling in the area of Ostrobothnia.

Finnish citizens from a wide area were captured and sent to Russia to work as slaves; particularly to St. Petersburg where according to some sources about 10 000 people worked in the construction sites. According to more recent sources there were more than 20 000 people there. Russian army officers handed the prisoners forward and sold them as slaves.

The most number of people who were taken to slavery were from Ostrobothnia and eastern Finland. 4 600 people, most of whom were children, were taken merely from Ostrobothnia. In addition, about 2 000 men were forced to army. Of the people taken to slavery about 2 000 returned to Finland, some after few years, some decades later. Of the 2 000 soldiers 500 came back.

The Russian Cossacks robbed food from the citizens in the occupied country and locals had to find substitute for food. In many places people fainted with hunger.

Hunger and epidemics, as well as unfavorable conditions

Great Famine of Finland (1695–97) was a time of an unusually cold weather in Finland and its surrounding regions. It’s suspected that a quarter or even a third of the population died of hunger and diseases during that time. The harvest was destroyed many years in a row and it was very common to eat bark bread or other emergency food. The lack of harvest got people to move in groups of beggars which led to spreading of typhoid and other epidemic diseases. Also plant diseases, such as ergot, spread in the unfavorable atmospheric conditions.

In 1862 the groups of starving beggars from Ostrobothnia and Savonia got food from central and southern Finland where the harvest had been fairly good. The Famine of 1866-1868 was the last major famine in Finland. It was a devastating demographic catastrophe which killed 8 % of the Finnish population. For example Ostrobothnia lost up to 20 % of its population in 1867.

Also the plague or bubonic plague ("Black Death") killed Finnish people during the Great Wrath. Finns called it the “big death”. An epidemic plague had transferred from Asia to Tallinn and all travelers from Tallinn were ordered to stay in a mandatory quarantine for six weeks. It has been said that the plague was brought to Finland by a peasant from the village of Koukela in Kymi’s mansion who had secretly visited Tallinn and managed to evade the quarantine. The peasant had had fever after he had returned to Finland. The plague affected the southern and south-western Finland. In the city of Turku the townsfolk threw people who had died of the plague out of windows onto the streets. Sometimes they even threw out people who hadn’t yet died of the disease.

Tuberculosis was also a difficult national disease for hundreds of years, up to the beginning of the 1900s. The situation back then has been illustrated, among other things, in a study of tuberculosis in 1929-33 which showed that 88 % of conscripts had the tuberculosis infection and approximately one Finn died of the disease every hour. Tuberculosis was overcome in the late 1940s when the first effective medicine against the disease was invented and nursing homes were established broadly throughout the country to take care of the infected patients.

What comes to the spreading of the Tuberculosis it’s noteworthy that the bacteria causing the disease appeared also on animals. People who worked with the infected animals or drank infected milk had a very high risk of getting the tuberculosis. A large part of the people in rural areas, which meant a large part of the southern Ostrobothnians too, belonged to the high risk group. The most significant bacteria causing tuberculosis on animals is ‘mycobacterium bovis’ which causes ‘bovine tuberculosis’. A lot of people were infected after consuming contaminated dairy products.

Among other diseases, intense influenza epidemics afflicted many families. In the beginning of the 1500s the epidemics were experienced quite frequently. There were outbreaks of flu also during the following centuries but they were milder. In 1918, an influenza epidemic called the "Spanish influenza" spread into a vicious pandemia throughout the world.

All in all, apart from the epidemics there hasn’t been any single disease which has affected the death-rate of the population more than tuberculosis in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Also cholera and smallpox caused a lot of deaths in the world of that period.

13.11.2014 Jari Tuomisto