colonists on the shores of the gulf of finland

Transcription

COLONISTS ON
THE SHORES OF
THE GULF OF
FINLAND
MEDIEVAL SETTLEMENT IN
THE COASTAL REGIONS OF
ESTONIA AND FINLAND
Editor: Marjo Poutanen
Photo editor: Anu Mönkkönen
CONTENTS
Museum team: Inka Keränen, Andreas Koivisto, Jutta Kuitunen, Anu
Mönkkönen, and Marjo Poutanen
Introduction.................................................................................................4
Translation: articles translated by Jüri Kokkonen, except for Villu Kadakas’
article, edited by Inka Keränen.
Other texts: Johanna Suokas
Cover image: General map no 1 of Uusimaa Province, Samuel Broterus,
1690s / Finnish National Archives
Design and layout: Ten Twelve OÜ
Printed:N-Paino Oy, Lahti 2011
ISBN: 978-952-443-354-9
ISSN: 0783-9162
Vantaa City Museum publications no 22
The material reflects the authors’ views and the Managing Authority cannot
be held liable for the information published by the project partners.
2
Georg Haggrén
The Colonization of Western Uusimaa in the Middle Ages..........................7
Villu Kadakas
First results of new excavations in Padise Monastery.
Further study issues...................................................................................27
Tapio Salminen
Fishing with Monks – Padis Abbey and the River Vantaanjoki
from 1351 to 1429......................................................................................37
Andreas Koivisto
Settlement at the Gubbacka Site.............................................................67
Janne Heinonen
Earth Fill and Medieval Law at Gubbacka in Vantaa................................79
Notes...........................................................................................................90
3
Introduction
The Settlers on the Gulf of Finland - Colonizing the Coasts of Estonia and
Finland in the Middle Ages seminar took place at Lumo Hall in Korso, Vantaa,
on November 12-13, 2010.
The seminar was part of the PAVAMAB - Padise-Vantaa the Middle Ages
Bridge - project that focuses on medieval history. The project constitutes
part of the Central Baltic Interreg IV A program, which will end in 2012. The
project partners consist of Padise municipality in Estonia and the City of
Vantaa in Finland. Cooperation between the two parties is natural, since the
regions have had contacts already in the Middle Ages. Vantaa’s predecessor,
Helsinge Parish, is first mentioned in writing in a document related to Padise
monastery. The document reports that King Magnus Eriksson in 1351 granted
the monks of the monastery the right to fish in the crown-owned waters of
the River Vantaanjoki.
The PAVAMAB project is an interesting example of how historical roots can
lead to present-day profitable cooperation. The project enables wide-range
research on archives and archaeology, and also translates into a thoughtprovoking discussion forum for researchers. Besides this publication, the
concrete results of the project will consist of a joint book presenting the
partners’ research results, a touring exhibition of the project themes, as well
as a public seminar in Estonia.
Archaeological studies aim to create a picture of life in the Middle Ages
in both the Vantaa region and Padise monastery. Another objective is to
analyze the contacts between the two regions. Archaeologist Villu Kadakas,
M.A., presents the results of the first excavations in the Padise monastery.
Meanwhile, archaeologist Andreas Koivisto, M.A., describes how the
medieval village of Gubbacka in Vantaa was colonized. Janne Heinonen,
B.A., tells about land use in Gubbacka from the perspective of archaeological
material and medieval legislation.
Leena Hiltula
Museum Director
Jutta Kuitunen
Project Coordinator
Marjo Poutanen
Project Assistant
The seminar held in Vantaa presented medieval Gulf of Finland from various
perspectives. The articles included in this publication are built on the
seminar lectures. Adjunct Professor of Historical Archaeology at University
of Helsinki, Georg Haggrén, Ph.D., describes exhaustively the colonization
of Länsi Uusimaa in the Middle Ages. The article by Tapio Salminen M.A. of
the University of Tampere focuses on contacts between Padise and Helsinge
Parish from 1351 through 1429. Salminen is currently writing a work on the
Middle Ages in Vantaa as a part of the city’s history book series.
4
5
The Colonization of Western Uusimaa in
the Middle Ages
Georg Haggrén PhD
Adjunct Professor in Historical Archaeology
University of Helsinki
The traditional view
The region of Uusimaa (Sw. Nyland) has traditionally been regarded as an
area that was not settled until the Early Middle Ages, literally a new land,
which would have been almost without settlement at the end of the Iron Age.
According to this view, the coastal regions of the province were colonized
from Sweden, while the inland parts received their settlers especially from
Häme. This viewpoint is crystallized in Suomen kulttuurihistoria (A Cultural
History of Finland), which appeared in the early 2000s: “The barren unsettled
shores of Uusimaa were for a long while a zone of long-distance exploitation
of the Häme Finns of the inland… It was not until the arrival of Swedish
colonists in the 12th and 13th centuries that the northern shores of the Gulf
of Finland were populated.”1
Uusimaa is not the only region in Finland which has raised the issue of
the lack of settlement at the end of the Iron Age. A similar description of
settlement has also been given for Ostrobothnia and even the Åland Islands
are suspected to have been without settlement at the turn of the Viking Age
and the Middle Ages before being colonized from Sweden.2 The idea of the
origin of the Swedish-speaking population of the coastal regions already
crystallized at the end of the Middle Ages, as can be seen from the preface
to Mikael Agricola’s Finnish translation of the New Testament, among other
sources: “… the coastal population of Uusimaa, in the provinces of Borgo
[Borgå, Porvoo] and Raasburi [Raseborg, Raasepori] and the islanders of
Kaland [Kalanti] and the Ostrobothnians who even now speak Swedish, had
first come from Sweden or Golland [Gotland].”3 It was only with regard to
7
the settled area of Finland Proper (Southwest Finland), Häme and Karelia
that scholars agreed that settlement had continued from the Iron Age to the
Middle Ages.
The archaeological notion of the lack of settlement in Uusimaa during the Viking
Age was based on the scarcity of Iron Age finds: hardly any cemeteries were
known from the region and only individual stray finds had been recovered.
The only exceptions in Uusimaa have been the areas of Lepinjärvi in Karjaa
and Bonäs–Fastarby in the inland part of Tenhola, from where Late Iron Age
level-ground cremation cemeteries are known. Even Iron Age settlement at
Karjaa, which has been regarded as rich, is regarded to have disappeared
during the Viking Age.4
The conception of no settlement in Uusimaa during the Late Iron Age has
been so established that for a long while antiquities of the Iron Age were
not even sought. It was not until the end of the 20th century that new pollen
analyses began to undermine this notion, but even now Iron Age activity in
the region has been interpreted as mainly wilderness utilization and longdistance slash-and-burn cultivation.5
farms is available, but in order to chart the abandonment of settlements,
the study was extended chronologically to the 1690s. There were some
900 medieval village and hamlet sites or single farms in Western Uusimaa,
comprising approximately 2,600 farmsteads in the 1550s. As the research
progressed, it could be demonstrated that there were village and hamlet
sites in the region that had already been abandoned before the 1540s.8
Based on the inventories, several archaeological excavations were carried out
in Western Uusimaa in the 2000s, at both Iron Age and medieval sites. While
some of the fieldwork was for purely research purposes, there were also
salvage excavations of antiquities threatened by building projects. This work
led to changes in the overall picture of the Iron Age in Uusimaa.
One of the most extensively investigated sites in Western Uusimaa during
the first decade of the 2000s was the Hanko village (Hangö) area in the
northern part of Hankoniemi Cape. As early as 1998, amateur archaeologists
had already found Iron Age ceramics and few Viking Age artefacts at the site.
The location was Gunnarsängen, the site of the medieval village of Hangö.
Excavations in 2003 revealed more ceramics but no signs of fixed structures.
During the following three summers, excavations were continued in other
Our Maritime Heritage and other projects
Since the turn of the millennium, the early history of Western Uusimaa has
been studied in several projects, as a result of which our traditional views
of the origin of settlement in the region have been questioned or at least
clarified. The overall picture of the colonization of Uusimaa is no longer as
straightforward or black and white as it was less than a decade ago.
The incomplete and outdated archaeological inventory of antiquities in
Western Uusimaa improved considerably at the beginning of the 2000s. In
2002, the three-year EU LEADER+ project ”Vårt maritima arv – Merellinen
perintömme” (Our Maritime Heritage) was launched. It included a systematic
survey of antiquities in the archipelago and coastal zone of the region from
Bromarv in the west to Helsinki in the east. This work was completed in 2005,
and as a result we now have an up-to-date inventory of known prehistoric
antiquities and a large number of sites from historically documented times.6
A project funded by the Kone Foundation on the Western Uusimaa archipelago
and coastal region in the Iron Age and Middle Ages began in 2003, within
which the history of settlement, livelihoods and the environment in the whole
region has been addressed through a few case studies.7
These projects also charted Late Medieval settlement by gathering information
on all the villages and hamlets of Western Uusimaa and the numbers of farms
in them. The starting point was the 1540s, from which the first data on specific
8
Fig. 1.
A late medieval oven foundation excavated in Lapsen puisto park in the village
of Hanko. The oven overlay earlier Viking Age and/or Crusade Period structures.
Photo G. Haggrén 2007.
THE COLONIZATION OF WESTERN UUSIMAA IN THE MIDDLE AGES
9
locations at the site, with finds of numerous medieval antiquities, especially
from the 14th century, but also three glass beads of mainly Crusade Period
date (ca. 1050–1250).9
In 2007 and 2009, fieldwork was continued in Lapsen puisto park, on the
other site of the village of Hanko, where finds from under a medieval layer
included poorly preserved Iron Age remains, some Iron Age ceramics and a
ring of Gotland type dated to the 12th–13th centuries.10 The excavations in
Hanko show that the areas became permanently settled at the end of the Iron
Age. The analysis of the results is still in progress. There are also a few Iron
Age stray finds from the Hankoniemi Cape area, some of which have been
recovered decades ago. The most recent find is a cache of two Viking Age
brooches found in Täktom in the spring of 2010. (Fig. 1)
Already in the 1990s, a small penannular brooch from the Late Iron Age and
few fragments of artefacts, among other items, were found at Söderby in
Snappertuna. In the autumn of 2007 a Crusade Period sword in poor condition
with the remains of an inscription on the blade was found at Orslandet in
Inkoo. Like the brooch from Söderby, the sword was found at a medieval
village or hamlet plot . The finds have not yet been published and it is unclear
whether they are associated with settlement or were originally gathered from
a cemetery to be smelted.11 (Fig. 2)
Fig. 2.
10
A forested slope at Orslandet in Inkoo, where the medieval hamlet plot of
Petars has just been found. Photo G. Haggrén 2007.
In 2006, a cairn excavated at Oxhagaberget in Inkoo proved to be a burial of
Iron Age, presumably Viking Age, date.12 Henrik Jansson has recently noted
that there are a large number of Iron Age burial cairns in the Western Uusimaa
archipelago and coastal region. Excavations have been carried out at only a
couple of sites, which means that the finds and precise datings are still very
limited. Owing to their elevations, many of the cairns were previously dated
to the Bronze Age, which was also the case at Oxhagaberget. Some of the
cairns, however, are at such low elevations that they cannot be older than the
Iron Age.13
Early Iron Age settlement has been known to have existed in the Lake
Lohjanjärvi region in the inland of Western Uusimaa, as indicated by several
cairn cemeteries. On the other hand, there have been hardly any finds from
the Late Iron Age. Among the local place-names, however, are Hiisi and
Moisio, two hamlets that are of particular interest. Hiisi refers to an Iron Age
worship site and Moisio to an early estate. Moisio in Lohja was a medieval
manor, which appears to have had roots in a Late Iron Age estate. It can be
shown that at Lohja, the lands of the parsonage and church were separated
in the Early Middle Ages from a hamlet named Moisio, as was done in several
parishes in Southwest Finland.14 (Fig. 3)
According to the above, it is obvious that there was Late Iron Age settlement
in the environs of the Church of Lohja. This conclusion was confirmed in 2008
when a salvage excavation was conducted at Haukilahti in Hiisi, Lohja by the
National Board of Antiquities. The excavation revealed a dwelling site from
the Viking Age, which proves that there was permanent settlement in the
Lake Lohjanjärvi region at the end of the Iron Age.15
Along with the new finds, the history of settlement and cultivation in Western
Uusimaa was given a completely new perspective through Teija Alenius’s
systematic series of samples of lake and bog sediments from 2003–2005
charting the history of land use throughout the area from Tenhola in the west
to Espoo in the east. The analyses of the samples gave consistent results
with mainly chronological differences. While settlement and cultivation
had become established earlier in some areas than in others, the overall
picture was similar throughout the region. At Orslandet in Inkoo and Älgö
in Tammisaari (present-day Raasepori), both in the outer archipelago, the
beginning of intensive land use, arable farming and the opening of the
landscape fall in the period 630–715 AD. In the coastal zone proper, this took
place ca. 880–1040 AD. Only the sample from Molnträsket in Kirkkonummi
points to a later date, i.e. 1040–1240 AD. In most areas, there are also signs
of extensive land use, possibly including slash-and-burn cultivation, from
before established arable farming.16
11
With reference to his analysis of place-names in Uusimaa, Kepsu observes
that of the Swedish-speaking coastal parishes of Western Uusimaa, Tenhola,
Karjaa, Siuntio, Kirkkonummi and Espoo, in particular, had farms and villages
of Finnish-speakers among the Swedish population. On the other hand, in
Pohja and Degerby in the east part of Inkoo, the place-names are almost
completely Swedish.18
The origin of the Swedish settlement of the southern coast of Finland has
been discussed a great deal since the 19th century. According to most recent
interpretations, the Swedish colonization of the archipelago of Finland Proper
(Southwest Finland) and Western Uusimaa dates from the second half of
the 12th century and the early 13th century. In the second half of the 13th
century, this colonization was followed after the so-called Second Crusade
by a second influx of settlers further to the east in Uusimaa and a third
all the way to Karelia. An important milestone of this colonization was the
founding of Viipuri Castle in 1293 as a base for the Swedes and in support of
colonization.19
Fig. 3.
The surroundings of Lohja Church in a parish map from the early 18th century
(Krigsarkivet, Stockholm). Shown in the map are the church, vicarage, and the
hamlets of Moisio and Hiisi. Photo G. Haggrén.
The origin of Swedish-speaking settlement
The results of pollen analyses, which suggest that there was settlement
in Uusimaa before the Swedish colonization of the Early Middle Ages, find
support in place-name studies. Saulo Kepsu, who has analysed place names
related to settlement and farming in Uusimaa, has observed that in many
places an older material of Finnish names can be noted from under the layer
of Swedish settlement and place-names. For example, the place-name Köklax
in Espoo derived from the Finnish Kaukalahti, meaning a long bay or inlet. A
grass-roots level analysis of agricultural place-names shows that there had
been Finns in many completely Swedish-speaking villages, who apparently
integrated with the new majority population. Finnish place-names survived in
the villages as relics of the ancestral language. In some villages and hamlets,
there are many names of this kind, as for example in Storhoplax in Espoo,
where one of its outlying fields is mentioned in a map from 1691 as Läppo
silda Päldo, a Swedish transliteration of the Finnish Leppäsillanpelto.17
12
The Swedish colonization was already mentioned in the early 14th century
in the so-called Chronicle of Erik, where it is noted in connection with the
founding of Hämeenlinna Castle: “The satto thz land mz crisna men, som iak
vänter at thz star oc än, Thz samma land thz vart alt cristith, jag tror at rytza
konungen mistit” – They settled the land with Christians, who are still there,
the land is now completely Christian, and the Russian king has lost it.”20 While
the chronicle is tendentious, this brief account may nonetheless describe
colonization along the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland, from Hanko to
the gates of Viipuri. The Christian colonists, many of whom were Swedishspeakers settled new areas while the indigenous population was converted
to the new faith.
It has traditionally been maintained that the Swedish colonists came mostly
from the region of Hälsingland. The main evidence for this has been found
in the so-called Helsinge Law applied in church taxes in Uusimaa, and placenames referring to Hälsingland. The name of Helsinge Parish and Helsingfors
(Helsinge rapids) have particularly been underlined. In other respects, placenames referring to Hälsingland are rare in Uusimaa. There is a Helsingby
village in Pernaja in addition to villages named Gästerby in Kirkkonummi, Pohja
and Sipoo. The latter name points to the province bordering on Hälsingland.21
An overview of the expansion of the kingdom of Sweden does not support
the suggestion of colonization from Hälsingland to the southern coastal
region of Finland. The large area of Hälsingland, to the west of the Bothnian
Gulf , did not come under the authority of the Swedish king until the second
quarter of the 14th century. By that time, Uusimaa had already become one
13
of the provinces ruled by the king of Sweden. Like Uusimaa, Hälsingland was
an area of medieval colonization. It had room for colonists, who did not have
to set out on a long sailing voyage to the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland.
Instead, the nearby coast of Ostrobothnia was a natural direction for colonists
leaving Hälsingland for new regions.22
The situation was completely different in Middle Sweden, where the
population had grown in the Early Middle Ages. The resulting population
pressure had led to migration in almost all directions, by no means least to
the east, across the sea to Finland and the Estonian coast. Migration from
Middle Sweden ended at the turn of the 1340s and 1350s, when the plague,
also known as the Black Death, spread into the Baltic region. In many places,
most of the population died of the plague, and thousands of farms were
abandoned in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Population pressure had come
to a natural end, and there was no longer any need or desire to emigrate.23
Saulo Kepsu has demonstrated that most of Swedish place-names in Uusimaa
can be traced back to Middle Sweden, to the provinces in the valley of Lake
Mälaren. Some of the colonists came from the Åland Islands or the coasts
and archipelago of Finland Proper. The colonists from Uppland, Södermanland
and Östergötland that settled in Finland named villages Helsingby, Gästrikby,
Dalakrby or Tjusterby according to individual colonists who had come from
other provinces.24 According to an uncertain item of information recorded
in the early 18th century, a group of colonists had been brought to Uusimaa
from Gästrikland and Hälsingland during the reign of “King Erik the Holy”. It is
possible that a group had come to the valley of the River Vantaanjoki, originally
known as the River Helsinge (Helsingå), and the name of their region of origin
had lived on.25 This exception does not alter the overall picture of the areas of
origin of the Swedish colonists.
The Swedish colonization of Uusimaa has been regarded as a peasant
migration.26 Enfeoffment in lieu for service, however, appears to have played
a significant role in the creation of most of the parishes. This is shown, for
example, by crofts and parcels of land which the manors of Prästkulla,
Gennarby, Karsby and possibly also Lindö had near the parish church of
Tenala. It was noted in 1723 that the croft of Prästkulla dated from the time
when the owners of the manor had built the church on “sterile” land, i.e.
not yet owned by anyone. Prästkulla Manor is already mentioned in sources
from 1351. There is evidence of similar land ownership from Pohja Church,
where the church belonged to the same division of property as the manors
of Gumnäs and Näsby. There were other medieval estates in the near vicinity
such as Brötorp and Gennäs, among others. At Karjaa, the church is in
between lands owned by medieval manors and the lands of the vicarage
were a donation from the enfeoffed class. The church of Inkoo is surrounded
14
by three medieval manors, while in Siuntio the landscape of the church still
reflects the connection between it and the manor of Suitia. Here, the lands
of the church and the vicarage were originally separated from the hamlet of
Tjusterby, where the original estate of the Silfverpatron family also appears
to have been a medieval enfeoffment. The connection between Moisio and
the church of Lohja was already mentioned above. The only distinct exception
is Espoo, where the church and vicarage were founded in the 15th century,
i.e. well after the colonization stage, on land obtained from local peasants.27
All the significant manors of Western Uusimaa had a close connection with
the parish churches. During the Middle Ages, the manors of many coastal
parishes settled by Swedes were surrounded by tenant farms belonging to
them. This suggests the likelihood that colonization had involved prominent
individuals or members of the enfeoffed class, who established residential
manors and took the initiative in founding congregations and the parish
churches. It is known from Norrland in Sweden that the colonization of some
of the northern river valleys was still entrusted in the early 14th century to
nobles who are known by name. Yrjö Kaukiainen has also found evidence of
colonization by members of the enfeoffed class in the parishes around Viipuri
Castle.28
It can be concluded from recent results of research show that there was
sparse “original local” settlement in Western Uusimaa during the Early Middle
Ages. From the turn of the Iron Age and the Middle Ages colonists began to
come from at least three different directions. Finns of Finland Proper came
from the west, while Häme Finns arrived from the north, remaining in their
former wilderness utilization areas in the inland and in Eastern Uusimaa. In
addition, Swedish colonists came in such numbers from beyond the sea and
from the archipelago of Finland Proper that Swedish became the predominant
language of the coastal inhabitants. The Swedish colonists included nobles
and other leading figures, who founded manors surrounded by small tracts
of tenant farms. The majority of the Swedes settled in their new locations as
land-owning farmers. In addition, it is likely that some colonists also came
from Estonia, but their contribution is difficult to distinguish with the means
of place-name research.
The birth of the province of Uusimaa
The oldest surviving mention of Uusimaa (Sw. Nyland) dates from the early
14th century. The king of Sweden at the time was Birger Magnusson, but from
1302 a large part of the kingdom came under the control of his two brothers.
In 1310, the territory of the younger of these, Duke Valdemar, included the
castle provinces of Turku and Häme, a number of areas in Sweden, the Åland
Islands, and Uusimaa, which is now mentioned for the first time.29
15
After this Uusimaa is not mentioned in sources until the 1320s, by which it
had become a largely organized administrative entity, a so-called “province of
the seal” under the authority of the king of Sweden. The earliest information
on the seal of Uusimaa Province is from a document dated 29 May 1326 in
Turku, ratifying a peace agreement between the inhabitants of the castle
province of Turku and the town of Tallinn, with the seals of the provinces of
Finland Proper, Åland, Uusimaa and Häme.30
The official seal was not the only sign of administrative organization in
Uusimaa. In 1326, Vicar Laurentius of Karjaa and Lindvidus, the tax collector
for Uusimaa of the Bishop of Turku negotiated with the town council of
Tallinn over the cargo of a vessel apparently from Uusimaa that had been
shipwrecked off Tallinn.31 The related document shows that the Bishop of
Turku had a designated official for collecting taxes in Uusimaa. Dating from
the same year is the oldest evidence of judicial administration in Uusimaa,
referring to Ingold Djäkni, lagman (legifer) of Uusimaa, “Ingonis Dyækn
legiferi Nylandie”.32 From the following year there is a mention of the bailiff
of Uusimaa, “Gerardo, aduocato Nylandie”, who was probably the influential
nobleman Gerhard Skytte, who appears in later sources.33
It is impossible to say whether the province of Uusimaa was organized
administratively in the 1320s or whether only an exceptionally large number
of documents survive from this decade. Was Uusimaa already regarded
as a separate province in the 13th century or did Duke Valdemar organize
the colonized areas of the northern shore of the Gulf of Finland into an
administrative entity in the early 14th century? Be that as it may, by the 1320s
Uusimaa had become one of the provinces of Sweden.
The earliest mentions of the parishes of Uusimaa also date from the 1320s.
The oldest surviving information on the vicar of Karjaa is from 1326. The vicar
of Porvoo is mentioned in the following year and the vicar of Tenhola in 1329.
The congregations of Inkoo and Kirkkonummi are mentioned in sources in the
1330s. Pohja became a separate parish most likely in the mid-14th century,
and Lohja in the inland is mentioned in 1382. By the end of the Middle Ages,
there were nine church parishes in Western Uusimaa: Espoo, Inkoo, Karjaa,
Kirkkonummi, Lohja, Pohja, Siuntio, Tenhola and Vihti, and the chapelrics of
Karjalohja and Kisko. There were five parishes in Eastern Uusimaa: Helsinki,
Pernaja, Porvoo, Pyhtää and Sipoo. The boundaries of the parishes that
emerged in Uusimaa during the Middle Ages still correspond, over distances
of hundreds of kilometres, with the municipal boundaries that existed at the
beginning of the 21st century.
While the oldest references to the parishes of Uusimaa are from the 1320s,
this does not mean that they were founded only at that time. The older the
16
parish, the less documentary information there is on their origin. In the
Finnish countryside, the formation of congregations, or church parishes,
was integrally related to the establishment of taxation by the church. With
reference to conclusions by Kauko Pirinen and Eljas Orrman, Markus Hiekkanen
has recently suggested that a system of tithing had been organized by the
church by the middle of the 13th century from Tenhola to Espoo in Western
Uusimaa. In this connection, Hiekkanen concludes that of the parishes, or
congregations, of Uusimaa, Inkoo, Karjaa, Kirkkonummi, Lohja and Tenhola
were established between 1220 and 1260, and Porvoo in Eastern Uusimaa
during the third quarter of the 13th century.34
Although the oldest mention of Uusimaa is from the beginning of the 14th
century, the so-called Black Book of Turku Cathedral contains a considerably
older document that may be associated with the formation of parishes
in the region. In a letter dated 24 November 1232 in Anagni, Italy, Pope
Gregory IX urged the Teutonic Knights of Livonia and the Bishop of Finland
to defend Finns who had converted to Christianity against the threat of the
Russians. The heading of this letter notes that it refers to Finland (Proper), i.e.
Southwest Finland, but the list of contents of the Black Book refers to the
threatened area as “terre Nylandiae” (Uusimaa). Since the list of contents
is from the Late Middle Ages, this mention cannot be definitely associated
with Uusimaa. It is, however, highly probable, and could well suit the political
situation of the early 1230s, in which colonists from Sweden and Finland
Proper had spread east from Finland Proper into the area that began to be
called Nyland (Uusimaa – the New Land).35
In taxation carried out by the church, Uusimaa was a distinct area in the
Middle Ages, where tax collection practices differed slightly from those of
Finland Proper, Häme and Karelia. The ecclesiastical Uusimaa of the Middle
Ages, i.e. the region of so-called Helsinge Law, can be defined from tithing
and so-called butter tax records of the 1540s and 1550s. The records of
taxes collected by the church show that the parishes of Uusimaa formed an
area with slightly different boundaries than the castle provinces that were
established in the late 14th century. In the west, half of Kisko, which was
a chapelric of the Parish of Pohja, was included in the castle province of
Turku according to secular administration. Most of Vihti and the taxation area
of Karisjärvi in Lohja were under the rule of Häme Castle, which also had
authority over a number of villages in the northern parts of the parishes of
Eastern Uusimaa. In the east, Uusimaa, as an ecclesiastical entity, extended
far to the east of Pyhtää and the River Kymijoki. The parishes of Vehkalahti
and Virolahti, the southern villages of the chapelric of Säkkijärvi and a few
farms in the Parish of Viipuri originally belonged to Uusimaa in ecclesiastical
administration, but were later joined to the castle province of Viipuri.36
17
The first contemporary item of information on church taxation in the area
of so-called Helsinge Law in Uusimaa is from 1331. This was by no means
the first time when a ruling was given in this matter. In 1345, an additional
food tax previously ordered by Bishop Ragvald II of Turku was ratified. Bishop
Ragvald was in office from 1309 to 1321, which means that taxation by the
church had been ruled by ca. 1320 at the latest. As discussed above, taxation
was presumably agreed upon for the first time in the 13th century. In the
1320s, the area of Helsinge Law and apparently the province of Uusimaa
extended from Tenhola in the west to Virolahti in the east.37
Bo Jonsson appointed the Swedish nobleman Tord Röriksson (Bonde) as the
first commandant of Raasepori by the autumn of 1378 at the latest, when
Tord Bonde dated a letter at the castle in which he donated properties in
Sweden to his spouse.40 Bo Jonsson died in 1386 and the castle was soon
taken over by the crown. Tord Bonde, however, remained in Raasepori and
was its commandant for over 20 years. For practical purposes, the founding
of the castle and the organization of the castle province can be said to have
been done by him. (Fig. 4)
Colonization in Uusimaa relied on the support of a castle or fort built in
Porvoo, according to which the river flowing past it was named. The parish
that formed around the fortress was similarly named Borgå (Fort or Castle
River), Porvoo in Finnish. In the same fashion the Swedes established a few
decades later, in 1293, Viipuri Castle, at the end of the so-called Third Crusade
to Finland. The province of Karelia was gradually organized under the rule of
the castle, and the eastern part of the colonization of Uusimaa was added to
it.
The castle provinces of Porvoo and Raasepori
Western Uusimaa was originally part of the province of Finland Proper. In
the early 14th century, when Duke Valdemar still ruled over Finland Proper,
Häme and Uusimaa, among other regions, Viipuri and Karelia were under the
authority of King Birger. Later, in the 14th century, the whole of Uusimaa was
ruled by the commandant of Viipuri Castle. In the early 1370s, the province of
Uusimaa was divided into an eastern and western part, the castle provinces
of Porvoo and Raasepori respectively.38 Their boundary passed between
present-day Espoo and Helsinki, i.e. the region to the west of which there
were areas colonized from Finland Proper, and to the east of which wilderness
zones utilized by the Häme Finns.
Albrecht of Mecklenburg, who ruled Sweden in the 1370s was deeply in debt
and had to grant castle provinces to nobles, especially the Chief Justice (Sw.
drots) of Sweden Bo Jonsson Grip, as security for his loans. This also concerned
Western Uusimaa by the autumn of 1374 at the latest. It now became the
castle province of Raasepori (Sw. Raseborg), where a castle of this name
was built as its centre. Eastern Uusimaa, or the province of Porvoo, was first
ruled by Turku and from approximately 1399 by the commandant of Viipuri
Castle. In Porvoo, however, an administrative centre and defensive structure
similar to Raasepori was not built and administration was concentrated in
the crown manor of Porvoo, which had been founded under the authority of
Viipuri Castle.39
18
Fig. 4.
Raasepori Castle. Photo G. Haggrén 2009.
19
The building – and upkeep – of a masonry castle like Raasepori required
a great deal of resources. In practice, they were obtained through a new
levying of taxes in Western Uusimaa. It can be shown that the division of the
region into taxed areas and taxes levied on land were based on the founding
of Raasepori castle and the related province in the 1370s. Settlement was
organized into administrative units or tax areas (Sw. bol) and administrative
parishes. There are examples from elsewhere in medieval Sweden of similar
new levyings of taxes for the building of a new castle.41
The levying of taxes in the province of Raasepori and the defining of the
related land tax units, or tax marks, took place at the beginning of Bo Jonsson’s
possession of the pledged property and Tord Bonde’s period as commandant,
in the late 1370s or at the latest by the end of the 1380s, the beginning of the
crown castle period. A similar tax mark unit was not used in the province of
Porvoo, which partly reflects the different historical development of Eastern
and Western Uusimaa in the Late Middle Ages.42
The division of parishes and tax areas followed by crown administration differed
in many of their details from the earlier ecclesiastic system of parishes and
allotted accommodation fees for tax collection purposes. A fragment of the
so-called Cadastre of Erik the Pomeranian from 1413 tells that the province
of Raasepori consisted of eight administrative parishes, divided into a total
of 102 tax areas. There is precise data on the tax areas from a list surviving
from 1451. Comparing these earliest tax records with the oldest cadastres
surviving from the 1540s, listing each farm and its owner, we can note that
only minor changes took place in the taxation and administrative division of
the castle province. There were now 101 tax areas, and no new levyings had
been carried out since the end of the 14th century.43
By combining information from cadastres and other sources, we can
note that around 1560 there were approximately 2,600 farms in the eight
administrative parishes of Raasepori province. The largest parish was Pohja,
with approximately 460 farms, and the smallest was Kirkkonummi with only
some 200 farms. At the same time, there were roughly 2,500 farms in the
five parishes of Porvoo province. Most of the farms in Uusimaa were on
farmer-owned taxed land. In Western Uusimaa less than 10%, i.e. 250 farms,
were in the possession of the crown, the church or the nobility. In Eastern
Uusimaa, the nobility owned a slightly larger proportion of the farms than in
the castle province of Raasepori. While in Porvoo and Pernaja, in particular,
there were many farms belonging to the nobility, only some 11% of all farms
in the province were on other than farmer-owned taxed land.44
The province of Raasepori consisted of the whole of Western Uusimaa from
Tenhola to Espoo. When Raasepori Castle was established, settlement was
densest in the old settled areas of the church parishes, and was sparser in
20
the inland and to the east. At the end of the Middle Ages, settlement grew
in the latter areas. There was no new levying of taxes, however, even though
the number of farms within the tax areas increased.45
Settlement in Western Uusimaa peaked around 1560, after which it did not
rise until the 18th century. Wars, the mandatory quartering of troops, severe
taxation and poor crop yields led to the abandonment of farming properties.
The late 16th and early 17th century were especially difficult periods, and
by 1635 over 30% of the farms of Raasepori province had been abandoned.
There was a decline of settlement at the same time in many other parts of
South Finland, e.g. in Finland Proper and the province of Porvoo.46
The abandonment of settlements in the Middle Ages
Cadastres of the Early Modern Period show how settlement had consolidated
in the northern and eastern parts of Raasepori province towards the end of
the Middle Ages. This was part of the late medieval expansion of settlement,
which has often been underlined in studies. According to the traditional view,
there was hardly any abandonment of settlements during the Middle Ages in
Finland. This conclusion is based on archive sources, which do not give much
information on the abandonment of settlement, although scholars have noted
from an early stage 39 abandoned bol units mentioned in the oldest cadastres
concerning Finland Proper. They have been regarded as small medieval
abandoned units of settlement – an exception to the rule. It was not until
17th-century maps and the results of archaeological fieldwork were included
in studies in the 2000s that researchers noticed that the abandonment of
settlements was much more widespread than previously thought. The oldest
cadastres of Raasepori province list only a few abandoned bol units or other
abandoned hamlets and villages, but when place-name studies and historical
maps are considered, the number of abandoned villages is multiplied several
times over.47
A clue is provided by böle place-names, which have been proven to often
indicated abandoned settlement. It was typical for such an abandoned hamlet
to be often divided among neighbours. For example, Storböle in Barölandet
in Inkoo was divided among two other hamlets, Barö and Espings, with the
boundary passing through the plot of the abandoned hamlet. In the spring of
2006, an abandoned hamlet site was discovered at Storböle, with a few finds
dating mainly from the 14th century.48
Place-names of abandoned hamlets have not always survived. For example,
Kullåkersbacken in the west part of the hamlet of Berg in Karjaa (Snappertuna)
has been dated archaeologically to the High Middle Ages. The hamlet was
presumably abandoned already around the middle of the 14th century. The
site of this unnamed hamlet can still be seen in a map from 1703, in which
21
Kullåkersbacken is surrounded by two fields of the same size. They show that
two-year crop rotation farming typical of older agriculture was practised at the
site, with half of the fields being cultivated while the other half lay fallow.49
Until the early 2000s, studies of medieval settlement in Western Uusimaa
depended completely on historical research relying on written sources. In
recent years, there have been numerous excavations of village sites with
results offering completely new opportunities for the study of the history of
settlement and livelihoods in the region. The village of Hanko has revealed
several building remains, a cemetery and an ancient field. In Inkoo, there
have been excavations at Storböle at Barölandet and adjacent Orslandet at
the sites of the abandoned hamlets of Norrby, Gammelby and Petars. In
2003, several house foundations were excavated in Kauklahti, Espoo, the
oldest of which dated from turn of the 13th and 14th centuries. Surprisingly,
this site also revealed a cemetery, and in 2006 a hitherto unknown medieval
cemetery was also discovered at Finno in Espoo.50
The most extensive and systematic excavations of medieval settlement
sites in Western Uusimaa have been conducted at Mankby in Espoo. This
village was abandoned in 1556, when its lands were incorporated into the
crown manor of Esbogård. The site remained unused and was spared any
future development. The well-preserved village site was discovered in 2004.
Still visible in the terrain are some 20 building foundations, the boundary
of the cleared plot area and five ancient roads. The Espoo City Museum
decided to organize excavations for the public at Mankby in 2008, the 550th
anniversary year of the city. The results were so promising that excavations
have continued each summer season since then. The aim is to continue
excavations one house or entity at a time and to gradually prepare a synthesis
on the development and structure of the village. The earliest dates obtained
so far for the village are from the end of the 13th century, but the village most
likely contains earlier layers.51 With its eight farms, the village of Mankby is
known from historical sources of the mid-16th century, but only archaeological
excavations can provide a deeper view of its history and structure and the
everyday lives of its inhabitants in the Middle Ages. (Fig. 5)
Excavations in recent years have demonstrated how archaeological source
material can be used for exploring medieval history of settlement and
livelihoods. The analysis of the recovered materials is still in progress, but
already at this stage we know a great deal about the dwellings and dietary
habits of the people of Uusimaa in the Late Middle Ages. Various artefact
finds shed light on everyday life and special occasions, and tell of contacts
overseas with Estonia, Sweden and as far as Germany. The excavation show
that rural village and hamlet sites are of great research potential – medieval
archaeology is no longer solely the study of castles, churches, towns and
other monuments.
22
Fig. 5. The medieval village site of Mankby in Espoo. Drawing by Maija Holappa.
23
Summary
During the 2000s the overall picture of the Middle Ages in Western Uusimaa
has changed a great deal. Archaeology, in the form of both surveys and
excavations, has provided new information. The same is also true of analyses
of historical maps. Although available maps are from as late as the mid-1650s
even in the best cases, they contain information on much older phenomena.
In addition, written sources that have long been used in historical research
still reveal new information. This concerns both individual medieval letters
and bailiffs’ accounts of the 16th century, which can provide a comprehensive
overview of the whole province.
to ensure resources, new taxes were levied on the area under the rule of
the castle. This area was divided into eight administrative parishes slightly
differing from the old church parishes of Western Uusimaa. This levying of
taxes makes it possible to chart the overall picture of settlement in the castle
province in the late 14th century. From then on, settlement consolidated in
the east and in the inland, but – contrary to previous assumptions – there was
considerable abandonment of settlements in many places in Uusimaa during
the Late Middle Ages. The farming community found itself from time to time
in a serious crisis.
In summary, it can be said that, contrary to previous assumptions, Uusimaa
was not an uninhabited area for long-distance slash-and-burn cultivation
or wilderness utilization. There was arable farming and sparse Finnish
settlements in the area of the future province. The Finnish inhabitants were
joined in the Early Middle Ages by Swedish colonists, including nobles, who
played an important role when churches and parishes were established in the
region.
Settlement in Uusimaa presumably originated from sparsely located individual
farms or clusters of a few farm households. The number of farms gradually
grew, with new ones established, for example, for new generations or when
new settlers arrived alongside the earlier population, in addition to completely
new farm households in new locations. As settlement grew and consolidated,
it became necessary to agree on rights to resources. On the basis of joint
interests, adjacent farms grew into villages with shared fields, meadows
and forests. In the coastal parishes, neighbours agreed on the boundaries of
individual villages or the joint areas of several villages before the end of the
Middle Ages. By the beginning of Early Modern times, a typical hamlet or
small village in Western Uusimaa consisted of 2–7 farms, while to the east
in the province of Porvoo the villages were slightly larger on the average. The
farmsteads were clustered in the village plot next to which were two large
fields used in rotation, and beyond them nearby meadows and small outlying
fields, with the forests of the village further away. The basic features of the
Western Uusimaa landscape remained unchanged in this form until the end
of the 18th century and land redivision, and in many places until the 19th
century.
Uusimaa became a separate region in the 13th century and by the 1320s at
the latest it had evolved into an organized province within the Kingdom of
Sweden. In the 1370s, it was divided into two so-called castle provinces.
Raasepori Castle was built as the centre of the western province. In order
24
25
First results of new excavations in
Padise Monastery. Further study issues.
Villu Kadakas MA
AGU EMS
The ruins of the medieval Padise Monastery (Fig. 1) stand on the bank of River
Kloostri (Fig. 2) ca 50 km south-west from Tallinn. This building complex of
the fortified Cistercian monastery is a rather well-preserved monument and
has a remarkable position in the study of medieval architecture of Estonia.1
The joint project between the Municipality of Padise and City of Vantaa has
enabled to continue in the summer of 2010 the long ago ceased archaeological
study of the ruin. In July and August the joint team of Finnish and Estonian
archaeologists had an opportunity to dig several test pits in different areas of
the site, trying to solve single problems and gather preliminary information
for the fieldwork of 2011.
History of the monastic site
In the 13th century Padise area belonged to the Daugavgrīva (German
Dünamünde) Monastery situated near Riga in present Latvia.2 A chapel of
unknown form and building material has been mentioned in Padise in a
document from 1281 referring to an argument between the Monastery of
Daugavgrīva and the bishop of Tallinn.3 The erection of the main buildings
of the monastery probably did not start before 1305, when the buildings of
Daugavgrīva Monastery were sold to the Livonian Order4, and the monks
subsequently had to move their headquarter to Padise. In 1317 the Danish
king Erik Menved gave a permission to build the monastery buildings of
stone, which has been considered the real beginning of major construction
works.5 A grave setback took place during the uprising of St George’s night,
when 28 monks were killed and the buildings set to fire.6 A consecration of
the monastic church by the bishop of Tallinn has been recorded in 1448.7 The
monastic complex was taken over by the Livonian Order in 1558, right after
27
the beginning of the Livonian War (1558–1583) and then officially secularized
in 1559.8 During the war the buildings were used as a fortification by different
armies and it suffered damages especially in the siege of 1580 when the
Swedish army conquered it from the Russian army.9 The partially destroyed
building complex probably functioned as a royal manor for a while, but lost its
military significance by the 17th century.
Fig. 1.
The ruins of Padise in 2010. Photo Villu Kadakas.
In 1622 the von Ramm family received the area and the manor from the
Swedish king and soon the building complex was rebuilt into their manorial
residence, dividing the church into smaller rooms and two storeys. Some
of the other building parts still standing were used for various economic
purposes and the already ruined south-western parts as a quarry. The manorial
residence was moved to a new house (Fig. 2d) built east of the ruin at the end
of the 18th century and the monastic complex was mostly left as a romantic
ruin10 whilst still using some cellars for storing goods.
Previous fieldwork results
Because of scarcity of written documents especially from the monastic
period, knowledge about the site is mostly to be obtained from fieldwork:
excavations and study of the building remains. Large amounts of crumble
28
debris were removed and restorative works carried out during the 1950s and
1960s, together with archaeological excavations and field-study of the building
remains carried out by Villem Raam. Even before the peak of the fieldwork
he managed to publish a small trilingual introductory book about the site in
195811, which was very soon outdated by fresh information. The excavation
and restoration works stopped abruptly in 1969 and Raam managed to publish
his most important post-excavation results only in a short general article in
1988.12 Finnish readers are uniquely in a lucky situation – this article has been
translated and published twenty years ago in Finnish13 – Estonian readers do
not have an advantage.
Fig. 2.
Situation plan of the ruins of Padise.
a. inner courtyard, b. northern courtyard/bailey, c. eastern bailey,
d. 18th c. manor house, e. River Kloostri, f. former moat, g. pond, h. road.
Plan compiled by Villu Kadakas.
According to Villem Raam, the original layout was a compact quadrangular
body (the so called conventional quadrangle) with four wings around the
central courtyard (Fig. 3) with the 13th century chapel as the oldest part of
the complex, jutting out southwards from the south-western corner of the
quadrangular body.14 The church constituted the northern wing (Fig. 2).15 The
final layout included a basement storey under all four wings including the
church. There was an exceptional chapel for side altars under the eastern
part of the church (Fig. 3d). Communication between the wings of the
basement storey and the main storey was performed through a two-storey
cloister around the inner courtyard (Fig. 2a). The eastern, southern and the
western wings all had a second storey the rooms of which were accessed
FIRST RESULTS OF NEW EXCAVATIONS IN PADISE MONASTERY. FURTHER STUDY ISSUES.
29
via separate staircases from the rooms of the main storey. Later, the western
courtyard with a tower in the south-western corner and a gate tower with a
complicated system of drawbridges was added to the western side (Fig. 3c).
The monastic site was untypically heavily fortified – in addition to the gate
tower (Fig. 3e), the inner gate of the quadrangle had a portcullis and the
whole building complex had small turrets in corners (Fig. 1) and a wall-walk
with a crenellated battlement on top of the outer walls.
Fig. 3.
Basement floor plan of
the ruins of Padise.
a. inner courtyard
b. northern courtyard/bailey
c. western courtyard/bailey
d. chapel
e. cellars under gate tower
f. discovered portal in east wing
g. discovered portal in south wing
h. walls of a supposed earlier building
i. pillar foundations of supposed cloister
j. discovered fragments of earlier walls
in north wing
Plan compiled by Villu Kadakas.
30
According to Raam16 the first building period (1317–1343) ended with the
uprising of St. George’s Night when the 28 monks were killed and the
buildings set to fire. The outer wall and the walls of the basement storey of
the four wings were probably completed by that time. During the second
period (ca 1375–1425) the erection of the four wings was mostly completed
with the outer wall equipped with a crenellated battlement and the vaulted
church. The third period (1425–1448) saw the completion of the refectory and
the kitchen complex in the southern wing and the western annex with a new
gate tower and a new courtyard. During the latter part of the Livonian War
the building complex was held by Russian troops (1576–1580) who probably
added some defences.17
Fig. 4.
Medieval portal base in the east wing. Photo Villu Kadakas.
One major modification to Raam’s view has been introduced during the
last 20 years, upon which all specialists agree: the protruding part of the
building in the southwest corner of the main quadrangular body does not
include remains of the 13th century chapel, but rather rooms of some profane
function and of much later origin.18 While digging some test pits, proof for
this claim was found in 2003.19 Later Kersti Markus has even supposed
that the original chapel might not have been situated on the site of the later
monastery at all, but ca 8 km westwards in the village of Paeküla,20 which has
31
also given the name to the monastery.21 Recently Jaan Tamm has published
a richly illustrated general overview of the building and study history of the
monastery, presenting some minor dates and other details differing from
Raam’s view.22 In addition, the carved reliefs in the church have been of
special interest to scholars.23
the eastern wing was a base of a demolished limestone portal (Fig. 3f, 4)
between the southernmost basement room of the east wing and the big
cellar in the south wing.
Research issues of the present project
Kaur Alttoa, the leader of the present study project, has suggested a
possibility that the monks of Daugavgrīva had erected a filiation with an
economic function – a grange – somewhere on the site of the later monastery
before moving their headquarters there.24 Later Alttoa has concluded that
almost all of the building parts that were standing at the end of the monastic
period and we see today do not predate the 15th century – only some walls
in the western wing of the main quadrangle seem to come from an earlier
construction phase (Fig. 3a).25 Therefore the focus of the new study project
– fieldwork of years 2010 and 2011 – is obviously on the two issues: to find
and specify 1.) the remains of the supposed 13th century grange, including
the chapel mentioned in written records and 2.) the buildings of the 14th
century monastery. At the same time information is to be gathered for the
conservation project of the ruin, e.g. data about original floor levels in the
basement rooms.
Fieldwork results of 2010
In July and August 2010 regular test pits were dug into all the basement
rooms of the western, northern and eastern wings (Fig. 3). As in the western
wing the walls have been heavily rebuilt during restoration works, the test
pits only revealed construction debris from the 20th century. In the basement
rooms of the northern wing, i.e. under the church some pits were targeted
near irregularities of the outer walls – supposed traces of demolished inner
walls (Fig. 3j) and traces of earlier vault corbels. In the two westernmost
rooms remains of two earlier inner walls were represented by more or
less rectangular patches of lime mortar under the filling layers, which were
exposed. Judging by the most common finds in these two rooms – pieces of
18th–19th century glass bottles (Fig. 5f) – the von Ramm family has probably
used the rooms for storing their bier. Nevertheless the only medieval find from
these rooms – a small richly ornamented stoneware fragment identified to
belong to the so-called Falcke group26 from the 15th century (Fig. 5g)27 – was
probably the highlight among this season’s finds. In the eastern basement
room of the northern wing – the chapel under the church – a foundation was
discovered (Fig. 3d) under the southern wall, running in a quite different
direction compared to the wall on top of it – hypothetically a remnant from
an earlier building. The most remarkable detail discovered in the test pits of
32
Fig. 5.
Finds from 2010 excavations
a. Ointment jar 17th-18th century, possibly from Raeren (present day Belgium)
b. shard of local pot with wave ornamentation, ca 1300
c. shard of painted redware bowl ca 17th century
d. splinter of painted window glass, supposedly from medieval church
e. shard of china cup ca 18th century
f. piece of glass bottle from Lelle manufactory (North-Estonia) 19th century
g. shard of Falcke group stoneware (Eastern Germany) 15th century
h. shard of Siegburg stoneware pitcher (Germany) ca 1400
Photos Villu Kadakas (a, c-h), Kristi Tasuja (b).
The test pits of the south wing were targeted on specific questions about the
possible earlier building parts in the western cloister area and in the southwestern corner area of the main rectangular body of the monastic complex.
The test pits provided several new but complicated details about the earlier
form of those heavily rebuilt rooms. Most remarkable was the exposure of
33
parts of a limestone masonry portal (Fig. 3g), obviously belonging to a building
predating the late medieval rooms of the southern wing. An underground
channel covered with large limestone slabs was discovered running through
under the portal, which probably once conducted rainwater from the inner
courtyard to the river. A complicated and top quality water conduit system is
to be expected, because Cistercians were among the first water engineers
in medieval Europe.28 A hypocaust oven was partly uncovered in the room
protruding southwards from the south-western corner of the rectangular
building body. The results of the pits in the south wing gave a good starting
point for the next year’s excavations. Probably the oldest find of the excavations
– a sherd of a round tripod pot (Fig. 5d) with wave ornament, which can be
vaguely dated to ca 1300 – was found in a test pit in the southern end of
the eastern cloister. The date is intriguing but not fixed enough to consider
it to be representative of the earliest period of the proper monastery or the
hypothetical grange period of the 13th century.
handicraft, is to be expected. The outer wall, supposed north-western cannon
tower and a supposed gate in the eastern wall will be the main problems of
the northern courtyard/bailey. A specific question – if the drawbridges of the
gate tower had a long continuous moat in front of them or just single pits
– is to be answered as well. Foundations of a supposed chapel in the northeast beside the road outside the monastic complex, discovered during road
building in 2009, will be investigated as well.
Study issues and plans for fieldwork in 2011
The test pits in the inner courtyard had the task of giving preliminary data for
bigger excavations in the 2011 season. One pit was dug in the middle of the
courtyard and five close to the northern and eastern wings in the area of the
former cloister (Fig. 3), supposedly demolished already in the 17th century. A
most peculiar result was found, revealing great differences in the thickness of
cultural layer in different areas of the inner courtyard: in the middle the natural
soil layer is only 40 cm deep from the ground level, whereas in the cloister area
there are ca 1.5 m thick filling layers. This could be explained in several ways:
e.g. the floor of the cloisters has been much deeper than expected; there
are earlier demolished and filled building remains in the cloister area. In any
case, the result is intriguing because this might indicate that remains of the
stone cloisters, thought to be fully demolished, or remains of earlier buildings
might be preserved underground. Unlike in his other publications, according
to Raam’s unpublished reports he was not convinced that the monks ever
managed to build the stone cloisters around the courtyard but perhaps had
to use temporary timber cloisters instead. Thus the evidence about the stone
cloisters would be most welcome during excavations in 2011. The test pits of
the inner courtyard revealed several simple Siegburg stoneware jug sherds
(Fig. 5h) from 14th and 15th centuries – probably the first finds of the monks’
drinking vessels.29
The excavations of the year 2011 will concentrate mostly on the inner
courtyard – on questions about earlier buildings and stone cloisters – and
northern courtyard/bailey area. As there is some medieval waste in the filling
layers under the inner courtyard, as indicated by the test pits, an amount
of various finds representing the monks’ consumption habits, perhaps even
34
35
Fishing with Monks – Padise Abbey and the
River Vantaanjoki from 1351 to 1429
Tapio Salminen MA
School of Social Sciences and Humanities
Department of History and Philosophy
University of Tampere
How did the Cistercian Abbey of Padise (Ger. Padis) in Estonia first come into
possession of fishing rights for salmon in the River Vantaanjoki in Finland, and
what was the significance of these rights for the economy and everyday life
of the monastery during the period of the abbey’s donation in 1351–1429?
What impact did the monks and lay brethren have on the use of the river and
the structure of settlement in its area, now in the dense suburban network of
Vantaa and Helsinki?
The Cistercian order and the pursuit of monasticism in
high medieval Europe
The medieval Diocese of Turku, roughly the same area as present-day Finland,
essentially differs from other parts of the Baltic region once belonging to
the medieval sphere of influence of the Catholic Church. Here, none of the
monasteries of the old, pre 13th-century orders, such as the Benedictines,
Carthusians, Cistercians or Premonstratensians had ever been established
and, with the exception of the Cistercian Abbey of Padise in Estonia, they are
not known to have had property or rights in Finland. Although ecclesiastical
culture and spiritual life in the medieval Diocese of Turku was by no means
different to the rest of Europe, one of their most characteristic features,
monasticism, was represented in its fully secluded form only by the
Bridgettine convent of Naantali, founded in 1438. This double monastery of
nuns and canons met all the requirements of monasticism: property in land
obtained through donations, monastic vows, the copying and production of
religious texts, and a continuous life of prayer in seclusion. The convents of
37
the Dominicans, who were active in Finland since the 13th century and the
Franciscans, who came to Finland by the early 15th century at the latest,
were popularly known as monasteries, but much of the activity of the friars
occurred outside of their houses among the local population. Observant to
their rules, Dominicans of Turku and Viipuri and Franciscans of Viipuri, Rauma
and Kökar Island never accumulated significant endowments of landed
property to sustain their houses.
The most important monastic order that spread into the Baltic region in the
12th century was the Cistercians, a reformed branch of the Benedictines,
which originated in 1098, when a number of monks established a monastery
at Citeaux, near Dijon in France. The name of the order derives from the
original name of Citeaux which was either based on the Old French word
Cistel, meaning “reed”, or on the Latin Cistercium, explained as referring to the
site of the monastery close to a three-mile stone on an old Roman road. The
Cistercian order was a reaction against the wealth of the Cluniac movement
of the previous major reform of monasticism and contained both Benedictine
and Cluniac features. In the former, each monastery was an independent unit,
and in the latter they were under the authority of the monastery of Cluny in
France. The purpose of the new monastery was to re-establish the monastic
rule written by Benedict of Nursia in the early 6th century in its original form
and to exclude all activities beyond the rule from the life of the monks. The
activities of the Cistercians were regulated in the rule Carta caritatis approved
by the pope in 1119, the manual Liber usum on life within the monasteries
and the decisions of the General Chapter that convened annually at Citeaux.
The abbot of each monastery, or a representative acting as his deputy, was
required to attend the meeting of the chapter, but exceptions were made if
the monastery was far away. In addition to Citeaux, special privileges were
enjoyed by its four first daughter houses, La Ferté (1113), Pontigny (1114),
Clairvaux (1115) and Morimund (1115), all of which were in the region of
Burgundy. The affiliation of mother and daughter houses was extremely
important because it specified the right of visitation, i.e. inspection among
the Cistercian Abbeys and the spiritual supervision of parish churches under
their patronage.1
The Cistercian order emerged as an influential spiritual, political and economic
actor as a result of the work of Bernard of Clairvaux (c. 1090–1153), a young
Burgundian nobleman who entered Citeaux in 1113 and founded the daughter
monastery of Clairvaux two years later. He was an important organizer and
theologian, who defended the rights of the church and emphasized the role
of the Virgin Mary as an intercessor between man and God. Bernard was
instrumental in the preaching of the Second Crusade to the Holy Land and
had a strong influence on the role of the Cistercians as one of the most
important missionary organizations accompanying the Crusader armies in the
12th century. In Germany, one of the main results of his work was a papal bull
38
issued in 1147, decreeing that the spiritual merits of participating in a crusade
did not depend on whether the crusade was to the Holy Land or against
enemies and apostates of the faith elsewhere. The papal bull laid the basis
for later theological arguments for crusades to the east of the River Elbe, to
the Baltic lands and Russia.2
From the beginning of the 12th century, the community of Cistercian
monasteries consisted of not only monks who maintained the unbroken
chain of canonical hours of prayer and performed their assigned work in the
monastery, but also of lay brothers (Latin conversi), who had made a vow of
chastity and obedience to the abbot. The lay brothers had their own quarters
and did not take part in the offices of the Hours, having instead their own
programme of prayer and religious activity. In church, they were separated
from the monks by a screen. Their activities and life were regulated with
a separate rule called the Usus conversorum, of which no version applying
to the whole order was ever issued. As opposed to the tonsured monks,
who had shaved their beards and the crown of their heads, the lay brothers
were allowed to let their beard and hair grow and were called fratres barbati
(bearded brothers). Both groups were also distinguished by their habits. The
monks wore a hooded tunic of white or pure wool covered by a white (later
black) hoodless scapular (Lat. scapulare), an apron-like vestment hanging
from the shoulders over the front and back of the wearer. The tunic of the lay
brothers was of coarse dark-brown wool with a removable cowl covering the
head and shoulders. Because the lay brothers had not taken monastic vows,
they could move about freely and spend long periods outside the monastery,
attending to its lands, organizing the transport of goods and supervising the
tenant farms of the monastery. The inhabitants of the surrounding countryside
called them monks, but in reality they were administrators, craftsmen and
specialists with their own internal hierarchy, without whom the monastery
could not have managed. Among the Cistercians, the ratio of monks to lay
brothers was generally one to two, but in places it could be one to three.3
The Cistercians’ main period of expansion was from the 12th century to the
end of the 13th, during which some 500 monasteries were founded. The
original aim of all of them was to keep to the monastic rule, the core of
which consisted of prayer and work. Since the monks were meant to earn
their living by clearing and cultivating fields and keeping livestock, the new
monasteries were often established in the outskirts of settlements in areas
which were suitable for clearing fields and where subsistence was based
on farming and animal husbandry. Since most of the monks came from the
elites of society, the monasteries often gained possession of considerable
property in land, which consisted of not only the domestic fields and plots
around the monastery but also of separate clusters of tenant farms further
away. The centre of each cluster of tenant farms was a central manor or
grange (Latin grangia), where rent was collected and which was administered
FISHING WITH MONKS - PADISE ABBEY AND THE RIVER VANTAANJOKI FROM 1351 TO 1429
39
by a lay brother, occasionally by even one of the monks. Characteristic of
the landed property of Cistercian Abbeys was that the possessions were
almost invariably a result of conscious planning and they were collected and
managed through a systematic programme of donations and endowments.4
From the 12th century onwards, the Cistercian monasteries formed an
important network supporting the spread of agriculture and inventions
in building technology, with the special feature of using water power for
mills and smithies. Some monasteries specialized in metallurgy and their
property included deposits of ores. Although the monasteries may have
been important in promoting new methods of work, the Cistercians should
not always be considered as the sole leaders in developing or passing on
innovations. Nonetheless, Cistercian Abbeys may have had wide-ranging
influence especially in regions with no previous monastic culture, and they
may have had impact on local practices at many different levels of technology
and society.5
monasteries for monks except for two were founded between 1143 and 1207.
As elsewhere in Europe, Cistercian Abbeys in Scandinavia were established
upon the initiative of rulers and bishops sympathetic to the order and with the
support of the landed elites of the society. Of the six monasteries for monks,
the first ones, Alvastra and Nydala, both founded in 1143 and located within the
Diocese of Linköping in Götaland and Småland, were daughters of Clairvaux.
In 1143 monks from Clairvaux also established a monastery at Lurö, later
transferred to Varnhem in Västgötaland, but after the expulsion of the monks
in the 1150s, Cistercian activity in Varnhem was restored only in the 1160s.
The spread of the order into Svealand met apparent resistance as late as at
the end of the 12th century, when the monks of Viby, founded near Sigtuna
in ca. 1160, were relocated in 1185 to Julita, south of Lake Mälaren. The last
Cistercian monastery founded in Sweden was Gudsberga in Dalecarlia, which
began its work in 1480. Close to important iron-ore deposits, it owned shares
in local mines and produced iron.7
The Cistercians in Scandinavia and Livonia
With regard to the areas around the Gulf of Finland, the most important
Cistercian Abbey in Sweden was Gutnalia, a daughter house of Nydala,
founded on the island of Gotland in 1164. Later called Roma, the abbey had
been in the 1220s donated landed property in Danish Estonia, where its
tenant farms were located close to its central manor at Kolga in the Parish of
Kuusalu on the highway from Tallinn to Narva and opposite to the archipelago
between Helsinki and Sipoo in Finland. Kolga Manor and the nearby tenant
villages remained in the possession of Roma Abbey until 1519, when King
Christian II of Denmark forced the monastery to relinquish them to the Danish
crown.8 The authority of Rome on the Gulf of Finland in the 1220s is shown by
the fact that in 1229 Pope Gregory IX ordered, upon the request of the Bishop
of Finland, the Bishop of Linköping, the Cistercian abbot of Gotland and the
Dean of Gotland to ratify the relocation of the cathedral of the diocese to
one of the sites proposed as suitable by the bishop and the clergy of the
diocese and to ensure that no injustice be done to the bishop, clergy and
people of Finland whom the Pope had taken directly under his protection.
In Finland, this has been regarded as marking the relocation of the centre
of the diocese from Nousiainen to Koroinen near Turku. The above parties
together with the Cistercian abbot of Dünamunde and the Benedictine abbot
of Lübeck were also ordered to prevent merchants of the region from trading
with the Russians as long as these kept harassing the Finns. At the time, the
term ‘Finn’ applied to the inhabitants of the Diocese of Finland, comprising
present-day Finland Proper (Sw. Finland), Lower Satakunta and possibly parts
of the regions of Western Uusimaa (Sw. Nyland) and Upper Satakunta.9
The Cistercian order spread into the northern Baltic Region along two routes.
In the three Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the
main period of founding the monasteries occurred from the early 1140s to
the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, with the result that all 24 known
Different to the three Scandinavian realms, the arrival of monasticism and
first monasteries in medieval Livonia (roughly the area of present-day Estonia
and Latvia) was not related to local rulers or inborn landed elites but was
instead a deliberate product of mission and conquest. Cistercian monks had
From the very beginning, one of the most characteristic features of Cistercian
Abbeys was their interest in fishing. Since fish was an important nutritional
and symbolical part of the diet during Lent and other periods of fasting of the
church year, most ecclesiastical organizations sought to secure their share
in fish in different ways. Fish was especially important to the Cistercians,
whose rule required abstinence from meat, which was allowed, under certain
conditions, only as late as 1481 after a constitution by the General Chapter. The
important role of fish in Cistercian monastic life is shown by the fact that most
of the monasteries had fish ponds built to ensure availability. The deliberate
attempts of Cistercian abbeys to increase the productivity of salmon fishing
are known for example from Ireland, where, as early as the 13th century, a
monastery with a share in the fishing of the River Boyne redirected the flow
of the river for a better catch in their weirs. In 1320, Tintern Abbey in Wales
had a special ‘guardian of the fisheries’ who was a monk or lay brother. The
interest of the Cistercians in fish and rights for fishing was equally great
also in Scandinavia, where the monks of Nydala Abbey in Sweden had joint
fishing rights with the nuns of the nearby Cistercian nunnery of Byarum as
early as in the end of the 12th century. Excavations of the floor of the kitchen
of the Cistercian Abbey of Øm in Denmark have revealed a large selection of
remains of different species of fish that had been prepared for consumption
in the monastery.6
40
41
participated in the conversion and colonization of areas east of the River Elbe
already in the latter half of the 12th century, and in 1167 the monk Fulco
of the Cistercian Abbey of Celle in France was appointed, possibly upon
the initiative of the Archbishop of Lund in Denmark, to serve as missionary
bishop in Estonia. In the early 1170s, Fulco and an Estonian-speaking monk
from Norway were engaged in missionary work in Estonia, possibly also in
Finland. Despite the early Scandinavian initiatives, however, the majority of
the Cistercians later active in Livonia came from the German regions. The
second ever ordained bishop of Livonia, Bishop Berthold (in office 1196
–1198) who was the abbot of Loccum Abbey near Hanover, and the German
Cistercian monk Theoderic, the first ordained Bishop of Estonia in 1211 who
died assisting the Danish troops in the siege of Tallinn in June 1219 had both
been engaged in mission in Livonia already in the late 1180s. The presence
of the Cistercians in the region was also supported by Pope Innocent III, who
in April 1200 sent a letter addressed to all the abbots of the order requesting
them to permit monks to set out for mission in Livonia.10
The construction of the first Cistercian monastery in Livonia began in 1205
at Dünamunde (Daugavgrīva) at the mouth of the River Daugava (Western
Dvina) in present-day Latvia. The activity of the Abbey at the location came to
its end in 1305, after which the convent was relocated permanently in Padise
some time before the year 1317. The original mother house of Dünamunde
Abbey was Marienfeld in Westphalia in the Diocese of Münster, but in 1305
the Abbey of Stolpe on the River Peene in Pomerania was decided as the
new mother by the General Chapter in Citeaux. In the same Chapter the
former Benedictine Abbey of Stolpe which had recently been reorganized as a
Cistercian foundation, was further ordained to serve as a daughter of the Abbey
of Pforte in the Diocese of Naumburg. Gottfridus, fifth abbot of Dünamunde
(in office 1226–1228) was Prior of Pforte and was in 1228 appointed first
bishop of the Diocese of Saaremaa, in which position he served less than
one year. The connections of Pforte with the ecclesiastical organization under
construction in the 1220s in Saaremaa and Läänemaa are evinced by the fact
that the first Cistercian monastery in the area of the modern Estonian State
was Falkenau (Kärkna) founded by the Bishop of Tartu in 1228. Its original
mother house was Pforte, which was replaced in 1305 by Stolpe. Padise,
Dünamunde, Falkenau, Stolpe, Pforte and Marienfeld, the original mother of
Dünamunde, all belonged to the Morimund brand of the Cistercian order,
while the Cistercian monasteries of Sweden were daughters of Clairvaux.11
The very presence of the abbeys of Roma and Padise in the areas bordering on
the Gulf of Finland can thus be regarded as an encounter of the two branches
of the Cistercian order, but at the same time it is important to keep in mind
that the majority of the monks and nuns in both Sweden and Livonia were
recruited from within the landed elite, which in Livonia consisted of vassal
families of mainly German or assimilated origin, and in Sweden of locally born
42
nobility whose social and economic networks penetrated ecclesiastical and
lay institutions. In both regions, monastic communities are also likely to have
attracted offspring of the urban aristocracy, the majority of whom were of
Hanseatic, i.e. German or assimilated origin.
A. Dünamunde Abbey
B. Padise Abbey
C. Falkenau (Kärkna) Abbey
D. Gutnalia (Roma) Abbey
E. Stolpe Abbey
F. Pforte Abbey
G. Marienfeld Abbey
Map 1: The locations of the three Cistercian Abbeys of Dünamunde, Padise and
Falkenau (Kärkna), Gutnalia (Roma) Abbey in Gotland, Marienfeld Abbey
(original mother of Dünamunde in 1205—1305), Stolpe (mother of Padise and
Falkenau since 1305) and Pforta (mother of Stolpe since 1305).
Source: Map Tapio Salminen 2011 & Lotta Ojaver, Ten Twelve OÜ 2011, based on an
original map by Karttakeskus Oy.
43
Padise Abbey and its landed property in Estonia in the 14th
and early 15th Centuries
The interest of the Livonian Cistercians in the northern shore of the Gulf of
Finland appears to have emerged soon after the relocation of the monastery
of Dünamunde to Padise, which took place between 1305 and 1317, possibly
already before 1311.12 Cistercian activity at Dünamunde ended as the result
of the war of the town and archbishop of Riga with the Livonian branch of the
Teutonic Order fought in several different stages in 1297–1330. In an early
phase of the conflict, the Livonian Master took possession of the Cistercian
Abbey controlling the strategic site at the mouth of the River Daugava and
decided to build a castle there. The transaction of the former site of the
Abbey to the Teutonic Order was officially sealed in May 1305 after which
both the landed possessions of Dünamunde Abbey and the affiliation of the
two Cistercian houses in Livonia, Dünamunde and Falkenau (Kärkna), were
reorganized in the administration of the Cistercian order.13
During the 13th century, Dünamunde Abbey had gathered a substantial
amount of landed property, consisting of domestic possessions of nearby
farms at the mouth of the River Daugava and in Curonia and three larger
clusters of tenant villages and farms spread over a distance spanning more
than one thousand kilometres between Tallinn in Estonia and Holstein
in Germany. A considerable part of the domains were located south of
Rostock in Mecklenburg and Brandenburg in northern Germany, where they
were transferred to the possession of the Abbey of Stolpe as a part of the
reorganization of the property of Dünamunde in 1313. The second cluster of
landed property was on the middle reaches of the River Daugava at Līksna
in present-day Latvia, where Dünamunde Abbey had owned farms and an
island in the river since 1230.14 The property on the Daugava included the
general right to fish in the river, which the Livonian Master confirmed to
the possession of the convent of Dünamunde after a request of the abbot
of Stolpe in 1314. Padise Abbey hold possession of an island and landed
property at Līksna on River Daugava and in Semgallia as late as in 1429,
when the abbot and convent traded them to the Livonian Master in exchange
to certain meadows near Padise and the right to buy 20 ploughs (haken) of
land in the Harjumaa region. Apparently the Abbey’s property on the River
Daugava had been reduced to a mere nominal possession without much real
value and the convent decided in 1429 to liquidate it all in order to improve
the Abbey’s economy in its immanent neighbourhood.15
The third main cluster of landed property of Dünamunde Abbey in the 13th
century was in North Estonia where it was further divided into two areas,
one at Padise west of Tallinn and the other southeast of Tallinn in the parishes
of Jüri and Rasiku. The core parts of both of them had been acquired by
44
the convent soon after the North Estonian campaign of King Valdemar II of
Denmark in the summer of 1219, when the Cistercians of Dünamunde had
been given land possibly as a reward of mission and the baptism of native
inhabitants carried out during and after the campaign. A few years later,
Valdemar’s bastard son, Duke Canute of Estonia (in office 1223–1227) donated
land to Gutnalia (Roma) Abbey in Gotland. The lands of the Cistercians were
along the highways leading to Tallinn from the west, southeast and east, and
one of the aims of the donations may have been to create permanent stations
to control communications in the area. Underlying the Roma donation may
have been the creation of a counterweight to the presence of the German
Cistercians in North Estonia.16
In the 13th century, the activity of Dünamunde Abbey in Estonia focused
in the village of Padise some 40 kilometres west of Tallinn at a bridge site
on the highway to Haapsalu where a grange of the Abbey had apparently
been established in an early stage. During the period of office of Bishop
Thurgot of Tallinn (in office 1263–1279), the village hosted the Abbey’s chapel,
the patronage of which then become a point of dispute between the bishop
and the Abbey. The chapel had most likely been designed for serving the
lay brothers in charge of the grange and a possible congregation of tenants
attached to it.17 The domains of the Dünamunde Abbey had extended to the
Estonian coast opposite Suur-Pakri (Rogø) island as early as 1257, and the area
between Padise and the sea emerged as the core of domestic possessions
of the Abbey in Estonia after the relocation of the convent from Dünamunde
to Padise. An apparent reorganization of the property occurred after the St.
George’s Night Uprising in Estonia in 1343–1346 when the Abbey was granted
land at the end of present-day Paldiski Bay with the right of patronage of the
Church of Lodenrode (present-day Harju-Madise). Around the same time, the
Abbey sold the island of Rogø to five men with Scandinavian names, but
retained the right to fish and graze livestock for itself and its tenants. In the
transaction, the island is said to lie “under Swedish law”, i.e. under a special
system of tithing designed for new colonization based on animal husbandry
and land clearing in areas of late 13th and early 14th century Swedish
colonization in Finland and on the Estonian coast. The Scandinavian names of
the five purchasers may point to the fact that they originated from among the
Swedish colonization along the coast of Uusimaa in Finland, not necessarily
from Sweden proper.18
The domestic possessions of Padise Abbey to the west of Suur-Pakri
expanded in 1402, when the monastery obtained the lands of the Cistercian
nunnery of Lihula at Newe (present-day Nõva) near the northwest end of
the Estonian mainland. By the end of the Middle Ages, Padise Abbey held
possession of the area extending from the abbey to the sea and comprising
the entire Estonian coast from present-day Paldiski to the waters off Nõva.
45
Together with the landed possessions, the property included rights of
patronage over the parish churches of Harju-Risti and Harju-Madise and the
Chapel of Saint Olaf in Nõva. The monastery also owned a large collection of
farms at Jõelähtme, Puiatu and Rasiku southeast of Tallinn, with a grange at
Rasiku as its centre.19 It also possessed a house in Tallinn, where abbots and
lay brothers could accommodate themselves while on monastery business
in the city or travelling through it and which served as its warehouse and
storage area in the town. The house is known to have been the property of
Dünamunde Abbey already in 1280 and it made part of an area controlled by
the Cistercian monasteries of Padise, Falkenau (Kärkna) and Roma located in
the Tallinn lower town on Monks’ Street (present-day Vene Street) next to the
Dominican convent, where the warehouses of the monasteries must have
been built by the end of the 1270s at the latest.20
The landed property of Padise Abbey in Western Uusimaa
in 1335–1408
After its relocation to Padise, the Cistercian convent of Dünamunde soon
appears to have become interested in the Uusimaa (Sw. Nyland) region on
the north shore of the Gulf of Finland, an area of active Swedish colonization
in the late 13th and early 14th century, mainly from the regions of Uppland
and Södermanland.21 Padise Abbey is documented to have had contacts with
Finland already in 1322, when Bishop Henrik of Tallinn (in office 1298–1322)
issued a letter of recommendation to the abbot of the monastery in a matter
that has remained unknown but of which he was to discuss with Bishop
Bengt of Turku (in office 1321–38). Of further interest is the fact that the core
of the Abbey’s possessions in Uusimaa was established already a decade
before the sale of Rogø island and the expansion of its ownership to areas
east of Padise Bay in Estonia. On 6 December 1335, the Abbey bought all
the landed property of the former headman (Latin capitaneus) of the areas
under Turku Castle Karl Näskonungsson and his subordinate Gereke Skytte,
bailiff of Uusimaa, in the parishes of Kirkkonummi, Pohja and Inkoo. The
transaction was ratified in Tallinn, where Skytte three days later endowed the
Abbey with another two landed domains, Finneby and Skawistad. Of these,
Skavistad in Pohja parish is known to have consisted later in the 16th century
of sixteen tenant farms with shares in adjacent rapids at a strategic location
controlling the medieval highway leading from Turku to Viipuri via Uusimaa.
It is first documented as a central manor (Latin curia) with possible tenant
farms in 1326 when it was made part of the landed possessions of Matias
Kettilmundsson, a former drots of Sweden and that time headman of Finland,
i.e. the area then comprising Finland Proper, Satakunta, Western Nyland and
Häme (Sw. Tavastland). Eight years later, on 20 August 1347, Skytte pledged
to the Abbot of Padise the properties of Lakukulla at Karjaa and Engewigh
46
in Kirkkonnummi. The latter is today known as Ängvik, an area near the
inlet between Upinniemi and Porkkalanniemi capes south of Kirkkonummi
Church.22
All the known tenant farms of Padise Abbey in Western Uusimaa were located
at the far ends of deep bays and inlets in an area between the bay of Pohja
Parish and Porkkalaniemi Cape, but the actual geographical range and number
of the possessions changed to some degree during the 14th century. In places,
as in Kirkkonummi and Inkoo, new farms were established, while some of the
properties, such as Skavistad appear to have been brought back to the control
of the crown as early as in the 1360s. The person behind the confiscation or
transaction was most likely Nils Turesson (Bielke), lagman (high judge) of all
Finland and headman of Viipuri Castle and Uusimaa from ca. 1362 to his death
in 1364, whose heirs then endowed Skavistad to Växjö Cathedral in Småland
in Sweden proper. When Padise Abbey expanded its landed possessions in
Nõva in 1402, a decision appears to soon have been made of liquidating the
remaining tenant farms in Western Uusimaa. In 1407–1408, the monastery
sold all the farms that it owned in the parishes of Kirkkonummi and Inkoo to
Tord Bonde, headman of Viipuri Castle and former bailiff of Raasepori Castle
in Western Uusimaa, who together with his wife Ramborg in 1415 endowed
the same property to the altar of Saint Catherine in the Town Church of Viipuri.
The altar later also owned other properties formerly belonging to Padise in
Kirkkonummi and Pohja.23
By the middle of the 14th century, the total amount of arable land in the
possession of Padise Abbey in Western Uusimaa is estimated to have
reached 395 sewn areas known as panni (one panni = c. 90 litres, ½ barrel of
seed), corresponding to 65–66 tenant farms of six panni each and comprising
of ca. 6% of all the farms in the region. Even if not all the farms owned by
the abbey are known and the structure of its possessions changed during
the 15th century also in Estonia, the amount of grain sewn at farms once in
the control of the abbey in Western Uusimaa was in the mid-16th century no
less than 93 barrels of seed, roughly one-seventh of the estimated sowing
of 700 barrels on the Abbey’s domains in Estonia in the 1340s. According
to an estimate based on the transaction prices of the abbey’s farms in 1335
and 1407, the sewn amount of grain at the monastery’s properties in Finland
could, however, have been 197.5 barrels, almost 23% of all sowing (ca. 897.5
barrels) on all the abbey’s tenant farms in Estonia and Finland.24 It is obvious
that between 1335 and 1407 Padise Abbey owned significant landed property
in Western Uusimaa, with the core possessions easily accessed from the sea.
The focus of the domains shifted during the 14th century from the regions
of Pohja and Karjaa eastward towards Inkoo and Kirkkonummi, but it remains
unknown whether the monastery had an actual grange in the Uusimaa region.
47
The Patronage of Porvoo and the Fishing Rights of the
River Vantaanjoki in 1351–1429
Patronage of Porvoo 1351–1429
Nyland = Uusimaa
Finnsicher Meerbusen = Gulf of Finland
Deutsch-Ordensgebiet = Dominion of the Teutonic Order in Livonia
Pojo = Pohja
Billnäs = Skavistad
Raseborg = Castle of Raseborg founded in the 1370s
Karis = Karjaa
Kyrkslätt = Kirkkonummi
Helsinge Å = The River Vantaanjoki
Sibbo = Sipoo
Borgå = Porvoo
Perno = Pernaja
Reval = Tallinn
Kolk = Kolga (Guthnalia/Roma)
Wesenberg = Rakvere
Map 2: The Known Landed Property of Padise Abbey in Estonia and Western Uusimaa
in Finland in the 14th Century and the Patronage of Porvoo with the annexed
chapels of Pernaja and Sipoo in 1351—1429.
Source: Map Tapio Salminen 2011 & Lotta Ojaver, Ten Twelve OÜ 2011. The original map
Johansen (1951), 214.
48
Instead of a sole initiative of the Padise Abbey, evidence exists that its landed
property in the region of Western Uusimaa was in some way associated with
the plans of King Magnus Eriksson of Sweden (elected 1319, of age 1331,
co-ruler with his sons Erik in 1357–59 and Haakon 1362–64, expelled 1364)
regarding the constitutional status of Danish Estonia. The transactions and
endowments of Karl Näskonungsson and Gereke Skytte in 1335 preceded
negotiations between the vassals of Danish Estonia, the town council of
Tallinn and the king in the spring of 1336. In the scholarship, the negotiations
have generally been thought to have concerned the Duchy of Estonia coming
under the rule of the Swedish crown in a situation where the former authority
of Denmark over Estonia was in turmoil. After the conquest of 1219 and
the reinstitution of the Danish power in 1238, the area under Danish Crown
had been organized into one diocese where the bishop was a suffragan of
the Archbishop of Lund. After the disintegration and total collapse of royal
power in Denmark in 1326–32, developments in the constitutional status of
the realm caused the Archbishop of Lund and other representatives of the
Danish Province of Scania (Sw. Skåne) to search protection from King Magnus
Eriksson of Sweden who guaranteed their rights in 1332. Soon after this,
Count Johan III of Holstein, who had held Scania as a pledge, sold it to King
Magnus. Because the Abbey of Padise was the largest ecclesiastic landowner
in Danish Estonia, perhaps second only to the Bishop of Tallinn, the intriguing
possibility exists that the expansion of the Abbey’s possessions into Uusimaa
in 1335 would in fact have been related to the abbot’s and convent’s role
as some kind of lobbyists for the Swedish King in a constitutional situation
similar to that of Scania three years earlier. The role of the Abbey as lobbyists
and partisans for the King in areas south of Gulf of Finland may also be found
behind the pledgings of Gereke Skytte to the Abbey in 1347, the mortgaging
of which was corroborated in the archipelago of Hiittinen, where King Magnus
was staying with a large entourage as part of his preparations for a military
campaign to the River Neva in the following summer. Visitors to the king at
the time included not only a delegation of peasants of the Finnish coast under
the Castle of Viipuri but also representatives of Padise Abbey. Because King
Magnus had around this time appointed Skytte as the headman of all the
castles and bailiwicks in Finland (now also with areas under Viipuri Castle in the
east), the pledgings of 1347 may have been part of the financing of the coming
military campaign, in the lobbying of which some role was also thought to be
performed by the Cistercians of Padise in Estonia. The position of the Duchy
of Estonia had decisively changed in August 1346 when King Valdemar IV of
Denmark sold it to the Teutonic Order.25 King Magnus Eriksson’s campaign in
the summer of 1348 led to the conquest of Schlüsselburg (Fi. Pähkinälinna,
49
Sw. Nöteborg) Castle at the strategic location where Lake Ladoga discharges
into the River Neva, but when Magnus and most of his troops returned to
Sweden in the autumn, Novgorod regained the castle. In the autumn of 1350,
the king attacked Kaprio Castle near the southeast end of the Gulf of Finland,
which controlled routes of communication by land between Novgorod and
Narva. This operation, however, failed and he remained in Livonia, where he is
documented to have sojourned in December 1350 in Tallinn, in February 1351
in Riga and in early April 1351 in Haapsalu, before sailing in May to Sweden
via Turku and Åland islands.26
A major expansion of the rights of the Abbey of Padise in areas north of the
Gulf of Finland occurred in the closing weeks of King Magnus’ sojourn in
Livonia on 2 April 1351, the eve of Passion Sunday, when the king in Haapsalu
donated to the abbey the right of patronage to the Parish of Porvoo in the
Diocese of Turku in Finland.27 The patronage apparently consisted of both the
right of presentation, i.e. right to nominate a candidate for the office of the
rector in the parish and the cure of souls attached to it as well as the benefice,
i.e. the control of the rector’s share of tithes in the parish. In practice, the
monastery appointed a vicar, as a substitute for the rector, to perform divine
services and offices, while the income from the benefices of the post went
to the monastery. Since the reason for the donation is in the king’s sealed
charter explained as not only the services which the abbot and convent of
Padise had rendered to him but also those to be rendered by them in the
future, the donation may have been a reward for the abbots’ efforts for the
benefit of the king in 1336, but also a recognition of the possible participation
of the monks as preachers in the campaigns of 1348–1350. Future service
may also allude to the fact that in the political aspirations of King Magnus the
incorporation of the Duchy of Estonia by the Teutonic Order was by no means
a closed issue.
The donation of the patronage was renewed a few weeks later in Turku where
the act was corroborated by bishop Hemming (in office 1338–66) and the
cathedral chapter of the diocese. In the new charter the benefice of the
patronage of the church of Porvoo was expanded to include two chapels
annexed to it, apparently two former parishes attached to the donation as a
further benefice to the monastery. Later 14th-century documents show that
the two parishes annexed to the donation as chapels were Pernaja and Sipoo.
In a separate charter, the donation was also specified to include the fisheries
(piscarias) of the vicarage of Porvoo, also corroborated by the bishop and the
chapter of Turku. In addition, and again with a separate sealed charter, the king
donated to the monastery his share of the “upper and lower salmon fishing
at Helsinga”, i.e. shares in the fisheries on the upper and lower reaches of
the River Vantaanjoki.28 Since the parish of Porvoo was part of the Diocese of
Turku, one of the major results of the donation was an agreement between
50
the king and the Bishop of Turku in 1352 itemizing the ten parishes to which
the king had rights of patronage. Another consequence were the subsequent
actions of the bishop and chapter of Turku which caused the Abbey to lose the
actual control of the patronage already in the early 1360s after which it was
only able to recover it at the turn of the 1370s and 1380s. An extensive debate
on the rights of patronage again followed in the years 1422–1424, when the
Abbey had to admit that it had received the tithes for the office of rector only
by special favour of the Bishop of Turku. From then on, the patronage was
only a formality and the monastery sold the rights to the Diocese of Turku for
the sum of one hundred English nobles in September 1428. The transaction
was corroborated in Padise and in Tallinn at the turn of July and August in
1429, when the monastery further informed that it had with the same sum
purchased two tenant villages of Knight Bertholdus de Lechtes located in the
Diocese of Tallinn. The agreement of the bishop and the monastery contained
the Abbey’s full assignation of all the original documents of King Magnus
Eriksson and his successors as well as later corroborations on the matter to
the bishop, but it does not state the manner in which the king’s share of the
salmon fisheries in the River Vantaanjoki was restored to the crown. It was no
longer in the possession of Padise Abbey after 1428.29 Around the same time
as the monastery withdrew for good from Finland, it also liquidated all of its
landed property and rights on the River Daugava. After 1429, the monastery’s
economic activities focused on the area of present-day Estonia, where its
domains were located almost completely within the Diocese of Tallinn.
The ecology of salmon and the salmon trade in the late
medieval Northern Baltic Sea region
Let us now return to the question of the actual role of the fishing rights for
salmon for the economy of Padise Abbey and what kind of impact did the
activities of the monastery have on the River Vantaanjoki during the period of
the donation in 1351–1429?
Since the Cistercian rule required total abstinence from meat, the royal
donation of 1351 must have played a significant role in the annual provision
of food in the monastery, where the connotations of eating fish were not only
of nutritional or economic nature. However, at the same time it is important
to bear in mind that salmon fishing in the River Vantaanjoki from 1351 to
the summer of 1428 was not the monastery’s sole source of fish in the
period. The tenants of Dünamunde had already in the late 13th century fished
off Suur-Pakri Island in Padise Bay and when the Abbey of Padise in 1345
relinquished the island to colonists, it kept its fishing rights and received
a share of local catches of Baltic herring and other fish in the waters. The
abbey is also known to have had fish ponds close to the convent castle, but
their time of construction is not known.30 The nutritional and status value of
51
greasy salmon was high and the monastery’s share of the salmon from the
River Vantaanjoki ensured the yearly availability of a valued fish that would
otherwise have remained beyond its means. Although the monastery still
had rights to the former fishing of Dünamunde Abbey in the River Daugava
after 1314, there is no evidence of them being used and salmon fishing from
the River Vantaanjoki was no doubt a desired addition to the economy of the
monastery.
Salmon (Salmo salar) is a migratory fish species that climbs in the summer
from the sea into rivers and their gravel-bottomed rapids to spawn in the
autumn before returning to the sea. The roe is hatched in the spring after
which the fry, or young salmon, remain in the spawning waters for a couple
of years before swimming to the sea where they gain maturity. Most salmon
spawn only once in their lives, at the age of 5–6 years.31 The best information
on the behaviour of salmon in the rivers of Southern Finland before the
industrial era are from the River Kokemäenjoki on the west coast, where
in the 1850s salmon would rise around Midsummer, with the best fishing
season lasting 30–40 days until the end of July. The time of year was always
the same, but before the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1753, the
migration of salmon began eleven calendar days earlier, in the Middle Ages
roughly a week before midsummer. In 1711, the best catches from the rapids
at Harjavalta and Kokemäki in the river were obtained from 12 June until 8
September, but the fish swimming up the river in late July were migratory
European whitefish (Coregonus lavaretus), the best fishing season of which
lasted from late July – early August until the beginning of September. There is
also reliable information on the migratory behaviour of salmon in the Middle
Ages from the large rivers discharging into the northern part of the Gulf of
Bothnia where the bishop’s salmon tithes were collected between the Feast
of Saint Eskil (12 June) and the Feast of Saint Margaret (13 July), which
covered the whole salmon season. In the present calendar, this corresponds
to the period between 23 June and 24 July.32
As in the other rivers of Finland, the migration of salmon into the River
Vantaanjoki in the Middle Ages began around 12 June according to the Julian
calendar and ended some four weeks later. The fish that migrated into the
river consisted of both salmon proper, which is known to have migrated as
far as Anjalankoski in the River Kymijoki in the late 1850s, but also trout,
which appears to have been more common in the river than salmon in late
historical times, which may have been due to the depletion of the natural
salmon of the River Vantaanjoki as a result of clearing and building dams at
the Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids in the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
According to sources, the salmon fished from the River Vantaanjoki in the
beginning of the Early Modern Era was definitely salmon. A clear distinction
between salmon and trout was made for example in 1548 when the bishops
52
share of tithes then already confiscated to the crown consisted of 41 salt-dried
salmon (spikilaxar) and a number of small trout (små öörlaxar), of which the
latter were obtained from the Helsinginkoski (today Vanhankaupunginkoski)
rapids. The behaviour of migratory trout (Salmo trutta trutta) differs from that
of salmon, as it does not begin to migrate upstream until the waters cool
in the autumn and it spawns in late October. The fact that salmon belongs
to the old fish stock of the River Vantaanjoki is proved by the fact that with
the improvement of the ecology of the river in the early 2000s, salmon has
returned to the river alongside trout. In the summer of 2007 thousands of sea
trout and salmon migrated to the Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids, most of the
fish continuing all the way to Nurmijärvi north of Helsinki and Vantaa. Some
salmon no doubt also migrated originally into the River Keravanjoki.33
During the Middle Ages, salmon was a valued fish of high nutritional value
due to its high fat content. The heyday of salmon fishing in the Baltic Sea
region began around the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, when merchants
in Lübeck began to supply salt from Lüneburg for preserving herring fished
off the coast of Skåne (Scania) and the salmon and whitefish of the north. The
availability of salt improved in the mid-14th century when sea salt from Baie
in the Bay of Biscay began to be imported into the Baltic Sea region. Towards
the end of the Middle Ages it was matched by salt from Spain and Portugal.
Most of the herring, salmon and whitefish caught in the Baltic region began to
be traded in the 13th century by networks of German merchants who bought
the fish directly from the fisheries or their supervisors. Since the availability
of salt was essential to the profitability of fishing, it was an important tool
in conflicts involving trade. When the kingdom of Sweden was embargoed
by the Hanseatic League, the headmen and bailiffs of the Finnish castles
sought to ensure the availability of salt through bilateral agreements with
Tallinn. The amount of salt shipped to the markets of the Gulf of Finland and
Novgorod is suggested by the Poundage of Tallinn, a Hanseatic tax levied
on all cargoes entering or leaving the port, according to which most of the
salt arrived shortly before the beginning of the fishing season in fleets of
merchant vessels sailing directly from the Bay of Biscay and Portugal. In the
summer of 1434, the imported salt was distributed in four trading fleets, the
largest of which consisted of sixteen ships arriving straight from Baie with
the inspected cargo on 19 May amounting to the total equivalent of ca. 8.5
tons (8.5 million kilograms) of sea salt.34
From the Middle Ages to the beginning of the 1900s the most common
method of preserving salmon was to salt it on site; i.e. the fish were gutted,
split and piled with their scales facing upward in salt water in wooden barrels
in which they were transported from the fisheries. In the Late Middle Ages,
the salmon barrel was an established measure, corresponding to the Rostock
herring barrel agreed upon by the Hanseatic cities in 1375 as the measure of
53
volume for herring. In the Middle Ages and the 16th century, it was 48 kanna
or approximately 118 litres. A full barrel of herring weighed approximately
160 kilograms, the net weight of the fish being some 140 kg. Fatty salmon
could not be dried like cod or pike, but an alternative method of preservation
was salt-drying in which the fish was first kept for a while in brine, after
which it was cold-smoked and dried. Salt-dried salmon on spits (spikelax)
were valuable individual items of trade.35
In the Middle Ages, salted salmon preserved in barrels was one of the
most important export articles from the area of the Diocese of Turku, i.e.
present-day Finland. The church, in particular, was interested in the fishing,
distribution and consumption of salmon. Towards the end of the Middle Ages,
the Bishop of Turku owned not only fisheries and shares of fishing in the River
Kokemäenjoki but also the whole of Ahvenkoski rapids in the River Kymijoki
ca. 90 kilometres east of the River Vantaanjoki, having received the crown’s
share of the fishing as a donation in 1357. Information on the medieval fish
trade of the bishops and cathedral chapter of Turku has survived in the
correspondence of Dean Paulus Scheel (in office 1509–16), which shows that
the high officials of the diocese had contacts with the burghers of Lübeck,
Stralsund, Danzig, Riga, Tallinn and Stockholm. Trade goods sent by Scheel
to Hans Chonnert of Danzig for sale included 43 barrels of butter, 12 barrels
of salmon and seven containers of seal blubber. The salmon amounted to
approximately 16% of the value of the delivered goods and their net weight
counted in Rostock herring barrels was at least 1,600 kilograms.36
In the early 14th century, salmon also caught the eye of the crown, which
regarded the king to have natural share of rights to it in all the rivers. The
result was a tax levied either as so-called fish-in-share, every Nth fish of a
catch, or as fishing turns, drawn as lots by the parties sharing the right to the
particular fishery or section of river at the beginning of every season. Both
the practices were also followed in levying the tithes of the church. During
the reign of King Gustav Vasa (reigned 1523–60), the taxation of salmon
fishing was increased so that for example at the Lammaistenkoski rapids in
the River Kokemäenjoki every ninth fish belonged to the crown in the Middle
Ages, but from 1527 every third fish, and from 1549 every second fish. Even
after this, part of the catch from the River Kokemäenjoki still belonged to the
local landowning peasants, but in many smaller rivers the crown eventually
monopolized all the fishing. When the Royal Manor of Helsinki was founded
in 1550, the former shares of the fishing in the rapids of the River Vantaanjoki
were purchased by the crown, which had sole control of all salmon fishing in
the river after 1552.37
54
The fisheries of the River Vantaanjoki and the structure
of settlement in the Vantaanjoki area in the period of the
Padise donation
One reason why the Bishop of Turku and the crown became interested in
salmon in the mid-14th century may have been the improved availability of
salt because of excessive trade from Baie. At the same time, however, other
new innovations in fishing were introduced in Finland. In June 1347 Bishop
Hemming of Turku ordered the construction of a new, efficient type of weir in
the Lammaistenkoski rapids of the River Kokemäenjoki. The design came from
Scandinavia where similar leads had been in use previously. Since traditional
customary law in Finland regarded all fishing in rivers, rapids, streams and
lakes to be the common prescription of all the houses and villages which
had shares in the waters concerned, the landowning peasants of Kokemäki
parish destroyed the new device without hesitation. However, according
to some Swedish provincial laws and the new law code of King Magnus
Eriksson then under preparation, any section of water, river or sound was
the property of the house or village that owned the shore. Since the bishop
owned the shore of the rapids where his officials had let the new device be
built, he applied to the king. In October 1347, the high judge (lagman), who
investigated the matter at the site, deemed the north bank of the rapids to
the bishop. Four months later, in February 1348, Gereke Skytte, the new
headman of all Finland then inspecting various cases with Bishop Hemming
in Kokemäki, ordered the peasants to rebuild the salmon device anew at their
own cost in the following summer. A couple of days later, Skytte confirmed
that in the areas of colonization north of the River Kokemäenjoki (i.e. on the
Bothnian coast north of present-day Pori), the owner of the shore also owned
the waters and marshy land emerging from the sea; a decision controlling
the ownership of new land revealed because of post-glacial land uplift in the
sea. Of special interest here is that Skytte and the bishop had already applied
this principle in December 1347 in Porvoo where they had given a verdict,
in the name of the king, concerning similar marshy land and waters in the
possession of the peasants of the three villages of Öffwerby, Sottungzby and
Gudstensby (present-day Sotunki-Sottungsby and Länsisalmi-Västersundom
in Vantaa and Itäsalmi-Östersundom in Helsinki) which had been disputed on
several occasions by peasants of the Parish of Hattula in Häme in the second
quarter of the 14th century.38
An important factor for salmon fishing in the River Vantaanjoki was that when
the royal donation of 1351 was made, the dispute concerning the ownership
of the rapids at Kokemäki had already taken place and had been settled
according to the new practice. The deed of donation, in turn, has traditionally
been interpreted so that the royal rights to the so-called upper and lower
salmon fisheries meant fishing sites upstream and downstream in the river.
55
Map 3:
The Pitkäkoski rapids (Lång Forsen) of the River Vantaanjoki in a map of
the fathoming and measurement of the river from 1757—60.
Source: Finnish National Archives, TVH:n arkisto, kartat ja piirustukset. E1/115.
Geometrisk Charta öfwer Gammelstads ån med dess Forsar, Belägen i Nylands Lähn Raseborgs östraoch Borgo härader samt Nurmijärvi och Hellsing
Sochnar. Författad Åren 1757, 1758 och 1760. Page 16.
Map 4:
The Ruutinkoski rapids (Tolkby Fors) of the River Vantaanjoki in a map of the
fathoming and measurement of the river from 1757–60. The sawmill (Sågqvarn)
at the north head of the island in the middle of the rapids was established in
the 1720s by the merchant Henrik Kosfelt, a refugee from Narva. The flour mill
(Mjölqvarn) on the south side was converted into a wheel mill in the early
1750s. In the 1750s there was a bridge across the rapids at the site of the mills. The triangular caissons north of it in the river were the structures related to the
water channel of the sawmill.
Source:
Finnish National Archives, TVH:n arkisto, kartat ja piirustukset. E1/115.
Geometrisk Charta öfwer Gammelstads ån med dess Forsar, Belägen i Nylands
Lähn Raseborgs östraoch Borgo härader samt Nurmijärvioch Hellsing Sochnar.
Författad Åren 1757, 1758 och 1760. Page 16 and Kuisma (1991) 46, 235.
56
Map 5:
The Helsinginkoski, later Vanhankaupunginkoski (Gammel Stads Forsar)
rapids of the River Vantaanjoki in a map of the fathoming and measurement
of the river from 1757–60. Note the forked foot of the river just above sea
level. The sawmill in the east fork (Såg quarn) was founded by the merchants
Clar Clayhills and J.J. Tesche of Hamina in the 1730s. The buildings at the head
of the west fork are mills. The verdict of 1417 concerned the intrusion of lay
brethren fishing on the east side of the rapids or in the east fork to the Forsby
village bank in the rapids on the west side or upstream from the island.
Source:
Finnish National Archives, TVH:n arkisto, kartat ja piirustukset. E1/115.
Geometrisk Charta öfwer Gammelstads ån med dess Forsar, Belägen i
Nylands Lähn Raseborgs östraoch Borgo härader samt Nurmijärvioch Hellsing
Sochnar. Författad Åren 1757, 1758 och 1760. Page 19 and Kuisma (1991) 50.
The location of the downstream fisheries in the Helsinginkoski rapids (now
known as the Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids) is obvious, but in order to locate
the upper fisheries, we have to take a closer look at the topography of the
river.39 According to maps of Helsinge Parish from the turn of the 17th and 18th
centuries and maps on the fathoming of the River Vantaanjoki from 1757–60,
the main rapids and sites of strong currents were the Vanhankaupunginkoski
rapids, the Pikkukoski rapids slightly upstream, the Ruutinkoski rapids
between Tolkinkylä (Tolkby) and Niskala, the Pitkäkoski rapids upstream from
there and the Vantaankoski (Myllykoski) rapids almost five kilometres from the
Pitkäkoski rapids. The Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids forks into two channels
57
and is currently 150 metres long, with a drop in elevation of six metres. The
series of rapids from Pitkäkoski to Ruutinkoski is 1,400 metres long with a
drop of eight metres. The Vantaankoski rapids are 240 metres long and the
drop in elevation is five metres. The Pikkukoski rapids no longer exist, having
been blasted completely open when the River Vantaanjoki was cleared in
1891–95 and 1903–05 to prevent flooding.40
As shown by old map data, the main rapids on the lower reach of the
river were in two relatively distant series, the lower one consisting of the
Vanhankaupunginkoski and Pikkukoski rapids and the upper series reaching
from the Ruutinkoski rapids to the Vantaankoski rapids, with the Ruutinkoski
and Pitkäkoski rapids as distinct entities. Of these sites, Ruutinkoski had
already in the Middle Ages provided locations for easy fishing from the shore
or from structures erected in the stream. The importance of these rapids for
historical fishing in the River Vantaanjoki is also shown by the fact that the
owner of nearby Tomtbacka (Haltiala) Manor and the farmers of Skattmansby
(Veromiehenkylä) village, who cultivated their lands near the rapids were the
very landowners in Helsinge Parish who expressed concern in 1640 over
salmon being able to migrate upstream. In 1684, the owner of Tomtbacka
Manor complained to the king that the barring of the river by installations by
the downstream inhabitants prevents fish from swimming upstream. When
salmon began to migrate again in the river in 2007, the lowest observations of
spawning along its course were from the Pitkäkoski rapids.41
Already in the 15th century, the rapids and streams of the River Vantaanjoki
defined local place-names. Forsby (Fi. Koskela, literally “At the Rapids”) to the
west of the Helsinginkoski rapids, is mentioned in sources for the first time in
1417, when it took legal action against the monks of Padise for fishing in their
river.42 Nackböle (Niskala) at the head of the Ruutinkoski rapids is mentioned for
the first time in 1482. The Ancient Swedish nakke and the Middle Low German
nacke both mean “neck” in the anatomical sense, but the word is also used
to denote the head of the rapids. This term is also found as a Late Medieval
settlement name not only in other parts of Uusimaa, but also at Nakkila (Sw.
Nackeby) on the lower reach of the River Kokemäenjoki, a village of medieval
colonization established in the late 14th century at the earliest, where some
of the farms were owned by the Bishop of Turku.43 Important for the control
of the Ruutinkoski rapids in the Middle Ages were Tolkby (Tolkinkylä) village
to the north of the river and settlement at Tomtbacka-Nackböle to the south.
Upstream from this location the first village on the south bank of the river
was Mårtensby, a place-name pointing to late medieval colonization. Next,
at the head of the Vantaankoski rapids is Biskospböle (Piispankylä), a placename of a type common in Uusimaa, appearing either on its own or together
with monk-related names in regions where tenant farms of Padise Abbey
once existed or similar farms established by the Bishop of Turku opposite to
58
them were founded during the period of the activity of the Abbey in Western
Uusimaa in 1335–1408 and the donation of Porvoo in 1351–1429. The villages
of Tolkby, Skattmansby and Brutuby (Voutila) north of the river were all tax
villages, i.e. consisted of free landowning peasants, the names of which refer
to individuals who organized colonization locally (old Sw. tolk = interpreter,
skattman = taxman, person responsible of the coordination of collective tax,
bryte = foreman, supervisor of colonization at the local level). By the middle
of the 14th century at the latest, the summer and winter routes of the Great
Coastal Road leading from Turku to Viipuri and running parallel to the Uusimaa
coast, passed north of the river at Tolkby.44
Not only the public winter road, but also the connection with fishing at
the Ruutinkoski rapids may have been the reason why the lagman’s court
sessions of Helsinge Parish convened on 1 March 1417 at the beginning of
Lent in Tolkby. On this occasion, lagman Klaus Fleming resolved a dispute
that had begun on the Forsby village side of the river in the summer of
1416, or at the most a couple of midsummers before that, when the monks
of Padise were not satisfied with the share of the rapids. The case is an
interesting account of fishing methods in the River Vantaanjoki during the
period of Padise, and tells about the ownership of both the rapids and the
shores confining to it. When the donation was made in 1351, it concerned the
king’s rights in the upper and lower salmon fishing in the river (“piscaturam
salmonum in Helsinga Aboensis dyocesis … inferius et superius”). According
to common practice, this should have entailed a share of the catch for the
crown, as at the Ahvenkoski rapids in the River Kymijoki, where the king’s
share in 1357 was every fourth fish.45 However, since the share of Padise
Abbey of the salmon the River Vantaanjoki in 1417 was an actual share of the
stream into which the salmon climbed, the river or some sections of it must
at some stage have been taken over completely by the crown, whereby the
prescription was defined according to Swedish practice, i.e. in terms of the
share of the stream corresponding the ownership of the bank and the shore.
According to the verdict of 1417, the monks’ rights concerned the part of
the stream on the side of the king’s land, i.e. east of the rapids, where they
had their own weirs and devices (laxekaar). The monks, however, were not
satisfied with this and had crossed over to the Forsby village bank in the west,
where they had begun to fish with hand nets from the waters of the village.
Here, the term ‘monk’ refers to the lay brothers responsible for the abbey’s
fishing activities, who fished in the Helsinginkoski rapids each summer with
weirs and hand nets, with which the salmon were taken from the enclosures
and straight from the rapids. Fishing with hand nets from the bank or standing
in the stream by the bank was an old fishing method that was practised in the
15th century also at the large rapids of the River Kokemäenjoki. The terms of
the 1417 verdict concerning the weirs built by the lay brothers or their hired
59
hands, laxakaar and laxa kistha, meant the same thing, a V-shaped fishing weir
in the water made of staves driven vertically into the river bottom, opening
downstream and preventing the fish from swimming upstream. This method
of fishing was typical of the Cistercians, as salmon weirs (laxakareno) are
known to have been used in Östgötaland in Sweden in 1374, when the bailiffs
of the crown were ordered not to interfere with the share of the Cistercian
nuns of Askeby in the salmon enclosures of the River Motala.46
More information on the fishing structures in the River Vantaanjoki survives
from 1550, when the Royal Manor of Helsinki was founded and the local
landowning peasants’ former shares in the salmon fishing were bought up or
confiscated to the manor. The purchase of the fishing rights extended to the
upper fisheries and by 1556 none of the villages along the river had shares
in fishing waters along the river or in the adjacent sea area.47 Salmon fishing
was an important part of the activities of the Royal Manor. When the main
building of the manor was under construction in the summer of the fiscal year
of 1550–1551 (from Michaelmas 1550 to Michaelmas 1551), a total of thirtysix man-days of labour were reassigned from the project for the construction
of a salmon weir in the nearby rapids. In the same and the following summer,
a separate salmon trap was also built in the weir. By 1553 there were two
such traps, and three by 1563. The manor’s accounts mention a hand net in
1560, and two salmon nets in the following year. There are no sources on the
use of salmon traps from the Padise Abbey period, but in addition to traps
and hand nets, salmon nets cast from the bank or boats could have been
used, as was done in the first half of the 14th century at Kokemäki.48 It is
also possible that the lay brothers of Padise also built salmon weirs in the
Ruutinkoski rapids and further upstream, but the best salmon catches on
the River Vantaanjoki came from the steep and narrow Vanhankaupunginkoski
rapids, where the fish could be caught right at the beginning of their climb
from the sea into the river.
Since the adjudication of 1417 confirmed that the monks had the right to fish
only in the part of the stream facing the king’s land east of the Helsinginkoski
rapids, the judgement was in accordance with the law code of King Magnus
Eriksson and the rulings given in 1347–48 in Kokemäki. The ruling itself,
however, does not specify if the side of the King and the monks was at that
time considered equivalent to the eastern arm of the bifurcated foot of the
river or if the conflict had occurred after the lay brothers had crossed the
stream at the more wide western arm of the river. It also remains uncertain
whether the donation of 1351 actually concerned King’s land on the east
shore of the rapids or only right to the fishing in the stream and from the
bank, from where the lay brothers administered their weirs in the rapids.
It is interesting to note here that one of the members of the twelve-men
jury responsible for the verdict in 1417 was one Jop Vie or Vic, a landowning
peasant of the village of Vik (Sw. Vik = cove, present-day Viikki) east of the
60
rapids.49 If the donation to Padise Abbey included the east bank of the river,
it was not part of the landed possessions of Vik village, which, slightly over
a hundred years later consisted of two different settlements: Östervik at the
site of the later Royal Manor at the end of the cove and Västervik close to
the rapids and east of them. With reference to Finnish place-names in the
area, Saulo Kepsu has suggested that (Öster)vik was originally a 13th-century
settlement of inland Finns from the Häme region previously settled in Malmi
area, from which Västervik may have been split as a daughter village in the
late Middle Ages.50 Equally well, however, the separate locations of the two
villages may suggest the possibility that Västervik was originally a tenant farm
founded by Padise Abbey near the rapids and it was made liable for taxation
by officials of the crown some time after the Abbey sold all its property and
rights in 1429.
The ruling of 1417 suggest a hypothesis concerning the medieval structure
of ownership of the banks of the River Vantaanjoki, where the officials of the
crown responsible for the Swedish colonization in the area in the late 13th and
early 14th centuries took possession of the east bank of the lower reaches of
the river between the Pikkukoski and Helsinginkoski rapids in the name of the
king. The opposite west bank of the river and the waters facing it remained the
property of Forsby village consisting of yeoman farmers of possible Finnishspeaking origin.51 Upstream, the structure of ownership and prescription in
the river may have been the opposite, with the Tolkby village’s side of the river
belonging to the colonists, while the south bank of the river and its fishing
waters upstream from the Ruutinkoski rapids were taken into the possession
of the king, whose rights extended to the head of the Vantaankoski rapids.
This may also be proven by the structure of the ownership west to the
rapids, where the former backwoods of late iron age or 13th-century Finnishspeaking settlement of Hämeenkylä (Tavastby) in Lapinkylä (Lappböle) were
mixed with possible late 14th century tenant farms of the Bishop of Turku
(Biskopsböle) and other late medieval settlers south of the river in Mårtensby,
the houses of which had a joint prescription of fishing with Kårböle (Kaarela)
village midway between the River Vantaanjoki and the sea. Located in the
middle sections of Matäoja creek discharging into Iso-Huopalahti Bay, Kårböle
village held a key logistical position between the upper rapids of the River
Vantaanjoki and Munkkiniemi on the sea and both summer and winter roads
between present-day Tali, River Vantaanjoki, the Silvola iron ore mines and the
Vantaankoski rapids crossed the village in the 18th and early 19th centuries. A
natural corridor from the middle reaches of the River Vantaanjoki to the sea,
the area of Matäoja creek also has information on old Finnish toponyms of
the Häme settlement, which may indicate that the summer and winter routes
in the area possibly predate Swedish colonization.52
The late medieval village and later manor of Munkkiniemi (Sw. Munksnäs,
“Monk Cape”) today in the northwest corner of the city of Helsinki has
61
traditionally been understood as reminiscent of the activity of ‘monks’, i.e.
lay brothers of Padise Abbey in the area and it was most likely first founded
as a tenant farm of the Abbey as one of its hubs for a permanent presence
in Helsinge Parish and River Vantaanjoki area. Considering this, the Mätäoja
corridor may have had a significant role in the activity of Padise Abbey, because
it provided direct access from the monastery’s tenant farm at Munkkiniemi
to the upstream fisheries of the River Vantaanjoki regardless of whether they
were at Ruutinkoski or Vantaankoski. Although the royal donation concerned
only the right to fish, it could also have provided rights to areas behind the river
banks, thus giving the abbey the possibility to establish tenant farms in the
region, for example in Nackböle, or to have influence on the overall structure
of settlement south of the river before 1429. Because the Cistercians are
generally known to have been interested in ores, it would be tempting to
think that the bearded lay brothers were also aware in some way of the iron
deposits at Kaivoksela, only a couple of hundred meters east of the bend of
the river in Silvola. The ore was first discovered in 1744, but the deposit is near
where the upper rights for fishing of the Abbey were once located and close
to the place were the routes running parallel to Mätäoja Creek branched off to
Pitkäkoski and Ruutinkoski in the east and Vantaankoski in the north.53 Would
the lay brethren really have been aware of the ore deposit already at the turn
of the 14th and 15th centuries? The fact remains that it was never before
considered important enough to be exploited before the 18th century, and
because no information whatsoever over the role of its ownership emerges
in the Early Modern sources, the whole idea remains pure speculation.
the salmon fishing of the Royal Manor of Helsinki was of small scale. The
crown’s catch of 1552 at the Ahvenkoski Rapids on the River Kymijoki was
16 barrels, four times the figure for the River Vantaanjoki. In the following
decade, the manor’s annual salmon yield was less than three per cent of the
approximately 150 barrels fished by the crown and the peasants together on
the River Kymijoki. Also on the latter river, the size of the catches decreased in
the 1560s from 200 barrels to seventy, which points to the decline of salmon
stock along the north shore of the Gulf of Finland that began after the middle
of the 16th century. Because the size of the catch on the River Kokemäenjoki
was reduced to half around the same time, the development appears to have
been a more general one and the underlying reasons may have been related
to both more effective fishing in the 1550s caused by the activities of the
crown and possible ecological changes related to the beginning of the socalled Small Ice Age.55
The King’s Dish – and that of the monks
How big was the annual catch of salmon from the River Vantaanjoki in the
period of donation of the Padise Abbey in 1351–1428 and later at the turn of
the medieval and Early Modern periods? There is no surviving information
on catches of the donation period, but the yield of the salmon fishing of
the river is known from the time of the Royal Manor of Helsinki in 1550–71,
when the manor administered, on behalf of the crown, all salmon fishing in
the River Vantaanjoki (see diagram). The manor’s catch consisted of salmon
salted in barrels and so-called spit salmon (spikelax), of which there is already
information from 1548, when local farmers paid to the crown 41 spit salmon
and a small amount of trout as bishop’s tithes then confiscated to the crown.
When the salmon fishing had been taken over completely by the crown in
1551, the spit salmon catch rapidly decreased from dozens to only a few
fish. Fresh salmon were also recorded in the accounts of 1556–61, when
their number ranged from 36 to 12. The same decreasing trend is evident in
the numbers of barrels of salted salmon, varying from eight to one. A normal
catch was approximately five barrels, but from the 1560s there is no longer
any information on this being exceeded.54 Compared with the River Kymijoki,
62
Diagram:The Salmon Catches of the Helsinki Royal Manor 1551–1571
Source: Allardt 1898, Tab Xb.
What did the yield of the fishing in River Vantaanjoki amount to in the economy
of the Abbey and diet of the its community? The fish catches of Helsinki Royal
Manor do not indicate the yield of the fisheries during the Padise donation
period of 1351–1428; nor is the manor known ever to have fished upriver. It
is nonetheless obvious that the share of Padise Abbey in the salmon catch
of the River Vantaanjoki never exceeded 5–8 barrels a year. Assuming a net
weight of 120–140 kg per barrel, the monastery acquired perhaps slightly less
than one thousand kilograms of salted salmon per year, in addition to a couple
63
of dozen salt-dried salmons on spits. There is no information on the size of
the monastery during the donation period, but as there were never hardly
more than twenty monks at a time, each one could have eaten some 30 to
40 kilograms of salted salmon per year. Even if the diet of the whole abbey
community including the lay brothers had been based completely on fish,
salmon would certainly have remained over for sale in good years, and not all
of it was consumed at the abbey, where the diet included other fish as well.
The barrels of salted salmon and salt-dried salmon on spits were valuable
articles of trade, some of which could be taken directly from the fisheries to
the monastery’s warehouse in Tallinn for sale or gifted to important partners
and associates of the abbey. An indication of who ate salmon in the Late
Middle Ages is given by the accounts of Helsinki Manor for the year 1554,
when salted and spit salmon were consumed only at the so-called bailiff’s
table at the meals of the crown bailiff and the higher-ranking staff of the
manor (clerk, mercenary captains, foreman and craftsmen). Some salted
salmon was also eaten on ships, at the sawmill and on other assigned work
outside the manor involving higher staff. Salmon did not belong to the diet of
the wage and day labourers and other employees of the manor. This was no
doubt also the case at Padise Abbey, where salmon was eaten by the monks,
but not necessarily by the lay brothers, who may have had access to the
delicacy only on special occasions.
64
65
Settlement at the Gubbacka Site
Andreas Koivisto MA
This article discusses the settlement of the hill site of Gubbacka in the light
of archaeological material and historical sources, addressing the question
of when human occupation of the site began and when settlement there
developed into a village community.
Introduction
The hill at Gubbacka emerged from the sea around 4,000 BC.1 Human
settlements on the hill have mostly been located on its south slope, which
receives sunlight throughout the day. The hill rising to the rear shielded the
inhabitants from cold north winds. A strait of the sea was located for a long
while at the foot of the hill, providing access by boat to the open sea. This
strait originally separated the present-day area of Vuosaari in East Helsinki
from the mainland and it was isolated through land uplift at some stage in
the 17th century.2 At present, only a small ditch remains of the strait, but
its channel could still be seen in the 1950s and fishing with seine nets was
practised there in the 19th century during the spring floods.3
Gubbacka Hill was a suitable location for human occupation, with the first
possible signs of human activity dating from the Stone Age or the Bronze Age.
The site then appears to have been settled for some time around the Middle
Iron Age before a village was established there by the Early Middle Ages at
the latest. This village appears to have been settled for at least four hundred
years before it was moved in the late 16th or early 17th century to its present
site two kilometres to the north to Västersundom (Fi. Länsisalmi) and the old
site was abandoned. Gubbacka is a later place-name for the hill on which the
village stood. The village may originally have been called Gudstensby, which
is mentioned in historical sources.
67
Possible Stone or Bronze Age settlement
There is highly fragmentary evidence of human activity at Gubbacka during
the Stone or Bronze Age. These periods are mainly indicated by a fragment of
a polished stone axe or other lithic artefact discovered in the excavations at
the site. The finds also include quartz flakes, but their striking marks suggest
the making of fire rather than artefacts and the items can mainly be classed
as fire-striking quartz.4 Apparently flint was in such short supply in the Middle
Ages that quartz also had to be used for striking fire. Quartz and steel are
known to have been used for this purpose at least in Northern Scandinavia
in historically documented times.5 Based on their striking marks and context,
the quartzes from Gubbacka appear to be of medieval date and cannot be
associated with the prehistoric occupation of the site.
The fragment of the stone artefact was not in its original location of use.
It was found in fill used by the villagers to level the slope of the site for
their buildings. Moreover, it was at an elevation that was too low for Stone
Age occupation. During the Stone Age, the area in question was under sea
level. The axe fragment had either been transported to the site in the fill and
remained unnoticed by the villagers, or it had been placed deliberately in the
ground. Stone Age axes, adzes and other bladed objects, such as sickles,
can namely be also associated with magical practices and are known to have
been placed in connection with buildings to dispel evil forces.6
The sand fill used in the village presumably came from either of the two sand
pits in the village area, which can be seen on the slope above the village
site. Based on trial pits excavated in the surroundings of the sand pits, the
easternmost pit of the two would appear to have had soil making it a more
suitable location for a prehistoric dwelling site. The trial pits did not reveal any
distinct signs of habitation in the surroundings of the sand pit. A few pieces
of quartz and burnt clay, however, were found at its edge. The quartzes,
however, were not of very good quality.
This means that there is no definite evidence of Stone or Bronze Age
occupation of the Gubbacka site. The fragment of a polished stone artefact
alone does not prove early settlement, as it could have come to the site from
elsewhere and placed deliberately in the ground at a later date. Prehistoric
finds in the vicinity of Gubbacka are known mainly from the area of Sotunki.
There is also a cairn, interpreted as being of Bronze Age date, on a hill called
Kasaberget south of Gubbacka.7
68
Fig. 1.
Fragment of a polished stone artefact from Gubbacka, possibly a fragment of
an adze. Object National Board of Antiquities. Photo Pekka J. Heiskanen/Vantaa
City Museum.
Iron Age settlement
There are also relatively few observed signs of Iron Age settlement at
Gubbacka. For the time being, this period is suggested by four sherds of
coarse ceramics and a few radiocarbon dates. The medieval village at
Gubbacka is at an elevation of approximately 11–12 metres above present
sea level, corresponding to sea level around 1500 BC.8 This means that by
that time at the earliest human occupation of the village site as detected the
terrain could have been possible. There are, however, no signs of settlement
of such early date in the village area.
The four pot sherds of possible Iron Age date from Gubbacka are hand-turned
and undecorated and made with coarse temper. It is difficult to assign any
definite date on the basis of the sherds alone. However, they clearly differ
from the medieval ceramics from the site, which consists mostly of red
ware.9 The Iron Age sherds were found in the yard area of the buildings in
layers dating from the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period. It appears
likely that they were deposited later than their own period of use.
SETTLEMENT AT THE GUBBACKA SITE
69
farms. In view of the late Iron Age date (10th–11th centuries) it would appear
likely that members of the indigenous Finnish-speaking population lived there
at the time. The problem of Iron Age settlement at Gubbacka requires further
research. However, if such settlement had existed and the area was cultivated
in the Middle or Late Iron Age, this would be the first concrete evidence of
Iron Age settlement in the area of present-day Vantaa.13
The Early Middle Ages – colonists from Sweden
Fig. 2.
Pottery of Iron Age type from Gubbacka. Objects National Board of Antiquities. Photo Pekka J. Heiskanen/Vantaa City Museum.
A large number of radiocarbon samples were taken from Gubbacka, and
several of them have been dated.10 While the dates obtained for them are
mostly from the Middle Ages or the Early Modern Period, one is from the
6th century AD. This sample is from a grain of rye found in a layer interpreted
as a medieval dung heap. It, too, was not in its original location. Should this
dating be correct, this means that rye was cultivated at Gubbacka at an early
stage. Pollen samples from the vicinity indicate cultivation beginning in the
Viking Age at the latest, but there are no definite signs of cultivation in the
6th century.11
The floor of a smithy is, for the time being, the oldest structure discovered
at Gubbacka. A pit hearth and the stone foundation of a forge were found in
connection with it. The pit hearth, in the middle of the smithy location, was
dated to the period 939–1024 AD and a charred wooden structure overlaying
it was from 1035–1190 AD. On the other hand, samples from pits surrounding
the smithy were dated to 1160–1265 AD and 1165–1225 AD.12 It appears that
there could have been two smithies at the site, one built on top of the other.
The first one would thus have been constructed around 1000 AD and it would
have included the pit hearth. It would then have been destroyed in a fire
slightly over one hundred years later, after which a new smithy with a forge
on a stone foundation was built at this location.
There appears to have been some kind of smithy structure at Gubbacka
already at the end of the Iron Age. It is unclear whether it was the smithy
of an individual farming household or the joint smithy of a village of several
70
During the Middle Ages, colonists came to the coastal region of the
historical province of Uusimaa (Sw. Nyland, “New Land”) from Sweden.
This colonization has been studied to only a limited degree and, owing to
the lack of written sources, its first wave cannot be ascertained with any
certainty.14 With reference to place-names, Saulo Kepsu suggests that the
first colonists arrived in the coastal region of eastern Uusimaa during the
12th century. They established several new villages. According to Kepsu,
the oldest villages in the present area of Vantaa are Tavastby (Hämeenkylä),
Meilby (Seutula), Ripuby (Riipilä), Skattmansby (Veromiehenkylä), Kyrkoby
(Kirkonkylä), Dickursby (Tikkurila) and Sottungsby (Sotunki). Kepsu estimates
that Västersundom (Länsisalmi), to which Gubbacka belongs, was founded in
the 13th century.15
Indications of settlement at Gubbacka became more distinct in the Middle
Ages. The village site has revealed the remains of a smithy, with later parts
dating from the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. Around the same time,
there is a marked rise in the amount of pollen measured from lakes in Sipoo
and Vuosaari. Large amounts of juniper pollen in the lake bottoms point to
active grazing, and a great deal of microscopic soot, in turn, reflects the
importance of slash-and-burn cultivation.16 It appears likely that settlement on
the hill at Gubbacka evolved at this time into a village configuration as several
adjacent farms were established there.
From where did the Swedish colonists come? The former Helsinge Parish in
the form Helsingå (the River Helsinki) is mentioned in sources for the first time
in 1351 and the name gradually came to mean the whole parish instead of the
river. According to Gunvor Kerkkonen, this name may point to the origin of
most of the colonists from the Swedish province of Hälsingland as the placename Helsinge Parish has been associated with it.17 Saulo Kepsu, however,
presents an opposite interpretation, maintaining that this was the name of
an individual village in the parish and that the majority of the colonists came
from elsewhere. Among them was a family from Hälsingland, and accordingly
the different name was given to only one of the many villages in the area. The
village could have lent its name to the river, which in turn provided the name
for the whole parish.18
71
Because of the lack of written sources, the exact origin of the colonists
that came to the Helsinge Parish remains uncertain. Based on Swedish
place-names in Uusimaa, Kepsu regards the Swedish regions of Svealand,
mainly Uppland and Södermanland, and to a lesser degree Östergötland to
be the most likely areas of origin. According to him, village names such as
Dalkarlaby, Gästerby, Tjusterby and Helsingby in Uusimaa are indications of
groups differing from the main body of the colonist population.19 In similar
fashion, place-names in Uusimaa with the prefixes Tavast and Finn point to a
population of Finnish origin in the area. They refer to the Finns of Häme (Sw.
Tavastland, Latin Tavastia) and Finland Proper (Southwest Finland), who lived
in the area before the arrival of the colonists.20
The coastal region of Uusimaa is regarded as having been a wilderness
utilization zone of the Häme Finns at the time of the Swedish colonization.
Place-names suggest that at least part of Uusimaa was permanently settled
when the colonists arrived, as the oldest stratum of place-names related to
settlement and agriculture is Finnish.21 At least in Vantaa, archaeology has not
yet provided support for this suggestion, as there are hardly any Middle or
Late Iron Age finds from the former Helsinge Parish. This, however, may be
due to the bias of research, because there have so far been very few studies
of medieval village sites. Research at Gubbacka appears to show that people
could have lived at the site before the arrival of the Swedish colonists.
The arrival of the colonists in the Uusimaa coastal region did not lead to
violent conflicts, which, at the least, would most probably have left traces
in oral tradition. In other words, the colonists and the indigenous Finnish
population managed to coexist without any major clashes. No doubt there
were disputes, which were also resolved in courts of law. The earliest
recorded mention of the village of Västersundom from 1374 is the result of
one such dispute. According to the source in question, Swedish colonists
were in a dispute with Häme Finns over fishing rights on the coast. The
Swedes claimed that the fishing grounds were in the lands of their villages,
while the Finns appealed to their possession of the fishing waters since time
immemorial.22 This source from 1347 has been preserved as a copy written
in the 17th century. It mentions that Västersundom was previously known
as Gudstensby. Gubbacka may well be the Gudstensby mentioned in the
source, as archaeological evidence indicates that it was already settled at the
close of the 12th century when the Swedish colonists supposedly arrived.
The stratification of the village of Gubbacka
Archaeological research carried out at Gubbacka shows that the hill site of the
village was settled in the 11th century and abandoned in the late 16th or early
17th century. This poses the problem of distinguishing the various chronological
72
stages of the village. Visible on the surface are mainly the final stages of
the village from the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early
Modern Period, but some of the excavated house floors may also be older. It
is not possible, however, to present any definite generalizations of the later
stages being visible on the surface, because despite an extensive excavation
in the village area in 2003, most of the village remained uninvestigated and
was destroyed when a new highway interchange was built at the site. Prior
to this, the east end of the site had already been destroyed when the Kehä III
ring road around Helsinki was built in the 1960s.23
Changes in the structure of the village obviously took place between the 11th
and 15th centuries. It has been estimated that in medieval towns a building
would last, on the average, for the period of approximately one generation,
i.e. 20–30 years.24 Owing to limited research, there is no definite information
on the age of buildings in the countryside, but at any rate they were not as
susceptible to fire as the densely built houses in towns. Swedish studies
have established that Iron Age houses in the countryside could have been in
use for as long as 100–150 years.25 During the period of over 400 years when
Gubbacka was inhabited the various buildings of the village were repaired
and renewed on numerous occasions. When new houses were built, the
buildings of farms could change place within the village.
Excavations at the site provided hardly any observations of overlaying building
remains of different age. One reason for this may be that the buildings of the
village were dispersed over a large area, and the village itself could have
moved over the centuries. On the other hand, the oldest structure of the area
was found under the fill of a later road layer. Most of the structures excavated
in 2003 were located on top of layers of fill.26 Because the fill could not be
completely removed in the excavations, the possibility cannot be excluded
that there could also be older layers of building remains under them. Older
cultural layers could also have been destroyed by later buildings. This might
be indicated by the pits and ditches found under some of the buildings and
individual older finds from mixed layers.
Structures predating the 16th century
As mentioned above, Swedish colonists can be assumed to have come to
Gubbacka around the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. Dating from this
time is the forge with a stone foundation in the smithy and a road passing
through the village. King Magnus Eriksson’s Law of the Realm, which was
also in force in Finland, ordered that every village must have two roads, one
leading into it and another leading out of it.27 This meant that a road had to
be built for a village already when the village was being founded. As the age
of the road coincides with the presumed arrival of the Swedish colonists, it
73
appears that the law was followed at Gubbacka at least in this respect. It can
also be assumed that the network of roads in the parish was created at the
latest when the Swedish colonists arrive and new villages were established.
There are also other individual observations of structures predating the
16th century. In 2003, the remains of a building were excavated providing
a sample from the foundation ditch of the wall which was dated to the 13th
century. The structure was presumably a dwelling but there were very few
finds. The only items clearly associated with it are a drill bit and a horse’s
ice shoe, which were either deposited in fill or placed under the wall for
protection against evil.30 As this structure revealed no other definite finds,
its age remains uncertain. It may be of later date, but it was built using the
foundation of an earlier building.
Stone-laid forge foundation of the smithy remains investigated at Gubbacka in
2010. Photo Andreas Koivisto/Vantaa City Museum.
The smithy and the house-floor possibly dating from the 13th century
contained few finds. In addition to slag, the smithy location revealed only one
pot sherd, which may have been wheel-turned but coarse-tempered early
medieval black or grey ware or so-called Baltic Ware.31 It appears that the
structures were thoroughly cleaned or that artefacts were re-used carefully.
The recycling of material may be suggested by the radiocarbon dates obtained
for iron nails. There are radiocarbon dates for five iron nails from Gubbacka, all
of which were found in 16th-century contexts. The dates, however, are much
older, mainly from the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, i.e. the oldest
stage of the village.32 The dates suggest that nails would always have been
recovered when old buildings were torn down and were reused for the next
project. It must be noted, however, that the dating of iron is a new method
and may still entail unknown sources of error.33 It is also possible that at least
some of the older items were placed in their find locations because of the
mixing of layers at the site. Old artefacts of value that were more special
would, in turn, have probably remained in use through several generations.
The road leading through the village of Gubbacka was improved and its
course was altered over the centuries, as indicated by a section of the road
excavated in 2008–2010. The road consisted of sandy fill brought to the site
and has been dated to the 15th–16th centuries.28 It was built on top of a
smithy floor dating from the earliest period of the village, which means that
changes to the layout of the village took place between the early 13th century
and the 15th–16th centuries.
In 2010, a house-floor was excavated at Gubbacka, with finds that may date it
to the 14th–15th centuries. On the other hand, sherds of a majolica vessel and
red ware were found in connection with it, which may be younger, although
their precise age is not known. The oven foundation of this structure could
be seen on the surface and the building in question was probably a dwelling.
Further analysis of the excavation results is still in progress, and accordingly
it is still too early for any precise information on this structure.
The smithy excavated at Gubbacka was built at the turn of the 11th century
and remained in use until the beginning of the 13th century. Analyses of slag
show that iron artefacts were made there for the use of the village from iron
brought from elsewhere. There were no signs of iron-making as such.29 The
iron was presumably obtained from an area rich in ore in the vicinity of the
village or it could have been bought in the form of bars, for example from
Estonia. At any rate, the finds from the 2010 excavation included a bar of iron
apparently obtained as an imported item. The smithy does not indicate the
earliest centre of the village, since smithies were often built on the outskirts
of villages, further away from other buildings because of the risk of fire.
The village in the 16th century
Fig. 3.
74
The structures visible on the surface at Gubbacka mainly date from the 16th
or even the 17th century, the last stages of the village. Most of the structures
are the remains of ovens visible as small mounds above the present surface
of the ground, with some buildings of some kind originally around them. They
may have been dwellings or yard structures containing an oven or stone,
such as threshing sheds or saunas. The precise nature of the buildings can be
established only with archaeological means, if even by them.
75
All the structures observed at Gubbacka are located along the road
passing through the village. They appear to indicate that most of the farms
and buildings of the village were on the lower slope of the site south of
the road. It is difficult to say on the basis of archaeological material alone
how many farming properties there were in the village in the 16th century.
Historical sources, however, contain systematic information on the village of
Västersundom since the 1540s. At the time, there were eleven tax-payers in
the village.34 If the village of Västersundom was still at Gubbacka at the time,
this number offers suggestions on the number of farming properties located
along the road. The number of buildings was many times this figure, because
farms would include numerous buildings and structures of different kinds.
The precise date of the abandonment of the village is not known, any more
than the reasons for this. The archaeological material and historical sources
suggest, however, abandonment during the second half of the 16th century,
possibly through a gradual process.35
Summary
Although there are indications of some kind of Stone or Bronze Age occupation
at Gubbacka, it appears that more permanent, long-term settlement at the
site began at the end of the Iron Age or the beginning of the Middle Ages.
In the Early Middle Ages, Swedish colonists arrived in the coastal region of
Uusimaa and established villages along the coast. At Gubbacka, the colonists
appear to have established a village at a site where there was already a farm
household built by the indigenous population. The colonists most probably
named their village Gudstensby, which is mentioned in historical sources.
For reasons unknown, the village on the hill at Gubbacka was abandoned
during the 16th century and moved two kilometres north to its present site
at Västersundom.
Although Gubbacka has been investigated to a great deal and more is now
known about it, it nonetheless seems that new research poses more questions
than it provides answers. It also appears that something new is always found
wherever the soil is turned at the village site. Gubbacka is therefore by no
means completely investigated. A future challenge, in particular, would be to
find features that are not visible on the surface.
76
77
EARTH FILL AND MEDIEVAL LAW AT
GUBBACKA IN VANTAA
Janne Heinonen BA
This article discusses earth fill works carried out when the medieval village
of Gubbacka was founded at Länsisalmi (Sw. Västersundom) in Vantaa with
reference to archaeological material and medieval law. The sources are
excavations conducted at Gubbacka and the Laws of the Realm of kings
Magnus Eriksson and Christopher the Bavarian that were in force in the
Kingdom of Sweden, to which the present area of Finland belonged at the
time.
To a new village in a new land
The history of the village of Gubbacka is part of the process of medieval
Swedish migration to the coastal regions of Finland. The date of founding the
village is not known, nor whether there was any previous Finnish settlement
in the area. It is nonetheless certain that migration from Sweden in the Early
Middle Ages affected the founding of Gubbacka and other villages on the
coast of the former province and present-day region of Uusimaa (Sw. Nyland).
The cultural and material influence of the eastern regions of Sweden is evident
in the archaeological record of West Finland since prehistoric times. During
the Middle Ages, the expansion of the Kingdom of Sweden also increased the
movement of goods and people between the respective shores of the Baltic.
The most distinct demographic change in the coastal regions of the northern
Baltic was Swedish migration that came under way at the beginning of the
Middle Ages. This mostly involved colonists from Central Sweden moving to
the Baltic regions and the sparsely populated areas of Finland, from the coast
of Ostrobothnia in the west to the Viipuri region of Karelia in the southeast.1
79
Very little is known about Late Iron Age and early medieval settlement in
the coastal region of Uusimaa. According to current views, the resources of
this region were utilized at the beginning of the Middle Ages by the Finnishspeaking inland population who did not establish permanent settlements
there.2 During the Middle Ages, settlement along the coasts of Finland
became increasingly permanent through the growth of population and
colonization from Sweden. At the same time, settlements clustered into
villages of several farmhouses instead of individual farmsteads.3
A typical village consisted of several plots for dwellings along a village
road or lane with surrounding fields and pastures divided according to
relations of ownership among the farmers and the sites of the dwellings.
During historically documented times villages in Finland were a relatively
broad concept, and forms of village-type settlement varied both regionally
and chronologically. In medieval Finland, a village consisted of at least one
farm property subject to taxation. In villages of several farms, the plots and
buildings of properties could also be quite distant from each other while still
belonging to the same village. For the people concerned, a village was a
social group bound by kinship or areas of land, while the crown regarded it
primarily as a unit of taxation based on land ownership.4
Gubbacka at Länsisalmi in Vantaa was a typically structured, clustered
medieval village of the coastal region of South Finland. Most of the excavated
areas of the village site have been dated approximately to the 15th and 16th
centuries. The oldest available dates are from the turn of the 10th and 11th
centuries,5 suggesting several stages of occupation. The houses and buildings
that were used in the 15th and 16th centuries were in a loosely grouped
configuration along the road passing through the village.6 The results of the
excavations show that the buildings of the village were mostly log houses
built on low stone foundations. The stone foundations consisted of piled
rows of relatively small stones or a few larger foundation stones bearing the
walls. Ovens of natural stone and clay are known to have been constructed
mainly for dwellings, threshing sheds and saunas. Owing to the decay of
organic material, hardly anything definite can be said about other structures
and constructions.
At Gubbacka, the techniques of erecting buildings were not restricted to
structures above ground. The excavations also pointed to more extensive
earthworks at the house plots of the village. These works were carried
at the dwelling plots to make them suitable for erecting buildings. In the
archaeological material, this is shown by layers of sandy fill 10–50 cm thick
in the stratigraphy under the buildings.7 The use of fill for foundations was
basically functional and related to local conditions. Depending on specific
80
location, sandy fill improved many factors of building and habitation that
would otherwise have prevented construction or made it difficult for people
to live at the village site.
The use of fill, however, is not unique to Gubbacka. It is known to have been
used when building towns and villages in the Middle Ages.8 The adoption of
this technique appears to have taken place at the end of the Iron Age and the
beginning of the Middle Ages, as layers of fill in connection with buildings
are not mentioned in the archaeological literature on the Iron Age in Finland.
The Middle Ages marked a change in building practices in both small and
large scale. The appearance of a new building technique in the archaeological
material raises questions regarding the origin of the change. The use of fill
could have been one of the building techniques applied by the Swedish
colonists, which also included the corner-joined chimneyless log cabin,
adopted in Finland in the 13th century.9 Also falling into this period was the
new Law of the Realm of King Magnus Eriksson containing instructions on
how the lands of villages should be parcelled and how building should proceed
on dwelling plots. The new settlers that arrived in the Middle Ages brought
with them different building techniques, innovations and social change, along
with the borders, authority and laws of the Kingdom of Sweden.
The Law of the Realm
The Kingdom of Sweden is regarded as having emerged at the turn of the
12th century. The formation of the kingdom and its development were closely
associated with the colonization of uninhabited or sparsely settled regions.
Medieval migration to the coastal regions of Finland was part of these political
developments and the expansion of power.10 The first stages of migration
from the provinces of East Sweden took place in the late 12th century, the
early years of the kingdom. During the following two centuries, Sweden’s
reinforced position north of the Gulf of Finland permitted the arrival of greater
numbers of Swedish colonists to the coasts of Finland.11
The development of society and the expansion of the kingdom also called for
a new system of justice and uniform legislation. In response to this need, King
Magnus Eriksson prepared Sweden’s first general law of the realm between
approximately 1347 and 1352.12 It was based on the old laws of the Swedish
provinces of Uppland, Götaland and Västmanland dating from the Late Iron
Age and early Middle Ages.13 With the new law of the realm, the king sought
to cement his authority and create a uniform, functioning judicial system for
all the provinces of the realm. The law also sought to reform the organization
of the kingdom, taxation and forms of private land ownership. For agrarian
EARTH FILL AND MEDIEVAL LAW AT GUBBACKA IN VANTAA
81
society, one of the main goals of reform was to replace the old system of
family and individual land ownership with its division of farmland into large
separate plots with the strip allocation system (Sw. solskifte, tegskifte).14
Magnus Eriksson’s law of the realm was revised a century later in 1442 by
King Christopher the Bavarian. The new law of the realm hardly differed from
its predecessor. It was based in the same manner on codes with changes
mainly in the content of the latter. According to calculations by Martti
Ulkuniemi, 76.5% of the law text remained unchanged in the reform. A
practical difference was the new law’s stronger position as the commonly
applied law of the kingdom. Copies of King Christopher’s Law of the Realm
spread into wider use and the law was translated into Finnish in the 16th
and 17th centuries. It remained in use as the general law of the Kingdom of
Sweden until being replaced by the Law of the Realm of 1734.15
Through the expansion of the kingdom and colonization, the laws of its
communities also spread to new areas. It is not precisely known when
Magnus Eriksson’s Law of the Realm was adopted in the Finnish part of the
kingdom. According to Ragnar Hemmer, the first historical indication of its
being applied in the present territory of Finland concerned the changing of
owners of the Pyhäjoki estate in Perniö, Southwest Finland, in 1354. Kustaa
Vilkuna, however, maintained that this did not involve the Law of the Realm
but the previously applied Law of Södermanland Province. Vilkuna suggested
that the Law of the Realm was gradually adopted in Finland, beginning in the
1350s and coming into common use by the mid-1370s.16
The rapid spread and adoption of the Law of the Realm in Finland was
probably due to knowledge of the provincial laws that had been applied
earlier. Although the precise date of the founding of Gubbacka village is not
known, Magnus Eriksson’s and King Christopher’s laws were in force during
its settlement in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Magnus Eriksson’s and King Christopher’s laws of the realm are divided
into thirteen codes or sections according to individual themes. Each code
corresponded to a sector of society, laying down the rights and obligations of
king and peasants alike, the rules of trade, judicial procedures, the founding
of villages and the parcelling of owned land.
The building code – instructions for founding villages
Regarding the study medieval village sites, the most interesting aspect that
may have generated archaeological remains is found in the building code
given in the law of the realm. It is listed as Section XIII of the law, instructing
82
parties founding villages and their inhabitants in matters such as the parcelling
of owned land, the use of common land, the building of roads, marking out
plots and initiating building works. It is a legal entity imposing fines for the
breach of some of the regulations. The first part of the code is also a set of
instructions for the founding and building of villages. The creation and upkeep
of functioning village communities can be regarded as the ultimate purpose
of this section of the law.
The most interesting parts of the law of the realm for the formation of medieval
village sites and their archaeological investigation are the first four chapters
of the building code. Chapter I gives instructions on marking the boundaries
of new villages and the building of roads leading to them. Chapter II requires
the local farmers and peasants to build and maintain public roads. Chapter III
contains instructions on the division of plots. Chapter IV is on compensations
resulting from the division of land and the locations of buildings and their
relation to adjacent plots and roads.17 This chapter is the only passage in the
law of the realm on the buildings of a village.
With regard to layers of fill found in archaeological excavations of village sites,
the most informative part of chapter IV is its first section. It is on the division
of land caused by the founding of a village or changes in the ownership of
plots, whereby land suitable for building has become unevenly distributed
among the farmers and peasants of the village. The core idea of this section
was to ensure that all the villagers had access to an equal amount of land
suitable for building.
Section I of chapter IV of the building code of Magnus Eriksson’s Law of the
Realm reads as follows in modern translation:
Now there is bedrock on the plot. If it can be quarried or burned, built
or otherwise used, let half of it be included in the parcelled land and
half left out. If it cannot be used, let it be excluded from the parcelling.
If there is a brook on the plot that can be filled or covered, let half of it
be included in the measured land and let half of it be excluded, but if
this is not the case, let it be completely excluded from the measured
land. Now more land must be taken from village lands once strip
allocation has been made. Let this additional land be divided amongst
those whose plots include land that cannot be used. The division shall
be carried out so that each party concerned shall have a share next to
his own plot.18
According to the law, the owner of a plot that was unusable but deemed
repairable was entitled to compensation from surrounding plots.
83
Compensation, however, required the possible removal or covering of the
obstacle to building and habitation on the plot. Should the obstacle on the
plot be repairable, it could be included in the parcelling of plots.
The law mentions bedrock and brooks as examples of reasons for repairing
plots. This regulation, however, seems to apply in general to hindrances that
can be noted in the plots of a village. According to Åke Holmback and Elias
Wessén, who have studied the original sources of the laws of the realm,
unusable plots, as defined by the law, were not only sites with outcrops,
bedrock and brooks but also soil subject to the effects of thawing or terrain
generally unsuitable for building.19 Finnish translations of King Christopher’s
Law of the Realm from the 16th and 17th centuries refer to hindrances 20 and
defects 21 when describing unusable plots eligible for compensation.
Where the law of the realm was followed in the parcelling of land in villages,
it affected the formation of the areas of the plots subject to parcelling. While
the law does not directly order the improvement of plots, their hindrances
as defined in the law point to the uses of fill observed in archaeological
excavations.
Fig. 1.
Drawn profile of the terrace in excavation area 2 of the 2003 fieldwork season.
The units of the drawing indicate sandy fill. Measured documentation by
Mikko Suha 2003, final drawn version by Donald Lillqvist/National Board of
Antiquities.
In 2008, excavation area I at the site focused on a building at the west end of
the village, dated to the 16th century. This structure had an oven measuring
2 x 3 metres, built on a foundation of clay. The clay foundation of the oven
was, in turn, on sandy fill brought from outside the plot. The fill layers under
the building excavated in 2008 also appear to have had the primary function
of levelling the plot on the slope to be suitable for building.24
Earth fill works at Gubbacka and related reasons
The location of Gubbacka on the south slope of a hill is typical of medieval
villages.22 The village was originally built on the south slope of Gubbacka hill
next to a bay of the Gulf of Finland, near areas to be cleared into fields. The
archaeological material shows that it was necessary to improve the site to
make it suitable for building and habitation. The problem here was not the
hindrances of brooks or bedrock as mentioned in the building code of the law.
Instead, the most obvious reason for improvements was the steep gradient
of the south slope of the hill.
Excavations were carried out at the village site in 2002, 2003, 2008, 2009
and 2010. The most distinct signs of improvements to the terrain and the use
of fill were noted in 2003, when the excavation focused on the east part of
the village, dated to the 15th and 16th centuries on the basis of artefacts.
Fieldwork revealed several terraces of sand and stones built under houses
and ovens to level the slope of the site. The most prominent of these works
was a laid terrace of sand and stone in excavation area 2. Two buildings with
stone foundations and ovens had been erected on the terrace. The stones
of the terrace were among the sand and did not appear to have formed any
separate structure. Instead, their purpose was to keep the soil of the terrace
in place. The fill was up to 50 cm thick and extended throughout the excavated
area of 242 square metres.23
84
Fig. 2.
The oven foundation in excavation area I of the 2008 fieldwork season on the
southward slope of the site. Photo by Andreas Koivisto/Vantaa City Museum.
85
Fig. 3. The left (east) profile of the above-mentioned oven. The profile drawing shows
how it was necessary to level the sloping site in order to construct the oven and
the house. Measured documentation by Anna-Maria Salonen 2008, final drawn
version by Riikka Väisänen/Vantaa City Museum.
At Gubbacka, fill was also used in the earlier stage of the village. Area 3 of the
2009 excavation revealed a terraced village road overlaying the remains of a
construction consisting of charred wooden structures, individual pits and a pit
hearth. The hearth was radiocarbon-dated to 939–1024 AD.25 Interpreted as a
smithy, this building was erected on 10–30 cm layer of sandy fill. The smithy
belonged to the earlier stage of the village site and it cannot be unequivocally
associated with the medieval village of Gubbacka. The use of sandy fill,
however, indicates that land was levelled at the site already in the Iron Age.
The fill at Gubbacka is mainly of pure, fine or coarse sand. The sand differs from
the earth layers of the plots, showing that it was brought from elsewhere,
probably from the south slope of the hill. There are still large pits visible on the
slope, suggesting the excavation and removal of earth.26 Some of the sand
pits on the slope may date from the period of the village, while the largest
pit suggests long-term use that continued after the village was abandoned.
In addition to improving the terrain and soil of the village, sand was probably
used for the building and upkeep of the adjacent road throughout its use.
According to medieval laws, farmers and peasants were required to maintain
roads.27
The use of fill to improve the terrain is clearly indicated by the archaeological
material. In view of the instructions given in the law of the realm, it is also
possible that sandy fill was used to improve the soil under buildings. The stone
foundations and ovens of the village appear to have been constructed on
sandy fill brought to the sites concerned. One reason for this may have been
to prevent the effects of freezing soil on the structures of houses. The poor
86
suitability of soil subject to freezing for house plots is indicated by Holmback’s
and Wessén’s above-discussed view of section I of chapter IV of the building
code of the law of the realm concerning hindrances. In this connection,
plots where water from melting ground frost remains on the surface are
regarded as partly entitled to compensation. Not only uncomfortable for the
inhabitants, the melting water has a destructive effect on wooden structures
of houses. Frost-related damage involving the movement of soil is caused
by pressure on structures from the freezing of soil and its expanded volume.
Especially in buildings erected on the ground or on low stone foundations, the
composition of the surface of the ground was important for the durability of
structures.28 Sand in fill under buildings allowed water to seep into the lower
layers of the soil, thus decreasing the probability of damage from frost and
melting waters. The use of sandy fill can be understood in areas where the
freezing of the ground could have had destructive effects on the structures
and mortared ovens of houses.
On the basis of only one site and few documentary sources, it is difficult to
establish how the provisions of the building code were followed. The research
material of a single village can only reveal the materials used for constructing
a specific dwelling site and they cannot permit any direct generalizations on
the spread of medieval building techniques or adherence to the instructions
of the building code.
However, archaeological excavations at other sites provide indications on the
more extensive use of fill. At the village of Mankby in Espoo, South Finland,
which is of the same age as Gubbacka, sandy fill was also used to improve
the plots of houses.29 In addition to these two cases, there is also evidence
of sand being used in the foundations of buildings from urban and manor
sites. Sandy fill has been noted in archaeological excavations in at least
Turku, the Old Town of Helsinki (northeast of the city centre) and the crown
manor of Näse in Perniö, SW Finland. In the oldest layers of urban settlement
in Turku, gravel, stones, wood chippings and sand were laid on the clayey
base soil to serve as foundations and to keep the location dry. By the end
of the Middle Ages, the older remains of the town had produced so much
coarse soil that soil from elsewhere was no longer used in the foundations
of buildings.30 In the Old Town of Helsinki, sand was used in the layers under
buildings to the depth of a few ten centimetres. Here, the sand fill covered
the older settlement layer of the village of Koskela.31 At the crown manor in
Perniö, sandy fill occurred in places to a depth of 50 cm in connection with
structures.32 In Turku and Perniö, sand was laid under floorboards at least for
insulating humidity and to prevent draughts.33
87
Fill in the building practices of medieval villages and
related archaeological research
Archaeological materials show that the soil of the Gubbacka village site was
deliberately worked and improved when the village was built. These works
were not only improvements at individual house plots; fill also appears to
have been used in the layers under houses and buildings throughout the
period of occupation of the village. At Gubbacka, fill was primarily associated
with the disadvantages of the sloping site and the practical need to improve
the foundations of plots. According to the building code of the law of the
realm, fill was also needed to prevent structural damage to buildings by the
freezing and thawing of the ground.
Medieval laws do not contain details on rural building practices. The
instructions of the laws are mainly of a general nature and not specific
rulings that would have affected the life of a whole village community. Nor
do other written sources provide more information on building and related
methods in the rural areas because the so-called verdict books of the Middle
Ages and Early Modern Times mainly concern land ownership disputes and
violent crime,34 and the building inspectors required by the law in towns are
not known to have been employed in the rural areas.35 Our knowledge of
medieval timber construction is therefore based mainly on archaeology and
ethnographic analogies.
Earth fill is a new subject of research in Finnish medieval archaeology. While
there is evidence of its use at medieval village and town sites on the south
coast of Finland, there is no detailed research on its application in the inland
regions. It also remains to be established whether the use of fill was part of
the building traditions of the Swedish colonists or a practice that had evolved
in the coastal regions of Finland.
In addition to establishing historical building methods, earth fill should also be
regarded as an important means of interpreting the chronological stratification
of sites. At locations with several stages of occupation or construction, fill
can make it possible to distinguish earlier and later stages, thus establishing
clear chronological boundaries between two or several levels of activity. At
the same time, fill serves as a protective barrier against the effects of later
human activity. An example of the benefits of old fill for archaeology is the
above-mentioned Old Town of Helsinki and the remains of the 14th-century
village of Koskela which remained under the fill of the foundations of the
town.
Until now, fill has been noted only briefly in excavation reports or has possibly
been interpreted as natural soil layers. A broader investigation of earthworks
related to medieval house plots in Finland and the function of fill under
buildings remains to be carried out.
Section I of chapter IV of the building code mainly concerns compensation
for land in the parcelling of plots in villages. While the law does not directly
order the improvement or filling of house plots, it points to the reasons that
led to earthworks at plots. It also tells of the needs for improving village sites
and related objectives.
The law of the realm reveals that the founding of villages in the Middle Ages
was partly a planned activity. The law’s building code, however, should be
regarded above all as a wish of the authorities for a better standard of building
in villages and instructions for farmers and peasants on the founding of village
sites. Generally speaking, the activities of an individual village appear to
have been more a matter concerning its inhabitants than between individual
farmers and the king. Also the parcelling of fields into strips as laid down
in the law of the realm was mainly a process carried out within the village,
although the adoption of this system of cultivation was directed by higher
authority.36 In addition to parcelling farmland, the division and improvement
of dwelling plots and the building of houses were probably carried out within
the village community. With the implementation of Magnus Eriksson’s law of
the realm, the development of villages was probably based on old building
traditions and the instructions of the new law.
88
89
NOTES
A1-001
Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen & Timo Joutsivuo (2002) ’Suomi ja suomalaiset
esihistoriasta suureen Pohjan sotaan’, in Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen & Timo Joutsivuo
(ed.) Suomen kulttuurihistoria 1. Taivas ja maa, Helsinki: Kustannusosakeyhtiö
Tammi, 35; Carl Fredrik Meinander (1983) ’Om svenskarnes inflyttningar till Finland’,
Historisk tidskrift för Finland 68, 231–232; Eljas Orrman (1995) ’Den nyländska
svenskbygdens uppkomst och gestaltning’, in Tom Sandström (ed.) Nyländska
ankarfästen, Helsingfors: Finlands svenska hembygdsförbund, 11–31.
A1-002 A good synthesis of the discussion concerning the Åland Islands and Ostrobothnia
is given by Eljas Orrman (2002) ’Kontinuitet eller diskontinuitet – konkurrerande
teorier om den svenska bosättningens ålder i Finland’, in Ann-Marie Ivars & Lena
Huldén (ed.) När kom svenskarna till Finland?, Skrifter utgivna av Svenska
litteratursällskapet i Finland 646. Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland 51–62.
A1-003 Kaisa Häkkinen (2007) Se Wsi Testamentti http://www.edu.fi/perusopetus/aidinkieli/
agricola/agricolan_elama_ja_tyo/se_wsi_testamentti (viewed 1.3.2011).
A1-004
See Meinander (1983) 231–232; Anna Wickholm (2005) ’Fyndtomheten i Nyland
under vikingatid och tidig medeltid – en forskningshistorisk genomgång av
hypoteserna kring fyndtomheten’, in Henrik Jansson (ed.) Vårt maritima arv –
Merellinen perintömme. CD-ROM, Helsingin yliopisto.
A1-005
See e.g. Kaarina Sarmaja-Korjonen (1994) ’Sibbo sockens naturhistoria’, in Christer
Kuvaja & Arja Rantanen, Sibbo sockens historia fram till år 1868, Band 1, Jyväskylä,
27–35.; Kimmo Tolonen, Ari Siiriäinen & Anna-Liisa Hirviluoto (1979) ’Iron Age
Cultivation in SW Finland’ Finskt Museum 1976, Esbo: Finska fornminnesföreningen, 10–25, 54–61.
A1-006
Henrik Jansson & Jaakko Latikka (2002–2003) Länsi- ja Keski-Uudenmaan saariston
ja rannikkoalueiden inventointi 2002–2003. Tammisaari, Hanko, Inkoo, Siuntio,
Kirkkonummi, Espoo, Helsinki. Vårt maritima arv – Merellinen perintömme, Helsinki:
Helsingin yliopisto, Museovirasto, Rakennushistorian osaston arkisto (unpublished
research report).
A1-007 Maritime landscape in change: Archaeological, Historical, Palaeoecological and
Geological Studies on Western Uusimaa. ISKOS 19. Helsinki: Suomen
Muinaismuistoyhdistys 2011.
A1-008
Georg Haggrén (2009) ‘Autioituneet kylätontit – kurkistusreikä Uudenmaan
asutushistoriaan’, SKAS 1/2009, 23–33; Georg Haggrén (2011 in print) ’Colonization,
Desertion and Entrenchment of Settlements in Western Nyland ca. 1300–1635 AD’,
Maritime landscape in change: Archaeological, Historical, Palaeoecological and
Geological Studies on Western Uusimaa. ISKOS 19. Helsinki: Suomen
Muinaismuistoyhdistys, 151–178.
A1-009 Henrik Jansson, Georg Haggrén, Kristiina Mannermaa & Tanja Tenhunen (2010)
‘Settlement history and economy of the Gunnarsängen site at the Hanko peninsula’,
Fennoscandia Archaeologica XXVII, Helsinki: Suomen arkeologinen seura, 69–88.
A1-010
Georg Haggrén, Heini Hämäläinen, Hanna Kivikero, Tarja Knuutinen, Heli Lehto &
Elina Terävä (2008) Hanko, Hangonkylä, Lapsen Puiston tonttimaa. Kaivaus 31.5.3.7.2007. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto. Museovirasto, Rakennushistorian osaston
arkisto (unpublished research report).
A1-011
Jansson & Latikka (2002–2003) 183–185.
A1-012
Sirkka-Liisa Seppälä (2007) ’Gravröse och bärnstensfynd vid Kärrängen i Ingå’,
Västnyländsk årsbok 2006. Ekenäs, 27–35.
90
A1-013
Henrik Jansson (2011 in print) ’ Burials at the end of land – Maritime burial cairns
and the settlement history of South-western Uusimaa’, Maritime landscape in
change: Archaeological, Historical, Palaeoecological and Geological Studies on
Western Uusimaa. ISKOS 19. Helsinki: Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistys * - *.
A1-014
Georg Haggrén (2005), ’Moisio – kartano – kirkko. Suurtalot ja kristinuskon
juurtuminen varsinaiseen Suomeen’, SKAS 1/2005, 12–26.
A1-015
Hanna Kelola & Satu Koivisto (2008) Lohja Haukilahti. Rautakautisen asuinpaikan
kaivaus. Helsinki: Museovirasto, Arkeologian osaston arkisto (unpublished
excavation report).
A1-016
Teija Alenius (2011) ’Palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the colonization
of Western Nyland’, Maritime landscape in change: Archaeological, Historical,
Palaeoecological and Geological Studies on Western Uusimaa. ISKOS 19. Helsinki:
Suomen Muinaismuistoyhdistys, * - *. The series of samples from Innoonlampi
Pond on Jalassaari Island in Lake Lohjanjärvi has not yet been dated.
A1-017
Saulo Kepsu (2005) Uuteen maahan. Helsingin ja Vantaan vanha asutus ja nimistö,
Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran toimituksia 1027. Helsinki: Suomalaisen
kirjallisuuden seura, 113–116.
A1-018
Kepsu (2005) 58–61.
A1-019
Orrman (1995) 12–17; Eljas Orrman (1990), ’Den svenska bebyggelsens historia’, in
Finska skären, Helsingfors: Konstsamfundet, 197–278.
A1-020 Erikskrönikan. See e.g. http://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Erikskr%C3%B6nikan, 9
(viewed 1.3.2011). Translation by Jüri Kokkonen.
A1-021 See e.g. Eljas Orrman (1995) 17–19, 22.; Ulrika Rosendahl (2008) ’Kolonisation och
nybyggare i den tidiga medeltiden’, in Byn. Medeltid vid Östersjöns stränder, Esbo:
Esbo stads museum, 62–64.
A1-022 Rosendahl (2008) 62. See Mats Mogren (2000) Faxeholm i maktens landskap. En
historisk arkeologi, Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology 24, Stockholm: Almqvist
& Wiksell International.
A1-023 Rosendahl 2007
A1-024 Cf. Kepsu (2005) 61.
A1-025 Cf. Gunvor Kerkkonen (1965) ’Helsingin pitäjän keskiaika’, in Helsingin pitäjä 1.
Porvoo: Helsingin maalaiskunta, 25–27, 91–92.
A1-026
See e.g. Thomas Lindkvist (2002) ’Sverige och Finland under tidig medeltid’,
in Ann-Marie Ivars & Lena Huldén (ed.) När kom svenskarna till Finland?, Skrifter
utgivna av Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland 646. Helsingfors: Svenska
litteratursällskapet i Finland, 46–47.
A1-027 Georg Haggrén (2006) ’Frälset, kolonisationen och sockenbildningen i Västra
Nyland’, Suomen Museo – Finskt Museum 2006, Helsinki: Suomen
muinaismuistoyhdistys, 55–68.
A1-028
Haggrén (2006) 55–68; Yrjö Kaukiainen (1975) ’Viipurin läänin ruotsalaisasutuksen
synty varhaiskeskiajalla’, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 72, 105–125; Thomas
Wallerström (1995) Norrbotten, Sverige och medeltiden. Problem kring makt och
bosättning i en europeisk periferi. I. Lund Studies in Medieval Archaeology 15:1.
Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 47-50, 152, 160-161.
A1-029 Ad. Neovius (1912) ’Akter och undersökningar rörande Finlands historia intill år
1401’, Historiallinen arkisto XXIII,1:3. Helsingfors: Finska historiska samfundet, 121.
91
A1-030 Finlands medeltidsurkunder (FMU) I, Utg. av Reinh. Hausen. Helsingfors: Finlands
statsarkiv 1910, nr 330.
A1-051 Georg Haggrén, Maija Holappa, Tarja Knuutinen & Ulrika Rosendahl (2011)
’Stratigrafin på en välbevarad bytomt – Mankby i Esbo’, SKAS 2/2010, 42–49.
A1-031 FMU I, nr 346.
A2-001
A1-032 FMU I, nr 331.
A1-033 Registrum Ecclesiae Aboensis (REA), Utg. av Reinh. Hausen. Helsingfors: Finlands
statsarkiv 1890, nr 43.
A1-034
Markus Hiekkanen (2005) ’Kristinuskon ja kirkkojen varhaisvaiheita Länsi- ja KeskiUudenmaan rannikolla ja saaristossa’, in Henrik Jansson (ed.) Vårt Maritima Arv –
Merellinen perintömme, CD-ROM. Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2; Markus
Hiekkanen (2007) Suomen keskiajan kivikirkot, Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran
toimituksia 1117. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura, 458.
A1-035 REA 9; Registrum Ecclesiae Aboensis. Codices Medii Aevi Finlandiae I. Hafnia
MCMLII, 14, 126.
Harald Arman (ed.) (1965) Eesti arhitektuuri ajalugu, Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 168-172.
A2-002 Wolfgang Schmidt (1941) Die Zisterzienser im Baltikum und Finnland,
Suomen Kirkkohistoriallisen Seuran Vuosikirja XXIX–XXX, Helsinki,
Suomen Kirkkohistoriallinen Seura, 69.
A2-003 Friedrich Georg von Bunge (1857) Liv-, Esth- und Curländisches Urkundenbuch
nebst Regesten, 3, Reval (Tallinn): Kluge und Ströhm, No 475a.
A2-004 Armin Tuulse (1942) Die Burgen in Estland und Lettland, Verhandlungen der
Gelehrten Estnischen Gesellschaft XXXIII, Dorpat (Tartu): Dorpater Estnischer
Verlag, 275.
A2-005 Schmidt (1941) 73.
A1-036 Kauko Pirinen (1962) Kymmenysverotus Suomessa ennen kirkkoreduktiota,
Historiallisia tutkimuksia LV. Helsinki: Suomen historiallinen seura, 76–89.
A2-006 Bartholomäus Hoeneke (1960) Liivimaa noorem riimkroonika (1315-1348) (compiled
and commented by Sulev Vahtre), Tartu: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus, 79.
A1-037 Pirinen (1962) 42–43, 80–82, 87.
A2-007 Schmidt (1941) 101.
A1-038 Birgitta Fritz (1973) Hus, land och län. Förvaltningen i Sverige 1250-1434, II,
Stockholm Studies in History 18, Stockholm, 120–121, 124, 127–128, 131, 137–138.
A2-008 Schmidt (1941) 118.
A1-039 Fritz (1973) 120–121, 124, 127–128, 137–138.
A1-040 FMU 873. Riksarkivet (Tukholma), Pergamentsbrev 8.9.1378.
A1-041 Georg Haggrén (2008) ’Uudenmaan synty’, in Kylä. Keskiaikaa Itämeren rannalla,
Helsinki: Espoon kaupunginmuseo, 49.
A1-042 Haggrén (2008) 49.
A1-043 Haggrén (2008) 49.
A1-044 Haggrén (2011 in print); Eino Jutikkala & al. (1973) Suomen asutus 1560-luvulla.
Kyläluettelot, Helsingin yliopiston historian laitoksen julkaisuja N:o 4. Helsinki:
Helsingin Yliopisto, 179–191.
A1-045 Haggrén (2008) 51–52.
A1-046
Eljas Orrman (1986) Bebyggelsen i Pargas, S:t Mårtens och Vemo socknar
under senmedeltiden och på 1500-talet. Historiallisia tutkimuksia 131, Vammala:
Suomen historiallinen seura; Anneli Mäkelä (1979) Hattulan kihlakunnan ja Porvoon
läänin autioituminen myöhäiskeskiajalla ja uuden ajan alussa, Historiallisia
tutkimuksia 109, Helsinki: Suomen historiallinen seura.
A1-047 Haggrén (2009). With regard to Helsinge Parish, see Veli-Pekka Suhonen (2008)
’Keskiaikaisen Helsingin pitäjän kadonneet kylät’, Helsingin pitäjä 2009, Porvoo:
Vantaa seura – Vandasällskapet ry, 26–51.
A1-048 Georg Haggrén, Henrik Jansson & Tarja Knuutinen (2007), ’Inkoon Storböle –
Keskiaikainen autiotontti Länsi-Uudenmaan saaristossa’, SKAS 3/2007, 3–11.
A1-049 Georg Haggrén, Henrik Jansson & Aki Pihlman (2003) ’Snappertunan
Kullåkersbacken. Unohdettu tutkimuskohde unohdetulla alueella’. Muinaistutkija
3/2003, 13–24.
A1-050 Georg Haggrén (2005) ’Köklax i Esbo. Arkeologiska undersökningar på en medeltida
bytomt’, Nordenskiöld -samfundets tidskrift 65, 83-101; Haggrén (2008) 45–46;
Haggrén, Jansson & Knuutinen (2007).
92
A2-009 Raam (1988) 66.
A2-010
Villem Raam (1958) Padise klooster. Падизеский монастырь. Padise monastery,
Tallinn: Eesti Riiklik Kirjastus, 19/ 46/ 72.
A2-011
Villem Raam (1958).
A2-012
Villem Raam (1988) ‘Padise klooster’, Harju rajooni ajaloo- ja kultuurimälestised,
Tallinn: Eesti Raamat, 53-67.
A2-013
Villem Raam (1991) ‘Paadisten luostari’, Helsingin pitäjä = Helsinge, 1992, Helsingin
pitäjän kotiseutuyhdistys, Vantaan kaupunginmuseo, 44-54.
A2-014
Raam (1988) 53.
A2-015
The building complex is not exactly oriented according to the cardinal directions on
a compass, but according to the natural defenses offered by the bank of the river.
Nevertheless, the wings of Padise monastery have conventionally been referred to
according to the closest main directions to avoid confusion.
A2-016
Raam (1988) 64-65.
A2-017
Raam (1988) 66.
A2-018
Kaur Alttoa (2001) ‘Einige Beispiele der Kombinationen von Burg und Kirche in
Estland’, in Kaur Alttoa, Knut Drake, Kazmierz Popieszny & Kari Uotila (Eds.) Castella
Maris Baltici 3-4, Archaeologia Medii Aevii Finlandiae V, Malbork, Turku: Muzeum
Zamkowe w Malborku, 15; Jaan Tamm (2002) Eesti keskaegsed kloostrid. Medieval
Monasteries of Estonia, Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus, 40.
A2-019
Villu Kadakas (2005) ‘Confusion with the „chapel“ walls in the southern wing of
Padise Monastery’, in Estonian Journal of Archaeology 9/2, Tallinn, 160-173.
Available on the Internet 16.05.2011. http://books.google.ee
A2-020 Kersti Markus (2009) ‘Misjonär või mõisnik? Tsistertslaste roll 13. sajandi Eestis’, in
Acta Historica Tallinnensia 14, 24.
NOTES
93
A2-021 Paul Johansen (1933) Die Estlandliste des Liber Census Daniae, Kopenhagen: H.
Hagerup/ Reval (Tallinn): F. Wassermann, 540. Both place names Padis and Paeküla
probably derive from the word paas meaning limestone.
A2-022 Jaan Tamm (2010) Padise klooster. Ehitus- ja uurimislugu, Tallinn: TEA.
A2-023 Helen Bome (2009) ‘Keskaegse munga hingepeegel: Padise kloostrikiriku
raidreljeefid. Mirror for the soul of a medieval monk: The carved reliefs in Padise
abbey church’, in Keskaja küla. Medieval village, Padise, 28-37.
A2-024 Alttoa (2001) 15.
A2-025 Kaur Alttoa (2009) ‘Padise kloostri arhitektuur. Uurimise hetkeseis ja probleemid/
Architecture of Padise Monastery. Current studies and problems’, in Keskaja küla.
Medieval village, Padise, 23.
A2-026 David Gaimster (1997) German Stoneware 1200-1900, London: British Museum
Press, 282-284. So called Falcke group was a very expensive and highly decorated
type of drinking vessels typically associated with very well-to-do users.
A2-027 Identified by Erki Russow.
A2-028 Henri Gaud & Jean-François Leroux-Dhuys (2006) Cistercian Abbeys. History and
architecture, Könemann, 46.
A2-029
The finds from the excavations of 1950s and 1960s appear to be lost in spite of
recent attempts to locate them in various museums. In any case, according to
preserved find lists and photos there were probably almost no medieval finds
among them, because the excavations mostly involved removing collapse debris.
A3-001
Lexicon des Mittelalters 1–10 (cit. LM), München und Zürich: Artemis Verlag
(1980–1999), Zistersiensen, -innen, LM 9, 632–634 and Citeaux, LM 2, 2104–2106.
A3-002 Bernhard von Clairvaux, LM 1, 1992–1998; Christian Krötzl (2004) Pietarin ja
Paavalin nimissä. Paavit, lähetystyö ja Euroopan muotoutuminen (500–1250),
Historiallisia Tutkimuksia 219, Helsinki, 209–212.
A3-003
Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages 1–2 (cit. EM), Cambridge: James Clarke & Co
2001, EM 1, 367, Konversen, LM 5, 1423–1424; Edward Ortved (1927)
Cistercieordenen og dens klostre i Norden 1, København, 42–46; Giles Constable
(1996) The Reformation of the Twelfth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 194–196; James France (1992) The Cistercians in Scandinavia, Cistercian
Studies Series 131, Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, Inc., 271–273.
A3-004 Zistersiensen, -innen, LM 9, 632–634, 635; Constable (1996) 220–221 and EM 1,
Grange, 630; France (1992) 256–273.
A3-005
Jean Gimpel (1977) The Medieval Machine. The Industrial Revolution of the Middle
Ages, Penguin Books, 46–51, 67–68, 229–230; Anna Götlind (1993) Technology and
Religion in Medieval Sweden, Avhandlingar från Historiska institutionen i Göteborg
4, Falun, 1–9, 62–63.
A3-006
Geraldine Stout (2002) Newgrange and the Bend of the Boyne, Irish Rural
Landscapes I. Cork University Press, 89–91; David H. Williams (2001) The Welsh
Cistercians. MPG Books Ltd., 225, which also discusses the importance of fish;
France (1992) 280–284.
A3-007
The Cistercian monasteries of Sweden, Denmark and Norway, their founders
and the donations for them are presented more extensively in Götlind (1993)
22–37, France (1992) 27–42 and Catharina Andersson (2006) Kloster och aristokrati.
Nunnor, munkar och gåvor i det svenska samhället till 1300-talets mitt, Avhandlingar
från Historiska institutionen, Göteborgs universitet 49, Göteborg, 24–29; the
Cistercian nunneries of Sweden proper were Vreta (Östgötaland, Diocese
94
of Linköping, founded 1162), Gudhem (Västgötaland, Diocese of Skara, 1160s?),
Fogdö (Södermanland, Diocese of Strängnäs, 1160s, relocated ca. 1290 to
Vårfruberga in the same diocese), Askeby Östgötaland, Diocese of Linköping,
mentioned in the 1180s), Byarum (Småland, Diocese of Växjö, before 1195,
relocated ca. 1235 to the Parish of Sko in Upland, Diocese of Upland) Riseberga
(Närke, Diocese of Strängnäs, before 1200), Solberga (Gotland, Diocese of
Linköping, ca. 1240), Götlind (1993) 22–37.
A3-008
Paul Johansen (1933) Die Estlandliste des Liber Census Daniae. Reval, 368–370;
Paul Johansen (1951) Nordische Mission, Revals Gründung und der
Schwedensiedlung in Estland, Kungliga Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets
Akademiens Handlingar 4. Stockholm, 157–162, 122–123, 149; Hain Rebas (1978)
’Internationella medeltida kommunikationer till och genom Balticum’, Historisk
Tidskrift 1978:2, 177.
A3-009
Registrum ecclesiae aboensis eller Åbo domkyrkans svartbok med tillägg ur
Skoklosters codex Aboensis (cit. REA), I tryck utgifven af Finlands Statsarkiv genom
Reinh. Hausen, Helsingfors 1890, REA nr. 1–5, 7; Markus Hiekkanen (2004) ’An
Outline of the Early Stages of Ecclesiastical Organization in Finland’, in Garðar
Guðmundsson (ed.) Current Issues in Nordic Archaeology, Proceedings of the 21st
Conference of Nordic Archaeologists, 6–9 September 2001, Akureyri, Iceland.
Reykjavik, 162–163.
A3-010
Peter Rebane (1989) ’The Papacy and the Christianization of Estonia’, in Gli inizi
del cristianesimo in Livonia-Lettonia, Pontificio comitato di scienze storiche, Atti e
documenti 1. Città del Vaticano: Libreria editrice Vaticana, 175–196; Friedrich
Benninghoven (1965) Der Orden der Schwertbrüder, Fratres milicie christi de livonia,
Ostmitteleuropa in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart 9. Köln-Graz: Böhlau Verlag,
20–54; Krötzl (2004) 235.
A3-011
Benninghoven (1965) 20–54, 248–249, 288; on the founding year of Dünamunde.
p. 21, 43 (note 20) and 54; Wolfgang Schmidt (1941) Die Zisterzienser im Baltikum
und in Finnland, Suomen Kirkkohistoriallisen Seuran Vuosikirja 29–30. Helsinki,
65–67; Wilhelm Kohl (2010) Germania Sacra, Dritte Folge, Band 2. Die Bistümer
der Kirchenprovinz Köln. Das Bistum Münster 11. Die Zisterzienserabtei Marienfeld,
De Gruyter, 98, 424–425; there were also five Cistercian nunneries in medieval
Livonia, two of them in the Archdiocese of Riga in Riga (founded 1257) and Lemsala
(Limbaži, ca. 1470) in present-day Latvia, and three in the dioceses of Tallinn (Monastery of Saint Michael in Tallinn, 1249), Saare-Lääne (Lihula, 1275–85) and
Tartu (Tartu, mentioned 1345) in the present area of Estonia, Schmidt (1941)
157, 189, 178, 183, 203 and Jaan Tamm (2002) Eesti keskaegased kloostrid –
Medieval monasteries of Estonia. Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus, 163.
A3-012
A convent was established under a prior in Padise apparently already in the late
winter of 1311, when King Erik Menved of Denmark donated land to the prior and
convent of Dünamunde in the villages of Pitke and Nurme, resolved his disputes
with them and assured the prior and convent would have free use of all the
convents property in Estonia. In this occasion, a copy of all previously ratified rights
given by the kings of Denmark concerning the property of Dünamunde Abbey in
Estonia was written, of which a complete copy was further authorized by the
Bishop of Tallinn in 1314. The actual founding of the Padise Abbey is traditionally
dated to the Friday after Trinity (2 June), when King Erik Menved gave the Abbey of
Stolpe permission to build a monastery of stone at Padise. Schmidt (1941) 72–73
and Jaan Tamm (2010) Padise klooster. Ehitus ja uurimislugu – Padise Monastery,
History of Building and Study. Tallinn, 21. Source, see Liv-, Esth- und Curländisches
Urkundenbuch nebst Regesten I–VI (cit. LECUB). Hrsg. von Dr. Friedrich Georg von
Bunge. Reval-Riga (Dorpat), 1851–1873, LECUB III 634a (21.3.1311) and Carl
Schirren (1861–68) Verzeichniss livländischer Geschichts-Quellen in schwedischen
Archiven und Bibliotheken. Dorpat, Band 5, nr. 43–44.
A3-013
Schmidt 1941, 55–68; LECUB II 614 ja III 614a; On the war, see Manfred Hellmann
(1993) ’Der Deutsche Orden und die Stadt Riga’, in Udo Arnold (ed.) Stadt und
NOTES
95
Orden. Das Verhältnis des Deustchen Ordens zu den Städten in Livland, Preussen
und im Deutschen Reich, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte des Deutschen
Ordens 44. Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 16–23.
A3-014
Schmidt (1941) 47–50. In the late 13th century, most of the property of Dünamunde
Abbey in Germany was within a triangular area bounded by Rostock, Havelberg and
(Alt)-Ruppin northwest of Berlin, where the monastery had the patronage rights
to at least three parishes (Trampitz, Snethlinge and Quedlinghe), which was
approved by the Pope in 1285; Benninghoven (1965) 201.
A3-015
Schmidt (1941) 47, 94.
A3-016
Johansen (1933) 772, 784–785; On roads and highways, see Rebas (1978) 176–181.
A3-017
Johansen (1933) 772–773; Schmidt (1941) 51–54, 68–72, Tamm (2010) 20;
LECUB III 475a.
A3-018
Johansen (1951) 209, 216–225; LECUB II 832 ”insulam nostram Ragoe iure svevico”; On maritime routes, see Rebas (1978) 166.
A3-019
LECUB IV 1608, Schmidt (1941) 89, 98 and Johansen (1951) 213, 233–235;
Johansen (1933) 772–773 and Schmidt (1941) 53.
A3-020 LECUB I 470; Eugen von Nottbeck (1884) Der alte Immobilienbesitz Revals. Reval,
65–66 and Tamm 2010, 107–109.
A3-021 Saulo Kepsu (2005) Uuteen maahan. Helsingin ja Vantaan asutus ja nimistö.
Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 1027, Helsinki.
A3-022
REA 30; Finlands Medeltidsurkunder I–VIII (cit. FMU), Samlade och i tryck utgifna
af Finlands Statsarkiv genom Reinhold Hausen, Helsingfors 1910–35, FMU I 1119–
1121, FMU VIII 6579; FMU I 328 ”curiam Skawastadhe”; Gunvor Kerkkonen (1945),
Padis kloster i nyländsk medeltid, Västnyländsk kustbebyggelse under medeltiden.
Skrifter utgivna av Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland 301, Helsingfors, 9, 14–23;
On the Coastal Road see Tapio Salminen (1993) Suuri Rantatie – Stora Strandvägen,
Tiemuseon julkaisuja 7, Helsinki, 280–282.
A3-023 FMU II 1254, 1277, 1454 and Kerkkonen (1945) 10–12; Jarl Gallén (1966) ’Den heliga
Birgita och Karelen’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 51, 23–24.
A3-024
Kerkkonen (1945) 10–11, 23–27 and Eljas Orrman (1994) ’Helsingin pitäjä ja
Uudenmaan kirkollinen järjestäytyminen 1400-luvun loppuun mennessä’, in Marja
Terttu Knapas (ed.) Vantaan Pyhän Laurin kirkko – Helsinge kyrka St Lars 500,
Tutkielmia kirkon historiasta, Sulkava: Vantaan seurakunnat, 23; Johansen (1933)
678, 772–774.
A3-025
On the constitutional status of the Duchy of Estonia in the period 1332–46, Juhan
Kreem (2002) The Town and its Lord, Reval and the Teutonic Order, Tallina
Linnaarhiivi toimetised 6. Tallinn, 28–29, Niels Skuym-Nielsen (1981) ’Estonia under
Danish rule’, in Niels Skuym-Nielsen & Niels Lund (Eds) Danish Medieval History,
New Currents, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 112–135, and Thomas Riis
(2003) Studien zur Geschichte des Ostseeraumes, IV. Das mittelalterliche dänische
Ostseeimperium, University Press of Southern Denmark, 86–89; FMU VIII 6579,
Kerkkonen (1945) 9. Magnus Eriksson stayed at Kyrksundet in the archipelago of
Hiittinen (Sw. Hitis) from the 18th to the 28th of August, 1347, FMU I 522–523. It
has traditionally been maintained in Finland that the king was on his way back from
Viipuri, but since he had been at Lodöse near present-day Gothenburg on 17 July, at
Örebro on 23 July and in Stockholm on 30 July, and was visited at Kyrksundet by a
delegation of landowning peasants under the authority of Viipuri Castle, it is unlikely
that he would had time to visit Viipuri. On the route taken by the king in 1347, see
Michael Nordberg (2007) I kung Magnus tid. Norden under Magnus Eriksson
1317–1374, Stockholm: Norsteds Akademiska Förlag, 127; On Scania, see Aksel E.
Christensen (1980) Kalmarunionen og nordisk politik 1319–1439, Copenhagen:
Gyldendal, 49–52.
96
A3-026
On the activities of Magnus Eriksson in the years 1347–50 , see Suomen
Kansallisbiografia, 1–10 (cit. SKB), Helsinki (2003–2007), Maunu Eerikinpoika (1316–
1374), SKB 6, 606–607; Nordberg (2007) 101–104 and Gallén (1966) 1–11; Karl
Näskonungsson and Gereke Skytte, who sold and donated land to the monastery in
1335 and 1347 may have been involved in contemporary connections between
Swedish nobility and Danish Estonia. Karl Näskonungsson was originally counsellor
to Duchess Ingeborg, mother of Magnus Eriksson, but joined the Skara
confederation of lay nobility and bishops, the leaders of which ruled Sweden during
the king’s minority until 1332. In 1327, Ingeborg married Kund Porse (died 1330),
Duke of Halland which belonged to Denmark at the time, and to whom the Duchy
of Estonia was pledged for a short while in 1329. The clients of the duchess or her
circle may have included Gerhardus (later also with the name Gereke) Skytte, who
was bailiff of Uusimaa in 1326 but no longer in this office in the late 1330s. Skytte
reappeared in a leading position in the summer of 1347 and a year later took part in
the king’s campaign to the River Neva. He participated in preparing another attack
on Kaprio in Novgorodian territory which was carried out from Estonia in the
autumn of 1350 and was the headman of all Finland still in this year, after which he
served as bailiff of Duchess Ingeborg’s pension in Västmanland. In the late 1340s,
Skytte had also supported the king’s ventures with funds, in compensation for
which Magnus, in December 1350 in Tallinn, enfeoffed him Ruona Manor in Sauvo,
Finland Proper. Known by the German names Gerhardus and Gereke, Skytte had
connections with Estonia that are not precisely known. However, he is known to
have visited Tallinn often and he may have been related to Gerard Skyttæ, the
subvassal of Hælf Gutæ of Jutland, who held land in the Parish Jõelähtme near the
property of Dünamunde Abbey in Estonia, or to Jacobus Schuttae, who in 1228–38
was in control of some of the lands of Dünamunde at Padise. Skytte, meaning
“crossbowman”, was, however, quite a common epithet in the Middle Ages,
appearing in the 14th century throughout the Baltic Sea region and was established
as a fixed surname only after the introduction of firearms in the 15th century. Since
three persons all named Gerdt Schütte owned land in the Parish of Jõelähtme from
1527 to 1623, the combination of the names appears to have been for some reason
common in the environs of Tallinn. The Schüttes of Jõelähtme have a surprising
connection with the property of Padise Abbey in Uusimaa, as the last of them,
Captain Gerd Schütte gave up his property in Estonia in 1623 and moved to
Helsinge Parish, where he had been given permission to form a manor at
Munkkiniemi in present-day Helsinki. His property increased manifold in 1629
through a donation from King Gustavus II Adolphus which consisted, between 1629
and 1655 in Helsinge Parish, of Munkkiniemi, part of Konala, Lauttasaari, Heikby
and Hindersnäs, and the manor of Viikki with its salmon fishing rights in the
Helsinginkoski rapids, i.e. many of the known nodes of activity of Padise Abbey in
the region some 250 years earlier. Skytte, Gerhard, SKB 9, 109; Johansen (1933)
437–438 and 830–831, Johansen (1951) 217; Kuisma (1990) 92, 115, 181.
A3-027 FMU I 596, REA 138.
A3-028
REA 139 ”jus patronatus et omne aliud quod nobis et corone regnj Swecie jn
eccelsia Borgha et duabus capellis eidem annexis Aboensis diocesis”, REA 143
”piscarias ad fundum presbiteralem ibidem pertinentes”, REA 142 ”piscaturam
salmonum in Helsinga Aboensis dyocesis cum omni iure nostro regio inferius et
superius”. The present author will discuss the donations, the related source material
and claims regarding the content of the donations presented in research at different
times more extensively in a work on the medieval history of Vantaa which is
currently under preparation and will be published in 2013.
A3-029 REA 152, Kerkkonen (1945) 32–52; REA 427, 430–432.
A3-030
LECUB II 832; On medieval waterworks and structures related to them in the
environs of Padise Abbey, see Jaan Tamm (2002) Eesti keskaegased kloostrid –
Medieval monasteries of Estonia, Tallinn: Eesti Entsüklopeediakirjastus, 44 and
Tamm (2010) 34–35.
A3-031 FAO, Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, Species Fact Sheet, Salmo Salar,
http://www.fao.org/fishery/species/2929/en, viewed 11.2.2011; Riistan- ja
kalantutkimus, Kala-Atlas, Lohi ja Järvilohi, http://www.rktl.fi/kala/tietoa_kalalajeista/
NOTES
97
lohi_jarvilohi/, viewed 11.2.2011; Kustaa Vilkuna (1975) Unternehmen Lachsfang.
Die Geschichte der Lachsfischerei im Kemijoki, Studia Fennica, Review of Finnish
Linguistics and Ethnology 19. Helsinki: SKS, 19.
A3-032 Tapio Salminen (2007) Joki ja sen väki. Kokemäen ja Harjavallan historia jääkaudesta
1860-luvulle. Kokemäen ja Harjavallan historia I:1. Kokemäen ja Harjavallan kaupungit
ja seurakunnat, Jyväskylä: Gummerus, 517–518; Kulturhistorisk Lexikon för Nordisk
Medeltid, 1–22 (cit. KLNM) 2. oplagan København (1981–1982), Laxfiske, KLNM 10,
379.
A3-033
H.J. Holmberg (1859) Alamainen kertomus, mihin päätökseen on tultu, syitä kalain
wähenemiseen Suomessa ja sen estämisen keinoja tutkittaissa, kuin myöskin
esitys kalain wiljelemiseen, Suomen julkisia sanomia 4.7.1859. According to
Holmberg, the salmon found upstream from Anjalankoski at Valkeala were lake
salmon, a species that spends its whole live in lakes; Finnish National Archives,
Voudintilit, VA 2969:8 ”Item aff Helsinge Fors wtj samme Sochn bisbens tiende
spikilax – 41 stücke” and 22v ”Item 2 (barrels or pieces) små öörlax som ffoos vidh
helsinge ffårsz”. The salt-dried salmon was delivered to the Royal Castle in
Stockholm. The accounts concerned only tithes appropriated from the bishop, and
not the actual salmon tax or catch acquired by the crown; Kari Stenholm (2008)
Virtavesien hoitoyhdistys ry, Vantaanjoen vuosiraportti 13.1.2008,
www.virtavesi.com/vantaanjoki2007.pdf, accessed 11.2.2011: According to
archaeological excavations, salmon (Salmo salar) also belonged to the diet of
the Old Town of Helsinki (Vanhakaupunki) in the late 16th and early 17th century,
Mikael A. Manninen & Kristiina Mannermaa (2008) Helsingin Vanhankaupungin
lohikalanluut – vuosien 1992, 1993 ja 1999 kaivausten kalanluiden alustava analyysi
13.3.2008, Helsingin kaupunginmuseo, 1–2; On the spawning season of trout, see
Riistan- ja kalantutkimus, Kala-Atlas, http://www.rktl.fi/kala/tietoa_kalalajeista/
taimen/, viewed 11.2.2011.
A3-034
Salt and Salthandel, KLNM 14, 692–712 and Fisketilvirkning KLNM 4, 344; FMU II
1841, 1840; The total amount of salt was 606½ c (centum), 4.5 tzarse, with one
centum of Baie salt corresponding to 13996.8 kg net. On the 20 June, customs
were levied on seven salt ships, followed by 2 on 10 August, and three on
September 5. The last-mentioned three had sailed from Lisbon, Reinhard Vogelsang
(Ed.) Revaler Schiffslisten 1425–1471 und 1479–1496, Quellen und Studien zur
baltischen Geschichte 13, Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau Verlag (1992), 219–229. On
the weight of the salt, see Thomas Wolf (1986) Tragfähigkeiten, Ladungen und
Masse im Schiffsverkehr der Hanse, Quellen und Darstellungen zur Hansischen
Geschichte, Neue Folge, Band 31. Köln-Weimar-Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 57–58.
A3-035
On the methods and equipment for preservation, see Vilkuna (1975) 395–400; On
herring barrels, see Wolf (1986) 194 and Tunna, KLNM 19, 57–63. According to
Vilkuna, when the taxation of fishing increased during the reign of Gustavus Vasa,
an acceptable barrel of salted salmon weighed 119 kg and a barrel of fresh salmon
136 kg, Tunna, KLNM 19, 64.
A3-036 REA 167; Salminen (2007) 177; Kauko Pirinen (1956) Turun tuomiokapituli keskiajan
lopulla, Suomen Kirkkohistoriallisen Seuran Toimituksia 58, Helsinki, 441–445
A3-037 Salminen (2007) 510–511; Gunvor Kerkkonen (1939) Helsingfors konungsgård
1550–1572. Allmän historik, Historiallinen arkisto 45, Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen
Seura, 99.
A3-038 Salminen (2007) 176–181; Laxfiske, KLNM 10, 377–378, On the regulations on
fishing in the law codes of the realm, see Fiskeret, KLNM 4, 336; REA 126, 128,
129, FMU I 540.
A3-039
98
REA 142; The upstream fishing rights were localized at the Vantaankoski
(Kvarnbacka) rapids by Gunvor Kerkkonen (1945), 107 and Kerkkonen (1965)
Helsingin pitäjän keskiaika, Helsingin pitäjän historia 1, Helsingin maalaiskunta,
Porvoo, 14.
A3-040
Finnish National Archives, Maanmittaushallitus, Kartat, MHA B 7 21/1–2, MHA B
11a 4/1–2, MHA B 11a 8/1–3, MHA B 9 9/52–54, see Teresa Leskinen & Pia
Lillborända (Ed.) Samuelin kartat. Helsingin pitäjä vanhimmissa kartoissaan 1681–1712, Vantaan kaupunginmuseo (2001), 40–41, 47–51, 52–55, 82–84; Finnish
National Archives, Tie- ja Vesihallituksen arkisto, Kartat ja piirustukset, E1 115:1
(1757–60), nr. 16, 19; Elevations: Vantaanjoen ja Helsingin seudun
vesiensuojeluyhdistys, Vedenlaatu, Joet, http://www.vhvsy.fi/, viewed 11.2.2010;
On the clearing of rapids, see Suomen Virallinen Tilasto, XIX Tie- ja Vesirakennukset,
year 1891, 56–57, year 1896, 76–81, year 1903, 77–79 and year 1905, 77–81. The
east arm of the Vanhankaupunginkoski rapids was cleared and widened in 1891
SVT:XIX, s. 56–57 and 1903, when the Pikkukoski rapids were blasted open.
A3-041 Markku Kuisma (1990) Helsingin pitäjän historia II, Vanhan Helsingin synnystä
isoonvihaan 1550–1713, Jyväskylä: Vantaan kaupunki 148–149; Stenholm 2008.
A3-042 REA 368; Kepsu (2005) 84.
A3-043 FMU V 3902. In 1517 the Tallinn merchant Helmich Ficke wrote the name in the Low
German form Nakkebuw, Kerkkonen (1965) 165; Kepsu (2005) 175; Documents
concerning Siuntio cite in the year 1490 Nackaböhle (FMU V 4331) and 1540
Nackaby, Åke Granlund (1965) ’En västnyländsk namntyp’. Folkmålsstudier,
Medddelanden från Föreningen för nodrisk filologi 19, 89–91 and Lars Huldén
(2001) Finlandssvenska bebyggelsenamn, Helsingfors, 297, 256. On Nakkila on the
River Kokemäenjoki, see Aarre Läntinen (1978) Turun keskiaikainen piispanpöytä,
Studia historica Jyväskyläensia 16, Jyväskylä, 152–153; Fornsvensk lexikalisk
databas, http://spraakbanken.gu.se/fsvldb/, viewed 11.2.2011, nakke, and
Mittelniederdeutsches Handwörterbuch von August Lübben, Nach dem Tode des
Verfassers vollendet von Christoph Walther, Norden und Leipzig (1888), nacke. In
the dialect of Swedish spoken in Sweden proper, the verb nakka is also known to
have meant illicitly taking the catch from fish nets or traps set by others, FSLD
nakka.
A3-044
Kerkkonen (1965) 58–59. On monk-bishop pairs in toponyms, see Kerkkonen (1945)
60–108, 107; More extensively on the place-names of the area, Kepsu (2005), 172–175 (Tomtbacka, Nacböle, Grannböle), 170–172 (Tolkby), 146–151
(Skattmansby), 145 (Sillböle), 130–133 (Mårtensby), 108–112 (Lappböle-Biskopsby),
69–71 (Brutuby); On the Great Coastal Road, see Salminen (1993). Considering the
local topography, the winter route of the Coastal Road may have crossed the river
further downstream at Mårtensby. The medieval course of the road was most likely
between Tolkby and Brutuby, closer to the river than the 17th Century route
surveyed in 1991.
A3-045 REA 368, 142, 167.
A3-046 REA 368; Salminen (2007) 512; Fiskeverke, KLNM 4, 346. On 19th-century fish
enclosure types of the great rivers at the Gulf of Bothnia region, see Vilkuna (1975)
125–280.
A3-047 Kerkkonen (1939) 70, 99; VA 3044:31r–52r
A3-048
VA 2993:52r, VA 3041:36r; Kerkkonen 1939, 100 converted the total of 36 manlabour days in 1551 into three days’ work by twelve men, Anders Allardt (1898)
Borgå läns sociala och ekonomiska förhållanden åren 1539–1571, Helsingfors, 150;
Salminen (2007) 512.
A3-049 REA 368; Kerkkonen (1965) 44.
A3-050 Kepsu (2005) 179–183.
A3-051 Kepsu (2005) 84.
A3-052 Kepsu (2005) 192–193 (Övitsböle), 145 (Sillböle), 105–108 (Kårböle), 108–112
(Lappböle); VA 3044:44v.
NOTES
99
A3-053 Markku Kuisma (1991) Helsingin pitäjän historia III. Isostavihasta maalaiskunnan
syntyyn 1713–186,. Jyväskylä: Vantaan kaupunki, 289–290.
A4-017
Gunvor Kerkkonen (1965) ‘Helsingin Pitäjän keskiaika’, Helsingin pitäjä I.
Porvoo, 24-26.
A3-054 VA 2969:8; Allardt (1898) Tab. X, Kerkkonen (1939) 99.
A4-018
Kepsu (2005) 99-100.
A3-055 Allardt (1898) Tab. Xb and XI; Mauno Jokipii (1974) Satakunnan historia IV.
Satakunnan talouselämä uuden ajan alusta isoonvihaan. Satakunnan Kirjateollisuus
OY., 289.
A4-019
Kepsu (2005) 61.
A4-001
Kalevi Hokkanen (2005) Vantaan rannansiirtymäkartat. GTK. (Shore displacement maps of Vantaa) http://arkisto.gtk.fi/index.php?dir=p22/&file=P22_4_111.pdf, retrieved 27.10.2010.
A4-002
Cf. a map from 1698 in which Vuosaari is still shown as an island. This map is in the
National Archives of Sweden in Stockholm and it has also been published as a
coloured copy in Erik Ehrström, Helsingfors stads historia från 1640 till Stora ofreden
from 1890.
A4-021
A4-003 Bo Lönnqvist (2003) ‘Västersundom bys forna tomtplats’, Nyländsk hembygd
1/2003,4.
A4-020 Tarkiainen (2008).
Eljas Orrman (2003) ‘Suomen keskiajan asutus’ in Viljo Rasila, Eino Jutikkala &
Anneli Mäkelä-Alitalo (ed.) Suomen maatalouden historia I. Perinteisen maatalouden
aika. Esihistoriasta 1870-luvulle, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia
914:1, Helsinki, 82-83; Kepsu (2005) 15, 23, 62-65.
A4-022 Finlands medeltidsurkunder I. -1400 (cit FMU), Samlade och i tryck utgifna af Finlands
Statsarkiv genom Reinh. Hausen, Helsingfors 1910, FMU nr. 540.
A4-023 Cf. Lönnqvist (2003)
A4-004 Personal communication, Esa Hertell & Mikael A. Manninen 27.10.2010
A4-024 Cf. Riina Koivisto (2009) Talonpojan tila. Rakentaminen ja arjen tilankäyttö keskiajan ja
uuden ajan taitteen Gubbackassa, Vantaalla, Pro gradu -tutkielma, Helsingin
yliopisto, 36.
A4-005 Noel Broadbent (1979) Coastal Resources and Settlement Stability. A Critical Study
of a Mesolithic Site Complex in Northern Sweden, Aun 3, Uppsala, 53.
A4-025 Hans Göthberg (2000) Bebyggelse i förändring. Uppland från slutet av yngre
bronsålder till tidig medeltid, Occasional Papers in Archaeology 25, Uppsala, 108-109.
A4-006
Harri Nyman (1997) ‘Muistoja tuhatvuotisesta taikauskosta -Perniön ukonvaajat’,
in Perniö - kuninkaan ja kartanoiden pitäjä, Helsingin yliopiston taidehistorian laitoksen
julkaisuja XV, Helsinki, 10-16; Sonja Hukantaival (2007) ‘Rakennusten kätköt –
kommunikaatiota yliluonnollisen kanssa’, SKAS 4/2007, 25-31.
A4-007 Cf. Sirpa Leskinen & Petro Pesonen (2008) Vantaan esihistoria, Keuruu, 251-252.
A4-008 Hokkanen (2005).
A4-009 See Riikka Väisänen (2010) ‘Patoja, kannuja ja ruokailutottumuksia’, in Andreas
Koivisto, Riina Koivisto & Jukka Hako (ed.) Gubbacka - keskiajan arkea Vantaalla,
Museoviraston rakennushistorian osaston julkaisuja 34, Porvoo: Kellastupa, 112-125.
A4-026 Veli-Pekka Suhonen (2004) Vantaan Länsisalmen Gubbackan autiotontin arkeologiset
tutkimukset vuonna 2003, Museovirasto, rakennushistorian osaston arkisto.
/Department of Monuments and Sites, National Board of Antiquities
A4-027
Magnus Erikssons landslag i nusvensk tolkning av Åke Holmbäck och Elias Wessén
(cit MEL), Skr. utg. av institutet för rätthist. forskning, Lund 1962; Veli-Pekka Suhonen
(2007) Vantaan keskiaikaisten teiden inventointi vuonna 2007, Museovirasto,
rakennushistorian osaston arkisto, 10./ Archives of the Department of Monuments
and Sites, National Board of Antiquities
A4-028 Cf. Andreas Koivisto (2010) ‘Teitä pitkin lähelle ja kauas’ in Andreas Koivisto,
Riina Koivisto & Jukka Hako (ed.) Gubbacka - keskiajan arkea Vantaalla, Museoviraston
rakennushistorian osaston julkaisuja 34, Porvoo: Kellastupa, 139-140.
A4-010
See Markku Oinonen, Heidi Nordqvist & Andreas Koivisto (2010) ‘Radiohiiliajoituksia
puusta ja raudasta’, in Andreas Koivisto, Riina Koivisto & Jukka Hako (ed.) Gubbacka
- keskiajan arkea Vantaalla, Museoviraston rakennushistorian osaston julkaisuja 34,
Porvoo: Kellastupa, 172-183.
A4-011
Kaarina Sarmaja-Korjonen (1994) ‘Sipoon luonnon-historia’ in Arja Rantanen & Christer
Kuvaja, Sipoon pitäjän historia. Vuoteen 1868. I osa, Jyväskylä, 33-34.
A4-012
More details on the dates obtained for the smithies in the report on the 2010
excavation at Gubbacka: Andreas Koivisto (2011) Vantaan Länsisalmen Gubbackan
arkeologiset tutkimukset vuonna 2010, Museovirasto, rakennushistorian osaston
arkisto /Department of Monuments and Sites, National Board of Antiquities
A4-013
A4-014
Cf. Leskinen & Pesonen (2008) 235-241.
A4-032 Oinonen et al. (2010) 180.
See e.g. Kari Tarkiainen (2008) Finlands svenska historia 1. Sveriges Österland:
Från forntiden till Gustav Vasa. Skrifter utgivna av Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland
702:1, Stockholm.
A4-033 Cf. Oinonen et al. (2010)
A4-015
Saulo Kepsu (2005) Uuteen maahan. Helsingin ja Vantaan vanha asutus ja nimistö,
Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran Toimituksia 1027, Tampere, 59-61, 206.
A4-016
Sarmaja-Korjonen (1994) 34-35.
100
A4-029
Annika Willim & Lena Grandin (2010) Medeltida smide i Vanda. Okulär och
metallografisk undersökning av material från en smedja. Finland, Nylands kommun,
Vanda stad, UV GAL rapport 2010:2. Geoarkeologisk undersöking, Museovirasto,
rakennushistorian osaston arkisto./ Archives of the Department of Monuments and
Sites, National Board of Antiquities.
A4-030 Koivisto R. (2009) 87.
A4-031 Cf. Andreas Koivisto (2009) Vantaan Länsisalmen Gubbackan arkeologiset tutkimukset
vuonna 2009, Museovirasto, rakennushistorian osaston arkisto, 16. /Archives of the
Department of Monuments and Sites, National Board of Antiquities
A4-034
Veli-Pekka Suhonen (2010) ‘Samuel Broterus ja konseptikartan autiotontti’ in
Andreas Koivisto, Riina Koivisto & Jukka Hako (ed.) Gubbacka - keskiajan arkea
Vantaalla, Museoviraston rakennushistorian osaston julkaisuja 34, Porvoo:
Kellastupa, 35-36.
NOTES
101
A4-035
Further details on this in i.a. Bo Lönnqvist (2010) ‘Västersundomin vanhan kylän
elinkeinot ja muutto’. in Andreas Koivisto, Riina Koivisto & Jukka Hako (ed.)
Gubbacka - keskiajan arkea Vantaalla, Museoviraston rakennushistorian osaston
julkaisuja 34, Porvoo: Kellastupa, 61-63; Suhonen (2010) 34-39.
A5-012
A5-013
Martti Ulkuniemi (1978) Kuningas Kristofferin maanlaki 1442, Suomalaisen
kirjallisuuden seuran toimituksia 340, Vaasa: Vaasa OY:n kirjapaino, 15.
Åke Holmback ja Elias Wessén (1962) Magnus Erikssons landslag. (Handskrift B68) Skrifter utgivna av Institutet för rättshistorisk forskning, Serien 1, Lund: Carl Bloms Boktryckeri, XXXIII–XXXIV.
A5-001
Ulrika Rosendahl (2008) ’Kolonisaatio ja uudisasukkaat varhaisella keskiajalla’,
in Kylä – keskiaikaa Itämeren rannalla, Espoon kaupunginmuseon tutkimuksia 10,
Helsinki: Lönnberg Print & Promo, 60–63.
A5-014
Orrman (2003) 87–89, 204–205.
A5-015
Ulkuniemi (1978) 18–23.
A5-002 Eljas Orrman (2003) ’Suomen keskiajan asutus’, in Viljo Rasila, Eino Jutikkala ja
Anneli Mäkelä – Alitalo (toim.) Suomen maatalouden historia I, Suomalaisen
kirjallisuuden toimituksia 914:I, Jyväskylä: Gummerus kirjapaino OY, 82.
A5-016
Kustaa Vilkuna (1977) ’Codex Aboensis – käsikirjoitus ja sen historia’, in Marketta Huitu, Tove Riska (ed.) Codex Aboensis. Turun käsikirjoitus. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran kirjapaino, 24–25.
A5-003 Rosendahl (2008) 92.
A5-017
Aulis Oja (1977) ’Codex Aboensikseen sisältyvät lakitekstit’, in Marketta Huitu, Tove Riska (ed.) Codex Aboensis, Turun käsikirjoitus, Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran kirjapaino, 167.
A5-005 Radiocarbon dates from a pit hearth in excavation area 3 of the 2009 fieldwork
season: 939–1024 AD (Hela-2290) and an iron nail 895–995 AD (Hela-1993),
personal communication from Andreas Koivisto 21.2.2011.
A5-018
Oja (1977) 167. Translation by Jüri Kokkonen.
A5-019
Holmback & Wessén (1962) 132.
A5-006 Andreas Koivisto (2008) Vantaan Länsisalmen Gubbackan autiotontin arkeologiset
tutkimukset vuonna 2008, kaivausraportti, Museoviraston rakennushistorian osasto,
10, 18. (Excavation report)
A5-020 E Setälä & M Nyholm (1906) Kristoffer kuninkaan maanlaki: Tukholman codex B 96, Suomen kielen muistomerkkejä 2, Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran toimituksia 82, Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 90–91.
A5-004 Rosendahl (2008) 92.
A5-007 Veli-Pekka Suhonen (2004) Vantaan Länsisalmen Gubbackan autiotontin arkeologiset tutkimukset vuonna 2003, kaivausraportti, Museoviraston rakennushistorian osasto, 16–20. (Excavation report)
Andreas Koivisto (2008) 12–14.
Andreas Koivisto (2009)Vantaan Länsisalmen Gubbackan autiotontin arkeologiset tutkimukset vuonna 2009, kaivausraportti, Museoviraston rakennushistorian osasto, 15–17, 35. (Excavation report)
A5-008 Georg Haggrén (2008) Espoo, Espoonkartano, Mankbyn kylätontti,
kaivauskertomus, Kulttuurien tutkimuksen laitos, arkeologia, Helsingin yliopisto
17–18, 20–21, 29. (Excavation report)
Markus Heikkinen (1994) ’Talo pihlajan varjossa, talo tutkimuksen kohteena’, in
Päivikki Kallio, Irma Savolainen ja Sinikka Vainio (eds.) Narinka, Jyväskylä:
Gummerus kirjapaino Oy, 250, 257.
Elina Saloranta (2003) ’Kulttuurimaan kerrostuneisuus(stratigrafia), dokumentointi ja tulkinta’, (ed. Liisa Seppänen) Kaupunkia pintaa syvemmältä. Arkeologisia
näkökulmia Turun historiaan, Archaeologia Medii Aevi Finlandiae IX, Turku:
Hansaprint OY, 64.
Marianna Niukkanen (1997) ’Näsen kuninkaankartanon arkeologiset tutkimukset’, in Perniö – kuninkaan ja kartanoiden pitäjä, Helsingin yliopiston taidehistorian laitoksen julkaisuja XV, Helsinki: Hakapaino OY, 115.
A5-009 Teppo Korhonen (2006) ’Talonpoikaistalo keskiajalla ja uuden ajan alussa’, In Anssi Mäkinen, Joni Strandberg ja Jukka Forslund (ed.) Suomalaisen arjen historia, Savupirttien Suomi, Porvoo: Weilin Göös, 96.
A5-010
Rosendahl (2008) 61.
A5-011 Eljas Orrman (1991) ’Den svenska bebyggelsens historia’, in Kurt Zilliacus (ed.)
Finska skärren Studier i åbolandsk kulturhistoria, Loviisa: Östra Nylands tryckeri Ab,
223–231.
102
A5-021 Martti Ulkuniemi (1975): Ljungo Tuomaanpojan lainsuomennokset I, Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran toimituksia 319, Vaasa: Vaasa OY:n kirjapaino, 54.
A5-022 Georg Haggrén (2006): Kylä ja -kartanotontit asutushistoriallisina
muinaisjäännöksinä. SKAS 2/2005, 49.
A5-023 Suhonen (2004) 15–20, 35.
A5-024 Koivisto (2008) 12–14.
A5-025 Radiocarbon dates from a pit hearth in excavation area 3 of the 2009 fieldwork
season: 939–1024 AD (Hela-2290), personal communication from Andreas Koivisto
21.2.2011.
A5-026 Koivisto (2009) 14, 35.
A5-027 Oja (1977) 137.
A5-028
Marita Kykyri (1989) Puurakennukset ja puurakennustekniikka Turun kaupungissa 1300–1600 -luvulla arkeologisen lähdeaineiston valossa, Pro gradu – tutkielma, Turun yliopisto, arkeologian laitos, 80. (Graduate thesis in Finnish on the archaeology of wooden buildings and related construction techniques in Turku from the 14th to the 17th century).
A5-029 Haggrén (2008) 17–18, 20–21, 29.
A5-030 Saloranta (2003) 64.
A5-031 Heikkinen (1994) 250, 257.
A5-032 Niukkanen (1997) 115.
A5-033 Kykyri (1989) 84.
Niukkanen (1997) 116.
A5-034 Pia Letto-Vanamo (1995) Käräjäyhteisön oikeus. Oikeudenkäytäntö Ruotsi-
Suomessa ennen valtiollisen riidanratkaisun vakiintumista, Oikeushistorian julkaisuja
2, Helsinki: Yliopistopaino, 155-156.
NOTES
103
A5-035 Liisa Seppänen (2003) ’Salvoksista sosiaalisiin systeemeihin’ in (ed. Liisa
Seppänen) Kaupunkia pintaa syvemmältä. Arkeologisia näkökulmia Turun historiaan,
Archaeologia Medii Aevi Finlandiae IX, Turku: Hansaprint OY, 95.
A5-036 Eino Jutikkala (2003) ’Peltojen sarkajako’, in Viljo Rasila, Eino Jutikkala & Anneli Mäkelä-Alitalo (eds.) Suomen maatalouden historia I, Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden toimituksia 914:I, Jyväskylä: Gummerus kirjapaino OY, 239.
104
NOTES
105

colonists on the shores of the gulf of finland

Transcription

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