Henrik Jansson, Georg Haggrén, Kristiina Mannermaa & Tanja ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

HANKO IN HISTORICAL SOURCESAfter the Danish itinerary, Hangethe is mentionedthe next time in the late 1390s. That source alsoconcerns seafaring. The castellan of Raseborg,Tord Röriksson Bonde wrote to the council ofTallinn about a ship which had either anchoredor come to shore in Hanko (FMU 1043). In 1508the castellan of Viborg, Erik Turesson Bielke,asked the bishop of Turku to collect ships andtroops to Hanko or Jungfrusund (FMU 5352).The importance of Hanko as place important forthe sea routes can be clearly seen even from alater itinerary survived from the southern coast ofFinland. In 1555 a nobleman called Jacob Teittidescribed the route beginning from Korpoströmin the southwest archipelago of Finland, where acoastal route crossed the route between Turku andStockholm. Several harbour sites described in thismid-16 th century manuscript can also be foundfrom the Danish itinerary (Teitti 1894). Teitti’sdescription gives us some hints about the inhabitantsof Hanko and several other harbour sitesearning some of their livelihood from piloting.In 1575, King Johan III appointed three peasantsfrom Hanko to official pilots who were exemptedfrom taxes (Boström 1968: 57). Later tax recordsconfirm that this privilege was followed in practise(e.g., KA 3437: 10v).The importance of Hanko for seafarers canalso be seen in the oldest maps, such as JacobZiegler’s Ptolemaist map dating from 1532. Twodecades later Olaus Magnus states in his famouswork Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus thatHanko has the very best harbour in the wholenorthern sea. The importance of the harbour sitein Hanko is clearly visible also from hundredsof rock carvings made by seafarers at a harboursite called Hauensuoli, located at the tip of thepeninsula and described by Olaus Magnus (1555:116–7). These carvings consist of both coats ofarms made by noble men and simple marks madeby common seafarers. Unfortunately, a great dealof the oldest carvings, among them some royalcarvings, has been destroyed during the centuries.The earliest survived carving is from the late 15 thcentury and from the 16 th century onwards they areabundant (Hausen 1902; Boström 1968: 26–7).The importance of the Hanko harbour has to dowith the fact that it is not frozen during most ofthe year as the other harbours in Finland. Stillin the 19 th century, Hanko was the only winterharbour in Finland and an important life line tothe outer world.A great deal of the written sources concerningHanko deals with seafaring. Fortunately, thetax records offer us also some information aboutthe local inhabitants, their subsistence, economyand settlement. The earliest survived tax recordfrom 1451 shows that Hanko was the centre ofa bol, that is, a group of hamlets paying theirtaxes together (FMU 2898). This source revealsthat the inhabitants in Hanko paid a great deal oftheir taxes in current money already in the mid15 th century.Beginning in 1539/1540, King Gustavus Vasaordered that every bailiff had to deliver his accountsto the royal chancellery and chamber,where they were not only checked but also archived.As a result, we have annual tax recordsand accounts from practically every Swedishprovince from the 1540s onwards. One of thoserecords was the land register from which we canget information about each single farm. Unfortunately,the land registers of Hanko and the entireTenhola parish pre-dating 1570 have disappeared.At that time, there were six farms in Hanko (KA3317). Hanko was thereby one of the largesthamlets when comparing to other settlements inthe parish of Tenhola. There were some hamletswith six or seven farms, but only Rilax, locatedabout 15 km to the north, with its ten farms wasclearly larger than Hanko.The land register does not reveal much of thelivelihood of the single farms in Hanko becausetaxes recorded in it were similar in the wholeparish. Much more informative in this respect arethe ecclesiastical tax records that have survivedfrom late 1540s onwards. From the oldest recordof näbbskatt, which is a personal tax dated to1548, we know that there were seven farms inHanko – one of the farms was abandoned in the1560s. Näbbskatt was paid for every adult personin each household. According to the tax record,there were on average 3.8 adults in each of theseven farms in Hanko compared to 3.0 adults inthe whole Tenhola parish. The number of adultsin the largest household in Hanko was six (KA3016).Another ecclesiastical tax which the crownbegan to overtake during this time was the tithe.The oldest survived tithe records from the Tenholaparish are from 1552 (KA 3003). The seven farmsin Hanko paid two to four kappa (1 kappa = 4.5870
litre) barley each. We have tithes records fromfour years in the 1550s, and during this periodeach peasant paid annually on average 2.7 kappaof grain. In contrary to most of Tenhola parish,the peasants in Hanko did not pay any rye astithe which means that they cultivated mostlybarley. The only exception was in 1552 when thewealthiest peasants in Hanko, Lars Ivarsson, paidnot only four kappa barley but five kappa rye too.In one single year, 1556, the tithe paid for othercereal than barley and rye from Tenhola parishhas been registered. According to this record thefarmers on the Hanko peninsula did not cultivatewheat and oats, contrary to the peasants on themore mainland hamlets (KA 3060, 3). On thegrounds of the tithe, it seems that the peasantsin Hanko concentrated on growing barley duringthe 16 th century.The third ecclesiastical tax was the so-calledcow tax. The peasants paid 1 pound (= 425 g)butter for every milking cow. For cows fromwhich they did not get any milk the peasantswere obliged to pay ½ pound of butter. It is notpossible to count the total number of cows, butbased on the cow tax records we can get an indexrepresenting the amount of cattle in each farm.In 1556 the seven farms in Hanko paid together41 pounds of butter, of which the owner of thelargest cattle, Mats Jönsson, paid 10 pounds.Each farm in Hanko paid cow tax in average5.9 pounds while the average farm in the wholeTenhola parish paid only 3.6 pounds (KA 3058,36). We can estimate that in the 1550s therewere 4–5 milking cows in each farm. However,after a few years the cow tax paid by peasantsin Hanko decreased heavily, and in 1565 everyfarm holder in Hanko paid only 1 pound, exceptJacob Ivarsson who paid 3 pounds. In 1571 thesix farms in Hanko paid on average 2 pounds incow tax which meant that there were only oneor two milking cows in each farm.In 1571 an extraordinary tax, the so-calledsilver tax, was collected in Sweden. In the silvertax records the domestic animals were registered.This gives us an opportunity to compare silver taxrecords with the cow tax indexes from the sameyear. The six peasants in Hanko had a total amountof 16 grown up cows (Soikkeli 1912). Accordingto this there were on average 2.7 cows on eachfarm which is rather close to the index of the cowtax from that year.Based on the silver tax record we know thateach peasant had one horse. Without horse itwas quite impossible to cultivate. The silver taxis the only archival source from the 16 th centurywhich reveals statistical data of cattle other thanmature cows. In 1571 each peasant in Hankohad in addition to grown-up cows on averageone calf, 2.5 sheep and 1.8 goats. As seen in thecow tax records there were obvious variation inthe wealth between the peasants. The wealthiestpeasant in Hanko, Jacob Ivarsson, owned about athird of all the cattle in the hamlet. In 1571 therewere practically no pigs in the farms in the wholeHanko peninsula. In contrast to this, the peasantsin the mainland hamlets usually owned one pig(Soikkeli 1912).The medieval and early modern taxes do notusually give much information on fishing. Besidesthat the peasants in Hanko began in the early1560s to pay their tithe in fish instead of grain.However, there was also one other tax paid collectivelyfor a whole tax area, the bol. In Tenala,there were 17 bols. The peasants in Hanko formeda bol of their own. The bol tax paid from Hankobol differed from the same tax paid from the otherbols in Tenala. Most of the bol tax paid fromHanko consisted of current money and fish. Theypaid 33 mark 7 öre 9 penning in silver money. Itseems that the people in the Hanko bol had significantlymore income in current money than thepeasants in the mainland hamlets. Furthermore,the 38 peasants on the Hanko peninsula togetherpaid a little more than 7 barrels of salted cod and2400 dried cods (KA 3033, 23v). The abundanceof cod demonstrates the importance of fishing inHanko.Additionally, the Crown collected certainseparate taxes from some of the most productivefishing places. The peasants in Hanko paid annually600 dried cods for the fishing around Gunnarsören,which is a small group of rocky skerriesabout five kilometres northwest from the harbourof Kapellhamnen (KA 3033, s. 3).The Swedish Crown began the mapping of thevillages and hamlets in Finland in the 1640s andonwards. Land surveyor Hans Hansson drew amap of Hanko in 1647. On his map, we can seefive farmsteads of which two had already beenabandoned. Three of the farms were placedaround an area which is today called Gunnarsängen.Two farms were some hundreds of metresfurther to the north. The landscape in the Hanko71
Page 4 and 5: area was not easy to cultivate. Ara
Page 6 and 7: Fig 2. Map of the trenches and area
Page 8 and 9: and areas with unburnt clay were fo
Page 10 and 11: 4540353025201510Fig. 4. Anatomical
Page 12 and 13: Table 2. Identifi ed plant species
Page 14 and 15: when the building was destroyed by
Page 16 and 17: and evidently still at the time whe
Page 18 and 19: CONCLUSIONSThe possibilities that t
Page 20: Seals in the Baltic. Stockholm Stud

Henrik Jansson, Georg Haggrén, Kristiina Mannermaa & Tanja ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?