Early Land Organisation around the Gulf of Bothnia

• Main Author: Roeck Hansen, Birgitta
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholm University, Sweden 2010
• Subjects: Sweden-Finland; Gulf of Bothnia; land ownership; social organisation; Journal of Northern Studies
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-43242

The area around the Gulf of Bothnia is a distinct region with historic roots. In 1809, after the peace treaty at Fredrikshamn, the area was divided into a Swedish and a Finnish (Russian) part through a new border on the Torne River. Earlier the whole area on both sides of the Gulf, in Sweden as well as in Finland, belonged to the same taxation district and was subject to the same taxes based on winter hunting and summer harvesting. The cultural landscape in this region can be seen in cadastral maps from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the villages, which were large compared to those in other places in Sweden and Finland, the same division of the arable land can be seen in the Torne river valley in the west as in the eastern coastal area to Kronoby in the south. South of the Torne river valley traces of this land organisation can be seen on the early maps. This land organisation had social causes depending on the main industry in the area of hunting and fishing. The roots of both social organisation and early taxation lay in the east as opposed to most areas in Sweden and Finland, in which a westerly influence dominated.