The great famine years in the province of Oulu in the 1860s, especially in the Haapajärvi district and Reisjärvi parish

Abstract

The great famine years of Finland in the 1860s were one of the last major population disasters in Europe. In this article, I study the causes and consequences of the famine years in the province of Oulu. Using various source materials, I seek answers to three questions: 1) how did the crop failures affect different areas of the province, 2) what impact did they have on population, and 3) what factors influenced the demographic changes experienced in different areas of the province.

When looking at the whole province, the northern districts – Kemi and Lapland – clearly survived these years better than the other areas. There are probably two main reasons for this. These two districts were not as dependent on grain cultivation as the southern regions, as agriculture in the north was more livestock oriented. For instance, the Kemi district was the most important butter production area in Oulu province in the 1860s. Another, more important, reason was that the hordes of beggars, driven by famine, were heading south, not north. Thus, diseases did not reach northern districts on the same scale as it reached southern ones.

This study confirms the findings of previous studies, namely that the southern parts of Oulu province, and especially the Haapajärvi district, were hit the hardest during the great famine years. In many of the province’s parishes, the population losses experienced were among the heaviest in the whole of Finland. Of the individual parishes Reisjärvi was the most affected. Examination of its population statistics makes clear that, despite the famine, few people died of starvation, but the main killers were disease, especially typhoid and dysentery.