Order, Materiality, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden 9789048531004

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Glossary
Introduction
Part I Setting the Stage: The Kingdom of Sweden and its Towns
The Swedish Empire and the Province of Finland
The Swedish Urban System
The Guild System
Turku and Its People
The Laws and the Judicial System
Part II Coming, Going and Staying: The Town and the Community
The Town and Its Space
1. Ordering Everyday Mobility
Marking and Crossing Boundaries
Stopping at the Toll Gate
The Extent and the Centre of the Town
Regulating Burgher Mobility with Detention in Town
Townspeople on the Move
Controlling Incoming Strangers
2. Undesirable Vagrants – Exclusion or Inclusion?
‘Time-thieves’ and Beggars
Inspecting, Banishing and Housing Vagrants
Loose or Settled: Sailors and Soldiers and the Town
Ordering Women in the Margins
3. Banishment and Lawbreakers
Banishment, Law and Crime
Spatial Exclusion and Rehabilitation of Thieves
Getting Rid of Miscreants?
The Banished and the Town
Community That Banishes
Part III. Living Together: Urban Home, Urban Space
Space and Urban Home
1. Organizing Urban Dwelling
Urban Turku Space: Small Houses and Central Yards
Household and Holding House
Tenancy and Control over Space
The Order and Disorder of Lodging
The Servants’ Place in Town
2. Spatial Rules of the Urban Homes
Closed and Porous Boundaries
Violent Invasion of a Home
Public, Private, and the Protected Home
Open Homes and Intimacy
Entering and Exiting: Male Sociability and Transactions
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Order, Materiality, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

Crossing Boundaries Turku Medieval and Early Modern Studies The series from the Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (TUCEMEMS) publishes monographs and collective volumes placed at the intersection of disciplinary boundaries, introducing fresh connections between established fields of study. The series especially welcomes research combining or juxtaposing different kinds of primary sources and new methodological solutions to deal with problems presented by them. Encouraged themes and approaches include, but are not limited to, identity formation in medieval/early modern communities, and the analysis of texts and other cultural products as a communicative process comprising shared symbols and meanings. Series Editor Matti Peikola, Department of Modern Languages, University of Turku, Finland Editorial Board Janne Harjula, Adjunct Professor of Historical Archaeology, University of Turku Hemmo Laiho, Postdoctoral Researchers, Department of Philosophy, University of Turku Satu Lidman, Adjunct Professor of History of Criminal law, Faculty of Law/Legal History, University of Turku Aino Mäkikalli, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Turku Kirsi-Maria Nummila, Adjunct Professor of Finnish language, University of Turku; University Lecturer of Finnish, University of Helsinki Kirsi Salonen, Associate Professor, School of History, Culture and Arts Studies, University of Turku Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen, Professor of Finnish history, Department of Finnish History, University of Turku

Order, Materiality, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

Riitta Laitinen

Amsterdam University Press

Cover illustration: A yard in Luostarimäki Handicrafts Museum, Turku Photo: Riitta Laitinen Cover design: Coördesign, Leiden Lay-out: Crius Group, Hulshout Amsterdam University Press English-language titles are distributed in the US and Canada by the University of Chicago Press. isbn e-isbn doi nur

978 94 6298 135 5 978 90 4853 100 4 10.5117/9789462981355 682 | 685

© Riitta Laitinen / Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 2017 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustrations reproduced in this book. Nonetheless, whosoever believes to have rights to this material is advised to contact the publisher.



Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9 A Note on Usage 10 Glossary 11 Introduction 13 Examining the Town and the Home: Spatial Rules, Spatial Practices and Court Sources 15 Spatiality and Materiality 21 The Chapters 26

Part I Setting the Stage: The Kingdom of Sweden and its Towns The Swedish Empire and the Province of Finland The Swedish Urban System The Guild System Turku and Its People The Laws and the Judicial System

31 33 37 39 41

Part II Coming, Going and Staying: The Town and the Community The Town and Its Space

1 Ordering Everyday Mobility Marking and Crossing Boundaries Stopping at the Toll Gate The Extent and the Centre of the Town Regulating Burgher Mobility with Detention in Town Townspeople on the Move Controlling Incoming Strangers

49 51 51 57 62 69 73 80

2 Undesirable Vagrants – Exclusion or Inclusion? ‘Time-thieves’ and Beggars Inspecting, Banishing and Housing Vagrants Loose or Settled: Sailors and Soldiers and the Town Ordering Women in the Margins

87 87 96 107 113

3 Banishment and Lawbreakers 121 Banishment, Law and Crime 121 Spatial Exclusion and Rehabilitation of Thieves 125 Getting Rid of Miscreants? 132 The Banished and the Town 139 Community That Banishes 143

Part III Living Together: Urban Home, Urban Space Space and Urban Home

149

1 Organizing Urban Dwelling Urban Turku Space: Small Houses and Central Yards Household and Holding House Tenancy and Control over Space The Order and Disorder of Lodging The Servants’ Place in Town

151 151 161 173 176 185

2 Spatial Rules of the Urban Homes Closed and Porous Boundaries Violent Invasion of a Home Public, Private, and the Protected Home Open Homes and Intimacy Entering and Exiting: Male Sociability and Transactions

191 191 204 214 221 227

Conclusions 239 The Town 239 Home 242 Bibliography 245 Index 263

List of Maps and Illustrations Map 1 Map 2 Map 3

Illustration 1

Map of seventeenth-century Turku with the toll fence, toll gates and the roads leading from the countryside to the market place The surroundings of Turku and the 1530 border of land owned by the town The earliest map of Turku is from 1634 and it is based on a survey by Olof Gangius. This copy was moved from Sweden to Finland aroun1809, when the text to the upper right corner was added. Depiction of seventeenth-century wooden houses in Turku with their yards, based on some archaeological research and written sources

53 64

65 157

Acknowledgements I have loved writing this book. I have thoroughly enjoyed the long period in the archives that it required as well as the equally long period of writing. Therefore, I thank the Academy of Finland who granted me a Research Fellow post that made a long-term research period possible. I have been fortunate to do research in the most wonderful research community at the Department of Cultural History at the University of Turku, which has been led by Professor Hannu Salmi and by Professors Kari Immonen and Keijo Virtanen before him. I could not have enjoyed my work as much as I did if it was not for this community and I owe a great debt to the department for everything in my scholarly life. I thank everyone at the department without even trying to list names, as a list would be long and with my terrible memory, I would be sure to omit someone. I want to thank you for your camaraderie, for suffering without complaint being pestered with all sorts of questions, and for your sharp insights into my texts, cultural historical questions, and the world in general. I do want to mention two research groups, where I have received invaluable comments to various parts of my text. These are the ‘Old Times’ group led by Professor Marjo Kaartinen and my own Spatiality and Materiality group. In these groups, also, the working papers of others have been invaluable for my thinking, and particularly my own group’s readings and discussions on spatiality and materiality have been elemental in the development of this book. Marjo Kaartinen helped me at the beginning of this project by tearing to shreds my draft of the application to the Academy of Finland and at the end by seeing where to cut one of my photos to make a cover for this book, as well as at many points in between. Jukka Sarjala’s reading of a draft for the introduction and Professor Deborah Simonton’s comments on a first draft of a part of the book are greatly appreciated. Outside of the Department of Cultural History I have received invaluable comments to my texts and presentations in the History of Premodern Turku group, in the Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, in the Trivium centre for Classical, Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Tampere and in in various particularly urban history and cultural history conferences and seminars. Comments from various anonymous reviewers of articles and, of course, particularly from reviewers of this book are also appreciated. My students in the lecture series that I taught on early modern urban history and on seventeenth-century Turku are to be thanked also, for the courses laid an important foundation for the book.

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Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

A Note on Usage The language of all the sources used for this book is Swedish, but the choice has been made to use the current English versions of all major placenames, such as towns and regions. This choice stems particularly from the preference for the usage Turku, the Finnish name of the town, rather than its Swedish name Åbo, which is used in the sources (and which is found in many older historiographical sources). I have chosen to use Turku, because it is the name that is used in current English discussion, both scholarly and nonscholarly. Particularly as international readers may not be familiar with the fact that many Finnish placenames also have a Swedish version, sometimes very similar but not infrequently (as with Turku and Åbo) strikingly different, to use a different term in writing than is current in discussion would be confusing. Accordingly, I have used the English or, lacking that, the local language versions of all major towns and regions. On their first occurrence, the Finnish names will be given with the Swedish names in parenthesis. For street names or other names of lesser significance that are no longer in use, however, I have used the names as they appear in the sources. In the seventeenth-century Swedish sources, people can have various different versions of their personal names, and names are used in a varied and inconsistent manner. Many people are referred to by first name and patronym, while some have a surname, and others a sobriquet attached to a first name. The names in this book are used as they appear in the sources. This means that for some people I use a surname, and for others a first name. This usage comes directly from the court sources, where most individuals are addressed and referred to by their first name, and usually only those with a proper surname (usually implying higher social status) are referred to by that surname. For royal names I use the internationally recognized names, which are often Latinized or English versions of the Swedish names. Various terms used in the judicial and administrative systems are difficult to translate, and translations can cause quite heated discussion. The main terms used in this book are listed in the glossary below, and the Swedish terms are given in parentheses when the terms first occur in the text. A few other problematic terms have also been noted in the glossary.

Glossary Borgmästare Burgomaster dreng hired hand, servant property, house; also yard gård Court of Appeal Hovrätt lodger (kvinna means ‘woman’ and man ‘man’) huskvinna, husman inhyses lodger Lower Town Court Kämnärsrätt Christopher of Bavaria’s Law of the Realm Landslag (after the first mention: Law of the Realm) Provincial Governor Landshövding Town Council Råd Town Hall Rådhus Town Court Rådstugurätt Magnus Eriksson’s Town Law (after the first Stadslag mention: Town Law) stads tjänäre (tienare) Town Constable länsman sheriff fogde bailiff

Introduction Everything is in order. That is, things are always in order, inasmuch as they are in a certain relation to each other and their surroundings. But the idea of order and ideal order are culturally and historically variable. Similarly, disorder is always cultural. This book explores how things were ‘in order’ in seventeenth-century Swedish/Finnish urban space.1 Order is considered to have had an important role in European early modern cultures, more so than in the periods before and after. Early modern order was hierarchical and patriarchal. Thomas Robisheaux’s list of the social values of order is descriptive: Hierarchy, social harmony, religious unity, corporate solidarity, the common good, deference, and obedience are visible in many early modern sources as well as in numerous scholarly treatises on early modern society and culture.2 A consensus exists that the early modern world was a world of patriarchal relations; a world of Gute Policey and administrative and policing reforms; and a world where people and things were expected to be in their correct and appropriate place.3 At the same time, scholars acknowledge that early modern order was multifaceted, complex and multi-layered; different meanings of order, various practices related to it, and the diverse agents involved in creating and maintaining order have been studied in recent decades. Studies of male interpersonal violence and the order of disorderly nightlife have highlighted how order was never merely something imposed from above.4 Research on the place of various categories of women and the lives lived in early modern households has diversified our understanding of hierarchical and patriarchal order in early modern Europe.5 The politics and policies imbued with hierarchical order have been seen more openly, for example, in studies of grass-root political practices and in the arrangement of church pews.6 Research on the emerging arrangement of poor relief and other urban administration 1 For more about the Kingdom of Sweden and Finland’s relation to it, see part I of the book. 2 Robisheaux 1989, 95. 3 See for example, Braudel 1976, 76; Foucault 1984, 241; Robisheaux 1989, 11, 95; Stadin 1993, 177-178; Friedrichs 1995, 57; Cowan 1998, 170-172; Braddick & Walter 2001, 1-2; Forsberg 2001, 30; Ruff 2001, 3; Landwehr 2003, 286; Blickle 2003, VII; Sandén 2005, 218; De Munck & Winter 2012, 12-13. 4 Spierenburg 1998; Tlusty 2001; Jansson 2006; Liliequist 1999; Liliequist 2002; Kümin 2005. 5 Dürr 1995; Gowing 1996; Gowing 2003; Orlin 2007; Flather 2007; Maddern 2008; Hubbard 2012; Miettinen 2012. 6 Lindström 2005; Marsh 2005.

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Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

has highlighted the impact of early modern understandings of order in everyday life, even when focusing on administration and legislation.7 These studies have shown how early modern order was diverse, albeit patriarchal and hierarchical, and that it was produced by ordinary people as much as by the authorities. This book explores the town of Turku in the mid-seventeenth-century kingdom of Sweden, and the order and disorder that were produced and experienced in and through its urban material space. The ways in which shared everyday practices were connected to material and spatial aspects of the town are examined in relation to the town as a spatial entity and in relation to homes as spatial and material things. The book inquires how the community organized its shared living environment, and how the urban community was organized in relation to the urban space. It argues that the inherent spatial and material nature of people’s lives centrally governs the way that communities organize themselves and create order. The book shows that studying mundane practices relating to town boundaries, roads, houses, rooms, doors, gates, and the town itself as a spatial entity, unveils the ways in which communities and individuals build their lives in and through their material environment. In the book the term ‘order’ means both the ‘early modern order’ described above and order arising from human predilection to organize themselves and their community in specific ways. The meaning of order as ‘arrangement in the position of things contained in a particular space or area’8 is the starting point for thinking about order in this study, although civil, social and moral orders are equally important and are seen as inseparable from order as arrangement of things.9 These orders are also related to yet another brand of order: ‘the condition in which everything has its correct and appropriate place’,10 a concept of order which was very important in early modern thinking. Order, in all its facets, is perceived here as fundamentally spatial and material. People are corporeal beings in a material world; they inevitably order themselves spatially and materially. Sharing everyday life in a material environment also makes a community 7 Unger 1996; Leeuwen 1994; Schmidt & Aspelmeier 2006; Heijden 2010. 8 OED, s.v. order III 14. b. 9 Civil order = ‘the state in which laws and rules regulating the relationship of individuals to the community, and the public conduct of members within a community, are maintained and authority is obeyed’ OED, s.v. order III.17.; Social or moral order = ‘system in which things proceed according to definite, established, or constituted laws’ OED, s.v. order III.14. a.; social order = ‘the way in which society is organized’ OED, s.v. social S2. 10 OED, s.v. order III 14. a.

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a spatial thing. The order studied here is, then, elementally a communally shared order of and in the material environment. ‘Order’ in the book is also seen as active; it is ‘ordering’, rather than static order. Moreover, order includes both order and disorder. Disorder is not necessarily seen here as something that disrupts an order that has been achieved (although it could also be this). The breaking of a particular order makes one kind of order visible, but that breaking may be part of another kind of order or a different side of the same order. The perception of order and disorder deployed here arises from the perspective of everyday life and its multifaceted and chaotic nature. Both prescriptive and philosophical literature, of both the early modern and the current era, often see order and disorder more in monochrome. Turku, the town that is studied in the book, was an international trading town and the second largest town of Sweden proper with a population of approximately 5000.11 Turku was a university town, and the centre of a diocese and of provincial civil administration, as well as an important centre for trade. Its history reached back to the late thirteenth century. The community in Turku was largely Finnish-speaking, although the wealthy and the official town operated in Swedish. While there were many local characteristics to the town, it was most crucially a Swedish and a European town. Turku shared with other Swedish towns a strong administrative development, the organization of guilds and trade, a judicial system and urban laws. Because of its material form as an urban settlement and because of its trade and administrative practices, the town also shared many aspects of its culture with European towns in general. Therefore, Turku is examined here as a Swedish and European town rather than a Finnish town on the periphery.

Examining the Town and the Home: Spatial Rules, Spatial Practices and Court Sources People’s relationship with their material environment, the urban space, is studied in this book through exploring ‘spatial rules’. Spatial rules orient people’s lives in every culture, but are often unexpressed or invisible. These rules are conventions that sometimes find their way into laws and 11 ‘Sweden proper’ refers to the areas that were fully part of the kingdom and not dominions or possessions acquired in war, which were not incorporated into the Swedish domestic system of administration and government.

16 

Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

regulations, and sometimes are manifested on the level of routine and customs. All individuals live in a world of such conventions; these rules are part of their culture, which they construct and which they are constructed by. ‘Spatial rules’ is a term that is not often used other than in a non-specific way, but the meanings in this common usage also correspond closely to its use here. The geographer Robert David Sack expresses these meanings in his terminology of ‘territorial rules’, as ‘implicit and explicit geographical “do” and “don’t” rules of in/out place’. Although Sack’s general thinking about space and place at times differs greatly from the thinking in this book, his statement that ‘territorial rules are constructed to control and reorient spatial interactions’ is a shared definition.12 I would add that the rules are often not constructed intentionally, but rather subconsciously, presenting themselves in routines, and through these in orienting and reorienting spatial interactions. In each case spatial rules are geographical rules about moving and acting in (material) space. They have to do with what is possible, acceptable, and desirable in a shared everyday environment. People and communities construct the rules and are constructed through them, but the material space itself also impacts on the rules and is impacted on by them.13 Although ‘spatial rules’ is a central concept in structuring the task of this book, the detailed examination in the chapters gravitates more towards practices than rules,14 since spatial practices make the spatial rules visible. Everyday practices carry in themselves both the written orders and regulations and the unwritten customs and conventions. These practices, for example lodging vagrants illegally or fetching jugs of beer from the tavern at night, connect with local practicalities and experiences as well as with more widely perceived ideas and prescribed regulations. The spatial rules and spatial practices in seventeenth-century Turku are examined here from the perspectives of mobility, settledness, and encounters. The book is divided into two parts: the town and the home, which are considered to be two significant elements for studying urban spatial relations. The town and the dwelling both touched each urban inhabitant; everyone was party to the shared codes and conventions concerning 12 Sack 1997, 89-92. 13 See also Flather 2013, 346. 14 Practices are defined in practice theory as active and bodily actions, which include both unconscious routines and conscious actions. Practices cannot exist separately from discourses, even if some definitions of practice seem to imply this, but practices do indicate the world of tangible activity of corporeal beings, which makes the concept very useful when examining people and culture as part of the material world. See Sewell 1998, 249-253; Schatzki 2001, 10, 20; Reckwitz 2005, 247, 246; Spiegel 2005, 22.

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entering and exiting the town, entering and exiting of homes, as well as residing in the town and dwelling in homes. Boundaries and crossing boundaries are emphasized in the book. The town and the home were not places with clear-cut and controllable boundaries, but they certainly did have boundaries. There were material objects – walls, fences, gates, windows and doors – that marked the borders of the town and the home. They were solid and tangible, but at the same time mostly porous and often open. They created – and create for scholars – an opening toward the inside and the outside, and toward the negotiations of the in-between. How townspeople related to the space and border of the town and the home, as well as to other people in them, shows how the urban community ordered itself and what kinds of things were important in the order of practical everyday urban life.15 It is important to note that the components of the urban material environment studied here, the town and the home, cannot be reduced to a dichotomy of public and private (and thus a boundary between public and private space cannot be studied). The town and the home were integrally related to each other. For one thing, the houses where people lived were open in nature; all kinds of actions and people from the rest of the urban space spilled into dwellings and vice versa. More tangibly, the bulk of the material environment of the town consisted of the urban settlement; that is, the houses, the dwellings, the homes. On the other hand, for example in some trading customs, dwelling-houses defined the urban trading community more centrally than the market place; that is, space usually considered public space. Studying both the town and the home must be seen, and is seen here, as studying the urban space in its totality, not as studying public and private spaces of the town in separation from each other.16 Focusing on everyday spatial practices in an urban material space that is not defined by mutually exclusive publicity or privacy extends the examination to all kinds of people partaking in the ordering of the urban space, 15 There is remarkably little research done on the material boundaries and practices attached to them. One of the few exceptions is Jütte 2014. Instead, the current research on boundaries deals with state boundaries, immigration and movement of labour as well as symbolic boundaries of various kinds. See Spierling & Halvorson 2008, 8; Roll, Pohle & Myrczek 2010; De Munck & Winter 2012; Selwood 2010. 16 Public and private have been widely discussed in early modern studies. See for example, Orlin 2007; Longfellow 2006; Burkart 2004; Freise 2004; Rau 2004; von Moos 2004; Kaartinen 2002; Vickery 2009; Crane 2009. These concepts have also been discussed beyond the early modern. See, for example, Kilian 1998. In terms of urban space, the concepts of public and private and the use of the terms still need further discussion. Seee Crane 2009, 4-7; Cohen 2009, 97, Hohti 2010, 373-374; and the discussion later in this book.

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since people and actions in and around homes receive similar attention as those in the streets and market places. Moreover, when one asks open questions about people’s everyday practices in a shared urban space, the role of people on the margins becomes visible as well as that of prominent town burghers. Also, because order is seen as active (as ordering), and not necessarily in a polarized binary relation to disorder, order is not primarily examined here from the perspective of the authorities/elites as opposed to the townspeople/the lower classes. Rather, exploring everyday practices, such as local ways of paying town toll payments or allowing widows’ houses in the centre of burghers’ plots, reveals an open and complex pattern of early modern and urban order. This study sees vagrants and burghers as equally important members of a shared urban community. Everyone in the town had a role in defining the town, through their everyday lives. Everyone played their part in the formation of spatial rules, and therefore everyone had a role in collectively defining the urban community. This perspective on urban life makes it possible to break through the monolith of ‘the early modern order’ to see the complex ways in which early modern townspeople ordered their lives spatially. The main actors in the book, then, are the burghers and their families, their servants and other employees, workers and seamen, but also and importantly vagrants and criminals, and then again the higher authorities at the levels of the county, the Grand Duchy of Finland, and the Swedish Crown. The cast arises from the sources used and includes all kinds of people visible in them. In the seventeenth century, the urban space in Turku was not yet very strongly socially segmented, even if some parts of the town were less fashionable than others. There were only around 5000 inhabitants, and the geographical area was not large. No one living in the town could really be segregated from other social classes, and all townspeople to a certain extent shared the common urban space. While even a town like this had various smaller communities – for example, among guild members and university students – in this book the community that is studied comprises of the whole urban population. Multiple or differing urban communities have been at the focus of early modern research recently, but the wider community of a town, particularly of a smaller town, should not be forgotten. Sharing urban space, and inevitably practices and rules connected to it, created a community of its own kind. While it is clear that residence at a place (a town) did not define one’s community or communal identity alone or simply, it does not mean that sharing a spatially defined living environment did not result in

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a community at all. Such a community of people living in a shared urban space is understood here according to David Sabean’s oft-cited words, which emphasize that the ‘members of a community are engaged in the same argument, the same raisonnement, the same Rede, the same discourse, in which alternative strategies, misunderstandings, conflicting goals and values are thrashed out’.17 In addition, an active relationship with the urban space, the material environment, is emphasised; as Niall Atkinson says, community can be something that comes about when a person moves in different spaces and amongst different things that are shared with other people.18 The main source material for the examination of the Turku community and urban space are the Turku Town Court records from the 1640s and 1650s, a period coinciding with significant urban, administrative and judicial changes in Sweden and thus also in Turku. The Town Court records are the only remaining source that can tell us about everyday life in Turku; no letters, pictures, diaries or other descriptions of the town or town life are known to have survived, nor has anything bar the Cathedral and the Castle survived of the material town.19 Court cases concerning fights and spats, disturbances of domestic peace, banishment, transgressions against trading rules, adultery, theft, collecting excise taxes, etc. however, offer us a vivid view into the town’s everyday life. They also make it possible to see how people related to their material surroundings, and they give us information about what the material environment was like. In addition, administrative issues, which were recorded in the same books as the court cases, inform us of ordinances and instructions issued or transmitted by the Town Council (råd) to the townspeople. The cases for analysis have been chosen on the basis of the ways that they relate to the material urban space. That is, entries in the records that include mentions of gates, doors, windows, the market place, houses, shops, streets, benches, etc. have been examined more closely. To get as close to urban everyday life as possible, these entries have been read from various 17 Sabean1984, 29. 18 Sabean 1984, 29; Atkinson 2011, 14. About research of early modern communities see Whithington & Shephard 200, 2-9; Nevola & Rosenthal 2011, 4-5; Halverson & Spierling 2008. It must be pointed out that the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft division does not play a role here. The community examined is not seen as ‘a friendlier thing’ than a society at large. It is believed that community and society are not opposite ends of a continuum. Instead they are seen to co-exist within each other. Cp. Sabean 1984, 28-28; Burke 2011, 26-27. 19 This is due to town f ires, particularly the Great Fire of 1827, after which the town was completely rebuilt.

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Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

different perspectives: the kind of actions taken to maintain or reimpose order (administrative practices, court’s utterances, interventions by townspeople); what had happened (what was described as having happened); the kind of patterns created by the events and their descriptions (everyday practices); and the things people said (patterns in accounts). The court case entries are accounts of the proceedings written down by the clerk in a somewhat condensed form. Relatively little of what was said in court was written down verbatim. Most of the time, the clerks summarized what each participant and witness reported as having happened; even the court’s questions to those involved are seldom written down verbatim. The questions of the court are expressed in phrases like ‘the court impressed on the defendant to tell the truth’. ‘Yes or no’ questions were more often written down; for example: ‘the women were asked if the sinner had been pregnant’. The answers are often only recorded verbatim when the answers are short, such as yes or no; otherwise the evidence given is condensed to narratives of events, where what people did intermingles with what each person had told the court (in their turn or even intermingled within one paragraph). This system of transcription results in accounts that are sometimes hard to follow, both with relation to what had happened and to what people had said. This is, however, a problem mainly for deciphering the logic, plot and details of the entry, as ascertaining what really had happened is often not of central concern here. Naturally, the court sources give us only one interpretation of the events in town and we can be sure that both the court proceedings and the transcribing of them to a record gave a particular slant to the account of everyday life, and we can also be sure that various perspectives and experiences are not represented in the entries. However, as Amanda Flather has also noted, information concerning material everyday space is often not something that would have been central to the court’s inquiry. This means that much of the information in the material of this study comes from asides and description of people’s movements, rather than from the central facets of the offence that was being investigated; this spatial information is therefore less likely to have been twisted to serve any particular purpose.20 In cases where spatial issues are at the heart of the matter, such as crossing toll borders or invading someone’s home, one has to be more careful in reading the case entries, and closely consider what motivations drove each person. The lack of certainty as to what actually took place does not create

20 Flather 2007, 12.

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a big problem, however, because – like most history – this is a study of possible histories.21 As the focus of many court cases studied in the book is not on spatial relations and practices, much of the research builds on small clues and their contextualization, and on deciphering, even based on individual cases, what was plausible in people’s relationship to urban space. The laws and ordinances are used as primary sources in the contextualization in addition to research literature on various aspects of social and cultural history of the era, as well as a general perception formulated by studying the mass of the court sources from the twenty-year period, a perception that is at times hard to pinpoint with a particular reference. This method has made it possible to build an image of spatial practices in the town and extend the analysis also to the lower levels of society.22 Based on this analysis considering various levels of the society, this book maintains that the everyday ‘spatial rules’ of life in Turku did not coincide with the prescribed rules of the society. It was not, however, a situation where those from above imposed their power and ideals and townspeople resisted. The discrepancy between the ordinances and decrees and the rules manifesting in everyday life arose out of the practicalities of arranging the community’s life in the local urban space and finding shared practices to keep an order about the town and in people’s lives. Importantly, the practicalities and shared practices in the local material environment are neither separate from nor in contradiction to the ideals, but are informed by them.

Spatiality and Materiality Considering order as first and foremost an arrangement of things and people leads us to consider more closely the issue of spatiality in the study of urban life. As so often when discussing spatiality in history, we can start with Henri Lefebvre and The Production of Space. Lefebvre’s thesis about the (social) production of (social) space has been widely read, and the gist of his extensively adopted thesis, quoting Sebastian Dorsch, is that ‘[s]ocieties produce their spaces […] in a complex arrangement (of power) consisting of experiencing, conceptualizing/representing, and practicing’.23 Although 21 Salmi 2011, 180. 22 See Salmi 2011; Corbin 2001; Davis 1983. 23 Dorsch 2013, 7-21.

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Lefebvre’s theory is not deployed as such in this study, its influence cannot be overstated. Lefebvre’s oft-cited triad of spatial practices, representations of space and representational spaces reminds us that production of space happens on various levels,24 even if we might not categorize the multilevel spatiality of life in a similar way and if Lefebvre’s lack of emphasis on the material world is problematic.25 Nevertheless, Lefebvre’s triads offer fruitful tools in an effort to separate (conceptually) and then merge the mental, social and material elements of space into the totality that they are in people’s life experience. Lefebvre’s perception that all space is produced by the people occupying it also reminds us how it is impossible to conceive of space as universal or abstract, or as an empty container for something (meanings, experiences, places). This means that, for example, a home or a dwelling cannot be seen as a place constructed by experience against a neutral background of urban space. Rather, a home is part of the urban space, coming into being in the processes of producing that urban space.26 Often, when ‘space’ and ‘place’ and their current understandings are discussed, Descartes and Newton are referred to as the starting points for our still persistent perception of ‘space’ as a neutral and empty container, and ‘place’ as something particular that is located within that empty space (although, as Kümin and Usborne point out, understanding space as something that really had to do with the people and things it contained also has its roots in the early modern era). The notion of space as an empty container (which is free of culture and meanings) has had a long history, the influence of which is still strongly felt, and that influence, in my opinion, is unnecessarily reinforced by giving the concept of ‘place’ a central role.27 Because of this, in this book I continually use the concept of ‘space’, whereas I seldom refer to ‘place’. Another reason that I consider ‘place’ to be a problematic concept is because, as the geographer P.J. Ethington points out, in the study of spatiality one can too often find that ‘places’ end up being good, while ‘space’ is bad. Places are construed as experiential, memorial and subjective, and space(s) as objective, abstract and universal. As Ethington writes, for example, Lefebvre sees ‘space’, created by modernity and capitalism, as panoptical and authoritarian. Postmodern geography to some extent continues in the same vein: postmodern society, too, has created bad, alienating ‘space’, 24 25 26 27

Lefebvre 1991 (1974), 38-39. Jerram 2013, 411; Lefebvre 1991 (1974), 39. Arnade et al. 2002, 522. Kümin & Usborne 2013, 307, 316; Casey 1996, 14.

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while ‘places’ have been (in geography, in anthropology, and in the end, in history) linked with positive meaning (local community, family, childhood memories, traditional customs, etc.).28 Abandoning ‘place’ as an operative concept does not in itself make the concepts of spatiality value-free, but turning to ‘space’ reduces the conceptual problems of assigning positive or negative value at the outset. In this book this can be seen, for example, in the examination of spatial constructs connected with family. A phenomenological perspective on spatiality, arising from the ideas of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and particularly his ideas on bodily experience, clarifies the framework of the conception of ‘space’ in this book, one that relocates the meaning of ‘place’. The philosopher Edward Casey, in his phenomenological treatise on spatiality, together with some other scholars (such as Michel de Certeau)29, has turned the often perceived relationship of ‘space’ and ‘place’ around. For Casey, ‘space’ is not primary, and ‘places’ are not something that are located/created/constructed within space; rather, ‘place’ is before ‘space’. Because people are corporeal, they are always emplaced, in a place. As with Merleau-Ponty, the knowledge of the place does not come after perception, but is part of perception. As Casey writes: ‘the perceiver finds herself in the midst of an entire teeming place-world rather than in a confusing kaleidoscope of free-floating sensory data’ to which places are created.30 When there is a perceiving body, there is also a place, and space and time ‘arise from the experience of place itself’.31 This study therefore proceeds in accordance with Casey, seeing ‘space’ as something that is located in each ‘place’. Quoting Leif Jerram (on phenomenological perspective): ‘In short, “to be” is “to be in place” (say, in a safe place) and “to be in space” (say, in a cot) and “to be at a location” (say, at grandma’s house) …’.32 This means that here the town of Turku is a place that is comprised of space practised, experienced, lived, and produced. Then again, a home in the space of the town is a place which contains produced space. Therefore, in this study, where the examined townspeople are, are not places created through experience, but the practised space of the town. Of the various definitions of place and space in the literature, the definition by Beat Kümin and Cornelie Usborne most closely resembles the one used in this study. They suggest ‘point’ as meaning ‘a physical grid-reference’, 28 29 30 31 32

See: Ethington 2007, 481; Jerram 2013, 405. See also Latham & McCormack 2004. de Certeau 1984. Casey 1996, 17-18. Casey 1996, 36. Jerram 2013, 408.

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‘place’ as referring to ‘specific constellations of object and agents [constituting] socially recognized sites of interaction’, and ‘space’ as meaning ‘fields of perception and manoeuvre experienced by humans at any points or place’.33 It is important to remember that while people produce space, space also produces people. The material environment and its components are active agents in the process of creating urban order. The role of matter and space in people’s lives needs to be studied more vigorously. This has been pointed out, for example, by Leif Jerram, who writes that Lefebvre’s system of producing space consists only of people doing and people representing. The rest of the material world does not have a role.34 The new-materialist theorist Karen Barad, again, has taken it upon herself to go beyond the ideas of Butler and Foucault, since she sees that their ideas of bodily human life do not go far enough and consider how matter matters.35 The geographers Alan Latham and Derek P. McCormack urge us to endeavour to better understand the inseparability of the immaterial and the material. Tackling materiality is not about ‘grounding’ the cultural or examining something more real or ‘concrete’. As Latham and McCormack write: ‘… concrete itself, or indeed any other building material, is not “brute matter”. It is a particular aggregate organization of process and energy. It is no more (or less) “real” than apparently “immaterial” phenomena like emotion, mood and affect, although it has a different duration and threshold of consistency’.36 While there is currently much theoretical and philosophical literature on the matter of matter, full incorporation of the material world into historical research is not common. In writing urban history, taking matter seriously can begin with steps like considering the practices and the matter in the building of the physical town as things of consequence, as is done in this book. Here, starting to take materiality more seriously means focusing on the impact that different kinds of material spaces had on people’s ways of dwelling, moving and encountering each other. While considering the 33 Kümin & Usborne 2013, 317-318. 34 Jerram 2013, 411. 35 Barad 2007, 34-35; Barad 2008, 126-127. 36 Latham & McCormack 2004, 702-705. One might see a contradiction in turning to both phenomenology and new materialism. It is true that new materialism (like posthumanism, antihumanism etc.) contests phenomenological thinking, among other philosophical approaches, but as the perspective of this study is a human perspective, the contradiction is not insurmountable. Challenging the dualisms of mind and body, of nature and culture, of human and animal does not exclude the existence of the human subject nor its relationship to the world outside the human subject. This relationship can be decoded with the help of some phenomenological ideas, while still taking a new materialist stance on the matter into consideration. See Connolly 2013; Thomas 2006.

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material world as active in this book most visibly means talking about the height of the fences, the number of rooms and the locations of buildings, the key aspect of this consideration is nevertheless that the research starts with looking at the material world which surrounds people, instead of starting with social institutions such as households, guilds or urban corporations. Therefore, this book begins with the fence around the town in the first part and with the forms of the houses in the second part. While in passages of the book, particularly at the start of each of the two parts, the materiality of space and spatiality itself are noticeably at the forefront, in other sections they may be more covert. For example, when talking about the actual physical crossing of the town boundary, materiality and spatiality are unescapably present, but when turning towards banishment, a practice at the outset connected to the crossing of the border, the focus shifts and social and legal perspectives come to the fore. This happens as the influence of the town as a spatial entity extends to all kinds of sides of everyday life, not just parts of it that concretely touch the material boundary encircling it. The town as a spatial thing is part of the whole social and cultural ordering of mobility and settledness, that is, its various values and practices. When the research for the book turned towards the examination of banishment, a practice elementally tied to the town as a spatial entity as well as to its material boundary, the sources (perhaps surprisingly) directed the exploration towards a treatise of settledness more than towards mobility and the actual crossing of borders. While the ideas behind banishment had to do with getting unwanted people out of the town, the practices connected to it illuminated to the same extent, if not more, being settled in the town. Therefore, even if parts of the book appear at first sight to be about something other than the spatiality of the town, the town as a spatial entity is in fact explored. When it comes to the exploration of the home as urban space, also there settledness is explored, but as home is a smaller thing than the town, the links in the text to the material environment remain more evident than they sometimes do in the case of the town. In all, what considering spatiality and materiality means is that, as Leif Jerram writes, looking at phenomena with the premise that thoughts, representations, and practices happen in particular material spaces, one ends up examining plural simultaneities instead of forcing the worlds of experience and cultures into coherent wholes, such as cultural systems or social institutions.37 When one sees people’s and groups’ relationships 37 Jerram 2013, 408, 419.

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to each other as depending on the particular space which they encounter and where they encounter each other, then the kind of units that exist, the institutions and values that are formed in homes and in the town, and how a community is constructed, are seen to be varied and diverse. As a result, the perspective on hierarchy, patriarchy, and status, and therefore on order, disorder, and urban community in general, becomes more open.

The Chapters The book starts by setting the stage for the reader to understand the particularities of early modern history and society in Sweden and Finland. The f irst Part describes the structures of the Swedish administration, trade, courts, and urban system. The relationship between Finland and Sweden is explained, and the administrative and material setting of Turku is described. The major laws and ordinances referenced regularly throughout the book are introduced. The second Part of the book explores people’s relationships with the town as a spatial entity. It examines how these relationships were expressed, and how the town as a spatial entity impacted on the ordering of everyday life for the townspeople. It looks into how various practices interacted with the borders of the town and with the urban space as a whole. Since the town boundary was marked with a fence and one had to enter the town through gates, entering and exiting the town – with their multiple forms, reasons and consequences – have been chosen as the main focus to illuminate people’s relationship to the town. As already mentioned, however, particularly the examination of banishment leads also into a treatise of the possibilities of residence in town in the case of the so-called unwanted, and into an evaluation of exclusion and inclusion. The first Chapter of the Part discusses the townspeople’s everyday mobility: crossing the toll border at the town gates, the limitations imposed on burghers’ mobility, and the ordering of incoming visitors and newcomers. The second Chapter covers the maintenance of control over ‘unwanted people’, and looks at the poor and other vagrants, and their coming and going and staying in the town. The third Chapter focuses on both the expulsion of criminals and their toleration in the town, and examines the frequent return of banished offenders. The third Part of the book explores the home as a spatial and material entity and people’s relationship to the space of dwelling. As early modern houses were open rather than closed, the home was expressively part of

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the shared urban space, while still at the same time being a designated space for individuals and families. This Part examines how the space of the home was ordered and organized in and by the community, and also here attention is paid to entering and exiting. The focus is on homes as the dwellings of individuals, as well as on the relationship of the community and the urban administration to the spaces of dwelling. The first Chapter of the Part looks at the arrangement of accommodation, and examines how individuals found their dwellings in the community, where houses were permeated with visibility, co-existence, and neighbourly communication, in a society where hierarchy and disdain for the morally reprobate regulated both official practices and the moral climate. The buildings and their layout, holding house, tenancy, lodgers and servants are covered in the chapter. The second Chapter asks what happened at and around the borders of the home, and illuminates both how homes were constructed as material and cultural entities, and how lives in homes were organized inside the wider shared urban space. Use of gates, doors and windows, the violent invasion of homes, intimacy of human relations, and sociability are all discussed.

Part I Setting the Stage: The Kingdom of Sweden and its Towns

Set ting the Stage: The Kingdom of Sweden and its Towns 

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The Swedish Empire and the Province of Finland To set the stage for a reader unfamiliar with the early modern history of Sweden and Finland, we start here with an introduction to some issues deemed relevant for the understanding of the analysis of urban order and its spatial practices beginning in Part II. The seventeenth century was the heyday of the greatness of the Swedish kingdom, so much so that it is called stormaktstiden (the era as a Great Power) in Swedish. Between 1561 and 1658, areas all around the Baltic Sea were added to the conglomerate state, and King Gustavus Adolphus rose to eminence in the Thirty Years War that ravaged Europe. Originally the kingdom of Sweden had grown into a state through a slow and complicated process during the Middle Ages. The first ruler referred to as king of both svear and götar (the peoples of Svealand and Götaland) was Olof Skötkonung (d. 1022), and the title occurs intermittently in the twelfth century before becoming the norm in the thirteenth, which shows that at least by then Sweden was considered a kingdom. During the thirteenth century, the king’s power in legal, judicial and military matters grew, and surrounding areas were brought under the rule of the Swedish king. Finally, during the rule of Gustavus I (1521-1560), the central power was properly organized, and the king’s rule over his subjects and territories became more substantive.1 Finland was among the areas that came under the rule of the King of the Swedes in the thirteenth century, but Swedish influence had begun already in the twelfth century, when the western Christian church was first organized in southwestern Finland.2 In 1521, when Gustavus I became the ruler of Sweden, the Finnish side of the realm consisted of what is the western part of present-day Finland, but during the early modern period, with the growing power of the monarchy, the area under Swedish rule expanded. During the Middle Ages the Finnish territory was called Österland (Eastland), but the name Finland appears already during the fifteenth century, and during the seventeenth century only Finland appears to have been used.3 Finland was one among the provinces of the kingdom, while areas that were acquired later in the early modern era were considered dominions. 4 With reference to urban history, it should be noted that towns in the various dominions 1 Bladh & Kuvaja 2005, 16-23; Sawyer 1991, 32-33. 2 Bladh & Kuvaja 2005, 16. 3 Bladh & Kuvaja 2005, 21-22; Villstrand 2009, 34-35. 4 Bladh & Kuvaja 2005, 20-21. The Norwegian and Danish areas acquired in the seventeenth century were however quickly integrated into Swedish society and were not considered dominions, but part of Sweden proper.

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acquired in the seventeenth century were not incorporated into the Swedish system of urban government, administration or law. Thus, in research, they are not usually placed in the same context as the domestic towns in what currently comprise Sweden and Finland.5 Finland was given the rank of Grand Duchy in 1580, which could be interpreted as implying that Finland’s status was different to the rest of the kingdom’s provinces. However, having a Grand Duchy within a kingdom was a matter of prestige and power for the king; on the European level, having one raised the status of the monarchy. For Finland the title did not change much, even if in principle a Grand Duchy was as close to a separate state as one could get inside a monarchy. But there was no difference in treatment in legal, military or administrational issues; in the seventeenth century Finland became, on the contrary, tied more closely to mother Sweden.6 To some extent, nevertheless, Finland was indeed seen to be somewhat different from the rest of Sweden. For example, in a letter in 1602, Duke Charles wrote about the nobility ‘here in Finland’ as distinct from that ‘in Sweden’. During the latter part of the sixteenth century, King John III had to insist to his soldiers that Finland was not outside their fatherland, but an important part of his realm.7 In the seventeenth century, it was common in Turku to talk about crossing the Gulf of Bothnia as ‘going to Sweden’ and ‘coming from Sweden’. Similarly, for example, students at the university in Turku were often referred to as ‘Finnish students’ and ‘Swedish students’ respectively, rather than being identified by their Swedish province or county. The political and economic position of Finland was not static. At the end of the sixteenth century, as the Twenty-Five-Year War with Russia (1570-1595) required a strong administration in the east, Finland’s position was relatively strong. Moreover, in the conflicts over succession and political power struggles of the latter part of the sixteenth century Finland and Turku at times played a role. However, by the reign of Gustavus Adolphus (1611-1632) Finland was regarded as a poorly administered backwater part of the realm, and in the 1620s a Governor General was appointed to reform the administration and government of Finland. This appointment, although it was the result of a negative perception of the province, put Finland in an unusual position within the realm, as Governors General were normally 5 Sandberg 2003. 6 Villstrand 2009, 34-35. 7 Villstrand 2009, 23. See also Lamberg 2007.

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only appointed to the newly conquered dominions of the Swedish Baltic Empire.8 In religious life, the seventeenth century in Sweden was an era of Lutheran orthodoxy. King Gustavus I had set the Reformation in motion in the 1520s, and Archbishop Laurentius Petri’s Church Ordinance was conf irmed in 1571, but it was not until 1593 that the Synod of Uppsala published an official confession of the Lutheran faith.9 In the seventeenth century, Lutheranism was the only accepted faith in the monarchy. The ‘orthodox Lutheran’ era was characterized by reforms in teaching and church discipline. The Church was officially unified, after the less certain times of the sixteenth century, when Gustavus I’s sons had differing stances on religion. Most of the seventeenth-century bishops who were relatively free to administer their dioceses according to their own thinking were proponents of orthodox Lutheranism. Only when deviating too far from the orthodox Lutheran line were their instructions interfered with, as the prosecution and deposition of Bishops Johannes Matthiae Gothus and Johannes Terserus in 1664 show. Both bishops were sentenced for heresy, on the grounds of their pan-Protestant ecumenism and syncretist teachings.10

The Swedish Urban System In Sweden the seventeenth century was a period of enthusiastic urban development. Urban centres had been important to the Crown ever since the Middle Ages, as they were considered important for the state’s commerce, but at the beginning of the seventeenth century the ruling elite considered that the realm’s towns were inadequate for the needs of trade and commerce or for the prestige of the Crown. King Gustavus Adolphus described his towns as ‘lacking in trade, rotten and broken down’. Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna called them ‘insignificant market places’ and ‘thieves’ dens’. In one respect the two men were right, as the towns were very small. The historian Sven Lilja describes them as ‘merely agglomerated villages with a few “urban” functions’. Other scholars, however, have pointed out that even if most towns were small, they all could boast of urban trades and 8 Karonen 1999a, 25, 101-102, 119, 234-240. 9 See for example, Montgomery 1995, 144-178; Laitinen 2012. 10 Laitinen 2015; Harjunpää 1968, 28-29, 31; Laasonen, 1977, 9-10, 13-14. Both bishops were later reinstated in the ministry.

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an urban administration. The median population of the Swedish towns in 1690 was 676. After Stockholm, Turku was the most populous town during the seventeenth century, with its 4000-6000 inhabitants.11 The Crown saw a clear need for improvement, and the early modern era in Sweden saw the rise and expansion of towns in the Swedish realm. Many new towns were founded in the latter sixteenth century and the seventeenth century; Nils Ahlberg has estimated there to have been 76 projects that can be defined as the founding of new towns. Most of the new towns were founded by the monarch with the aim of boosting trade and commerce. The mercantilist economy required more towns to increase state revenue, but the old towns also needed to be harnessed more strongly to benefit the Crown. Thus all towns became a target of reform, which included the bureaucratization of the central administration; the development of economic policy; increasing state intervention in urban life; and the spread of town planning ideals. Petri Karonen argues that the most important reforms were the conceiving of the system of the Courts of Appeal and the devising of various trade ordinances between 1614 and 1630, and then the development of urban administration from the 1630s to the late 1650s. The latter period was characterized by an effort by the Crown to gain control of the town councils and integrate them into the royal administration. The appointment of burgomasters (borgmästare) began to be controlled by the Crown; in Turku two thirds of the burgomasters chosen during the stormaktstiden were ‘king’s men’. There was also an effort to organize the work of the town councils more effectively by arranging the council into four collegial bodies (judicial, commerce, crafts, and finances and building).12 The reforms were successful to varying degrees. In Turku, for example, the assertion of control over the appointment of burgomasters went quite well in the end, but a system of town elders proposed in 1619 never took hold. Petri Karonen writes that the regulations concerning industry and commerce were put into effect in the towns of the realm surprisingly easily. By the mid-seventeenth century, for example, practically all towns had various inspecting officers, who surveyed and policed local commerce and trade.13 The urban reform was realized through a multitude of ordinances and privileges, and one draft of regulations for a statute for the towns of the kingdom. In 11 Ahlberg 2005, 55; Lilja 1995b, 50; Sandberg 1996, 180-181; Laitinen & Lindström 2009, 66-67; Westling 2002. 12 Ahlberg 2005; Karonen 1995, 125-128, passim; Ranta 1981, 81. 13 Karonen 1995, 27, 35, 41-45.

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1619 the Lord High Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, drew up a set of regulations dealing with a range of the administrative and financial dealings of towns, but these never became law, probably because the towns did not favour them. Chancellor Oxenstierna, who was a central figure in the process of urban reform, then chose to implement the ideas by granting privileges to individual towns. In the end, only ten towns received these new privileges, but the ‘Rule of 1619’ still influenced also other towns, and was apparently widely read. Of the reforms suggested in the Rule, the system of town elders, took hold in Sweden, but not in Finland. New Lower Town Courts (kämnerrätt) were founded in approximately half of the towns in the realm, and the royal appointment of burgomasters was generally successful. And as already mentioned, the regulation of commercial life and crafts was particularly successful and it was further strengthened with various royal ordinances.14 Although the governance of the towns was under scrutiny and change, the foundation of urban administration remained the same. Everyday life in the town was managed by the Town Council, which in mid-seventeenthcentury Turku consisted of ten to twelve councillors and three to four burgomasters. The medieval Magnus Eriksson’s Town Law had specified these numbers as 30 and six respectively, but the law was written with Stockholm in mind, and most towns in the kingdom were too small for such numbers. Turku was at least large enough for multiple burgomasters, while many other towns were not. The Town Council was assisted in its task by various town officers, including the Notary (syndicus), Treasurer, Bailiff (fogde), and Public Prosecutor. In addition, there were various clerks, inspectors, and toll collectors.15 Even if posts for various officials existed, the burghers were still to a great extent responsible for many administrative and judicial tasks. First, the Town Council consisted of burghers, who were not paid very well for their work, but who – especially after the urban reform of the 1620s – had a substantial workload. In Turku, it was not until the late 1630s that there was a proposal to make the task a paid job rather than an honour and a responsibility. The efforts to organize the financing of the Turku Council did not progress easily, but by the early 1650s the town was solely responsible for the payment of wages. The salaries were never substantial nor always punctually paid, and therefore only relatively wealthy burghers could take on the task. In Turku, however, it appears that the wealthiest were not interested in the tasks of councillor or burgomaster, even if the positions 14 Karonen 1995, 23-37. 15 Ranta 1975, 547-548, 581, 584.

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brought prestige and power. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Turku Council still had several Finnish-speaking burghers (most of the rest being Swedish, but some, for example, German and Dutch), but with the passing decades their share grew smaller. From the mid-century there were hardly any Finns left. The Finnish-speaking burghers were mostly less wealthy and also more strongly represented the crafts, whereas the majority of the Town Council consisted of merchants.16 There were a multitude of tasks for which all burghers were collectively accountable, rather than them being delegated to appointed officials or servants. There was no police or professional town guard organization; instead, the burghers were responsible for keeping order in the town. The town was divided into rolls, each of which in turn had the responsibility of providing a night-watchman. The maintenance of the various communal spaces in town was also a shared responsibility. Each burgher had the responsibility of taking care of the street in front of their house, but also of providing workers and sand for general street work, as well as the upkeep of the only bridge in town. A number of burghers were also chosen each year to collect taxes, inspect chimneys, inspect vagrants and collect money for the poorhouse. The burghers were not keen on fulfilling these duties, and were often admonished for failing to appear at guard duty or to provide sand for the streets.17 One of the crucial measures introduced by the government to manage the towns was the organization of a staple system. This idea was based on the already existing separation between urban and rural industries, which was now reinforced. During the first quarter of the seventeenth century the towns were divided into two categories. Only those towns called staple towns were allowed to engage in foreign trade; within the staple towns, ‘full staple rights’ meant permission both to accept foreign traders and to sail to foreign ports oneself, whereas ‘passive staple rights’ were limited to the right to host foreign traders. Fifteen towns in the Kingdom received full staple rights, Turku amongst them. This means that most Swedish towns were now cut off from foreign trade, and that the staple towns became the hubs of local trade, since other towns were forced to take their produce for export to the staple towns. A new urban hierarchy and a new urban-rural relationship emerged.18 16 Ranta 1975, 577-579, 557-559. 17 This is not, as such, a well researched area, but how the public works in towns were organized can easily be understood from the court sources. 18 Ranta 1981, 67-68; Lilius 2014, 150.

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The Crown’s interest in the kingdom’s towns did not end with the reforming of the urban administration. New towns were planned according to the latest town planning ideals, but new street plans were also drawn up for many of the older towns. This side of urban development related first and foremost to the glory and grandeur of the monarch and the kingdom, and as was mentioned earlier, King Gustavus Adolphus was not pleased with his towns. Stockholm of course was the most important town, and after a fire ravaged the town in 1625, both the streets and the houses were planned anew and rebuilt. Less attention was paid to the other towns, and the level of success in planning and rebuilding was mixed. Street plans were drawn up for Turku during the terms of Governor General Per Brahe (1637-1640 and 1648-1654).19 The town plans followed Renaissance and Baroque aesthetics, and were instigated at the highest level by the King and the Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, together with the Quartermaster General (head) of the national Fortifications Administration, Erik Dahlbergh. While military concerns played their part in the building and rebuilding of the towns, the more important factor was a desire for order, harmony and grandeur, which required certain specific characteristics of urban space. The King sent architects to Europe to learn from the best European masters, and trained engineers were sent to the towns of the realm to draw up exact and viable plans. While the beginnings of this urban planning project date from the beginning of the century, the highpoint came in the 1640s and 1650s. Nils Ahlberg has established that between 1521 and 1721 there were 170 new town plans drawn up, 65% in Sweden Proper and the rest in the new dominions across the Baltic Sea. As happened in several other towns, the plans for Turku were for the most part not realized. After the 1656 fire, some Turku streets were relocated, and some new streets built, according to the plan and the ideal of straight streets, but in the main, the street layout stayed the same, and burghers were very rarely required to remove or rebuild their houses.20

The Guild System The guild system in Sweden began to develop only in the fifteenth century, although the Stockholm tailors had been awarded privileges by the king 19 Laitinen & Lindström 2009, 78-88. 20 Laitinen & Lindström 2009, 78-79, 86-88.

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already in 1356. The first time that guilds as such are mentioned is from 1428, when the town records of Kalmar mention a guild ordinance for the ropemakers, and add that other crafts had organized already earlier. There are more references to guilds in the latter half of the fifteenth century; many of these guilds were concentrated in Stockholm, and there are only sporadic mentions from other towns. Only in the late sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century do signs appear that the guild system was becoming more widespread in the kingdom, but there is little information about the importance or influence of the guilds in urban life.21 The Crown’s interest in the guild system only really began in the early seventeenth century, and was tied to the need to control trade and crafts as part of the state’s mercantilist policy. The f irst measures regarding guilds were introduced in the early 1620s, at a time when so many other administrative and economic measures were taken. While the practice of crafts had already earlier been specified in principle to belong in the town, crafts were in fact also practised in the countryside. In an effort to control this situation, it had been decreed that crafts could be practised in the countryside only within a certain distance from towns. The effort to get all craftsmen into the towns was, however, reasserted in 1620, when a policy statement was sent to the governors (landshövding) ordering them to urge artisans in the countryside to move to the towns and set up as burghers.22 In 1621 a reform of the guild system was begun in Stockholm and in Uppsala province, which received a Guild Ordinance. Similar ordinances were to be issued in various towns, and the old demand for artisans to move from the countryside to the towns was to be repeated. In the end, this centralized effort to organize the guilds did not spread beyond Stockholm and Uppsala province, but there are signs nonetheless that guilds began to organize in various towns after the early 1620s. A general Guild Ordinance for the whole kingdom was, however, issued only in 1669.23 In Turku, in the 1630s, the trade in wares was considered to be too disorganized: in some trades some masters had a monopoly, and in some trades prices got out of hand. In addition, there were problems with trades that had too few masters in town, so that a guild could not be formed. The Town Council therefore wanted to organize a wide range of crafts under a single general guild, to which every master should belong. This general guild was established in 1636. Previously, the earliest crafts guilds 21 Lindström 1991, 71-72. 22 Heino 1984, 62-72; Lindström 1991, 221-222. 23 Heino 1984, 78-79; Lindström 1991, 218-227.

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39

in Turku were the shoemakers (1624), the tailors (1625), the blacksmiths (1625), and the goldsmiths (possibly already in the sixteenth century). In the early 1630s the carpenters, painters, glaziers and turners organized into guilds. In many trades, where there were only few masters, they belonged to the guilds of Stockholm.24 The guilds were an important factor in the seventeenth-century urban system. In addition to organizing the trades, they kept order among the membership, and created circles of sociability.

Turku and Its People Turku was founded at the turn of the fourteenth century to bolster both the king’s and the Church’s power in southwestern Finland.25 By then the area had been under the Swedish influence for over a hundred years. In the seventeenth century, Turku was the largest town in the Grand Duchy of Finland, and the second largest town in the whole kingdom, not counting the dominions around the Baltic Sea. The population has been estimated by Raimo Ranta to have been approximately 5000 in the middle of the century.26 Turku was and is situated on the southwestern coast of Finland and it is set on the lowest reaches of the River Aura. In the Middle Ages, the town plan followed German traditions, with the town built around a church and the adjacent market place. By the seventeenth century, the central market place, built in the 14th century, had moved slightly further away from the church, and followed a German market place / town hall (rådhus) combination. In general, Turku’s streets and houses followed the low lands between seven hills.27 Turku, like most of the towns in the Swedish kingdom, did not have town walls, but a fence and gates were built in the early 1620s to comply with the Town Toll Ordinance. The town had four quarters, as stipulated in medieval tradition: three of them on one side of the river – the Church Quarter, the Convent Quarter (named after a medieval Dominican house), and the Mätäjärvi Quarter (named after a stagnant lake) – and only one on the other bank – the Aningais Quarter (named after a medieval farm located in the area). The latter, which had begun to grow in the fifteenth century, was also called the New Town. The mostly wooden town was regularly 24 25 26 27

Ranta 1975, 391-394, 402-466. Seppänen 2012, 940-941. Ranta 1975, 148. Kostet 1996, 31, 36-37.

40 

Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

ravaged by fires. In the seventeenth century there were ten relatively large fires, and three times – in 1656, 1678 and 1681 – the town was burned almost completely.28 No seventeenth-century town houses have survived nor is there much research on them; thus the houses of the town are a target of investigation in the third Part of this book. Turku was the centre both for administration and for trade for the whole of the Great Duchy of Finland. It traded with towns and merchants abroad, as well as with Finnish peasant farmers and other domestic towns. The town was the seat of the bishop and the Governor General for the Great Duchy, as well as a Governor for the county. The position of Governor General was not always filled, and when the post was vacant, the governors ruled over the individual counties. The Governor General was the highest official for the entire province both in civil and military affairs. During the period studied in this book, Per Brahe was Governor General in 1637-1640 and again in 1648-1654. Between 1641 and 1648, and between 1654 and 1664, no Governor General was appointed. Per Brahe came to Turku from Sweden where he had become a Privy Councillor in 1630, in 1640 he was also made a Lord High Steward. Governor General Brahe was responsible for a number of significant reforms in Turku and in Finland. The Governor General – or when the position was vacant, the Governor – ruled from Turku Castle, which is situated 3.5 kilometres downstream from the Cathedral, at the mouth of the River Aura. The role of the governors in the town’s administration changed during the seventeenth century: before 1634 the Governor had greater power in the governance of the town, but after 1634 the governors were no longer required to be present at the meetings of the Town Council, and decisions could be made without their approval. From 1635, the governor no longer exercised judicial powers; he merely oversaw and implemented. He still had the right to attend the council meetings if he so wished; in Turku this sometimes happened, although the Governor (and even more so in the case of the Governor General) usually made his will and opinion known by letter. In practice, a request or suggestion by the Governor or Governor General was considered to be a binding order; therefore it was sometimes a governor who put reforms or measures in motion, and not the Burgomaster and the Town Council.29 Turku also hosted a university dating from 1640, a Court of Appeal (hovrätt) from 1623, and a Cathedral, which had been consecrated in 1300. These 28 Dahlström 1930, 102-103; Ranta 1975, 593. 29 Ranta 1975, 543-544.

Set ting the Stage: The Kingdom of Sweden and its Towns 

41

institutions made Turku a town where various kinds of discourse co-existed, both on the everyday level, and on the higher levels of government, religion, scholarly thinking and judicial practice. The Cathedral and the University had jurisdiction over their own personnel, but the financial management of the Cathedral was shared with the town. The Church in seventeenth-century Turku was organized into a one Cathedral parish. There were, however, two parallel sets of services, because the Lutheran Reformation required vernacular services, and the population of Turku included both Swedish- and Finnish-speakers. At the end of the sixteenth century, for a short period, the Finnish-speakers had their own church, and during the 1630s Bishop Isaac Rothovius tried to form a separate Finnish parish, but in the end the Cathedral remained the sole parish church in town.30 Since the Cathedral was also a parish church, the Bishop, the members of the Chapter, and the parish Rector were jointly responsible for the organization of religious services and ceremonies, as well as the upkeep and maintenance of the church. But from the later sixteenth century onward, the town also exercised growing responsibility for and influence over the Cathedral. The church accounts were inspected not only by the Cathedral Chapter and clergy, but also by the three mayors of the town, and for the whole of the seventeenth century the upkeep of the church was the town’s responsibility as well as the Church’s. The town was also responsible for finding rooms for various officers of the church.31

The Laws and the Judicial System The first written sources from Swedish legal history date from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when regional laws were written down and the central power of the king was still weak. While at this time the role of kinship and family remained strong, the writing down of the laws was a sign of the growing central power. During the medieval centuries the king took over both the defining of crimes and penalties, and the building of a court system to mete out the punishments. The mid-fourteenth century saw the arrival of King Magnus Eriksson’s Law of the Realm and Town Law, and in 1442 Christopher of Bavaria’s Law of the Realm was promulgated. These laws laid down, among other things, the court system which took the place of the individual mediations and compensations that had been the rule of 30 Heininen 1976, 121. 31 Paarma1980, 305, 309.

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Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

the land earlier. In 1540, arbitration outside court rooms was forbidden, both in civil and in criminal cases.32 By the seventeenth century, the system of district courts and town courts was well developed and functional, but the laws in use were still those from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The courts in the countryside operated according to the 1442 Law of the Realm, while the towns used the Town Law from the 1350s. The Law of the Realm and the Town Law included largely similar regulation covering all kinds of issues in society. The Town Law included sections on the following matters: administration, marriage, inheritance, land ownership, building and management of properties, trade, shipping, organization of the Town Court, the King’s Oath (including serious crimes such as violent invasion of a home, rape, and robbery), homicide and manslaughter, the causing of bodily injury, and theft. In addition to these medieval laws, that remained the core legislation until the 1734 Code of the Realm, an abundance of royal ordinances was issued all through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Toomas Kotkas has recently studied these ordinances and has concluded that in the sixteenth century they regulated on the same matters as the Law of the Realm and the Town Law, i.e. they did not supersede these earlier laws, but instead often included a reference to the Law of the Realm.33 In the seventeenth century, the number of ordinances further increased, and they became more focused in their scope.34 The purpose of these newer statutes was not to challenge or amend the medieval laws, but they provided a means to update obsolete regulations in the Law of the Realm and the Town Law. The outmodedness of the older legislation was referred to with expressions like ‘the passing of time’ and ‘requirements of the present times’. Toomas Kotkas has also noted that as time went on the references to the medieval laws in the seventeenth-century ordinances grew scarcer. Kotkas concludes that, in contrast to the ordinances of the sixteenth century, as the seventeenth century went on the royal ordinances began to be considered as new law, not simply as amendments to the old laws.35 Part of the purpose of the royal ordinances related to a toughening of the royal stance with regard to criminal law after the Reformation. In 1563, a statute of King Eric XIV made the death sentence obligatory for blasphemy and adultery. In 1608, an ordinance of King Charles IX increased the number 32 33 34 35

Taussi Sjöberg 1996, 16-17; Kotkas 2014, 87-88. Kotkas 2014, 88. Kotkas 2014, 99. Kotkas 2014, 174-184.

Set ting the Stage: The Kingdom of Sweden and its Towns 

43

of crimes punishable by death to 70. Traditionally, legal historians have emphasized the strict line of punishment following from the adoption of Mosaic Law and highlighted the harshness of courts’ decisions in the seventeenth century, and a humanizing of punishments has been seen as taking place in the eighteenth century. Rudolf Thunander, however, has shown in his study of the Göta Court of Appeal that even in the 1630s and 1640s most death penalties were commuted in the higher courts, and that later legislation, which became more lenient, in fact followed the practices of the Courts of Appeal. It appears that that the harshest legislation was never fully realized. The 1608 ordinance, however, did influence the lower courts, and they began to give harsher sentences; the higher courts were freer and more apt to mete out more lenient punishments, mostly fines, as had been the practice earlier in the sixteenth century.36 The Turku Town Court, surprisingly, very seldom referred to these ordinances, usually citing the Town Law or a few specific ordinances concerning trade or taxes. In cases of theft, the Penal Order of 1653 by Queen Christina was one of the few general ordinances immediately adopted by the Turku Town Court. It appears that in some other Swedish towns the courts cited laws and ordinances more widely and sometimes even invoked the Law of the Realm.37 In the early 1640s a committee of the Council of the Realm suggested that perhaps the lower courts should also be allowed to deviate from the letter of the law (as the Courts of Appeal could) where the death penalty was concerned, and impose more lenient punishments. The reason for this debate, which dealt especially with fornication and theft, was that the most severe punishments did not actually work as warnings for the people, since the higher courts were known to mitigate so many sentences.38 The law committee was working towards a new code of law for the Realm, but their reports never became official ordinances or even guidelines for new judicial practice. The committee did, however, include representatives from the courts, for example, from the Turku Court of Appeal, and the debate in Stockholm may therefore have been shared in Turku with Town Court officials. Thus the outlook of the judicial community may have been a shared one, even if the lower courts were comprised of burghers with no legal training. Rudolf Thunander, in his study of the Göta Court of Appeal, also came to the conclusion that the lower courts and the higher courts 36 Thunander 1993, 5, 53-57, 59, 120, 127; Ditlev et al, 2000, 30-32; Thunander 1989, 48. 37 For example, Köping Stads Dombook 1647, 386; Enköpings stads dombook 1649, 26-27. 38 Almquist 1929, 17, 18, 121-122.

44 

Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

usually cooperated with each other, and that thus also the lower courts could get their opinions heard on various legal issues.39 Swedish towns had two lower courts, the Lower Town Court (Kämnerrätt) and the Town Court (Rådstugurätt), both of which dealt with a multitude of administrative and judicial matters. The tasks of the Lower Town Courts were outlined in the regulations issued to the kingdom’s towns in 1619, and particularly the privileges granted to some of the towns in 1620. The Lower Town Courts were a new introduction, created to ease the workload of the Town Courts, and they were to consist of the kämner (a town magistrate), a Crown magistrate, and a clerk. It was thus a much smaller institution than the Town Court, which consisted of one of the Burgomasters and the Town Council. The Lower Town Courts were to adjudicate on criminal matters that carried only the punishment of pillory, on cases that were very straightforward and punishable merely by fines, on financial disputes (but only with the agreement of the Town Court), on infringements against regulations issued by the Town Council, and on the trade ordinances. Petri Karonen has found that in the Finnish towns the Lower Town Courts dealt particularly often with financial disputes. In Turku, criminal cases, including fornication, also played a big part. 40 The Lower Town Court could at its discretion refer cases to the Town Court, and defendants in its cases could also appeal to the Town Court. 41 The Town Court dealt with all kinds of criminal and civil cases, some of them in practice very similar to those heard in the Lower Town courts. The Town Court was presided over by the burgomaster(s) and the Town Council. There were no professional judges, and the Town Council performed the functions of the jury, although they apparently did not discuss cases separately from the burgomaster who was the chairman of the proceedings. Efforts to improve the organization of the Swedish judicial system had begun before the seventeenth century, and ever since the 1540s various measures had been taken to subjugate the lower courts to the control of royal officers. 42 As one result of the reorganizations, the highest judicial instance in Turku in the seventeenth century was the Court of Appeal. Courts of Appeal reviewed all cases of serious crime tried in the Town Court, and either confirmed the sentence given by the Town Court or mitigated it. There were four Courts of Appeal in the seventeenth century: the first, Svea 39 40 41 42

Thunander 1993, 284. Karonen 1995, 105-116; Karonen 1994, 52-53, 176-183. Karonen, 1994, 183-192. Korpiola 2014, 48.

Set ting the Stage: The Kingdom of Sweden and its Towns 

45

Court in Stockholm, was established in 1614, and the next was founded in Turku in 1623; the following ones were created in Tartu (Dorpat) in 1632 and in Jönköping (the Göta Court) in 1634. In addition, the Swedish territories in Germany got their own Court of Appeal in Greifswald in 1655. 43 The relationship of the Courts of Appeal to the Town Courts was twofold. First, the lower courts were required to submit a copy of their record books yearly to the Courts of Appeal for inspection; and second, some of the cases heard in Town Courts were referred for perusal to the Courts of Appeal. The latter automatically included capital-punishment crimes, like adultery and theft. In cases of infanticide, murder and rape, however, the death penalty did not require confirmation by the higher court. 44 Plaintiffs and defendants in the Town Court could represent themselves, or appoint representatives to argue their case; these representatives were seldom trained lawyers. In the mid-seventeenth century, there was only one legally trained advocate active in Turku. Most of the advocates, therefore, had no formal legal training, and we know little about most of them or their education. Petteri Impola has studied some of these men, and has shown that one of them in late-seventeenth-century Helsinki, Gabriel Abrahamsson, had a history of serving the town as an inspector of trade, in addition to engaging in trade himself. His appearances in the Helsinki Town Court during the first decades of his activity related to his own business transactions, but in later years he came to act more and more as an advocate for others. Impola maintains that a hands-on learning of legal skills in his work, a good reputation in the town, and age were the contributing factors in his taking on the task of advocacy, coupled also, naturally, with an interest in legal matters. There is very little information about the fees that such advocates charged, but Impola has found some instances where the sum of one or two dalers is mentioned. This was not a substantial amount; you could get four kilos of butter for the same price. 45 While the officials of the courts were always men, and while the law imposed restrictions on women’s participation in legal proceedings, many studies have shown a strong discrepancy between the text of the law and judicial practice. 46 According to the law, women did not have the capacity to conduct legal proceedings, and could not represent themselves in a court of law: they had to be represented by a guardian. Women were not even 43 44 45 46

Korpiola 2014, 26. Ditlev et al. 2000, 51. Impola 2016; Lagerqvist & Nathorst-Böös 1984, 73. Taussi Sjöberg 1996, 81.

46 

Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

supposed to give evidence or swear an oath. 47 Women were, nonetheless, responsible for their own offences, and could be sentenced to fines, corporal punishment or death. Their fines were to be paid by the guardian, but out of the woman’s property. Since, accoding to law, women did not have the right to stand in court, they could not be plaintiffs, but their suits should be brought to court by a man. 48 However, even a brief look into early modern court records shows that the law was not followed on any of these points: women appeared in court as plaintiffs and defendants, and as witnesses; they swore on oath, and even appeared as spokespersons for their husbands. This practice is clearly visible in this study, as it has been in many others.

47 Taussi Sjöberg 1996, 87. 48 Taussi Sjöberg 1996, 89.

Part II Coming, Going and Staying: The Town and the Community

Coming, Going and Staying: The Town and the Communit y 

49

The Town and Its Space In the early modern period, people moved in and out of the town regularly; peasants from the surrounding countryside came into town with their produce; foreign traders visited; the poor and the delinquent came and went. Regardless of the early modern ideal of set places for all and an official aversion towards unnecessary mobility, current research considers early modern European society to have been very mobile. Within this mobility, migration and the wandering of vagrants have been the most studied varieties.1 Urban in-migration was important to towns; they thrived on mobile labour. Poor and vagrant incomers, on the other hand, were problematic, and a variety of different ordinances were created with the goal of curbing their mobility.2 However, migration to and from the towns only accounts for part of the mobility; in addition, the ways that the townspeople and various visitors lived their everyday lives also made the urban community mobile. This kind of inherent mobility has been less studied. In addition, the relationship to the town of the ‘unwanted’ has not been fully examined; their coming and (at times coerced) leaving, but also their staying in town needs more attention. In this Part of the book I explore the townspeople’s relationship with the town as a spatial entity through an examination of all kinds of movement to and from, into and out of the town, but also through settledness, which is an inevitable counterpart for mobility.3 Moving to and from the town was directly linked to how various people could and did reside in town. The starting point in the following discussion is the individual person crossing the material boundary of the town, not mobility as a social phenomenon. Entering and exiting the town – with its multiple forms, reasons and consequences – offers a fruitful perspective on people’s relationship to the town, as entering and exiting a town are, to quote Daniel Jütte and Christopher Friedrichs, deliberate experiences. 4 While crossing the border to and from the town was always intentional and planned, it also carried within it many unconscious practices and understandings, many of them tied to the wider culture of a local, national and European nature. In mobility oriented into the town, the relationships of individuals, the community, 1 De Munck & Winter 2012, 1, and the literature quoted there. 2 See De Munck & Winter 2012, 1-2; Lindström & Mispelaere 2011, 142-143; Hitchcock 2012, 198; Betteridge (ed.) 2007; Cowan 1998, 156-157, 160. 3 For stillness in Mobility Studies see Cresswell 2012. 4 Jütte, 2014, 215; Friedrichs 1995, 42.

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Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

and the authorities with the town as a spatial entity were consciously and unconsciously expressed. Moreover, the community’s relationship with the town as a spatial entity was part and parcel of the regulating of the community and its inhabitants. A town was always a spatial entity, whatever its borders were like and however they were controlled. Entering and exiting the town is studied in the following, but while the examination begins with physical crossings of the boundary, with regard to the town the perspective is wider. The town gates may have been a focal point of the mobility relating to towns,5 but the gates were merely one element in the totality of the material and spatial town. The following chapter will touch upon actual physical mobility and the movements of individuals, on concrete ways of restricting or controlling mobility, on ideal constructions behind the restrictions, and on practical and local solutions in negotiating the restrictions and actual everyday mobility.

5

Jütte 2014, 225.

1

Ordering Everyday Mobility

Marking and Crossing Boundaries However much people moved in and out of the town, the movement, in principle, always halted at the town gates. Turku never had a proper town wall, but the town was surrounded by a toll fence from 1623 onwards, after the passing of the 1622 Town Toll Ordinance.1 On every road leading into town, gates and gatehouses marked the entrance to the town, and by the 1640s the town gates had long been part of everyday life in Turku. The town toll boundary was not unlike the town walls that many European towns had, even if the toll fence was a far cry from any sturdy medieval town wall. This chapter opens with an examination of what the Turku town toll boundary was like materially and how it operated as one of the defining boundaries of the town as a delimited urban space. Restricting incoming traffic into towns was of course very common both in medieval and early modern Europe. Most European towns had walls and gates, which fulfilled multiple functions. The gates were used as a site to welcome people: ceremonies for important visitors, for example, were arranged at the gates. On the other hand, beggars, sick and other unwanted persons were stopped at the gates, their entrance hindered. At night, the gates were closed to prevent anyone from coming in, and during daytime various excise taxes were collected on many of the goods and wares brought into towns. The wall usually denoted the extent of the urban administration and its judicial reach, and delimited various economic activities and opportunities.2 The history and architectural theory of town walls and gates interested Renaissance architects and humanist scholars. Daniel Jütte writes that in scholarly thought, the ideal early modern city required a perfect wall. These scholarly views were followed by various rulers, and during the early modern era some medieval town walls were replaced, by new militarily more advanced walls with more gates than previously.3 In the Swedish kingdom, the change in the nature of the urban boundaries in the early modern era was more fundamental. The only towns in the kingdom with medieval town walls were Stockholm, Vyborg (Viborg, Viipuri) and 1 2 3

Ordning på lilla tullen 1622’, 841-853. Jütte 2014, 210-215; Boes 2007, 88, 92; Kostof 1992, 26. Jütte 2014, 205-207. ‘

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Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

Kalmar. 4 Thus a requirement in 1622 to surround all towns by a fence and furnish it with proper gates changed the nature of urban boundaries markedly. King Gustavus Adolphus’ prime motivation for instituting these town fences was to collect money through an indirect tax to finance his wars in Europe. Under the Town Toll Ordinance, all foods and consumer goods coming into town became subject to tax; approximately three per cent of the value of the goods had to be paid at the toll gates. This payment applied to anything that was brought to the market to be sold, but also all items brought to be consumed in the town. This meant that burghers had to pay, for example, for grain they had bought elsewhere and brought in for their own consumption. The reasoning underlying this kind of excise was that it would be easier to collect small amounts of money on each piece of food and consumer goods than to enforce a larger piecemeal tax. The town toll was to apply to all subjects of the Crown equally. As peasants, burghers and nobility alike were to pay for wares brought in, the payment would be spread out among the realm’s subjects, and would not impose strain and possibly provoke unrest from any particular heavily burdened group. The only exemption was that nobility who owned property within the town were to be admitted without inspection when they arrived in their personal carriage, sleigh or boat. Their commercial ships, however, were subject to inspection and tolls just like any other.5 In contrast to tolls collected on many other European town gates,6 these Swedish town tolls did not benef it the town itself at all, but only the Crown. The toll fences, as the term suggests, were not very substantial, and in that sense bore no comparison to real town walls. Nevertheless, on the gates coming into town, incomers were met by the toll inspector, the toll clerk or at least a hired hand or servant (dreng), who made sure that nothing was brought into town without the toll being paid. In Turku, all three main roads leading from the countryside had their toll gates and tollbooths. There were also two collection points by the river that ran through the town, in addition to the customs point near the castle, at the mouth of the river. One of the river toll gates was upstream, for peasants coming in with their boats in the summer, and the other was on the road leading into town from the castle (See map 1). 4 Ahlberg 2005, 49. 5 ‘Ordning på lilla Tullen 1622’, 841-842; Kerkkonen 1945, 23, 163-167. 6 See Jütte 2014, 213-214.

Ordering Everyday Mobilit y

53

Map 1 Map of seventeenth-century Turku with the toll fence, toll gates and the roads leading from the countryside to the market place

Map: Panu Savolainen

There is little information about the actual physical appearance of the Turku toll fence. The meagre sources that survive (brief remarks in administrative announcements and in a variety of court cases) indicate a fence with a trench, which would not constrain people’s movement efficiently. Certainly neither the fence nor the trench could provide any security, which was one of the main functions of the town walls in many European towns.7 The 1622 Town Toll Ordinance talks about a ‘toll fence’, as do many of the scholars who 7

Jütte 2014, 210.

54 

Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden

have written about Turku history. The Town Court records from the 1640s and the 1650s, however, mention the trench more often than the fence. For both constructions, the most frequent references are found, at least once each year, when the Town Council urges the burghers to participate in the maintenance of both.8 Perhaps the fence did not fall into disrepair as easily as the trench did, and thus is not mentioned as often as the trench; one can certainly conclude that if the trench thus needed continuous maintenance, it really cannot have been more than a mere ditch, which easily filled up. The trench was not dug until 1639-1640, apparently to reinforce the effectiveness of the fence, and for the authorities it was clearly seen as a significant improvement. The trench seems to have been part of the efforts by Governor General Per Brahe to make Turku more effective and orderly as a town and a trade hub. In 1639, when the trench was being excavated, the Governor General forbade the crossing of the trench under pain of death.9 In August of 1640, the townspeople were reminded that they needed to complete the digging of the trench, and all people with a personal gate in the fence were reminded to close it for good.10 Later, in November, the threat of the death penalty for crossing the newly excavated trench was repeated from the town’s pulpits.11 The trench was thus inaugurated in a very serious manner. The harshness of the punishment for possible transgression of the newly improved toll boundary creates a completely different image from that generated by other comments regarding the toll boundary: the recurrent announcements concerning the poor condition of the fence and the trench suggest, rather, a prevailing atmosphere of indifference. Evidently the burghers did not meet their responsibilities over the physical maintenance of the boundary willingly. Between Governor General Brahe’s conception of the toll boundary, and that of the town burghers, there thus existed a serious contradiction. Regardless of the seriousness of Brahe’s efforts, the repeated orders by the Town Council for the burghers to f ix the fence and the trench also indicate that the upgraded toll boundary was less effective than the Governor General would have wanted. The threat of capital punishment 8 For example, TRO (Turun raastuvanoikuden pöytäkirjat) 13 October 1641 [1642], 23; TRO 3 September 1642 [1643], 402; TRO 25 May 1644, 357-358; TRO 10 April 1647, 253; TRO 26 June 1648, 159-161; TRO 6 June 1653, 171-171; TRO 4 September 1654, 248-249; TRO 8 June 1657, 116; TRO 4 September 1658, 175-176; TRO 13 June 1659, 255-256. Before 1648, the Town Court record for each year began in October. For entries between October and December I have therefore indicated the administrative year in square brackets. 9 TRO 12 October 1639 [1640], 5-6. 10 TRO 31 August 1640, 351. 11 TRO 18 November 1640 [1641], 75.

Ordering Everyday Mobilit y

55

for crossing the boundary is not mentioned again, and in 1641 and 1642 the reminders to keep the trench in good condition include merely a short general warning against crossing the trench.12 In later years, admonishments about the poor state of the trench sometimes came near market days, when large numbers of peasants would arrive in town with goods to sell.13 If people could cross the toll boundary outside the main thoroughfares, they would be able to bring goods into town without paying for them. Most of the proclamations, however, were simple reminders to burghers to take care of their responsibilities in maintaining the toll boundary. Some years saw repeated reminders, suggesting reluctance for the task among the burghers, and possibly a dislike of the whole boundary. In addition to the official proclamations about the repair of the fence and the trench, there are few entries in the records that tell us about this boundary. Two rare comments on record come from the early 1660s. In 1663 the burghers complained to the Crown that the toll fence was in such bad repair that peasants could enter the town wherever they pleased, and evade payment of the toll, to the detriment of the Crown’s interests in the town. Three years earlier the burghers had appealed to the King and asked to have the peasants to be held jointly responsible for the repair of the boundary, as they themselves were, but without success.14 Perhaps surprisingly, therefore, there are only three court cases in the material studied here which deal with instances of illegal crossing of the toll boundary. One of the cases testifies to the ease with which the toll boundary could be crossed: in 1642, near one of the toll gates, two peasants, Simon Henricson and Jöns Erichsson, got into an altercation with the toll clerk’s servant. The toll clerk had seen Simon step over the trench and had assumed that the peasants were trying to cross without paying the fee; therefore he sent the toll servant to intercept them. Simon explained to the court that he had sent already his oxen home and paid the toll fee earlier, but then had stayed on in town himself. Then, when preparing to leave, he saw his neighbour outside the toll gate, and because the trench was only a step wide, he crossed over. Both peasants were exonerated from all charges, and the incident was deemed to have been a misunderstanding.15 However, we can see from this episode that at least at the place where Simon crossed the trench, it was really only a small ditch that could easily be stepped over. 12 13 14 15

TRO 13 October 1641 [1642], 23; TRO 19 October 1642 [1643], 26-27. TRO 19 August 1648, 195; TRO 4 September 1654, 248-249; TRO 8 June 1657, 116. Privilegier och resolutioner för Åbo Stad, I, 128; TRO 2 September 1663, 464; Ranta 1975, 111-112. TRO 10 February 1644, 136-136.

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Two other cases tell of skirting the toll gate. In the winter of 1648, some peasants were hauling tree trunks for a wealthy burgher, Peter Thorwöste, but due to the weather conditions could not pass through the toll gate. The peasants had gone to the burgher’s house, and explained the situation to the burgher’s wife. She gave them money to pay the toll fee, and promised to talk to the toll inspector about granting permission to drive the trunks further downriver. Nonetheless, the burgher ended up in court, accused of tearing down the toll fence without permission. No further description of these events is given, but it appears that the peasants may have found their own solution and not waited for the burgher’s wife’s efforts to obtain a special permit. They could not be themselves be interrogated, however, since they had already left town. The matter remained unresolved, but also somewhat unclear, since it is hard to ascertain what ‘further down the river’ means, and thus where the toll fence was torn down.16 In another case, in February 1653, two farmhands, Jöran Jöransson and Clemet Erichsson, got into a fight with the toll clerk near the toll fence by the riverside. As the toll clerk had seen the men approaching on a road not leading to the toll gate, he first sent the toll servant after the men and when they did not stop, he ran after them himself. When the officials attempted to turn the oxen that the farmhand was driving, this led to a fight. Clemet and Jöran said in court that they did not know that they were not supposed to use the road in question; it had ‘always’ been used. One witness said that he did not know about this specific incident, but he did know that people had been in the custom of coming into town using this particular route both before this incident and since. The maidservant Walborg Olofsdotter, who was with the farmhands, told the Court that they had nothing to declare and that in any case they could not have used any other road into the town because of the slippery conditions. The farmhands were fined for trying to get past the toll gate and all of the participants in the fight were fined for causing bodily harm.17 Neither of these cases apparently concerns a wilful effort to avoid the toll payment. Instead, they tell of practices relating to changing traffic conditions and ways of entering and exiting the town. As the toll boundary was not materially imposing, it was easily susceptible to ‘adjustment’, and a more easily passable route could be preferred. If this provoked the ire of the toll inspector, problems ensued; but evidently this did not happen very often. One cannot say for certain whether this absence of recorded incidents 16 TRO 7 February 1648, 19. 17 TRO 24 October 1653, 252-255.

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was due to people not bending the rules very often, the toll inspectors not noticing it when it did happen, or the inspector not always caring about it. There is some indication in the sources, however, that the toll gates were in fact regularly avoided. One remark from 1658, in another reminder about the need to repair the trench, includes a reference to ‘the roads that thoughtless people have built in several places’.18 This isolated comment corroborates the common-sense interpretation that in everyday traffic – for example, when going out to pick berries or coming in to visit from nearby villages – the main roads and the toll gates were not necessarily used. The comments about market days in connection with the repair announcements also indicate that people with things to declare may have come in through alternative routes. Similarly, suspicions of smuggling are reinforced by an aside in one theft case from 1660 that mentions a toll inspector having gone out on the river ice to examine for items brought into town without toll payment.19 Even if cases about illegal crossing of the boundary are only seldom found in the sources, it is therefore more than likely that other routes than the main roads and the river were used to enter the town, both traditionally and after the building of the toll fence. As a conclusion, from the 1620s, when the fence was first built, Turku became a different kind of spatial entity than previously, and this change was further reinforced by the building of the toll trench in 1640. Yet it can be said that this boundary was full of holes. It was a physical boundary, and had to affect people’s movement and comprehension of urban space and the town as a material environment, but it did not make the town hermetically sealed. People continued to use the old routes into town, and evidently built new ones, skirting the official routes when necessary. How much of a problem the toll fence, trench and gates actually were in people’s everyday lives is difficult to know, because the sources are so silent. Regardless of the possible avoidance of the toll gates and the flimsy nature of the material boundary, however, it is clear that the boundary nonetheless also fulfilled its role as an economic boundary, as we will see from the following.

Stopping at the Toll Gate Regardless of the possibilities of avoiding the toll gates, Raimo Ranta’s research on the two remaining toll payment catalogues (1639, the whole year, and 1641, 18 TRO 19 July 1658, 166. ‘… och de wägar som den öfwer på åthskillige ställen af obetenksamt folk giorde …’. 19 TRO 6 February 1660, 11-16.

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from January to September) shows that the toll boundary worked: people came into town through the tollgates and paid their fees at the tollbooth. However easy it might have been to get over the fence and the trench, there were many people travelling on the main roads and using the town gates to enter the town. Ranta has calculated that nearly ten thousand people with items to declare passed the tollgates yearly.20 Grain, butter, meat and fish were the most prominent imports brought in by the peasants. Grain, especially, was not only for local consumption, but also for extensive export.21 Other items found in the toll catalogues include linen, hemp and bast fibre, root vegetables, hides, hops, firewood, hay, bark etc.22 The number of daily inspections at the busiest tollgates could exceed a hundred events during the busiest market days in January. The traditional market times in January, June and September were the most active time, and approximately half of all the recorded visitors to the town during the year arrived during those months. The yearly traffic into the town depended on crops, fishing hauls, and the competing attraction of other towns, and the four gates experienced different patterns of traffic. At the Tavast Toll gate, one third of the traffic in 1639 was from January, but at the Aningais Toll gate the trade is more evenly spread. People from the nearer regions of Southwest Finland (Varsinais-Suomi, Egentliga Finland) and southern Satakunta (Satakunda) mostly came in through the Aningais Toll, while the road leading to the Tavast toll gate carried more people from longer distances. Long-distance travelling was easier under winter conditions. On the other hand, the toll gate on the river was busiest during the summer. The court records do not include many smuggling cases. In one of the rare cases, from 1656, a peasant had tried to bring in squirrel pelts inside another person’s hay load, since he had been told by a burgher’s son that the toll clerks seldom checked hay coming into town.23 In another case a servant was accused of bringing in some items hidden inside a box.24 No other references to deliberate smuggling have surfaced in the material from the 1640s and 1650s. Most of the court cases dealing with incidents at the toll gates turn in fact around disagreements between the burghers and the toll inspector. Peasants appeared in court over toll fees rather infrequently. The cases instigated by the toll inspector against burghers usually begin with the inspector accusing the burgher of having goods brought in without declaring them at the toll 20 21 22 23 24

Ranta 1975, 329, 330-332. Ranta 1975, 334-343. Ranta 1975, 345-348; Åbo stads landttull-längder 1639, Läänintilit (7024), KA. TRO 28 November 1656, 5-7. TRO 24 November 1641 [1642], 87-88.

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gates. The goods involved in these cases – grain, tar, and animals, for example – were all things that would have been rather difficult to smuggle in, and the accusations in court are never about smuggling as such, but rather about irregularities in payment. The burghers defended themselves in various ways: One said that he had not been able to estimate the length of the fabric he had brought in, and another explained that he had forgotten to take with him the receipt of the already taxed goods when leaving the town with the same goods.25 Although one had to pay for everything brought into town, there was no need to pay twice for the same items. Grain and flour, however, were problematic, because you had to pay for bringing in grain, then go outside the gates to have it ground in the mill, and then pay for the flour when bringing it in. This may have been one of the issues underlying a reluctance for prompt payment of fees at the gates when bringing in grain or flour.26 Burghers and their servants also sometimes tried to put the blame on others. In one case a servant had brought tar in, and explained that he had tried to declare it, but that the inspector would not see him, because he was still in bed.27 In one case a burgher tried to get out of trouble by saying that someone else had brought his grain in and that he had acquired it within the town.28 There were also arguments over whether one had to pay customs for one’s grain or not. There were some complaints over the actions of the toll clerks and toll inspectors, and disagreements as to whether the fee actually been paid or not.29 Many of the burghers’ explanations countering the toll inspector’s accusations tell of divergent local practices that did not follow the Town Toll Ordinance to the letter. The Ordinance decreed that any person bringing goods into town should deposit the toll fee into a coffer in the tollbooth; they were not supposed to hand it to the toll inspector or the toll clerk. The payment was also to happen immediately, without delay.30 At least with burghers this did not necessarily happen. For example, the merchant Balthasar Wernle had made an agreement with the toll inspector that all the goods he brought into town would be written down at the toll gate, and he 25 TRO 4 August 1640, 335-339, 340-341; TRO 22 March 1641, 210; TRO 27 March 1641, 225-226; TRO 1 December 1640 [1641], 104-105, 116; TRO 15 January 1644, 135-136; TRO 1 March 1658, 21-24. 26 Kerkkonen 1945, 174. 27 TRO 1 December 1640 [1641], 104-105, 116. 28 TRO 22 March 1641, 210. 29 TRO 30 March 1644, 244; TRO 12 March 1645, 176-177; TRO 10 December 1646 [1647], 60-65; TRO 13 December 1645 [1646], 66; TRO 8 February 1647, 121-122; TRO 14 January 1647, 91-92; TRO 1 March 1658, 21-24. 30 ‘Ordning på lilla tullen 1622’, 841, 842; Kerkkonen 1945, 167.

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would pay the whole sum each Saturday.31 One custom was to have someone from the burgher’s house come to meet a servant hauling things in, or to meet a peasant coming to sell their wares and pay the fees for them – both irregular practices from the ordinance’s perspective.32 The townspeople had then created local customs in dealing with the toll gates and toll fees, fashioning an order to their everyday life. The fashioning of everyday practices relating to bringing goods into town shows that the town was actively defined and ordered in and through the toll boundary. Although from the perspective of the law and the authorities, disorder may at times have seemed to prevail, there was in operation a local order fashioned by the practices of the townspeople. Even if the toll boundary was very permeable, then, it is clear that the spatial entity of Turku in the 1640s and 1650s had become defined by the economic boundary created some twenty years earlier. It is just as clear that the toll boundary was always more than an economic boundary, and this is illustrated by the case before the court of Jöran Erichsson. Jöran had come into town, perhaps on an errand for his mistress the Countess of Raseborg, and as a result of an altercation at the toll gate when he was leaving town, he ended up in the Lower Town Court. Jöran felt he had been attacked without cause on a common road (almänna landzwäg och gata); the Court found in his favour, and Michel Jacobson, the toll clerk, was sentenced to a small fine for causing Jöran bodily injury at the toll gate. In a subsequent Town Court session, Jöran applied for compensation for the loss he had suffered, as he had needed to stay in the town for the trial.33 Jöran had met the toll clerk Michel at the Aningais toll gate one Saturday evening, when the peace proclamation for the next day’s Day of Prayer had already been issued. The clerk had asked Jöran why he was travelling so late, and then, according to Jöran, had called him a hundsfott,34 hit him with a stone, and torn at his clothes. Michel claimed that Jöran had pushed him first, so that he had fallen on a bench.35 When the case was resumed nine days later, the clerk Michel told the Court that he had left the tollgate sometime between 10 and 11 at night, and was just setting off for his lodgings, when he met Jöran, rather drunk, riding with another man. Michel had asked them whether they wanted to leave town, and when Jöran said yes, Michel told them that it was against the toll inspector’s orders to open the 31 32 33 34 35

TRO 27 March 1641, 225-226, 250-251. TRO 26 October 1640 [1641], 39-40, 88; TRO 24 Januarij 1651, 326-328; TRO 18 February 1663 TRO 14 July 1656, 183-190. One of the most common terms of abuse among men; literally, ‘dog’s cunt’. TRO 14 July 1656, 183-190.

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gate again. This, he said, had provoked Jöran to a verbal attack and then to violence, neither of which, however, Michel could prove in court.36 It cannot be known for certain whether everybody really had to stop at the Turku town gates. In principle, people presumably were supposed to stop at least to say that they had nothing to declare, but it may be that neither the toll clerks or servants, nor the inspectors themselves, were in the custom of standing outside the tollbooth constantly. At least in one case the incoming person had to go inside the tollbooth to fetch the clerk, or even to wake him up.37 The clerk Michel’s testimony above implies that at night the gate was closed and left unmanned. On the other hand, one case of a fight includes a mention that a toll clerk had set out from his lodgings for the toll gate at nine o’clock. This might indicate some kind of night watch duty, but it is also possible that this clerk may have gone to help the toll servant in closing the gate and dealing with the paperwork.38 Whatever the case, the gates were closed for the night, as was common all over Europe, and the custom of not travelling at night must also have been common practice in the Swedish Kingdom.39 It is, however, impossible to say how much the closing of the gates in mid-seventeenth-century Turku actually affected people’s movements. We have already learned that it was easy to get across the town fence, certainly on foot and probably even with a horse, so even the existence of a guard would not have hindered a person determined to enter or exit the town. Still, as there are not many cases like Jöran’s in the court records, one can only speculate as to how many travelled to or from the town late at night, via the gates or otherwise. If people did travel at night, it cannot have been a problem in itself, because such travel has not ended up in the court sources. Moreover, one must note that Jöran’s and Michel’s encounter happened in mid-July, when at Turku’s latitude the sun would not set until around half past eleven and the period of civil twilight would have ended two hours later. As the sun rose at five a.m. and twilight began as early as half past two in the morning, there was really no darkness at all in mid-July.40 In the Nordic 36 TRO 14 July 1656, 183-190. 37 TRO 1 December 1640 [1641], 104-105. 38 TRO 30 January 1641, 147-156. No set time for closing of the gates can be found, but one can presume that nine o’clock, when the taverns had to close their doors, would have been a possible time for gate closure. The Town Toll Ordinance only specified that the toll officials should be at the gate at four in the morning in the summer and six in the morning in the winter. ‘Ordning på lilla tullen’, 842-843. 39 See Jütte 2014, 220-221, 222-223; Ekirch 2005, 61-65 about town gates at night. 40 http://www.moisio.fi/taivas/aurinko.php?paikka=Turku&dy=24&mn=07&yr=1656, (20 October 2014), Auringon nousu- ja laskuajat Suomessa. Civil twilight is an astronomical term, which means the time when the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon and it is not quite dark yet, the horizon

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summer, then, fear of the dark was not a concern, nor could the gates be closed at the fall of darkness, since darkness never really fell. Similarly, it is very improbable that darkness would have signalled the time for closing of the gate in the winter, when darkness began so early, for example, around four in the afternoon in mid-December. While the town boundary remained the same, the light conditions may have influenced how people travelled at night, both in summer and in winter, for opposite reasons. Although evidence from the sources is yet to be found, the experience of the town boundary and even the town gates was different in the north to that in the rest of Europe where towns usually had proper walls and sturdier gates, and where darkness fell in a more regular manner throughout the year. Jöran’s and Michel’s encounter at the toll gate, then, shows how important it is to recognize the impact on people’s relationship to the town not only of mental, spatial and material factors, but also of geography and climate. Although many concepts relating to the boundedness of urban space were widely shared over Europe, local conditions were also important. Nonetheless, in Jöran’s case, and despite the light summer night, the closure of the toll gate prevented Jöran and his friend from leaving the town. They were on horseback, on a main road out of the town. In his statement to the Court, Jöran argued that the road to town was a common right of way, where he should have been free from attack and interference, even from the toll clerk. The toll clerk saw it otherwise: since Jöran was attempting to leave town after the gates had already been closed, it was the toll clerk’s right and responsibility to intervene. Even if the closure of the gates may not have been as strictly ordered as in other European towns, 41 Jöran’s case reminds us that the toll boundary did constitute a transition point for all kinds of traffic to and from the town. All persons coming into town were, in principle, under surveillance, even if they had nothing to declare.

The Extent and the Centre of the Town Like medieval town walls, the Turku toll fence separated the town from the surrounding countryside, and made it in many aspects distinct. 42 This distinctiveness was, however, as in any town, relative. Towns and townspeople is clearly visible and only the brightest stars can be seen. The times of sunrise and sunset are estimates; they are from 24 July (Gregorian calendar) and based on the current time zones. We do not know the system by which the hours of the day were defined in seventeenth-century Sweden. 41 Jütte 2014, 217, 220-221. 42 See Jütte 2014, 205; Arnade et. al. 2002, 533.

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shared many things with the countryside and its people. For one, the urban economy cannot be seen isolated from that of the countryside, and personal contacts between the townspeople and people outside the town were constant. Although in any sphere of life, it is difficult to indicate a clear boundary between the town and the countryside, nevertheless, as for example Arnade, Howell and Simons point out, towns still constituted bounded entities and had a different identity than that of a countryside village or a farm. 43 Because of the nature of towns as spatial entities with particular identities, but with porous and fluctuating boundaries, examining the spatial definitions of Turku beyond the toll boundary is vital. Hence the examination continues by exploring the existence of different kinds of boundaries as well as of the focal locations of urban space. In Turku it was common for townspeople to keep pigs, cows and horses, and to have kitchen gardens. In addition, there were, in fact, also farms inside the perimeter of the toll fence. Whereas in many European towns with walls, the town – that is, the urban settlement – gradually spilled beyond the walls so that they no longer fully denoted the extent of the town, in Turku the situation was to some extent the opposite. The toll fence did not separate a completely urban settlement from the surrounding countryside; there was some very rural living inside the toll fence perimeter. On the other hand, in the Kaarina (St. Karins) parish, near St. Catherine’s Church and the town boundary, some ‘loose people’ lived in some kind of a shack village, which had a population of thirty people in the 1680s. In the 1640s, in addition to maids and hired hands who had left service, the area even housed some craftsmen, teachers, and church servants.44 To complicate things more, both the Town Corporation and individual burghers also owned land outside the toll fence.45 One of the first documents about the Turku boundary comes from 1530, when King Gustavus I defined the eastern boundary of the town, in response to a group of peasants who claimed they had never received payment for the lands that the Crown had given the town permission to buy in the late fourteenth century (see map 2). The town presented a bill of sale and the boundary was perambulated. The area spread quite far from the actual town and included, for example, grazing lands owned by the burghership in common. 46 The boundary defining the extent of these lands thus created a different spatial definition of the town from the one later marked by the toll fence. 43 44 45 46

Arnade et al. 2002, 530-535. Innamaa 1952, 139-140. Ranta 1975, 509-510, 514. Kallioinen 2000, 58; Nikula & Nikula 1987, 81-84 .

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Map 2 The surroundings of Turku and the 1530 border of land owned by the town

Map: Panu Savolainen

The town’s boundaries, however, were not merely spatial, but also judicial. The town was a judicial entity; yet the university also had judicial rights over its staff, students and property, and the Church, similarly, had its judicial rights. Consequently, the geographical extension of the town’s jurisdiction overlapped and intersected in complex ways with other jurisdictions. These various delimitations of the town, whether they related to jurisdiction, boundary tolls, or land ownership and use, created a somewhat elusive totality. It is far from self-evident which boundaries defined the town for the townspeople. In light of the overlap of the urban and the rural, and the coexistence of various kinds of town boundaries, we need to ask whether the toll boundary was rendered the primarily experienced boundary of the town. Even if in present-day research, and in the general understanding of the history of Turku, the toll fence is seen as the crucial boundary defining the town; we must query whether the seventeenth-century population thought so too.

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Map 3 The earliest map of Turku is from 1634 and it is based on a survey by Olof Gangius. This copy was moved from Sweden to Finland aroun1809, when the text to the upper right corner was added.

In terms of the town as a material environment, in addition to the toll boundary and various other boundaries defined in the documents, the limits of urban settlement formed an important boundary between town and country. The toll fence – as it is drawn in the earliest Turku map, from 1634 – follows the limits of urban settlement only along the three roads that led into town from the countryside. For any person travelling into town by road, therefore, the toll boundary did also mark the entrance to the area of urban settlement. On the river, however, the toll gates were a little farther upstream from the urban settlement area, whereas the approach from downriver, past Turku castle, and with relatively heavy trade traffic on the river, would have created an urban atmosphere well before arrival in the built urban area. Elsewhere, away from these traffic routes, however, the built town did not reach to the toll boundary.

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This difference between the practical boundary of the fence and the boundary set by urban settlement was problematic. A small clue to the ambiguity of multiple boundaries comes from some rulings issued to the burghers of Turku by the Queen in 1654. In this list of resolutions, the Queen first rejected the burghers’ request that the peasants working the farms owned by the town outside the toll boundaries should to be under the town’s jurisdiction. Secondly, the monarch confirmed that all persons living inside the town fence came under the jurisdiction of the town. 47 The latter instance seems to have related to some unclarity about certain people who had built houses inside the toll fence and their relationship to the urban administration. In a similar vein, the status of a lieutenant and a ship’s master who lived near the castle, and thus outside the toll fence, was unclear. In 1658 the two men were ordered by the Town Council to pay the stove excise tax, compulsory for every house in the town. Since they did not actually live in town, the men had considered themselves free of this tax. In 1659 the Town Council, coming to the same conclusion, retracted its decision and freed the ship master of the tax (the lieutenant must have moved, as he is no longer mentioned). 48 In this instance, apparently the two men’s role and occupation within the town had led the Town Council to consider them residents, but jurisdictionally it was the location of the person’s dwelling that was the deciding factor. The combination of a number of coexisting boundaries, each valid in its own terms – one based on land ownership, one on the toll tax, one on the judicial extent of the Town Court’s authority – in addition to the material boundary defined by the extent of urban settlement, led at times to confusion as to where the town actually began and ended. Further confusion arises from the fact that some of the land inside the perimeter of the fence did not belong to the town, but was owned by individuals or by the Crown. Moreover, income from this Crown land was sometimes used to pay the town officials’ wages, which further blurs the distinctions. 49 It is thus clear that the town was not defined merely by one boundary, but that what marked the limit of the town depended on the person and on the situation. The spatial entity of the town could be perceived and experienced in different and inconsistent ways. It is for this reason that the incidents of avoidance of the toll boundary described earlier cannot be read (merely) as acts of political resistance. Avoidance could also result from a 47 Privilegier och resolutioner för Åbo stad I, 115. 48 TRO 26 May 1658, 121; TRO 19 April 1659, 199. 49 Väisänen 2007, 16-17.

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divergent personal understanding and experience of the town. Moreover, the avoidance may have related to very practical concerns, as some of the court cases cited earlier in this chapter illustrate. In sum, one can conjecture that people’s activities around the town’s boundaries had less to do with formal definitions of the town, or with how people thought it should be, than with how the town was materially and socially experienced. Material and social practices also steered the ways that specific areas or places in town came to be seen as significant and definitive. In addition to there being multiple boundaries that defined what and where the town was, negotiations concerning the toll boundary, importantly, were not only about the actual boundary lines, but touched upon urban space more generally. The clearest example of this is the relationship between the traders and the peasants, vis-à-vis the Crown’s trading rules. The practices of forestalling (i.e. making private deals before the items reached the town market), and the lodging of peasants in burghers’ houses, show, as we will see below, that the material barrier of the toll fence created only one frame for the experience and definition of the town as a spatial entity. The tradition of forestalling and of trading in illegal locations – i.e. not the market place – were both common indiscretions in Europe. It was also common for the authorities to try to rein in this kind of behaviour, since transgressions of these rules were seen as a threat to the order of the town.50 In Turku the trading rules connected with the toll border, and the transgressions thereof, pulled clearly in two directions: the official rules set out to direct people and their trading first to the toll gates and from there to the market place, but the old trading customs directed people to burghers’ houses. The Crown’s struggle to gain control of the urban trade in Sweden began in earnest in the 1620s. The Town Toll Ordinance of 1622, and some regulations written after that, proclaimed the principle of ‘free trade’, aiming among other things for all burghers to have an equal opportunity to buy from the peasants. The goal was to take over the control of the trade, especially from the rich merchants, who had in some cases inherited trade (and debt) relations with particular peasants. In order to break the old trading system based on these relations, the Crown set out to direct the trade to the central market place.51 Even in the Middle Ages, trading was only permitted in towns and on particular market days in some countryside parishes. This general rule was 50 Cowan 1998, 17, 18; Jütte 2014, 220. 51 Möller 1954, 176-178, 179-183.

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reinforced in various ordinances; in Turku, Duke Carl decreed in 1600 that Turku merchants were forbidden to trade in the countryside. The rules, even if not strictly followed, resulted in peasants needing to come to town with their wares; and certain trading practices emerged.52 A common custom was that a peasant would bring his goods directly to the house of a particular burgher, and that only where a peasant did not have previous relations with a merchant in town did he go to the market place. This custom was inadvertently furthered in the seventeenth century, when the Crown started to collect the excise tax at the toll gates, and also to collect the poll tax in cash. Many peasants now needed cash when coming to town, and began to contact ‘their merchant’ to borrow money before any actual trade transactions had happened. This then left the peasants no other option than to take their goods to the same merchant once they had passed the toll gate. Another custom was that of merchants housing ‘their peasants’, which meant that the peasants became further caught in debt, since when they left town, the food and drink consumed at the merchant’s house had to be paid for, while at the same time some essential items (like salt) had to be taken back home too.53 The Crown fought against these practices, and insisted that all trade by the peasants must take place in the market place and that only designated burghers could house visiting peasants. In Turku, Governor General Per Brahe drew up a decree in 1638 against forestalling and the illegal lodging of peasants. Another local ordinance by Brahe was issued in 1649, and the penalties for forestalling became more severe: the peasants would forfeit their goods, and any persons dealing illegally with peasants were fined 40 marks. Such rules, however, had already proved inefficient; since 1624 a series of ordinances had been promulgated, both at national level across the kingdom, and locally, yet the transgressions continued.54 The old system of trading persisted, because the system of trading at the merchant’s house was, in principle, beneficial for both trading partners: The trader ensured the supply of wares for his shop, and the peasant was guaranteed the sale of his wares as well as a place to stay. Through the Toll Ordinance and other orders, the Crown attempted to establish control over trading, and in the process it can be said that it defined the urban through the space it was able to control. In the Crown’s policy the market place was the heart of the town, since it was the centre of 52 Ranta 1975 353; Privilegier och Resolutioner för Åbo Stad, I, 34-35. 53 Möller 1954, 176-179. 54 Möller 1954, 181-182.

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the primary activity of the town, i.e. trade.55 For the Crown, towns, however small, needed to be defined as urban, different from the rest of the country, and they also needed to be highly visible, and controllable.56 Trading in merchants’ houses did not fit the Crown’s thinking, either from an economic or from a more general urban policy perspective. It can be concluded that in the process of moulding the towns, wittingly or unwittingly, the Crown defined the urban spatially by drawing people and activities in towards the market place. However, as seen above, prevailing local practices were also focused on the townspeople’s houses, and therefore not only for the burghers but also for the peasants, the homes of the townspeople can be considered important shared space in urban life. Houses and yards were as central as the market place, if not more so, and for town dwellers and visitors alike were thus also central in defining the urban space.

Regulating Burgher Mobility with Detention in Town Regardless of the basic regulation of trade and the centrality of the merchant’s house, Turku merchants did not simply sit and wait for the peasants to come to trade; in fact, they were strikingly mobile. Open trading in the countryside was forbidden, but burghers often travelled to trade in the markets organized in the countryside parishes or in other towns. These market days were regulated by the Crown, and were either free markets, where burghers of any town could attend, or private markets, where only burghers of particular towns could participate. As Turku was the largest town on the eastern side of the Gulf of Bothnia, it had rights in many nearby markets, and tried to acquire rights to markets even farther afield.57 Merchants also travelled to collect debts from other towns and the countryside. In addition, merchants often travelled to Stockholm, Tallinn and Lübeck. Efforts to curb illegal trade on these various trips began from the 1620s onwards, culminating in 1648 in a prohibition to travel to collect debts without proof of the said debt and the date of a court session where such a debt was to be claimed. Governor General Brahe, in particular, had wanted to completely ban the collection of debts in the countryside. None of these decrees were very effective, however, and the burghers continued to make 55 See Calabi 2004, xxiv & passim for organization of market places in Europe, and see Postles 2004 for power and spatiality of a market place in early modern England. 56 Laitinen & Lindström 2009, 66, 68. 57 Ranta 1975, 297-300.

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their way through the countryside collecting debts, while also buying and selling, especially cattle and other domestic animals.58 Travelling to villages to collect debts was an old custom and it was common for merchants to take with them goods that they knew the peasants would need. Regardless of efforts to stop these trips and the illegality of this trade, the custom persisted. Rich merchants were even prone to send their trading agents out of town to carry out quite large-scale trade. Similarly, despite official prohibitions, some Turku merchants used agents to carry on trade in other towns.59 The mobility of the merchants sometimes resulted in problematic situations in their own town. Finalizing financial contracts or the resolution of disagreements were delayed, as the men were away so often. The official solution for this was a detention order, under which the Town Council could order a person to stay in town until such time that the matter at hand had been resolved, whether bilaterally between the two parties or in a court session. The detention order was called an arrest (detention); it was delivered to the person in question by a Town Constable (stads tjänare), ordering him or her to stay in town, and disobeying such an order was a finable offence. A dictionary definition for the Swedish word arrest is ‘a seizure of goods or the detention of a person as collateral for a debt or security against misappropriation’.60 This is exactly what an order of arrest meant in the seventeenth century. Some orders concerned money: the person might not use their funds until the argument in question had been settled; but other orders forbade a person to leave town until the matter at hand had been settled or heard in court. Arrest entries in the court record books are mostly of the form: ‘XX.XX may not leave the town until they have obliged with their contract with YY.YY, under penalty of a fine’. Arrests were a very common entry in the court record books: in 1647, for example, sixty such entries were recorded. Forty of these were prohibitions against leaving the town.61 Anyone with unfinished business with someone could apply for a detention order from the Town Council. Most of the detention orders were requested by burghers who had unfinished financial transactions with various persons, but not exclusively. The petitioners for such orders also included noblemen, professors, wives and widows, and town off icials, 58 Ranta 1975, 301-302, 354-358. 59 Möller 1954, 171-173, 206-213. 60 Svenska Akademiens Ordbok, http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/, s.v. arrest. 61 See for example TRO 10 October 1646 [1647], 7; TRO 17 October 1646 [1647], 8; TRO 18 January 1647, 95, 97; 23 January 1647, 100.

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and orders were issued not only to burghers, but also to widows, officials, soldiers, peasants, noblemen and clergy. In cases where detainees nonetheless absconded, they had usually simply left town on business, or if from out of town, had departed after having visited the town. It appears that the reason for leaving town was seldom to run from an order of arrest, although ignoring an order when leaving on one’s business may well have been deliberate (there is a clear difference of gradation). Common excuses for an infringement were that they had never received the notice, they had already had left their home, or someone else in the house had received the notice and not given it to them. When someone travelled despite a detention order, the injured party or a Town Bailiff could bring the case to court. For example, in 1639 the Town Bailiff, Sigfred Johansson, reported to the Court that Hans Dunkarsson had left despite an arrest order lodged against him by Widow Träll. Dunkarsson replied that he had in fact already paid the 160 dalers he owed the widow, and that her advocate had freed him from the order. The proper procedure, however, would have been also to request the Town Council or the Burgomaster for the order to be annulled before leaving town.62 In one case concerning a debt over 50 barrels of salt, the claimant, Alexander Watson, kept an eye out for his adversary Anders Merthen after he had failed to appear in the Lower Town Court to clear up the matter, despite a detention order having been issued for him to stay in town until the matter was resolved. Alexander was told by the Town Court that he would have to wait until Anders came back before the matter could be discussed. On 3rd March 1641 Alexander let the court know that Anders had come home: this he had heard from a discussion between two men outside his window. One of these, David Berelius, however, when questioned, said that he did not know if Anders had come home. A third person, Hans Dunkarson was then also asked, and he said he had not seen Anders Merthen; but when further questioned if he knew of his coming home, he would not answer yes or no. To Alexander this was confirmation that Anders had, indeed, returned. He also knew that Anders would be leaving back for Norrbotten directly. On 8th March Anders finally appeared in court, and stated that the original notice of arrest had arrived the day he had left town, and that it had been delivered to his wife, but had not reach him in time. Five days later Alexander repeated his demand that the court should punish Anders for breaking the detention order, and should help him get the sale of the salt sorted out; the matter was not resolved, however, and we remain in 62 TRO 17 January 1642, 131.

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the dark as to what happened concerning the debt over the salt between Alexander and Anders.63 No other cases of personal surveillance like this one between Alexander Watson and Anders Merthen appear in the material examined, but the burghers may well have followed each other’s movements and applied for a detention order at such times when they knew the other party to be in town, or knew they were about to leave, especially in cases that concerned large amounts of money. As the practice of stonewalling was common in early modern Sweden, both in politics and in the courts, it is highly probable that dragging one’s feet both over the payment of debts and over responding to the Town Council’s orders was a conscious decision, and also something that the other party knew to expect. Dag Lindström has shown how in various situations people on various levels of hierarchy used the policy of procrastination, and has deduced that one of the motivations for procrastination was protecting oneself from increased control over one’s matters. An effort to delay various payments or settlement of issues was very common.64 Applying for a detention order may have been one last effort by a creditor to get his or her money before suing the other party, and perhaps not taking notice of the detention order was just one more way of postponing the inevitable settlement of affairs further into the future. Cases of absconding despite an order of arrest give the impression of an inefficient practice. People seemed to be able to travel quite freely, regardless of an express prohibition to do so. On the other hand, only those cases where someone did abscond came to court, and it may well be that many detentions were adhered to. There are also some cases that imply that when the debt which had caused the detention was paid, the order would then be cancelled. In a few cases, the detained person appealed to the Council for a relaxation of the order, for example, to attend a funeral; and one order was cancelled because the detainee was a poor widow, whose daughter wanted to take her to her current hometown to live with her.65 One case that dragged on for years, however, illuminates the limitations of the detention order system. One Olaf Erichson had sold some property to a Professor Michael Wexonius, but the sale ended up in limbo when the 63 TRO 27 February 1641, 176; TRO 3 March 1641, 186; TRO 8 March 1641, 190; TRO 13 March 1641, 194. 64 Lindström 2005, 20. 65 TRO 17 October 1646 [1647], 8; TRO 22 February 1654, 29-30; TRO 23 June 1655, 168-169; TRO 12 May 1641, 300, 302.

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other heirs to the property did not agree to the sale. Professor Wexonius applied for a detention order against Olof Erichsson, but Olof paid no heed. The first entry on the matter dates from 1642, and the last from 1647, by which time Olof had meanwhile travelled in and out of town several times; yet the Town Court still could do no more than order Olof to pay the 40 mark fine imposed in the original order of arrest from 1642.66 Detainees were clearly not kept in town by force; rather, the detention system required the cooperation of the townspeople to work. Stonewalling in cases where one received an order of arrest does not, however, mean that the burghers were opposed in principle to the practice: those absconding sometimes themselves may have applied for a detention order on someone else. Regardless of some degree of inefficiency, then, detention orders were a working tool for controlling mobility to which both the burghers and the Town Council were committed, and reflects how the town was mutually recognized as a spatial entity within which control could legitimately be exercised on community members.

Townspeople on the Move Here we have been looking at the boundaries of the town from the perspective of restricted movement. Much of the traffic into and out of the town, however, was not subject to restriction, and where it did not cause any problems, it would usually go unrecorded. There are a few individual remarks in various court cases, and the diary written by a university student, Petrous Gyllenius, which illuminate some facets of the townspeople’s unproblematic everyday mobility. From these meagre sources it becomes clear that movement between the town and the countryside was frequent and not limited to trade and profession. In the following, therefore, attention will be turned to mobility as part of the pattern of everyday life in the town, an aspect of early modern urban life that has not yet been examined thoroughly. The university teachers, clergy, wealthy merchants, office holders, and especially their families, seem to have spent substantial amounts of their time outside town, especially in the summer. In his diary, Petrus Gyllenius tells us of constant movement between the town and the countryside. Gyllenius was a farmer’s son from Sweden, who arrived in Turku in August 66 TRO 29 March 1647, 227-228; TRO 16 March 1642, 196-197; TRO 23 March 1642, 212; TRO 28 March 1642, 215; TRO 4 May 1642, 254.

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1648. In February 1649, he became tutor to Burgomaster Johan Hansson’s sons, in return for free lodging. For the following year and a half, his diary includes numerous entries recording trips to the family’s Alakylä estate in the neighbouring parish of Kaarina. In the first diary entry, the estate is described as a farm belonging to the Burgomaster’s wife, Elisabeth Winckelhauss, the daughter of a goldsmith, Hans Hosenwinckel .67 Petrus travelled to Alakylä frequently, sometimes with his mistress Elisabeth, sometimes with her sons, sometimes with the Burgomaster or by himself. These trips were made by boat or by road. Petrus stayed in the countryside sometimes only for one day, sometimes for a couple of days; the June of 1649 was mostly spent in Alakylä and July saw constant travel to and fro. Alakylä was about 10 kilometres from Turku by road.68 Later, when Petrus was in the employ of Bishop Aeschillus Petraeus in 1652, he travelled in a similar way between the town and the Bishop’s estate on Kakskerta (Kaxkerta) island, just outside town. He also took part in various events, for example attending a wedding in Pargas (Parainen) by boat (some 20 kilometres south-east of Turku, in the archipelago) with ‘twenty townspeople of the better sort’.69 Petrus spent one of the wedding days with a group of other people sailing around in the area around Pargas and visiting churches and taverns. Similar patterns were repeated when Petrus was teaching the sons of the Court of Appeal’s Assessor; the Assessor’s estate was in Naantali (Nådendal), some 20 kilometres west from Turku.70 Matleena Tornberg, who has studied animal husbandry in southwestern Finland, writes that most of the wealthy burghers and office holders had country estates or farms. Some of these farms were linked to the office held, and some had been acquired personally. Some must have been family properties. Most farms that Tornberg has tracked down belonged to the wealthiest burghers with foreign names (as they are the ones that are easily identifiable from the sources). The estates she has examined were all in the parishes surrounding Turku.71 The family estates that Petrus Gyllenius visited were all reachable within one day, leaving in the morning and coming back before nightfall. There is little reference to these properties in the Town Court sources; the court material used in this study includes just one mention of a student, Joachim Stutaeus, the son of the cathedral 67 Carpelan, Åbo i genealogiskt hänseende 1600- och början af 1700-talen. http://pastebin.com/ CUm1ZUW7 [16.1.2014]. 68 Gyllenius 1880, 133, 134, 137-139, 140-142, 144-146. 69 ‘… tillijka medh myckit annat förnämbligit Stadzfolck, til 20. personer …’. 70 Gyllenius 1880, 176-17, 202-204, 205-206, 208. 71 Tornberg 1973, 95-98.

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Dean, having left town for the family’s estate on Kakskerta.72 Other possible references to estates outside the town in court records occur in the context of thefts that happened when the occupants were away: a student, Anders Gadd, for instance, had some books and clothes stolen from his rented lodgings while he was away in the countryside, and in another case, one Erich Jacobsen confessed to stealing from the house of the Court of Appeal judge Petrus Wigelius while the family was away.73 These two individual references support the information coming from Petrus Gyllenius’ diary; the learned and the highly placed lived part of their lives at their country estates. While we can thus be relatively sure, regardless of the limited sources, that the wealthiest townspeople spent some of their time in the countryside, information about the burghers in general is more scarce. One court case tells us that Mats Pässi’s wife Walborgh, who was accused of adultery with a priest called Påell in Pässi’s townhouse, had earlier spent some time in Lieto (Lundo) parish, where Påell was the parish priest. Walborgh told the court that she had been in the countryside for eight days, and collating her comments on different court days, it appears that she had gone to Lieto for fishing for three days, and had two of her maids with her; after the fishing, she had stayed on as she was unwell.74 Other references to countryside trips in the court records are much briefer, as well as few and far between. In one case a publican Elisabet Mårthensdotter is mentioned as having been out in the country, when a man was killed in her establishment.75 People went to the countryside for a wide variety of reasons. For example, the merchant Simon Blom is said to have retreated to his farmhouse when he was banished from town for writing a libellous poem (more about him in the chapter about banishments). Blom’s estate was in Raisio (Reso), some ten kilometres from Turku.76 In addition to having a country estate or a farm of their own, people might visit relatives, friends or associates; one might attend weddings, or go fishing or hunting, although as the only source telling about the townspeople’s everyday lives is the town’s Court records, no information about such trips can be found. One thing that emerges is that especially in times of need, family in the countryside was important. 72 TRO 10 December 1642 [1643]; Joakim Stutaeus, Ylioppilasmatrikkeli 1640-1852, http://www. helsinki.fi/ylioppilasmatrikkeli/henkilo.php?id=125 [16.1.2014]. 73 TRO 30 May 1655, 149-152; TRO 20 September 1647, 403-406. 74 TRO 16 March 1640, 126-127; TRO 16 May 1640, 220-221; TRO 3 June 1640, 244-245. 75 TRO 23 February 1659, 46-50; TRO 19 March 1659, 87-91. More about Elisabet Mårthensdotter see Toropainen 2016, 241. 76 Ranta 1975, 518-519; Toropainen 2006, 58-59.

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This is illustrated by one complaint about a census roll: in 1655, the burgher Jöran Thomasson wrote to the Town Council that he had mistakenly been written down in the census records in Loimijoki parish as a peasant, and he requested the Town Council to provide him a letter confirming that he was a burgher and a citizen in Turku. Jöran had ended up in the wrong roll because he had fallen badly ill, and his brother Sigfred had taken him and his family to his farm to be taken care of there. As his illness persisted, he had to stay for over a year, and when the parish priest was collecting census data, he had simply lumped him together with his brother as a peasant.77 There is also an individual remark suggesting that people looked for help in the countryside in the aftermath of town fires. In 1657 a vagrant had persuaded someone in the countryside that he was in fact a burgher who had lost his house in the great fire of Turku in 1656, and needed work.78 Many of the townspeople also passed through the town gates on a daily basis. Most houses kept cattle, which were driven to graze outside the town. As some of the town land outside the gates was rented out to peasants to farm, sometimes the animals had to be driven across the boundaries to the next parish (which was not taken kindly by the peasants of those parishes).79 Other recorded activities taking people out of the town included buying flour, and picking berries in the forests. The information about these activities comes only from asides in criminal cases, however: for example, one victim reported that she had been robbed while picking berries in the forest.80 Most of this kind of mobility remains unrecorded. Even with the need to scour for small details amongst a multitude of court cases, it is clear that although the town always had boundaries and was demarcated from the countryside in many ways, and even if many kinds of movement were controlled and restricted, people’s lives were not continuously constrained by the town boundaries. It is also noticeable that none of the brief comments in court cases about townspeople being out of town explain, describe, or otherwise elaborate on these absences. This implies that it was normal to be away; no explanation was needed. For example, when witnesses needed for hearing a case were away, their absence was passed with little remark. The town was only one part of townspeople’s everyday living environment, and many lives were oriented rather widely outwards. Thus it can be said that while the town itself 77 78 79 80

TRO 23 January 1655, 9. TRO 7 February 1657, 26. Ranta 1975, 510; Innamaa 1952, 34-35. TRO 14 July 1670, 606-668; TRO 20 September 1657, 403-406.

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constituted a bounded spatial entity, with its own particular significance and considerable restriction of movement, on the other hand the town was only one (if the major one) of potentially several locations of significance and orientation in townspeople’s lives. Within the category of everyday mobility, the mobility of servants and workers was distinct in character. The movement of hired labour, whether living inside that town or outside it, differed from that of the burghers and their families, and can largely be understood in terms of migration and work-related mobility. Like the daily mobility of those living in the town, however, the traffic created by servants and workers remains largely unrecorded. In principle, there should not have been much labour-mobility traffic at all between the two official hiring days in the spring and the autumn. The Town Law (from the 1350s) decreed that labourers should be hired on yearly contracts, which should end and begin on either at Easter or at Michaelmas.81 These hiring days did not always suit the farmers, however, as some felt that the harvest work was not yet complete by Michaelmas, so that hiring at that time interfered with the farm work. The Law of the Realm of 1442 did designate hiring days on Whit Sunday at the end of spring and on Martinmas in November,82 but these days were evidently not in use, which can be seen from various complaints about the September date, noted by Toivo Nygård in his research on the seventeenth-century Finnish countryside.83 Nygård’s research shows that these laws were in any case not always adhered to. Different hiring days were used; labourers dithered in committing to a contract, even if it was agreed in principle on the correct date; and contracts were made for periods of less than six months, sometimes even for couple of weeks. Punishments for contravening the law could be harsh: an absconding labourer could forfeit his or her hiring money and even a year’s wages to an employer who was wronged. Usually, however, disagreements were reconciled amicably.84 It is safe to assume that in context of these flexible hiring practices, mobility by would-be workers at times other than the official hiring days also happened in Turku, and that there was year-round labour mobility to and from the town One group of people whose movements are sometimes mentioned in the court records are solitary women: single women, widows, and soldiers’ wives. Marko Lamberg has shown that single women frequently moved 81 MES (Magnus Erikssons stadslag), byggninsbalken XXI, 95. 82 KKLL (Kuningas Kristoferin maanlaki), byggningsbalken 15, 80. 83 Nygård 1989, 100. 84 Nygård 1989, 100-104.

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around between different Swedish towns in search of a place to settle.85 Many women did indeed settle in towns, and were in respectable service in burghers’ houses. Maids who had been employed in town might also subsequently return to their homes in the countryside: many were in employment only for a limited period of time, and then married, not necessarily in town. In addition to single women, soldiers’ wives also settled in town when their husbands were sent to war: those visible in the Turku sources (as witnesses, fornicators, or as names in the census records) were mainly already inhabitants of the town and nothing really is known about their mobility.86 It is not possible to say how much of the itinerant hired labour held legitimate (although often wrongly timed) contracts, and how many ended up living in town doing other kinds of work. The census records from the latter part of the 1650s, however, give us some indication of the numbers of unattached women, who were still more or less accepted members of the community. These women are referred to as inhyses (‘lodger’) or huskvinna (‘house woman’), and they also appear in the court records, most often as witnesses. Strictly speaking, these women had no legal status, as unattached workers should not have been tolerated in the town; but they were tolerated nonetheless, and we can presume that many of them were part of a mobile labour force constantly seeking for employment. Unattached women formed quite a large group in the town, in fact: in 1658, there are listed 238 of them, which can be compared with the list of 301 employed maids for the same year.87 Some of the itinerant women came before the court for the offence of having an illegitimate child. A couple of court cases refer to a woman going into the countryside to give birth. In one infanticide case, a student, who (the woman claimed) was the father of the child, had instructed the woman to not to reveal her pregnancy to anyone and leave the town to give birth. The same woman had three years previously arrived in town after giving birth to another illegitimate child.88 In another case, the maid Margreta Nilsdotter, who had, in effect, cohabited with her employer Jöran Ruskia for 14 years, had travelled to the countryside and had a child 85 Lamberg 2009, 149-151, Lamberg 2007, 223-225. 86 Less is known about the movement of solitary men than of solitary women; manual labourers came and went without leaving any surviving trace, and in Turku, since almost all the guild records have perished, this also applies to many apprentices and journeymen, unless they committed a crime. 87 Åbo stad mantals lengdt 1658, Turun ja Porin läänin tilejä (7271), KA. 88 TRO 9 November 1657, 229-235, 267.

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there without telling anyone who the father was. The couple’s living in sin came before the court when the parish priest in Lieto, who baptised the child, found out who the father was and reported the couple to the Turku Consistory.89 Single women with children, or one on the way, could also move in the other direction, trying to find somewhere to live. For example, one Karin from Götaland had settled in Turku with her three children.90 Again, a former servant Lisa, who was pregnant, had escaped to town from her countryside home.91 From these few cases it is possible to deduce that for some solitary women the practice of moving to or from town offered a chance to maintain some form of respectability. On the other hand, as Tiina Miettinen has shown in her study of the early modern countryside in Finland, having an illegitimate child did not necessarily lead to isolation or exclusion. Single women with children might continue to live at home, with relatives, or in service, or get married. There was thus a certain element of toleration towards women with illegitimate children in the society.92 On a more general level, labour mobility in search of livelihood was further increased in the kingdom by competition for workers, resulting from the wars that took so many men to the European battlefields. Workers’ wages were even used in governmental politics as a tool to ensure an adequate supply of servants for the nobility. There was also competition for workers between the towns and the peasants, and peasants’ complaints on this issue led the government to believe that masses of people had left their homes, leaving farms completely untended. This perception may or may not have reflected reality, but there were also more concrete complaints: ships took servants and workers illegally to Sweden, Estonia and Livonia. Mirkka Lappalainen writes that in Helsinki (Helsingfors: at that time, still a relatively small coastal town), Livonian fishermen took people to the Baltic region, where they could get better wages than in Finland. Men also went abroad to escape from impending conscription, and some were running from the law. In the Turku Town Court records, one can find warnings of fines for taking unattached people aboard ships bound for Stockholm, Tallinn or Riga, which most likely means that servants and workers had been leaving Turku or travelling to those towns through Turku.93 89 90 91 92 93

TRO 22 August 1647, 406. TRO 25 October 1651, 240-241. TRO 3 March 1651, 55-63. Miettinen 2012, passim. TRO 26 September 1653, 225; Lappalainen 2005, 193; Nygård 1989, 45, 94-95.

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For mobile single individuals looking for work, or solitary women seeking respectability, as well as for servants and workers on short contracts, the town’s boundaries – whether they were crossed with ease or in stealth – were just one of the boundaries to be crossed in the search for a place to live or to support them for a while. As the laws and the authorities emphasized the importance of tying servants and workers to long-term contracts, and treated moving around with suspicion, it is important to point out and show how being mobile still dominated many people’s lives, and was part of the whole community’s way of life. Moreover, as we have seen, the spatial orientation of those living in town was not exclusively centred on the town either, but the surrounding countryside and the nearby parishes were also part of the urban population’s everyday life. What that part was, depended on who and what kind of a person you were.

Controlling Incoming Strangers In early modern European communities, being a ‘stranger’ or a ‘foreigner’ most often meant being from outside, not being settled in a community, and/or not being known to people. Town administrations’ attitude towards such strangers was often related to labour markets: fluctuations in production impacted strongly on who and how many strangers were welcome in towns at any given time. An economic downturn usually increased negative attitudes towards incoming strangers. Town administrators also associated immigration with the possibility of unrest, and thus as a threat to social order. Hence, unknown newcomers, especially of the lower classes, were often considered suspect. Useful workers and professionals, on the other hand, were often welcomed, either officially or by individual townspeople.94 In Turku, as elsewhere, the movement of strangers or foreigners was controlled in different ways from that of the townspeople, although in Turku the control typically focused more on strangers’ activities in the town and the country or on the threat of their overstaying their welcome, than their actual physical coming into town. In the Turku Town Court records, the terms used to denote unknown persons, outsiders and visitors are ‘stranger’ ( fremmande), ‘foreigner’ (utländskt) and ‘guest’ (giäst). The most common term was ‘stranger’. Any merchant or craftsman who was not under Turku’s privileges was a 94 Canepari 2012; De Munck & Winter 2012, 6-7; Coy 2012, 158; Boes 2007, 90-91, 100; Jütte 2014, 212-213; Raphael 2009, 28.

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‘stranger’,95 as was a traveller looking for a bed in the inn.96 ‘Stranger’ could also be used to refer to foreigners or foreign goods, while utländskt, meaning ‘from abroad’, was used far less often.97 But an outsider to a house or an otherwise unknown person could also be called a stranger. For example, in a theft case from 1644, a lieutenant’s wife, Karin Haraldsdotter, asserted that someone had taken things from her chest, and told the court that there had been no strangers in the house during the time that these things disappeared.98 In another case, about a small fire, Lars Frosti reported that a maid had been carrying fire in the street, which he had heard from a ‘stranger’, rather than witnessing the event himself.99 A ‘stranger’, i.e. an outsider to the immediate situation, could also be asked to value items that were the subject of dispute, or to testify in other matters.100 The term ‘stranger’ then was not reserved to persons who came from the outside, and many of the ‘strangers’ who appear in the Turku sources were not from elsewhere, nor were they unknown to the whole community. Here, however, we will focus on people coming into the town from outside, rather than on all who were called ‘strangers’; moreover, we will concentrate on respectable outsiders, leaving vagrants and lawbreakers to be discussed in the following chapters. With regard to persons arriving in town from outside, there was one often repeated rule: ‘No one shall dare venture to take in someone who is a stranger – whether domestic or foreign – who comes into town, who has not reported to the Burgomaster and the town’s officials with a letter of proof as to where they come from’.101 The starting point, therefore, was that people were not simply free to wander into town: they needed to have the appropriate papers, and a legitimate purpose for being in town. In contrast to some other European towns which, for example, Daniel Jütte writes about, however, there is no indication that everyone had to stop at the town gate to present their papers or answer questions, although they did need to stop to report any goods they were bringing in.102 95 For example, TRO 16 October 1639 [1640], 11; TRO 20 September 1641, 431; TRO 8 December 1647, 506; TRO 4 December 1648, 302-303. 96 TRO 16 October 1639 [1640], 8-9; TRO 2 November 1640 [1641], 52. 97 TRO 18 April 1640, 166; TRO 3 April 1648, 109, 200. 98 TRO 18 September 1640, 526-527. A similar use of the word TRO 26 November 1660, 390-392. 99 TRO 2 April 1653, 89-90. 100 TRO 28 January 1654, 9-10; TRO 16 March 1663; TKO (Turun kämnerinoikeuden pöytäkirjat) 14 January 1642; TKO 10 July 1643. 101 TRO 30 January 1643, 186. ‘… att ingen shall fördrista eller understå at intaga nogon fremmande In- eller uthlendsker som kan ankomma, för än som dee sigh hoos Borgmestare och stadzens förmän sigh hafwa angifwadt och bewijst hwadan dee ähre kompnä …’. 102 TRO 7 March 1640, 106; TRO 14 September 1640, 359-360; Jütte 2014, 216.

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The attitude in the Town Council towards strangers with a trade depended on the current trade situation in town. If the stranger’s skill was needed, and would not hamper any local burgher’s chances of earning their livelihood, they were welcomed. Anyone who wanted to become a burgher – whether merchant or craftsman – had to apply to the Town Council, and needed to have a skilled trade as well as two guarantors who were burghers of the town.103 When a man was approved as a burgher, he was usually exempted from the normal obligations of a burgher for one to six years, but he also pledged to stay in town for six years at least. This exemption was something of a risk for the town, as the men might leave after their free years, in order to gain more free years in another town. This practice, however, made it easier for new burghers to settle and get their business going. The two guarantors were required to provide monetary guarantees and to vouch for the character of the applicant.104 In the Turku records, new burghers swearing their oath to the town are identified only by name. This means that we often know nothing about their origin and the circumstances of their arrival; only in the case of the few men that were discussed by the Town Council do we have further information. In 1653 a coppersmith called Claus von Dalen presented himself in front of the Council and asked to set up in town. As his profession was deemed necessary for the district and the town, his request was approved. Claus was described as a journeyman, a stranger and without livelihood. Similarly, Jacob Dunder, a newcomer journeyman in the cupper and sauna trade, was granted burghership in 1644. A musician from Tallinn was given permission to sell beer and spirits, but was also required to play at New Year festivities at particular persons’ homes and to play in church on specified dates. Some newcomers were taken in on condition that they produced further proof of their previous employment.105 Some outsider tradesmen originally came to town following their noble masters, or were hired when an officer was installed and then ended up staying in town when their masters left. There were also some refugees from war-ravaged European towns.106 Anni Kallio has found in her study on Turku tailors that most recruits to the guild came 103 Instruction och underrättellse … Landshöffdingen 1635’, 202-203. 104 Heino 1984, 180. The guilds also had their say in the matter, as they had control over who was taken into the guild. The relative powers of the guilds and the Town Council varied by town. See Lindström 1991, 100-102. 105 TRO 12 September 1653, 221; TRO 6 July 1644, 421; TRO 12 July 1641, 407; TRO 30 January 1658, 4; TRO 4 September 1657, 216. 106 Kallio 2000, 40.

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from the surrounding countryside;107 the same may also apply for some other guilds. It might then be that tradesmen coming from farther afield were questioned in the Town Court, while no particular need was seen to question those coming from the vicinity of the town, where townspeople had close contacts; as few incoming professionals appear in the court records, however, it seems unlikely that even the questioning of everybody from abroad was customary. It is, of course, possible that the guilds did question and probe incoming strangers, but if so no sources remain to illuminate this. Unlike craftsmen, foreign merchants usually came to town only to trade, not to stay. Visiting merchants were welcome to stay in town as long as they only engaged in wholesale trade, and did not remain too long. When foreign traders came to town and reported at the Town Hall, they were given passes which permitted them to stay in town, but not to travel into the countryside. Other restrictions were also imposed: grain had to be sold directly from the ship, alcohol from specific cellars in town, and bulk goods at customs warehouse. Foreign merchants could only leave town with specific permits.108 These rules were broken in various ways. Some merchants did go outside town; some sold goods piecemeal, and some overstayed their welcome. Some merchants even went as far as setting up a shop in town. Some got caught trading outside the town multiple times: Joachim Woltersdorff from Lübeck was twice given a permit to settle some affairs in Helsingfors, but was reported to have grossly misused his permit.109 The Trade Ordinance from 1617 stipulated that a foreign merchant should not stay in town for more than eight weeks, although at times weather and sailing conditions made this rule impossible to enforce. Some merchants were stranded for the whole winter. This happened so often, in fact, that there was a particular term to refer to them: vinterligare (‘overwinterer’). ‘Overwinterers’ were not supposed to trade while they stayed, however, and were to lodge at a burgher’s house. Nonetheless, some young merchants, who were not yet established in their home town, stayed more or less permanently, provoking the ire of the Town Council.110 Foreign traders were expected to stay with burghers, but were not allocated lodgings individually by the Town Council. If they overstayed their welcome, the Council might be called upon to arbitrate. In one case, a 107 Kallio 2000, 32-38. 108 Möller 1954, 117-121. 109 Möller 1954, 121-122 110 Möller 1954, 122-123, 124.

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German, Gregorius Van der Gille, had lived in Lars Palicka’s house without paying rent for a quarter of a year; he had received permission from the Town Council to live there for a short period, while waiting for burgher Peter Thorwöste’s ship to get ready to sail. This short time, however, had stretched to a longer one, and Gille was ordered to pay rent to Palicka for one month, and if he could not come to an agreement about the subsequent period, to vacate the house within fourteen days. It appears from the matter-of-fact organization of these matters that the presence of foreign merchants was perhaps more the rule than the exception. One indication of semi-permanent organized trading relations involving foreign merchants were ‘the Russians’, who had a shop in town and also apparently employed an interpreter.111 Peasants who arrived in town on a regular basis are not dealt with in the court records really as strangers, even if they often appear as illegal traders. Often they are mentioned as living in burghers’ houses or inns, and taking part in the same drinking and fighting that other men did in the evenings.112 Strangers other than artisans and merchants coming into town do not really appear in the records, and it is impossible to say how many visitors the town had. Apart from public announcements where their illegal accommodation is forbidden, honourable travellers are only referred to in a few admonishments to innkeepers, and even then the actual travellers are not discussed. The medieval Town Law had already stipulated that each town should have an inn. During the seventeenth century, various new statutes were issued requiring even small towns to have two inns, and obligating town councils to issue ordinance on the towns’ inn-keeping.113 In Turku, the Town Council designated some of the burghers as inn-keepers; for example, in 1651 twelve men were named, three from each quarter. The inn-keepers were required always to be ready for travellers, and post a clear sign on their houses so that people would easily find them.114 On occasion, travellers were not able to get a bed in an officially designated inn. In one case a nobleman had sent a man to book a room in Hans Matson’s place, but although the Town Bailiff made several trips to the house, Hans’s wife refused to give him a room. In court, Hans defended 111 TRO 16 January 1643, 164-170. 112 For example, TRO 3 February 1640, 157-158; TRO 25 February 1646, 118; TRO 19 July 1656, 200-205. 113 ‘Förordning om tafwerner, 1638’, 160-167; Ranta 1975, 609. 114 TRO 15 November 1651, 262-264.

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his wife by saying that she did not have the key to the guest room. Hans himself was out of town, and the key had been taken by his brother-in-law, who was occupying the room at the time. Nevertheless, Hans was fined for failing to take in a guest.115 In another case, the inn-keeper Matts Turska had not taken in a stranger who had been assigned a room in his house; Turska explained that he had not been at home when the traveller came in. He was out with his people on a boat, and the incident had occurred only a couple of days after he was designated as an official inn-keeper. Only Matts’ wife had been in, and she was deaf and did not even know about the new responsibility of inn-keeping. The Bailiff pointed out, however, that it was actually two months since Matt’s designation as an inn-keeper, and Turska was accordingly fined.116 Both for the Crown and the town, it was important that there were inns that could accommodate respectable strangers visiting the town, which thus demonstrates that travelling was not always perceived negatively. However, in a town the size of Turku, there seems not to have been much need for specialist inns, since peasants were usually housed illegally, and foreign merchants legally, in burghers’ homes. Thus most of the inn-keepers in Turku in the 1640s and 1650s were burghers with other main occupations, who became inn-keepers only because the Town Council so determined; nor were they always inn-keepers for long, since some designated burghers could be changed each year.117 Perhaps most of the respectable travellers in Turku were in fact friends, associates and kin of the townspeople.

115 TRO 16 October 1639 [1640], 8-9, 34-35. 116 TKO 31 October 1640 [1641]; TRO 2 November 1640 [1641], 52, 65. 117 TRO 9 May 1646, 246-247; TRO 15 November 1651, 262; TRO 2 May 1659, 218-220.

2

Undesirable Vagrants – Exclusion or Inclusion?

‘Time-thieves’ and Beggars Vagrants were of great concern to the authorities all over Europe. They were considered idle and lazy, useless, immoral, and a threat to the wider community and society. Fighting vagrancy and begging was directly linked to the ideal of the common good and building a good and honourable community, and it was inherently a spatial and material issue. Depending on the ideal of what a town should be like, vagrants might be pushed inside or outside the town: materially removed, hindered from coming in, or alternatively placed in confinement. All across urban Europe, vagrants were banished, put into penal institutions and drafted into armies.1 The issue of vagrancy was far from a simple spatial in-or-out question, however; it was connected to a range of social, legal and mental concerns. In the Swedish context, these concerns included a shortage of workers in the countryside, obligatory service statutes, control of trades, crime prevention, control of begging, the fear of unknown mobile people, military recruitment, the curtailing of immoral living, and expectations about the ability to earn one’s keep. Many of these issues were shared European concerns, and many of them related to changes that were happening in the attitudes toward work, poverty and wandering. Through examining Swedish attitudes and legislation, I will start this chapter by considering how the authorities’ conception of a good town, and attitudes to persons moving around in the Kingdom, impacted on the regulation of urban communities within the state. As many scholars have shown, the attitude toward the poor became more negative at the beginning of the early modern era, both in Protestant and Catholic areas. Although Christian charity did not cease to exist, the evaluation of those in need changed. From the sixteenth century onwards, the poor, and especially wandering beggars, were more and more seen only as a problem, and as being themselves responsible for their plight.2 The 1 Jütte 1994, 165-167; Cowan 1998, 156-157; 160; Coy 2008, 22-23; Tyler 2000, 88-89; Lidman 2005, 300, 303-305; Raphael 2009, 19, 20, 31-32. 2 For example, Unger 1996, 21-23; Jütte 1994, 143, 145; Cowan 1998, 158; Lidman 2005, 298; Schmidt 2009, 318-320; Junot 2012, 78; Canepari 2012, 105, 111, 113.

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earliest new urban poor and beggar laws reflecting these changing attitudes were already passed in the fourteenth century, and the fifteenth century saw an onslaught of laws that divided those in need into the deserving and the undeserving poor.3 The able-bodied wandering beggar, not deserving of support, also featured in fifteenth-century literature, religious writings, and broadsheets. 4 Poverty had been an accepted way of life in the Middle Ages, and in some respects even idealized.5 However, changes in the realities of everyday life began to separate the social understanding of the poor from the religious view. Work and the professions were rising in appreciation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in European towns, at the same time as populations were growing and the grip of feudalism was being loosened.6 The fourteenth century, on the other hand, saw the Black Death, pauperization, rebellions and migration.7 In tandem with these social and economic changes, scholars, theologians, and humanists became increasingly concerned with the question of poverty. As early as the thirteenth century some canon lawyers came out against helping those who were voluntarily poor. By 1400, most humanists considered that certain kinds of poverty caused social disorder, and should be eliminated.8 Lutz Raphael sees this change as a slow development from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to the nineteenth century, in which the religious and social conceptions of poverty became separated, and where poverty eventually was primarily discussed in the context of social reality.9 Alexander Wagner contends that the early modern era saw the disappearance of the idea of the necessity of the poor as a test of Christian love for one’s neighbour, which is found in medieval thinking about repentance and alms, and although even in the Middle Ages the idle poor were looked on with disapproval, in the fourteenth century attitudes started to harden.10 From the fifteenth century onwards, in various parts of Europe, the undeserving poor increasingly became the target of urban and regional laws aiming to get rid of them, for example by banishing them or by banning the giving of alms.11 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Schmidt 2009, 318; Wagner 2006, 21-22, 28; Beier 1985, 3-4. Scribner 1988, 65. Beier 1985, 4. Raphael 2009, 25; Olson 2013, 156. Raphael 2009, 18; Beier 1985, 3-5. Beier 1985, 4. Raphael 2009, 25. Wagner 2006, 25-26. Schmidt 2009, 32; Cowan 1998, 158-159; Jütte 1994, 145; Coy 2008, 166, 169.

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In Sweden, only Stockholm had a population large enough for the poor or vagrants to become a real problem. As the population in Stockholm rose rapidly from approximately 9000 inhabitants in the early 1600s to around 50 000 in the 1670s,12 the problems with incoming people may have been overwhelming. In Turku, which was much smaller, the problems were nowhere near the level of those in Stockholm. The Turku court records show very few complaints about begging or the poor; evidently the streets of the town were not crowded with vagrants. The treatment of vagrants in Turku must therefore first be considered in the context of the laws of the Swedish realm and the thinking behind these, arising both from the general European situation and from the special conditions in Stockholm. These laws applied to all Swedish towns, whether they actually had problems with the poor or not. It therefore needs to be recognised right from the outset that some local practices may not have resulted at all from the material and spatial circumstances of the towns themselves, but those of the capital. K.J. Ståhlberg noted in 1893 that an ideology of yearly contracts for hired hands, and an obligation for landless people to accept such contracts, was a continuing trend running through statutes from the late Middle Ages to the latter part of the seventeenth century.13 Indeed, from the Middle Ages onwards, wanderers, people not having work in a set place, and those working illegally in mobile occupations, were all linked together in statutes aspiring to control mobility in the Kingdom. Roaming vagrants were considered harmful. In 1303 King Birger Magnusson decreed that a vagabond who caused harm in the nation could be flogged, their ears could be cropped and their property could be confiscated. King Birger’s statute refers to wandering people and to foreigners who seemed to be without masters, but who should have been able to show or acquire a pass or a letter of proof from the master they served. Any person without proof of a master was deemed dangerous: prone to commit murder, robbery, theft and other execrable crimes.14 This statute’s description of the dangerous wandering man was very similar to those elsewhere in Europe, for example in late fifteenth-century England.15 The Law of the Realm (1442) and the Town Law (1350s) likewise covered being masterless. Both laws decreed that anyone whose personal estate was 12 Lilja 1995a, 313-315. See Unger 1996 about the development of poverty and poor relief in Stockholm. 13 Ståhlberg 1893, 1-2. 14 Ståhlberg 1893, 11-12. The law is reproduced in Dahle Laghen 1676. 15 Beier 1985, 10.

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less than three marks in value should be in some kind of employment. The Town Law decreed that without enough property or a place of employment, one could not legally reside in town. Refusing a place of employment, when offered, therefore meant having to leave the town.16 In the sixteenth century King Gustavus I continued in similar vein. Looking at two of his ordinances from 1540 one can see the nature of the problems that strangers and vagrants presented. The West Götland Statute (Västra Götaland) (which in its preamble also refers to other areas of the Kingdom) opened with a complaint about strangers ( fremmande) who roamed the country, coming and going at their own pleasure. Such persons were described as wandering beggars, people without employment, and travelling hawkers and chapmen, who at times lied and deceived, causing much harm. The Statute decreed that, as in other Christian monarchies, it should be known who comes in and leaves, and for what purposes. To ensure this information, the statute prescribed that only specified roads in West Götland should be used, even by the subjects of the Crown.17 One of the problems that wandering people presented, then, was that they were seen as potentially dangerous simply because they were unknown. This Statute is consistent with the development of travelling passes, which had begun to be required in European countries from the mid-fifteenth century onwards. By the mid-sixteenth century it was already common practice that travellers needed to prove who they were.18 Wandering people were a problem because of their wandering: their relationship to known communities and therefore also to material space was not fixed, and thus difficult for the authorities to define or to control. In another ordinance by King Gustavus I, written for the town of Örebro, vagrant men, i.e. unattached workers, ‘loose men’ (löös karl, lededräng) were forbidden to travel in the countryside and to take work for a day wage. Instead they were to be hired on a year’s contract, as was the custom.19 Worrisome wandering was thus seen not only as a problem applying to dangerous vagabonds, but also to people looking for work. This concern over unattached mobile persons continued throughout the century. For example, in 1583 instructions to the King’s Bailiffs (konungens fougder) expressed concern over labourers who roamed from place to place and 16 KKLL, Rakennuskaari 15, 80; MES, Byggningsbalken, XXI,96. See also ‘Rikets städer 1619’, 324. 17 ‘Patent till alt Westergötland, 5.6.1540’, 60-62. 18 Groebner 2007, 174-175. 19 ‘Articlar … uthi Örebro A:o 1540 uthaf Rijkzens Rådh ähre gilladhe och ratificarede worden’, 59.

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from contract to contract, never settling down in one place.20 The issue, nevertheless, focused not merely on wandering and potential begging as such, but also on securing a sufficient labour supply for farms and, at least for the nobility, on keeping wages low.21 In the sixteenth century, there was also growing concern over the control of all kinds of trade. Toomas Kotkas has calculated that 60 per cent of all royal ordinances between1523 and 1611 dealt with commerce.22 As was also customary elsewhere in Europe, statutes were issued to ensure that trade and crafts were practised only within towns. Not only was itinerancy itself seen as a problem, but there was also a strong emphasis on tying people to particular places in the context of labour regulation and the economy. The Royal Army was also a part of the equation. Law of the Realm stipulated that all men in the kingdom were obliged to defend the country, but also that they could not be taken to campaigns abroad without their consent. During King Gustavus I ‘s reign it became obvious that, even when supplemented with domestic and foreign mercenaries, not enough men were available for the growing army waging its wars in Europe.23 As the royal policy was based on mercantile principles, taxing citizens was important. It was therefore not sensible to conscript tax-payers. Consequently, many people deemed useful for society were exempt from military service: the nobility and their servants, the burghers and their sons, mine workers, innkeepers, and sheriffs and their household. 24 In Sweden then, as elsewhere in Europe,25 the recruiting system turned to the vagrants. An ordinance from 1577 set out the categories of people suitable for recruitment. Itinerant craftsmen who did not pay taxes, for instance, could be conscripted. In towns, burghers were not allowed to have more servants than they absolutely needed, and all men deemed extra could be recruited if the situation so warranted. Similarly, traders or their employees who illegally traded in the countryside and were not under any town’s privileges, could be taken, as many as were needed.26 In the seventeenth century the Crown was in continuous need of soldiers, and guaranteeing a labour supply in the towns and in the countryside 20 ‘1583 Instruction för Konungens Fougder’, 25-26. 21 Nygård 1989, 45, 50-55, 61; Hammarskjöld 1866, 48-50. 22 Kotkas 2014, 43; Karonen 1999a, 141-143. 23 KKLL, Kuninkaankaari 2.2., 27; Huhtamies 2000, 26-27. 24 Huhtamies 2000, 27. 25 Huhtamies 2000, 21 26 ‘Extract utur Kongl. Maj:ts förordning angående Utskrifningear. Dat Stockholm then 4. Januarii. år 1577’, 267.

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became a problem, as the continuing recruitment depleted the country of able-bodied men. In 1635, for example, around 12600 Finnish foot soldiers were fighting abroad. In the 1650s, during Carl X Gustav’s wars against Poland and Denmark, 8000 new soldiers were recruited. Toivo Nygård has estimated that, at the same time, from the 1630s to the 1650s the number of hired hands fell significantly.27 The compulsion of employment forced people into working contracts, and those who refused contracts could be enlisted in the Army; but as more men were enlisted, there were fewer available for hire on the labour market. In this situation, being unattached, without a settled place, resulted ever more easily in being recruited into the Army or the Navy. Regardless of the centrality of these military and economic concerns, the significance of vagrancy for the general social order cannot be neglected. Social order was at the core of European legislation concerning vagrants, and Swedish laws were part of that shared legislative mindset. Moreover, social order was inextricably linked with moral order.28 The Swedish legislators belonged to the European ruling class, who were chronically afraid of the possibility of disorder and even riots.29 Although the Swedish kingdom was relatively peaceful, and there were no major uprisings in the seventeenth century, such fears were also felt in Sweden. The possibilities of unrest were discussed among leading politicians, and on a smaller scale unrest did exist, in occasional protests and even small riots. For example, the town toll law of 1622 led to some violence in Stockholm in 1622. In 1638, when the toll fees were increased, people in Örebro insulted and hit officials, and tore down toll fences built around the town. Around Skara, 300 peasants began a march towards the town after hearing rumours about planned hangings of those taking part in these attacks, but they stood down after negotiations. There were also some strikes in mining towns.30 What worried the authorities the most was the impact of the burden brought on by continuous wars. They therefore urged the elimination of dangerous opinions among the common people by various means, including intervention by army recruiters.31 The Provincial Governors were advised to impress the people to be ‘dutiful, righteous, willing to serve and dedicated 27 Nygård 1989, 45, 54-55, 61, 67, 79-81. The amount of available work force increased again during the peace time, form the 1660s onwards. Nygård 1989, 81; Rahikainen 2006, 21. 28 Pihlajamäki 2009, 98-100, 109; Kotkas 2014, 73-78. 29 See for example, Beier 1985, 4; Cowan 1998, 170-172. 30 Katajala 2002, 394-397, 400-401. 31 Forssberg 2005, 14, 281-282.

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to the Monarch and the Crown’, and ‘to maintain the good trust that should exist between the Crown and its subjects’.32 Börje Harnesk writes that there was ‘an unmistakable and persistent nervousness in the Privy Council during the seventeenth century’. Tax increases caused concern over a peasant rebellion. The Chancellor, Axel Oxenstierna, even doubted whether he should visit his country estates, in case trouble might ensue.33 This concern expressed by the authorities, together with various aspects of the issue of moral order, brings us back to poverty. The burden of poor relief in the sixteenth century was still largely on the Church’s shoulders. The Church Ordinance of 1571 had placed the responsibility for poor relief in the hands of the God-fearing parishioners and their charity, although the Ordinance did expect the towns to place the poor in hospitals, for which a special warden was to collect money from the townspeople. The hospitals were to take in first the local poor of good reputation, and others only after that, but never any able-bodied poor, who should be able to earn their own way through work.34 Poverty, and the problems it was seen as generating for social and moral order, were managed through organization that attempted to tie people to particular material spaces: mostly their home parishes, but also to hospitals and poorhouses. Although new poor laws and ordinances followed in the seventeenth century this basic approach did not change. Nonetheless, both poverty and itinerants – the incoming hopefuls – were on the increase, particularly in Stockholm, and the issues of poverty and begging were discussed both by the secular and the religious authorities in the capital. One question was who should be allowed to beg. Already in 1573 King John III had authorised the magistrates of Stockholm to banish all useless people (onyttigt folk), who spent their days in wickedness and disgrace. Such people’s poverty was seen as self-inflicted, and they had no right to poor relief.35 In the debate, and in the resulting statutes, the issues of idleness, work, and poverty continued to be linked together throughout the seventeenth century. The Town Rule of 1619 complained about people coming in from the countryside to laze around with no intent of finding work. Such people should be examined, and, if necessary, sent back to where they came from. Begging was forbidden, except for persons with a special 32 ‘Instruction och underrättelse … 1635’, 191. ‘… vthi plichtigh hörsamheet, rättrådigheet, Tiänstwilligheet och devotion emoot H. m.tt och Sweriges Crono … ’, ‘… och oppehålla dett helsosamma förtroende som Herre och Vndersåter ägnar och böör wara emillan’. 33 Harnesk 2009, 251-252; Forssberg 2005, 14, 281-282. 34 ‘Then Swenska kyrkeordningen 1571’, 174, 176; Unger 1996, 76-77. 35 Unger 1996, 77.

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pass from the parish priest.36 Similarly, the beggar law from 1624 forbade general begging. Anyone capable of working who wandered around begging should be condemned to penal servitude.37 In the on-going debate around poverty, a consensus seems to have prevailed about the increase and damaging nature of vagrancy.38 There was a fear, shared by many in other European countries, that the land would be filled with lazy idlers who were useless and harmful to the ordered society.39 A new beggar law in 1642 continued in the vein of the previous ones. Able-bodied vagrant beggars received harsh treatment: they were to be compelled to work in the Royal castles. 40 The 1642 law also restricted the people to be taken into the hospitals to those who were sick and injured, mentally ill or carrying contagious diseases. The deserving poor were to be placed in poorhouses to be built both in the countryside and towns, and even these poorhouses were reserved for persons unable to work because of old age or illness. The goal was to keep the poor of each parish in their own home location, so that they would not go on the road and end up as beggars in towns. Begging was, again, outlawed except for special cases, where a person could get a beggar’s pass from the parish priest. 41 The pattern was similar to many European areas: the poor were categorized, and both their movement from place to place and their place of residence were to be restricted and controlled. Although vagrancy has been discussed above from military, economic and social perspectives, the spatial aspect of the issue remains. The poor laws, the commercial ordinances tying professions to towns, the compulsory employment orders, and the recruitment of soldiers all illuminate the ways in which vagrancy management was very much a spatial question. Put simply: everyone should be in their own (physical) place. The poor were to live their lives, and be helped if necessary, in their home place. Hired hands and maids were tied to the location of their annual contract, and traders and craftsmen to their towns. If you were away from your legitimate place, or could not prove you had one, corporal punishment and banishment could follow. In towns, in particular, since crossing the town border was controlled, moving into town without a legitimate set place was to some extent a risk. 36 37 38 39 40 41

‘Rikets städer 1619’, 324. Unger 1996, 79. Unger 1996, 78-97. Unger 1996, 78; Jütte 1994, 143; Cowan 1998, 159. ‘Ordning och Stadga … … medh Tiggare och fattige 1642’, 332-333. See Unger 1996, 90.

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Before we begin an examination of how the vagrants, after entering the town, settled in or were removed in Turku’s urban space, it must be emphasised that the characteristics of the unattached, the mobile, the poor, the dangerous, the unknown, and the immoral were all associated together in the ordinances and legal discussions. This excerpt from the 1642 poor law shows clearly how poverty, vagrancy and itinerancy were inextricably linked with each other as well as with working or not-working: All vagrants and vagabonds who do not have proof of a sickness of body or weakness of head, but instead have taken to idleness and joblessness, travel around the land, and with their beggary put a strain on Our subjects, shall be tolerated no more; But where they are encountered, they shall be taken into custody and taken to the nearest castle so that they can be put to mine work, until they indicate a significant bettering, and they can justifiably be set free again. 42

Heikki Pihlajamäki does identify a conceptual difference between a vagabond and a vagrant: the former was an able-bodied person travelling around the land, and the latter a person without a place of employment. 43 Already K.J. Ståhlberg also pointed out that these are two distinct legal concepts. 44 However, in the early modern debate, both these two concepts and others overlapped with each other. The 1624 poor law was called the ‘Constitution against beggars and time-thieves’ (Constitution emot Tiggiare och tijdztiufwer), and the 1642 law bore the heading: ‘Order and statute on how beggars and the poor, who need right charity shall be dealt with: including vagabonds and layabouts’ (Ording och Stadga, huru hållas medh Tiggare och fattige, som rätt Allmoso behöfwe: item medh Landstrykare och Lättingar). 45 Other texts used similar concepts in various combinations; for example a decision about liability to conscription by the 1635 Diet lists loose roamers (lösdifware), layabouts (lätting), and weekly wage earners (weckulönare) when discussing non-contracted servants. 46 In practice, it did not make much difference whether the authorities were talking about the poor, the unattached, or the mobile. In actual encounters between people in local urban space, the amalgamation of the different terms in 42 43 44 45 46

‘Ordning och Stadga … … medh Tiggare och fattige’, 332. Translation by the writer. Pihlajamäki 2009, 103. Ståhlberg 1893, 18. Unger 1996, 78, 89. ‘Riksdags beslut. Dat Stockholm den 12. Novemb. Anno 1635’, 939-940.

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statutes and ordinances into an ‘unwanted’ person met with open-ended everyday practices, as we can see from the following discussion about the situation in Turku.

Inspecting, Banishing and Housing Vagrants Beggars and the poor, as placeless or being in a wrong place, are mentioned in the Turku court records only a few times. A rare entry from 1634 refers to a letter written by the Burgomaster and the Council to the Cathedral Chapter, asking for help in finding a way to deal with the poor in the streets; the Council wanted to find a livelihood for the people in question. 47 No later entry can be found as to whether anything was actually done, and we do not even know how many of these problematic people existed. Later, in the 1640s and the 1650s, getting beggars or poor people off the streets is mentioned a couple of times, but only briefly, in public announcements about poor relief. 48 Vagrants, termed ‘loose’ people, on the other hand, are regularly mentioned in the record books as illegal guests in people’s houses, and if found, when they are ordered to leave the town. I will go on here to examine how practices at the local level both organized and were organized by the vagrants, looking at the realities of everyday life and how they were informed by the ideals of a good town, of social and moral order in the community, and of expelling from the the town. Every couple of months or so, public notices were published at the Town Hall, with information about royal ordinances, fire prevention, street maintenance, taxes, and so on. Warnings about accommodating people illegally were usually included: No one was to take in guests or unknown people who had not reported their arrival at the Town Hall or with a burgomaster. All vagrants, that is, those who had no legitimate purpose for their presence in town, should be evicted by the people lodging them. 49 The wording of these proclamations refers to persons coming from outside, to idleness and not having a position of employment, i.e. to the 47 TRO 21 May 1634, 81. 48 TRO 30 May 1640, 235; TRO 4 May 1642, 253; TRO 27 February 1647, 150-151. 49 For example, ‘främmande folck uthan Magistratens wetskap’ (strangers with the magistrate’s knowledge), ‘inga gäster intaga för än de hafwa ansägt dhem hwadan dhe ährö kommen’ (not to take in any guests before they have announced where they come from) or ‘nogon fremmande för än han hafwa warit hoos stadzens förmän och bewist sina pass’ (any stranger before he has been to the town foreman and shown his pass). TRO 13 October 1641 [1642], 24; TRO 5 August 1643, 433; TRO 9 November 1644 [1645], 55.

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characteristics of unwanted persons listed in the ordinances, but poverty and begging are not mentioned.50 The terms used in the proclamations to refer to forbidden lodgers were ‘loose parties’ (löst partij), ‘loose people’ (lösa personer), stranger ( fremmande), and guest (giäst). The term ‘loose people’ was particularly used when burghers were ordered to get rid of unregistered people already living in their houses. Sometimes ‘loose people’ was used together with ‘guest’ or ‘stranger’, but these tended to be used more often when emphasis was on the prohibition against taking strangers in. ‘Guest’ and ‘stranger’, therefore, referred to persons who could not yet be presumed to be unrespectable vagrants, but might potentially still prove to be respectable visitors to the town.51 Every now and then the Turku court record books include entries about ‘inspections of loose people’, which were carried out to ascertain that no illegal lodgers were living in the town. These inspections were associated with the regular inspection of trades in the town, and both were to be carried out twice a year. In the 1619 Urban Rule, the inspection of trades was listed in the same section as the problem of incoming vagrants. The instructions to Provincial Governors from 1635 mandated the trades inspection in the section immediately following the one about non-tolerance of idlers.52 The official monitoring of work was thus bundled together with the monitoring of those not working, and the Town Council’s practices concerning people coming into town were framed by the royal orders about mobility and employment. In the material studied here, these trades and vagrant inspections are mentioned only sporadically. It is probable that the Town Council did not in fact carry out the trade inspections regularly; at least there are very few references to them in the records. In 1648, the Town Council noted that there 50 TRO 14 February 1642, 158; TRO 6 May 1643, 319; TRO 14 January 1647, 91. 51 See TRO 9 February 1639, 34; TRO 23 February 1639, 43; TRO 23 March 1640, 139; TRO 13 October 1641 [1642], 292; TRO 14 February 1642, 158; TRO 4 May 1642, 253; TRO 4 February 1643, 187; TRO 17 April 1643, 292; TRO 6 May 1643, 319; TRO 5 August 1643, 433; TRO 27 March 1644, 231; TRO 10 January 1645, 113-114; TRO 8 February 1645, 127-128; TRO 22 March 1645, 188; TRO 21 May 1645, 305; TRO 9 November 1644 [1645], 55; TRO 19 March 1646, 165-166; TRO 19 October 1646 [1647], 9-10; TRO 31 October 1646 [1647], 33-34; TRO 14 January 1647, 91; TRO 3 May 1647, 285; TRO 26 September 1653, 225; TRO 9 July 1656, 166-167; TRO 27 April 1670, 204-205. 52 TRO 18 February 1639, 40; TRO 8 & 11 January 1647, 89-90; TRO 28 & 30 January 1656, 8; TRO 20 October 1668, 416; TRO 19 & 20 October 1669, 570; 17 May & 25 October 1670, 306, 518; ‘Instruction och underrättelse … 1635’, 204-204; ‘Rikets städer 1619’, 324. Similar inspections were common at least in Germany. Cases dealing with individual vagrants were also common. For example, in sixteenth-century Ulm (17,000 inhabitants) 404 individual vagrants were banished in court. Coy 2008, 36-37.

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were many people in the town whose means of livelihood were unknown, and an inspection would therefore be useful. The tone of this entry is far from routine, which one would expect if the inspections had been made regularly.53 The vagrancy inspections were recorded more often, but usually with no record as to their findings. The entries on record only indicate the names of the burghers appointed to conduct the inspection; no vagrants’ names are listed, and no vagrants were brought to court. The year 1647 is a notable exception, as the vagrancy inspection findings from that year were recorded. In January of 1647, illegal residents were identified in 94 houses, and in December in 48 houses.54 Strikingly, the names of those harbouring vagrants were listed, but neither the number nor the names of the vagrants themselves. No new inspections were recorded after 1647 for several years, nor was illegal lodging mentioned again in the public proclamations until 1653. It may be that the biggest problems had been solved by this efficient strike in 1647, although the 1648 proclamation about the trades inspection seems to indicate that some unclarity about some persons still persisted. Possibly, after the 1648 trades inspection the Town Council just thought they had done enough on this front for a while. The records indicate that vagrants were not seen as a very serious problem in Turku, even if the 1647 inspection shows that many persons classed as vagrants were living in the town at that time. Many people chose, for one reason or another, to keep these ‘undesirable’ people in their houses, and as mentioned, there are no recorded complaints about begging or loose people in the streets.55 In addition, it appears that the inspections of 1647 may have been instigated by the Provincial Governor, and not by the Town Council. Governor Knut Lilliehöök was present at a Council meeting in October of 1647, and spoke to the burghers himself, even if Provincial Governors had already ceased to have a structural role in urban government in the mid-1630s.56 53 TRO 4 September 1648, 206-207. 54 TRO 8 January 1647, 89-90; TRO 11 January 1647, 89-90; TRO 14 January 1647, 91; TRO 8 November 1647, 429; TRO 18 November 1647, 462; 19 November 1647, 463; TRO 20 November 1647, 465; TRO 22 November 1647, 465; TRO 6 December 1647, 488-489. 55 This does not necessarily mean that begging did not exist at all. If begging was not considered a problem, it may have existed without ending up in our sources, except by chance. For example, one case concerning a robber outside the town, mentions that a woman was robbed of food, which she had received in town through begging. TRO 9 November 1670, 620-624. 56 Karonen 1995, 48, 127; Ranta 1975, 544; Halila 1942, 37, 41. From 1635 the governor had supervisory and executive duties, and at least in the 1640s they were more prone to approach the Town Council through letters than be present in meetings, even if they had right to do so.

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Governor Lilliehöök addressed the burghers about the damage they were doing to themselves and others by taking in people who were not supposed to be in the town. Lilliehöök referred to the prevailing circumstances in the countryside, pointing out that farmers were finding it hard to recruit labourers, while at the same time there were people without work living illegally in the towns.57 From the perspective of the state or the province, then, the issue of vagrancy in Turku was connected with manpower problems in agriculture. Like the discussion of the everyday mobility of townspeople in the first chapter, we are again reminded here that although the town formed a material and spatial whole, it was not hermetically sealed. The movement of people to and from the town also affected the places they came from or went to. Thus the town’s matters were of interest to others than the townspeople. Regardless, therefore, of the bounded nature of the town and the importance of the town borders for its identity, economy, and everyday experience, urban vagrancy was not only – or even primarily – an urban problem. As the laws and ordinances show, from the perspective of the state – and, it appears, also of the provincial government – vagrants were a serious problem: they were seen as not working, having no permanent dwelling, and not benefiting the state in any way. A couple of entries from the late 1650s in Turku corroborate the interpretation that the initiative for measures taken in towns to deal with vagrants came from above and not from the town level. In 1659, a letter from Governor General Gustav Horn was read out to the burghers forbidding ships to carry loose men and women into the town. In the previous year, the Governor General had sent a Captain to town with orders that all vagrants should be reported to his Captain according to his instructions.58 It was thus not the Town Council that was the primary agent in dealing with wandering men and women. The focus of the vagrancy problem from the perspective of the Town Council seems to have been their ‘immoral ways’, and only to some extent was attention paid to their disregard of the trade and crafts ordinances and to their damage to the town economically. Nevertheless, although in the court and administrational records it is issues of morality which occur most often, by implication this was closely connected with the economy. Vagrants could not be part of the upright urban community, a community comprising virtuous townspeople and an administration working for the 57 TRO 30 October 1647, 417-418. The problems in the countryside are mentioned already previous fall, TRO 31 October 1646 [1647], 33-34. 58 TRO 28 June 1658, 142; TRO 3 December 1659, 404.

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‘common good’. Crucially, this ‘common good’ included seeking appropriate individual good for oneself and one’s family, but also providing essential goods and merchandise to the town and thus contributing to the good of the population and to the welfare of the community as a whole. Economy and morals were closely connected.59 At statute level in Sweden, the ‘common good’ was expressed in the royal ordinances as the ‘benefit of the realm and its inhabitants’ and in the Town Rule of 1619, for example, as the benefit, well-being and prosperity of the towns.60 These expressions also relate to ideas of ‘good order’ that began to appear in Swedish royal ordinances in the 1560s. Like the concept of Gute Policey in Germany, this sense of ‘order’ was not merely social, but very much also a moral order.61 Through the ideals of Gute Policey we can see that moral order was also of importance to the Crown. As Lutz Raphael writes, ‘good order pleasing God’ was the characteristic goal of sovereigns in the early modern period and both poor people and strangers constituted a challenge to this ideal.62 At the core of the ideal of the ‘common good’ was the bond between the private citizen and public duty; citizens were expected to serve the community.63 The division in early modern towns into burghers and nonburghers, i.e. citizens and non-citizens, was a very fundamental division. According to the laws and ordinances of Sweden, burghers had rights and responsibilities in the town; the rest of the people in effect merely lived there. Other people did have a right to reside in towns, as long as their position and status were clear. Non-burghers, in principle, had to have a connection either to one of the burghers, or to the town administration, the church, or the university. Journeymen, apprentices, servants, and hired hands were considered to be under the rule of their burgher master. Clergy, university professors and students, sailors, and soldiers were respectable townspeople in their own right. Similarly, visiting peasants and foreign traders had their proper place in the community and in the urban space, 59 Isenmann 2010, 108-109; van der Heijden 2010, 273, 278-279; De Munck & Winter 2012, 12-13. The notion of Common Good originates from the antiquity, in Roman law, as well as its medieval interpretation. It appears in political theory, poems, legal texts, reform proposals, political debates and political iconography. See Isenmann 2010, 107, 113. 60 ‘rikets och thes inbyggeres gagn och bäste’, quoted by Kotkas 2014, 71, see also 157; ‘ … om stadzens gagn, wälfärdh och tilvexst, att god ordningh och politied må blijffua ved macht …’ (of the towns benefit, well being and growth, so that good order and policy will prevail) in ‘Rikets städer 1619’, 309. 61 Kotkas 2014, 73-75. 62 Raphael 2009, 20. 63 van der Heijden 2010, 273, 278; Schulze 1986, 598-603.

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as did the wives, children and widows of all these respectable men. For example, the Instructions to Provincial Governors ordered the governor to ascertain, with the Town Council, that the people living in the town were useful craftsmen and merchants, or were employed by someone. All other people were to be investigated, and it should be determined whether they could remain in town; for example, as ‘deserving poor’. There is a direct correspondence between the ideal of a good community and the inspections of trade and vagrants.64 In the ideal of the common good, both the honour of the town and the stability and coherence of the political community or administration, were closely linked with the honour and virtue of all the members of the political community,65 but it is clear that in the early modern urban community the honour and virtue of all the inhabitants were considered quite as important as those of the burghers. The virtues of obedience, honourable conduct and respectability, modesty and moderation, industriousness, and austerity resulted in orderly communal living, good financial standing, and security, all bedrocks of good urban life.66 In her study of early seventeenth-century Linköping, Annika Sandén found that the ideals of order, balance and harmony which we find in the normative sources were also manifested at the local administrational and judicial level. She writes that ‘an organic unity, where people could live in peace and harmony and earn their living’ was a shared goal.67 In this comprehension of a good community, vagrants could not display any of the required virtues: since they did not earn their own living, they did not contribute to the town’s well-being. This suggests that even if the Provincial Governor may have been the instigator for banishing the vagrants in Turku, the Town Council can hardly have been opposed in principle to getting rid of them, even if in practice it did not act on the issue. Despite the lack of active measures initiated by the Town Council to expel vagrants, immoral ‘loose people’ did at times end up in the Town Court, and especially in the Lower Town Court where their place in the urban community and the urban space was negotiated. In a Town Court case from 1659, the widow Karin Fransdotter was accused of housing disreputable people and of selling beer illegally. A member of the court was sent to ask a neighbour, Anna Gerdner about the widow’s life. Anna reported that another widow, and one woman who had just the previous year been 64 65 66 67

‘Instruction och underrättelse … 1635’, 203-205. Isenmann 2010, 113-115. See for example Runefelt 2001, 98. Sandén 2005, 218-219. Translated by the author.

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sentenced to neck irons, had both spent time with the widow Karin. On the basis of Anna’s testimony, the Court banned Karin from selling beer in the future, and in addition she was put in jail for a few days.68 In the Lower Town Court in January of 1639, Hans Danielsson Murupäls was accused of accommodating a group of ‘loose whores and people’ (lösse hooror och Parety), including Agneta Erichsdotter, who had two illegitimate children, and Malin Kåpperska, who was ‘a manifest whore’ (en uppenbar hora). Hans’ lodgers were also referred to as ‘loose harlots’ (lösse skökier).69 In 1640, Walborg Poroj was similarly accused of taking in ‘loose people and young men’ (unge karler) at night-time, and allowing unfitting behaviour; this case was in fact brought to the court by the neighbours, in an effort to protect Walborg’s daughter. Walborg had not heeded previous warnings, but had continued to let notorious people come to her house and be noisy and disorderly in the streets. She was given a heavy fine, and had to undertake on oath not to keep a whorehouse.70 Similarly, Thomas Äyrälä was fined for lodging “loose people’, ‘whores’ and ‘harlots’, with their ‘whore hunters’ (hoorjägare).71 As will be established in the next chapter, adulterers and fornicators were rarely banished from Turku, and regardless of the attention given to the harbourers of ‘loose people’, leniency also seems to have prevailed in the case of keepers of disorderly houses. This was in stark contrast to some other European towns. In post-reformation Augsburg, for example, procurers of prostitutes could be harshly interrogated, branded, whipped and banished,72 and in eighteenth-century Aberdeen keepers of disorderly houses were easily expelled.73 In Turku such offenders were typically merely fined, and no need seems to have been felt to expel them from the town. Notwithstanding this leniency in punishment, immorality was a determining feature of the ‘loose people’ who appear in the Turku court records. Individual vagrants, however, were very seldom taken to court either for immoral living or merely for vagrancy, in the sense of being placeless. In the vagrancy inspections, as mentioned, the vagrants were not named, and even the banishment of the vagrants after an inspection was left to the landlords and landladies to carry out; this was not the job of the court or the Town Council. In the twenty years examined here, only four individuals 68 69 70 71 72 73

TRO 19 September 1659, 332. TKO 19 January 1639. TKO 22 October 1640. TKO 17 November 1640. Roper 1989, 117-119. Simonton 2014, 26.

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were taken to court on the accusation of not having a place in town. In 1644, guild alderman Knut Viisas accused Suni Pärson, a journeyman of his own tailors’ guild, of having been vagrant and without employment for several years. When Suni explained to the court that he was currently employed by Colonel Sigrotz, and as Castellan Cnut confirmed Suni’s words, he was released.74 In 1641, a loose blacksmith (sporemakare), Jörgen Orxläpsensis from Stockholm, who had come to town with a woman called Margrete Andersdotter, was brought before the Lower Town Court by the Town Bailiff on the grounds that he had no pass. Both Jörgen and Margrete were fined for sexual immorality, as they were not married; the charge of vagrancy was postponed for later investigation, but the case does not come up again in the records. Perhaps the couple immediately moved on.75 Then again, in 1644 one Anders Andersson was examined for coming into town as a vagrant. He was asked where he had been born and what kind of a man he was. Anders said he was originally from Vyborg and now had come from Sweden to look for a livelihood. Anders told the court that his pass had fallen into the sea; the court decided that he must be a deserter from the Army. Anders was sent to the castle jail until more information could be retrieved about him.76 And finally, in 1645 Henrich Jöransson was accused of illegal trading in the countryside, and also of being a vagrant. His current true status was unclear, however, as although in the previous year’s inspection of seamen he had been entered in the books as a vagrant, the trader Simon Blom had employed Henrich during the previous winter, and was willing to vouch for him, as long as he was not accused of theft. The case was not off icially closed, but no further examination can be found on record.77 These four cases, the only ones directly dealing with individual vagrants, show that having legal ties to the town, a pass, or provable employment were meaningful factors. Since, however, no one else accused of vagrancy ended up in the record books, it can be concluded that ‘loose people’ were not really seen as a major problem for the town unless they committed a 74 TRO 30 March 1644, 245. As no guild protocols remain from this period, we do not know if persons like Suni were a problem for the guilds and/or if such cases would have been handled by the guilds and not reach the town’s courts. In the latter part of the century illegal crafts master became a problem. There were more trained tailors than could be accepted as burghers and they got stuck between a journeyman’s and master’s status. Not much was and could be done to the journeymen who stayed on as illegal masters. See Kallio 2000, 27, 28. 75 TKO 7 September 1641. 76 TRO 16 November 1644 [1645], 65. 77 TRO 11 February 1645, 135-136.

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specific crime (usually theft), or lead visibly immoral lives.78 It seems clear that the town authorities did not actively seek to prosecute unattached persons. In addition, one can see that the court’s interest was clearly focused more on the townspeople who housed the vagrants than on the vagrants themselves. The emphasis fell on the responsibilities of the burghers in the task of constructing a good town, and on ensuring their respect for the ordinances. We need to go back to 1647, however, to find direct information about how unwanted, but non-offending, ‘loose people’ living in town were actually dealt with. As mentioned, landlords and landladies were ordered to expel illegal inhabitants from their houses and from the town. In 1647, householders identified as lodging vagrants were fined; but the fine imposed was three marks, whereas the regular penalty for this offence should have been 40 marks.79 It was further stipulated that if the householders could not pay the fine, they too could be expelled; this addition of the threat of expulsion to the court’s sentence suggests that these householders were not very wealthy themselves.80 The list of names corroborates this interpretation. Many of the names were Finnish, and Finnish burghers tended to be poorer than those of Swedish (or Dutch, or Scottish) background. In addition, no names of known wealthy and influential burghers can be found on the list. Offering lodging to incomers probably brought in some much-needed extra income; the vagrants themselves may not have always been without funds, or at least hands willing to work, even if, through the definition of vagrancy, they were classified as having neither.81 The willingness of less wealthy burghers to house vagrants, together with the absence of complaints about begging, suggest that most of the ‘vagrants’ found in the vagrancy inspections were not really ‘vagrant’ at all, except in the sense that they did not have a yearly contract with an employer. They did, however, have a meaningful place in the material urban space, alongside the other inhabitants of that space. The lodging of vagrants shows that in everyday urban life the view of vagrants was significantly different from the perspective of the higher administration. It appears that people expelled from houses following vagrancy inspections did not even, in practice, need to leave town, but 78 No record has remained of those incomers who had their passes and we do not know how regularly incoming people were checked. 79 TRO 18 January 1647, 95; TRO 4 May 1642, 253; TRO 9 July 1656, 166-167; TRO 19 October 1646 [1647], 9-10. 80 TRO 6 December 1647, 488-489. A similar threat was made in 1639, although the names or the number of houses having illegal inhabitants is not given. TRO 23 February 1639, 43. 81 TRO 18 January 1647, 95; TRO 6 December 1647, 488-489.

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they could just move to another house. One case of the violent invasion of a home implies such practice. In 1647 a couple accused the burgher Jacob Bispa of the violent invasion of their home. The case record states that the couple had rented Bispa’s sauna, and that following a vagrancy inspection, Bispa had expelled them, as ordered by the Town Council. The eviction had not transpired without conflict, and some nights later, Bispa, being drunk, went to abuse the couple in their new lodgings. During the case and sentencing, no mention was made that the couple should have been or should be expelled from town; the court’s deliberation, as recorded, deals only with whether the alleged crime of home invasion had occurred or not. The court’s conclusion was that it had not, but the burgher was nonetheless fined for slander and minor physical assault (a clip on the ear). The couple, it would seem, stayed on in their new lodgings (although we cannot be sure of what happened outside the actual hearing).82 The numbers recorded in the1647 vagrancy inspection support the interpretation that vagrants did not in practice need to leave town after a vagrancy inspection. In the first inspection in January, 94 houses had illegal guests. In the summer the Council warned that further inspections would be made later that year. Regardless of the first inspection and the warning, in December vagrants were still found in 48 houses; but the names of the householders lodging vagrants were different from those in January. Most likely then, many of the vagrants simply moved around in the town, and as the fine imposed for first-time offenders was small, the risk for landlords was not high enough to act as a deterrent. The point may be that the ordinances concerning vagrants and the undeserving poor were simply too stringent for the realities of everyday urban life. Cornelia Bohn writes how the overall findings from a chronologically extensive research project about exclusion and inclusion in European history show that neither being alien nor being poor equated with being excluded. Strangers and poor people integrated in various ways and on various levels into various communities. 83 Correspondingly, the illegal housing of vagrants was not a practice unique to Turku. Maria R. Bose has found very similar results in her study on Frankfurt: regardless of a series of warnings and threats of punishment, people persistently continued to offer lodging to incomers and foreigners.84 In Sweden, Dag Lindström has shown how the Town Council of Karlstad resolutely informed the Provincial 82 TRO 3 April 1647, 265-268. 83 Bohn 2009, 35. 84 Boes 2007, 108-110.

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Governor that there were no vagrants in town, despite having at the same time admonished one woman for having no place of employment in town, and issuing similar warnings to other unemployed ‘loose people’. In the end the Karlstad Council drew up a list of 23 loose persons, but immediately hired them to clean the streets, placed them on poor relief, or found them places in burghers’ houses. In the end, only four people were expelled.85 It thus seems clear that the definition of being a member of an urban community extended much more widely than formal burghership, and also that belonging to an urban community was not in practice defined from outside that community. As De Munck and Winter point out, the division between inclusion and exclusion may be too simple and linear to match the multi-layered reality of everyday life. 86 The disconnect between the highest authorities’ and the townspeople’s perspectives on incoming placeless people is closely related to a failure to differentiate in the various laws and statutes between different kinds of ‘unattached’ people. And the ‘loose people’ in town were a varied lot. On the local level mere mobility did not define people; some of them may have been relatives coming from the countryside, others may have paid rent, others may have paid their way by working in the house, and only some of them led lives deemed immoral.87 Christian charity also played a role, for instance in the case of the vagrant stranger Anders Andresson, where Henrich Sledh was admonished for having lodged Anders for one night; Sledh justified himself by saying that he could not have refused to take Anders in, as the man came to his door late at night with a wife and a child.88 A similar attitude is indicated in several people each in their turn taking into their home a pregnant girl who could not get a position in town.89 To further paraphrase De Munck and Winter, there were various mechanisms and levels of incorporation open for those coming to town.90 These mechanisms and levels of incorporation were the result of both the actions and values of both the incoming people and the permanent townspeople, rather than of the actions and values of the officials and authorities. In this equation, I believe, the Town Council’s position lies somewhere in between the official view and the townspeople’s views. 85 86 87 88 89 90

Lindström 2005, 10-11. De Munck & Winter 2012, 18. See TRO 3 April 1647, 265-268; TRO 22 October 1655, 261-262; Luukko 1971, 98-99. TRO 16 November 1644 [1645], 65. See also Luukko1971, 98-99. TRO 23 March 1641, 219-222. De Munck & Winter 2012, 18-19.

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Loose or Settled: Sailors and Soldiers and the Town As a result of this prevailingly lenient attitude towards the expulsion of vagrants and loose people, there were various kinds of people living in the town who could be called ‘suspect’. Some of these, on the border between honourable and dishonourable, were called ‘loose’, and some were not. Examining the loose and suspect people living in town is relevant for our understanding of the town: one needs to investigate who was in fact able to live in the town and be part of its fabric. It is important to pay attention to the term ‘loose’ with reference to these people. This is the term used in the statutes and in the town’s proclamations about those seen as not fit to live in the town; however, not all people on the margins of acceptability were termed ‘loose’, and those who were not also have to be taken into account. We will begin with ‘suspect men’, mainly exploring the place of the seamen in town. Seamen in early modern Europe were often mobile, and were usually considered to be on the margins of the respectable community.91 They are therefore a group of people who can tell us more about inclusion and exclusion in the towns. In the Turku sources, the prefix ‘loose’ is seldom used in connection to men; the term emerges as somewhat gender-specific. It was significantly more often applied to women, whom we will further discuss a little later. ‘Loose’ is, however, sometimes used about males with reference to sexual misconduct; in the Turku Town Court material explored here, there is only one such case. In this case the term ‘loose man’ (löösmannen) is used for Simon Jacobsson, who ends up being executed for a multitude of sexual relations, with both married and unmarried women, over a period of twenty years.92 In addition, ‘loose servant’ appears in a few cases in the Lower Town Court dealing with sexual offences.93 These obviously are not the only cases of sexual offence in the courts, but in all the others the male culprit is called something else. Men’s names, in general, were usually prefixed with their occupations (previous or current), such as ‘servant’, ‘labourer’, ‘peasant’, ‘soldier’, ‘seaman’, or ‘journeyman’.94 In addition to these sexual cases, one theft case in the Town Court refers to the male accused as a ‘loose servant’. The man had come into the plaintiff’s house some months before the theft in question. In this case 91 92 93 94

See for example, Fumerton 2006. TRO 19 April 1654, 57-59. TKO 1 October 1642; TKO 3 December 1642. See also Sognerl et al. 2000, 192. Lidman 2012, 144.

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the term could therefore refer to vagrancy, itinerancy, immorality/theft, or joblessness, or all of them.95 Then there are the cases mentioned earlier concerning the four men accused of being placeless; and a case against Olaf Kangiutare, accused of housing a tailor ‘who was said to be a stranger and a loose man’.96 In all of these cases the emphasis in ‘loose’ is on these men being alien to the community, and not having a legitimate place of employment. In general, however, men did not acquire the appellation ‘loose’ easily. The same goes for some other appellations. In cases of theft, men are occasionally given the epithet ‘thief’ (tiuf), but many male thieves are referred to by their occupation or simply by their name, whereas female thieves were more often referred to as ‘thief-woman’ (tiufkona). As ‘loose men’ appear in the records so infrequently, we can more fruitfully explore men’s possible marginality and vagrancy through seamen. Seamen are a category who, even if respectable, can be seen as occupying a somewhat unclear position in relation to vagrancy and settling in town. There were two kinds of seamen in Turku, Crown seamen and burghers’ seamen. Both of them may have been actively employed only for part of the year. The men employed by the burghers had work when the merchants needed them on their ships. The Crown seamen were financed by the burghers, as reserve hands for the royal Navy, and they were kept by the burghers until they were needed by the Navy and sailed from the town.97 Crown seamen formed the majority of the seamen in the town, as the Turku burghers had few ships. For example, in the 1647 census, 96 Crown seamen were listed and only 22 burghers’ seamen.98 According to Armas Luukko, in the town of Vaasa some seamen (the non-Crown ones, one would imagine) were also eligible to swear a burgher’s oath; Luukko cites three cases from the beginning of the 1660s, where seamen took burghership as ‘carpenter/sailors’.99 In principle burghers’ seamen could be respectable and full-fledged members of the urban community. Even the Crown seamen, who are often seen as unattached outsiders, may in practice have been quite settled in the town. In 1629, the proclamation of an order for Crown seamen to leave for Sweden (under pain of death) states that this order applied both those who rented rooms as well as those that had their own houses.100 In the census records from the 1640s and 1650s, one can find seamen with a reference to two or 95 TRO 15 January 1640, 79-80. 96 ‘den dee hafwa sagdt wara fremmande och een lössman’. TRO 20 September 1641, 431. 97 Glete 2010, 601. 98 Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1647, Turun ja Porin läänin tilejä (7233), KA. 99 Luukko 1971, 89-90. 100 von Bonsdorff 1887, 58 (-den 17 October 1629).

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three taxable persons next to their name. This most likely means that there was a wife and perhaps a maid. In some cases, there are also references to lodgers attached to the seamen, which would indicate that they occupied a house they could rent out a room in.101 Seamen were thus not necessarily all ‘loose’, unattached men, but may have had a very settled place and firm ties to the material space of the town, even if the court sources often portray them as marginal, unattached, and causing problems. The Turku court records do not always indicate whether seamen mentioned in various cases were Crown seamen or burgher’s seamen.102 Thus in Turku we cannot study naval seamen separately from civil seamen, as Hans Andersson was able to do in the case of late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century Stockholm.103 In any case, it seems that whatever the appellation, seamen did get into trouble; they were often in court both for general drunkenness and disorderliness, and quite often also for theft.104 Persistent idleness, the lack of a secure source of income, and the prospect of leaving for war may have made the men’s lives quite unstable. This unstable life may be linked to an unstable relationship with the material urban space as well as to a lack of order in one’s personal life. But it certainly is the case that not all seamen were alike. Some may have led a very settled life, some less so. Whatever the case was with each individual seaman, seamen as a group did cause problems recurrently throughout the seventeenth century. In 1633 the town complained to the Crown about seamen who had completed their service for the Crown roaming around the town, and being a nuisance both to the Crown and the town.105 Similarly, in 1686 the King’s response to a complaint by the town refers to problems caused by soldiers, cavalryman and seamen.106 The Town Council’s proclamations also frequently pay particular attention to seamen, impressing on the toll clerks, for example, that 101 For example, Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1658, 217, 221-222, 225; Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1647, 274-278. 102 And even when the man is specified to be stadzbåtzmän (town’s seaman), landzbåtzmän (country seaman), or Cronones båtzmän (Crown seaman), he can in each case still be a soldier. Landzbåtzmän was a soldier financed by peasants, stadzbåtzmän could be a soldier financed by the town and Cronones båtzmän could be either, but stadzbåtzmän could also be a seaman employed by the burghers. 103 Andersson 1993, 43. 104 TRO 24 March 1634, 40; TRO 15 September 1634, 101; TRO 21 March 1640, 137, 160; TRO 14 February 1646, 101; TRO 22 March 1647, 298-302; TRO 26 July 1649, 63; TRO 3 October 1653, 229-230, 232. 105 Privilegier och resolutioner för Åbo Stad, 59. 106 Privilegier och resolutioner för Åbo Stad, 176.

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they should be careful not to let in seamen or solitary women attempting to enter the town.107 Only a minority of the seamen appeared in court. In the census of 1638, where seamen were listed separately, there were 108 persons classified in the category of Crown seamen and their households.108 In the cases from the lower Town Court and the Town Court for 1640, the closest in time in my material to the census of 1638, only about a dozen seamen appear, and the same applies to 1641. On the other hand, not all fights and drunken behaviour will have ended up in court, and the concern expressed by the Town Council may therefore still have been well founded on events in town. Secondly, although this is not mentioned in the Turku records, it is also possible that some seamen’s offences were heard in a naval court, as it happened in other towns, since in principle Crown seamen came under the Admiralty’s jurisdiction. However, seamen belonged under the naval jurisdiction only while in Crown service, and it may be that different Town Courts had differing interpretation of what this meant.109 Still, as the recurrent complaints and warnings show, seamen were seen as suspect people. It is telling that in 1659 seamen were assigned to the dishonourable task of implementing the punishment of the gauntlet.110 On the other hand, the ambivalent link between dishonour and seamanship was used by the Town Council in one case when they wanted to save a servant found guilty of theft from harsher punishment by applying to the Court of Appeal to have him taken on as a Crown seaman.111 It is, however, the legislation that demonstrates the clearest and very direct link between vagrancy and seamanship. As we have seen in the previous chapter, vagrants were easy to recruit for the Navy as Crown seamen, and there are some hints that this kind of enlistment did take place. In Turku in 1632, the Town Council members Mårthen Sigfredsson and Lars Palicka accused burgher Jöran Hassi of exaggerating the number of Turku vagrants in Stockholm, when some burghers were questioned by the Admiralty over the seamen provided by the town. Hassi had stated that there were 120 vagrants in Turku 107 TRO 11 January 1647, 89-90. 108 Åbo stads mantaal och boskaps lengdt 1638, Turun ja Porin läänin tilejä (7183a), 610. As seamen in 1638 were counted as a group of their own, this year may give a more reliable result than the later censuses from the 1640s and 1650s where seamen were listed among the other people according to their lodgings in a rather unsystematic manner. 109 Andersson 1993, 39, 43; Södertälje stads dombook 1649, Härads m.fl. Rätters Domböcker, RA, 71; Ibid., 63. 110 TRO 31 August 1659, 322. 111 TRO 30 April 1659, 207.

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suitable as Crown seamen, and also that the traders in town had protected and concealed some of their servants from enlistment. Furthermore, Hassi had accused the Town Clerk of accepting bribes in the recording of seamen. In the Town Court, Hassi retracted his statement, and said he had meant only 60 vagrants. It is not clear if the burghers and/or the Town Council were concerned that their town might be targeted for further inspection and recruitment, or whether they were simply concerned with their own and their town’s reputation.112 Nevertheless, in this incident, naval seamanship is directly linked with vagrancy, which shows that a link existed also in practice and not just in law and ordinance. Two cases concerning the recruitment of vagrants reached the Town Court; otherwise, matters of conscription were handled by the General Commandeur. These two cases, however, show that vagrants did indeed get conscripted, even if in these cases by dragoons. In one case, Kirstin Simonsdotter complained to the Court that a troop of dragoons had run rampage in her home, while her husband was away. The dragoons had come for her husband, Jacob Silli, because during a long-drawn argument between his father and him, his father had stated that the couple were both vagrants. All that the Town Court did, however, was to enter the case into record, and Kirstin was told to lodge her complaint with the General Commandeur.113 In the other case, Erich Stång was conscripted in 1659 as a vagrant after, according to Stång, an opponent in a fight had reported him as a vagrant, thus preventing him from gaining employment, which he would otherwise have done. In further examination, numerous documents from Stång’s previous employers showed that he was, indeed, without employment, although he had in the past worked for some high-ranking people, including for example Count Gustav Horn. Since Stång had been taken by the dragoons, because he had no pass later than from 1654, and had not been in employment for over a year, however, the Town Court ruled that he should stay with the dragoons. The Captain that Erich Stång had complained about, however, had since left town, and the case could not be properly closed; thus, in the end, the Town Court left it to the parties to sort the matter out with each other.114 Both Stång’s and Silli’s cases show that the town authorities were unwilling to interfere with military recruiting processes, even if they evidently tried to protect their own servants from being conscripted and were, on the 112 TRO 25 June 1632, 13. 113 TRO 18 January 1658, 5. 114 TRO 28 March 1659, 177-180; TRO 1 June 1659, 250-252; TRO 27 June 1659, 267-268.

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whole, not very concerned about vagrants living in the town. It thus seems probable that any man with no place of employment was, in principle, at risk of being taken from the town for military service. Seamen in Turku were perhaps seldom classified as ‘vagrant’ or ‘loose’, at least that we know of, but they were in a position that could relatively easily lead to the edge and over it. A Crown seaman called Jöran Jacobsson will serve as an example of a problematic mobile seaman. He had arrived in Turku with a woman called Anna Matzdotter, to lodge at the burgher Thomas Bryggiare’s house. He was then accused of stealing from a publican in the neighbouring town of Naantali. Jöran was interrogated as to how he had come to leave the Crown’s service and whether he had a pass with him. Jöran said that he was from Mynämäki (Virmo) parish, and had been sick in Stockholm for three years, and did not have a pass. Further inquiry revealed that he already had a wife in Turku, with whom he had six children. Anna had been ‘his whore’ (sin hora) from Mynämäki for three years, and they had twins together; they were not married.115 Anna told the Court that she had met Jöran not in Mynämäki, but in Sääksmäki parish, and that he had promised to marry her, giving her as a gift of betrothal two silver dalers. He had told her that his wife had died in Sweden. Another witness, a Crown seaman, stated that Jöran had deserted from the Navy, and fled to Finland. Jöran then insisted that his Captain had discharged him already eight years ago.116 Whatever the truth in this respect, before coming to Turku Jöran had worked in Nagu (Nauvo) parish in the archipelago for about a month, telling his employer there that he had previously been a burgher in Turku and that his house had been destroyed in the great fire in the previous year. He had introduced Anna as his wife.117 Jöran is an example of a seaman who through his own actions ended up in the category of ‘loose men’, even if he had succeeded in presenting himself as a respectable working man for certain lengths of time. He is also an example of the overlapping of the honourable and the dishonourable. Being respectable or ‘honourable’ was always connected with the particular town and parish where a person resided: in Nauvo parish, Jöran had passed as an honourable man, but in Turku he was soon exposed as a thief, found out as a deserter, and categorized as vagrant. Although the court records often describe seamen as troublesome ne’erdo-wells, Jöran in more detail than most others, locally resident seamen 115 TRO 3 February 1657, 15. 116 TRO 4 February 1657, 20-21. 117 TRO 7 February 1657, 26.

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were usually not the ‘vagrants and strangers’ that burghers were warned not to accommodate. Crown seamen may well have been established members of the urban community for a long time before being called up for active service. They rented rooms in burghers’ houses, thus contributing to the urban economy (although at the same time, of course, getting their stipend from the burghers). On the other hand, they might also rent out room in their own houses to other tenants.118 It was usually only after finishing their period of service (legally or illegally) that Crown seamen were more prone to end up as vagrants. The burghers’ seamen, on the other hand, as their work was vulnerable to economic fluctuations (i.e. the burghers’ ability to finance ships), were always in danger of losing their livelihood. Thus both kinds of seamen may, at some point, have ended up as vagrants in the full meaning of the term (as it manifests in the law texts and court cases) and thus fallen under the threat of expulsion, even if in general they appear to have been relatively well-integrated members of the urban community.

Ordering Women in the Margins Women on the margins of European urban communities were often soldiers and seamen’s wives and widows as well as single women unable or unwilling to find an honourable occupation and a set place. In Germany, Maria R. Boes writes that women were poor more often than men, and travelled frequently in search of work; therefore they were more often new to town, outsiders, and received somewhat discriminatory treatment by the authorities.119 In England, on the other hand, according to A.L. Beier, the majority of the mobile masterless people were young men, whereas women formed a majority of the urban sedentary poor. Vagrant women, asserts Beier, were typically prostitutes, pregnant girls, or women looking for their absconded husbands.120 Here I will examine how ‘suspect women’ were situated and categorized in the Turku Town Court and community, and discuss how they found their places in the shared urban space. In seventeenth-century Sweden as a whole there were more women than men. In the towns there were many poor soldiers’ widows and wives who did not know their husbands’ destiny. There were also many unmarried women in need of employment, some on the move because many people 118 For example, Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1658, 217, 221, 222, 224; Glete 2010, 584, 595-596, 601. 119 Boes 2007, 101-102. 120 Beier 1985, 52-53.

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worked outside the home before getting married. Maids were employed in most urban houses, while not all houses employed a hired hand or a male servant.121 There were thus both sedentary poor and solitary women in town as wells as incoming women looking for work as maids. As already mentioned in the first chapter, women’s work other than maid’s work is not really visible in the sources, since only yearly contracts for maids were legal work. In addition, we cannot know for certain how many of the women that the sources refer to as maids were working outside those yearly contracts. One can, however, presume that many of the women outside the yearly contracts were among those referred to as ‘house woman’ (huskvinna) or ‘lodger’ (inhyses), a motley crew of ‘independent’ persons living in a house that was not their own. While there are no clear signs of these or other single women being more closely monitored than other townspeople, the terms used to describe women in the sources do highlight the importance of their virtue as compared to men. Thus the sources suggest that with regard to potentially marginalising issues, women may have been more visible in the urban space than men were. Both the term ‘loose’, and other related terms, were applied to women more than to men. When looking at ‘loose’ women in Turku, the widow Karin Fransdotter can serve as an example. Her house was a location of suspect activities and ‘loose people’, although in her case the term ‘loose’ is used vaguely, without specifying gender. Several women mentioned in her case, however, are given special attention. One previously sentenced woman (sentenced for what we do not know) who was found at the widow’s house is referred to as a kona (woman), which is an often-used attribute for a disreputable woman. In court records of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries various terms are used to refer to women on trial: lööskona (loose woman), kåna or kona (woman), qwinsperson (female person, womenfolk) as well as more case-specific terms such as tiufkåna (thiefwoman) and hora (whore). In his study of women in Stockholm in 1450-1650, Marko Lamberg cites most of the women appearing in court records on charges relating to prostitution as ‘harlot-thieves’: he sees the association between dishonour, theft and prostitution as so strong that he coins this term ‘harlot thief’ and applies it to women denoted in his sources as ‘loose woman’, ‘infamous woman’ (beryktad kvinna), ‘harlot’ (sköka, biläspirska), ‘whore’ (hora, horkona), ‘everyman’s whore’ (allemanshora), or ‘pillory whore’ (kåkhora). However, as Lamberg also notes, any of these terms might also

121 Ranta 1975, 175.

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refer to many kinds of women seen as morally suspect, and not only strictly to prostitutes and/or thieves.122 Scholars have interpreted the above terms of lööskona, kona and qwinsperson to mean ‘dishonourable women’, but the use of the vocabulary displays considerable variation. For example, in her study of a parish in south central Sweden, Gudmur Andersson found that the use of ‘loose woman’ declined in the second part of the seventeenth century, while the use of kona and qwinsperson became more common at that time. Both Andersson and Seppo Aalto maintain that kona was less disparaging than the other expressions and could be also used neutrally to refer to women in general. However, in my Turku material, I find that the term kona affixed to a woman’s name always indicates that the person was seen by the court as not of the most honourable status in the community.123 The accumulation of negative characteristics to a woman who had committed one unvirtuous, dishonourable, or disreputable act was both part of the construction of the proper female norm and part of ‘creating vagrants’ as Jason Coy puts it. ‘Loose persons’ were not so much recognized as made by the town and the court officials and the townspeople. In the case of loose women, the use of the term kona in the court records is part of this process.124 In Turku Town Court in the 1640s and 1650s, the most clearly disparaging label ‘loose woman’ (lööskona) was used relatively seldom, and in the 1650s hardly at all. In the Town Court the term was mostly used in cases of fornication. Only in a few entries does the term primarily mean ‘vagrant’, and these entries do not concern individual women, but are among the public notices about accommodating undesirable people. The term ‘loose maids’ (lööspigor) appears in the list of unwanted people, which also includes soldier’s wives, ‘unknown men’, and ‘useless people’.125 The term kona without the affix ‘loose’ is typically used in cases of infanticide, theft, or fornication, or of suspicion of these crimes. Despite being a widely used term of general disparagement, kona is seldom used in the Turku Town Court records of a woman unless she is associated with charges of theft or indecency, and is most strongly connected with sexual offences. In the Lower Court records, various cases bear testament to this. In one case concerning birth out of wedlock, the mother is described as 122 Lamberg 2009, 140. 123 Andersson 1998, 1998, 190-191, 193-194; Aalto 1996, 76; Sogner et al. 2000, 192; Lidman 2012, 143-144. 124 Coy 2008, 173; Boes 2007, 101-102. 125 TRO 23 February 1639, 43; TRO 14 January 1647, 91.

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‘… then a jungfru (maiden) and now kona (woman) …;’126 in a similar case from 1641 the woman is called ‘… a kona (woman), at that time a pyga (maid) … ;’127 and most poignantly ‘… the parish priest’s maidservant, who is a kona (woman), has given birth to a child’.128 In the last example the term woman (kona) would be redundant unless it carried more meaning than just ‘a female person’. In addition, a draft church law from the mid-century directly parallels the terms hor and kona in sections discussing the baptism of children born out of wedlock and the churching of their mothers.129 It is thus rather clear that kona denoted ‘a fallen woman’, which from our point of view of settledness makes examining the few cases where a woman labelled kona was not accused of indecency or theft interesting. Only three instances are found in the material studied here where the term kona is used in a case not dealing with sexual offences or theft.130 One case concerns Anna Rasmusdotter, who occupied a room in the building of the Court of Appeal. She had a hearth under the room where the archives of the court were kept, and for fear of fire, the members of the court wanted her moved. Various attempts to evict her were made, but she appears to have returned each time. The case notes are very brief, and do not elaborate on the history of her living conditions or her status in the community, or even what finally happened to her. Another case refers to a woman who refused to hand over a Bible that she had received in pawn, when a student came to claim it for the book’s owner. Nothing is recorded about the women but the name, kona Maria Willomsdoter; it is, however, evident that this is the same Maria Willomsdotter who had been sentenced for a sexual offence a few years earlier, when she was fined for giving birth to an illegitimate child. Both cases are interesting in that they connect women referred to using the derogatory term kona with people in relatively high status. Why is a dishonourable woman living in the house of the Court of Appeal, and why is it so difficult to get rid of her? Why is another woman hanging on to the pawned Swedish Bible of a learned scholar?131 We do not really have answers to these questions, but the cases do tell of the possibilities for fallen women to retain their position in the town, or to find a new one. 126 TKO 2 May 1640. 127 TKO 19 June 1641. 128 TKO 22 June 1643. 129 ‘Svenska kyrkoordningen’, 57, 63. 130 For more about crime, banishment and the town, see the next chapter. 131 TRO 9 May 1648, 128; TRO 31 October 1642 [1643], 49; TRO 23 November 1642 [1643], 87.

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As Tiina Miettinen’s research on the early modern Finnish countryside shows, there were more possibilities to adapt to the local community as a fallen woman than previously recognised.132 Maria Willomsdotter had been ordered to pay fines for her sexual offences, but had not been able to pay them and a whipping and banishment was ordered.133 This punishment was never realized, however, and instead Maria sat in jail for over a year. In the end Maria’s mother managed to collect the money for the fine from various burghers of the town, and also to get the Court of Appeal to overturn its ruling on banishment. We do not know anything more about Maria’s and her mother’s relationship with the burghers, nor do we know why the banishment was not executed in the first place. However, as we see Maria in the town taking a Bible in pawn, and probably continuing to keep a tavern or an alehouse, we can conclude that (at least for some women) not even a sentence for fornication, a child out of wedlock, and a long imprisonment made holding a relatively accepted place in town impossible.134 We know even less about Anna in the Court of Appeal building than about Maria, but her case illuminates well how, regardless of the efforts to place people in the categories of honourable and dishonourable or wanted and unwanted, the reality was more confused. As Paul Griffiths has shown in the case of London, the living spheres of honourable and dishonourable people overlapped. Social borders were always permeable, because people moved in or through same spatial surroundings, and because the honourable sometimes needed the services of the less honourable.135 The mixing of spheres was even more likely in smaller towns. In Turku the number of shady persons and places was smaller than in London, but at the same time, because the town was small, there was also less possibility to avoid certain places or parties. Anna Rasmusdotter’s case, in particular, shows how the high and the low indeed lived on top of each other. Her case also shows that the practice of procrastination that Dag Lindström has written about as a political strategy used by the Crown, the Town Councils, and the burghers, was also used by the lower classes.136 Anna first refused to leave, and then, when the Town Constables threw her things out, still came back. It is rather unfortunate that the records of the case dwindle away, and we are left without any resolution as to who won the dispute and what became of Anna. 132 Miettinen 2012. 133 TRO 28 April 1645, 261 134 TRO 7 April 1647, 251. 135 Griffiths 2000, 125-129. 136 See Lindström 2005.

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The third case including a kona not accused of a sexual offence or theft refers to a fight between two women: Anna, Påwel Nilsson’s wife, and the kona Walborgh. Anna started the fight when Walborgh had not paid her rent, and in any case, Anna suspected her of being a thief. In the court record, Walborgh is first referred to by the term huuskona (housewoman), an independent woman living under someone else’s roof. A huuskona or huusqwinna was usually an accepted inhabitant of the town, and paid tax. But such a woman could easily slip into being considered a ‘loose woman’. In this case, her inability to pay rent and her evidently quarrelsome nature led the mistress of the house to evict Walborgh from the house, which ended up in a physical scuffle. Later in the court record, Walborgh is simply called kona, not huuskona. The case itself remained unresolved.137 We do not know whether Walborgh really had fallen into petty crime, or if she actually was a fallen woman or not, or whether the mere suspicion of theft was enough to earn her the appellation of a ‘loose woman’, or if the term was in fact used by the plaintiff in court as a tool to degrade Walborgh. Even if the meaning of the term is clear – i.e. it means a fallen woman – its use does not necessarily correlate with the reality of the women’s lives. We do not know whether kona was used of these women outside the court records. It is clear, however, that the relationship between the worker and the employer was an important factor in keeping a person on the right side of a fluctuating boundary between honourable and dishonourable, wanted and unwanted, and settled and vagrant.138 In conclusion, it can in general be said that a ‘loose woman’ was a fallen woman or a woman of ill repute, and therefore, in principle, an unwanted person in the town, at least from the perspective of the courts. Nevertheless, some of these loose women were able to find a place in the urban community and urban space. If they had reconciled their offence through a given punishment, they were allowed to stay in town, even if probably not in as good standing as they would have enjoyed before their transgression. A punishment, be it a fine, a church punishment, a lashing at the town hall or a stint in the town jail, would inevitably have affected the victim’s future life in the community.139 And while not all fallen women necessarily ended up 137 TKO 14 April 1641; TRO 12 & 24 May 1641, 300-301, 321. 138 See De Munck & Winter 2012, 2012, 7, 18; Coy 2012, 164; Lamberg 2006, 53-61. 139 Men were not immune to the effects of the punishments for sexual offences. In addition to the church punishment, the fines and the obligation to provide maintenance burdened them. Wealth, social status, reputation, and local connections influenced how a man could survive the consequences and maintain his place in the town. I thank Mari Välimäki for our discussion on the men’s situation.

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in court, nor all the punished women outside the community, the boundary between a vagrant woman and a maid or huuskvinna could be thin. For example, an older maid who had previously served with the Burgomaster had found lodgings with another burgher, who was then summarily fined for lodging a vagrant. As is common for cases dealing with maids or vagrants, this maid’s journey from Burgomaster’s service to vagrancy is not described or explained in any more detail. The study of the status of ‘suspect men and women’ in Turku tells of a similar grey area of values and practices as the inefficient practice of banishing vagrants does. Inclusion, at least in the urban space, if not in the fully respectable urban community, was more common than exclusion. In this process of preference for inclusion, however, the nature of the ideals favouring exclusion are also important, since it is these ideals which in part defined the urban, both the community and the space. The threat of banishment for socially unacceptable behaviour, together with the ways that suspect persons were treated in court and in the community, influenced people’s opportunities in the town, and limited or protected their prospects. The inclusive practices, however, made the suspect people part of the wider urban community, which collectively defined what the town was and what it included. The mobility of servants, single mothers, and seamen played an important role in constructing how the town borders, crossing them and residing in town were built.

3

Banishment and Lawbreakers

Banishment, Law and Crime Even if suspect people were often able to find a niche of their own in the town, banishment did threaten many. Everywhere in urban Europe, banishment could be used as a tool for getting rid of people who did not fit into the ideal of a good town or into the workings of a good community. In addition to vagrancy, various other transgressions could result in expulsion. In Turku, Agnis Olofsdotter is a fruitful example of a banished person. She was a thief and also a vagrant. As far as we can see, she had neither a permanent place to live, nor regular employment. Unlike the anonymity of most vagrants, offenders who were banished for particular crimes appeared in the Turku Court as individuals, and thus their stories can be told. In this chapter, I explore people banished for breaking particular laws, and consider how their relationship to the town f igured in their destinies. Agnis Olofsdotter was banished from town for theft, in 1639, again in 1641, and again in 1643. Her case seems to be a simple instance of an unwanted criminal. She appears in the court records for the first time in 1639, when she and two other women who had conspired with her were first sentenced to death by the Town Court, but then pardoned by the Court of Appeal, which commuted their sentences first to fines, and then to the pillory and banishment.1 After being banished in 1639, however, Agnis came back, and was again caught stealing in 1641. She was again sentenced to death, but again the Court of Appeal mitigated the sentence, this time to the cutting-off of an ear and banishment.2 Two years later, Agnis was once more caught stealing in town. This time, the Town Court referred the case to the Court of Appeal, as the last time Agnis had escaped before the punishment could be carried out. The higher court decided to implement the earlier sentence, and Agnis left the town again. Nonetheless, two years later, in 1645, Agnis was caught stealing in the town for the last time. After a lengthy investigation, where Agnis admitted to various property crimes, she was sentenced to death and 1 TRO 19 June & 16 July 1639, p.231, 291, appendix. 2 TRO 12 May & 23 June 1641, p. 297-298, appendix. This kind chain of events was not rare in the courts, because the laws required rather stringent punishments, for example, for theft than the courts really wanted to execute. See Thunander 1993; Laitinen 2013.

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not pardoned, and was beheaded by axe on 17th March 1645.3 Agnis entered and exited the town multiple times; it is worthwhile to study how and why she and others like her could do so, and we will return to it later. But first the nature of banishment as punishment must be examined. Banishment was a harsh punishment, even if in Agnis’ case she probably would have preferred to be banished again, instead of being executed. The harshness of banishment, however, is illustrated by a young woman found by Maria R. Boes in her Frankfurt material, who would have preferred decapitation to banishment. 4 In a society where a set place in a community was at the core of one’s everyday life and where that place so elementally determined one’s honour and reputation, being banished from a community was a very severe punishment indeed. Although expulsion was a harsh but common punishment, it is not yet very well researched; sometimes general treatises on crime and punishment do not even mention it.5 But all over Europe, individuals could be banished from town for various crimes, or for improper ways of living. When one considers how important people’s ties to their everyday living environment are in general, and how much a respected, established place in a particular communal space was for people in the early modern period, an examination of banishment can offer crucial insights for cultural and social history in general and for the study of urban space in particular. For Germany, where urban banishment has been more fully researched than elsewhere, an extensive list of types of persons liable to banishment can be drawn up: beggars, prostitutes, debtors, those with unpaid fines, thieves, gypsies, forgers, those trading with Jews, breakers of religious peace, users of a false name, instigators of unrest, sellers of forbidden books, adulterers, unmarried cohabiting couples, those with persistent marital difficulties, killers, fraudsters, vagrants, and religious deviants.6 Maria R. Boes has calculated that in 1562-1699, in Frankfurt, 94 per cent of those sentenced to non-capital punishment were banished. People could also be banished merely on suspicion of a crime, particularly if they were Jews. Children and wives of the offenders could be expelled with the offender.7 Treatises on crime in early modern Europe mention banishment occasionally among other punishments and tell us, for example, that in England banishment 3 TRO 17 February, 26 February, 12 March & 17 March 1645, 137-143, 151, 185. 4 Boes 2007, 106. 5 See for example, Österberg & Sögner 2000 and discussion about the issue Coy 2008, 1; Goodman 2009, 110; Kedar 1996, 165-166. 6 Tyler 2000, 92-93; Coy 2008, 9. 7 Boes 2007, 105-106.

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could be imposed for giving birth to an illegitimate child and vagrancy; in France for extra-marital sex, vagrancy, theft, and general debauchery; in Italy for extramarital sex and vagrancy; in Spain for theft; and in New England for religious dissent. 8 However, as so little research has been carried out into urban banishment, it is difficult to draw up definitive lists of the crimes and offences for which banishment might be imposed in various jurisdictions. In Finnish and Swedish research, banishment has been all but completely ignored. In one general treatise on Nordic law and judicial practice, the chapter about punishments does not even mention banishment.9 In another chapter in the same book, Ditlev et al. mention that banishments increased in the seventeenth century as the number of death sentences went down, but do not elaborate.10 Some scholars briefly refer to banishment;11 but in most of the research it is not even mentioned. Petri Karonen, for example, includes banishment (somewhat oddly) in a list of corporal punishments in his statistics concerning sentences for serious crimes, but only in a footnote.12 One significant exception is Marko Lamberg’s examination of banishment in his research into the ‘harlot-thieves’ of early modern Stockholm.13 In mid-seventeenth-century Turku, banishment was meted out for vagrancy, theft, sexual misbehaviour, witchcraft, extreme violence in or other misuse of office, ridiculing one’s hierarchical superiors, and incapability to pay fines. Theft was the most common crime punished by banishment, while all the other crimes account for only a couple of banishments each during the 20 years studied here. In most cases, banishment was imposed in Turku on the basis of the fourteenth-century Town Law, but various royal ordinances also affected sentencing. The law in the early modern Swedish kingdom was very strict, and many offences that might today be categorized as merely offensive were treated as criminal. After the Reformation, new ordinances were enacted on serious crime. In 1563 a statute of King Eric XIV made the death sentence mandatory for blasphemy and adultery. In 1608 King Charles IX’s ordinance 8 Ingram 1996, 47; Cashmere 1996, 6; Mentzer 2000, 4, 15, 16 n28; Pike 1975, 16; Cahn, 1989, 114, 117; Goodman 2012; Junot 2012, 78; Canepari 2012, 111, 113; Hitchcock 2012, 199; Fumerton 2006, 6. 9 Naess & Österberg 2000, 140-166. 10 Ditlev et al. 2000, 31. 11 For example, Sundin 1992, 137-138; Österberg & Lindström1988, 47. 12 Karonen 1999b, 225. 13 Lamberg 2009.

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increased the number of crimes punishable by death to 70. Traditionally, legal historians have emphasized the strict penal policy introduced with this adoption of Mosaic Law, and have highlighted the harshness of court rulings in the seventeenth century, whereas the eighteenth century brought a humanizing of the penal code. Rudolf Thunander, however, has shown in his study of the Göta Court of Appeal that even in the 1630s and 1640s most death penalties were commuted in the higher courts, and that later more lenient legislation in fact followed the established practices of the Courts of Appeal. It appears that the harshest legislation was never fully implemented. The 1608 ordinance, however, did influence the lower courts to move to imposing harsher sentences; the higher courts were freer and more apt to mete out more lenient penalties, mostly fines, as had been the practice earlier in the sixteenth century.14 With regard to banishment the statutory instrument regularly referenced by the Turku Town Court was the medieval Town Law. In the Town Law, banishment is usually stipulated to be used in connection with some form of corporal punishment or when the culprits could not pay the fines given to them, rather than by itself. Expulsion could or was to be used for crimes of theft, slander, adultery, false testimony, and the violation of a virgin. Authorization for banishment for any person in breach of the good order of the town could also be drawn from the general privileges of all towns, but Turku Town Court always cited (if anything) the Town Law.15 Exploring the multifaceted process of putting offenders in their appropriate place – whether inside or outside the town – can tell us much about the Court’s and the townspeople’s relationship to the town as a spatial entity and the location for a good community. At first glance, it appears that offenders in Turku were banished or not banished in a seemingly random manner, however, a closer inspection of banishment practices tells us about perceptions of specific townspeople’s suitability and belonging in the town and the community. In the following discussion, the banishment of thieves, sexual offenders and wayward burghers is analysed in order to explore how removing problematic individuals from the community, tolerating them, or in fact embracing them were complexly interwoven in the prevailing social and legal practices, and again, how individuals found and negotiated their places in the town. 14 Thunander 1993, 5, 53-57, 59, 120, 127; Ditlev et al. 2000, 30-32; Thunander 1989, 48. 15 ‘Rikets städer 1619’, 309; MES, Konungsbalken XII & XVII, 7,11; MES Giftermålsbalken III & X, 39, 43; MES Rådstugubalken XXXI, 182; MES Högmålsbalken XI, 235; MES Tjuvabalken III, 229.In addition, in many places in the town law (manuscripts) there is an empty slot, where the consequence of not being able to pay fines should have been. Whether banishment or forced labour, which was also used, was meant to be added, is not known.

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Spatial Exclusion and Rehabilitation of Thieves After vagrants, the next largest category of offenders expelled from Turku were thieves. Banishment was not, however, the most common punishment. Between 1640 and 1660, 18 thieves were sentenced to banishment (some of them several times), when theft accounted altogether for about 80 cases. Until 1653, according to the Town Law, the punishment for theft over the value of one mark was death. If the value of the stolen goods was under one mark, various corporal punishments were to be meted out, and all the corporal punishments were to be followed by banishment from the town.16 In 1653, Queen Christina’s Penal Ordinance revised the threshold for the death penalty for theft at 60 dalers, i.e. 240 marks. The new Ordinance took into consideration the change in the value of money, but an overall tendency towards more lenient punishment is also evident. For example, in the fourteenth century a barrel of beer cost 1.5 marks, while in 1640 it cost 4 copper dalers, i.e. 16 marks.17 The Ordinance also introduced greater leniency in other ways. Stealing items worth less than 60 dalers incurred a triple fine and reimbursement of the stolen property, but not automatically corporal punishment. Only if the culprit could not pay the fine would he or she be put in chains and sent to forced labour. If, however, no suitable work was available, a man would face the gauntlet, and a woman a whipping. Banishment was no longer listed among the penalties for theft.18 In principle, both before and after the revised penal legislation of 1653, the courts followed the current statutes: before 1653, therefore, the Town Court often sentenced thieves to death, and after 1653 to fines. As the crime carried a death sentence, the cases went automatically to the Court of Appeal for review. In most cases, death sentences were commuted by the higher court, for example, to banishment. Before 1653 some Turku thieves were banished by the Court of Appeal, but others were banished on first appearance in the Town Court. Sentencing did not necessarily follow the letter of the law, since sometimes the Town Court took the position of the thief or the amount that was stolen into consideration and imposed a more lenient sentence than it should have. Adhering to the letter of the law thus clashed with more creative considerations to do with general leniency. The practice of moderation by the Court of Appeal ties into the overall development of the penal law and judicial practice in the kingdom. The 16 MES, 297. 17 ‘Drottning Christinae Straff-Ordning 1653’, 295; Lagerqvist & Nathorst-Böös 1984, 45, 68. 18 ‘Drottning Christinae Straff-Ordning 1653’, 295.

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criminal law had become stricter after the Reformation, but at least by the third decade of the seventeenth century a tendency towards greater leniency becomes clearly visible. Leniency is often attributed to the higher courts, but it can also be seen in the Turku Town Court, especially during the late 1640s and the early 1650s, before Queen Christina’s Penal Ordinance: the death penalty for theft became less automatic, and for example in 1651, two years before the new penal ordinance, there were theft cases where only a whipping was imposed, or eight days in the town jail and reimbursement of the stolen property.19 In two cases, the Town Court imposed whipping and banishment, which were then mitigated in the Court of Appeal to hard labour.20 A gradual but steady shift in the prevailing practice can be seen from the early 1640s, when the Town Court mostly sentenced to death and the Court of Appeal mitigated this to banishment, hard labour or fines. Within this overall shift in judicial practice, we can also examine what individual sentences were based on, and explore how some cases resulted in banishment and some did not, and how the town and residence in town figured in the process. This examination is best served by studying cases from the early 1640s where information about the Court of Appeal sentences survives. From the Court of Appeal decisions that are available for us between 1640 and 1650, eight cases can be identified where a death penalty was mitigated. These cases are included in the appendices of the Town Court records; no Court of Appeal records have survived. In the Town Court records, about a quarter of theft cases from 1640-1660 carry an annexed ruling from the Court of Appeal.21 In three such cases from the 1640s, the Court of Appeal mitigated the death sentence to banishment, and in the other five, to fines. The Court of Appeal did not, therefore, use banishment routinely; it was clearly just one of the several tools available to avoid sentencing thieves to death, rather than a tool for getting thieves out of town. The main goal of the Court of Appeal was not banishing thieves, but the mitigation of death sentences.22 Among the three thieves sentenced to banishment by the Court of Appeal during the 1640s was Agnis Olofsdotter, whom we have already heard about. 19 TRO 7 April 1651, 108; TRO 11 June 1651, 157; TRO 28 June 1651, 166. 20 TRO 13 July 1651, 47-50; TRO 1651, appendix. 21 Five record books from the 1640s and the book of 1651 included an appendix of court of appeal decisions. Five other record books, both from the 1640s and the 1650s include some court of appeal decisions among the Town Court decisions, but they are not entered systematically. It is beneficial that more of the 1640s record books include the appendix, because in the 1640s all theft cases automatically went to the court of appeal for consideration. 22 Laitinen 2013.

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She was one of the professional or habitual thieves that appear in Turku court records. Another such thief was Mats Lambanpä. He too was, time and again, found in the town despite having been banished. He was even sentenced to be transported to the American colony of New Sweden, but escaped before the sentence could be executed. When later caught again, he was sentenced to death and hanged.23 The third thief was Anna Påelsdotter, who had been stealing for years from various people in the town.24 We will not go into the reasons why these thieves ended up receiving the death penalty, but concentrate here on trying to find the possible reasons for them being banished while the other five thieves were not. Persons unknown to the Court were usually first asked to identify who they were and where they came from. They were asked what they were doing in the town, and whether they had any papers. This was not done in the cases of Agnis or Matts, let alone Anna, who was known to be a burgher’s daughter. Moreover, in the cases of Agnis and Matts the court record does not include any reference to a legitimate place of residence or employment, not even a former one. We can conclude that Agnis and Matts were then both well-known persons, i.e. more or less permanent residents in the town, but at the same time they were ‘loose people’, known for their crime or probably for their vagrancy. Anna’s was a different kind of case. She was the stepdaughter of a burgher, and had thus started out with a legitimate place in the town. Subsequently, however, Anna was disowned by her stepfather, who petitioned the Court to banish her, since he could not control her. We can conclude that although all three thieves were ‘unwanted’ persons, they were recognized none the less as inhabitants of the town. Despite having no legitimate, honest place in the town, they were not ‘outsiders’. Recidivists were more likely to be banished than first-time offenders. Judging from Thunander’s study on the Göta Court of Appeal, which sometimes gave reasons for its resolutions,25 Agnis, Mats and Anna were banished and in the end sent to their deaths, because they were well known and considered incorrigible. In addition to a first offence, age, extreme poverty, and low value of stolen items were mitigating factors; but the culprit’s earlier relationship to the urban community also seems to have impacted on sentencing.26 In Turku in the 1640s, five thieves received fines 23 TRO 29 March 1641, 231; TRO 19 May 1641, 310-312, 322, 329; TRO 31 October 1642 [1634], 51-52, 110-111, appendix; TRO 24 March 1645, 193-194; TRO 26 March 1645, 236-241, 264, and appendix. 24 TRO 12 April 1641, 266-267, 403, appendix; TRO 18 Januarij 1643, 172-173, appendix. 25 Thunander 1993, 63, 118-119, 122. 26 TRO 22 June 1640, 280-284; TRO 20 April 1640, 173-174; Thunander 1993, 63, 118-119, 122.

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in the Court of Appeal. A closer look at these fined thieves suggests that even if it is not always clear why banishment was imposed on some, (since the Court seldom stated reasons for its decisions) sentencing did seem to have something to do with being a respectable inhabitant of the town. One of the thieves whose death sentence was mitigated to fines was Mårthen Hålli. Although Hålli had already previously been tried and sentenced for theft, he still got off with no more than a fine. Hålli’s brotherin-law had found a former customs officer and now ironworks owner, Carl Billsten, to vouch for Hålli and his fine. Although we do not know anything about Hålli’s occupation or his relationship to Billsten, because of the relationship between Hålli and Billsten we can be sure that he had some kind of a stable position in the town and the community.27 In another case, a maid called Gerthrudh Hansdotter, who had stolen quite a few items from various people in the town, was sentenced to fines and given time to find relatives to help with paying them. Only when no one came forward to help her, did she end up being pilloried and banished. Gertrudh was thus acknowledged as a member of the town’s community in a different way than, for example, Agnis. Both Gertrudh’s mother and her sister were questioned and asked whether they knew if she had already been stealing when she was still living at home. Both she and her family, therefore, were recognized as prima facie respectable residents of the town. Through imposing a sentence of fines, and giving time to find help in paying them, the Court of Appeal made an effort to reconcile Gertrudh to the community. Reconciling persons back into the urban community was a common practice across Europe. Respectable townspeople were commonly banished less readily, or for shorter periods of time, than outsiders, and efforts were made to find punishments that would enable their reincorporation into the community afterwards.28 A third example of a fined thief is a very elderly burgher called Clemed Kandaja, who was caught stealing from the burgher at whose house he apparently resided. His sentence was reduced to fines by the Court of Appeal, despite the fact that he had already once escaped from prison.29 It seems obvious that a fellow burgher was even less likely to end up banished than other kinds of people, and the more so when the person in question was old and impoverished. Two other thieves who received fines from the Court 27 About Carl Billsten see the Finnish National Bibliography, http://www.kansallisbiografia. fi/kb/artikkeli/2300/ [7 February 2013]. 28 TRO 22 June 1640, 280-284; TRO 18 November & 14 December 1640 (1641), 82, 134, appendix; Coy 2008, 89; Harrington 1995, 225. 29 TRO 19 November 1642, 63-65.

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of Appeal instead of banishment were an unemployed worker, who was originally from Turku, although he had recently been living elsewhere, and the poor widow of a burgher; their cases also imply that poverty and ties to town mattered. The last fined thief we are told very little about, except that he too was a man who had a dwelling and a wife in town.30 It is notable that none of these eight thieves before the Court of Appeal in the 1640s were labelled as outsiders. Even Agnis and Matts were seen as belonging to Turku; they were known, and their origins were not queried. Like Anna Påelsdotter, however, they had become undesirable because of their incorrigible nature. The other five offenders were more straightforwardly identified as members of the community who had erred in their ways. Although there are not many cases, it seems clear that having a legitimate position in the town influenced the Court’s choice in commuting sentences, and affected who was banished and who was not.31 One conclusion that could be drawn from both the banished and the non-banished is that there were perhaps relatively few outsiders or complete strangers in Turku; even the convicted criminals were more or less permanent residents of the town and part of its fabric. Moreover, it appears that people in town were expected to recognize strangers, and at times to query where they came from and to treat them with suspicion. An example of this is a theft case where a goldsmith was asked why he had not asked a woman selling things to him where she came from.32 The goldsmith defended himself by saying that he had asked her and that the woman had said she came from Tavastland (Häme) and that her husband was a soldier. In the goldsmith’s mind, a soldier’s wife could well legitimately have the silver and gold items she was selling, and good reason to be selling them.33 To return to banishment cases, not even the Town Court sentenced all thieves to death, but also it imposed penalties of banishment and fines. Especially towards the end of the 1640s, a tendency towards greater leniency 30 TRO 15 January & 27 January 1640, 79-80, 86, 377, appendix; TRO 20 April & 6 June 1640, 173-174, 379; TRO 20 September & 18 November 1647, 403-406, 462; TRO 5 July 1648, 176. 31 The Court of Appeal did not call any witnesses, but adjudged based on the papers furnished by the Town Court. This did not mean that they could not have given sentences in relation to people’s place in the community, especially when the court members lived in the same town, which in the Turku case they did. It is important to see a court of appeal also in its urban, spatial context and not just as a part of the royal judicial system. See Laitinen 2013. 32 The items she sold were stolen in the countryside; the goldsmith was being questioned about receiving stolen goods, but the thief was not interrogated in Turku. 33 TRO 3 April 1658, 67-73.

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can be seen. This leniency may, at least in part, be attributed to local factors and spatial (micro-geographical) circumstances, although comparative research would need to be done on other Swedish towns to ascertain this. In Turku the Court of Appeal was located on the same square as the Town Court, and the sources indicate a constant dialogue between them. The Town Court sent its members to the Court of Appeal for advice on many occasions, and in the small elite community of the town they will in any case have been in frequent communication with each other. We can also be confident that discussions in meetings in Stockholm among Court of Appeal members will have impacted on the Turku Town Court. One topic of discussion in Stockholm was the futility of meting out death sentences, when they were commuted anyway. The Law Commission, consisting of Court of Appeal members, debated whether the lower courts should be authorized to decide against the letter of the law and not sentence people to death; and although no such ruling was in the end issued, in practice a shift towards more lenient sentences is clearly recognizable in Turku during the late 1640s and the early 1650s.34 Looking at the theft cases where the Town Court had originally imposed a sentence of banishment rather than the death penalty, one can find cases where banishment can be seen as moderation (i.e. avoiding the death penalty), cases where it can be seen as getting rid of an unwanted person, and cases where the culprit’s ties to the town reduced the sentence. For example, a shoemaker’s son, Påel Eskilsson, was sentenced to banishment by the Town Court (and the Court of Appeal reduced this to the pillory). Young men and boys were especially likely to be treated leniently; the youngest were only whipped lightly, and by their parents. Recidivists, and people who lived on the margins of the respected community or were even part of a criminal underclass, were sentenced to banishment. In some cases, individuals who stated that they had been lured into theft by other thieves were not given a death penalty, while those who lured them were, but were then instead banished. Even when the amount stolen would have carried a mandatory death penalty, persons with some kind of employment or even previous employment tended to be banished (and not sentenced to death), and some were then even pardoned from banishment by the Court of Appeal. These individuals included several seamen, one ex-clerk, and a maid.35 34 Laitinen 2013, 552-554, 557-558. 35 TRO 13 July 1651, 47-50; TRO 11 June 1651, 157; TRO 28 July 1651, 211; TRO 21 April & 10 May 1651, 120-123, 132, appendix; TRO 24 January 1644, 121-126; TRO 22 March 1647, 298-302, appendix; Laitinen 2013, 558.

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Although no clear tendency to banish outsiders more than insiders can be identified, since there were no thieves clearly labelled as outsiders, one can still find, both in the Town Court and in the Court of Appeal, a tendency to promote the peace and order of the community through restoring balance among its members, that is, among those who had a legitimate and accepted place in the town.36 And here the members of the community seem to have been defined rather more broadly than has generally been done; not only the burghers and their families were considered worthy of consideration, but also the poor and the servants.37 Although the 1653 ordinance made significant changes in mandatory sentences, sentencing policy at the Turku courts in the end did not show major change, but rather the continuation of well-established trends. However, after 1653 banishment disappeared altogether, at least until the beginning of the 1660s to where the examination in this book extends. Outsiders or professional thieves could still be banished as the Town Council, and consequently Town Court, still retained the right to banish anyone who they considered harmful to the good of the town.38 While such banishments of outsider thieves can be found in sources from other Swedish towns,39 in the cases recorded between 1654 and 1660 in Turku, no outsiders or professional thieves appear. Instead we find maids and servants stealing from their employers, young boys erring in their ways, a seaman, a widow, a merchant stealing during a fight, and a drunken peasant stealing sheets hanging on a line. The only thief who seems to have been an outsider was one Staffan Metzewitz, a Pole, who had already sat in jail for 12 days when his case came to court. He was considered to have stolen only in utmost need, and he was pardoned from any further punishment. All the other punishments recorded consisted of fines, with some converted to the gauntlet, whipping or forced labour because of lack of funds to pay the fine. After 1653, as banishment was not mentioned in the new Penal Ordinance, there was little occasion to banish anyone who could show some kind of recognized position in the town. 40 36 A tendency to strive towards restoring of the peace of the community is considered to have been characteristic in the Swedish courts in general until the 1680s and 1690s, when the conciliation between parties gave way to stricter adherence to contracts between parties. Välimäki 2013, 192. 37 See for example Harrington 1995, 235-236; Einonen 2003, 81, 104. 38 ‘Rikets Städer 1619’, 309. 39 Västerås stads dombook 1658, Härads m.fl. Rätters Domböcker, RA, 25-26; ibid., 64-65, 67. 40 TRO 3 July 1654, 226, 238; TRO 3 July 1654, 233-234; TRO 18 July 1657, 184-192; TRO 31 May 1654, 155-156;TRO 25 April 1655, 110; TRO 22 February 1656, 54, 20; TRO 28 June 1656, 151-155;

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The sentencing practices examined above suggest a prevailing understanding of the town which meant that someone who had found a place in town, even if it was not fully legitimate, had stronger rights than someone who did not. Although being a burgher or a member of a corporation, was the most influential and honourable position, lower positions in town did also matter. The interpretation reached in the chapter about vagrants is therefore strengthened: inclusion is emphasized more than exclusion. On the other hand, it is difficult to tell how the position of a maid, a servant or a worker will really have been affected by the aftermath of the theft and subsequent corporal punishment. Corporal punishment was most common with poorer people, as incapability to pay the fines usually resulted in whipping, if not banishment. The effect may have varied case by case, but one can presume that at least some of these people lost their position in town. The sources are silent on this subject. Convicted servants may have been forced to seek other work, or have remained in town as vagrant poor, or have left the town altogether, i.e. they may have lost their legitimate place in the town regardless of the fact that in principle a fine created the possibility to rehabilitate oneself into the community. Thus one did not necessarily have to be expelled to be removed from the respectable community, or even the physical urban space.

Getting Rid of Miscreants? Among miscreants other than thieves and vagrants, banishment was not a very common penalty in Turku. During the 1640s and the 1650s six people were banished for fornication, three people for receiving stolen goods, two for writing a libellous poem, and two for witchcraft. Witchcraft is not examined here, because the two case reports in the material consist of only a couple of sentences, and lack any description of the crime or the persons committing them. In one case, the Town Court passed sentence – then reviewed in the Court of Appeal – on Frans Mårthensson Kuka for casting spells; the other record reports the Court of Appeal’s sentence on Per Skinka for witchcraft.41 In Turku, immoral living also resulted relatively seldom in banishment, but sexual crime is discussed here since it was so often a cause for banishment elsewhere in Europe. The same applies for ill-disciplined burghers. TRO 24 April 1658, 103-105; TRO 9 December 1654, 347-349; TRO 20 June 1659, 257; TRO 17 June 1658, 137. 41 TRO 17 May 1645, appendix; TRO 25 May 1657, 99-100.

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In early modern Sweden, prosecution and conviction for sexual offences was problematic. Adultery was clearly a crime, but sex between two unmarried persons, while considered criminal, was not covered by clear legislation. Nonetheless, sexual crime was increasingly tried in all seventeenth-century lower courts of the Kingdom. In Småland, between 1610-1619, 36 per cent of court cases dealt with sexual crime; in Lohja, Finland, between 1615-1645, 40 per cent. Similar numbers are found for 1603-1648 in Östgötland. 42 In Finland, sexual offences grew between the beginning and the late seventeenth century from a rather insignificant category (only a few per cent of cases) to the most common category of offence.43 As the stricter ordinances of the late sixteenth century and the early seventeenth century required a death sentence for adultery, and all crimes that carried a death penalty went to the higher court for review, the Courts of Appeal heard a multitude of sexual cases in this period. In the Göta Court of Appeal between 1635 and 1644, 58 per cent of the cases dealt with sexual offences. When the Göta Court of Appeal was founded in 1635, it was already customary that the majority of death penalties in sexual cases were mitigated to fines of 80 marks for a married person and 40 marks for an unmarried person. 44 In the period 1635-1644 as many as 560 cases in the Göta Court of Appeal lead to amnesty; only in 34 cases was the death penalty confirmed. 45 The fact that premarital sexual relations were not as such illegal according to the Law of the Realm and Town Law caused problems all through the seventeenth century. In 1615 King Gustavus Adolphus issued to the Courts of Appeal an ordinance that criminalized all premarital relations, but created problems by tying the sentencing of the crime to the medieval law’s article of violation of a virgin, where only the man could be sentenced. The legislation was not clarified until 1694, when fornication was defined as a fineable offence both for men and women. 46 Nevertheless, women began to be punished for premarital sex widely as early as in the 1640s. As sex outside of marriage was a sin, and the authorities had the responsibility to punish people for it, the courts began to develop their own practices, drawing on old customs from the sixteenth century, and, after 1653, applying the regulations in Queen Christina’s Penal Ordinance about sexual relations between cousins to all premarital sex. In 42 43 44 45 46

Ylikangas et al. 2000, 84; Thunander 1993, 94; Sundin 1992, 81. Sogner et al. 2000, 187. Thunander 1993, 96-97. Thunander 1993, 96-97. Välimäki 2009, 27-28.

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the 1640s, an old custom was revived where a man was fined three marks if he slept with a woman who had previously had premarital sex. Since the woman was not a virgin, however, the man did not have to pay the woman, or rather her parents, compensation, as he would have had to (as dictated by medieval law) for the violation of a virgin. 47 After 1653, the cousins’ rule from Queen Christina’s Ordinance provided better grounds to fine the women as well, as gender was not specified. In 1658 an Ordinance issued by King Charles X Gustav clearly stated that both men and women were to be punished for premarital sex, although only recidivist women are specified. 48 In Turku, the Town Court sentenced very few sexual offenders to death in the 1640s and the 1650s. In two cases, the execution of the death penalty for sexual offences is confirmed in the record books: in the first case, a woman gave birth to a child by her sister’s husband, thus having committed incest; and in the second case, a man had had multiple sexual partners over a period of 20 years. 49 In the Lower Town Court, where many of the simple cases of fornication were heard, fines were meted out in a rather straightforward manner. The man usually received a 40 mark fine, unless some mitigating circumstances were found. Such circumstances usually related to repeated offences by the woman, which lowered the man’s fine to 20 marks. Women were fined every now and then, but not on a regular basis.50 Before the 1653 Ordinance, cases of sexual offence in Turku Town Court were usually adjudged according to the marriage section in the medieval Town Law; the strict Ordinances by Eric XIV or Charles IX are not cited, nor is the Mosaic Law. Sentences are determined according to the 10th or the 3rd article of the marriage section, both of which stipulated a fine and/ or public corporal punishment and banishment from town.51 The penalty prescribed in the Town Law for the violation of a virgin was that the man’s nose should be cut off, and he should pay a 40 mark fine and be banished, unless the injured party pleaded on his behalf. In the case of adultery, the parties were fined, but if one could not pay the fine, public punishment 47 Aalto 1996, 110-111; Välimäki 2009, 27. 48 Aalto 1996, 110-112, 116; Välimäki 2009, 28. 49 TRO 19 April 1654, 57-59, 60-61, 62-69, 78-79, 141; TRO 24 May 1658, 120-121. 50 In the material studied for this book there are 32 cases in Lower Town Court and 7 cases in Town Court. TKO 1639-1647, 1650, 1651; TRO 1640-1660. 51 TRO 17 December 1659, 434-436; TRO 11 May 1642, 271-291, appendix; TRO 22 September 1647, 406; TRO 26 May 1658, 123; TRO 24 May 1641, 321; TRO 21 June 1641, 367-368; MES, Gifftomålsbalken III & 1X, 39, 43. The 3rd section deals with violation of a virgin and the 10th with adultery.

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was executed and the perpetrators were expelled from town.52 In the Turku records there is one case where the culprits are said to have paid their fines;53 but in all the other cases, we do not know for certain whether the offenders in the end paid the fines, were banished, or were punished in some other way. In the few cases where banishment is explicitly mentioned, only two of the persons concerned actually lived in Turku. This does not really tell us anything about non-banishment of Turku people, as the record of the sentence usually only cites the number of the paragraph of the law, but not how or what parts of the sentence were executed. However, banishment is mentioned in five cases which were referred from the district courts to a special session in Turku Castle or to the Court of Appeal, and where the final resolution was then announced in the Town Court. These culprits, being from the countryside, were not banished from town, but from the Court District or the Castle County.54 In one of these cases, the culprits were sentenced to death by the special session court, but the Court of Appeal mitigated the sentence to a whipping and banishment. Another case cites an earlier sentence of fines, which the Court of Appeal had changed to banishment when the female adulterer could not pay the fine. In one case the woman was banished from the Castle County, while the man was banished from the whole of the Royal Court’s jurisdiction, to Ingria.55 It is worth noting that the punishments listed in the Law of the Realm, unlike the Town Law, did not include expulsion for sexual crimes. When the culprits came from the countryside, the Court of Appeal was therefore applying banishment as an ‘extra-legal’ punishment. One of the banishment cases dealing with townspeople concerns a university student who falsely claimed to have consorted with a priest’s daughter. The daughter denied the relationship, and no proof could be found; the student was then expelled from the university, which also meant leaving the town.56 In the other Turku case, an impending penalty of banishment ended up in the payment of fines instead. A young woman, 52 MES, Gifftomålsbalken III & 1X, 39, 43. 53 TRO 11 May 1642, 271-279, appendix. 54 TRO 10 March 1647, 159, appendix; TRO 22 June 1640, 284.; TRO 25 May 1657, 99-100; TRO 29 May 1647, 320, appendix; TRO 2 June 1647, 322. 55 TRO 22 June 1640, 284. 56 TRO 30 January 1656, 8-9; Consistorii academici Aboensis äldre protokoller I, 585. The University in Turku expelled students easily for sexual offences. Expulsion could be temporary or final. The townspeople were warned not to take in a student, who had been expelled, which meant that expulsion meant also banishment from town. Välimäki 2009, 32-33.

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Maria Willomsdotter, whom we have already met in an earlier chapter taking a Bible in pawn, had given birth to a child out of wedlock, and was accused of several illegitimate relationships. Another somewhat suspect woman, Susi Brita, lived with Maria, and testified to having seen various kinds of people come and go, but had never seen Maria in flagrante. Maria was a soldier’s wife and produced proof that her husband was a deserter, which she interpreted as meaning that she was free of her marriage to him. Maria was first sentenced to fines, according to the adultery paragraph of the Town Law, which would have lead to banishment, as she did not have money to pay the fine; but her mother pleaded for her daughter, and recruited some burghers to help her with the fines. In the end Maria was exonerated through this payment of the fines.57 In the end, therefore, there is no certain evidence that the Town Court banished anyone from town for a sexual offence. It may be that, as in many cases of theft, the Town Court did not consider expulsion necessary, even where it was permitted or indeed mandatory under the law. Fines in themselves were a severe punishment for the culprit, and sent a good warning to the rest of the community. 20 marks, which was the lowest fine and most frequent fine in these cases, was the whole yearly stipend of a university student. In one case a Town Constable who had let a woman adulterer escape had to pay her fines of 80 copper dalers (160 marks); the Court valued his house at 60 silver dalers (240 marks), and the house was taken over by the town.58 Such a fine was, then, indeed severe, and not many people were able to pay it, especially as many of the culprits were young and unmarried. Persons who defaulted on their fines would first be sent to jail or suffer a lashing (and then possibly be banished); and in any case they were given a church punishment on the stocks after the whipping by the town hall. All of these offenders were then at least to some extent publicly shamed, but apparently they were not usually forcibly removed from the town. Again, it is impossible to say how much these people were marginalized, even if they remained in town. But remembering the relatively widespread tolerance towards mothers with illegitimate children,59 and Maria Willomsdotter, who was sentenced for immoral behaviour but carried on working in the town, we cannot simply assume that all transgressors of sexual rules became severely marginalized or banished. Moreover, regarding banishment, we must remember that in 57 TRO 28 April 1645, 261; TRO 7 April 1647, 251; TRO 1646, appendix. 58 TRO 1643, appendix. 59 Miettinen 2012, 97, 128, 135-136, 158.

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the case of sexual offences, expulsion was only a secondary penalty, usually linked to corporal punishment. As banishment was used sparingly even in cases of theft, where it was required by the law, the courts may have been even more reluctant to banish people for crimes where it was not so explicitly mandatory. The town as a spatial entity was not used here as a basis for regulating the community. Burgher citizens of the town were seldom banished for any crime. A couple of burghers and one wife ended up being expelled for dealing in stolen goods. Their crime was serious, equal in law to theft itself. The burgher Bertil Lepäis, in whose house the thief Agnis Olofsdotter had resided, was merely fined a fine for harbouring Agnis in his house, whereas his wife Walborg was expelled, for receiving and dealing in stolen goods, apparently leaving her husband to tend for the house.60 In another case, the burghers Jöran Pelldo and Johan Huutaja were sentenced to banishment for receiving stolen goods; and in addition to being banished, they were ordered to pay fines and to recompense the victims for the theft.61 Banishing burghers for indiscretion was thus less common than in at least some German towns. Jason Coy reports that in Ulm, burghers were punished for blasphemy, for squandering family money, for treating family members poorly, for illicit sexuality, for drunkenness or fighting, and especially for any combination of these. Coy also points out that in Ulm banishment was seen as a suitable punishment for burghers, since it spared them from public corporal punishment; and as banishments were usually for a limited term, there was no lasting effect on the family’s honour.62 In Turku, however, where temporary banishments were extremely rare, there is only one case where improper behaviour lead to banishment, and even then what was at stake was a case of defamation and dishonouring the urban community rather than merely misbehaviour such as drunkenness or fighting. In 1644, the wealthy trader Simon Blom, and his poorer associate Erik Wijnblad, were banished for writing and circulating a libellous poem. This rare instance of expulsion from town – and of a relatively high-ranking member of the community – tells about the importance of the hierarchical structure of the burgher community, and the importance of honour and reputation, but the rarity of expulsion also demonstrates the degree of tolerance that the community had for its members. 60 TRO 17 February 1645, 137-143. 61 TRO 7 November 1651, 250, appendix. 62 Coy 2008, 79-112.

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Simon Blom wrote a poem that ‘was written to disgrace many respectable men and women in the town’.63 This poem was not Blom’s first transgression. His punishment for defamation on this occasion must be considered in connection with his earlier problems with the Burgomaster and the Town Council. Already in 1636 Blom had been accused of shaming the Town Council. This was in itself a serious offence, and was even more problematic in the context of his earlier slanderous statements against various people in the town and his generally rowdy and quarrelsome nature.64 In 1636, Blom was sentenced to an 80 mark fine for every councilman he had shamed, but on appeal the sentence was mitigated to a total fine of 20 silvermarks; further transgressions would, however, result in a 200 mark fine.65 The next time Blom was in court for slandering a member of the Town Council was in 1640, when he had written a libellous poem about the Burgomaster Henrich Scheper, calling him a red and blue nosed turkey. Blom’s punishment now consisted of the 200 mark fine and a regular 20 mark fine for slander of a councilman.66 Numerous cases of slander were heard in court, but even in the rare cases of slander against the Burgomaster and the Council, singular incidents resulted only in fines. In 1644, however, after Blom’s earlier transgressions, a longer poem spread in the town, and this finally resulted in the heavy punishment of expulsion. The Court examined the writing and dissemination of the libellous text for about a month. Erich Wijnblad, who had transcribed the version of the poem that the Court had received, was banished; and so was Simon Blom, whom Wijnblad stated to be the original author of the text, following his refusal to swear under oath not to be the author. Both were banished for perpetuity.67 Blom’s banishment was exceptional, however, and the punishing of burghers in Turku thus differed sharply from the practice in Ulm, where burghers were more closely monitored. Coy writes that in Ulm informants often brought townspeople’s transgressions to light.68 No system or tradition of informants existed in Turku, and lesser transgressions by burghers usually never came to court. 63 TRO 3 June 1644, 375-386. ‘det pasquill som till många redelige så mäns som quinnes persones wanheeder har componerat och upsprrijdt’. 64 TRO 7 December 1636, 174. Blom appears in various quarrels in the court books for the first time in 1625. Toropainen 2006, 199. 65 TRO 12 December 1636, 177. 66 TRO 1 June 1640, 239; TRO 3 June 1640, 297-299; TRO 6 June 1640, 297-299; TRO 20 June 1640, 327-328. 67 TRO 3 June 1644, 385-386. 68 Coy 2008, 80-112.

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Blom’s case thus reflects a relatively high level of tolerance among the burghers. Blom was not a popular person. He was often in court over debt cases and quarrels. In the 1640 slander case, he accused another person of writing the poem, and this man then called Blom an ‘honour thief’ (ährtiuff), and he said that Blom had previously tried to set him against another man by talking ill about each of them behind their backs.69 Nevertheless, a troublesome nature and an inclination to make fun of others were not initially adequate grounds for the serious punishment of expelling a fellow citizen from the town. Only after repeated offences, culminating in a more serious case, did the court resort to the most serious punishment.70 But, as with sexual transgression, spatial exclusion was not the primary solution to social disruption.

The Banished and the Town Expulsion from town, when it was used, rarely worked as an instrument of social cleansing as intended. The banished persons did not always go very far, and many of them returned sooner or later, as happened also in many other European towns.71 Those returning caused problems for the Town Court. In one case two councilmen were sent to the Court of Appeal to ask what to do with two women who had returned to town regardless of the threat of a more serious punishment; the Court of Appeal advised to banish them again.72 In some cases the Town Court asked the perpetrator why they had returned. Walborg Lepäis, a burgher’s wife, was banished for receiving stolen goods, but she had a hard time accepting her banishment. At first she turned back towards the town immediately after the officer expelling her had left; later, after being driven out again, she came back twice more. On one occasion she explained that she had no shoes and could not walk very far; the other time she said that she was only trying to get to a boat that was leaving for Stockholm, as her children were in the capital.73 Another returning offender was the thief Anna Påelsdotter; her mother still lived in Turku, and she found refuge at her house. Anna was exposed in 69 70 71 72 73

TRO 6 June 1640, 297-299. See Coy 2008, 97-98. Coy 2008, 40, 51; Lamberg 2009, 148-150; Boes 2007, 106. TRO 27 January 1640, 86. TRO 25 June 1645, 346.

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a vagrancy inspection and was asked why she had returned. Anna gave no answer, but her mother pleaded with the Court to let her stay on with her as a maid, and promised to keep her out of trouble. The Court did not relent, and sentenced her to death.74 The student Thomas Martinis, who had been expelled from the university, also tried to come back, but as the expulsion from the university was for perpetuity and the university authorities gave no clemency, the Town Council ordered him to leave town the same day before the night bells rang.75 It is possible that expelled persons found it difficult to find alternatives to returning to town. In his study about underclass women in Stockholm, Marko Lamberg found that the women returned to town again and again. The practice can be found in the earliest surviving sources, from the fifteenth century. Lamberg notes that the banished women often first tried to move to a location quite far from the town (which was not their original home), but that their reputation followed them, so that they could not stay. Thus they could only return to Stockholm, even if they did not have much to return to.76 However, as the cases of Walborg Lepäis and Anna Påelsdotter and the student Thomas suggest, another powerful attraction was the good life that was left behind. In Walborg’s case this even included a burgher husband and a house to rule over. If you were not a poor vagrant or a homeless criminal, it must have been very difficult to abandon your (at least relatively) secure life, and such difficulties were especially strong in the case of Simon Blom. In some ways, banishment was not as severe a problem for Blom as it was for a poor thief, for Blom also owned a sizable country estate, and he did not face the threat of starvation. Nonetheless Blom’s situation was far from easy, and he had much to lose, since when he was banished, Blom also lost his right to trade in town. Moreover, while he was gone, his inherited town house, which was already a bone of contention between relatives, became of interest for other townspeople. Blom’s sister in law Elizabet Påelsdotter stated a claim to the Town Council for priority in renting the house, while one Hans Petri made several bids to buy it. The Council ruled that the house and its contents should be inventoried, and the key be kept at the Town Hall.77 74 TRO 18 January 1643, 172-173. Of her execution we have no information. 75 TRO 30 January 1656, 8-9; Consistorii academici Aboensis äldre protokoller I, 585. 76 Lamberg 2009, 148-149, 150. 77 TRO 17 November 1645 [1646], 23; TRO 28 April 1645, 253; 30 June 1645, 362; TRO 27 June 1646, 301; Toropainen 2006, 52-53, 59;

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Blom, like many other expelled persons, did not content himself with his punishment. He came back to town in November of 1645, about a half a year after his banishment, for which he was strongly admonished by the Council. Even a letter of recommendation from Governor General Per Brahe did not help him: he was to stay away, and desist from practising his profession as a trader. Although Blom was not ostracised by all – he was housed by a fellow burgher, and had support in high places – he had for the time being truly lost his place in the town.78 In the end, two and a half years later, Blom obtained a pardon from Queen Christina, and on December 1st 1647 he arrived back in town. The pardon relieved him of his punishment and possible forthcoming talk about the libellous poem. In addition, the letter stipulated that everyone having unfinished business with Blom should bring it immediately to conclusion. And so Blom returned to his old place in the community. There is no indication that his position had worsened, but quarrels about his trade relations do not appear in court records any more. Perhaps in Blom’s case the punishment served its purpose.79 Although a royal pardon was the only way to get banishment revoked, this does not mean that only the wealthy and the powerful could return to living in town after banishment. This is confirmed in the history of the thieves Matts and Agnis, both of whom revealed, during their last trials, that they had actually been in town several times since their most recent banishments before being caught again. Agnis stated that she had been in town three times since her latest banishment, having lived and practised thievery with some other women from the town. Matts had lived with relatives in the nearby village of Halinen, but had made trips to town to steal again.80 Returning to town did not inevitably mean getting caught, and although Turku was a small town, one obviously could operate there under the radar of the officials, at least in the short term. Returning after banishment offered not just the threat of a harsher punishment, but also opportunities. If you had chosen, voluntarily or through necessity, to make your living as a thief, town was obviously a good place to be. Repeated return to town also speaks of the porous nature of the town boundaries and the relationship between the town and the surrounding villages. This 78 TRO 17 November 1645 [1646], 23; TRO 24 November 1645 [1646], 30; TRO 19 March 1646, 144, 169. The Town Council wrote a letter to the General Governer explaining, why Blom, regardless of his recommendation, no longer could practice trade in the town. TRO 25 March1646, 269. 79 TRO 1 December 1647, 485-486. 80 TRO 18 April 1645, 236-241; TRO 17 February 1645, 137-143.

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relationship had two sides to it. Particularly on the north-eastern side of the town in the parish of Kaarina, connections to town were close and frequent and it seems that it was not of particular importance where you resided. On the other hand, the constant return of thieves to town means that the town still had particular significance. Returning without a pardon, nevertheless, did always pose the threat of more severe punishment if caught. For thieves, it could mean the death penalty, and as Agnis and Matts eventually found out, mitigation of the death penalty was not repeated indefinitely. Marko Lamberg has shown that some expellees did try to find alternatives to returning,81 and joined the itinerant outcasts roaming the country, either looking for a place to settle or making their living through crime. Settling was sometimes difficult. Heikki Ylikangas writes about a (banished) man in the countryside who refused to tell the district court where he came from; the court deduced that he must have committed a crime in his home place.82 In court, you had to be able to tell where you came from, who your parents were, and what you were doing in the particular location you were at, and preferably you should have some papers on you as a proof, as we have already seen. Anyone who could not provide this information was automatically a suspect person. One must note, however, that the thief that Ylikangas describes had been able to move from one place to another at least for some time. There are other similar examples. Lamberg tells of a thief, Karin Henriksdotter, who came from Mynämäki (Finland) and had been at least to Stockholm, Uppsala, Söderköping and Aborga in Sweden. In the Turku records we find a female servant who had been a thief in Tavastland; she was one of the witnesses in a case about a street fight that had gone too far and resulted in a lengthy trial, until one of the defendants discredited her by revealing that she had been sentenced for theft in Tavastland.83 Making a place for oneself, in an honourable manner, was not impossible, even if the danger of being exposed was great, and the position one could attain in town could not be very high.84 It seems clear that banishment, even if for perpetuity, did not in fact sever all ties to the community, nor did it make finding a place in another community impossible. The relatively good opportunities for 81 Lamberg 2009, 148-149, 150. 82 Ylikangas 2000, 70-71. 83 TRO 5 December 1657, 298-308. The record does not show how long she had worked in the town nor what happened to her after the disclosure. 84 Lamberg 2009, 151; Lamberg 2007, 223-224; TRO 27 October 1651, 240-241; TRO 5 December 1657, 298-308.

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finding a new place in society are implied also by the low number of court record entries referring to bandits roaming the forests and surrounds of the town. In Turku, only one case, from 1670, implicates a couple of persons in such banditry, just outside the town.85

Community That Banishes Just as the banishment cases discussed above show that banishment was not used in a very organized manner, the court records also indicate that in Turku the actual physical act of banishment was not a strictly regulated ritual. Jason P. Coy describes how in Ulm, where the influx of outsiders to the town was a bigger problem than in Turku, the Town Council used public rituals in an effort to make banishment more effective. Having sentences read aloud and making the act of banishment a public ritual was part of this process, especially in cases of sexual offences.86 In Turku, no descriptions of public expulsions have been found. In some cases, there is a brief comment that the sentenced person was driven out by the executioner, but in other cases it is decreed that the offender could leave on their own accord; the burghers Wijnblad and Blom, for example, were ordered by the Council to leave the town by a particular day. As we have already seen, landlords were responsible for the expulsion of vagrants living in their premises, and the vagrants themselves did not even appear in court. Some thieves, nevertheless, were expelled by an executioner or a Town Constable and were escorted to the town border.87 Only few cases cite this practice explicitly, but it may well have been the practice in all cases that mention whipping and pillory followed by banishment. With regard to the burghers, it seems likely that the non-public character of expulsion relates to concerns about retaining one’s honour. On the other hand, part of the reason why the banishment of vagrants was so ineffective probably was because it did not have a public aspect. Non-public expulsion was not really a good demonstration of power. Altogether, we can see from this evidence that banishment in Turku – both in sentencing and executing – was a diverse practice. As Coy has written in the case of sixteenth-century Ulm, banishment was a flexible 85 TRO 8 November 1670, 610-615. 86 Coy 2008, 52, 77, 78. 87 TRO 21 May 1645, 305; TRO 7 July 1645, 368: 26 March 1645, 193-194.

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punishment.88 In Turku, this did not mean that imposing different lengths of time or perimeters of expulsion in defining the punishment, but that banishment could be applied in different measures and for varying reasons. Specific cases, like that of Simon Blom, give the impression that banishment was reserved for particularly exceptional cases. Later, in the 1660s, two other exceptional cases led to banishment: a man who escaped execution for adultery when the executioner failed in this task was then banished, and on another occasion an executioner (a different one) was banished for excessive violence and misuse of his office.89 Although banishment was used less in Turku than, for example, in Ulm, and probably in some other European towns, it appears clear that it nevertheless related to similar issues: in the main, to a perceived threat to the good community. Blom’s slanderous poem undermined the honour of the whole town, through attacking so many townspeople. The executioner’s misuse of office (robbery and incarceration of an innocent man after a drunken fight, combined with adultery and domestic violence) was a threat to the good order of the town. Similarly, those burghers and their wives sentenced for receiving stolen goods threatened the order and the economy of the town. On the other hand, other uses of banishment are more complex and ambivalent. The banishment of vagrants was a relatively routine and straightforward practice, and far from exceptional; but still even if ineffective, it nonetheless represents a reaction among the higher elite of the town to a perceived threat to the urban community. The banishing of thieves was based on a clear paragraph of the law, and should also have been rather simple, but in practice was far from straightforward. And in the case of sexual offenders, the possibility given by the law to banish was very seldom used – perhaps since the threat to the town was not deemed very serious. Banishment was then both a very common punishment, yet used surprisingly little. Examination of it has cast light on the ideal and the reality of the good urban community, and its relationship to the urban space and an individual’s place in it. People could be banished when they did not fit into the workings of a good town, but in the end there were diverse possibilities for living in the town, even for people breaking the law. Perhaps in a town with about 5000 inhabitants on the geographical periphery of Europe, the problems caused by ‘unwanted’ 88 Coy 2008, 111. 89 TRO 4 November 1668, appendix; TRO 26.20.1669, appendix; Toropainen 2004.

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people were not acute enough to result in the heavy use of banishment as a tool in controlling the town and its people. Turku was not near to the battlegrounds of the seventeenth-century wars. There was a high demand for labour in the countryside, and hunger seldom drove large numbers into the towns. It also emerges that the moral atmosphere in Turku was relatively permissive. Maids, seamen, journeymen, soldier’s wives, widows and sometimes even random poor travellers could all find some degree of welcome.

Part III Living Together: Urban Home, Urban Space

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Space and Urban Home The starting point for this Part of the book is the individual living in a house, but the questions asked are mainly posed with the community in mind. Looking at the individual dwellers in the community reveals the multifaceted and varied nature of urban living, and shows how spatial practices and spatial rules were connected to houses and homes. In this perspective, which is open towards the urban and the family home, it becomes possible to challenge some of the prevailing hierarchies and dichotomies regarding early modern communal and family life. As Amanda Flather has written, in real, everyday life, early modern houses were not the ‘space of security and boundedness for household heads’ as is described in the ideas and ideals of the era. The spatial arrangements of houses played an important part in why and how the experienced reality differed from the imagined one.1 In this Part of the book, I will begin the examination with the houses, rather than with households, and examine how the material environment of buildings was arranged and organized in relation to various categories of individuals, in relation to heads of households, in relation to the patriarchal ideal and system, and in relation to conventions of sociability in the urban community. As compared to the Part II of the book, the question here is: What was people’s relationship to homes as spatial material entities? Accordingly, entering and exiting, as well as dwelling and occupying, are at the focus of the inquiry. Doors, gates, windows and fences created boundaries to homes that open up the inside and the outside to us, as they did to contemporaries. The crossing of these boundaries is studied intensively and extensively, paying attention to the social and the mental as well as the material. Both potential and actual mobility to and from houses is examined, as well as how the houses were homes. The permeability of boundaries, visibility in and out of homes, neighbourly communication, and the ideals of a harmonious life are all touched upon. An important point of perspective is the openness of early modern homes, which has been noted by various scholars of European history. Joachim Eibach suggests that the term ‘open house’ (Das offene Haus) would be useful for studying early modern living and dwelling, and points out three central microlevel aspects to an open house: interactions among neighbours; a culture of visibility; and the co-presence of things and people in an accessible space.2 But as Eibach writes, although an early 1 2

Flather 2007, 53. Eibach 2011, 646-655.

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modern house was always an open house, it still was an entity separate from its surroundings, with borders that had to be crossed. People did not just constantly wander in and out of the home: if this were the case, the concept of ‘house’ would not make any sense. This is exactly why examining the house and the home as a material construction is important; it helps us to see what house and home meant in an early modern town.3

3

Eibach 2011, 648; Eibach 2004, 199.

1

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Urban Turku Space: Small Houses and Central Yards As no buildings have survived from early modern Turku before the late eighteenth century, nor are any plans or pictures of them available, not much is known with any certainty about their layout, form and content. The examination of dwelling patterns here cannot therefore be based on earlier research. Instead, with the help of archaeology and court sources, we need to start by inquiring into what kind of material living environment the buildings in seventeenth-century Turku might have provided.1 This inquiry, it must be stressed, is not a foray into material things as separate from the practices of dwelling or from the cultural meanings of homes, but sees the material houses as emerging from the same processes as social practices and cultural meanings.2 Like any early modern European town, Turku had buildings housing the wealthy as well as the poor. Most residents in the town, like the majority of people in urban Europe, lived close to each other.3 Turku was not a big town, and its way of life could in some ways even be considered rural. The common image of an early modern Turku house is that of a plot of land surrounded by one or two houses, perhaps a barn, a sauna, possibly a workshop, a malt room and sheds. In the yard there would be a kitchen garden and some domestic animals. Indeed, signs of urban underdevelopment can be found in the source material. In the 1630s the Town Council complained that there still were too many houses that did not have chimneys;4 and in 1646 the Council asked those town householders still without glass in their windows to furnish their houses ‘as was the custom in other towns’.5 Cows being herded through the streets and pigs escaping from the yards added to the countryside feel of the town.6 1 Archaeological research in Turku often focuses on the Middle Ages, partly because the remains from the medieval centuries are best preserved. However, because new houses were often built on the site of older ones, medieval Turku archaeology does shed some light into the history of the seventeenth-century dwellings. In addition, some information has been identified about the seventeenth-century houses themselves. Whole houses, and especially whole properties, have nevertheless never been excavated. 2 See Barad 2007 for her epistem-onto-logical theory of agential realism; her theory belongs to the field of new materialism. 3 Sarti 2002, 138-139; Friedrichs 1995, 40. 4 Ranta 1975, 96-97. 5 ‘som i andra staden brukas’ TRO 9 November 1646 [1647], 47-48. 6 Ranta 1975, 509-510.

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However, this rural image of seventeenth-century Turku is too strongly influenced by extrapolation from eighteenth-century sources.7 One of the most widely-used sources to describe the material environment of early modern Turku is Daniel Juslenius’ Aboa vetus et nova from 1700. This is the earliest extant comprehensive description of the town that we have, and it describes Turku as a low-rise grey town with beautiful gardens and trees. However, Turku in 1700 was not the same as the Turku of 1650, or more to the point, it was not simply a more developed version. The town had been largely destroyed in a town fire in 1681, and the late seventeenth century was not as economically prosperous as the mid-century had been.8 It would thus be possible that the town in 1700 may have been less impressive or less urban in appearance than the town in the 1640s and the 1650s. The archaeologist Liisa Seppänen, in fact, suggests that fifteenth-century Turku was not a particularly low-rise or modest town: stone buildings and two-storeyed houses with chimneys, and stonepaved streets, were well established. Following the fires of 1509 and 1546 (and others), a shortage of good building materials and restless social conditions meant that the rebuilding of the mid-fifteenth-century town was not easy.9 We don’t know whether the fifteenth-century level of urbaneness suggested by archaeological research was reached even by the mid-seventeenth century. What is clear is that we must avoid looking for steady progress from a less developed medieval town into a more developed early modern town; rather, we need to concentrate on the evidence of each period on its own merits. Although the Turku Town Council’s concern over chimneys and windows does suggest the prevalence of somewhat humble condition in the seventeenth-century town, we must remember that these are only two quotes amongst a multitude of administrative entries, and do not necessarily mean that Turku was not in many other important aspects more urban in character. Both the written sources and archaeological research point to many urban features in the seventeenth-century buildings and streets. Many (although not all) of the streets and some yards were paved with stone.10 Window glass was so common in the seventeenth century that archaeologists have been able to use it to indirectly date other finds.11 Stove tiles have also been found in archaeological excavations from the fifteenth century onwards; tiled stoves featured at least in the houses of the town’s rich merchants.12 Similarly, 7 8 9 10 11 12

For example, Ranta 1975, 97. Ranta 1975, 278. Seppänen 2012, 947-956. Kykyri 2001, 16; Seppänen 2012, 884, 956. Kykyri 2007, 71-72. Majantie 2010, passim.

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the court sources testify to glazed windows and paving of the streets.13 This information provided by both archaeology and the court sources balances the view of a large number of chimneyless buildings in the town. Although the town was therefore probably more urban in appearance than has been previously believed, most of the houses in Turku were not multi-storeyed with multiple rooms. Archaeological research suggests that the wooden buildings in Turku often had one main room, a bed chamber, and a small hallway. There were also one-room houses with no separate bed chamber, as well as some buildings with two big rooms connected by a combined hall and bed chamber. The latter pattern, however, became more common only in the eighteenth century. The archaeologist Marita Kykyri’s research shows that there may also have been buildings with more than three rooms, but we cannot know how common these were. Liisa Seppänen has found wooden buildings approximately 30 to 50 square metres in size. Some of these were two-room houses, and others one-room houses with a hallway. The size of the rooms varied between 7 and 40 square metres. Seppänen’s houses are dated mainly to the fifteenth century.14 As buildings throughout the centuries were often built on the same site as the preceding one, these fifteenth-century house and room sizes may also be indicative of at least some houses in the seventeenth century.15 Archaeological research tells us that in medieval Turku the masonry houses were rectangular buildings with one to three rooms on the ground floor and a hallway or a stairway to the next floor, and often had a cellar.16 The size of the rooms in the medieval masonry buildings starts from 11 square metres and the largest cellars were 55 square metres in size. The largest excavated buildings were between 250 and 380 square metres in all, while the smallest found has been estimated at 35 square metres.17 Not much else can be said of the design of these buildings, since in most cases only part of the house has been excavated. As only the cellars and the near ground-level structures have survived, archaeology cannot tell us much about the height of the builldings. Seppänen, however, estimates that the building of two-storeyed wooden houses began possibly in the early fifteenth century, when also the first brick buildings were built. It is likely that particularly the masonry and stone 13 For example, TRO 22 October 1655, 261-262, 271; TRO 6 May 1643, 318-320; TRO 3 May 1643, 358; 2 April 1660, 107-108; TRO 22 January 1642, 135; TRO 3 September 1642, 402-403. 14 Seppänen 2012, 816-817; Kykyri 2007, 94-95; Kykyri 1989, 116-126. 15 Kykyri 1989, 122. 16 Seppänen 2012, 821. 17 Seppänen 2012, 819-823.

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houses had at least two storeys. The Swedish medieval towns of Uppsala and Visby had many multi-storeyed buildings; in Visby, some houses were even seven storeys high. In Turku no information about such buildings has survived, and thus we can only speculate whether any houses in Turku may have been multi-storeyed.18 The seventeenth-century written sources mainly consist of very brief and vague court record references to houses in sale and inheritance cases, and of side remarks in some criminal cases. The Town Court record books include a few estate inventories for the wealthiest burghers, but these usually include only lists of movable assets like dishes, fabrics and metals. The historian Veli Pekka Toropainen has studied the inventory of the merchant Thomas Träll, who died in 1636, and whose houses and their furnishings were, unusually, also listed. Träll’s estate was one of the most valuable in the town; it included one larger and one smaller stone building, and one wooden building. In addition, there was a sauna, a stable and a cowshed (which housed a horse, a cow and five pigs as well as a sleigh with a soft top). There was also a boat to be used on the river, and, on another plot, a storehouse for blubber and one for hay and firewood, as well as another storehouse on a field outside the town.19 To put Träll’s estate into context, Toropainen also describes two smaller properties. Two years earlier, in 1634, Agneta Grotila had sold her father’s old house and a cabbage patch for 60 copper dalers, while Träll’s two stone houses, one wooden house and the outhouses with their fixed furnishings were valued at 2200 copper dalers. In another case, Henrik Staffanson was in dispute in court about an old property that he and his sisters had inherited; this comprised a small house worth 14 copper dalers, a decayed small house worth 10 dalers, and a rotten sauna worth 6 dalers. In another case, a property including a small house with a baking oven and bed chamber and a separate sauna was valued at 20 dalers.20 In the Träll inventory, the furnishings and fittings of the buildings are listed by house and by room. The stone houses had vaulted cellars and one of them had a storage space upstairs. The bigger stone house had one big and one small room, with iron shutters on four windows. The smaller stone house, the one with the attic, had a baking room, a kitchen and a storeroom (steenbod) towards the street. The latter may have also been used as a small

18 Seppänen 2012, 822-824. 19 Toropainen 2014, 135-136; TRO 1636, appendix. 20 Toropainen 2014, 136, 138.

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shop, like many other small stone houses along the streets.21 Träll’s wooden house had two rooms with a bed chamber between.22 At least the bigger of Träll’s stone houses was probably rather spacious. It included a lockable bureau, an oak cupboard furnished with three locks, a pine cupboard, an oak table with turned legs, a framed chair and three smaller chairs. The smaller room had one bed, two Danish chests, an English bench, a small table and a small lockable chest. The smaller stone house was an outbuilding, and the only furniture listed was one bed;23 it is probable that this combined bakehouse and kitchen also housed some benches. Träll’s wooden building had, in the smaller room, three beds and two chests with locks, and a locked case containing all the family documents. From the bigger room the list only mentions one bed,24 but it seems likely that the room would also have included a table and benches, as it is implausible that a big room belonging to a rich merchant would have been so empty. Benches and tables are the furniture that are most often mentioned in various court cases, and it is very likely that all houses had this furniture. Beds are also often mentioned, most often when for the use of the master and mistress of the house. Other bed chamber furniture is mentioned only rarely in the court record material, since most disputes that required court proceedings concerned the main rooms of the houses (or outside areas), but beds would surely have been staple bed chamber furniture. Träll’s houses described above are an example of a wealthy property, but reinforce the model typical of many Turku houses, consisting of one or two main rooms and one or more bed chambers. The main rooms in less wealthy houses may not have included fine cupboards and fine chairs, but most families seem to have had a lockable chest, a table and benches, and often a bed for the master and mistress. The indirect evidence from a range of other court cases indicates that many houses had just one single room, or that bed chambers were rented out and only one room was kept for the use of the family. The latter point is evidenced by cases where evening events are described and where (usually) the mistress of the house can be found in bed in the same room where the men are sitting by the table drinking, playing and talking.25 Träll was one of the richest men in town, yet his buildings were not multistoreyed. Nevertheless, the terms ‘up’, ‘down’, or ‘basement’ occur in various 21 22 23 24 25

Nikula & Nikula 1987, 96. Toropainen 2014, 135-136; TRO 1636, appendix. Toropainen 2014, 135-136; TRO 1636, appendix. TRO 1636, appendix. TRO 6 December 1647, 489; TRO 5 June 1643, 361-362.

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court cases, although it often remains unclear whether the buildings were two-storeyed or even two-and-a-half-storeyed, or at times just buildings with cellars. There is no indication of more than three storeys (or two and a half). In many buildings cellars were more than storage rooms, since for example many drinking establishments in the town were called cellars (källare) and were below street level. Some entries in the court records describe going upstairs to bed chambers, or refer to an ‘upstairs room’ or a ‘room downstairs’. It is difficult to ascertain if such ‘downstairs rooms’ were basements or on the street level, and whether the ‘upstairs rooms’ were a full second storey or perhaps a low attic space.26 As there seem to have been many tenants in the town living in rented rooms, however, one might conclude that there may have been more two-storeyed buildings (where such rooms could have been located) than has previously been believed. For a fuller consideration of dwelling patterns, however, not only the buildings are important, but also the outbuildings and the layout of the houses on the plots. The houses in Turku were built around a yard, with the long side of the building facing the street – unlike the practice of building in many Continental European towns. Liisa Seppänen has found that Uppsala in Sweden had a similar building tradition, and in Deventer in the Netherlands the nobility and the canons built their houses this way. This building practice provided a central yard surrounded by buildings, a similar layout to the main house and the outhouses of a single farm that were typically grouped round a square central yard. This building tradition came to Swedish towns in the fourteenth century; it has been found earlier in Novgorod in the ninth and early tenth centuries and in Denmark in the early Middle Ages.27 In a complete arrangement, where the buildings form a continuous enclosure, this tradition may have served defence purposes; it may even have been the case that in towns with no town walls, wealthy merchants needed to defend their properties and families.28 In Turku there is no evidence of fully enclosed courts with buildings on all sides; neither, on the other hand, is there evidence of plots with an open space towards the street. Archaeology cannot help us, since no entire yards or plots have ever been excavated. Seppänen has, however, come to the conclusion that the archaeological evidence for the Middle Ages does not indicate yards 26 TRO 20 April 1640, 172-173; TRO 30 January 1654, 13-16; TRO 26 March 1645, 193-194; TRO 31 May 1643, 354; TRO 22.10.1642 [1643], 314; TRO 12 December 1642 [1643], 137-144; TRO 5 July 1643, 415-418, 421-422; TRO 12 March 1653, 57-60; TRO 4 February 1646, 93-99, 125; TRO 18 November 1640 [1641], 75-78, 94-95, 109. 27 Seppänen 2012, 900-901. 28 Seppänen 2012, 902.

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Illustration 1 Depiction of seventeenth-century wooden houses in Turku with their yards, based on some archaeological research and written sources

Illustration: Panu Savolainen

completely surrounded by buildings where one could enter only through a porched gate.29 The seventeenth-century court sources indicate that fences closed those parts of the yard that were not surrounded by houses. For example, thieves are reported as having climbed over fences, and merry-making students are described as rattling fences in the streets at night.30 As with the buildings, the written source material does not provide us with actual descriptions of the yards. The general impression one gets, however, is that town blocks consisted of one or several yards, each surrounded by one or more dwellings with their outhouses. A wealthy person like Träll might own an assemblage of buildings in a neatly organized square, but often houses or parts of them were sold or subdivided between inheritors, new buildings were built, and over time, yards changed shape, size and ownership. There is very little information about the size of the plots that 29 Seppänen 2012, 885, 902. 30 For example, TRO 22 October 1655, 261-262, 271; TRO 20 June 1659, 257, 261-262, 263; TRO 9 June 1645, 352-357; TRO 15 December 1660, 449-51.

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people owned or built their houses on. Some plots were small and narrow, but not much else is known. For example, a plot sized 5.3 metres by 14.9 metres was part of a larger property bought by Thomas Marsken, or so he thought. A woman referred to as ‘Bengt’s wife’, however, claimed this bit of land as hers, and she had the documentation to prove it.31 In 1660, Henrich Schecht complained that Thomas Skräddare had built on his plot of 11.8 m by 2.4 metres.32 These were apparently plots attached to particular buildings, and many house owners owned or otherwise occupied the land their dwelling and outbuildings were built on and thus also the yard they formed.33 The size of the plots is not very important to our inquiry into dwelling conditions, but the relationship between the various buildings around a yard is. To examine this issue we can examine two court cases for some clues. In 1654 a tenant, Johan Nielsson, took legal action when his landlady, Grels Wächtare’s wife Elisabet Jöransdotter, removed Johan’s chest from the building he was renting. Johan claimed that Elisabet had first taken his chest to Simon Post’s house, and then further to Mats Bryggiare’s house; he also accused Elisabet of violence and defamation. Elisabet’s story, corroborated by three eye-witnesses, tells the story slightly differently. One of the witnesses, Jöran Post, reported that Johan had come into Simon Post’s house and insulted Simon. Elisabet had interrupted and said that Johan should just pay his rent and leave to wherever he wanted to go. Johan had then gone out, and Elisabet had followed him into Johan’s rented house, asking again for the rent money. Johan had insulted Elisabet, which all the witnesses had heard, and Elisabet had then taken Johan’s chest as collateral for the rent. The chest had half broken in the yard and Jöran Post had helped carry the chest into Simon Post’s house. As there was nothing of real value in the chest, it had then been left outside in the yard.34 In no part of the description of the events by either quarrelling party or any of the witnesses is the location or the size of any of the buildings described. Nevertheless, one key to finding out about the buildings are the terms used in the court records. When the landlady wanted to get Johan 31 TRO 30 April 1642, 247. 32 TRO 15 December 1660, 449-451. 33 In Swedish medieval towns there were three categories of land: land owned by the Crown, land owned by burghers, and the land owned by the town. Most of the Church land was transferred to the Crown during the Reformation. The burghers could build on town or Crown land, where they would have merely a right of use, or on land that they owned. The town and Crown plots were ‘unfree plots’ (cf English leasehold), and people occupying them had to pay a rent/ tax called tomptöre. Sandberg 1996. See also Améen 1964. 34 TRO 18 September 1654, 305-309.

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and his things out of her property, the term gård was used. Gård is a word with many related meanings, which derives from the Old Swedish word garđer meaning ‘a fenced area’; in the Middle Ages the word came also to refer to the buildings and the built area of a farmhouse. Gård also began to be understood as the household of a married couple.35 Two dictionary definitions of gård are ‘a fenced area near or around a building, often an area surrounded with buildings’ and ‘a property with its houses’.36 Both of these definitions fit well with what gård appears to have meant in seventeenthcentury towns: i.e. a grouping of houses owned or occupied by a single owner, and/or the yard of such a house, or the gated complex composed of the houses and the yards (whoever they are owned or used by). In English we might sometimes use the term ‘a property’, and sometimes ‘a courtyard’ or ‘a yard’. In the dispute between Johan Nilsson and Wächtare’s wife, the gård where they both lived was evidently a property belonging to or in the use of the burgher couple Wächtare, and Elisabet was dealing with a lodger living in one of the buildings on that property. In the description of the events, gård is also used to mean the actual yard area, for example when the chest is dragged to the yard and left there (‘på gården’). The word used about Simon Post’s house, where Wächtare’s wife took the tenant’s chest to, is stuga. Stuga can mean a small house with a hearth, or a room in a house with a hearth in it (often the main or the only room).37 Simon Post’s stuga was apparently such a house, which he either owned or rented. In many cases the two main meanings, house or room, are difficult to tell apart, and in the Turku Town Court records stuga is used in both meanings. The term nattstuga (night room) is sometimes used about a bed chamber. In addition to stuga there is also the term hus (house), but it is not used in this particular case. Hus, as defined in the dictionary, can be a building, a place of lodging or dwelling, or a home.38 It very often occurs in the Turku court records in compound words, for example rådhus (Town Hall), hushyra (house rent) and husmoder (mistress), but also occurs as a term for a building in general. In our case the stuga that the landlady carried the chest to was apparently located in the same yard as her own house, as was the buillding that Johan was renting, which however was not referred to as a stuga but as a pyrte. A pyrte was rather a primitive one-room building with no chimney; these 35 36 37 38

Lagerstedt 2004, 85; Burström 1995, 164. Svenska Academiens ordbok. s.v. gård. http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/ [1.3.2016]. Svenska Akademiens ordbok, s.v. stuga, http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/ [25.8.2015]. Svenska Akademiens ordbok, s.v. hus, http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/ [25.8.2015].

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were mostly saunas or malt rooms, but they might in this period sometimes still be built as dwellings. They were often rented out to poorer people, and not always exclusively for their use: for example, the burgher Jacob Bispa, whom we already met in the chapter about vagrants, apparently used to warm himself in his sauna, where a vagrant couple was also lodging.39 In the dispute between Elisabet and Johan, the descriptions of people moving between the buildings, coming and going, and the chest being dragged in and out of the houses and around the yard, all fits well with a plot layout where a yard was surrounded by several buildings. This arrangement of the dwellings made the yards very central to people’s lives; both arguments, and more sociable dealings, spilled out from the houses into the yard shared by various people living in the surrounding buildings, rather than into the streets, as happened in many other European towns. 40 One home invasion dispute further illuminates the spatial arrangement of buildings and people’s activities. Again, there is no real description of what the buildings were like, or how they were situated around the yard(s), just brief remarks about the movements of the persons in question. The case in question concerns Mistress Margreta Markusdotter, a lodger in Sigfred Pihmonen’s property, who got into an argument with a neighbour, Phillip Mårthensson, over a fence separating her dwelling from Phillip’s. Margreta had gone to ‘Phillip’s fence, which was in Sigfred’s property’ and maligned Phillip, who was thus provoked to ‘rush to the fence’ and, after further altercation, ‘vault over the fence into Sigfred Pihmonen’s yard’ and pin Margreta against the wall. Phillip had taken a stick to hit her with, but others in the yard took it off him. Margreta got away from Phillip, and escaped to Påske’s yard, possibly over another fence, where Phillip followed her and finally hit her. In the end Phillip was sentenced for causing bodily harm and for the violent invasion of a home. 41 Everything that happened between Margreta and Phillip thus occurred inside areas enclosed by various buildings and fences. At no point did either of the parties go through a gate and into the street. There were several houses inside the block, where at least Sigfred Pihmonen and Påske each owned a property, and Phillip possibly a third. Here the land of the several individual properties did not form closed separate courtyards, but a more open shared area, with at least some fences separating yards of different 39 TRO 3 April 1647, 265-268. 40 See Gowing 2000, 137; Cowan 2009, 130; Cohen & Cohen 2001, 69. 41 TRO 28 March 1659, 111-114. ‘gått till Philips plank som war i Sigfredz gård’; ‘Philip springer derföre på planket’; ‘derföre sprang öfver planket och in uthi Sigfred Pifmes gård’.

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properties from each other. In Margreta’s and Phillip’s case the different properties thus did not share a completely open yard (although the events of the incident show that the fences were not very high), whereas in Elisabet’s and Johan’s case, discussed above, no fences are mentioned. How common the existence of fences was between properties in the same block is not easy to say, as references both to yards and fences are so brief and scarce. Nonetheless, what both our sample cases show is that the dwellings of various people were connected with each other through and in the yards, and that individuals’ yard areas were connected with each other, whether they were demarcated by fences or not. A shared yard area may have led to a ‘community of dwelling’ that extended outside the house. An altercation between some university students and a toll clerk illuminates this. The toll clerk Erich Erichsson lived in a house in the same yard where Matts Kaukar had his house. It is not certain if Erich’s house was owned by Kaukar or by someone else, but the house was not Erich’s own. One night Erich had some Swedish students for supper at his lodging. At nine o’clock in the evening Erich left to go to the toll gate (apparently in his role as a toll clerk) and the Swedish students left with him. As the three left the house, two drunken Finnish students and a seaman happened to come out of Mats Kaukar’s house and pick a fight. These three men had been drinking in Kaukar’s house, because a sheriff, whose daughter was the fiancée of one of the students, had his lodgings there. 42 While this very winding and protracted court case is a perfect example of the imprecise and confusing references to dwellings in the court records, more importantly it testifies to the ways in which the yard was central for everyday urban life. If one could use the term ‘community of dwelling’ to describe the collective relationships of occupants of a house, there was also a ‘community of dwelling’ around a courtyard, even if that community was not always very tranquil. This community may have included house owners, tenants, lodgers, and visitors. Perhaps, indeed, such yard-based ‘communities of dwelling’ were more prominent than those formed around people living in a single house: a yard brought people together, while walls separated them.

Household and Holding House To examine the people’s relationship to their dwellings further, we need to take a closer look at the concept of the ‘household’, and at who occupied 42 TRO 31 January 1641, 147-156, 160, 378, 404, appendix.

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the houses in Turku. Studies of European towns provide reports of various different patterns of composition both of persons and of ways of dwelling. In addition to families occupying their own individual houses, many families and individuals rented lodgings of various sizes. Rooms and apartments were called ‘homes’, even when they were very small. In crowded towns like London, rooms were even partitioned to house several people or families. The notion of a free-standing building as a single family’s dwelling is, however, resilient, and it is reinforced by the predominance of the concept of ‘household’. Empirical research has, however, shown that urban dwelling cannot really be defined in terms of the household, if ‘household’ is understood as a cohesive patriarchal unit occupying a house. 43 The use of the term ‘household’ has already been criticized from various perspectives. Dag Lindström and Göran Tagesson point out how historians, steered by the dominance of the concept, have been led into expecting and searching for clearly differentiated families and households from their sources; they refer to David Warren Sabean, who already in 1990 raised concern over the usefulness of the concept of household as an analytical tool, if understood as a coherent and delimited entity. Moreover, as Lindström and Tagesson write, historians have seldom analysed household in the context of space, even if household, in principle, is often spatially defined, that is, as a group of people who reside, eat and work together under the same roof. Rather than spatiality, what has interested scholars is the household’s social function. ‘Household’ has been overused as an exhaustive term to describe a ‘fundamental unit of social and economic organization’; and although new ways of thinking about the household have emerged, for example examining the household from the perspective of ideology and discourse, and new issues like varied agency or alternative kinds of households have been studied, the problems of the concept remain. 44 These problems are well illuminated by the German concept ‘das ganze Haus’ (the whole house), which was coined by Otto Brunner in the 1950s and which has been used extensively in German research. ‘Das ganze Haus’ is a concept relating to the processes of modernization: it prototypically characterizes the prevailing family and societal structure prior to the modern era as unchanging, clearly structured and seamless. ‘Das ganze Haus’ is based on prescriptive and normative sources, which see the household as a harmonious unit controlled solely by a Hausvater (father of the house). 43 Orlin 2007, 157, 163, 167, 169-170; Cohen & Cohen 2001, 65; Miettinen 2012, 44, 47; Fouquet 1998, 417-418; Corley 2009, 146. 44 Lindström & Tagesson 2015, 48-50.

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One of the reasons that the use of ‘household’ and ‘das ganze Haus’ has been so persistent is that it has been tempting to project this kind of wholeness onto the pre-modern family and community, as such wholeness so strongly resonates with the normative ideas of the time. 45 A critique similar to that against the problematic use of ‘household’ has also been presented on the use of ‘family’, when what is often studied is actually a household. As pointed out by Tiina Miettinen, Giovanni Levi argued already in 1985 that families cannot be separated from the communities they live in, and the ‘family’ should therefore not really be an independent object of study. Levi also points out how ‘family’ has characteristically been defined through a shared dwelling and hearth, thus linking the question of family directly to that of the household. In her review of family history, Miettinen goes on to criticize family history because it has mainly studied families as they are described in prescriptive literature; scholars have then found families similar to those described in the normative sources. As in the case of the household, this is problematic, because the sources used by scholars about local communities were written by people who conformed what they committed to paper to the prevailing prescriptive thinking. Philippa Maddern has highlighted this problem by describing how Peter Laslett’s group in the 1970s, studying early modern household formations, set to work with a presumption that all servants and journeymen were unmarried unless specific evidence to the contrary presented itself. The project found no married servants, because a particular pattern of family and household was set as a premise. 46 When considering the problems of ‘das ganze Haus’ and the study of everyday lives in houses, Joachim Eibach writes that the German term Haushalt (household) would be more open to examination of communication and interaction than das ganze Haus, but ends up concluding that ‘house’ would be an even better term, as it skirts the socioeconomic baggage of ‘household’ and would be a better fit with the terms used in the sources. 47 Similar conclusions can be made regarding the Swedish court sources. The term household (hushåll) has not appeared once in my material, whereas the words hus, gård and stuga are prominent. Since ‘house’, as suggested by Eibach, refers both to the material building and to the people and their 45 Opitz 1994. See also Eibach 2011, 635-639. Although ‘household’ and corresponding terms in other languages and in other European research do not quite match the term ‘das ganze Haus’, similar problems apply. See for example, Flather 2007; Gräslund Berg 2011, 82-83. 46 Miettinen 2012, 23; Levi 1992 [1985], 68-69; Maddern 2008, 47. 47 Eibach 2011, 636-639.

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relationships to and in that house, ‘house’ is indeed a better term. Furthermore, the people who live in houses are individuals, which means that the examination needs to start from the premise that there is always more to the house than a cohesive household. This chapter therefore continues the examination of dwelling patterns in terms of houses, not households, even when looking at interpersonal relationships within them. As noted, the continuing use of the term and concept of ‘household’ arises partly from the fact that all across Europe the concepts of the ‘house’ and the ‘household’ as a perceived unit of people living together were indeed central to the ideals of community and family in the early modern era. The importance of household in early modern culture cannot then be ignored. As elsewhere in Europe, so also in the Swedish kingdom, the patriarchal family was the ideal basis for dwelling and community. Both clergy and other scholars based their thinking about the proper order of the house, the household, and the family on the Bible as well as Aristotle and other authorities, and the government followed the same ideas and ideals. 48 The Lutheran Catechism presented the ideal order of the society in the Table of Duties, which divided society into three groups: the clergy, the civil government and the subjects/the house. The duties of the latter were presented in a hierarchical form, listing the duties of the household members (although not using the term household (hushåll), which was however used in household manuals). The table of duties for the King’s subjects were presented in an ordered list, with the husband above the wife and the rest of the house, and then the husband and the wife together above the servants and the children. Household manuals similarly placed all occupants of a house under the master of the house. Both devotional literature, and conduct and household manuals, saw the household as an essential building block of society, of the family, and of the individual. Jonas Liliequist writes about the man’s role and manliness in this equation, noting how according to the manuals, marriage and founding one’s own household were milestones in becoming an adult man. If a man did not succeed in presenting the right kind of authority in the household, and therefore in the community and wider society, he was a failure. Women were weaker vessels, which the men were to govern, defend and educate.49 This relationship, like the relationship of the husband and the wife towards their children and servants, was a model of the relationship between the monarch and his or 48 Hansen 2006, 35-39. Also, for example, Hubbard 2012, 262-263; Flather 2007, 17-38; Dürr 1995, 266-273. 49 Liliequist 2002, 76-79, 81; Lagerstam 2002, 22-23.

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her subjects. There was a correlation between the two; without a functioning household, the whole society would be dysfunctional. The running of this system was reinforced in Sweden in the seventeenth century with a range of laws aimed at keeping everyone in their proper place in the hierarchy. The laws concerning vagrants and compulsory labour, for example, which were discussed in the Part II of this book, were part of this effort.50 These ideals and laws did not, however, correspond to the reality of everyday life, as we shall see below. A closer examination of the actual practices of urban dwelling will start here with an exploration of the ownership and occupation of urban houses, paying particular attention to administrative and judicial practices as well as departures from the normative ideal. Regardless of a common lack of correspondence between the prescriptive texts and everyday practices, in general the burghers in Turku must be considered the primary owners and managers of the urban houses. Burghers were the townspeople with the strongest association with fixed assets, and burghership required in principle (although not in practice) owning a house in town.51 Mainly burghers are found in the court record books buying and selling houses in Turku, and houses are often named in the court records after their male owners or occupiers, as was common in other European towns.52 The census rolls followed the same custom, with some people listed as living ‘in somebody’s house’, often having only their own first name stated. Most of the time, however, it is impossible now to know where such a ‘somebody’s house’ was, or, more to the point here, if that somebody still owned or occupied the house. Regardless of this starting point of a burgher as the owner of a house and of houses being identified by men’s names, by no means all houses were stable spatial units owned by a burgher and occupied by a cohesive household. While some houses remained in the ownership of particular burghers and burgher families for long periods of time, we will inspect other kinds of ownership and occupation in order to gain an overall balanced view of how dwelling was arranged in the town. Some instances of arbitration and dispute show that properties (gård) could be rented out in parts, so that yards and even the use of buildings could be shared. For example, in 1644 Commissar Johan Apelgreen complained to the Town Court that he was not satisfied with occupying only the subdivision of the property (gård) he had rented, and requested the 50 For example, Hansen 2006, 39; Aalto 1996, 107; Stadin 2000, 81. 51 Sandberg 1996, 190; Lindström 1991, 15. 52 For example, Cohen & Cohen 2001, 65.

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Town Council for permission to have the use of the whole yard, with all its buildings and outhouses. Since the rest of the property was not currently occupied, he approached the Town Council for authorization to take it over. He was given permission as long as he paid rent for three quarters of the place for the benefit of the underage children of the previous owner, and took responsibility for any damage by fire or other cause that might endanger the children’s inheritance.53 People sometimes ended up in peculiar sharing arrangements. A peasant called Lars Mattson was given tenure by the Court of Appeal for a half a property (gård), that is, a little two-storeyed wooden building, together with half of the stable yard and half its pyrte, until his affairs with the previous owner, the recently deceased Grels Korti, had been settled. The whole property had meanwhile been bought from Korti’s widow by Jöran Snickare, who already occupied the main building. Until Korti’s widow’s business with the peasant Mats Matson had been concluded, however, Snickare had to pay rent for half of the property.54 All in all, a wide range of property arrangements were possible. One could rent a house in someone else’s yard, while the owner lived in the main building. This could mean, for example, one burgher renting a house from another one, so that one burgher was living as a tenant in a building in the yard of their fellow burgher.55 Or on the other hand, one could live in a building whose owner did not live in town, or one could live in a building whose owner inhabited a house in another yard in the town.56 In the two latter cases, the house that was rented might be an entire property (gård), or it might be just an individual building (stuga or hus). Ownership of houses and plots caused confusion particularly in the late 1650s, as after the fire of 1656 parts of the town were re-planned. People lost portions of their land and received compensatory pieces of land elsewhere. In one case Henrich Schlecht complained to the Town Council that his neighbour Thomas Skräddare had built on his stockyard, without permission; it was explained that that part of his yard had now been reassigned to Thomas, and that Henrich had instead been assigned an area that earlier had been part of the street.57 53 TRO 2 November 1644 [1645], 46. 54 TRO 11 November 1639 [1640], 37; TRO 1 February 1640, 87. 55 TRO 15 November 1648, 314-316. 56 TRO 18 November 1654, 311; TRO 7 April 1655, 99-100; TRO 31 May 1659, 246; TRO 15 November 1648, 314-316; TRO 8 May 1644, 316. 57 TRO 15 December 1660, 449-451.

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The Town Council and the Town Court were responsible for arbitration in quarrels about houses and land, as well as the general urban dwelling arrangements, such as settling arguments over rent, monitoring purchases of land, and granting permits to dwell in particular locations. The statutory texts did not provide much guidance in these matters. The stipulations in the Town Law mainly referred to building in towns, and did that in a very imprecise manner. The Law provided restrictions on building a lavatory too close to your neighbour, and warnings about building on someone else’s land or building a roof so that the water ran onto the neighbour’s roof. The Law did provide instructions about penalties for those who did not pay their rent and how a rental agreement was to be revoked.58 The Town Rule of 1619 said even less about the building of private houses than the Town Law,59 but did refer to housing by instructing that the town must provide housing for certain specified members of the clergy.60 In general, however, the Town Council was left to its own devices in organizing and keeping order over the houses of the town. Sometimes the Turku Town Council had to evict someone from their house, or at least terminate their ownership of it. The Town Council could for example take action when someone was clearly living above their means. This is what happened to Jacob Engellsmed’s widow: the case stemmed from a debt that the widow could not pay. She was instructed to sell or rent her house and move to a smaller dwelling, one she could afford.61 The widows who are mentioned in various court cases as landladies probably needed to rent out rooms to make ends meet, so as not to lose their house as the widow Engellsmed did. One could also lose one’s house over failure to pay fines or when liable for another wrongdoer’s fines by having vouched for them. For example, Jöran Peldo lost his house in connection with fines for receiving stolen property,62 while a Town Constable Henrich Staffanson lost his small house because he had let an adulterer called Karin escape from him.63 Family quarrels could also lead to changes in dwelling arrangements: 58 MES, Jordabalken 70-77, Byggningsbalken 87-91. 59 Laitinen & Lindström 2009, 67-69. 60 ‘Rikets städer 1619’, 311, 325. Clergy housing sometimes caused problems; for example, the Finnish Assistant Curate complained that he had not been allocated accommodation, and later complained that for years he had been forced to rent a room for himself. In another instance the Town Council decided to move an Assistant Curate and an organist to the parish priest’s house and allocate their house to a doctor (the rent, however, would go to the Assistant Curate). TRO 4 May 1642, 253; TRO 7 December 1642 [1643], 107; TRO 16 August 1651, 217. 61 TRO 11 October 1641 [1642], 20. 62 TRO 1651, appendix; TRO 7 April 1655, 99-100. 63 TRO 1643, appendix.

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the town court recommended Jacob Silli to move out, evidently from his father’s house, so that some kind of peace could be reached between Jacob’s wife and his father’s new wife.64 The Town Council also made valuations of property, and settled quarrels over inheritance. For example, one Henrich Pyrri wanted to live in a bed chamber in his mother’s house. Part of the house was Henrich’s by inheritance, but the mother did not want him to live there, and Henrich brought the case to arbitration. Three councillors set out to examine the building. The building had one living room and one bed chamber, and was occupied by the mother and her daughter’s family. The councillors found that the parties could not be reconciled, and recommended that the property be valued and Henrich given his quarter of the value in cash. Henrich received 20 dalers from his mother, and was satisfied with the solution.65 All of these examples show that keeping a house was neither wholly private, nor stable. The examples further show that the Town Council could take quite drastic measures to maintain peace and sound domestic economy. They also show that a patriarchal household ruled by a burgher was not the only model of holding house, as women clearly could also be owner-occupiers. We don’t know how many women owner-occupiers there were in Turku, as they appear in the court material only sporadically, and the census records are very vague at best. Many of these women likely were widows who continued to live in their husbands’ houses and to follow their occupations after their death, as was common in many European towns.66 There was however, at least one lesser woman in her own house. Brita Thomasdotter, also known as ‘Cavalryman’s Brita’, lived in a stuga at the end of a plot which Pär Thomasson had bought in 1640. Brita lodged a complaint with the court against Pär, who had torn down her house while she was away, and built a storehouse in its place. Pär, however, described Brita’s house as blocking his way out to the street; he believed that the land that Brita occupied was part of the property he had just acquired, and that all Brita could appeal to was a vague promise from her deceased mother about her right to the building and the land. Brita had, however, paid her land tax (tomptöre) (although too small an amount, according to Pär), and she neither wanted to sell nor rent the house. In the end the Town Council decided that Brita should be allowed to stay. Pär Thomasson appealed against this decision, 64 TRO 31 October 1660, 355. 65 TRO 18 April & 20 April 1640, 168, 174-175. 66 Ogilvie 2003, 217; Hubbard 2012, 261-268; Wiesner 2000 (1993), 89-90.

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and argued that the previous owner, Thomas Åhrapä, had paid for the freehold of the said land. The owner before that, however, a cavalryman called Henrich Ryttare, as testified by his wife, had never bought the land that Brita occupied; and Brita had in fact built her stuga on the land during the even earlier owner’s Erik Sigfredsson’s time. As for the building being an obstacle, Henrich Ryttare’s wife stated that they had always used Brita’s yard as their route out to the street.67 Erik Sigfredsson, the earliest owner cited in the case, had been Brita’s sister’s husband, and Brita stated that it was Erik who had originally given her permission to live on the land. The Town Court could not find any previous claim for Brita’s house and land from before 1637, when Thomas Åhrapä had bought the land from Henrich Ryttare and began to complain about Brita’s house. The case ended with Brita being awarded the freehold of the land, as long as she paid the yearly land tax. Pär Thomasson was ordered to tear down the building he had begun to build on Brita’s land, and to use the same route to the street, through Brita’s yard, as his predecessors had done.68 This case shows how buying a property did not guarantee complete control over all the buildings in the yard. Surprises like this that Pär Thomasson suffered may have been quite common, as many plots had been divided many times in different distributions of estate. Most commonly it was the heirs who divided properties up, but contracts of sale could also include clauses providing a separate property for someone else. For example, one Gertrudh Carlsdotter, Koppar Eskill’s widow, complained about Thomas Matsson, who had bought her property, but would not let her build herself a small house on the property, even though the contract so stipulated.69 So, in addition to owning or holding house not being stable, ownership of property was somewhat fragmented. It is also worth noting that even if we know that wives and widows might well have headed a house, Ryttare Brita was not a model respectable mistress of a house. In the case notes, one of the appellations used for Brita is huskvinna (house woman), usually reserved for lodgers and not at all comparable with hustru (wife) – a term which Christopher Pihl and Maria Ågren define as referring to a woman owner-occupier with rights of control over her property. In early modern Sweden hustru did not mean only ‘wife’, 67 TRO 24 October 1640 [1641], 33; TRO 11 November 1640 [1641], TRO 25 November 1640 [1641], 70, 102. 68 TRO, 28 November 1640 [1641], 11. 69 TRO 5 April 1654, 43-44.

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as in present-day Swedish, but more generally ‘an adult woman capable of governing a household’.70 Brita was a wife, but a soldier’s wife – a category of women whose status was often in practice little different from that of single (unmarried) women. Their husbands were away at war, and often not expected to return. Soldiers’ wives in town lived mostly as lodgers.71 Brita is listed in the 1647 census rolls as living alone, with a maid or a child over 15.72 She does not appear to have been wealthy, nor was her house large, and there is a further hint of her low status in a later court case, where she appears as a receiver of stolen goods.73 All these features are reminiscent of single unattached women, whom scholars in Europe have found often to have been poor.74 There are some women in the Turku census rolls who can be recognized as such poor single women. The clearest example is one Walborg, listed in the census rolls as living in the stallyard of one Säger’s house.75 Ryttare Brita, however, owned her own house. She appears to have belonged to a category of people who caused problems for the various clerks and officials recording people and events. As mentioned, in the court records Brita is called huskvinna, but also hustru a couple of times, as well as ‘Ryttare Brita’, simply ‘Brita’, and ‘the neighbour woman’. Tiina Miettinen’s study of the western Finnish countryside cites the example of a ‘lodger woman’ who lived in her own house, which also seems an oxymoron.76 We will discuss lodgers more a little later in this chapter, but here one can point out how the use of the terms in principle reserved for poor lodgers (huskvinna or inhyses), to describe women living in their own houses, shows how problematic women owner-occupiers were for the bureaucracy. Officials had difficulty in finding appropriate terms to describe women who were not subordinate to a male head of house, yet who were not themselves heads of a proper family either, that is, were neither widows, nor wives of a burgher taking care of a proper burgher house. According to the norm, single women were supposed to reside with their father, brother or some other male relative.77 70 Pihl & Ågren 2014, passim., 190. Translation by the writer. 71 See Åbo stads mantals lengdt, particularly from 1658. 72 Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1647, 282. 73 TRO 1 March 1651, 47-50. 74 Bennet & Froide 1998, 17; Wiesner 1998, 193, 195. 75 Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1647, 279. Wiesner also believes that women listed only by their names in the German records were probably single. Wiesner 1998, 193. 76 Miettinen 2012, 47, 130. 77 See also, for example, Froide 1998, 237.

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In addition to Ryttare Brita, about whom we know more than about women in general because she appears in the court records, the census rolls also list various other women who may have been unattached to a husband or a brother. For example, in the 1658 register for the Aningais Quarter, there was one cluster of five hustrus and one daughter listed one after another. They may have lived together, but as none of them is listed as a lodger of another, this seems unlikely or at least not logical. These women are referred to respectively as a ‘seaman’s wife’, a ‘soldier’s wife’, ‘Jacob Fäbegge’s daughter’, a ‘shoemaker’s wife’, a ‘tailor’s wife’, and ‘Knut Bytti’s wife’. Who were these women, and if their husbands were alive (and not soldiers), where were they? We cannot know whether any or how many of them were owner-occupiers. Such examples of women listed separately in the census rolls raise more questions than they answer, but one possibility is that in these women, like Brita, were wives or widows occupying a dwelling which they themselves controlled.78 In addition to ‘wives’ some women were listed in the census rolls as ‘somebody’s daughter’, and some just under their own names. Some, even many, of these women seem to have constituted their own independent economic units, whether living in their own houses or under someone else’s roof. As the European estimates for single women in the population between 1250 and 1800 range between 10 and 20 per cent, and in Sweden for the early modern period up to 20-30 per cent, it is practically inevitable that some of the women listed separately in the Turku census rolls were women living without attachment to a family.79 The ‘somebody’s daughters’ in the census rolls are an interesting group, and are largely invisible in other sources. There is one exception found in my material. In the 1650 census roll the councillor Lars Bårgare is listed in the Church Quarter, and under him, but each in their own subentry, paying a lower tax rate (i.e. that paid by lodgers),80 are Matz Turska and Erich Mårthensson’s daughter.81 Matz Turska also appears in the court records. He was a burgher in the town, but had in 1648 asked for a dispensation from night guard duty on the grounds of age and blindness, and because he no longer had a house (gård). Thus it is conceivable that Turska lived, with his wife, as a lodger in Lars Bårgare’s house.82 Erich Mårthenson’s daughter 78 79 80 81 82

Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1658, 219. Pihl 2011, 56; Bennet & Froide 1998, 2-3, 9-10, 14. Kerkkonen 1945, 230. Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1650, Turun ja Porin läänin tilejä (7241), KA, 357. TRO 3 August 1648, 188.

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also appears in the court records: in 1650, she was admonished for merely propping up with poles a masonry wall in her house that was falling down, and was ordered to tear it down.83 Erich Mårthenson’s daughter was thus responsible for a house in her own name, and clearly therefore not a lodger in Lars Bårgare’s house. Census rolls before and after 1650 show that her name was Brita, and she was listed living in the same place from 1643 to 1658.84 The one court record entry and the census rolls thus indicate that this woman occupied the house for years. She was, nevertheless, listed in the 1650 rolls as paying the half rate. As she clearly was not in fact a lodger, this suggests that she might have been registered as a lodger – either by Lars Borgare and/or the clerk – since women who were neither members of the family nor contracted servants were seen by officials as ‘placeless’.85 This practice reflects the tendency to list people according to a patriarchal household ideology, in which everyone must be hierarchically related to a (male) head, i.e. the owner, of the house.86 Owner-occupier women did not fit well into this hierarchy, even if they were wealthy. In most years Mistress Brita was listed in the census rolls simply as ‘Erich Mårthensson’s daughter’, without her own name, a practice clearly reflective of patriarchal hierarchy. Some ‘daughters’ listed this way, by the father’s name rather than the woman’s own name, may have been from wealthy burghers’ families. Brita Erichsdotter may well have been the daughter of Erich Mårthensson, who had been a Turku councillor in the 1620s.87 While, in general, it has been shown that women householders were more common in the lower classes,88 in early modern England Froide has identified single women of middling to elite social status to have been particularly successful in becoming householders, and mentions three gentlemen’s daughters as examples.89 Above-average wealth may also explain some of the female owner-occupiers in Turku. 83 Turun raastuvan tuomiokirjat 1650 (z:20), KA, 282. 84 Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1643-1658, KA. 85 The issue is further complicated by the fact that in the first page of the 1650 listing the second column is titled ‘women’, while the later pages make it clear that the column is for those who paid the lower rate, where the gender of the person is irrelevant. It is very likely that there was a mistake by the clerk, as gender had in any case nothing to do with the poll tax. Still, Erich Mårthensson’s daughter was listed on the first page, so one cannot for certainx say what the clerk intended, and how she came to be in the list where she did. 86 Miettinen 2012, 30. 87 Juha Sinivaara, Sinettejä Turusta 1600-luvulta, http://www.juhasinivaara.f i/sinetit1600/ turunsine.htm [3.10.2015]. 88 Schmidt, Devos & Blondé 2015, 6. 89 Froide 1998, 242-243.

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Erich Mårthenson’s daughter is not the only ‘daughter’ to be listed in the census rolls. In the 1647 census, for example, there are twenty-two ‘somebody’s daughters’, while in 1658 there are twelve. As most of these women are not found in the court records, it is impossible to draw any firm conclusions as to their relationship to dwelling places or families in the dwelling places. The daughters in the census rolls, if not heading their own house, may have lived with relatives or close associates of the father.90 All in all, however, it is clear from these occasional entries in the court records and the vagueness and inconsistency in the census rolls that household patterns were not as clearcut in real life as the patriarchal model would suggest.

Tenancy and Control over Space In towns, there were more people independent from a family-setup than in the countryside. Society in the countryside can be thought of as centred around the unit of a farmhouse and the family running it (although in reality even that was not so simple), whereas in the town there were merchants’ houses and artisans’ houses, university buildings and church properties. The people dwelling in them, with their various roles and occupations, were not necessarily connected with the owner’s family in any particular way; they might simply be resident tenants. One can recognize two categories of people living in rented rooms in seventeenth-century Turku: those who had long-term leases for a room or a house, and those whose dwelling arrangements were more disorganized or undefined and whose dwellings were of lower quality. The latter were called inhyses, translatable as ‘lodger’. We will first discuss the renters of rooms and houses: tenants who sometimes were even relatively important men in the service of the town and the courts. Gerhard Fouquet has pointed out, regarding Germany, how tenancy has been a blind spot in the study of late medieval and early modern urban dwelling. Fouquet notes that earlier research treated families living in their own houses as the self-evident norm, and renting as an exception. More recent research, however, has shown that in German towns tenancy comprised from 30 to up to 80 per cent of a town’s population.91 Bernd Roeck states that 70 per cent of the people in early modern Augsburg lived 90 Also here one can compare to England, studied by Froide, where wealthy single women might equally well choose to live with relatives or friends rather than set up on their own. Froide 1998, 243. 91 Fouquet 1998, 417-418.

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in houses that housed four or more families.92 Similar results have been found for England. In seventeenth-century London, for example, because of the shortage of housing, many people rented rooms, and many lived in crowded housing conditions.93 In Lisbon, where from the late fifteenth century onwards people swarmed into the port, five- and six-storey houses were inhabited by multiple families.94 In Turku, although the number of buildings and of the housed did not reach metropolis proportions, tenancy was similarly common. Since the houses in Turku were relatively small and predominantly had only one to three rooms, an interesting tension arises regarding control over space and membership of a community or a house, between the ideal of a patriarchal unified household and the reality of separate tenancy. The most common tenants appearing in Turku court records were off ice-holders and students. University teachers, public off icials, and some university students rented whole houses (mostly stugas, not gårds), although all of them also occur in the records as renting individual rooms. The most frequent tenants of rooms were students, sometimes sharing rooms with each other.95 Students found their lodgings all around the town, and were given room by both wealthy and influential burghers and poorer townspeople. The rent was paid in cash, or room and board might be paid for by teaching the offspring of the landlord.96 Often it is difficult to say what kind of spaces people rented, because the court records only refer to ‘lodgings’ (härberge, logement), not to rooms or houses. For example, in one court case concerning a fight during the night, we find one Niels Andersson, living in premises at Knut Kiälke’s widow’s house. The transcript merely states that Niels was in his lodgings (härbärge) when the fight under investigation started; we cannot even be sure if he lived permanently at Kiälke’s house or if he was just visiting the town.97 Many references to rented rooms in the records are similarly cursory and matter-of-fact, making it impossible to say if the tenants had rented a room, a sleeping-place in the main room, or even a separate house. In some cases a bed chamber or a stuga is mentioned, but these cases are not numerous 92 Roeck 1989, cited in Friedrichs 1995, 40. 93 Orlin 2007, 156-177 94 Barreiros 2009, 13, 20. 95 For example TRO 13 October 1660, 331-332; TRO 26 April 1645, 251; TRO 30 May 1655, 149-152; TRO 30 January 1641, 147-156, 160, 378, 404, appendix; TRO 11 November 1640 [1641], 75-78; TRO 20 June 1646, 293; TRO 18 November 1640 [1641], 75-78, 94-95, 109. 96 Nallinmaa-Luoto 1973, 10-13. 97 TRO 5 June 1643, 361-362.

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enough to support any far-reaching conclusion about the general nature of tenancy in the town, except that it was a common practice and a central element in the dwelling culture of Turku.98 If the room layout in general was similar to the houses that archaeologists have so far examined, rented rooms usually had an entrance by a door or a stairway from the hallway; that is to say, tenants could reach their rooms without entering the living quarters in the rest of the house. Nonetheless, younger tenants in particular may have caused disruption to other residents in the houses. They appear in the sources banging on doors and gates late at night, so that landlords, landladies or servants had to get up to open the door to them. The students, seamen and journeymen may have continued making a racket in the main room, where many of the other occupants of the house slept.99 Since most rented rooms probably had no stoves or fireplaces for cooking, leases including board were more than likely the norm.100 The tenants, therefore, must have used more of the house than just their rented room. Moreover, it must have been inviting to spend the evening in the warmth of the main room, for example, rather than in unheated rented bed chambers.101 One can only speculate, however, on the status of tenants in the ‘community of dwelling’ of any house. The tenants may have been merely paying customers who were accommodated and fed, or they may have become members of the small social community which inhabited the house. Yet although tenants may have become part of a social community of dwelling, they were not members of the household, when household is defined as a group of people living together as a unit, eating under one roof, under the patriarchal responsibility and control of the master of the house. Therefore, even if the tenants became part of the social community of dwelling in the house where they lived, they also were clearly the heads of their own one or two-person units. For example, one Petrus Torpensis refers to the recognized concept of the ‘peace of the home’ (cf. the ‘sanctity of the home’ in English contexts) when talking about his rented room. Similarly two students took their landlord to court for invading their home, i.e. their room in the landlord’s house.102 The perception of a room as an individual’s home, even a ‘house’, is discernible here similarly to Lena Cowen Orlin’s 98 For example, TRO 22 January 1642, 135; TRO 4 May 1642, 253; TRO 30 May 1655, 144-152; TRO 18 November 1640 [1641], 75-78; TRO 16 August 1651, 217; TRO 20 May 1644, 349. 99 TRO 31 January 1646, 82-83; TRO 31 January 1641, 147-156, 160, 378, 404. 100 Toropainen 2016, 248. 101 The archaeologist Liisa Seppänen writes that in the early modern period stoves were mostly built in the largest room of each house. Seppänen 2012, 722. 102 TRO 4 February 1646, 93-99, 125, appendix; TRO 13 October 1660, 331-332.

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sixteenth-century London, where a single woman, Anna Smith, spoke of her bed chamber as her dwelling house.103 The tenants’ control over a space that most often was separated by walls from the rest of the house can be seen as playing a central role in defining their relationship to their living space as well as to the other people living in the same building. This control over separate space made the tenant a head of his or her own unit – even if in practice the tenant’s everyday life also encroached into other parts of the building.

The Order and Disorder of Lodging The main sources that tell us about lodgers are the census rolls, but also to some extent the court records. The collecting of census information began in many European countries in the early modern era. In Sweden, King Gustavus I updated the bookkeeping for taxes in the sixteenth century and began listings of his subjects.104 The poll tax for which seventeenthcentury census rolls were compiled was first introduced in the late 1620s,105 but information about taxable persons was not collected or recorded very systematically even in the 1640s and 1650s. Toivo Nygård writes that in the countryside people still tended to reduce their tax burden by omitting grown children (over 15) and servants from the lists. Nygård also notes how common discrepancies were in the entries between various years.106 Miettinen similarly points to inconsistent and careless registering practices.107 The term usually deployed in the records for lodgers was inhyses, ‘lodger’, but women were also listed as huskvinna (‘house woman’), and very occasionally men were listed as husman (‘house man’). There is variation in how the appellations huskvinna and inhyses are used, both in the census rolls and the court records, which neither follow the same logic or even maintain their own logic consistently. The recurrent confusion in the use of the terms in the records, as well as the lack of consistency in recording lodgers in the first place, make it nigh impossible to track individuals from one source to another. In addition, in the census records all labels had to do with taxation, not with that person’s relationships 103 Orlin 2007, 169. 104 Miettinen 2012, 21. 105 Kerkkonen 1945, 218-234. 106 Nygård 1989, 20-23. 107 Miettinen 2012, 73.

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with other people in the community or their dwelling place. Genealogical research has shown, for example, that even people closely related to each other are not necessarily listed together in the census rolls.108 Court records, again, do not provide much in the way of details about lodgers, even if lodgers appear quite often in the court records, especially as witnesses. Examining the evidence about lodgers is, nevertheless, essential, as it helps further to open up the household model of dwelling, and shows how different kinds of people lived in houses in different ways. As we have already seen in previous chapters, according to the law anyone living in town had to have enough money to support themselves, or to be in service. Nevertheless, both the court sources and the census records show that numerous lodgers, people without a service contract or an apprenticeship, also lived in the town. According to the law and administrative instructions, such people should have been banished as vagrants, but many were not. Instead they were evidently hired to do various kinds of casual labour, on terms that we know nothing about; we merely know that the sources refer to these people as lodgers rather than as vagrants. The only normative text found so far in my material that even mentions lodgers is the Instructions to the County Governors from 1635, in a paragraph about vagrants and the poor, where it says that ‘no lodger man or woman shall be tolerated who will not or cannot either with trade, craft or contracted service support themselves’.109 This sentence clearly derives from instructions in the Town Law and other ordinances about vagrants, that is, non-burghers and nonservants. However, as the term used is inhyses, not vagrant, the focus of the text, unusually, is on people who have settled in the town, rather than on the wandering vagrants that the laws were often concerned with. In towns, the ‘loose’ people the statutes were so worried about were lodging in houses, rather than living in the streets, as already became evident in the Part II of this book. Regardless of these Instructions, lodgers formed a large group among the townspeople; yet scholars have showed little interest in them. Attention has been paid in recent years, particularly internationally, to poor relief and the destinies of vagrants, but less to the lower classes living in the towns as such.110 In the Swedish and Finnish research, when the townspeople are described in studies about particular towns, usually only the burghers, 108 Miettinen 2012, 35. 109 ‘Och ingen inhysesman eller qiunna ther lijdes som icke will eller kan sigh anten medh kiöpenskap handawärch eller tiänst nära’, ‘Instruction och underrättelse 1635’, 204-205. 110 See the various references in Part II of this book.

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office holders, clergy etc. merit discussion. Ruth Hedlund’s study on the population of Västerås in central Sweden in the seventeenth century is an exception. Hedlund writes about the kinds of jobs associated with people that she classes as ‘day workers’ (arbetare), and also mentions briefly that some people lived as lodgers (inhyses); she notes that many people first came to town as servants, and then ended up as workers, for example, after getting married. The size of this worker population is not clear, as Hedlund does not itemize how many of the women she has counted appear in her sources as workers and how many merely as wives. It is, however, possible for her to itemize people according to their occupation and family, since she is working from the late seventeenth-century Västerås parish registers, in addition to the vaguer census rolls, which for mid-seventeenth-century Turku are the only demographic source available. The combined number of men, wives and widows that Hedlund places in the ‘worker’ group forms 25 per cent of the Västerås population, whereas the lodgers that Hedlund identifies were of a varied but poor background, and composed only 2.8 per cent of the population.111 Hedlund characterizes the lodgers or day workers as illegitimate, placeless people: in the research literature more generally, whenever lodgers are mentioned (or day workers, who are mentioned even less than the lodgers), they appear to float in the air, as non-active members of the community, which ironically matches well with the early modern ideas of the ‘placelessness’ of lodgers. We know nothing of how payment for lodging was arranged; there may have been varying practices. Nevertheless, it seems clear that lodgers were distinct from servants or workers under yearly contracts to work for the master of the house. This does not exclude the possibility that some lodgers were provided for by the master of the house, as we know that at least some daughters and sisters are listed in the census rolls as lodgers.112 In Turku there were even some burghers listed as inhyses; evidently, not all of those burghers who did not own their own house were able to rent a whole building, but some had to share a dwelling with others. The lodgers were a varied lot, and the term inhyses appears to refer, as its dictionary definition would indicate, primarily to a person’s relationship to a house as a non-owner non-dependent resident; it does not denote a class, role of employment or moral status as such.113

111 Hedlund 1980, 61-63, 177. 112 Miettinen 2012, 81. 113 Svenska Akademiens ordbok, s.v. inhyses, http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/.

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In the Turku census rolls, most of the female lodgers are listed without name or occupation. Among the few female occupations mentioned, we find laundresses and wet nurses. Occupations are mentioned more often for male lodgers, but overall, female lodgers clearly outnumber males, while female tenants do not occur at all.114 The numbers of lodgers during the seventeenth century can be estimated only indirectly, from a couple of years. Some years’ census rolls had two columns, one for those who paid full tax and another for those paying half; lodgers belonged to the latter group. In the 1658 census rolls, 829 households are listed, which housed altogether 340 persons paying the lower rate of tax; 238 (70 per cent) of these were women.115 From 1638, at the beginning of the period under scrutiny, there is a separate list of 265 ‘loose people’, which seems to consist mainly of lodgers and where the majority of listed people were women.116 In seventeenth-century Turku, then, lodgers made up approximately five per cent of the population, and the majority of them appear to have been women. Among the male lodgers listed in the census rolls of Turku, most were seamen, while others included older burghers, houseless masters and other craftsmen. Anni Kallio, who writes about the Turku tailors’ guild, notes that master artisans could not always acquire a house immediately after qualifying, and thus would be forced to live as lodgers.117 Among the men listed as lodgers in the data for 1658, there were 24 who were not seamen, in addition to a total of 40 seamen, 31 of them with wives. (In addition, there were 23 seamen listed under the higher rate of tax, which would indicate that they headed their own house). The other inhyses men from 1658 are mostly craftsmen: a weaver, a painter, a chamois maker, a glove maker, and a bricklayer, as well as a gardener, a street builder, a drummer and a barber. Among the 24 non-seaman lodgers from 1658, seven have no profession stated. The status of the male inhyses is typically stated more clearly in the census records than that of the women. We know who the men were and what they did; in the case of the women we do not. Thus the listed inhyses women can be seen as more ‘placeless’, in the sense of the ordinances, than

114 It should be noted, however, that tenants are not listed separately in the census rolls, and even in the court records their existence can more often be deduced from circumstances than from them being named as tenants. 115 Åbo stad mantals lengdt 1658. As there were 301 maids listed, we can see that there were quite many women of low status in town. 116 The lack of such a separate list in the 1640s and 1650s illustrates the constantly evolving system of the census rolls. 117 Kallio 2000, 46.

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male lodgers, although in practice they may have been as well and even more specifically employed than the male lodgers.118 On the other hand, the numbers and status of apprentices, journeymen and particularly various kinds of hired hands is left even more obscure by the sources than those of lodger women. Some of the men listed in the census rolls as dreng (servant, hired hand) may have been apprentices, but there is no certainty over this; some of them certainly were hired hands with a yearly contract. However, it is difficult to determine whether day workers were listed in the census rolls at all; it seems unlikely that burghers would have reported them along with their maids, apprentices and contracted workers – there would have been no reason for a burgher to pay the tax for someone who was not in their full-time employment. As there were few drengs listed in the census rolls independently, we cannot be sure whether there were in fact very few male day workers in town, or whether they just never ended up on any list. For example, it may be that they were not listed as lodgers if they slept in barns and shops, whereas the placeless women typically lived in houses and saunas, and may have been listed more readily. In any case, it is clear that in this category the men are much more invisible in the sources than the women. A similar invisibility of single men has been pointed out by P.J.P. Goldberg for later medieval England; Goldberg attributes this to legal concerns under English law, which was stronger for women than for men.119 One group of lodgers were the old and the destitute. The Town Council was responsible for the care of the deserving poor and the elderly; the most usual entry in the records regarding this issue is when an old or sick person asked to be placed in the ‘hospital’, i.e. the poor house; such requests were usually granted.120 Widows in poverty could obtain assistance even if neither sick nor old. When Widow Judit Pärsdotter was reduced to poverty through her husband’s debts, and was living in the streets, she asked for help; when she appeared before the Town Council, she stated that she was supporting her two sick children by begging, and asked to be allocated a bed. She did 118 Elsewhere in Europe women are known to have been employed as seamstresses, charwomen, spinners, weavers and lacemakers. They sold various products to earn their living, acted as pawnbrokers and moneylenders, they brewed beer and produced various foodstuffs. Wiesner 1998, 197; Bennet & Froide 1998, 8; Wiesner 2000 (1993), 117-118; Stabel 2015, 27-49; Montenach 2015, 50-68; Simonton 1998, 13-84. For Turku in the eighteenth century, see Vainio-Korhonen 1998, 60-114. 119 Goldberg 2015, 117. 120 TRO 20 September 1651, 229; TRO 4 June 1660, 144; TRO 24 November 1651, 280; TRO 6 December 1651, 293.

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not ask for a place in the hospital/poor house, as many older burghers or their widows did.121 Judit’s request may relate to a practice of placing the old and the poor in burghers’ houses, a practice that is not described anywhere, but is indicated by few entries in the Town Court records. For example, two burghers complained that Bertil Tieru was a dangerous man when drunk, and requested from the Town Council that he should be moved elsewhere. The Council decided that Tieru should be placed behind the gates of the Town Hall until a new dwelling could be found for him.122 In another case, an older burgher called Clemet Kandaja had stolen from the magistrate Erich Johansson, who stated in court that he had kept and treated Clemet as one of his own, which suggests that Clemet had perhaps been a resident in the magistrate’s house.123 Although we thus know something about the lodgers and their place in the houses in Turku, their closer relationship to the burghers and the wider community is extremely difficult to ascertain. People listed in the census rolls were in principle listed under a head of a household, but getting reliable information about lodgers’ relationships to the masters and the houses in the town is highly problematic. The method by which the census was collected was that the Town Council summoned each burgher to visit the Town Hall to provide information, both for their own family (‘sit egit folck’), and also for servants, and then the lodgers, separately (‘sedan inhyses folck serdels’).124 Following this household model of a cohesive housebound unit, one might simply place all who were listed in the rolls after the name of a known or probable burgher as belonging under the roof and particularly the responsibility of that burgher. The listings, however, were not accurate descriptions in this respect, and not all people were even listed at all.125 121 TRO 23 May 1653, 134-139. 122 TRO 17 January 1657, 5. 123 TRO 19 November 1642, 63-65. Anni Kallio has studied the surviving records of the Tailors’ Guild and identified older master tailors who had to give up their houses and ask for help from the guild; the guilds may have also helped with lodging of older, poverty-stricken masters. Kallio 2000, 46-47. 124 See TRO 7 February 1648, 18. 125 Houses, however, at least in Turku, seem to have been listed approximately in the same order each year, and thus one can follow various changes in the composition of the occupants of each of the four quarters of the town. However, the composition of the occupancy of houses is more problematic, because one cannot say with certainty which people lived in any one house in all the listed years, and even the order of households/houses/people is not entirely logical. To make sense of the census rolls in this respect would require a study of its own, preferably with comparative material from other Swedish towns.

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Particularly between 1643 and 1656 (no lists have survived from 16381643), it is impossible to estimate who has reported each lodger, soldier’s wife and seaman for the register, as during these years the lists state only people’s names, one after another. In some cases, the name of a burgher has the number three next to his name, which would most probably mean the burgher, his wife and a maid. In these earlier rolls, huskvinnor and other singular people are listed separately on their own, so it is impossible to say where they had their dwelling. In addition, the term inhyses does not appear in the rolls before 1657 at all. Before this date, then, one must presume that some lodgers were listed among the widows, soldiers’ wives, ‘somebody’s wives’ and ‘somebody’s daughters’, but probably many lodgers were not listed at all.126 The rolls from the late 1650s show some burghers with one lodger, some with two, and some with more. There is a difference here to the late-seventeenth-century situation in Västerås examined by Hedlund, as there most of the lodgers are listed as living in the houses of the poorer townspeople. But also in Turku non-burghers, at least some of the seamen and widows, could also have lodgers. In addition to lodgers living with non-burghers, there are also sometimes clusters of names in the rolls that suggest a group of non-burghers sharing houses. Many of these people were women. Although, in the imprecise census rolls, the clustering of names is not as such proof of them living together, research shows that European women did share housing with each other, particularly in the case of older single women.127 In Västerås, Hedlund has found in the late seventeenth-century church records what she calls ‘non-household households’, meaning houses that housed many lodgers. As an example she cites a tailor, who in addition to his own family, had in his house a group of ‘incomplete’ families, that is, an unmarried bellringer with his mother, an old widow with a 35-year old daughter, an unmarried worker, another old woman with a daughter, and a cupper with a child.128 Groupings of names in the Turku census rolls indicate the existence of similar houses, many of them run by widows. In various places in Europe it has been shown that widows often took in lodgers to support themselves.129 It has also been found that poor widows 126 There were fewer than 150 women who might have been lodgers listed in the 1647 census rolls, whereas in 1658 there were 238. It is impossible to say if the difference is due to a more lax listing of people or due to population increase. 127 Bennet & Froide, 9-10. 128 Hedlund 1980, 177. 129 Mc Evan 2011, 54; Froide 1998, 239; Hedlund 1980, 177; Ogilvie 2003, 244-245. In Turku see Toropainen 2016, 248.

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and unmarried women usually clustered in the poor areas of the town.130 In the latter part of the 1650s, the Turku census rolls show that there are houses headed by women which include many lodgers, but also houses headed by men without wives with many lodgers, particularly women. Many of these clusters appear in the Aningais quarter, which included some of the poorer areas of the town, and several in the Mätäjärvi Quarter, part of which was notorious. The Aningais quarter also housed a sizeable proportion of the seamen living in the town (some of them as providers of lodging) as well as a concentration of male lodgers. Seventeen of the twenty-four male lodgers who were not seamen were listed in 1658 in the Aningais quarter.131 Dwellings shared by women appear extremely seldom in the court records, which are the more descriptive source. Reflecting the character of the source material, those that do are of the more disreputable kind. Many of the court cases where löös folk, particularly women, are a source of concern, were about houses headed by widows. However, also more generally it is the widows and wives who often appear in in court over disagreements with their lodgers. That is, the women – also in burgher families – were the ones who took care of the lodgers and tenants, while the men apparently went about their trade or craft. As it is likely that board was often part of the agreement, at least with tenants, the general management of affairs with the lodgers naturally fell to the women.132 Reputable houses multi-occupied by several women do not appear in the court records at all, but the census rolls include entries such as ‘Nils Peusa’s widow, lodger seaman Erich, wife Gertrud’, where a widow housed a couple, and for example: ‘Mårthen Tolpo’s hustru Agnes, maid Aka, lodger Mats tegeldreng (worker at the brickworks), his wife Agnes, and huskvinna Margreta’.133 There are also clusters of women listed without any clarity as to the head of the house, for example: ‘Walborg, soldier’s wife in Tarhala’s house (gård), and huskvinnor Kirstin, Walborg and another Walborg’,134 where the women may have been the sole occupants of a house owned (at least at some point) by someone called Tarhala (gender unspecified, presumably male).135 The cluster of five wives and one daughter already mentioned is an interesting puzzle; they are not assigned to any house or under any man, so it 130 Wiesner 1998, 195; Froide 1998, ; Bennet & Froide 1998; Ogilvie 2003, 217. 131 Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1658. 132 Toropainen 2016, 248. 133 Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1658, 224f, 225. 134 Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1658, 219. 135 Hedlund has also identified such clusters from her Västerås sorces: Hedlund 1980, 177.

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is impossible to say how and where they lived.136 Overall, it is clear, however, that the widespread conception that those called inhyses or huskvinna were single persons living in a burgher household as some kind of an appendix to the family does not hold. There were many different arrangements and different relationships obtaining between a lodger and the landlady or landlord, and thus different relationships to houses and homes. In general it can, nevertheless, be said that the lodgers (inhyses) in seventeenth-century Turku were characteristically in a different relationship to the master and the mistress of the house than the office-holders and students who rented rooms. Rather than having a room of their own lodgers most often lived in the main room or in the outbuildings, such as saunas, malt saunas, and kitchen buildings. If a lodger family rented a whole building, this will usually have been an outbuilding of some kind. Even rented outbuildings were not always out of bounds for intrusion by landlords and landladies. Lodgers typically seemed to share the same room with the family or at least with the servants.137 As lodgers were not usually separated by walls from the rest of the people living in the house, in principle they were more directly part of the ‘community of dwelling’ than the tenants, who more often had their own rooms or houses separated by walls from the rest of the house; yet, although lodgers were more directly a part of the ‘community of dwelling’ in the house, they were not part of the social and economic unit of the family occupying the house. Few details about how the lodgers lived their everyday lives emerge from the court records, but the few examples are worth mentioning. One lodger woman, Lisa, was on trial for infanticide. A detail in one of the testimonies informs us that she was believed to have left the house in the morning to go to Erich Franzila’s house to mend the clothes of Erich’s children.138 An adultery case tells of a soldier’s wife called Karin, who worked at the Pistolmaker’s house, but lived in another house in the Aningais Quarter.139 These isolated entries confirm the interpretation that some, if not most, inhyses persons were independent lodgers, and not part of the economic unit of the house that they lived in, and more importantly that they worked elsewhere than the dwelling. This may not seem a revolutionary interpretation, as women in Europe are known to have worked for wages since the 136 Åbo stads mantals lengdt 1658, 219. 137 TRO 3 March 1651, 56-63; TRO 3 April 1647, 265-268; TRO 18 September 1654, 305-309; TRO 9 November 1657, 229-235; TRO 5 December 1657, 298-308; TRO 26 November 1660, 385-389. 138 TRO 3 March 1651, 56-63. 139 TRO 19 September 1642, 420-421.

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Middle Ages;140 but it is important to point this out, since no attention has really been paid previously to lodgers in the Finnish or Swedish research. Moreover, since in many aspects the material shape of the houses and yards in the town resembled the material shape of country houses, it is pertinent to emphasize, particularly in regard to dwelling, that people in Turku did not always live and work in the same house; and because the sources are so silent, to emphasize that lodgers were an important element in the town’s population, whose role deserves fuller discussion.

The Servants’ Place in Town Lastly, we must consider the dwelling patterns of another important group of townspeople: servants. In the Turku source material, the position of servants in town emerges as mobile and uncertain, as has already been shown in the Part II of this book. This means that the location of their dwelling may also have been uncertain, even if the norm was that servants had yearly contracts and lived with their masters. In many areas of Europe servants, particularly maids, were not even allowed to leave the house or the property without permission from their master or mistress.141 Flather writes that in England, servants were vulnerable to eviction; contracts were difficult to enforce, and servants could do little if they were expelled from the house.142 Similarly, Dürr describes how in Swäbisch Hall the Town Council issued an ordinance forbidding servants from congregating out in the town.143 Maddern has, however, shown that at least in late-medieval England servants could marry, live separately and go home to their spouse in the evening, thus leaving the house of service.144 Flather also points out that houses were so open in design that in practice complete control was impossible.145 In the Turku records there are only examples where maids moved from house to house, or left service in the middle of the contract period, but none about illegitimate mobility or expulsion like those described in the German and English materials. There were various cases of absconding from service that came before the court, since the law allowed the burghers 140 Wiesner 1998, 203. 141 Ogilvie 2003, 135; Flather 2007, 49-51. 142 Flather 2007, 50. 143 Dürr 1995, 221. 144 Maddern 2008, 50, 51. 145 Flather 2007, 59.

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compensation for losing a servant. If the escaped servants were caught, they were under obligation to pay back the money they had so far received (although if it is doubtful if they still had it). Moreover, if they were found in another burgher’s house, that burgher had to pay compensation for luring a fellow burgher’s servant.146 If we compare the Turku situation to that in England presented by Flather, the problem seems to be the opposite. Servants were not evicted, but fled.147 Neither in the cases heard in court, nor elsewhere in the Turku sources, does there seem to have been the level of aversion towards maids that Wiesner, Ogilvie and Dürr describe in Germany and Froide in England. There are no signs of a tendency to expel women merely on the grounds that they were single. There are no ordinances or proclamations that apply particularly to women, let alone single women; nor are there any explicit expressions of dislike in general for masterless women or maids.148 The escaped servants who were caught in Turku most often gave as their explanation for leaving that they had not been given enough food or even the clothes that their contract stipulated. This applies both to women and men, and indicates that even if no explicit aversion towards servants in general is expressed, they were not always treated well. The only available research testifying to particular surveillance of maids or single women in the Swedish Kingdom comes from Marko Lamberg, who has identified some Stockholm ordinances from the late fifteenth century that restricted maids’ lives, and even patrols examining unmarried women to ascertain that no unwanted pregnancies were hidden. These patrols then lapsed for about a hundred years from 1530 to 1630, however, and when they started again after 1630 the examinations were not surveillance of women as such, but investigations of women suspected of involvement in the death or abandonment of a baby. Lamberg has also found a couple of seventeenthcentury cases where a maid’s absence from the house was questioned in court.149 Neither such cases nor a general policing of unmarried women or maids can be found in mid-seventeenth-century Turku. This does not mean that a general watchful attitude towards them did not exist; but the attitude may have been less strict than in Stockholm, which was more populous and growing rapidly. In principle, nevertheless, the position of maids was always dependent on the goodwill of the burghers and the Town 146 Nygård 1989, 98-107, 112-119. See also Ogilvie 2003, 134. 147 TRO 8 November 1656, 239; TRO 2 June 1641, 338; TRO 4 May 1646, 242; TRO 14 February 1648, 29; TRO 26 September 1640, 370, 375-376; TRO 22 May 1641, 315-316. 148 Wiesner 1998, 196-202; Froide 1998, 237, 239, 240, 248-249; Flather 2007, 50; Ogilvie 2003, 134, 271, 314; Dürr 1995, 220-224, 237-245. 149 Lamberg 2008, 175-176.

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Council. The overall uncertainty of the position of maids arose both from the mobility necessitated by the search for work, and their dependency on burghers and the Town Council for a legitimate place in town. Although no particular surveillance of single or young women is visible in the sources, the Town Council could still order the women about. For example, when Oloff Kannogiutare explained to the Town Council that he had no maid, and requested authorization to hire one, he was told to take as a maid the older woman who was a lodger in his house.150 Whether this woman was a lodger who paid in cash, or someone who worked in the house to pay her way, or even who was a relative, the Town Council had the right to designate her as Oloff’s maid, since in the face of the law, she was an unattached person and was obliged to take a contract if offered. Other than as witnesses, maids appear in court mainly in cases of theft and/or flight. Very few maids appear merely on the grounds of unacceptable behaviour. Giving birth to an illegitimate child is an exception, but these court cases are very brief, and give no more information than that the birth had happened and that those involved were punished, usually by a fine. In these cases, the status of maids in the town or in the house more generally was not of interest to the court. In one very rare case, assessor Anders Andersson complained about the ‘disloyalty and disreputable state of affairs’151 of his maid Walborg Johanensdotter, and asked permission to dismiss her and hire a new maid. The case notes do not specify what Walborg had done to fall into disfavour; she was, however, asked where she usually spent her time (‘… och hoos hwem som hon pläga hafwa sitt tillhåld’: ‘whose house she usually frequented’). She replied that she ‘was at’ Knut Kiälke’s house in the Aningais quarter and that she kept her chest there. The choice of words in the court record is problematic. The court’s question would seem to refer to a place where she used to ‘hang out’, but her reply that she had her chest at Kiälke’s house would indicate that it was a more permanent place of dwelling (‘Då swarade hon sigh wara inne hoos sahl. Knut Kiälkes…’: ‘Then she answered that she was in the house of Knut Kiälke’s Widow’).152 It may be that the mistrust between the master and the servant had already resulted in Walborg moving out – or that her unacceptable behaviour included ‘staying’ somewhere else than in her master’s house. 150 TRO 15 February 1647, 132. About the narrow line in the countryside between being a servant, a lodger or a vagrant, see Nygård 1989, 30-31. 151 ‘otroheet och oredelige förhållande’. See Dürr 1995, 220-224 on the negative attributes of ‘bad servants’ in Germany. 152 TRO 15 November 1648, 281-282.

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With regard to maids in general, due to the nature of the source material, the ones that we know about are the problematic ones, and their lives look unsettled. For example, in one theft case, a maid called Gertrudh Hansdotter stated that her accomplice had been in service with Anders Merthen, and then with Jacob Nashall, but that she did not know where she was now.153 As the maids whose movements are discussed in the court records are usually either thieves or suspected thieves, or pregnant, however, the records give a negatively-slanted representation of maids’ mobility and instability in the town. Yet while troublesome maids occurred, there obviously were more who settled peacefully at their place of service, either for one contract period or for a longer time. While a general impression emerges that there were fewer opportunities for single women than men to find a legitimate place in town, the place of dwelling of male employees was also a matter of consequence. Like the women, male servants were also relatively mobile, and cases of them fleeing service can also be found. They also appear in fornication cases and cases of theft. A couple of entries in the court records illuminate how the dwelling practices of male servants and apprentices was policed, including the practice of living in the master’s house. In a court case about a brawl, one strapmaker’s apprentice explains that he had permission from the Town Council to reside with and work for a swordmaker; it clearly was anomalous for an apprentice to live away from his formal apprenticeship master’s house.154 Another entry records a fine imposed on a burgher for lodging the hired hands of several shopkeepers.155 The issue is not elaborated on, but the case may be that the young men were expected to be lodged by the merchant hiring them, or more likely to sleep in the shops. Male employees, be they hired hands or apprentices, do not turn up in court cases as often as women; they appeared in court mostly when they were accused of fornication, fighting, or theft, but not very often as witnesses. On the basis of the little information we have, their appearances seem to be linked to the places where they slept, such as workshops, but also possibly barns, saunas and other outbuildings. One entry with precise information is in the adultery case concerning Karin the seaman’s wife, who was found in the apprentice’s bed in the workshop where he was sleeping. The apprentice claimed innocence, saying that only when he woke up, did 153 TRO 22 June 1640, 280-284. 154 TRO 12 March 1653, 57-60. 155 TRO 2 November 1640 [1641], 52.

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he realize there was a woman in his bed. He was asked why he had not latched the door when going to bed.156 Both the sleeping places of male workers and servants and the frequency or infrequency of their appearances in court may also have been related to the location of their tasks. Hired men, it can be surmised, usually worked in workshops, barns, and also on the road, where there were fewer incidents that ended up in Town Court. Maids, however, worked within the main rooms of the houses, as well as around the yard, and also in the streets and along the riverside, as did many of the female lodgers. These women lived in the main rooms, kitchen buildings, and various saunas, usually in a similar manner to the young daughters of the house, often sleeping on benches. For example, where a sudden death of a maid was examined, it emerges that she had shared a bench in the sauna with another maid, while a third maid lived in the main room of the house. Information about the maids’ and the daughters’ sleeping places often emerges in witness statements, which reinforce the point that their living spaces corresponded with the locations of many of the events that ended up in court. Maids could thus become witnesses to adultery and fornication, to theft, to sudden cases of death, and to squabbles and fights between drunken men.157 Although all the people in a house were in constant contact with each other, it seems that maids, even more than others, lived in constant copresence with a multitude of people – and vice versa: most of the people in a house came into contact with maids during the day and the night. The male workers were likely to work and sleep in places more cut off from the hustle and bustle of the main house or the main room. Male and female servants thus had a different relationship to the ‘dwelling communities’ in houses and around yards.

156 TRO 19 September 1642, 420-421. 157 TRO 12 April 1641, 263-265; TRO 7 February 1646, 85-88; TRO 6 October 1641 [1642], 14-17, appendix; TRO 12 December 1642 [1643], 137-144, appendix; TRO 7 May 1642, 257, 259, 271-279, 323; TRO 20 February 1660, 24-25; TRO 27 February 1660, 65-68; TRO 31 September 1646, 82-83.

2

Spatial Rules of the Urban Homes

Closed and Porous Boundaries Research has shown that urban homes in early modern Europe were often open for neighbours to come in, and the authorities had more rights in the house’s or the family’s affairs than after the early nineteenth century, when the home began to be defined in terms of privacy. Nevertheless, doors, gates and windows marked the inescapably material boundaries of homes. Like the materially less firm and less clearly definable locations such as doorways, thresholds, yards and alleys, they provided specific stages where urban encounters could take place.1 Joachim Eibach writes that the domestic totality opens up to examination through its artefacts and practices in relation to visibility and accessibility, the formation of the front and back of a stage, and the inside and the outside.2 The examination in this chapter moves along similar lines, in exploring encounters and boundaries inside and around domestic buildings. Looking at the practices which were connected to the boundaries of homes, as will be done here, offers an approach to the relationships of the community and its members to their dwellings as material and social sites of encounter, co-presence, and shared habitation.3 First, one needs to explore what kinds of material borders existed, and how and why and to what extent they were open or permeable. A good way to start is with the action of locking the doors or the gates, a practice that gives a message of the space being closed to outsiders. Locking up was a common habit both in Turku and elsewhere in Europe. For England, Amanda Flather writes that as robbery was common, house and outbuilding doors were usually locked. Lena Cowen Orlin points out that good rented rooms in London had locks in their doors, whereas poor ones had only latches. In the German regions, Gerhard Fouquet writes, doors were usually locked at nine o’clock, because there were so many thieves. 4 While simple protection of property was one main reason for locking up, further inquiry into why and how the doors and the gates were locked illuminates the communal 1 Longfellow 2006, 315-318; Eibach 2011, passim; Eibach 2004, 195, 198; Katajala-Peltomaa & Toivo 2010, 19, 21. 2 Eibach 2011, 641. 3 See Eibach 2011, 651. 4 Flather 2007, 46; Orlin 2007, 176; Fouquet 1998, 494.

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order and the townspeople’s relationship with their buildings and smaller units of dwelling. Doors and doorways are often at the focus when the borders of houses are discussed, but in the case of Turku it is pertinent to begin with the gates to the courtyards. As we have seen, yards were important to urban everyday spatiality in Turku; one must presume that the gates to the yards often created the first effective point of entrance to the houses. The earliest surviving layouts of buildings and yards from Turku date from the late eighteenth century, and then, at least, the doors to the buildings were mostly located inside the yard: only shop doors faced towards the street.5 For the medieval era, the archaeologist Liisa Seppänen says it is difficult to pinpoint the location of the doors, since at best only the foundations have survived for archaeologists to study, and the doors were mounted so high in the walls (to be above the level of wet ground and snow) that not much has remained of them to study. Still, the scant remains indicate that doors may have been placed on any side of the building. Archaeological studies from elsewhere, as well as ethnological research, imply that doors may have more often been placed at the gable end of the house.6 The layout of the buildings on the plots in Turku may, however, mean that this was not the case here. In the seventeenth-century Turku Court cases, people are described as going to the street through the gates, not directly through the door. This is not categorically unambiguous, however, since the reference is often simply to ‘going out of the house’, with neither the yard nor the street mentioned. At night people were heard banging at the gates, but less often at the doors. While the Court case entries do not prove that doors were invariably inside the yard, they do show that many were so, and therefore indicate the importance of the gates as urban boundaries.7 The gates separating the house and the street were usually open during daytime, but closed and locked for the night. Closed gates are mentioned in the Court records most often in connection with fighting and drunkenness in the streets at night. Drunken journeymen, students and sailors arrived back at their lodgings late, and tried to get in by banging on the gates, or they ran riot in the towns and assaulted various people’s gates. Sometimes their landlords would let the men in, but sometimes not. In the 5 Savolainen 2014, 39, 30-31, 32, 33, 102. 6 Seppänen, 752-753. 7 See for example TRO 14 May 1642, 280-281; TRO 15 March 1645, 182-183; TRO 15 January 1642, 126-127, 128-129, 134; TRO 20 February 1660, 24-25; TRO 21 April 1651, 120-123, 132, appendix; TRO 3 March 1651, 56-63.

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latter event, it may have been more of a question of them not being heard than of categorically not being allowed in after the gates had been locked. In the case between toll clerk Erich Erichsson and the Finnish students discussed earlier in the chapter about houses and yards, the landlord, Mats Kaukar, stated that everyone in the house had already gone to sleep when the students arrived late at night; Kaukar said that he had to get up to let them in himself. In this instance, the students had been able to get the gate of Kaukar’s property open, and banged on the house door. The gate had not been locked, just latched, probably because the house possibly was an inn, where people would be expected to arrive late at night. Many gates were more firmly locked. The incident starting on Kaukar’s property includes an episode where Erich tried to find shelter in the yard of Hans Wäfware, but could not get the gate open, as it was securely fastened.8 In another case, Peter Bruun, in court for killing a student, had been hanging around in the street (where he came across the said student) after failing to get into his lodgings. He had banged at the gate, which no one came to open, and had then sent a boy who was with him to check the gate on the other side of the plot.9 Getting in through a closed gate at night thus seems to have depended on being heard and on whether or not the person wishing to enter was expected at the house late at night. Locking gates for the night was a regular procedure, and people were aware of the risk of being shut out. The adulterer Karin, already mentioned twice in the previous chapter, complained to the Court that she had not got into her own lodgings because it was too late and the gate was already closed. After having been found in the bed of an apprentice, Matz Eshilsson, in the morning, Karin explained to the Court that it had already been ten o’clock the previous night when she had left the Pistolmakare’s house where she had been working, and where Matz resided, and that she could not get into her lodgings in the Aningais Quarter. She had decided to go back to the Pistolmakare’s house, but in the meantime the house door had been closed; and this was the reason she had gone into the workshop and crawled into bed with the apprentice. Karin did not mention banging on the gate or the door of either of the houses. As Karin was able to get into the workshop at the Pistolmakare’s house, however, the gate to that yard must still have been open; she could have tried banging on the house door. Very possibly, Karin was merely using the locked doors as a pretext for being in the bed with the 8 TRO 30 February 1641, 147-256, 160, 378, 404, appendix. 9 TRO 11 May 1642, 263-268. For more about this case and violence in the streets at night, see Laitinen 2007.

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apprentice; the Town Court was evidently of this opinion, as it sentenced both Karin and Matz to the appropriate fines for adultery.10 As the gates were usually closed only for the night, it seems safe to assume that they were primarily closed to protect the people sleeping there, although closing the gates may also have served as a signal that activities in the house had ceased for the night. Everyone inside the building was protected by the locked doors and gates, whether they were residents or visitors. This idea of protection is in fact referenced in the legislation: in the Section concerning the violent invasion of a home (heemgång), all the persons present at a house under attack (defined as an area enclosed by the fence) were equally protected by the law; moreover, so was anyone fleeing from an attack in one house to find refuge in a second house. The closed gate therefore protected everyone in the house, not just the family. The gate also protected all the various different homes that existed in a property behind the gate, not just the property as a whole. To summarize, the gates enclosed inside them and protected a community of the same kind as was discussed earlier in the chapter about tenants. Thus although the term ‘household’ might not accurately describe the people living on one urban property in Turku, the persons residing or visiting a specific property did nonetheless constitute for some purposes a spatial community. During the daytime, the gates to properties were open. However, some daytime skirmishes and arguments are described as taking place at the gate, thus reconfirming the importance of the gate as a boundary.11 One skirmish that involved three hired hands, a seaman, and a burgher’s son was brought to court as the violent invasion of a home. The incident happened around five in the afternoon, when the gates were still open and it wasn’t yet dark. A witness reported that he had seen the hired hands in the street in front of the gate, and the burgher’s son in the yard. Another witness said that he saw the hired hands running out from the yard, but had not seen them go in.12 The witnesses either offered the gate as an important location by choice, or the Court’s questions had highlighted the gates. It is impossible to say which, but either way, the statements shows how the gate was an important border of the house or property, even when it was open. Similarly, one Anders Rutz had entered Henrich Porro’s yard during an argument with Porro’s wife. The gate played a central role; one witness said that Porro’s wife and Anders had been standing in the middle of the 10 TRO 19 September 1642, 420-421; TRO 1643, appendix. 11 TRO 16 March 1644, 211-212; TRO 7 April 1647, 249-250. 12 TRO 10 October 1660, 301-306.

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gateway, when Anders had hit her and taken his hat from her. Porro’s wife had found the hat in the street after an earlier argument. Anders was fined for assault, but not for trespass, as he had a right to go and retrieve his hat. This happened around noon.13 The gate as a boundary of a house or a home thus also had symbolic meaning, an issue which will be discussed further in connection with the violent invasion of a home. The closing up of doors differed to some extent from the closing of gates. Like gates, doors were locked for the night to signal that the occupants had retired to rest, and to protect them, but they were regularly also locked during the daytime. One can find several cases of daytime theft where the thieves broke in while the doors were locked. Church services seem to have been an opportune moment for thieving. For example, the widow Barbro Erichsdotter accused Sigred Persdotter of theft during the services: Sigred was a suspect, because she had been left alone in the house the previous night, when Barbro Erichsdotter was visiting Councillor Anders Michelson. The next day, when people came back from church, some money was found to be missing from Barbro’s chest. Sigred defended herself and said that the chest had been intact when she had left for church in the morning, and insisted that she had locked the door behind her. Sigred also told the Court that the door was locked when she came back from church. The Court’s examination revealed that a neighbour’s girl had heard the gate open two times during the church services, and the house door slam shut. The Court’s conclusion was that when Sigred left for church, she had indeed locked the door of the house, and had closed but not bolted the gate to the yard. When the lock of the door was examined in court, it was found to be weak and easy to break open.14 We cannot know how often locks were mainly for show, as in this case. At least some thieves did have tools of the trade, so they did not necessarily presume they could get into houses easily.15 The court records show how locks were used for protection of property of all kinds: the records of cases of theft show that storehouses as well as homes were usually locked, as were storage chests owned by people on all levels of society.16 13 TRO 31 October 1660, 343-347. 14 TRO 21 October 1654, 279-280. 15 TRO 15 January 1640, 79; Västrås Stads Dombok 1658, Härads m.fl. Rätters Domböcker, RA, 64-67. In addition to breaking into locked houses, thieves at times said that they had been given a key by someone living in the house. TRO 21 April 1651, 120-123, 132, appendix; TRO 25 April 1655, 108-109. 16 TRO 20 March 1657, 53; TRO 19 May 1641, 310-312; TRO 21 October 1654, 279-280; TRO 1 December 1641 [1642], 108-110; TRO 3 July 1654, 233-234, 238, 246; TRO 10 May 1658, 112-113; TRO 21 April 1651, 120-123.

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Houses and rooms were also locked when the occupants left them empty for a longer period of time. For example, one student, renting a whole house, locked the door when he left for the countryside.17 In another house, which was licensed as an inn, the brother of the mistress had locked the door of a room which he apparently intermittently occupied, causing a problem when other travellers needed the room.18 At times, people inside houses also needed the protection of a locked door, and not only at night. In a rental disagreement case between Grels Wäfware and Erich Målare, a house door was locked to protect the children. Grels Wäfware had insisted on a speedy eviction after claiming the house where Erich’s family lived. Since Erich had left town for work, his wife went to look for new lodgings, and locked her children in the house for the duration.19 The locking of the door was strongly motivated by a concern for the protection of property and for human safety. Previous European research has tended to discuss the closing of doors from the perspective of hiding something: privacy achieved by locking a door was associated with secrets, which were, in principle, shunned. It was suspicious to close a door so that no one could come in. In Venice, for example, according to Alexander Cowan, and in Kolozvár in Hungary (nowadays Cluj-Napoca in Romania), according to Emese Balint, closed doors aroused suspicions of particularly illicit sexual activities.20 Similar suspicions emerged in one University Consistory case in Turku, when a maid accused a university student of getting her pregnant, and to prove her claim of illicit sex, she stated that the student had taken the key from the door in his room after they retired there.21 Conversely, one maid was shut into a room by her drunken mistress, Anna Ingemansdotter, who herself stayed in the main room of the house with an army clerk, Sigfredh Larsson. Anna’s husband was away, and she had been drinking at her house with Sigfredh, and ended the night with shooing the maid into a chamber. The maid, however, obviously recognizing the precariousness of the situation that her mistress had got herself into, told the Court that she had opened the chamber door ajar (the door had evidently not been locked from the outside) to monitor the situation, and intervened before anything untoward had happened.22 17 18 19 20 21 22

TRO 30 May 1655, 149-152. TRO 16 October 1639 [1640], 8-9, 34-35. TRO 16 February 1642, 163-169. Cowan 2009,134; Balint 2009, 57. Consistorii academici Aboensis äldre protokoller II, 482-482. TRO 2 September 1644, 499-510.

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Most of the Turku Court cases from the 1640s and the 1650s where there is mention of locked or closed doors, however, focus on the protection of property, and there are very few cases that imply locking of doors to hide actions from others. In principle the doors of houses were open when there was someone in the house and they were awake. This is evident in incidents where people rush in to start an argument, come in to trade or collect taxes, etc.23 Various scholars of early modern Europe have pointed out how doors towards the streets created a threshold between the home and the outside, and how people encountered each other at or in front of house doors. Laura Gowing sees the doorway as a particularly important boundary for women and their honour, on the premise that women’s virtue was protected by the walls of the home. Gowing’s women in London are often seen in doorways, poised between the domestic and the communal.24 Alexander Cowan has shown how in Venice men, too, spent significant amounts of time at and around the threshold between the house and the street, as their work often placed them in spaces which were open towards the street, aimed particularly at potential customers for their trade or craft.25 Elisabeth and Thomas Cohen have written about sixteenth-century Roman servants sitting at the front door ‘holding children, sunning themselves, and chatting’.26 In Turku, however, doorways did not take on this kind of function; to some extent gates did, but windows also played an important role.27 Windows appear in the sources as points of entrance or exit, as a permeable boundary through which events are observed, and as getting broken in night-time tumults, as well as providing light. Various Court cases where not only thieves, but also other people, are described entering a house through a window tell us that windows were large enough for a man to enter relatively easily. In one instance, one man from a group of men involved in a fight wanted to leave, but one of the other men dragged him back in by the hair. As knives were involved, someone also 23 For example, TRO 31 March 1656, 86-88; TRO 9 December 1648, 305-306; TRO 17 December 1651, 322-32; TRO 7 April 1647, 249-250. 24 Gowing 2000, 137. See also Hubbard 2012, 149-150. 25 Cowan 2009, 130. 26 Cohen & Cohen 2001, 69. 27 Fences were also important sites of boundary because so much of everyday life centred round the yards, which were defined by the fences. Nevertheless, fences are seldom mentioned in the court records. A couple of entries mention a thief crossing a fence, and fences are also mentioned as markers of property boundaries. TRO 20 June 1659, 257; TRO 26 October 1659, 365-366.

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closed the door, so that no one could get out before injuries were assessed. This one man, who had knifed another, however, sprang out of the window and made his escape.28 In another case a young German merchant accused one Karin Bochmöllerska of not reporting another man who had come into her house by force through a broken window.29 Some windows were used practically as doors: Jöns Skomakare accused the preacher Zacharias Martini, for example, of letting his lodgers use a window to Jöns’s yard as an exit (instead of using the door to their own yard).30 Windows, or at least some of them, were therefore not tiny and inconsequential apertures in the wall: they opened up the house towards the street and the yard. Broken windows are most often reported in connection with the culture of the streets at night. In the evenings and at night young men, particularly university students, roamed around the town, and the term gå grassatim (run riot) was used almost exclusively for the students’ rowdy activities, so regular was their racket-making. Making noise with swords and sticks, dragging them across the stone-paved streets, fences and gates or across windowpanes and shutters was an essential part of the grassatim. And sometimes windows got broken.31 Making this kind of racket at night was common behaviour for young men all over Europe. Streets provided a cheap and relatively uncontrolled environment for socializing. While rivalries, conflicts and violence were part of this street culture, so was more simply ganging up together in a ritual-like making of ruckus. It was both about having fun and about group and individual honour.32 In Sweden, ordinances were issued in Göteborg in 1624 and Stockholm in 1659 against this kind of turmoil and noise at night, and the universities also had rules against it.33 Indeed, in Turku, students roaming around town at night particularly aroused the ire of the town and university authorities. There were efforts to curtail the students’ frequenting of taverns; in 1642, two years after the establishment of the university, innkeepers were forbidden to accept books or clothes as pawn against drinks.34 28 TRO 5 June 1643, 361-362. 29 TRO 11 May 1642, 271-279. 30 TRO 22 October 1655, 261-262. 31 For more about grassatim, see Geschwind 2001, 121-136. Lars Geschwind has found the term grassatim used of other young men as well as students. 32 Schindler 2002, 202, 209; Geschwind 2001, 121. 33 ‘Götebort 24 februari 1624’, 232; ‘Stockholm 2. Aug 1659’, 897; Geschwind 2001, 122. 34 TRO 14 February 1642, 158-159; Consistorii academici Aboensis äldre protokoller I, 44; Svenfelt 1990. See also Karonen 1996.

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In addition to being part of general merry-making, banging on windows was often part of the ritual of claiming territory. For example, some cavalrymen and youngsters banged on the windows of a house where some Russians were living, and vice versa. There were also discernible rivalries between Swedish and Finnish students, as well as between students and any other groups of young men, and between soldiers and students. The banging of windows, walls, and fences, was part of this rivalry. One goal seems have been to lure out opponents into the street; and where this was successful, fights easily ensued and court cases resulted.35 Elisabet Cohen has demonstrated how the whole façade of a house in sixteenth-century Rome could be a space of contention, closely linked to the identity and the honour of the occupant. The doors, the walls and the windows were a boundary of a personal space as much as they were boundaries of a material house.36 This kind of personal connection to a house was expressed in terms such as mi casa in Italy, mein Haus in Germanspeaking areas, and mitt eget hus in Sweden.37 However, the rattling and breaking of windows in Turku, most of the time, was not a sign of a direct attack against a particular person or their eget hus, but part of the general male street culture. It was part of merry-making and staking claim to the night streets in general. In one Court case this becomes evident when two students were declared innocent of breaking a burgher’s windows. As no known previous grievance existed between the students and the burgher, and since the windows were not along the common street (afsides ifrån almänna wägh och gatu) but inside the yard (in uhtj gården), the Court found no reason to blame the students for the broken windows.38 Students’ grassatim was apparently always associated with windows along the street, which had symbolic importance as boundaries between the public street and the out-of-bounds, sleeping world indoors, but not particularly with the person living behind those windows. So, while windows facing the street were an important interface between the street and the house, they were not seen as personal boundaries similar to those inside the yard. This emphasis, arising from the 35 TRO 16 January 1643, 164-170; TRO 20 September 1654, 262-267. Gescwind has found that in three university towns (Uppsala, Turku and Dorpat) rivalries and conflicts between groups of students in Swedish universities had to do with nation, region and class to varying degrees. Geschwind 2001, 205-210. 36 Cohen 1992. See also Eibach 2004, 205. 37 Cohen & Cohen 2001, 65. 38 Consistorii academici Aboensis äldre protokoller I, 109. The case is also mentioned in Laitinen, 2007, 609, where it is incorrectly claimed to be from 21.1.1641.

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buildings’ orientation along the street, means that although the façade of the house toward the street was important, it was less so than that towards the yard. While the broken and rattled windows along the street were not central sites and boundaries of most houses’ personal space, however, they certainly were a stage for young men to make themselves visible – and audible – in the community.39 As both Cohen and Cohen, and Cowan, have pointed out, windows in towns were important openings towards the street, enabling all kinds of observation. Witnesses in court often told of having seen and heard events of the street through a window.40 Such filtering of the non-domestic to the domestic is evident also in Turku; moreover, the connection was two-way, as it was elsewhere. People in the streets could see or hear in through the windows, and observe what was happening inside. For example, the stepson of a Jören Von Kagen had heard the quarrel between his mother and Jören through a window, when he was passing on the street. When he got into the house, his stepfather was about to attack his mother with an axe.41 People on the streets could also stop to talk with people through the windows.42 There are also instances where people were seen peering through windows in broad daylight before a theft or a breaking of windows at night. No spying through windows at night is reported, however, though at least in England this was common.43 Observation of life in the street from indoors through windows is more pronounced in the Turku Court material at night time, but daytime examples also occur. One instance is the burgher we met in Part II of this book, who overheard two merchants talking under his window.44 Holding business discussions in the streets may have resulted from a need to hold confidential discussions outdoors, where not so many people were around to listen. In 39 While the houses and windows often suffered as a result of general grassatim, the young men staking claim to territory sometimes did so by directing their action against more established townspeople. Anders Svenfelt has highlighted the students’ relationship with the town and university administrators. In 1647 the students rebelled against the Consistory of the university, which had once again asked the tavern keepers in town not to accept student’s belongings in payment for drinks. As part of the protest the students made a racket at the Rector’s gate. In 1648 it was the Burgomaster’s turn. One student, who had broken the Burgomaster’s window, was then committed to the town jail by the Burgomaster; but this exceeded his municipal authority, since the University Consistory had jurisdiction over the students, and not the town. Both cases illustrate the sometimes problematic relationship between the university students and the town. Svenfelt 1990, 31-32. 40 Cohen & Cohen 2001, 68; Cowan 2009, 126. 41 TRO 10 January 1642, 123. 42 TRO 1 March 1658, 74-78, 128-129. 43 TRO 18 July 1659, 301-304; Orlin 2007, 176. 44 TRO 3 March 1641, 186.

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the case of early modern England, Mary Thomas Crane has pointed out how outdoor spaces provided the secrecy and seclusion that indoor spaces could not guarantee. 45 Although the Turku material does not provide other examples of business negotiations being held outdoors, it is possible that similar practices were followed – although if in the incident reported here secrecy was sought, it was not successful. Most of the incidents found in the Court records where people witnessed events in the streets through their windows happened during the later hours of the day. For example, a burgher’s wife called as a witness in the case of a street fight reported that she had heard shouting and running in the street when she was reading a prayer book beside her window after supper.46 Again, when students were making noise one night between two and three in the morning at Mårthen Rajala’s gate, it brought not only Mårthen but also others out onto the street, and a student lodging at Rajala’s house heard the noise and came to his window to see what was happening. A burgher’s wife, Brita Jacobsdotter, was another witness, and she stated that that she had heard shouting up on the street, sounds of merry-making and scraping of the wall – neither of which caused any harm to anyone, she added.47 In another case, the University Notary, Johannes Frisius, got out of bed to investigate the tumult that he heard, and thus became witness to a fight between four students and the night watchman. There are several other examples of such observation of street life at night. In some cases, observers came out from their dwellings and became participants in the events, whereas in other cases they continued merely to watch from their windows. 48 The practices associated with windows, as well as of gates and doors, found in the Turku Court cases thus suggest that different boundaries of houses became active or relevant at different times of the day. The significance and porosity of different boundaries was not a constant. At night, when the gates were closed, communal life centred on the streets; the façade of the house toward the street then became a more important dividing line, with some observing from indoors and others making a racket on the street in front. During the daytime, on the other hand, the yards became more important sites of encounter, and doors more relevant points of boundary. Windows were also, of course, a source of light. The crux of the argument, in some of the mid-seventeenth-century complaints about building 45 46 47 48

Crane 2009. TRO 30 October 1651, 271-279. TRO 9 June 1645, 352-357. TRO18 November 1640 [1641], 75-78; TRO 16 January 1643, 164-170; TRO 1 July 1640, 285-287.

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or extending houses in Turku, concerned the access to light. Orlin has found that similar issues emerged in London. 49 In Turku, a cleric called Zacharias Martini complained that his neighbour Jöns Skomakare, by illegally enclosing an alley next to his house, had cut off the light from the window of Martini’s main room. When Jöns had bought the land from the town, the alley had been closed for use because of some changes in the town plan; Jöns was therefore quite within his rights in enclosing the thoroughfare to Martini’s house, but he was ordered not to build in such a way that it would darken the plaintiff’s window. Jöns was, however, allowed to put up a fence on the side towards Martini’s house, when he complained, as described earlier, that the ‘loose folk’ that Zacharias had rented his house to used his yard as a thoroughfare, ‘climbing out the window at will’. Jöns, for his part, was of the opinion that Zacharias could just as easily have installed a new window on the other side of the house, thus leaving Jöns to build as he wished.50 In another incident, Hans Ankerholt had boarded over his neighbour Caspar Hörnick’s chamber window. Ankerholt’s wife stated that they had boarded the window because Caspar had raised the roof of his building so high that it stopped light from entering their house (in addition Hans Ankerholt claimed that one corner of Caspar’s new house stood on his land). Caspar argued that the window had been in the same place for forty years without problems; this was however challenged during the course of the hearing, when Hans said the window had been walled up (igienmurat) already once, when a former tenant of the chamber had been throwing waste out of the window and using Hans’s chimneys for target practice. Witnesses corroborated this as having happened some 16 years earlier. The window had been also closed up for a short while in 1651, four years earlier. While the argument in this Court case stemmed from the height of the building blocking the light fromHans’s house, most of the proceedings ended up being about the problems caused by a chamber window opening over someone else’s yard. Hans claimed that Caspar’s father had promised him a barrel of salt every ten years in compensation for the window; but when Caspar’s father’s widow was consulted, she said that the agreement in question had been about a window on a lower storey of the same house, which had been walled up years ago. The example of this agreement, although it did not help Hans in this case, indicates a 49 Orlin 2007, 159, 160, 185. 50 ‘som kunde uplåta fönsterlukan och nederstiga uthi hans gård enär de wille’. TRO 22 October 1655, 261-261, 271.

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recognition that windows opening over somebody else’s yard might require special agreements.51 It thus appears it was not popular, although not forbidden, to build a house with a window opening over another person’s yard. In the earlier case, when Jöns Skomakare acquired the land of the former alley, the problem arose because the window in Zacharias’s house, which had faced onto a street, now faced Jöns’s new yard. Blocking the light was only part of the problem. The same applied to Caspars’ and Hans’s case. Personal space was being invaded, and the window marked that space. In another complaint about a building which came before the Court, the widow Elisabet Davidsdotter’s objection to the location of her neighbour’s new barn was deemed groundless, but her complaint about a window in the same building opening over her yard was favourably considered. She held the windows to be against all decency, and the neighbour was ordered to cover it up.52 These disputes concerning windows and personal space raise questions about a nature and extent of community in and around yards shared by many houses, discussed earlier. While the case in the chapter about houses and yards between Mistress Elisabet Wächtare and her tenant indicated an open setting and some sense of a community sharing a central yard owned or controlled by various people, the disputes about windows reference a sense of more bounded family or personal space around houses. A similar tendency to limit the area of one’s house has been noted in the case where Philip and Margreta crossed over the fences from one yard to another. In that case, and in the fight between Erich and the students in Kaukar’s yard, a sense of community is nevertheless indicated, as these people encountered each other frequently in their everyday lives, and shared the space around the houses, whether bounded by fences or not. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the boundaries between houses and properties were strongly felt. Not only windows, as discussed here, but also one’s own gate towards the street seems to have been seen as important. When Pär Thomasson was in dispute with Cavalryman’s Brita (discussed in the chapter concerning control of the houses), one of the issues of contention was that Brita’s house blocked the direct route to the street. A similar problem arose in a dispute between the widow Gerthrud Carlsdotter and Thomas Matsson. Thomas had bought Gertrudh’s plot, but she retained a contractual right to build a house there; Thomas now wanted to stop her, because he wanted sole 51 TRO 21 November 1657, 259-264. 52 TRO 19 May 1655, 127-129.

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control of the gate to the street.53 The implication is that a gate of one’s own was an issue of status, more than of practicality. The examination of the material borders of houses and homes shows that the definition of the transition between the outside and inside of the home was not tied to the building itself, but extended to the plot were the house stood, and to the area limited by fences and gates. The location of meaningful boundaries was never unequivocal or stable, nor was the meaning of borders always similar in every house or for every person. These considerations about the plots and the yards as parts of ‘home’ applies most clearly to those whose homes were houses and properties, and those who owned those houses and properties. Again, while rented rooms could be regarded as ‘home’ by their occupants, the house owners may have seen the tenants as a problem, since they penetrated the porous boundaries of their own home (room) in an undesirable way. The significance of these various borders of homes, and their open or closed state, depended very much on circumstances, as can be seen even more strongly when we go on to examine the violent invasion of a home.

Violent Invasion of a Home Exploration of the illegal crossing of the borders of homes and houses reveals many important aspects of how these borders were understood by the townspeople and by the Town Court. We will therefore examine the crime of heemgång (spelt hemgång in present-day Swedish), which translates literally as ‘home going’, but can more aptly be translated as a ‘disturbance of domestic peace’, ‘trespass’, or ‘violent invasion of a home’. I will use the term ‘violent invasion of a home’, because this best describes the content of the term as it then appeared in the law, where heemgång refers to the invasion of somebody’s home with evil intent and causing or attempting to cause bodily injury.54 Heemgång was a serious crime. As one of the translations of the Swedish term, the often used ‘disturbance of domestic peace’, implies, the crime appears in the royal peace legislation, in relation to the peace of the house and the home (hus och hem frid). In the Law of the Realm and the Town Law, heemgång was listed in the Section of the King’s Oath together with crimes like rape, robbery, and assault on people in church or in court. 53 TRO 5 April 1654, 43-44. 54 MES, Edsörebalken I-IV, 213-214; Laitinen 2014, 20.

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The fine under the Town Law for breaking the King’s Oath was 160 marks, which was equivalent to a year’s pay for a male hired hand, of which, moreover, he received only a portion in cash.55 In the Law of the Realm, the punishment was even harsher: forfeit of one’s property and proclamation as an outlaw.56 In most of the Turku cases with a verdict of guilty of violent invasion of a home, the invader’s actions were found to be incriminating in all the crucial points of the law: malice, invasion of a [domestic] space, and violence or the threat of it. For example, in a case from 1658, Nills Silli was found guilty of heemgång against his daughter-in-law. There had been disagreement between Nills and his son Jacob, and one time when Jacob was away, things got out of hand. Nills picked a fight with his daughter-in-law Kirstin about the ownership of some sheets drying on the line, and ended up forcing his way inside Kirstin’s house with a knife in his hand. In court Kirstin had a very strong case, because Nills could be shown to have forced his way in, and the knife in his hand meant he had bad intentions. As a fight ensued inside, he could also be shown to have caused bodily injury; and as Kirstin told the Court, when she first saw the knife, she was afraid for her life. Nills and Kirstin ended up in a fierce fight on the floor, which ended only when a woman lodger living in the house (huskvinna) threw a bucket of water over them. Kirstin’s case did not suffer from her having fought fiercely: the law allowed for violence in defence.57 In some cases, where intent and violence were obvious, the Court’s inquiry emphasized spatial aspects. Three seamen had attacked Petrus Torpensis when he was returning to his lodgings late one afternoon, hit him, and robbed him of his fur hat. The Court, after establishing these events, sent two men to examine whether the hallway where the seamen were seen entering actually led to Petrus’ lodgings. When it was found to do so, the men were found guilty. Some sentences of guilty followed a mere banging and slandering at the house gate; even when the actual space of the house was not invaded, banging on the gates could be construed both as an invasion of the domestic space and as a sign of ill will and a threat of violence.58 The significance attached to the entryway to a dwelling that is evident in the case between Petrus and the seamen, is present also in the text of 55 56 57 58

MES, Edsörebalken XXVI, 222; Lindström & Mispelaere 2015, 442. KKLL, rauhanvalan kaari XXI, 125. TRO 6 December 1658, 241-244; MES, Edsörebalken VI, 214. TRO 4 February 1646, 93-99, 125, appendix.

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the statute concerning the violent invasion of a home. The law stated that the protected area of the home included the house and the yard. The Town Law stipulated that if an attacker was slain or injured while within the yard or the plot (i gård eller på tompten), no charges would be brought. The law is quite specific: if the intruder fell with his feet outside the gate, he would be considered to be outside, but if the head was outside the gate but the feet inside, he would have been inside.59 The Town Law here talks about the gate and the fence, which emphasizes the importance of the yard or the property rather than the more specific dwelling-space of a house or a room. But when one compares the Town Law to the Law of the Realm, one can see that in the Town Law the yard is actually de-emphasized. The Law of the Realm defines the home as extending over where the peasant had his houses and the area enclosed by fences, and adds that outbuildings even further away belong to the same protected home zone.60 No equivalent definition is found in the Town Law, and it is clear from the heemgång cases in Turku that there was more variation in the understanding of ‘the home’ in town than in the countryside. In the attack against Petrus, particularly, the location of the door to his dwelling was seen as of importance. It was relevant for the Court to determine if the attack had happened on the border of the space that was considered to be Petrus’s home, that is, his room. There are other cases where the invader has come in through the door into a particular dwelling, and the percentage of guilty verdicts is quite high in these cases, whereas in the incidents at the gates to the yards, it is lower.61 Although the number of these cases (twenty-five) is not high, the percentage of guilty verdicts vis-à-vis the site of assault, combined with other information about doors, gates and houses, tells us that in the town the door was more often considered the boundary of an individual’s home than the gate was, and passing through a doorway was a more significant criterion for an intrusion to be classified as the physical invasion of a home than passing through a gateway. With regard to violence, the letter of the law was often followed. Following the law, both violence and the threat of violence were punishable offences. Incidents that did not escalate to violence, but still resulted in a guilty verdict, carried a smaller fine. For example, Henrich Henricsson had barged into Joachim Loos’ house, because his son had been bullied by Joachim’s son. Henrich was sentenced to a fine of only 120 marks, as he 59 MES Edsörebalken V, 214. 60 KKlL, edsörebalken 3, 121. 61 Laitinen 2014, 21.

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had merely slandered and threatened the occupants of the house, but had not hit them.62 In many cases the absence of demonstrable ill will led to a not-guilty sentence. Johan Erichsson, a councillor’s son, was found not guilty of violence in trying to get a young maid (of only ten years old) to return to his father’s house after she had escaped to her aunt’s house from harsh treatment. Two wealthy merchants were found not guilty of heemgång although they had injured a young woman called Maria Swinhufwud and her mother when barging into their house very drunk. In both cases, lack of proof of malice was cited. Similarly, one burgher was found not guilty of culpably invading the home of a vagrant couple. In these cases, it may also be relevant that the actual intrusion is not described, as always happened in the cases with a guilty verdict.63 The law also mandated a guilty verdict if a bystander was injured. In Turku, for example, a fight broke out in a tavern and then migrated into the street, and ended up in a melee at Bengt Johansson’s house, where a young shop assistant, who had nothing to do with the fight, was shot and later died. The shooter was found guilty both of manslaughter and heemgång, as the incident occurred in the gateway to a house where the culprit was trying to get in with a gun in his hand.64 In the twenty-five cases from the twenty years studied here, there is no particular pattern of events, but the Court’s perception of the criteria for the crime seems clear. The Court was first and foremost interested in the course of events. It wanted to know whether a space had been invaded, whether there was demonstrable ill will, and whether there was violence or the threat of violence. The Court was of course not completely impartial. The non-guilty cases just cited all involved a defendant with relatively high social status. Although it could be argued that that they were found not guilty only because of their status, it is on the other hand striking that such influential men were charged at all. One of them was even accused by a vagrant couple, who were not even supposed to have a home in the town. Similarly, in the Silli family case, the daughter-in-law won her case against her husband’s father, and in another case Philip Mårthenson was sentenced guilty of an attack against a lodger woman.65 Moreover, regardless of the 62 TRO 15 November 1648, 314-316; MES Edsörebalken I, 213. 63 3 April 1647, 265-268; TRO 20 December 1658, 270-274; TRO 30 March, 6 April, 3 May, 4 May 1644, 246, 264, 298, 296. 64 TRO 16 March 1647, 349-360, 389-390. 65 TRO 28 March 1659, 111-114.

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social status of the parties, all heemgång cases went through the same procedure of gathering information and consideration of the circumstances and the course of events. All in all, it appears that in principle, and to some extent also in practice, the law about violent invasion of a home did protect everyone’s home. Moreover, the boundaries of homes were very important, even in early modern urban space, where houses were in principle very open. Although the Court’s investigations of the crime of heemgång focus on the tangible questions of violence, invasion and protection of the home, there was also a symbolic, ritual nature to the crime that ties into meanings and practices concerning gates and doors. Karin Hassan Jansson has described two ritual aspects in the violent invasion of a home: banging on the gate, already noted earlier in another context, and calling-out. Jansson sees the banging on the gates as a calling-out ritual, which is often seen as part of a ritual complex of male interpersonal violence.66 A good case for examining the ritual nature of heemgång in Turku is the assault by a regiment clerk, Oluff Erichsson, on Hans Kreijare in ‘his own house’, of which Hans’s wife lodged a complaint to the Court.67 The parties in the case knew each other, and had conducted business with each other earlier. One day Oluff came to Hans’s house, having already been drinking in another house. He sat down with the master of the house, and drank three rounds of beer. Oluff then began to accuse Hans of handling the regiment’s affairs like a thief and a rogue. Hans ignored this insult and sat quietly, knowing that it was the beer talking; but Hans’s wife shouted from her bed, where she already had retired: ‘God forbid, what words do I hear. Is this our thanks, for all the trouble we have gone to in handling your affairs?’ Straight away Oluff got up and drew his sword to strike Hans, but then suddenly ran out of the door and shouted back from the hallway to Hans: ‘Come out, you thief and rogue’. At this point, the wife sprang out of bed and, with a servant, tried to close the door; but Oluff was faster, and came after Hans with his sword. He succeeded in hitting Hans on the head and the back with the flat side of the sword, but the servant managed to restrain him before he could stab his friend, and together with the wife succeeded in keeping him restrained until the Town Constable arrived to help.68 While the role of the wife here is interesting, this case presents us with a model example of ritualized male violence and heemgång. Oluff was drunk, 66 Jansson 2006, 436, 440, 448. 67 TRO 6 December 1647, 489. 68 TRO 6 December 1647, 489.

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insulted his host, left the house to call Hans out to fight, and then forced his way back in and injured the object of his ire. The events followed a common pattern of violent invasion of a home, found by Karin Hassan Jansson in her article about masculinity and heemgång: one man calls the other out, as a prelude to a violent attack. This practice belongs to a set of practices of male interpersonal violence, where responding to a challenge was of importance, as has been explored by Pieter Spierenburg, Ann B. Tlusty and Jonas Liliequist. A man could not ignore an insult or a call to a fight without injury to his honour. Jansson has challenged the strictness of this ‘rule’, however, and has shown that in cases of violent invasion of a home both positive and negative manly stereotypes came into play: those of a peaceful, reasonable man, and of a man rash and uncontrolled. A reasonable man did not need to respond to calling-out or insults. The social practice was thus more complex than a blanket requirement on all men simply to respond to any kind of attack or challenge. Nonetheless, in male interpersonal violence and in male interpersonal relations, a man’s honour can still be seen to have been central, and calling-out to have been a common practice.69 The rules of interpersonal male violence are further highlighted in our case here, since Oluff didn’t attack Hans’s wife, even though she was more aggressive than the man of the house himself. Not attacking the wife, as such, did not necessarily result from a general avoidance of attacking women, as men in Turku don’t seem to have categorically shunned violence against women; but Hans’s wife was pregnant, which may well have influenced Oluff’s behaviour. Alternatively, Oluff may have wanted to follow the rules of an honourable fight with Hans, or he may have been angry specifically with Hans and therefore didn’t pay attention to his wife. Hans’s wife suspected that Oluff had been sent to argue with Hans by someone else. If true, the ritualized behaviour could be explained by this premeditation. Usually however, it seems, the violence between men that came before the Court in Turku, be it in a case of violent invasion or in other cases, very seldom followed the rules of popular duel or honourable fights as described by Spierenburg and Liliequist. Most occurrences of interpersonal violence were more or less spontaneous attacks, with a distinct lack of rule-governed procedure. Regardless of the ritual of calling-out, this clash between Oluff and Hans cannot be examined only from the perspective of male interpersonal violence or male honour. Hans’s wife was the one who took the case to court, 69 Spierenburg 1998, 105, 112-113; Liliequist 1999, 174-207; Tlusty 2001, 129-132, Liliequist 2014, 45-46; Jansson 2006, 446, 447. See also Lindström 2002.

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and accused Oluff of assaulting her husband. She also said that she would fall ill from the pushing and shoving she was subjected to while trying to restrain Oluff. Hans told the Court that he was willing to reconcile with Oluff, as long as he was released only on bail until Hans’s wife’s condition could be assured. The wife’s honour and bodily integrity was at stake here, but so was Oluff’s honour, because a pregnant woman as a vulnerable being was not supposed to be attacked. Hans, for his part, had to take a stand against his friend to protect his wife. But, importantly, Hans’s wife was an active agent in the whole incident, not merely a victim to be protected. Her call from the bed about Oluff’s insulting words shows that when her husband was verbally attacked, it meant that she also felt attacked. The man’s honour was also the wife’s honour. In fact, her words could be interpreted as a calling-out: it was when the wife shouted from her bed that Oluff sprang up and drew his sword.70 In this attack on a family home, while the attack was directed against the husband, the rituals of honour extended to the wife. The ritual of calling-out is not strongly represented in the Turku heemgång cases, but the gates, and banging on them, do figure in some cases. In Jansson’s study on heemgång, banging on the gates appears more regularly. Her 104 cases, drawn from both the countryside and towns, show how banging on gates or doors, and particularly making a mark on the gate, was ritual in nature and central in the treatment of the cases in court. In some instances, there had been no real attempt to get into the house to attack anyone; but targeting a person’s house in this way was a challenge to their person and honour, a phenomenon that has also been studied by Elisabet Cohen in early modern Rome.71 As we have already seen, in Turku much of the racket at the gates (as well as at windows and fences) was part of another kind of a ritual – that of claiming territory – but attacking gates did also occur in the context of heemgång. These attacks, however, were still often a result of drunken brawling in the streets rather than premeditation. Nonetheless, banging on the gates was always also a question of honour. Once, a group of seamen attacked the Court of Appeal Assessor’s gate, apparently simply because his house happened to be next to a house where the seamen had got into a fight with a tailor. The fight continued in the street, and the tailor managed to escape into the Assessor’s yard. The seamen then collected some weapons and returned to the gate, banging on it and slandering those inside. 70 ‘Då hafwer Oluff genast sprungit up, dragit uth sin wärjä och welat slå Hans’ (Then Oluff had sprang up, drawn his sword and had wanted to strike Hans). 71 Cohen 1992.

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There was no premeditated attack on the person of the Assessor, but the attack became an attack against him personally, as it was his gate that was assaulted. Making the attack even more personal, the Assessor himself then came outside to help the tailor against the attack.72 It appears that the incident escalated in an unplanned manner into a case of insulting the Assessor’s honour at his gate, and thus a case of heemgång. Few of the night-time incidents of disturbance at somebody’s gate were clear-cut heemgång cases. In one case the Court Assessor’s young servant had been at the Burgomaster’s gate one night and shouted out that the Burgomaster was a rogue if he did not open the gate for him. The boy denied such behaviour, but the Court did not believe him and decided that the Assessor was required to punish the servant for his transgression.73 In this case the offender’s youth was taken into consideration and the incident was not investigated very thoroughly. In another case, a seaman was accused of disruption at the gate of the President of the Court of Appeal, Jöns Kurck. The seaman insisted that he had neither shouted nor hit the gate, but had been to the President’s house only to complain about a case of his. He also claimed that there was a mix-up and that an earlier squabble at the same gate had now been confused with the events of the night in question. This case lapsed without any sentence being passed.74 In addition to the aspect of personal assault, these two cases both also had the aspect of assaulting an office holder, which was in principle even more serious than an attack on someone else. As the cases in question did not arrive at a proper conclusion, however, we do not get to know if the Court would have imposed a particular of punishment for such offences. The legal status of the gateway, and its association with both the honour of the person and the crime of heemgång, were not unfamiliar concepts to the townspeople. In one case, in fact, this knowledge was used to attack a person by prosecuting him. Elisabet Sandersdotter, the wife of one of the councillors, accused the Advocate Fiscal, Johan Wassenius, of violent invasion of a home: she described how Wassenius, in an antagonistic state of mind, had come with some of his friends to the gate, banged on it and slandered her. Wassenius admitted to being at the gate, but claimed that he had been invited by Elisabet’s husband and had merely knocked at the gate to be let in. As the case unravels, it becomes clear that Elisabet had a bone to pick with Wassenius. Her family had already earlier claimed that 72 TRO 26 May 1641, 325-327, 335-357, 381. 73 TRO 15 March 1645, 182-183. 74 TRO 14 February 1646, 101.

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Wassenius had given a promise of marriage to Elisabet’s sister; instead, the sister had an illegitimate child, and Wassenius merely had to pay child support. The heemgång case ended with Elisabet being fined for criticizing the Court’s lawful sentence about the birth of the child, and for disrespectful talk against a public official.75 In the case between Mårthen Rajala and the students cited earlier in the discussion about windows, Mårthen’s accusation agaist the students was of not making a racket at his gate, but of violent invasion of his home – probably knowing that a charge of heemgång would cause more trouble for them than mere grassatim, violence or slander would.76 While these two cases show individuals’ understanding and use of the legal significance of gates, they also more generally raise the question of the townspeople’s attitude to litigation around heemgång as a crime, as well as to questions of the home and its sifnificance more generally. Examining the motivations behind suing people for violent invasion of the home may help answer these questions. Approximately two thirds of the home invasion cases in mid-seventeenth-century Turku resulted in a not-guilty sentence. Some of these cases involved drunken men in other people’s houses, or the cases turned out to be just about social encounters that had turned into scuffles and fights. Some disturbances spilled over from the streets and taverns into gateways, yards, and dwellings, and ended up in court as violent invasion of a home. These incidents do not include rituals of calling-out, and they were not considered to have been premeditated or made with malicious intent. Nonetheless, they had initially ended up in court as heemgång cases. In general, the Turku sources do not offer reason to doubt the general perception of an early modern town where people moved quite freely in and out of other people’s homes during daytime. Even at night time, people could quite often gain entrance by knocking on the door or the gate. Because of this there were many instances where violence or other confrontation discussed in the Court included an outsider of some kind already in a home when the incident occurred, that is, someone whose regular dwelling was not in the house where the events ensued. Some of these instances ended up in court as cases of heemgång. For example, when Erich Stång visited the house of the lawyer Sveno Kalliander, Sveno was not at home, but Erich asked a woman who lived in the sauna in Sveno’s yard to open the door to him. Even though he then caused mayhem in the house, hurting the woman and making a mess, he 75 TRO 13 November 1658, 194-214. 76 TRO 9 June 1645, 352-357.

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was not sentenced for violent invasion of a home, for two reasons: first, the woman had let him in, which means that there was no invasion; moreover, the Court felt that there was no reason to doubt Erich’s statement that he had come to the house for a friendly visit. Similarly, in the case where two drunken burghers harassed the young woman Maria Swinhufwud and her mother, the offenders were not sentenced for violent invasion of a home, because they had not invaded the house with ill will; their manner of entering the house is not described or discussed at all, so they evidently had not forced their way in. Nevertheless, although the charges of heemgång were dismissed, both the drunken burghers and Erich Stång were fined for the physical injuries they inflicted.77 It remains somewhat obscure why sometimes people fighting or causing mayhem in other people’s homes were accused of violent invasion of a home, and sometimes only of causing injury or of slander. In the cases where a charge of heemgång was made, is difficult to say precisely how the accusers considered the peace of their home disturbed, as their motives are not reflected upon. It has already been noted that in many of the incidents a premeditated attack on a person’s honour was not a primary motive. Honour was nevertheless probably a contributing factor in many of the court cases. It may be that the accusers wanted their assailant to be more severely punished than merely for causing bodily injury; or the plaintiff may have wanted to get rid of an aggravating person for a while by making a more serious accusation. This might well be the case in another incident involving Erich Stång (who seems to have been in general a rather belligerent person), where Stång barged into Eskill Mårthenson’s house to fetch his wife, whom he handled very roughly.78 Another motive for laying charges of heemgång might have been to defend the plaintiff’s honour or status: This could well be the case for Maria Swinhufwud and her mother, since Maria’s father – now deceased – had been a man of the nobility, Captain Daniel Swinhufwud.79 In another case, where two students accused their landlord of heemgång, they may have been trying to reassert their control of the room, despite their unpaid rent.80 An accusation of heemgång might also encourage the defendant to come to a peaceful settlement, for example, of a rent. Despite the absence 77 TRO 26 November 1660, 385-389; TRO 30 March, 6 April, 3 May, 4 May 1644, 246, 264, 298, 296. 78 TRO 17 December 1659, 454-458. 79 http://www.roskildehistorie.dk/stamtavler/adel/svenske/Svinhufvud/Svinhufvud.htm [25.10.2016]. 80 TRO 31 October 1660, 331-332.

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of any discussion in the court record over the plaintiffs’ reasons, it is clear that in the practice of suing for heemgång, issues of honour, dignity, control of space, and control of a troublesome person all played their role. Since no consistent pattern emerges from the events in the Turku heemgång cases, it is difficult to formulate any comprehensive interpretation of the nature and perceptions of the crime. It is clear, however, that at least at times people did feel that their homes had been violently invaded, even if the heemgång law was also clearly utilized for varying ulterior motives. In the case where two men came to haul the servant girl back who had escaped to her aunt’s house from her harsh conditions of employment, the aunt may have felt that for her and her niece, both their physical and social integrity had been breached when the men invaded their space. A plaintiff’s physical integrity, particularly a woman’s body, played a central role in some of the attacks. In some home invasion cases, as in some other kinds of court cases, the male plaintiffs referred to their pregnant wives either being forced to bed rest for days or for weeks, giving birth prematurely, or even losing the child as a direct result of the violence in their house. This focus on the pregnant woman’s body ties into a wider abhorrence of attacking those that are vulnerable, which is also central in the legal thinking underlying the concept of the violent invasion of a home. The feeling of invasion, however, could also refer to the actual material space of the home. For example, Sveno Kalliander must certainly have felt that his home had been invaded when he returned home and found the mess that Erich Stång had left behind. Regardless of the openness of early modern houses, then, a house being a home meant something, and so did its borders. We can again revisit Elisabet Cohen’s ‘house scorning’, which reflects how persons were identified with the space they dwelled in.81 People in the Turku cases, as in the case of the Roman houses referred to by Cohen, always refer to their house or home in the singular, not as ‘the family’s house’ or ‘the husband’s house’. It was always ‘my house’ which was invaded. This suggests that ‘home’ aroused emotion as the dweller’s own personal domain. In fundamental principle, it could thus be closed to others but the dweller.

Public, Private, and the Protected Home The home which was protected by the heemgång paragraph of the law was the dwelling space that people, individuals, lived in. Dwellings have generally 81 Cohen 1992.

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been considered to be in the realm of the private, although as has been noted by various scholars since the 1980s the terms of ‘public’ and ‘private’ are problematic where the early modern period is concerned. Some scholars have suggested that ‘public’ and ‘private’ should not be used at all, because their meanings in the early modern were so different from their meanings today, and the modern meanings have been central in the use of the terms as analytical tools of research. On the other hand, some scholars have argued that the concepts of ‘private’ and ‘public’ are so central to our understanding of the world that it is impossible to avoid using them. It has also been pointed out that the concepts were in use also during the early modern era, and therefore it is difficult to abandon them altogether. In addition, scholars have found that there were important changes going on in the understanding and use ‘public’ and ‘private’ between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, which makes examining the concepts and therefore using the terms important.82 In this study, the general scholarly division of urban space into ‘public’ and ‘private’ must be queried; it must be asked to what extent such a division actually existed in urban space. The enquiry into the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘private’ is particularly important for the examination of the home. The nature of the changes that took place in early modern dwelling space has recently been re-examined, for example, by Lena Cowen Orlin, who has questioned the interpretation that the addition of multiple rooms to houses in early modern England resulted simply in single-function rooms and more privacy. She maintains that medieval life, lived in great halls, has too straightforwardly been interpreted as limitlessly communal, and asks for more precision in writing about the issue, questioning the idea that privacy is ipso facto a desirable state and that its increase was a positive evolutionary change and an evolution from a more primitive, medieval public or communal life style.83 The change to multiple-room houses had not yet reached Turku in the mid-seventeenth century, and this slow, complicated, and far-reaching change of room layouts is therefore not examined here; but the questions that Orlin asks about the ‘self-evident’ understanding of ‘private’ are strongly pertinent. Erica Longfellow writes that before the eighteenth century ‘private’ in England meant something that ‘did not pertain to the nation or community’. ‘Private’ was about something that was placed outside of the shared and open: it was separate and secret. Places and things could be private, meaning 82 Orlin 2007, 9-10; Longfellow 2006, 313-314; Burkart 2004, 168; Rau 2004, 214-215; Kaartinen 2002; Katajala-Peltomaa & Toivo 2010, 16; Vickery 2009, 26-29; Crane 2009. 83 See Orlin 2007, 105-106 and passim.

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that they were accessible to a few people only.84 A division of a similar nature can be found between the German and Swedish terms öffentlich/ offentlig (open) and gemein/allmän (common), on the one hand, and the term privat on the other, though the congruence is not complete: the Latinbased terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ refer to the general and the particular as well as to participatory and non-participatory, and thus are firmly linked with the domain of government and the state, whereas the terms öffentlich and allmän, on the other hand, highlight openness and accessibility, and are not necessarily connected to government.85 In the Turku Court Records of the 1640s and the 1650s, the terms private and public (privat, public, allmän, offentlig) carry all the above-mentioned meanings, but they are used extremely seldom. ‘Private’, in these entries, means ‘behind closed doors’, ‘in secret’, ‘personal affairs’, and ‘personal property’. ‘Public’ always had to do with governance. It referred to governmental buildings, money governed by the Town Council, property of the Crown, or a civil servant who was a public person. The term allmän was mainly used to describe the Town Council/Town Court meetings that were open to all to attend (almeen rådstugudag), or the common road or street (almenne gathan), which was shared space administered by the Town Council. Offentlig, again, meant something visible and done or happening in the open (offentligen på åhn (openly on the river), offentligen på torget (openly in the market place)).86 Houses could be called public or private, but only with reference to ownership. It is clear that the terms used in the seventeenth-century Turku sources to describe what we mean today by public and private do not really have anything to do with the home. Subsequently, however, homes have been conceived through the concept of the private so strongly that, in the field of urban history, the town has usually only been studied from the perspective of ‘public’ space, that is, civic and religious buildings and manifestly shared space like streets, taverns and market places. When privately-owned houses have been studied, they have been studied as empty façades and architecture. In urban history, the domestic space of the town has received relatively little attention.87 84 Longfellow 2006, 315. See also Orlin 2007, 10. 85 von Moos 2004, 10 and passim; Svenka Akademiens Ordbok, s.v. allmänn, offentlig, http:// g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/ [18.9.2012]. 86 TRO 17 September 1655, 228; TRO 13 November 1658, 194-214; TRO 13 June 1657, 117-118; TRO 1 December 1640 [1641], 119; TRO 14 September 1644, 512; TRO 5 December 1657, 298-308; TRO 9 January 1646, 71; TRO 1 June 1640, 239; TRO 21 November 1670, 637-638; TRO 30 August 1658, 175-176. 87 Hohti 2010, 373.

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Where the home has predominantly been studied is within the domain of family history and gender history; it has thus been placed outside the shared urban. The division of life and space into public and private has to a great extent excluded the home from the general discussion of urban space, the town itself, notwithstanding some more recent efforts to define urban space in new ways. Mary Thomas Crane opens up the terminology of private and public and of the home in the early modern era, when she examines the privacy of the outdoor. In Crane’s English material, in order to do things hidden from others one would go outside (usually considered public in the present-day understanding of public and private space), not to closed locations inside. This is a direction of analysis that goes towards seeing the home as an integral part of urban space in general.88  Houses and urban space have been studied throughout this book on the premise that only the governmental and administrative are different from the rest of the urban space. This approach eradicates a preconceived difference between homes and other kinds of urban buildings. In the following we will briefly consider two ways in which the home was not ‘private’, that is, how some ‘public spaces’ were homes, and how the ‘peace of the home’ legislation protected the individual, not a private space. In her study on eighteenth-century Lyon, Susanne Rau writes that the nature of the tavern changed in the evening when the doors were closed: the tavern suddenly came under the protection of the peace of the home. She calls the application of the ‘peace of the home’ to the tavern, which was a public place, a paradox; but it need not be a paradox if one considers the nature of private and public differently.89 Such considerations can be entertained with regard to the ‘peace of the home’ at least in the case of early modern Sweden, where none of the relevant statutes mention public houses separately, but simply talk about homes. One Turku Court case illuminates well the fluidity of the concept of the home. A shoemaker’s widow accused a servant, Johan Brick, of attacking her in her house. Brick had been out drinking and gambling with some students and suggested that they go to the widow’s house to ‘have fun with the daughters’.90 The widow would not let them in, as it was late and the doors were already closed for the night. The servant returned later alone 88 Crane 2009. 89 Rau 2004, 223-224. Rau refers to urban statutes, which in some towns excepted taverns from the home peace protection, but even in such cases popular perception and interpretations of the local courts may have gone against such statutes. See for example Eibach 2004, 204. See also Katajala-Peltomaa & Toivo 2010, 22. 90 ‘Wij wele gå till Sahl. Matz Skomakares dottrar, der wij wäl få drijfwa wår lust’.

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and tried to climb in through the window, and in the process struck the widow when she tried to stop him.91 In court, Brick said that he had seen a man in the widow’s room through a window. As the house appears to have been a house of ill repute, we can deduce that Brick thought that if there was already one man in the house, the house should have been open to him as well. When Brick tried to get in, however, the widow said (as she told the Court): ‘… why do you scare people at night like this so they can’t enjoy peace in their own house?’92 She thus indicated that the border to her home had been unlawfully crossed, and that she was then under the protection of the law. We do not know if there was necessarily a genuine difference of opinion regarding the illegality of crossing of the border into the house, or if the disputing parties were merely each appealing to a common understanding of the border of the house, and of the crime of the invasion of a home, to their own benefit. Johan’s argument suggests that the material border of a home (the door) had been used in a wrong manner, that is, it was closed even though a person (an unknown man) who should not have been inside the house was there while the door was closed, whereas the widow’s argument was that since the door was closed, her home should therefore be protected by the law and no one had the right to claim entry. To corroborate her claim, the widow explained that the man in the house was a friend from countryside who was seeking medical help for an ailment, indicating that he was in the house legitimately. Although the widow’s house was clearly a house of ill repute, she expected it nonetheless to be under the protection of the law as a home. It might be argued that the house was protected because it had a dual function, one being the private home of the widow, and the other being a brothel, and that when the doors were closed, it took on the role of a home and it was in a special position with reference to the heemgång law,93 but this may be an interpretation too straightforwardly dependent on our contemporary understanding of private and public. The closing of the door was certainly crucial, but this did not change the space from public to private: it was just an ordinary sign that the house/home was closed for the night. 91 TRO 1 June 1659, 246-250. 92 ‘Wharför han så tijdskrämde folk, at de inthet finge niuta fredh uthi deras egit hus?’ 93 See Rau 2004, 223. The words ‘brothel’ or ‘house of ill repute’ do not actually appear in the court record. The nature of the house is merely implied by Brick’s desire to have fun with the daughters, and the Court’s exhortation that the daughters should procure employment – as the law required – so that such inappropriate situations would not arise again. In this respect, one might not consider the house as one offering a public service, but since contemporaries certainly considered it as such, we cannot interpret the house as ‘merely’ a home.

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Other incidents in Turku show that taverns were also recognized as homes in the meaning of the legislation. Claes Tuppurainen, the innkeeper at the guild tavern in Turku, complained that one Sigfred Staffansson Målare had drawn his sword in the tavern and attempted to stab him, ‘in his own house’,94 and had torn a hole in his trousers in the fracas. Sigfred was found guilty of the violent invasion of a home, and sentenced to a fine of 120 marks. There is no indication in the proceedings in court of a perceived discrepancy between the idea of the peace of a home and the character of the house as a licensed tavern.95 It is not clear from the sources if the point is that all houses were protected by the peace legislation, or that all houses were dwellings and therefore homes and therefore protected. What is clear is that all houses and rooms in Turku seemed to be somebody’s dwelling. Keepers of taverns mostly lived in the same house where they served drinks; and if they did not, some of their employees did. Even small shops by the street apparently housed the gatubodsdränger (streetshop help), just as the craftsmen’s shops housed the apprentices and the journeymen. The only exception seems to have been the Cathedral. Houses were very seldom anything but combinations of dwellings and places of business. More importantly, not much of a division appears to have been made between domestic and business uses of the houses. And the way that ‘peace of a home’ is applied to all kinds of houses may indicate that we should not make such a division either. So far it has become clear that the ‘home’ that was protected by the peace legislation was not necessarily the private home of a family. As Joachim Eibach comments with regard to the German law, the sanctity of a home protected by the King’s Oath was not the same as the sanctity of a modern home and its privacy.96 But dwelling is the key to the issue: a ‘home’ (heem) meant the dwelling of an individual, and this was what was central to the crime of heemgång. The peace legislation paragraphs in the Swedish Law of the Realm and the Town Law, just as the German ones, are part of the medieval tradition of peace laws. The aim of these laws was to protect the subjects of the crown from violence.97 As mentioned earlier, in addition to domestic 94 ‘uthi sin egen stugu’ 95 TRO 26 April 1648, 115-116. See also TRO 20 February 1660, 24-25. 96 Eibach 2004, 205. 97 Jansson 2004, 9; Ågren & Johansson 1994, 125; Åqvist 1989, 50-51; Krötzl1988, 4-6; Korpiola 2001, 37-39.

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peace, the peace laws in Sweden also addressed, for example, the peace of women, of courts, of the church, but also of the sauna and of the privy.98 Mia Korpiola writes about other places or groups of people that were also protected in similar ways in other statutes, and maintains that the overall aim of this legislation was to protect either events or practices that had societal meaning (weddings, markets, harvests), or persons who were in an unprotected or defenceless situation, e.g. when sleeping, swimming, washing, or defecating. She also points out that it was considered despicable to kill someone who was in a vulnerable state or too young, too old, or too female to protect themselves.99 With reference to Germany, Inken Schmidt-Voges points out that the central role of the home for the order and harmony of society was also important in the case of domestic peace: the home needed to be protected because it was the core of the common order and organization of the state.100 The home, then, in the cases Schmidt-Voges presents, both carried societal meaning, and was a place where, particularly at night, people were vulnerable. In neither case did the privacy of the home play a role. In the home invasion cases in Turku what seems to be central is not so much the home as the locus of the ever-important family, and therefore its societal meaning, but the individual that was under protection. Even if the immediate action involved in the violent invasion of a home consisted of invading the domestic space, the crime was understood as directed against a person rather than a home – at least as a space shared by a family or other group of people. Protecting a home was about protecting the safety of the people in it. The lack of division between public and private for most of the houses in the town, and the basic idea underlying the peace laws, as well as the ways that the people talked in court about homes that were under attack as ‘my home’, all indicate that a home was understood as a dwelling of individuals. People knew that they were protected by the law when they were inside the walls and fences of their home. This does not mean, on the other hand, that individuals were necessarily secluded from others in their dwellings, nor does it deny or diminish the fact that families or communities shared the dwelling space. Although ‘home’ as an individual’s dwelling was important in defining boundaries in relation to heemgång, homes were nonetheless, of course, still sites for family, neighbourhood and community. And they were still open houses. 98 Krötzl 1988, 6-7; MES, 213. 99 Korpiola 2001, 41-42. 100 Schmidt-Voges 2010, 204-205.

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Open Homes and Intimacy Despite the importance of borders to homes and houses, and of laws that offered protection against the illegal crossing of those borders, a porousness between inside and outside was characteristic for the urban environment. The general impression given by the Turku Town Court records is that when things happened, inside houses or in the yards and the streets, there were always various kinds of people around. And since the idea and ideal of privacy as protected intimacy, a domain protected from interference or intrusion, really emerged only in the early nineteenth century, then sexual intimacy and family relations, nowadays generally assumed to belong in the sphere of privacy, must be seen as part of the shared and communal, not as something private.101 Where beds, sleeping, and intimate relations are mentioned in the Turku Town Court records, the home appears as a stage for communal living. Night life in Turku seems to have been rather busy; all kinds of people moved around in houses and homes. Beer and wine were offered in many places. Some of the individuals living in any particular house might retire to bed already well before the (often young) men there ended their night of drinking, gambling and talking. The young men may also have stayed on to sleep elsewhere than their own lodgings: for example, in one case two men once ended up sleeping on a bench, head to head with the daughter of the house. These movements at night in and out of various houses were as such not usually challenged in any way in court.102 One account about a young man being found in the bed of a burgher’s wife particularly illuminates the openness of sleeping places. Matts Kiäppi accused his wife of adultery with a university student, Laurentius Jacobi. The court proceedings record that three students had come in to drink a jug of beer in Kiäppi’s house. Laurentius had immediately said that he wanted to lie down, and although he was shown a bench to rest on, he threw himself on the bed. The maid stated that Laurentius was still lying on the bed when she went to her own bed in the kitchen building. Mistress Karin said that she had gone to sleep when the evening bell rang, and that at that point the students were sitting in the room and drinking beer. She had woken up at one o’clock at night, and realized that the student was sleeping beside her. 101 Longfellow 2006, 315-326. About beds, privacy and intimacy see also Orlin 2007, 170-173; Sarti 2002, 121-123. 102 See TRO 6 December 1647, 489; TRO 11 May 1642, 271-279; TRO 16 April 1640, 118-123; TRO 26 November 1660, 390-392.

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She swore that she had had nothing to do with him.103 Whatever the truth about the adultery might be, this evidence shows, first, how the mistress’s bed was in the main room and not separated from the common area, and secondly, that people’s movement inside the house was not restricted. Thus the space of the home was not distinct, restricted or intimate: at any given moment, it was ‘merely’ what people were doing in that space that mattered. In the few adultery and fornication cases where the case notes include more than just the culprits’ names, the nature of the offence and the fines imposed, there were always witnesses. Often they were servants, but sometimes tenants and lodgers. In one case, Wächtare’s wealthy widow Elisabet Jöransdotter (whom we met as Wächtare’s wife in an earlier chapter)104 had two suitors. She wanted to get rid of one, who insisted that he had slept with Elisabet. At the beginning of the case notes, Elisabet declared that she had witnesses – evidently other people residing in the same room – to confirm that this Bengt had not been in her bed when he had stayed on after the wake for one of her children (for some reason these witnesses were never called). On another occasion, she conceded, Bengt had stayed when everyone else had left, and lay down to sleep (according to Elisabet) on a chest at the end of her bed. Again, it is not relevant what actually happened between the two: what is significant is that it was plausible that Bengt could have stayed and not had relations with her. People could socialize and spend time in the same space where the mistresses were sleeping.105 Places of sleeping, then, were shared space. Many beds and other sleeping places were in the rooms that were central sites of encounter in the urban community. As the cases of Elisabet and Kiäppi’s wife show, everything did not always go smoothly. The importance of the virtue of women caused problems. Even burgher mistresses could have their honour compromised when drunken men lost their ability to act according to the norm. Because of the openness of their sleeping quarters, women could be targets of unwanted advances in their homes – or on the other hand, they could engage in liaisons of their own volition. One court case tells of Mistress Karin Bochmöllerska, who was pursued by various men. A young merchant, Anders Bållman, had apparently 103 TRO 31 January 1646, 82-83. 104 This Elisabet Jöransdotter is referred to as Wächtare’s widow in 1646 and as Wächtare’s wife in 1654. This is because Elisabet’s second husband, of whom we know nothing but his first name, Grels, apparently took the name of the merchant house when he married her. Grels was the other man in the case in question here. 105 TRO 7 February 1646, 85-88.

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promised marriage to Karin, after which they had sexual relations. They had been to the Cathedral Consistory about this promise, where Karin accused him of slander. He had called her a whore, and accused her of having relations with two other men. The case includes a description of the two men in question entering Karin’s house drunk, Bållman hiding in the kitchen building (as the men had swords), and the two men interrogating Karin about Bållman being by her bedside earlier. Bållman stated to the Court that he would not have promised marriage to Karin, because he knew she had not taken Erich Andersson, one of the other men, to court, even though he came over the fence and broke the window to get into her house. Instead, she had quietly had the window repaired. Moreover, he pointed out, Karin was a married woman, and should not have been so wanton with anyone. The case in the record is very winding and complicated, and it is difficult to follow who said and did what and when; there is also very little information about Karin Danielsdotter and her circumstances. We know that her husband had abandoned her, and there is some indication that she ran a public house. Karin’s case shows what kind of encounters could happen in a solitary woman’s house, and how they could damage her reputation. Furthermore, the case also shows how what mattered was not only actions, but words about the actions. Once the relations between Karin and the two men had been uttered out in the community, they had to be dealt with. Karin’s virtue required her to accuse Anders in court.106 Even if it was possible for a solitary woman to hold a house in Turku, she had to watch out for her virtue and reputation. The comings and goings of the men in Karin’s house were probably known about by several people, and at the least by Karin’s servants; but they were apparently broadcast to the community only by the culprits themselves, when they ended up in disagreement about the nature of their relationship. This order of events is part of an implied practice of keeping things concealed from outsiders and/or the authorities. This practice is most evident in the behaviour of the servants in the Turku material. Common sense, of course, says that it was not to their advantage for servants to expose the misdeeds of their employers. In the case between Anders Bållman and Karin Danielsdotter, Karin’s maid is said to have given contradictory evidence in the Lower Town Court and the Town Court: this may have resulted from the need to watch out for one’s words. In the Town Court, the maid stated that although she had seen Erich Andersson spend nights in her mistress’s house, she had never seen anything happen between them, and that they 106 TRO 11 May 1642, 271-279, 323. See also, Toropainen 2016, 147-148.

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always had the light on the table.107 Similar discretion by the servants can be found in the Wächare’s widow’s case discussed above: when a maid was called in as a witness, she gave a statement to support her mistress. She could not deny that the couple had shared a bed, but she was sure that the man, Bengt, had had his trousers on at all times.108 In another adultery case, concerning the priest Påel and Matts Pässi’s wife, which was already discussed in the Part II of this book, a male servant did blab about an affair between his mistress and the priest, but only after he had already left her service. It was not his statement, however, that led to the court case. The servant’s story about catching his mistress and the priest in the act actually came to the Court’s knowledge through another burgher’s wife, and the servant himself was not traced for questioning, despite someone being sent after him to his parents’ home in the countryside.109 The adultery between the burgher mistress and the priest ended up in court as a result of gossip, perhaps arising from an argument between two burgher mistresses. Nonetheless, in Turku, not only servants, but also either neighbours or lodgers reported their fellow townspeople to the authorities very often. Lena Cowen Orlin has written about such considerations in early modern London, and suggests that people living in shared accommodation expected and practised certain consensual conventions concerning dealings between people in the shared space. Because of the crowded conditions, witnessing other people’s intimate relations was more often the rule than the exception; but disclosing information was only rarely resorted to.110 Although circumstances in Turku were significantly dissimilar from those in the crowded metropolis of London, the collective nature of dwelling may have contributed to the emergence of similar conventions, rather than those of informing the authorities of immoral actions found, for example, by Jason Coy in Ulm in southern Germany.111 In Turku, people’s various activities were in a manner of speaking hidden from others even if they happened in the shared space and were often hard not to notice. This kind of courtesy found in urban practices does not eliminate the need to keep illicit encounters secret, but it is fact part of it. The need for 107 TRO 11 May 1642, 271-279, 323. 108 TRO 7 February 1646, 85-88. 109 TRO 16 March, 21 March, 11 April 1640, 126-127, 135, 152-154. 110 Orlin 2007, 173-174. 111 Coy 2008, 14, 63, 84-85.

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secrecy is evident in the circumspect testimonies by the servants and the adamant denials by the culprits. Adultery was always adultery, and sex outside of marriage was forbidden. It is, however, uncertain how problematic various kinds of illicit sexual relations were when they actually happened, as we only know of the events that were revealed, that is, spoken out. There may have been various levels of tolerance over what happened in the houses. When there was a certain balance between events, observers, their observations, and what was spoken out, order prevailed. This order, however, while it was good and necessary from the point of view of the community, was not always good from the point of view of an individual. Servants and lodgers, in particular, had to balance their actions and words carefully. Moreover, various categories of women were all at some level of risk from sexual demands from the men in the house, an issue which does not really surface in the Turku sources.112 Domestic violence, another issue that the Turku sources are relatively silent about, was also in principle part of the accepted order of a home, and did not really need to happen in secret. Domestic violence was justified violence, part of the accepted norm and indeed constitutive of the accepted social system, although in many places in Europe the neighbourhood community created some systems of monitoring extreme cases.113 Domestic violence was not an issue of intimacy or privacy. As has often been pointed out, the family and home were the small-scale model of the society. The King was the head of the state and the husband was the head of the family. The head of the family was directly responsible for order in his house, but he was responsible to the King and to God that proper order prevailed. Excessive violence, on the other hand, was not part of such order and the authorities had the right to intervene when violence or other disorder was extreme.114 In Turku the boundaries of excessive violence and therefore of the man’s right to rule in his house were tested in court only occasionally. Domestic violence cases did not reach Turku Town Court very often, as marital pro­ blems were usually dealt with by the Church. Not many of the Cathedral Consistory records have survived, but the ones that have (1656-1661) do not include many instances of domestic violence. It is very possible that the clergy will have dealt with discordant couples verbally, and that no 112 See Wiesner 2000 (1993), 60. On rape in early modern Sweden, see Jansson 2002. 113 Attitudes towards domestic violence were, however, not simple and clear cut. See more Lidman 2016, 18-23. 114 Eilola 2003, 190, 192-1994; Stadin 1993,178; Karlsson Sjögren 1998, 164.

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record was kept of these discussions. Indicative of the content of any such discussions are the few Consistory cases found. Once again we meet Erich Stång, accused of violence against his wife. The Consistory record of his case consists mainly of conciliatory discussion and an exhortation for family peace, and ends up with the couple shaking hands.115 A few incidents did reach the Town Court. One mishandled woman had sought help from her neighbours. This Hans Mattson’s wife was beaten regularly. She had escaped his attacks through the window, to the neighbour’s house, no less than eight times. The case came to court only because Hans had threatened to set the neighbour’s house on fire if they gave his wife sanctuary once more. The maid corroborated the wife’s story, and added that Hans had only been to church once while she had worked in the house. The case in court didn’t amount to anything much: Hans was told not to set the neighbour’s house on fire, and the domestic violence case was referred to the Consistory Court, where it was probably dealt with by an admonition to treat his wife more amicably.116 The few cases in the Turku records show how domestic violence was an accepted part of the marriage, even if in excess it was disapproved. The marriage and the family were values that came before personal suffering, and this did not apply only to women, as is illustrated by the examination of a wife who was drunk in the Russians’ shop late one night. The mistress was apparently a drunk, who had caused humiliation and disgrace to her husband on various occasions, and this time he said he did not want her back. During the course of the trial, the husband was asked several times whether he would take her back anyway; in the end he relented, and the disgraced woman returned to the marriage and the house. 117 Even the patriarchal marital relations inside a home were not a private and intimate matter, but the authorities also had a hand in keeping marital peace in the houses in the town. The intimate encounters that occur in the Turku Court records, all in all, show how homes were always spaces of communal encounter. There was no prior expectation of privacy, and very seldom were people or places completely secluded; yet not everything was to be shared at all times. To summarize, one could say that as the homes were open spaces, ‘open houses’, there was no privacy, but also vice versa: since there was no privacy, homes were open spaces. 115 Consistorii ecclesiastici Aboënsis protokoller, 473. 116 TRO 13 February 1646, 100. 117 TRO 2 September 1644, 499-510.

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Entering and Exiting: Male Sociability and Transactions Much of the sociability in these open homes that appears in the Turku Court records is of a nocturnal and male nature, as arguments, usually triggered by alcohol, ended in bruises, cults and insults which then required restitution in court. The Court cases demonstrate that instead of spending nights behind closed doors at home, men socialized either at their lodgings or at various drinking establishments till late at night. The notion that by default people stayed in their homes after the night bell, or any other kind of indication that night had fallen, has already been proven wildly inaccurate by scholars of European history. In principle, movement in the streets at night, particularly for reasons of idle sociability, was disapproved of; but as Craig Koslofsky has written, although there were rules about carrying lights and even about not being outside at night at all, these rules were seldom enforced. Both Koslofsky and Norbert Schindler have found various kinds of people moving about town after dark. Koslofsky notes a concern over ‘the unmarried found idly in the street’, as a 1697 Leipzig ordinance put it. Schindler writes about young men finding cheap and unsupervised surroundings in the streets, and about men visiting neighbours and associates. Similar observations can be made about mid-seventeenth-century Turku.118 Women are not mentioned very often in these accounts of happenings at night: the presence of women, particularly of the burghers’ wives, was not acceptable. In the Turku Town Court, there were two cases during the twenty years studied here where a burgher mistress appeared in a drinking establishment late at night. The case of the drunken wife in the Russians’ shop was already discussed in this chapter. The other case concerned a woman buying wine from a tavern, which came to court because she was slandered by the tavern keeper’s wife. The case notes discuss in detail how and why she ended up in the tavern, starting with her waiting at the top of the stairs for the wine to be brought for her, and ending up in a scuffle on the tavern floor between the two mistresses.119 Women like the tavern keeper’s wife, and maids, were out in the town at night more often than burgher mistresses, but those who appeared in court, at least, were most often in work roles. While a drunken woman was an abomination and an honourable woman would not frequent a tavern, women were not confined to their homes or 118 Koslofsky 2002, 751, 752, 759; Schindler 2002, 202. See also Ekirch 2005 for various kinds of night-time activities. 119 TRO 5 July 1643, 415-418, 421-422.

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constantly monitored. Kustaa H. Vilkuna has found evidence of drinking practices in the early modern Finnish countryside where women may have drunk together, out of the men’s sight when the men were away. This female drinking could be excessive, and sometimes ended up in violence.120 Signs of such practices have not been found in Turku, but drinking in one’s own home would not necessarily show up in our sources. One thing that merits attention with reference to women’s drinking relates to those mistresses discussed previously in this book who did not take part in the night-time socializing in their own homes. Even if they had done so, they would not have been improperly roaming the streets or visiting taverns. But they were sleeping. Although questions of propriety and impropriety may have played a central role in this practice, one should also take into consideration that women’s work usually meant that they had to be up in the morning before the men, and it is therefore entirely plausible that their non-participation in night-time sociability was in part due to their need to retire earlier. It is, however, more likely that sociability and drinking together were just strongly gendered practices.121 Male night-time practices usually consisted of drinking, talking and gambling. Often it is not easy to say if men congregated to drink, talk and/ or gamble in homes or in taverns, because when houses are talked about they are referred to by the name of the head of the house, whether the house was a tavern or not. Some of the legal taverns can be identified, but there were many ill-defined establishments one cannot be sure about. One court case dealt with an exchange of blows between a Jöran Rachapää and some other men in the house of Knut Kiälke’s widow. One of the men, Nils Andersson, had lodgings in the house, and he described himself and the other men as sitting around a table ‘talking about the weather’.122 We know from this case that widow Kiälke rented out a room or rooms, which was a common livelihood for widows. It is not possible to say whether Kiälke’s house was a tavern, that is, if the widow had a licence to sell beer: selling or buying drinks is not mentioned in the case records. Two earlier entries about Kiälke’s house, however, give the impression of rather a shady place with some dubious sources of income. In 1640, Kiälke’s widow is mentioned as accepting a stolen dish in pawn,123 and in 1648 the wayward maid discussed 120 Vilkuna 1995, 280; Vilkuna 2015, 412-413. 121 Tlusty 2001, 122-146; Vilkuna 2015, 407-408, 490-496, 508-521. For an example of male drinking practices, see Hailwood 2011. 122 TRO 5 June 1643, 361-362. 123 TRO 14 March 1640, 118-123.

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in the previous chapter mentions the widow’s house as one that she had lived in/frequented.124 Renting rooms, suspicious dealings and sociability at night are easily associated with selling alcohol, legally or illegally. Kiälke’s house apparently consisted of one room for the family and company, and at least one other that was let out. This widow’s house is a good example of a mixture of a home and a public house, of a multifunctional house, fitting with the premise that the division between homes and places of business was blurred or non-existent.125 The mixing of domestic life and communal sociability in one space, common in many European towns, is even more emphasized in Turku, because most of the houses consisted of only a few rooms. When the business was that of hospitality, the mixing of the domestic and non-domestic was even more pronounced, as in many cases night time did not really mean the end of business activities (even if it should have). The boundaries between domestic life, sociability, and business are more blurred in houses such as Kiälke’s than in more established taverns and inns. Even the legal sale of beer by widows often differed from that of the proper taverns. For example, Burgomaster Guthrie’s widow was given permission to brew beer for herself and for her neighbours. She was allowed to sell beer at her home, that is, basically to set up a tavern, but she was not allowed to sell beer by the jug to take out.126 Her establishment was basically more a domestic space, while a full-fledged tavern had a more prominent and defined business role. Even in the fully licensed taverns, however, it is probable that at least the servants slept in the cellar area, which is where the alcohol often was served; the tavern space was probably always dwelling space for someone, as well as an extension of the domestic space of the owner of the tavern. Both the brewing or distilling and sale of alcohol were strongly regulated. The ordinances strived for a more ordered economy, and thus at the same time, wittingly or unwittingly, for a clearer delineation of space. The ordinances governing taverns, controlled inn-keeping and the making and sale of alcohol. Since the sixteenth century, the Crown had strived to end unlawful demands for hospitality and the mistreatment of inn-keepers and in the countryside of peasants being asked to provide overnight shelter. Strict and precise rules were issued about what a traveller was entitled to 124 TRO 15 November 1648, 281-282. 125 An example of a widow’s house as a multifunctional establishment in an English setting, see Withington 2007, 293. 126 TRO 30 January 1660, 9; 23 June 1651, 164.

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and what the inn-keeper was obliged to provide. These rules pertained also to towns, but most of the paragraphs of the ordinances were concerned with inns along the highways; the most relevant regulations about urban taverns had to do with excise taxes and control of the trades. In 1617, a trade ordinance complained about the disorder associated with many of the ale taverns in the towns of the realm. The ordinance forbade any selling of drinks elsewhere than in taverns which already had a licence or subsequently acquired one. In 1622, when the arrangements for many excise taxes were reorganized, taxes were established for two distinct classes of taverns: those that sold domestic beer, and better taverns that were allowed to sell foreign wines and beers. The taverns were also to provide rooms for travellers and have a visible sign on the street. No one else was to sell any alcohol except for these legal taverns.127 In addition, because of the fear of disorder – mainly of the economic kind – the brewing ordinances ruled that only the central town breweries could make beer. Everyone should buy their beer there, and the towns were not to allow any home-brewing at all.128 The regulations, however, were not well received and apparently not well adhered to. Even if there were six town breweries in Turku,129 the Town Council had to continually remind the burghers that they were not supposed to brew beer in their own homes The rules and regulations do make clear the differences between the official taverns and various other places that sold alcohol. It is also very likely that they were different in terms of sociability and encountering people. The taverns were more likely to stop selling at nine o’clock than the unofficial places (as they were monitored); but the taverns were also more likely to have better facilities, e.g. more benches and tables, as well as facilities for games like darts and billiards.130 These probable differences between drinking establishments in their furnishings and fittings means that their patrons will have used the spaces in different ways, and they probably attracted different patronage. At the level of everyday practice and experience, then, the taverns were a very different space compared to other houses. This does not invalidate the argument that on another level taverns would not have been distinguishable from a home, as discussed 127 ‘Ordinantie för Kiöphandeln 1617’, 703; ‘Krögare och deras Accis 1622’, 868-870; ‘Krögare och Gästgifware 1622’, 870-873; Kotkas 2014, 66, 115. 128 ‘Instruction för Tull-Inspectoren 1639’, 213. 129 Toropainen 2016, 241. 130 An entry about darts TRO 9 June 1656, 138-140, about billiards TRO 20 July 1657, 193-198. About problems with taverns and night-time closing see for example, TRO 5 March 1642, 152, 189-190; TRO 9 May 1642, 259; TRO 18 October 1647, 413: TRO 4 December 1645 [1646], 93.

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in the chapter about the violation of a home. Houses and urban space in general had manifold meanings, and they were experienced differently in different circumstances. In addition to the drinks sold at taverns and other establishments, alcohol was also consumed in homes that did not sell it. Norbert Schindler has written how in German small towns, domestic visiting practices were central for sociability.131 The same can be said about Turku. People certainly seem to have visited neighbours and associates at night,132 and since home-brewing was regulated, beer would have to be bought from a tavern. The taverns had permission to sell beer and wine by the jug. At night, the town sometimes seems to have been full of men going from one house to another, drinking here and there, or carrying jugs of alcohol. Fetching drinks in the middle of the night demonstrates that homes were places of sociability, particularly of the male kind, even very late at night. In one instance, four men were at home and had sent out for two or three jugs of beer, but the night watchman had stopped the boy fetching the jugs, and asked him what kind of time it was to be carrying beer around. According to the watchman, it was between 11 and 12 at night, while the burghers claimed it was only around nine o’clock, and defended their purchase of the beer, since it was bought from a legal tavern. The court case, however, was about injuries sustained in a fight that followed the argument, and the fetching of beer is not further commented on. The point about the time of day is important, however, even though it did not explicitly affect the sentencing: taverns were supposed to close at nine o’clock, and as one of the burghers, Casper Ekman, was fined, one can presume that the actions of the watchman were deemed legitimate because the beer had been bought after nine.133 The description of fetching alcohol at night tells us about visiting and hospitality practices, but also about the mobility that sociability and visiting entailed. It illuminates how the space of the street and the house merged into each other as sociable space. Events spilled out from the houses onto the street, and from the streets into the houses. This was something that was shared with European towns in general: closeness of houses in urban space, tenancy and lodging as forms of dwelling and the existence of multiple taverns combined with similar cultural practices of drinking and socializing made European urban spaces comparable in terms of male night-time sociability. Although there was a varying number of spaces intended specifically for leisure activities 131 Schindler 2002, 202. 132 For example, TRO 17 May 1642, 128-129. 133 TRO 27 October 1647, 454-456.

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in various European towns, it was common that male leisure activities spilled into the street.134 One aspect that does emerge from the practices of sociability at night is the constant coming and going of people, mostly of young men. Men drank at someone’s lodgings, went out, continued somewhere else, fetched friends from their homes. When functions such as weddings were being arranged, the movement from house to house was even more frequent.135 For example, one Wilhelm Wilhelmsson told the Court that he had been at Erich Sterkersson’s house with a journeyman carpenter, Adolph Berendtsson, left there when the night bell rang, gone to Axel Skräddare’s place and then home.136 In the incident of fighting between Erich Erichsson and the Finnish students at Matts Kaukar’s house that has already been cited twice, the Finnish students had come to Kaukar’s house from the student Aeschillus’ lodgings, where the sheriff and his daughter, the fiancée of one of the students, had been invited to spend the night. Judging from the description of the students’ behaviour after a few jugs of beer, everyone had been very drunk, and left to continue the night under the pretext of escorting the sheriff back to his lodgings.137 In all, these descriptions of the nightlife in Turku give the impression of houses and homes that were relatively open for people to come and go even late at night. However, it is most likely that although all houses were open spaces of sociability in principle, this was not always the case. That is, not all houses were open for people to come and go at all times. Gates and doors could be and frequently were locked, and they did not need to be opened when someone knocked. In practice, someone always made a choice whether or not to make the house available for socializing in the evenings and at night, even if the private home in the sense of a protected space for family intimacy cannot be said to have existed in early modern Europe and as a rule houses were more open than closed. It is difficult to say much, on the other hand, about daytime sociability during weekdays. The sources are largely silent on the issue. It is presumable that most people were working during the day, and would not have time for 134 See for example, Muurling & Pluskota 2017. For cultural practices of sociable drinking see Vilkuna 1995; Tlusty 2001; Withington 2007; Hailwood 2011. 135 For example, TRO 14 March 1640, 118-123, 145-146; TRO 27 June 1657, 132-138; TRO 1 June 1659, 246-250; TRO 21 May 1642, 298-299; TRO 30 October 1651, 271-279, 286. 136 TRO 26 November 1660, 390-392. Some discrepancy about times complicates the reading of the case. While Wilhelm talked about the night bell (at the latest at 9, perhaps at 7 or 8), Alex Skräddare witnessed that Wilhelm came to knock at the gate between 12 and 1 a.m. 137 TRO 30 January 1641, 147-156, 160, 378, 404.

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leisure visiting. We have little information about how people interacted with other people and the houses where they dwelled or worked. When daytime work is referred to in the Court records, it usually relates to unpaid debts, and when the material environment is mentioned, what is highlighted is the fights ensuing during various transactions. These fights, however, do throw some light on practices related to encountering people in their homes. Drinking caused problems also during the day time. On one occasion, Sigfred Markusson and Nils, an excise-tax collector, went into Clemet Posoila’s house to collect a tax, and Sigfred also wanted to buy some tobacco and a pint of beer. Inside, they encountered Eshill Mättälä, who was drunk and talking about buying some hops from Clemet, as well as another Eshill, Eshill Shomakare, who was in the house working (on what, is not said). Both Sigfred and Nils and Eshill Mättälä sat and drank beer, and ended up playing cards over who would pay for the next round. Eshill lost, but did not want to pay; a fight ensued, in which Sigfred was killed.138 What this scenario illustrates is how taking care of the Crown’s business, selling and buying, working and sitting down to drink and play cards, were all part of the course of the day. Judging from this case, sociability and official and business transactions combined in men’s forays into each other’s houses. Another comparable incident arose when a lieutenant colonel’s servant, Hans Wagner, went to Mistress Gertrud Påelsdotter’s house to collect a debt from a bailiff, Michel Carlsson. The bailiff had rented a room at Gertrud’s house, and sought restitution in court from Hans for some windows he broke. Hans told the Court that he had gone to the bailiff, asked for some spirits, which the bailiff sent for, asked for some more, and then went on to ask for some food. He was presented with an empty plate and a fork, which made him angry and he summarily broke the plate. When the Bailiff Michel and his wife escaped his ire to the yard, Hans followed and then broke the windows.139 Whether it was day or night, having a drink of beer or spirits when meeting someone in their house seems to have been customary. Sometimes the drink was offered, sometimes asked for (as in the case above), and sometimes bought.140 Tobacco was sometimes served. In one case a town 138 TRO 6 October 1641 [1642], 14-17. 139 TRO 22 January 1642, 135. 140 Even on entering a tavern courtesy seems to have been in order, or the need for it could be used in an account in court. In one homicide case a captain in the cavalry explained that he had stayed in a tavern and ordered a drink, although the person he was looking for had not

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official came to a burgher’s house and was received kindly (at first), offered tobacco and invited to stay for a meal, before a melee then broke out in protest at his dealings.141 In the fight at widow Kiälke’s house discussed a few pages ago, when Johan Rachapää entered the room, he first sat down on a trunk between the door and the mistress’s bed and offered her tobacco before joining the men at the table.142 This is a very rare entry, as courtesy between the visitor entering and the master and mistress of the house is seldom directly mentioned. As the two incidents described above show, both private and public matters were attended to in the space of dwelling. One other case that illuminates this concerns a debt-mediation which took place at Peter Facht’s house (and resulted in a fight, which led to fines being imposed). Councillor Sigfred Salko had arrived at Peter Facht’s house with a ‘stranger’, that is, an outsider to the matter at hand, to arbitrate a financial disagreement between one of Facht’s guests and another man. The discussion led to an argument between Facht and Salko, and in the end to Facht throwing an inkwell at Salko’s head.143 The Burgomaster and the Council attended regularly to debt issues in court, but as we can see here, also could help to sort out matters as individuals. We cannot know whether Salko was mediating the issue as a friend, as an associate, or in his official role, but the case still shows that houses, people’s homes, were places where townspeople not only met for sociable reasons, but where business arguments were settled between and with the help of associates, friends and town officials as well as outsider mediators. Overall, the boundaries between official places, the locations where officials might operate, and people’s homes were not based on a strict division between private and public. The Crown’s and the Town’s business constantly intruded into people’s everyday lives in their homes. Officials, who usually were fellow burghers, came to burgher houses to collect various kinds of taxes, and every spring they came to inspect the chimneys. Servants of the Courts and the Castle visited homes with citations, requests and questions. Toll inspectors and the inspectors of the Tobacco Company, as well as army recruiters, were allowed to officiate in people’s houses. Often, officials visiting houses were considered unwanted intruders: they were, been there, because he could not leave in a hurry from a house where he had not been before. TRO 23 February 1659, 46-50. 141 TRO 31 March 1656, 86-88. 142 TRO 5 June 1643, 361-362. 143 TRO 3 February 1647, 105-107, 126.

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after all, collecting money, bringing citations from the Court, looking for infringements of the trade rules that were constantly broken by practically everyone, and meddling with the very constructions of the houses.144 In addition to people coming to other people’s houses in administrative roles, townspeople also went to officials’ houses. The Burgomaster’s house was the place to visit in case of trouble. Only at night time might one first need to approach the night watchmen. Visiting the Burgomaster to report violence or robbery is mentioned in various Court cases. The mother of a violent executioner reported her son to the Burgomaster.145 Mistress Kirstin, whose father-in-law invaded her house, cited in court a previous case as proof of malice: the father-in-law had thrown a stone into her house, hitting a lodger woman and hurting her knee, and Kirstin had gone to the Burgomaster to report the incident.146 Sometimes lack of contact with the Burgomaster was deemed an aggravating circumstance. Nils Larsson, who accidentally shot a young boy in a home invasion case, claimed that he had the right to try to get into the house in question because his sword had been taken there – stolen, he said, confiscated to hinder any harm, others said. Lars was told that he should have proceeded through the proper channels and gone to the Burgomaster to complain and get his sword back.147 Like the other houses in town, the Burgomaster’s home was an open house. It is clear that the Burgomaster’s house was not a public building as such. It was a home, and as with other people in the town, the Burgomaster’s work took place both at his home and elsewhere. The border between public and private blurs even in the administrative domain, where in principle the terms had clear meanings. There were public buildings, first and foremost the Town Hall, but public matters were managed in homes, which by definition of the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ were really neither. We have already seen that in addition to arguments escalating inside homes, there was a tendency to move in and out of houses, out into the street and back inside. In the mediation described above, when (according to Facht’s testimony) Salko was already irritated at the beginning of the mediation, he made a dash for the door, but Facht had stopped him in the hallway and persuaded him to come back in. This flare-up was thus calmed for a while (prior to the throwing of the inkpot), but an angry man rushing 144 For example, TRO 27 April 1640, 186-189; TRO 13 March 1644, 211-212; TRO 18 January 1658, 5; TRO 26 November 1660, 392-393. 145 TRO 10 September 1668, 91-95. 146 TRO 6 December 1658, 241-244. 147 TRO 16 March 1647, 349-360, 389-390.

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out of a house often led to him coming back in armed, or another man following him outside to fight. The practice of rushing outside during an argument or a fight appears to be connected, first, to getting away from the situation, but secondly, also to the tradition of calling-out. Both of these practices are familiar tactics from popular duels, which Pieter Spierenburg has written about. Spierenburg writes that in his Dutch material most fights followed a ritual pattern, including challenges, calling-out, and patterned responses. B. Ann Tlusty writes that tavern sociability often led to interpersonal violence in early modern Augsburg. The violence was deliberately taken outside into the street, away from the tavern space. The tavern, however, was an important starting point, because there were other people there who witnessed the challenges to a person’s honour, and he would therefore often choose the option to fight. These kinds of patterns found in early modern male violence are related to the dashing in and out in the Turku cases.148 Although in Turku there do seem to have been some ritual elements in the custom of running out of a tavern or somebody’s home, duels were not common, and the ritual behaviour was not clearly structured. Running to and fro and challenging people to fight was not restricted to taverns, and as a rule fights were not taken to the streets. In one case Clemet Mattson Rottala accused Lieutenant Nils Henrichsson of striking his mother and slashing his son’s finger with a sword. The whole incident started one Saturday with two men, one with his wife, sitting and drinking at the Lieutenant’s home. When they left, they got into an argument in the street, which was so loud that the Lieutenant had decided to go out to calm the men down. The Lieutenant’s wife followed him and tried to get him to turn back home. The discussion in the street in the end led to all three men returning to the Lieutenant’s yard, where two other men then also followed.149 This commotion includes some very confused shouting and moving around, and violence between various men. This somewhat random meeting of people, moving from one house to another, led to some persons running to safety, some coming out of their houses, many handing out threats and blows – all this was far from structured ritual violence, even if it probably had to do with honour. There are some clearer incidents in the court records consisting of a man leaving a house and coming back in, perhaps again leaving or ending up in a fight. Shouting and blows are usually included. One drunken Per Persson started to misbehave one night, and was therefore approached by the master 148 Spierenburg 1998, 104-105, 111; Tlusty 2001, 129-132. See also Lindström 2002. 149 TRO 12 March 1642, 192-194, 194-196.

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of the house. Per left, but came straight back in with a (concealed) bludgeon (glubba), had a drink with the master and then took the bludgeon out and started hitting him. In court, Per was clearly concerned about the way that the accusations were going, as he stated that he had found the club in the hallway, and not actually gone out of the house at all; he evidently did not want to be accused of violent invasion of a home.150 Returning with obvious malicious intent and a weapon would have triggered a harsh sentence. Other similar cases show the importance of the coming and going. Sometimes a man would want to leave, but someone else inside the house would, so to speak, ‘call him out’ to stay and fight – or to stay and have another drink. Sometimes a man went out and called another out to fight. In one case, which ended in the death of one man, the accused was happy to explain all the coming and going and drinking that had been going on during the day, but wanted to emphasize that he had not, in the last stage of events, gone out and come back with violence in his mind. This did not help, as he was sentenced to death for manslaughter.151 In these incidents we can see both the porosity of borders between inside and outside, and the importance of those borders; people were constantly moving from houses to the yards and the streets and back again. The communal nature of controversies is also evident. Most of the fights were not one-on-one disputes between two individuals, but involved whole groups of people, showing once again how the urban space, both inside and outside, was shared. One interesting occasion of calling-out arose out of an argument between Mistress Lucia Grå and an army clerk, Erich Schring. Lucia Grå came down to Schring’s stuga and began an argument about a transaction of some kind between them. The argument soon escalated to throwing things and pushing and shoving. Lucia Grå’s daughter Maria then joined in the fray, hair untied and armed with a mortar pestle. She opened Erich’s door, said that he was a rogue, and challenged him to step out so she could give him what he deserved. Erich followed Maria out with a log in his hand, which he threw at Maria. Maria picked up the log and threw it at the window, breaking six window panes; she then ran back to the door, opened it and shouted at Erich’s wife: ‘You wanton whore’.152 Although only men are usually 150 TRO 20 February 1660, 24-25. 151 TRO 10 October 1660, 297-301; TRO 15 October 1660, 316-320; TRO 19 July 1656, 200-205; TRO 12 May 1641, 325-327, 335-357, 356, 381; TRO 15 January 1642, 126-127, 128-129, 134; TRO 18 March 1648, 98. 152 TRO 20 April, 30 May, 8 July, 11 July & 20 July 1640, 172-173, 237, 305, 316, 332.

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mentioned in connection with rituals of violence and encounter such as calling-out, this one case shows that it was also possible for women to act similarly. It should be noted, however, that Maria and her mother were not a ‘normal’ pair amongst the townspeople, but were often at the center of controversy; nonetheless, this incident shows that gender roles were not categorically followed, but even generally gendered spatial practices could be employed across the gender divide. Finally, it can be said that although houses were open and people moved in and out of them quite frequently, even at night time, it becomes clear from the instances of sociability and transaction described above that the boundaries associated with houses were very significant. They offered stages for resolving relationships and performing honour and identity. In this sense, the boundaries were not merely boundaries between two polarized kinds of space, inside and outside, but a distinct category of liminal space in their own right.

Conclusions The Town Although the order of and in Turku urban space was not specif ically characterized by an adversarial relationship between the authorities and the local community, the examination of the toll fence and the various practices relating to crossing it shows that there was a clear divergence between the thinking of the local people and that of high officials. It has become clear that one person’s or group’s order (the local order fashioned by the townspeople) was someone else’s disorder (the Crown and the local authorities, and particularly, in many instances, Governor General Per Brahe). The fashioning of local order in various spheres of life has become visible in the examination of practices connected with the material boundary of the town. While the material restrictions of the toll fence and the town gates – generated by statutes – were unavoidable and significant, and created very clear and visible spatial rules, they were not straightforward. Townspeople had ways of organizing urban life and making their own rules in relation to the material boundary. Fluidity was a key aspect of urban order for the burghers as well as other town dwellers. This can be seen, for example, in local practices of paying toll fees or lodging vagrants. In these practices that created local spatial rules, the official order was neither rejected nor resisted; it was moulded. The relationship to order varied considerably between different categories of townspeople, that is, burghers, servants, workers, wives and widows. The local order was not uniform. First of all, the town was governed by a corporation of burghers that created order for itself with its own benefit in mind (and not necessarily that of all the townspeople). This administrative order of the town was closely related to the desired order of the higher authorities, but these two diverged, for example, in dealing with the burghers’ need for mobility – a necessity for the burghers, but undesirable from the perspective of the Crown. Interestingly, the town as a corporation also looked particularly to its own members to keep the desired order, as can be seen from the way that ‘loose people’ were dealt with in court. Vagrants and immoral persons were most definitely unwanted and to be expelled, but rather than targeting them in the court, the burghers were made responsible. The order and disorder of the town was understood to be a matter best controlled by its burghers. At the same time, because of

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a lack of a fully functioning urban administration with specific officials for every task, individual burghers had to take roles in implementing and policing various matters of civic order. While the burghers were in many aspects mobile in their lives, in principle they still were fundamentally settled in the town. The everyday order of servants’ and workers’ lives, on the other hand, involved a different element of mobility. This mobility, revolving around finding a livelihood, was manifested as disorder for the urban corporation, but at the same time it was required by the practical system of the town, for there was work to be done. For the servants and workers themselves the mobility-based order may have been a combination of personal order and disorder. Personal ties in town were of central importance for them in building stable lives, meaning that ideals of location and stability were a factor in the lives of the itinerant lower classes. But mobility was for many an important phase in life and for most a necessity in obtaining a livelihood, and therefore it was part of the ordered life. While it is obvious that order and disorder depended on personal experience, social status and physical location, it is also a matter that deserves more research, as to date urban communities and institutions have been more thoroughly researched than individuals. Individuals who were not wanted in town could be banished. Banishment in early modern Europe is connected to the tendency to treat insiders differently than outsiders, which is an aspect that has already been highlighted in earlier research. In seventeenth-century Turku, however, the tendency to include extended not only to the burghers but also to the lower classes and even lawbreakers such as thieves. Inclusion seems to have been more desirable than exclusion. At first sight, inclusion of offenders would seem to contravene the ideals of Good Community, which relied on the honour and virtue of the citizens. However, ties to locality, important in the practices of inclusion, in fact matched well the ideals of being settled in one particular place. Also, while even non-working vagrants and thieves were not treated as harshly as the laws would have required, the sources show that work in a settled location was considered important. Local ties were always social ties, but practices of exclusion and inclusion were nevertheless profoundly spatial practices; a person’s previous life in the urban space was of importance. Nevertheless, the relationship of the local administration, particularly to the ideal order concerning vagrancy and poverty, was complex. In some situations, rules and regulations were upheld and a strict stance towards ‘loose people’ and mobile persons was maintained, but the town council’s attitude to the town’s vagrants was significantly permissive. Neither the

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ideals nor the regulations matched the complexities of ‘real life’, and the treatment of the ‘unwanted’ varied case by case, with corresponding shifts in emphasis in social, economic and moral concerns. The issues of vagrancy and poverty show how order in the local material and urban context interrelated with wider concerns in the kingdom and in Europe. Europe-wide fears over begging and vagrancy, the need to conscript soldiers for wars, the need to find workers for the kingdom’s farms, and the authorities’ concern over unrest and control of trades, all in their own way materialised in the local practices at the town gates and in the practices relating to order in the town. The material town, and the entering and exiting of it, did not exist in isolation from the outside world. The local order of a town was never completely separate from the order of the kingdom, not even on the very practical level. Some lenient practices related to the wide-ranging issue of the judicial revolution. The legal system in the Swedish kingdom was evolving relatively rapidly in the seventeenth century, and leniency in sentencing was part of this development. However, in the present enquiry it has also become evident that in some aspects leniency also had to do with people’s relationship with local urban space. Local residents were dealt with in the courts more leniently than those with less obvious ties with the town. Even the co-location of several courts within the same urban space may have had an impact. In Turku there was a Court of Appeal, which was physically close to the Town Court (as well as to everyday urban life); decisions taken in this higher court in cases relating to the host town may have differed from its rulings in cases arising elsewhere, although comparative studies of other towns’ judicial decisions would be needed to substantiate this. Particularly regarding the materiality of the world, it has become clear that material boundaries conceived for one particular purpose also influenced the urban order in other areas. The material nature of the toll fence made the toll boundary more than an economic boundary. However, while the toll fence created order and oriented people spatially in many ways, it did not change people’s lives from mobile to sedentary, any more than the general official aversion to the mobility of vagrants and the poor had done. Mobility was part of the townspeople’s everyday orderly life; in this respect the material boundary of the town was perhaps somewhat inconsequential. The material boundary was not set, not firm in its materiality. The town gates were affected by the time of the year and the toll fence deteriorated from the action of weather and other agents. Thus it was not only the townspeople, the urban community, or the higher authorities who were active in ordering the urban space and life in it, but also the material environment.

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Home The disposition of the houses created one particularly important element for the spatial order in the town, that is, the yard. The yard steered people in their relationships with their own and other people’s homes, and ‘stage-directed’ the encounters between people. The gates and the doors acquired distinctive roles, and became the sites of particular everyday practices in relation to the space of the yards as much as in relation to the inside space. The composite of yards, gates and doors interacted with two important elements in the use of houses: their openness and closing. The doors and gates were open and shut for various purposes and at various times, but openness was a dominating character of domestic order and the order of dwelling. Openness was elementally connected to the continuing co-presence of multiple people in houses and rooms. This openness and co-presence could generate various kinds of disorder, but at the same time they were an elemental part of the urban everyday order. For example, commotion at night constituted both order and disorder; it was part of the ordering of male sociability, but because it mostly happened in dwelling space or on the fringes of dwelling space it disrupted the order of the home, as well as disrupting the order of the communally administered street. This order/disorder of night life was also a result of the material surroundings, as the layout of rooms and of houses on their plots steered the ways that people moved and encountered each other. There are other order/disorder dyads to be found in the town’s houses. For example, domestic violence was disorder that grew out of a fundamental early modern order, an order of patriarchal ideals and legitimate violence. As disorder, domestic violence was both personal disorder and disorder of the neighbourhood. On the other hand, (patriarchal) ideal domestic order was reasserted in efforts to reconcile marital differences; and in such and similar situations the authorities extended their own order into the home. Similarly, but arising from the ideals and practices of obedience and deference, the authorities imposed their power on homes in a range of administrative and legal matters. In these ways, God’s order and the order of virtues – here, hierarchy and deference – played an important role in urban order. A corresponding influence of the central ideals of the era can be seen in the context of sexual indiscretion and crime. In terms of the dwelling community and ‘householding’, it has become clear that the ‘household’ was not in practice the most central fact in the organization of how houses were occupied. The order of householding was not stable or rigid, nor were its spatial rules necessarily fully patriarchal.

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The things that were important in the organizing, owning and occupying of houses – a very basic ordering of urban space – were legality, fluency, harmony, and finances. The Town Council was an important authority in the matter, having a final say, and it could even take drastic measures, such as evictions. The Town Council seems to have been an arbitrator that all townspeople accepted, at least in principle. Nonetheless, since the administrative order of householding was not part of a fully developed system of public administration, owners of properties could sometimes face surprising situations, as when other people’s homes, and indeed houses, could exist fully legitimately within the properties they had bought. There was at times incongruence between patriarchal ideals and the privileges of the burghers on the one hand, and some of the local practices approved by the Town Council on the other: for example, granting even a lowly soldier’s wife permission to keep her house on a complaining burgher’s property. This disparity between ideals and practices is visible in some official records, particularly in the census rolls, where the clerks seem to have had difficulty in finding suitable terms to describe independent women. It appears that for the bureaucracy of the developing administration female occupancy of houses represented disorder, whereas in the practical life of the town it did not. The mixing of domestic and non-domestic practices in the houses was an important part of everyday order. Many houses were multifunctional, because of the ways that both everyday life and the houses were ordered. Co-presence and openness were the main operating elements of this order of homes, where professional life was not separate from the rest of one’s life, sociability incorporated some very mobile practices, and the houses in town were relatively small and very simple in their layout. Here spatial rules arose from both the organization of material space (the houses and the rooms) and the ideals and rules of sociability. With reference to people living under one roof, ‘community of dwelling’ may better describe the everyday urban order than the concept of ‘household’. People living in a house or a property shared parts of it, whether they were tenants, family members, servants or lodgers. For example, tenants may have rented a room, but they probably used the main room of the house regularly as well. Moreover, people who lived in houses clustered around one yard may have shared that yard to such an extent that they too can be said to have formed ‘a community of dwelling’. Such communities were not cohesive units, however; hence the inappropriateness of the concept ‘household’. Spatial rules of dwelling on the domestic level were also a shifting combination of prescribed rules and local practices of everyday life. Tensions

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did exist regarding the space of the ‘communities of dwelling’, as not all dwellers came under the head of a household (defined by the patriarchal ideal), and also because the houses were small and had few rooms. This is a tension visible to the researcher; it was not expressed by contemporaries in the sources. However, when the language of the ideals of the era is compared with the everyday life portrayed in the court materials, a discrepancy surfaces between the idea of the patriarchal household and the realities of tenancy. Tenants in the town may have been members of the ‘community of dwelling’, but not of the house or family, as they constituted their own separate economic and patriarchal units. Lodgers create another twist, as many of them were women, whose living outside of a patriarchal unit was even more contrary to the ideal patriarchal order of the time. Lodgers’ relationship to the order of dwelling was also different because, more often than the tenants, they shared their space with the family constantly. It appears that house walls were important in the order of tenants’ and lodgers’ dwelling: however much they also used the other parts of the house and the yard, tenants more often occupied a separate, walled-off unit, whereas lodgers did not habitually occupy their own disparate and bounded space. Finally, it is important to point out that while shared and open space have been dominant features in this book, the issues of shared space and personal space ultimately surfaced, particularly in the legal order of dwelling. In various legal issues, particularly relating to the violent invasion of a home or to the building of houses and rooms, negotiations over material space and the place of individuals within it were important. The house (or the room) was almost always ‘my house’, and the law protected the individual(s) in houses, whether in cases of violent attack or violation in the form of a wrongly placed window. The rules of the law were also known by the townspeople, and these laws, in conncetion with the materiality of houses and homes, were used for personal gain; thus the laws affected local practices on many levels. At the same time, it is clear that bodily and other forms of personal order and disorder were intimately connected to family and neighbourhood order. A home was ordered as personal, family, neighbourhood and wider community space.

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Index Aberdeen 102 Aborga 142 accommodation see lodging administration 13-15, 32 reform of 33-36 bureaucratization of 34 administrative practices 15, 20 Admiralty 110 adultery 42, 45, 75, 123-124, 133-136, 144, 184, 188-189, 194, 221-225 Ahlberg, Nils 34, 37 alcohol places of consumption of 84, 155, 161, 208, 221, 227-231, 235 selling of 83, 229-231 see also beer, wine, drinking alleys 191, 202-203 animals, domestic 59, 63, 70, 74, 76, 151, 154 Aningais Quarter 39, 171, 183, 187, 193 Aningais Toll 58, 60, announcemnts, public 53-54, 57, 84, 96 appellations gender-specific 108 harlot-thieves 114-115 huskvinna (housewoman) 176 kona (woman) 118 loose 108, 118 qwinsperson (female person) 114 apprentices 78n86, 100, 177, 180, 188, 193, 219 archaeology 151-153, 156-157, 175, 192 Aristotle 164 arrest see detention order artisans see craftsmen Assessor, Court of Appeal 74, 210-211 Atkinson, Niall 19 Augsburg 102, 173, 236 bailiffs 11, 35, 71, 84-85, 90, 103, 233 balance, restoring 131 Balint, Emese 196, Baltic Sea 31, 37, 39 bandits 143 banishment 25-26, 94, 240 and honour 122, 132, 137, 139, 142-143 and public ritual 143 and the executioner 143-144 and threats to Common Good 144 as a flexible punishment 143 as a secondary punishment 126, 130, 137 as an instrument of social cleansing 139 for dealing in stolen goods 132, 137, 139, 144 for improper behaviour 123, 137 from the university 135, 140 in exceptional cases 138, 144

linked to corporal punishment 124-125, 132, 134, 137 of burghers 132, 137-141, 143 of fornicators 133-139 of Simon Blom 137-139 of thieves 121, 123-132 of vagrants 87-88, 93-94, 96-106 of witches 132 returning to town after 139-143 temporary 135n56, 137 to Ingria 135 Barad, Karen 24, 151n2 barns 151, 180, 188-189, 203 bed chambers 153-156, 159, 168, 176 and intimate relations 188-189, 193, 221-222, 224 tenancy of 174-175 unheated 175 beds 59, 81, 84, 155-156, 180, 188, 201, 208, 210, 214, 221 location of 193, 221-223, 234 beer 16, 82, 125, 208, 221, 228-233 domestic and foreign 230 making of 229-230 selling illegally 16, 101-102, 229 beggars 51, 87-88, 90, 122 and laws 88, 94-95 complaints about 96 Beier, A.L. 113 benches 19, 60, 155, 230 sleeping on 189, 221 betrothal 112 Bible, the 116-117, 136, 164 billiards 230 blasphemy 42, 123, 137 boats 52, 74, 85, 139, 154 Bohn, Cornelia 105 books 75, 116, 122, 198, 201 Bose, Maria R. 105 boundaries 14, 17 and land ownership 63, 66 as liminal space 238 judicial 64, 66 of the house 176, 191-212, 220, 232, 234-238 of the town 25-26, 49, 51-57, 63-67, 73, 76, 80, 141, 239, 241 perambulated 63 see also gates, doors, windows, fences Brahe, Per, Governor General of Finland 37, 40, 54, 68-69, 141, 239 breweries 230 Brunner, Otto 162 buildings 24-25, 116, 151-161, 162-163, 165-166, 168-169, 176, 178, 184, 191-192, 194, 204, 217 and orientation along the streets 156, 192, 200

264 Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden around a yard 156-161, 192 construction of 167, 201-203 masonry 153 material environment of 149, 151 pictures of 151 plans of 151, 153 size of 158 stone 152, 154 two-storeyed 152, 156 wooden 153, 155, 166 see also houses burghers, duties of 35-36, 54-55, 84, 97-98, 104, 234 burgomasters 11, 34-35, 40, 44, 71, 74, 81, 96, 119, 138, 200n39, 211, 234-235 houses of 235 royal 34-35 calling out 236 and violent invasion of a home 208-210, 212 and women 210, 237-238 Carl X Gustav, King of Sweden 92 cash 68, 168, 174, 187, 205 Castle County 135 Catechism, the Lutheran 164 Cathedral Chapter 41, 96 Cathedral, the Turku 19, 39-41, 219 as responsibility of the town 41 cavalrymen 109, 111, 169, 199 cellars 153, 156 as taverns 83 vaulted 154 census rolls 76, 165, 170, 176, 178-183, 243 arranged according to patriarchal hierarchy 172-173, 181 clusters of names in 171, 182-183 inconsistencies in 176-177, 182 problems with listing women in 170 ‘somebody’s daughters’ in 171-172 workers in 180 Charles IX, king of Sweden 42, 123, 134 Charles, duke of Södermanland 32 chests 81, 155, 158-160, 187, 195, 222 children 78-79, 101-102, 106, 112, 116-117, 122-123, 134, 136, 139, 164, 166, 170, 176, 180, 182, 184, 187, 196-197, 206, 212, 214, 222 chimneys 36, 151-152, 159, 202, 234 Christina, queen of Sweden 43, 125-126, 133-134, 141 Church punishment 118, 136 Church Quarter 39, 171 Church, the 31, 33, 39, 41, 64, 93, 116, 158n33, 173, 225 churches 13, 63, 74, 82, 204, 220, 226 building for the Finnish-speaking townspeople 41 services in 195 clergy 41, 71, 73, 75-76, 79, 94, 100, 116, 135, 164, 167, 178, 224-225

clerks 20, 35, 44, 111, 130, 170, 172, 193, 243 army 196, 208, 237 toll 52, 55-56, 58-62, 109, 161 climate 62 clothes 60, 75, 184, 186, 198 Code of the Realm, 1734 42 Cohen, Elisabeth 197, 199-200, 210, 214 Cohen, Thomas V. 197, 200 Common Good 13, 87, 99-101 communities 14-19, 21, 26, 43, 49-50, 73, 80-81, 90, 124, 127-130, 136-137, 149, 163-164, 174-175, 177, 191, 194, 200, 203, 215, 220, 222-223, 225, 239-240, 242-244 and honour 101, 115 and the Common Good 87, 96, 99-101, 121, 225 being reconciled to 118, 131-132, 141 dishonouring 137 having a place in 107-108, 113, 116-119, 122, 130, 142, 145 members of urban 78, 105-106, 108, 113, 128-129, 178, 181 perceived threats to 87, 144-145 ‘community of dwelling’ 161, 242-243 and lodgers 184 and servants 189 and tenancy 175-176, 244 compared to ‘household’ 243 protected by doors and gates 194 yard-based 161 conscription 79, 87, 91-92, 94-95, 110-111, 234 Consistory, Cathedral 79, 223, 225-226 Consistory, University 196, 200n39 Convent Quarter 39 corporation, urban 25, 63, 132, 239-240 Council of the Realm 43 country estates 74-75, 93, 140 countryside 38, 42, 49, 53, 73-75, 77-79, 83, 87, 90-91, 93-94, 99, 106, 117, 135, 142, 145, 151, 170, 173, 176, 196, 206, 210, 228-229 demarcated from the town 76 markets in 67-68 mobility to and from 69-70, 73-76, 78-79, 82-83, 218, 224 trading in 69-70, 103 court sources 10, 15-21, 36n17, 61, 74, 109, 151, 153, 157, 163, 177 court system, the 41 Courts of Appeal 11, 44-45, 110, 116-117, 121, 125-132, 135, 166, 210 Göta 43, 124, 127, 133 Turku 40, 43, 130, 139, 241 Cowan, Alexander 196-197, 200 cows 63, 70, 76, 151, 154 Coy, Jason 115, 137-138, 143, 224 crafts 34-36, 38, 91, 99 craftsmen 38, 63, 80, 82-84, 91, 94, 101, 173, 179, 219

265

Index

crime 41-45, 87, 89, 104-105, 115, 118, 121-125, 127, 132-135, 137, 142, 204, 207-208, 211-212, 214, 218-220, 242 criminals 18, 121, 129-130, 133, 140; see also thieves customs warehouse 83 Dahlberg, Erik, Quartermaster General of the National Fortification Administration 37 darkness 61-62 darts 230 das ganze Haus 162-163; see also household das offene Haus see ‘open house’ daughters 72, 74, 102, 127, 135-136, 161, 168, 171-173, 178, 182-183, 189, 217, 221, 232, 237 daughters-in-law 205, 207 Day of Prayer 60 daytime 51, 192, 194-195, 200-201, 212, 232-233 De Munck, Bert 106 death penalty 43, 45, 54, 125-127, 130, 133-134, 142 debts 67-72, 122, 139, 167, 180, 233-234 deference 13, 242 Denmark 92, 156 Descartes 22 desertertion and marriage 113, 223 from service 77, 185-186 from the army or navy 103, 112, 136 detention order 69-73 disorder 13-15, 18, 26, 60, 88, 92, 102, 109, 225, 230, 239-244 district courts 42, 135, 142 doors 14, 17, 19, 27, 61n38, 106, 149, 175, 212, 218, 234-235, 237 and protecting property and people 191, 195, 197 at night 175, 189, 193-194, 217, 227 at the gable ends of houses 192 closed for privacy 196, 216-218 during daytime 195, 201 facing the street 197 importance of as boundaries 201, 206, 208, 210, 242 located inside the yard 192 locking of 191, 193-194, 196-197, 217-218, 232 open 242 shop 192 doorways 191-192, 197, 206 Dorsch, Sebastian 21 dreng see hired hands, servants, workers drinking 84, 109-110, 131, 137, 155, 192, 198, 208, 212-213 217, 219, 221, 227-228, 230-231, 233 and violence 144, 161, 189, 192, 210, 227, 236-237 and women 196, 222, 227-228 duels, popular 209, 236 dwelling 16-17, 22, 24, 66, 99, 129, 149, 151-189 arrangement of 151, 156, 160-173

imprecise reference to 161 in kitchen buildings 184, 189, 221 in saunas 160, 180, 184, 188-189, 212 in shops 180, 188, 219 see also homes Eibach, Joachim 149-150, 163, 191, 219 eighteenth century, the 43, 102, 109, 114, 124, 151-153, 192, 215, 217 England 69n55, 89, 113, 122, 172, 174, 180, 185-186, 191, 200, 215 Eric XIV, king of Sweden 42, 123, 134 evening 60, 84, 155, 161, 175, 185, 198, 217, 232 bell 221 eviction 105, 185, 196, 243 exclusion 26, 79-119, 120-145, 240 exports 143-144, 235 expulsion see banishment family 23, 41, 74-76, 100, 128, 137, 149, 155, 162, 167-168, 170-171, 173, 178, 184, 191, 194, 196, 203, 207, 210-211, 214, 226, 229, 232, 243-244 and household 163, 164 as a small-scale model of the society 225 critique of the use of the concept 163, 217, 219-221 in prescriptive literature 164-165 ‘incomplete’ 182 patriarchal 172, 181 farms 39, 63, 66, 74-76, 79, 91, 156, 241; see also country estates fathers 78-79, 111, 127, 154, 162, 168, 170, 172-173, 200, 202, 207, 213 fathers-in-law 235 fear of fire 116 of the dark 62, 92 over vagrancy 87, 92, 94, 241 fences 17, 25, 149, 161, 197n27, 198-199, 203-204, 206, 210, 220 closing the yards 157 separating properties 160-161 see also toll fence fights 19, 110, 189, 201, 205, 209-210, 212-213, 231-234, 236 communal nature of 199, 201, 207, 236-237 financial contracts 44, 70, 234 fines 43, 46, 60, 70, 73, 76, 102, 104-105, 117, 118n139, 121-129, 131, 134-138, 167, 187-188, 194, 206, 219, 222, 234 as a severe punishment 132, 136, 205 Finland 18, 39-40, 74, 79, 112, 133, 142 as Österland 31 as part of Sweden 31-33, 35 Finns, the 15, 32, 36, 40-41, 92, 104, 161, 193, 199, 232 fire 37, 40, 76, 81, 96, 112, 116, 152, 166, 226 of 1656 37, 76, 166 of 1681 152

266 Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden fishing 58, 75 Flather, Amanda 20, 149, 185-186, 191 foreign 36, 49, 80-81, 83-85, 91, 100, 230; see also strangers forestalling 67-68 Fouquet, Gerhard 173, 191 France 123, Frankfurt 105, 122 furnishings 154, 230 beds 59, 81, 84, 155-156, 180, 188, 201, 208, 210, 214, 221 benches 19, 60, 155, 189, 221, 230 cupboards 155 chairs 155 chests 155, 195 tables 155, 224, 228, 234 gambling 217, 221 gård, definition of 11, 159 gates and claiming territory 198-199, 210 and honour 210, 211 and symbolic meaning 195, 210-212 at night 201 avoidance of toll 56-57 banging at the 193, 205, 208 closing of 61-62, 193-194 control over one’s own 203-204 into the street 160 meaning of as a boundary 194, 206 of a house 157, 193 open 194-195, 212 personal in the toll fence 54 porched 157 protecting people 194 racket at the 200, 210-211 stopping at 56-62, 81 toll 55-62, 68, 161 Germany 45, 97n51, 100, 113, 122, 173, 186, 220, 224 goods 51-52, 55, 58-59, 68, 70, 81, 83, 100 stolen 125, 129n32, 132, 137, 139, 144, 170 gossip 224 Governor 11, 40, 98-99, 101, 106 Governor General 32, 37, 40, 54, 68-69, 99, 141, 239 Gowing, Laura 197 grain 52, 58-59, 83 Grand Duchy of Finland, the 18, 32, 39 grassatim see racket-making Guild Ordinance 38 guilds 18, 82, 103, 179, 181n123, 219 in Turku 38-39 system of 37-39 Gulf of Bothnia 32, 69 Gustavus I, king of Sweden 31, 33, 63, 90-91, 167 Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden 31-33, 37, 52, 133 Gute Policey 13, 100

hallways 153, 175, 235, 237 attacking through 205, 208 harmony 13, 101, 220, 243 hearth 116, 159, 163 Hedlund, Ruth 178, 182 Helsinki 45, 79 hierarchy 13, 26, 36, 72, 165, 242 of the family 172 hired hands 11, 52, 63, 89, 92, 94, 100, 114, 180, 194, 205 and workshops 189 dwelling places of 188 homes and family 149, 155, 162, 164, 184, 191, 194, 207, 210, 214-221, 229, 232, 244 as an area limited by fences and gates 204 as official places 235 as protected 204-220 as spatial entities 14, 17, 25-26, 149-150 as urban space 16-18, 22-23, 69, 217 freestanding house as 162 officials in 234-235 openness of 149, 212, 221-226, 242-243 rooms as 162, 206, 213, 219 see also dwelling, violent invasion of a home, house, boundaries honour 36, 101, 122, 137, 139, 143-144, 198-199, 211, 213-214, 236, 238, 240 female 197, 210, 222 male 209-210 Horn, Gustav, a Governor 99, 111 horses 61-63, 154 hospitals 93-94, 180 ‘house scorning’ 214 house, the concept of 149-150 household 13, 25, 91, 110, 159, 170, 179, 182, 194 and ‘das ganze Haus’ 163 and early modern ideals 164-165, 172-174, 244 critique of use of the concept 162-163, 168, 175, 177, 181, 184, 242-244 definition of the concept 162 in the context of space 162-164 man’s authority in 164 household manuals 164 householder 104-105, 149, 151, 161-173 burghers as 65 seamen as 109, 179, 182-183 women as 168-173 houses of ill repute 218 houses 11, 23, 81, 150, 153, 158-159, 161-173, 181n125 amount of rooms in 153, 159, 174, 215 boundaries of 176, 191-212, 220, 232, 234-238 burghers’ 56, 60, 68-69, 71, 83-84, 140, 154-155, 165, 178-179, 186 evicting from 105, 167 façade of 197, 199-201, 214 layout of in the plots 151, 156, 158

267

Index

moving in and out of 192-193, 197-198, 200, 206, 209-210, 213, 218, 223, 226, 231, 233, 235-237 multifunctional 218-219, 229, 243 names of 165 ownership and occupation of 109, 161, 174-175, 178, 182-185, 187-189, 194, 196 sale and inheritance of 140 storeys in 152-156, 166, 174 value of 136, 154 see also homes, buildings, ‘open house’ humanists 51, 88 hunger 145 hus 163, 186, 199, 204 definition of 159 huskvinna see lodger husman see lodgers hustru see wives idleness 87-88, 227 ill, the see sick illegitimate children 102, 123, 212 court cases over 78, 115-116, 187 tolerance towards mothers of 79, 117, 136-137 immorality 87, 95, 99-102, 104, 106, 132, 136, 224, 239 Impola, Petteri 45 imports 58 imprisonment see jail inclusion 26, 105-107, 119, 132, 240 industries 34, 36 infanticide 45, 78, 115, 184 Ingria 135 inheritance 42, 154, 166, 168 inhyses see lodger inn-keeper 84, 229-230 burghers designated as 84-85 inns 81, 84, 193, 196 inspections 45, 111 of tobacco 234 of trades 97-98 of vagrants 97-98, 102-103, 105, 140 inventories of estate 154-155 of movables 140, 154 itinerants 78, 91, 93, 95, 108, 142; see also vagrants, mobility jail 102, 103, 117-118, 126, 128, 131, 136 Jansson, Karin Hassan 208-210 John III, King of Sweden 32, 93 journeymen 78n78, 82, 100, 103, 107, 145, 163, 175, 180, 192, 219, 232 judicial district 42, 51, 64, 66, 135, 142 judicial practice 40-41, 125-126, 165, 241 judicial system 41-46 lack of trained lawyers in 45 women’s participation in 46

Kaarina 63, 74, 142 Kakskerta 74-75 Kalmar 38, 52 kämner see town magistrate kämnerrätt see Lower Town Court Karlstad 105-106 Karonen, Petri 123 keys 85, 140, 195n15, 196 Kings Oath, the 42, 204-205, 219 kitchen buildings 154-155, 184, 189, 221, 223 kitchen gardens 63, 151 knives 197 kona 118 and place in the town 116-118 and sexual offences 115-116 and theft 108, 115 use of the term 114-116 Kotkas, Toomas 42, 91 Kümin, Beat 22-23 labour force 78 contracts 77-78, 177 mobile 17n15, 49, 77, 90 supply and demand for 79-80, 91-92, 99, 145 Lamberg, Marko 77, 114, 123, 140, 142, 186 land tax 168-169 landladies 102, 104, 158-159, 175, 184 widows as 101, 167, 174, 182 landlords 102, 104-105, 143, 174-175, 184, 192-193, 213 Lappalainen, Mirkka 79 Laslett, Peter 163 latches 189, 191, 193 Latham, Alan 24 laundresses 179 Laurentius Petri, archbishop of Sweden 33 lavatories 167, 220 law criminal 42, 126 letter of the 43, 125, 130, 206 Mosaic 43, 124, 134 running from 79 Law Commission, the 43, 130 Law of the Realm, Christopher of Bavaria’s 11, 41-43, 77, 89, 91, 133, 135, 204-206, 219 Law of the Realm, King Magnus Eriksson’s 41 laziness 87, 93-94 Lefebvre, Henri 21-22, 24 leniency 43, 102, 107, 124-126, 129-130, 241 letters of proof see passes Levi, Giovanni 163 libellous poems 75, 132, 137-139, 141 Lieto 75, 79 lieutenant 66, 81, 233, 236 Liliequist, Jonas 164, 209 Lilja, Sven 33 Lilliehöök, Knut, a Governor 98-99 Lindström, Dag 72, 105, 117, 162 Linköping 101

268 Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden Lisbon 174 livelihood 79, 82, 96, 98, 103, 113, 228, 240 Livonia 79 local practices 59, 69, 89, 239, 241, 243-244 locking of chests, bureaus and cupboards 155, 195 of doors 191, 193-197, 232 of gates 192-195, 232 locks 191, 195 lodgers 11, 27, 78, 97, 102, 114, 159-161, 169, 171, 176-185, 187, 189, 198, 205, 207, 222, 224-225, 235, 243-244 and sharing space with others 182-184 and work 179, 184 confusion in the use of the term of 170-172, 176 daughters and sisters as 178 in seamen’s houses 109 master artisans as 179, 181n123 occupations of 179-180 old and destitute as 180-181 seamen as 179 soldiers’ wives as 170 widows taking in 183 lodging illegal 16 of foreign merchants 83 of loose people 96-97, 102 of peasants in burghers’ houses 67-68 Lohja 133 Loimijoki 76 London 191, 197, 202, 224 loose people see vagrants, placeless people Lower Town Court 11, 35, 44, 60, 71, 101-103, 107, 110, 134, 223 Lübeck 69, 83 Lutheranism 33 Maddern, Philippa 163, 185 maids 56, 63, 75, 78, 81, 94, 109, 114-116, 119, 128, 130-132, 140, 145, 170, 179n115, 180, 182-183, 185-188, 196, 207, 221, 227-228 and the main rooms 189 as witnesses 189, 223-224, 226 aversion toward 186 dependency on burghers 187 dwelling places of 189 sleeping on benches 189 maintenance of communal space 36, 41, 54-55, 57, 96 malice 205, 207, 213, 235 malt saunas 151, 160, 184 manslaughter 42, 207, 237 market days 55, 57-58, 67, 69 market places 17-19, 39, 53, 67-69, 216 marriage 42, 133-134, 136, 164, 212, 223, 225-226 and conciliation 226 Mätäjärvi Quarter 39, 183

material environment 14-15, 17, 19, 21, 24-25, 57, 65, 149, 152, 233, 241 material space 14, 16-17, 24-25, 90, 93, 109, 214, 243-244 materiality 21-26 McCormack, Derek P. 24 mercantilist economy 34, 38, 91 merchants 36, 40, 59, 67, 69-73, 101, 108, 131, 152, 154-156, 173, 188, 198, 200, 207, 222 agents of in other towns 70 and peasants 68-70 collecting debts in the countryside 69 foreign 80, 82-85 mobility of 69 Middle Ages, the 31, 33, 39, 67, 88-89, 151n1, 156, 159, 185 Miettinen, Tiina 79, 117, 163, 170 migration 17n15, 49, 77, 80, 88 mills 59 mine workers 91, 95 mobility 16, 25, 49-86, 99, 106, 119, 149, 185, 187-188, 231, 239-240 restriction of 49, 89, 97, 185, 241 moral order 14, 92-93, 96, 100 morning 61, 74, 184, 193, 195, 201, 228 Mosaic law 43, 124, 134 mothers 115, 117, 128, 136, 139-140, 168, 182, 200, 207, 213, 235-236, 238 ‘my house’ 92, 199, 214, 244 Mynämäki 112, 142 Naantali 74, 112 Nagu 112 naval court 110 navy 92, 108, 110-112 negative characteristics, accumulation of 95, 115 neighbours 101-102, 149, 160, 166-167, 170, 191, 195, 202-203, 220, 224-227, 229, 231 New England 123 New Materialism 24n36 New Sweden, American Colony of 127 Newton, Isaac 22 night 51, 60-62, 102, 106, 159, 161, 189, 192-197, 200-201, 211-212, 217-218, 220, 223, 226, 229, 236, 238, 242 and women 228 concern over behaviour at 227 night bells 14, 227, 232 night watch 36, 61, 171, 201, 231, 235 nightlife 13, 16, 102, 157, 174-175, 193, 197-199, 201, 221, 226-228, 231-232, 242 noise 198, 201 Nordic Law 123 Norrbotten 71 Notary (syndicus) 35, 201 Nygård, Toivo 77, 92, 176

Index

officials, public 40, 43, 45, 92, 115, 170, 172, 174, 239 and slander 138-139, 211-212 officials, town 35-36, 56, 66, 70-71, 81, 141, 240 in homes 234-235 ‘open house’ 149-150, 226 order, definition of 13-15 order/disorder dyads 242 ordinances, royal 19, 21, 33-35, 38-39, 42-44, 49, 51-53, 59-60, 67-68, 83-84, 90-91, 93-97, 99-100, 104-105, 111, 123-126, 131, 133-134, 177, 179, 186, 229-230 Orlin, Lena Cowen 175, 191, 202, 215, 224 Östgötland 133 Outbuildings 155-156, 158, 184, 188, 191, 206 outsiders 80-82, 108, 113, 127-129, 131, 143, 191, 212, 223, 234, 240 oxen 55-56 Oxenstierna, Axel, Lord High Chancellor 33, 35, 37, 93 Pargas (Parainen) 74 parish priests see clergy parishes 41, 63, 67, 69, 74-76, 79-80, 93-94, 112, 115, 142, 178 passes 81, 83, 89-90, 94, 104n78 and questions in court 103, 111-112 patriarchy 26, 149, 162, 164, 168, 172, 174-175, 226, 242-244 pawn-taking 116-117, 136, 180n118, 198, 228 peace legislation 204, 219-220 the peace of the house and the home (hus och hem frid) 204-205, 217-219 peasants 49, 52, 55-56, 58, 63, 66-67, 69-71, 79, 84-85, 92, 100, 229 and debt to merchants 68 town land rented to 76 Penal Order of 1653 43, 125-126, 131, 133 people, as corporeal beings 14, 16n14, 23-24 personal space 199-200, 203, 244 physical integrity 210, 214 picking berries 57 pigs 63, 151, 154 Pihlajamäki, Heikki 95 pillory 44, 114, 121, 130, 143 place as experiental 22 as good 22 as part of perception 23 coming before space 23 definitions of 22-24 people in their own 13-14 phenomenological perspective on 23 town and home as 17-18, 23 placeless people 96, 100, 106, 108, 172, 178-180; see also vagrants plots 18, 151, 154, 156, 158n33, 160, 166, 168-169, 192-193, 203-204, 206, 242 size of 157-158

269 plural simultaneities 25 point, definition of 23-24 Poland 92, 131 poll tax 68, 171n85, 176 Poor Laws 88-89, 93-95 poor relief 13, 93, 96, 106, 177 and charity 87, 93, 95, 106 and hospitals and deserving poor 88, 94, 101, 180 and poorhouses 36, 93-94, 180-181 poor, the as a problem 49, 89, 94, 100 changes in attitudes toward 87-88 complaints about 89, 96 in the Middle Ages 88 in their own home location 94, 180 prayer books 201 pregnancies and violence 209-210, 214 unwanted 20, 78-79, 106, 113, 186, 188, 196 President of the Court of Appeal 211 prison see jail privacy 17, 191, 215, 219, 221, 225-226 doors 196 secrets 196, 215-216 private, the term 17, 215-217 priveleges of guilds 37 of towns 34-35, 44, 80, 91, 124 Privy Council 40, 93 procrastination 72-73, 117 Production of Space, the 21 professors 70, 72-73, 100 properties 11, 151n1, 154-156, 158-161, 173, 185, 193, 194, 203-204, 206, 243 arrangement of 42 as rented out 166 ownership of 52, 64, 72-74, 166, 169, 243 subdivision of 166, 168 property 89, 90, 121, 125-126, 205, 216 inventories of 154, 168 protection of 191, 195-197 prostitution 114, 218 public and private, dichotomy of 17, 216-217, 220, 235 Public Prosecutor 35 public, the term 17, 215-218, 220, 235 punishments 43-44, 54, 77, 102, 105, 110, 117-118, 121, 123, 125, 128, 131, 141, 211 corporal 46, 94, 123-125, 132, 134, 137 cutting of an ear 121 forced labour 124n15-126, 131 gauntlet 110, 125, 131 pillory 44, 121, 130, 143 reimbursement of stolen property 125-126 whipping 117, 125-126, 131-132, 135-136, 143 see also banishment, death penalty pyrte, definition of 159-160

270  Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden racket-making 175, 198-201, 210, 212, 236, 242 rådstugurätt see Town Court recruitment see conscription Reformation, the 33, 41-42, 102, 123, 126, 158n33 refuge 139, 194 refugees 82 relatives 75, 79, 85, 106, 128, 140-141, 173 rent, paying of 84, 106, 118, 158, 166-167, 178, 213 Riga 79 River (Aura) 39-40, 52, 56-57, 65, 154, 189, 216 roads 14, 74, 90, 94, 189 common 60, 62, 216 to town 51-53, 56-58, 62, 65 robbery 42, 89, 144, 191, 204, 235 Rome 199, 210 roofs, building 167, 202 room, the main 153, 155, 174, 168, 175, 184, 189, 196, 202, 222, 243 as homes 162, 206, 213, 219 downstairs 156 multiple 153, 215 renting/rented 108-109, 113, 156, 167, 173-174, 191, 204, 213, 228-229, 233 rooms 14, 25, 84-85, 116, 154-155, 159, 168, 175, 196, 206, 218, 221-222, 230, 234, 242-244 sharing 184 upstairs 156 routine see spatial rules, spatial practices royal pardon 141 Rule of 1619 35, 93, 97, 100, 167 Russia 32 Russians, the 84, 199, 226-227 Sääksmäki 112 Sabean, David Warren 19, 162 Sack, Robert David 16 sailors see seamen salt 68, 71-72, 202 Sandén, Annika 101 saunas 82, 151, 154, 160, 220 as dwellings 105, 180, 184, 188-189, 212 seamen 18, 179, 182-183 and vagrancy 110-112 as members of urban community 108-109, 113, 145 as mobile 119 as reserve hands for navy 108 burghers’ 108-109 Crown 108-109 in the margins of respectable community 103, 107-108, 112 in trouble 109-110, 130-131, 161, 175, 194, 205, 210-211 servants 11, 18, 58-60, 79, 91, 100, 107, 110-111, 114, 163-164, 175-176, 184-189, 197, 208, 211, 214, 217, 229, 233, 239 and census rolls 180-181 as members of community 131 as thieves 131-132, 142

as witnessess 223-225 church 63 illegal mobility of 79, 95 in fornication cases 222 mobility of 77, 79-80, 119, 178, 188, 240, 243 not treated well 186 runaway 185-186 toll 52, 55-56, 61 town 36 see also maids, hired hands, workers service contracts 77-78, 80, 91, 94-95, 104, 114, 177-178, 180, 185-186, 188 compulsory 89-90, 92, 172, 187 setledness 16, 25, 49, 116 settlement, urban 65-66 sexual offences adultery 19, 42, 45, 75, 123-124, 133-134, 136, 144, 184, 188-189, 194, 221-222, 224-225 banishment for 135-136, 144 death penalty for 107, 133 fines for 103, 134, 136 fornication 43-44, 115, 117, 132-134, 188-189, 222 in the Göta Court of Appeal 124, 133 public punishment and 136, 143 rape 42, 45, 204, 225n112 sex between unmarried persons 107, 122, 133, 136, 186 tried in lower courts 103, 107, 134 violation of a virgin 124, 133-134 sheets 131, 205 Sheriff 11, 91, 161, 232 ships 52, 66, 79, 83-84, 99, 108, 113 shops 19, 68, 83-84, 155, 192, 207, 226-227 and dwelling 180, 188, 219 shutters 154, 198 sick, the 51, 76, 94-95, 112, 180, 210 Skara 92 slander 105, 124, 138-139, 205, 207, 210-213, 223, 227 sleeping places 81, 174, 188-189, 193-194, 220 as shared space 155, 208, 221-222, 228, 234 sleigh 52, 153 Småland 133 smuggling 57-59 sociability 39, 149, 160 and courtesy 234 and houses and streets 231-232, 236 as gendered practice 228 at dwellings 231 daytime 232-233 in domestic space 229, 232, 243 in taverns 230 male 227-232, 242 nocturnal 227-228, 231 social order 14, 80, 92 Söderköping 142 soldiers 32, 71, 91-92, 94, 100, 107, 109, 129, 199, 241; see also seamen, cavalrymen

Index

solitary women 77, 79-80, 110, 114, 223; see also unattached women space, the term 21-24 Spain 123 spatial practices 15-18, 21-22, 149, 238, 240 spatial rules 15-18, 21, 149, 191, 239, 242-243 spatiality 21-26, 162, 192 Spierenburg, Peter 209, 236 squares see market place St. Catherine’s church 63 stables 154, 166 stadstienare see Town Constable Ståhlberg, K.J. 89, 95 stairs 153, 175, 227 status 66, 78, 100, 103, 115-116, 118n139, 119, 170, 172, 175, 178-180, 187, 204, 207-208, 211, 213, 240 Stockholm 34, 37-39, 43, 45, 51, 92-93, 103, 109-110, 112, 114, 123, 130, 140, 142, 186 and ordinances 35, 89, 198 leaving for 69, 79, 139 population of 89 stockyard 166 stonewalling see procrastination storehouses 154, 168, 195 stoves 175 taxed 66 tiled 152 strangers 80-85, 90, 96n49, 97, 100, 106, 108, 118, 129, 234 welcoming 80, 82-83, 105 streets 18-19, 36-37, 39, 81, 106, 151, 154-156, 166, 177, 179, 195, 197-198, 200, 203, 216, 219, 230 and sociability 199, 201, 221, 227-228, 231 and young men 193, 198-201, 232 at night 157, 192-193, 198 drunkenness in the 102, 192, 210 fighting in the 142, 199, 210, 236 getting people off the 89, 96, 98, 180, 189, 192 moving in and out of the 160, 168-169, 192, 194, 201, 207, 212, 231, 235, 237 paved 152-153, 198 seeing and hearing events in the 200-201 the common 216, 242 strikes 92, 98 stuga, definition of 159 summer 52, 58, 61-62, 73, 105 Swedish Crown, the 18, 33-34, 37-38, 55, 63, 66-69, 85, 91, 100, 109, 158n33, 216, 229, 233-234, 239 and its subjects 52, 90, 93, 219 swords 188, 198, 208, 210, 219, 223, 235-236 Table of Duties 164 Tagesson, Göran 162 tailors 37, 39, 82, 103, 108, 171, 179, 182, 210 Tallinn 69, 79, 82 Tavast Toll 58

271 Tavastland (Häme) 129, 142 taverns 16, 74, 117, 198, 216, 228-231, 233n140 and disorder 207, 212, 230, 236 and sanctity of home 217, 219, 230 as dwelling space 219, 228-229 buying alcohol to take out from 227, 231 closing time of 61n38, 230 licensed 228-230 women in 227-228 taxes 43, 91, 96, 176 collecting of 19, 36, 197, 234 excise 19, 51-52, 66, 68, 230, 233 see also Town Toll Ordinance tenancy 27, 173-176 and householding 175-176 theft 19, 42-43, 45, 57, 75, 81, 89, 103-104, 107-108, 110, 121, 123-132, 137, 142, 187-189, 200 and immorality 109, 114-116, 118 and locks 195 and the community 132, 136 receiving stolen goods 129n32, 132, 137, 139, 144, 170 thieves 108, 114, 125-132, 157, 188, 191, 197, 240 and tools of trade 195 habitual 142 thresholds 191, 197 Thunander, Rudolf 43, 124, 127 Tlusty, Ann B. 209, 236 tobacco 233-234 toll boundary 51-67, 241; see also toll fence, toll trench, Town Toll Ordinance, maintenance of communal space toll fee see excise tax toll fence 51-57, 62-67, 92, 239, 241 toll gates see gates toll inspector 52, 56-57, 60, 234 disagreements with 58-60 toll trench 53-55, 57-58 town and settledness 16, 25, 49 as spatial entity 14, 25, 49-50 entering and exiting 17, 49 Town Constable 11, 70, 117, 136, 143, 167, 208 town councils 11, 19, 34-36, 38, 40, 44, 70-73, 76, 82-85, 97-99, 101-102, 105-106, 110-111, 117, 131, 138, 140, 143, 151-152, 166-168, 180-181, 187-188, 216, 240, 243 admonishments by 54, 66, 230 announcements by 54, 57, 84, 96, 109 collegial bodies of 34 Town Court 11, 19, 42-45, 54, 60, 71, 73-74, 79-80, 83, 101, 107, 110-111, 113, 115, 121, 124-126, 129, 130-132, 134-136, 139, 154, 159, 165, 167-169, 181, 189, 194, 204, 216, 221, 223, 225-227, 241 town elders 34-35 Town Hall 11, 39, 96, 118, 136, 159, 181, 235 keeping a key at 140 reporting one’s arrival at 83, 96

272  Order, Materialit y, and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden Town Law, King Magnus Eriksson’s 11, 35, 41-43, 77, 84, 89-90, 123-125, 133-136, 167, 177, 204-206, 209 town magistrate 44, 93, 181 Town Toll Ordinance 39, 51-53, 59, 61n38, 67-68 town walls medieval 39, 51-53, 62, 156 towns and Commmon Good 100-101 and the surrounding villages 63, 141 as spatial entities 57, 60, 66-67, 73, 77, 124, 137 being settled in 78-80, 95, 107-120, 188, 240 burghers leaving the 69-73 centre of 67-69 entering and exiting 50, 56, 241 founding of 34 of the realm 15, 34, 37 organization of a staple system in 36 reform of 34-35, 37 returning to 71, 73, 121, 139-143 ties to 103, 109, 122, 129-130, 240 see also boundaries Trade Ordinance (1617) 83, 230 traders see merchants trades 33, 38-39, 87, 230, 241 inspections of 97-98 trading rules, transgression of 19, 67-69, 83-84, 103 Treasurer 35 Turku Castle 19, 40, 52, 65-66, 103, 135 Turku earliest description of 152 map of 53, 64-65 population of 34, 39, 41, 179 quarters of 39 twilight 61 Ulm 97n52, 137-138, 143-144, 224 unattached people 79, 90, 92, 95, 104, 106, 108-109; see also vagrants unattached women 78 , 170-171, 187 university students 18, 32, 64, 73-75, 78, 100, 116, 135-136, 140, 157, 161, 174-175, 185, 192-193, 196, 198-199, 200n39, 201, 203, 212-213, 217, 221, 232 University, the Turku 15, 32, 40-41, 64, 100, 135, 140, 173, 198 unmarried men, invisibility of 78n86, 180 unmarried women 107, 113, 170-172, 182-183, 188 in census rolls 171-173 policing 114, 186 unrest 52, 80, 92, 122, 241 unwanted, the 25-26, 49, 51, 96-97, 104, 115, 117-118, 121, 127, 130, 144, 239, 241 Uppsala 33, 38, 142, 154, 156 urban development 33, 37 urban economy 33, 36, 51, 63, 99-100, 113, 144 Usborne, Cornelie 22-23

vagabonds see vagrant, itinerants, mobility vagrants 16, 18, 36, 87-119, 165, 187n150, 239 and banishment 87, 97, 122, 144 and immorality 99-101 and military service 76, 91-93 and placelessness 121, 132, 140, 177 as a state and provincial problem 98-99 as illegal guests and lodgers 96-98, 102-106 considered harmful 89, 93-94, 99, 101-102 in court 103-104, 143 inclusion of 132, 240 inspections of 36, 97-98, 101-105, 140 mobility of 241 residing in town 160, 177, 207 Västerås 178, 182 Västrä Götland (West Götland) 90 Venice 196-197 Vilkuna, Kustaa H. 228 village 33, 57, 63, 70, 141 of Halinen 141 shack 63 vinterlingare (overwinterer) 83 violation of a virgin 124, 133-134 violence 61, 92, 123, 144, 158, 198, 205-208, 212, 214, 219, 228, 235 and honour 209, 236 avoiding against women 209 causing bodily harm 56, 160 domestic 144, 225-226, 242 in defence 205 interpersonal 13l, 208-209, 236 ritualized 208-209, 237-238 violent invasion of a home (heemgång) 42, 105, 160, 194-195, 204-214, 219-220, 237, 244 and social class 207-208, 213 honour and 209-211, 213-214 litigation around 213-214 ritual aspects of 208-212 virtue 101, 114, 197, 222-223, 240, 242 visitors to homes 161, 194-195, 212-213, 227, 231, 234-235 to town 26, 49, 51, 57-58, 68-69, 80, 83-85, 97, 100, 174 vulnerable, being 185, 210, 214, 220 Vyborg 51, 103 walls 17, 160, 172, 184, 192, 197-199, 202, 220 scraping the 201 separating people 161, 176, 244 wandering see vagrants, mobility, itinerants weather 56, 83, 228, 241 slippery conditions 56 weddings 74-75, 220, 232 wet nurses 179 widows 18, 70-72, 77, 101, 114, 131, 145, 178, 180, 182-183, 187, 195, 202-203, 224, 234, 239 as landladies 101, 167, 174, 182

Index

as owner-occupiers of houses 166-171, 183, 203, 217-218, 222 of burghers 129, 181 of soldiers 113 selling beer 101-102, 228-229 windows 17, 19, 27, 151-154, 191, 197-203, 210, 212 as entrance or exit 218, 226 as permeable boundaries 149 broken 223, 233, 237 importance of as boundaries 199, 202-203, 244 panes 198, 237 peering through 200 seeing and hearing events through 71, 218 shutters 154, 198 wine 221, 227, 230-231 winter 56, 58, 61n38, 62, 83, 103 Winter, Anne 106 wives 112, 118, 129, 137, 158-159, 164, 168-169, 171, 194, 196, 202, 208, 213, 226, 233, 236-237 abandoned 223 as women governing a household (hustru) 169-170 burghers’ 56, 71, 74-75, 84-85, 139, 201, 209-211, 221, 224 drunken 227 soldiers’ 81, 109, 129, 136, 170, 182-184, 188, 243 women and calling out 210, 237

273 and participation in judicial system 45 and virtue 114, 197, 222 as owner-occupiers of houses 166, 168-173, 183, 203, 217-218, 222 as vulnerable 210, 214, 220 as weaker wessel 164 clusters of in census rolls 171, 182 see also unmarried women, solitary women, unattached women, maids, wives, widows, kona, landladies work 34-36, 77-78, 80, 94, 97, 99, 104, 108, 113-114, 125, 132, 178, 185, 187-189, 196-197, 227-228, 233, 235, 240 attitudes toward 87-89, 93 wage 90, 95, 184 workers 18, 36, 77-80, 87, 90-91, 118, 129, 132, 178, 180, 182-183, 189, 239241; see also servants, hired hands workshops 151, 188-189, 193 yards 11, 69, 157, 166, 169-170, 185, 189, 191, 193, 198-200, 202-203, 206, 210, 212, 233, 236 and fences 157 bringing people together 160-161, 203, 242-243 central 156, 192, 203 gates to 193-195 paved 152 young, the 83, 102, 113, 122, 130-131, 146, 187-189, 198-200, 207, 213, 220-222, 227, 232, 235 as offenders 211, 130, 135-136