Unusual Death and Memorialization: Burial, Space, and Memory in the Post-Medieval North 9781800736030

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Tables
Introduction. In Search of the Unusual in Early Modern and Modern Burial Traditions
Part I. Memorials, Graveyards, Epidemics: Inequality, Disease, and Sudden Death
1. Forgotten and Remembered: Unusual Memorial Practices at Buffalo’s Old Cemeteries
2. Reactions to Tragedy: Familial and Community Memorials to Sudden Occupational Deaths in Britain and Ireland
3. Memory of Epidemic Diseases in Finland: Old Disease Cemeteries and Modern Urban Planning
4. Freethinkers’ Cemeteries and Local Secular Burial Culture in Finland
Part II. Peculiar Burial Places
5. Death during Retreat: The Burials of Carolean Soldiers in Jämtland and Trøndelag (Sweden and Norway)
6. Taken to the Island: Temporary Burials in Early and Late Modern Periods in Finnish Periphery
Part III. Memories and Folklore of Unusual Death
7. “On the Apparitions of Drowned Men”: Folklore and the Memory of Unnatural Death at Haffjarðarey, Western Iceland
8. Death Lives with Us: Witchcraft on the East Coast of Bothnian Bay during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Part IV. Unusual Cause of Death
9. The Cause of Death—Arsenic or Mercury? Investigation of Human Remains from Entombments in the Moscow Kremlin (Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Century)
10. Sawed Skulls: Archaeological Evidence of Medicolegal Autopsies in Finland
Afterword
Index

Citation preview

Unusual Death and Memorialization

Unusual Death and Memorialization Burial, Space, and Memory in the Post-Medieval North

Edited by

Titta Kallio-Seppä, Sanna Lipkin, Tiina Väre, Ulla Moilanen, and Annemari Tranberg

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2022 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2022 Titta Kallio-Seppä, Sanna Lipkin, Tiina Väre, Ulla Moilanen, and Annemari Tranberg All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kallio-Seppä, Titta, editor. | Lipkin, Sanna, editor. | Väre, Tiina, editor. | Moilanen, Ulla, editor. | Tranberg, Annemari, editor. Title: Unusual Death and Memorialization: Burial, Space, and Memory in the Post-Medieval North / edited by Titta Kallio-Seppä, Sanna Lipkin, Tiina Väre, Ulla Moilanen, and Annemari Tranberg. Description: [New York]: Berghahn Books, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022016551 (print) | LCCN 2022016552 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800736023 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800736030 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Funeral rites and ceremonies—Northern Hemisphere. | Burial—Northern Hemisphere. | Death--Causes. Classification: LCC GT3190 .U68 2022 (print) | LCC GT3190 (ebook) | DDC 393/.109181/3—dc23/eng/20220521 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016551 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022016552 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-80073-602-3 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-603-0 ebook https://doi.org/10.3167/9781800736023

Contents

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List of Illustrations Introduction. In Search of the Unusual in Early Modern and Modern Burial Traditions Titta Kallio-Seppä, Sanna Lipkin, Annemari Tranberg, Tiina Väre, and Ulla Moilanen

1

Part I. Memorials, Graveyards, Epidemics: Inequality, Disease, and Sudden Death 1. Forgotten and Remembered: Unusual Memorial Practices at Buffalo’s Old Cemeteries Sanna Lipkin

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2. Reactions to Tragedy: Familial and Community Memorials to Sudden Occupational Deaths in Britain and Ireland Harold Mytum

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3. Memory of Epidemic Diseases in Finland: Old Disease Cemeteries and Modern Urban Planning Titta Kallio-Seppä and Tiina Väre

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4. Freethinkers’ Cemeteries and Local Secular Burial Culture in Finland Ilona Kemppainen

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Part II. Peculiar Burial Places 5. Death during Retreat: The Burials of Carolean Soldiers in Jämtland and Trøndelag (Sweden and Norway) Kristina Jonsson

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6. Taken to the Island: Temporary Burials in Early and Late Modern Periods in Finnish Periphery Tiina Väre and Juha Ruohonen

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Part III. Memories and Folklore of Unusual Death 7. “On the Apparitions of Drowned Men”: Folklore and the Memory of Unnatural Death at Haffjarðarey, Western Iceland Sarah Hoffman 8. Death Lives with Us: Witchcraft on the East Coast of Bothnian Bay during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Annemari Tranberg

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Part IV. Unusual Cause of Death 9. The Cause of Death—Arsenic or Mercury? Investigation of Human Remains from Entombments in the Moscow Kremlin (Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Century) Tatiana Dmitrievna Panova, Andrey Yurievich Dmitriev, Sergey Borisovich Borzakov, and Constantin Hramco 10. Sawed Skulls: Archaeological Evidence of Medicolegal Autopsies in Finland Ulla Moilanen, Anne-Mari Liira, Heli Lehto, Kati Salo, Maija Helamaa, and Kari Uotila

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Afterword Milton Núñez

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Index

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Illustrations

Figures 0.1a.–b. Locations of the research sites and material discussed in the chapters. © The Museum of Tornio Valley, Emma Laitila.

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1.1a.–b. Some of the old cemeteries and their removed deceased are memorialized by memorials erected at the former site of the old cemetery or at the new burial site. A memorial at the site of former High Street Cemetery records the removals to Forest Lawn (a). At Forest Lawn a memorial was erected for the persons removed from the Franklin Square Burial Grounds (b). © Sanna Lipkin.

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1.2. Elmira Brockenborough’s unmarked burial is memorialized by a plaque erected close to the driveway near her original burial site. © Sanna Lipkin.

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1.3a.–b. Above Mary Jemison’s current memorial stands a statue made by H. K. Bush-Brown (a). Red Jacket’s memorial is visibly located close to one of Forest Lawn’s gates (b). © Sanna Lipkin.

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1.4a.–b. Jeanie Wilson (a) and Lizzie Greenwood (b) were memorialized by temple memorials. © Sanna Lipkin.

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1.5a.–b. Occasionally children are memorialized by sculptures depicting them. Tacie Hannah Fargo’s life-sized statue is protected by a glass case (a). Laura and Willie Gardner are depicted in a hug (b). © Sanna Lipkin.

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1.6. The angel in Belle Bingham’s memorial stands on stones. One hand is raised while the other rests on an amphora. At the feet of the angel lies an anchor, a symbol of hope. © Sanna Lipkin.

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1.7. In the memorial of John Sibley Ganson, a dog lies in front of a food bowl. © Sanna Lipkin.

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2.1a.–c. Memorial texts on headstones of victims of occupational accidents. David Griffiths, master mariner, St. Mary’s, Newport, Pembrokeshire (a); Peter Manderson, St. Nicholas Church, Cramlington, County Durham (b); James Meyers, Yeadon Chapel, West Yorkshire (c).

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2.2a.–b. Princess Alice steamer disaster. Princess Alice and the Bywell Castle collide on the river Thames (a). Photo by Creative Commons: Harper’s Weekly, 12 October 1878, XXII(1137): 812–13, based on an Illustrated London News image. Celtic cross in Woolwich Cemetery (b). © Marathon on Geograph.

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2.3a.–b. Inscriptions on the four faces of the Celtic cross base monument to those who died in the Princess Alice disaster 1878 (a). Erected 1880 at Woolwich Cemetery by the graves of the unidentified victims. Inscription on the panel on the Bramhope Memorial, Otley, West Yorkshire (b).

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2.4a.–b. Bramhope Railway. Tunnel North portal (a). © Creative commons, Wikipedia. Memorial to those who died in the construction of the tunnel, Otley, West Yorkshire (b). © Harold Mytum.

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2.5a.–c. New Hartley pit disaster, County Durham, 1862. Families waiting for news, image used in contemporary newspapers (a). © Creative commons: https://commons .wikimedia.org/wiki/File:L percent27Illustration_1862_ gravure_Catastrophe_de_la_mine. Memorial after its dedication (b). © Illustrated London News. Memorial today, Earsdon, County Durham, churchyard (c). © Harold Mytum.

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3.1. The port of the current Vanha Kirkkopuisto (Old Church Park) in Helsinki reminds the visitors of its original use as a cemetery for plague victims, 2019. © Titta Kallio-Seppä.

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3.2. Inscription at the port reads that altogether 1,185 Helsinki residents were buried here during the four months in 1710 when plague raged in the town. © Titta Kallio-Seppä.

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3.3. Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery), a former plague cemetery, in Kokkola, 2019. © Titta Kallio-Seppä.

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4.1. A gravestone made from old kerbstones. Karkkila Freethinkers’ Cemetery. © Ilona Kemppainen.

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Illustrations

4.2. A memorial carved of wood. Kotka Freethinkers’ Cemetery. © Ilona Kemppainen.

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5.1. The Nordic countries with today’s capitals and selected villages/towns mentioned in the text marked. © Kristina Jonsson based on open data from Lantmäteriet (the Swedish mapping, cadastral, and land registration authority). 117 5.2. Soldiers struggling through the snowstorm in the Carolean death-march. © Jämt-trønderska föreningen Armfelts karoliner (JTAK).

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5.3. Sites mentioned in the text: burial sites outside of cemeteries are marked with a cross. © Kristina Jonsson based on open data from Lantmäteriet (the Swedish mapping, cadastral, and land registration authority).

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6.1. Map of Finland, showing locations of sites mentioned in the text. © Juha Ruohonen.

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6.2. Ruumissaari (Corpse Island) of Ranuanjärvi, Ranua, Finnish Lapland was used as a temporary burial site. Ruumissaari is the smaller island on the right. © Tiina Väre. 145 6.3. Kalmosaari, Autiojärvi, Nurmes, Northern Karelia is one of the many temporary burial islands in Finland. © Juha Ruohonen.

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6.4. A grave depression in Kalmosaari, Autiojärvi, Nurmes, Northern Karelia. © Juha Ruohonen.

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7.1. The western coast of Iceland showing the location of Haffjarðarey in relation to Reykjavík. © Sarah Hoffman.

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7.2. The island of Haffjarðarey looking southwest from Hausthús on the southern edge of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. © Sarah Hoffman.

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8.1. Plant material, faggots, and brooms are often found in under-floor spaces and inside coffins. © Sanna Lipkin.

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8.2. Dolls of magic or just a doll of a child? © Sanna Lipkin.

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9.1. Hair of the first Russian Tsarina Anastasia Romanovna. © Andrey Dmitriev.

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9.2. Rib of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich before cleaning. © Andrey Dmitriev.

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9.3. Rib of Knyaz M. V. Skopin-Shuisky before cleaning. © Andrey Dmitriev.

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9.4. Cleaned rib of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. © Andrey Dmitriev.

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9.5. Cleaned rib of Knyaz M. V. Skopin-Shuisky. © Andrey Dmitriev.

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10.1a.–b. Renko Church and the location of the graves of autopsied individuals (a). © Kati Salo. The church and churchyard of Holy Trinity in Rauma (b). © Arttu Liimatainen, Janne Haarala, Maija Helamaa, and Heli Lehto/Muuritutkimus oy.

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10.2a.–c. Saw-marks from craniotomy. Renko individual from Grave 49 (a). © Kati Salo. Rauma individual from Grave 7 (b). © Anne-Mari Liira. A skull from Bulevardi, Helsinki (c). © Kati Salo.

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11.1. Finland and the neighboring countries of Sweden (S), Norway (N), and Russia (R) with some places mentioned in the text: (1) Tornio; (2) Kemi; (3) Ii; (4) Hailuoto; (5) Levänluhta; (6) Jettböle, Åland Archipelago; and Bothnian Bay (BB). Map based on: https://d-maps.com/ carte.php?num_car=4223&lang=en.

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11.2. Unusual burials? Not really, this was part of normal cemetery procedures. When the necropolis of Cristobal Colón was founded in Havana in 1876, the well-to-do families bought permanent plots to build their marble tombs and pantheons. It was also possible to rent small burial plots, which the less wealthy families often did thanks to funeral donations. However, when they could not afford paying the fees, their dead relatives were simply evicted, and their remains piled up at one corner of the cemetery. As a result, a huge bone mound had accumulated by the end of the century, when this stunned American delegation inspected the necropolis. Photo taken by an unknown photographer.

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11.3. Coffins in the unheated belfry of the Kautokeino Church (Lapland) waiting to be buried once the soil thaws (De Capell Brooke 1827: 479).

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11.4. Iceland according to Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina (1539a). Its western section shows a long peninsula halfway between a bay called Isafiord (Isafjordur) in the north and an island called Foglasker (Fug Lasker Isles) in the south. Based on its shape and location, the peninsula must be Snæfellsnes. It even reads Iokul (glacier) where Snæfellsnesjokul lies. The location of inland sites is distorted, with Mons Hekla (Hekla volcano) and the

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Illustrations

Scalholdin (Skálholt) Cathedral to the east of Snæfellsnes, when they should be to the southeast and in reverse order. Most interesting for us is a small land bulge south of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. There, between the caos (abyss) by Mount Hekla and the sea, are two dark human shapes. This area is labelled “C” and, according to the map key, those who drown appear to their kin on the same day and say that they must go on to Mount Hekla, a place for punishing/purging the souls (Magnus 1539b). Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0. 11.5. Engraving from the chapter “On the apparitions of the souls of the drowned” in Olaus Magnus’s Historia (1555: 2.3). It has some common features with the map in Figure 11.4, but the configuration and orientation differ. The Scalholdin (Skáltholt) Cathedral and the upright stones inscribed with ancestors’ deeds are still present, though in a different place. The Hekla is not labelled, but there is a large mountain by the shore and, behind it to the left, a single snow-topped(?) peak with a cave/ entrance(?). There are new elements as well, like the scene of a sinking ship and sailors drowning in the sea, and two gate-like features at the base of the mountains. Finally, there are five human figures whose clothing is dashed like the sea. Three stand before the mountain, but also by the sea near the drowning shipwrecked(?) sailors. The other two figures seem to correspond to those in Figure 11.4 and may be headed to the gate-like features. (Magnus 1555: p. 62, 2.3).

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Tables 1.1. Public cemeteries in Buffalo that are no longer used for burying purposes.

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1.2. Public cemeteries still in use in Buffalo.

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9.1. Mass fraction of elements in the samples.

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INTRODUCTION

In Search of the Unusual in Early Modern and Modern Burial Traditions Titta Kallio-Seppä, Sanna Lipkin, Annemari Tranberg, Tiina Väre, and Ulla Moilanen

From Traditional . . . to Unusual Mortuary culture includes various attitudes and practices associated with the dead. In a Christian context, this usually means a preparation for death, the disposal of corpses according to the accustomed practices, and the commemoration of the deceased. Incidents that disrupted peoples’ expected futures sometimes led to burials that did not follow the normal traditions among the communities. This volume provides examples of incidents that led to burials or memorialization that somehow deviated from what was considered the norm in those times, cultures, and locations. The chapters present research material and case studies from Finland (at that time part of Sweden or Russia), Sweden, the US, Britain, Ireland, Iceland, and Russia with a temporal scope from the sixteenth century to the early twenty-first century. The aim is to give a northern perspective on the complex topics of death, burial, and memory in the post-medieval era. The circumstances of the deceased themselves, their death, or their living environment, could all result in a different kind of burial (see Moilanen 2021). An “unusual death” could be caused by various factors, such as epidemic, war, premature birth, social status, or having a disability. Such incidents may have been relatively rare, concerning only a portion of people, such as families or even just a single person. Other examples concern wider geographical areas or certain groups of people performing a certain task, such as soldiers. The terms traditional and unusual are discussed in this volume within research material of Christian contexts. Unusual body positions, grave orientations, and burial places outside the churchyard have often been interpreted from a negative point of view and seen as an indication of humil-

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iation or an expression of disrespect and rejection (Arcini 2009; Reynolds 2009; Riisøy 2015). These interpretations are usually highlighted in the Christian context, where the burial tradition is easily seen as homogenous and without variation (see Mui 2018: 65, 301; Mytum 2004: 17, 19). It may be true that these burials represent a minority, which is why they are often called “atypical.” From this perspective, it would be easy to believe that burial places far away from the church represent social exclusion or that the graves with unusual orientation or a distinctive way of treating the corpse indicate punishment. After all, it is the church and the churchyard that form a clearly defined social space, where the good members of the congregation were interred. Similarly, by placing the corpse in the grave facing west, the deceased was granted a possibility for resurrection on Judgment Day. However, the simplistic views of atypical burials have been criticized during recent decades, and a more nuanced picture has emerged (e.g., Aspöck 2008; Gardeła 2013, 2017; Gilchrist and Sloane 2005; Mui 2018; Moilanen 2018, 2021; Toplak 2018; Scott, Betsinger, and Tsaliki 2020). It also seems clear that the mortuary customs have been influenced by the individual choices of those responsible for the burial. In many situations, the corpse itself has had postmortem agency. An unusual manner of death or unexpected circumstances at the time of death could have led to distinctive treatment of the corpse or to it being buried in a special burial place. For example, prone burials, in which the individual is placed on his or her stomach face down, sometimes occur in Christian cemeteries. The modern interpretations of these seemingly dramatic burials range from the symbolism of penitence (Gilchrist and Sloane 2005: 154; Toplak 2018) to a complex mixture of magic and superstitions deriving from local stressful events (Moilanen 2018, 2021). Therefore, unusual ways to bury or commemorate the dead do not necessarily convey only negative meanings. The cases presented in this volume highlight the diversity of ways of treating the dead in a Christian context. However, burial practice in the past did not always come without problems, especially in the northern American context, where burial grounds are often on the land that belonged to Indigenous people but was colonized by Europeans. As these lands were forcefully occupied, it is rightful to ask if holding the Christian cemeteries and repeating the commemoration practices (particularly those of a patrimonial nature) is in accordance with the measures taken to prevent the destruction and pillage of the Indigenous burial sites (Barker 2018: 1144), and whether appropriate actions have been taken to restore the memories of these burial sites as an effort for reconciliation and decolonization (Van Dyke 2020; Wadsworth, Supernant, and Dersch 2021). In Europe, and the Nordic countries, history of colonization can be approached from a slightly different angle. For example, Finland, which

Introduction

3

was part of Sweden until 1809 when it became the Grand Duchy of Russia, was not only a subject of both Swedish and Russian colonization but also that of the United Kingdom. From the early nineteenth century onwards these processes were closely interrelated with the industrialization of the country (Lipkin 2021). Yet, Finnish legislation and practices allowed activities towards the minority groups that can be defined as colonial. In the Nordic countries the effects of colonialism are not as tightly related to land occupation as they are in North America. Traditionally, the Indigenous people, the Saami, have lived in Sápmi (northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and parts of Russia bordered by the Barents Sea), but the borders of this area have been challenged and contested; the Saami have lived also in the southern parts of these countries. Colonialism of the Saami has been studied in relation to the Swedish mining industries in Sápmi, as well as to the early modern collection of Saami material culture and the repatriation and reburial of the anatomical collections (Ojala 2009, 2018, 2020). However, the Saami were not the only ethnic minority group living in the Nordic countries. For example, we still know very little of the living experiences of the Roma (Wong 2020), or how the Karelians were buried in Finland (Lipkin and Kuokkanen 2014). Despite the common and contemporary religious continuum from Catholic faith to Reformation and Lutheran religion, the Nordic countries cannot be thought of as one cultural region in terms of understanding death and afterlife. As testified through folklore, church records, and other written sources, the old traditions and beliefs continued their flourishment in the communities including the minority groups. This led to local ways to commemorate the dead (Lipkin 2020), and it is not always possible to distinguish between the traditions of the majorities and minorities.

Case Examples from the “North”: Burials from the Early Modern Times to the Present This book was developed from an interest and a need for a compilation that brings together examples of deviant burials, especially from early modern and modern times. We wished to ask: What in the burial customs indicates unusual death or unusual ways of remembering and what does it mean? What makes archaeologists consider a burial to be unusual? What kind of ethical questions are related to the handling of unusual deceased or researching them? For this volume, we wanted to broaden the perspective on unusual burials with a wider range of chapters covering a larger geographical area (Figure 0.1a.–b.) and tying the chapters together under a theme “North.”

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a

b

Figures 0.1a.–b. Locations of the research sites and material discussed in the chapters. © The Museum of Tornio Valley, Emma Laitila.

Introduction

5

The concept of “North” is considered relative as its implications vary with respect to the standpoint of the observer. Thus, instead of fixating on high latitudes we have approached the concept from a perspective of such relativity. The sites introduced here all represent relatively northern locations within their own cultural or national contexts. Additionally, we have used the climates typical to Nordic areas as an integrative factor, even representation, of “northernness.” Due to the influence of the Gulf Stream, the Nordic countries enjoy comparatively temperate climates for their latitude. For instance, those countries in corresponding areas of North America experience much harsher climates, while climates resembling Nordic ones are impacting much more southern locations on this continent. Thus, instead of geographical location or a concept that can be defined in absolute numerical terms, in this volume, “North” refers to a kind of an experiential, “qualitative,” even sensory attribute that all the introduced sites share. A wider geographical coverage entails a broader range of burial traditions and historical events affecting the burials. According to Liv Nilsson Stutz and Sarah Tarlow (2013: 2), special kinds of burials, such as those that seem to have been outside normal society, have attracted interest among scholars in recent years. For example, atypical burials are addressed from bioarchaeological perspectives and often contain data from prehistoric times (Murphy 2008; Betsinger, Scott, and Tsaliki 2020; Evans 2020). Our temporal scope is in early modern and modern periods, ranging from the sixteenth century to the early twenty-first century. We can approach the time frame by using a periodicity describing the changes in burial traditions from the early modern times to the present. Tony Walter (1994) described three consecutive cultural periods: traditional, modern, and neomodern, to understand and conceptualize death and changes in burial customs. According to Walter, the traditional period was strongly rooted in the burial traditions of a community where death was a frequent, and often sudden, visitor and considered to be the result of a sin. Thus, dying was more or less considered part of everyday life and family and neighbors were responsible for preparing the deceased for the burial. During the modern era, from the nineteenth century onwards, death was medicalized and slowly distanced from the surroundings of the home to hospitals, where death and burial were handled by the nuclear family and professionals. The present neomodern era has raised a high level of individuality; people often plan their own funeral beforehand and the bereaved organize the funeral according to the wishes of the deceased, not according to old traditions. These historical phases are said to be simplified ideas of social life at the time, and the phases followed each other, with traditional tending to give way to modern and modern to neomod-

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ern. The research data and questions in this volume use data from the first traditional and modern phases. During the traditional phase, the beliefs relating to good and bad death were strong. From the Middle Ages until the mid-nineteenth century, death was considered omnipresent. From then on, death would be effaced, shameful, and forbidden, and in time disappear (Ariés 1974: 85– 88). Philippe Ariés described this situation as follows: In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, under the influence of the Counter Reformation, spiritual writers struggled against the popular belief that it was not necessary to take such pain to live virtuously, since a good death redeemed everything. Because of the belief there was a moral importance in the circumstances surrounding a death. It was not until the twentieth century that this deeply rooted belief was cast off, at least in industrialized societies. (1974: 38–39)

A sudden death, criminal death, or a death with special features (such as one caused by an epidemic) that left no time to prepare for the afterlife in the form of religious rites assuring redemption was considered a “bad” death (e.g., McNeill 2004).

Different Sides of the Unusual and Atypical Burial has a twofold meaning. From an individual’s perspective, it is usually done in respect for the deceased (Lempiäinen 1990). From society’s viewpoint, it is a means of disposing of remains before they become contaminated and a threat to the living (Jenner 2005). When death occurs, relatives usually follow the burial rituals laid down by the custom of the society. This book introduces a selection of cases that address the issue of unusual deaths, burials, or ways of remembering deceased loved ones. It explores not only what past individuals and groups wished to remember, and what have been the unwanted or unpleasant aspects of death, but also the ethical questions involved in the study of those whose death can be considered unusual. The chapters combine theoretical views related to social memory of death and memorializing the deceased and their resting places during the premodern and modern period. The case studies introduce readers to varied views on “otherness” that are visible in burial customs, memorialization, and research history. In many cases, the unusual and atypical features become less dramatic with thorough contextualization, and instead of curiosities, they can be seen as part of the normal and nuanced mortuary culture (c.f., Aspöck 2008; Murphy 2008; Betsinger et al. 2020; Moilanen 2021). The individual chapters of this volume are grouped according to a few common themes. These include how memorials, graveyards, and epi-

7

Introduction

demics are viewed from the concepts of inequality, disease, and sudden death; different reasons for atypical burial places; generational memories and the folklore of unusual death; and unusual causes of death. All the chapters discuss two or more of these themes. The Afterword, written by Milton Núñez, provides further examples from Scandinavian archaeological material and research.

Memorials, Graveyards, Epidemics: Inequality, Disease, and Sudden Death Times of fatal tragedies or epidemic diseases often evoke distinct funeral and memorial practices. This is especially relevant today. While writing this introduction the world has passed the milestone of twenty million confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19. Lockdowns and physical distancing have prevented people from participating in the funerals of their loved ones. Due to high death rates, regional cemeteries have become full and the deceased have been buried outside their hometowns. To prevent the spread of the disease, the dead have been buried in their hospital clothes and no proper commemoration with relatives has been possible. This has raised feelings of anxiety and sadness towards the prevailing situation. In Bergamo, Italy, one of the places hit hardest during the early stages of the pandemic, the Guardian (19 March 2020) described the struggles that the large province faced when thousands of people suddenly died of the virus. Coffins awaiting burial were said to be lined up in churches and those who died at home were kept in sealedoff rooms for days before the actual funeral. Thus, the need to bury the dead quickly prevailed; for instance, on Hart Island in New York City, unidentified individuals were laid in temporary mass graves. This historical potter’s field was established in the mid-1800s and has been used during numerous other epidemics, such as the Spanish Flu (New Yorker, 10 April 2020). In an historical sense, people’s reactions and burial practices have been similar throughout the centuries, and deviations from normal burial customs have resulted from the spread of scary epidemics. The uncontrollably rising mortality rates that fatal epidemics can cause have forced societies to replace their normal funerary customs in order to mitigate the effects of rapidly mounting body counts. It is common for specific graveyards to be established for victims of the epidemic. These themes are dealt both in Sanna Lipkin’s and Titta Kallio-Seppä’s and Tiina Väre’s contributions (Chapters 1 and 3). Even though the disease itself does not care who becomes sick, we are provoked by inequality based on social reasons. In the past, this led to the spread of diseases being blamed on certain groups of people, such as the Irish in Buffalo in 1832 (Goldman 1983: 49). Both

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the lower status and difficulty of identifying the dead could affect the ways the dead were commemorated, and if the removal of these graveyards later became concurrent, the human remains could be handled disrespectfully. The notoriety of the plague-causing bacteria, Yersinia pestis, is unparalleled. The plague has not disappeared as a disease and outbreaks occur regularly in parts of South and North America, Siberia, South Asia, and Africa (CDC 2018; Gage and Kosoy 2005; Raoult et al. 2013). In the past, case mortality rates of up to 90 percent could be observed, but since the 1940s, Y. pestis infections have been curable with antibiotics (Smadel et al. 1952; Butler 2014). Even today, despite the advances of modern medical science, such infections can be fatal in as many as half of cases (Spickler 2013; Butler 2014). Another disease that could cause past societies to collapse into chaos was cholera, which could quickly kill half of those infected. For example, in connection to the earthquake of 2010 in Haiti, case mortality rates of 15–25 percent were recorded, while proper medical care could reduce mortality to as low as 2 percent (Fisman and Laupland 2011). Throughout history, the spread of cholera has been blamed on causes such as spoiled rice, miasmas, chemical or organic cholera poison circulating in the air or water, and even invisible insects (Vuorinen 2002: 120–25; Fisman and Laupland 2011). Theories concerning the causes of diseases in the past bear little resemblance to current theories. Instead of being able to categorize diseases according to their true etiology, physicians in the past could describe only the symptoms to classify them. The complete ecologies of the pathogens causing plague as well as cholera were discovered only in the nineteenth century (Howard-Jones 1974; Vuorinen 2002: 120–25, 110–13; Kallioinen 2009: 171). Kallio-Seppä and Väre (Chapter 3) identify, via several Finnish examples, a theory of infectious disease transmission based on the effect of miasmas and how that theory affected the official instructions to control the spread of the diseases. Many severe infectious diseases were then ordinary to contemporary people. However, the mental imprint that these diseases left on social memory must have been strong. Both the plague and cholera required societies to reassess many of their normal functions, such as burial practices. Even though the pandemics comparable to these killers seem to be a concern of the past, various outbreaks are possible even today. This, as well as the havoc that such situations wreak, is being clearly shown today with the rapid emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by a coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) of zoonotic origin, which was transmitted to humans. The current pandemic is not a one-off incident. Even though epidemics have been successfully controlled during the past century by the development good hygiene practices, sufficient immunization coverage, and effective antibiotics, diseases are likely to return unless careful global

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attention is paid to the proper medication protocols and vaccine education. During the past few decades, epidemiologists have given repeated warnings about the rise of new, dangerous, far-reaching epidemics that may reach pandemic proportions (e.g., de Jong et al. 1997; Ferguson et al. 2006; Fan et al. 2019). After more than a hundred years of significant breakthroughs in the fields of modern medicine, we are obliged to listen and act based upon the quantities of worrisome predictions published in scientific journals throughout the previous decades. Graveyards and memorials are important for the living. A tombstone serves as a message for posterity and a reminder for the bereaved (Casey 2000: 226–27, 274). Remembering takes place through activity (Soja 1989: 120, 129). “Being with the dead” (Ruin 2019) is a central human need and the absence of religious belief does not change that. A sense of community with the living and the dead are essential in a culture of death. As demonstrated by Ilona Kemppainen (Chapter 4), although atheists do not believe in a literal afterlife, a sense of connection between generations and individuals is necessary. Until 2007, Finnish secular cemeteries were private ventures of particular freethinkers’ associations; people were not only buried there, and the local community maintained the cemetery. During the early twentieth century, secular burials were often also power displays of the worker’s movement. Pierre Nora’s (1989) term “realms of memory” refers to the role that spaces have in constructing social identity and bonding communities. Spaces are given meaning through social action in them (Halbwachs [1925] 1992, 1980). A place of remembrance is created through and by traditions and ceremonies, while building a collective memory (Rowlands and Tilley 2006: 502). In the US in the nineteenth century, commemoration was performed through Sunday walks at the burial grounds (Baugher and Veit 2014: 133–34), which made the memorials significant. Lipkin (Chapter 1) considers the commemoration of certain Buffalonian middleand high-rank children with unusual grave markers that exhibit both their innocence as children and their social status. Commemoration according to the status of the deceased was important, and is usually manifested by burial location, memorial, coffin, and funerary attire. Even though a few Russian nobles, including the members of tsar’s family were murdered using poisons, as verified by Tatiana Dmitrievna Panova et al. (Chapter 9), they were buried according to their status in stone coffins in the Ascension Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. According to neutron activation analysis, Tsarina Anastasia wore a headdress made of silk thread wrapped with thin silver strips gilded with gold. Whereas high status can lead to an unusual burial, the same may apply to people of low status. Lipkin (Chapter 1) reviews how the social status of the deceased in nineteenth-century Buffalo affected the treatment of hu-

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Titta Kallio-Seppä, Sanna Lipkin, Annemari Tranberg, Tiina Väre, and Ulla Moilanen

man remains during massive removals of city’s abandoned burial grounds. Whereas the remains and memorials of the higher classes were relocated to new cemeteries, many pauper burials were left behind to be found during future inspection work or were buried in less favorable places. Similar segregation was put in place by the winning Whites (mainly the business owners and farmers) during the Finnish National War in 1917 when, as Kemppainen (Chapter 4) states, the nonreligious burials of the Reds (the working class) were both carried out and desecrated by the Whites’ shaming descriptions of “dog’s cemeteries.” These mass burials were made outside of the Lutheran cemeteries. In addition to unusual memorialization, Lipkin, Kallio-Seppä and Väre, as well as Harold Mytum (Chapters 1, 2, and 3), consider forgetting as a cultural and social phenomenon (Connerton 2008, 1989). For example, after the completion of a significant archaeological excavation project, city officials are considering an acceptable way to memorialize the once forgotten remains unearthed at the former site of the Erie County Poorhouse. Restoring the dignity and memory of the lives that were forgotten is important for the local communities. In Buffalo, the cemeteries have not purposefully been forgotten, whereas the epidemic cemeteries in Finland were forgotten and erased from the visible scenery (Kallio-Seppä and Väre, Chapter 3). Additionally, remembering can prevent a recurrence of tragic events, as described both by Mytum and Sarah Hoffman (Chapters 2 and 7), but it can also contribute to recovery from the crisis, ergo dealing with losses seeks to achieve community balance, and can also prevent recovery from a crisis. However, maintaining remembrance requires activity, either in maintaining signs or in keeping the activities associated with it alive (Rowlands and Tilley 2006: 512). It is either prescriptive forgetting, which allows social healing and a continuity in life, or it can be humiliated silence, which does not provide justice for the tragedies that form certain types of commemoration traditions and sense of communal identities. Hoffman (Chapter 7) points to the importance of the landscape as the enabler of the preservation of the folkloric memories of the unexpected deaths of the last priest and thirteen parishioners the church of Saint Nicholas on the island of Haffjarðarey in western Iceland. These individuals drowned on their way from the island where the church was located back to mainland on Christmas Eve in 1563, which eventually led to an abandonment of the church and the cemetery. Mytum (Chapter 2) examines commemoration of deaths from the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century occupational accidents in the context of the far greater incidence of communal and institutional forgetting. Commemoration can take place at the burial location, the place of the accident, an appropriate community location, or on portable material culture; sometimes combinations of locales were used. In the British and Irish examples that Mytum

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provides, the deaths of mariners at sea and those caused by industrial accidents were often commemorated in different ways. Some maritime deaths were considered tragic and attracted a communal fund to erect a memorial, while others did not. The same process of forgetting was also the norm for terrestrial occupational losses. The danger of forgetting was that lessons were not learned and that history could indeed repeat itself. This was seen in the maritime, mining, and construction industries.

Peculiar Burial Places, Memories, and Folklore of Unusual Death Graves and the memorials of death tell of the deceased as well as of the buriers, the social status of the deceased, and the structure of the community. There are many determinants—circumstances being one—of ceremonies, practices, and monuments. But, how should an unknown deceased who is far from his home church and family be buried? And how should tragic deaths be remembered? Living arrangements, unusual events or tragedies, and even epidemics may lead to peculiar burial places. Kristina Jonsson (Chapter 5) deals with deaths, burials, and commemoration of Carolean soldiers who perished during the retreat from Norway to Sweden during the Great Northern War (1700–21). In December 1718, around 3,700 soldiers died due to bad weather conditions, hunger, and illness during a retreat to Jämtland crossing the mountainous border region. Approximately one-third of the soldiers of the “Carolean death-march” were buried close to the battlefields and retreat routes. King Karl XI’s “Church Law and Order” from 1686 would have recommended the right to be buried in a churchyard with proper ceremonies, but at the time of crisis this was bypassed. Only a limited number of the dead soldiers were granted a proper Christian churchyard burial. In Finland, convenience and lack of proper routes to transport the dead to be buried in the churchyard during summers created a need to establish temporary burial grounds on islands. Tiina Väre and Juha Ruohonen (Chapter 6) review eighteenth- to nineteenth-century eastern and northern Finnish temporary island burials sites where people living in the hinterlands were buried during summers. Only when there was enough snow to ride a sledge could the dead bodies be transported to parish churches, which were often several dozen kilometers away. These temporary burials were reused over time. In the past, islands were important both in terms of practicality and religious liminality. As Hoffman shows (Chapter 7), in medieval and post-medieval Iceland the islands reached by tidal flats were not isolated places but important economic and community centers that were easily reached by all members of the community. Simultaneously, due to their liminal and social nature, they were selected to be sacred places where

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churches and cemeteries were established. Contrary to the Islandic example, the Finnish “Death Islands” (described by Väre and Ruohonen) were isolated and the dead were buried there because of their liminal nature. Death itself is often considered a liminal space between life and afterlife and this space and the decomposing cadaver exposed threat to the living. It was considered important to escort the dead through this dangerous liminal space, which was done through ritual and under social control. The rituals of the liminal space, in this case the burials at isolated islands, gave control over this stage and provided a means of coping with fear of haunting bodies (Hertz [1907] 1960: 36–37, 83; Turner 1992; Eilola and Einonen 2009: 198–99; Lipkin 2020). The possibility of haunting was highly related to the peculiarity of the death or the unusual burial. The connection between the smell of the rotting corpses (miasmas) and the spread of epidemic disease also caused great fear. At that time, the traditional funerary practices and socially valued final resting place represented a person’s status in society and as a good parishioner (e.g., Pihlman 1989; Watts 1997: 18). Epidemics such as the plague typically resulted in sudden and “bad” death that left no time to prepare for the afterlife in the form of correct religious rites (McNeill 2004: 127, 178–80). The threat of being denied a proper burial must have added to the fear of epidemic diseases. In traditional folk belief, deviations may have caused more stress, because of the belief that the dead needed proper handling to prevent them from returning and haunting the living. As Annemari Tranberg (Chapter 8) concludes, the power of death (Väki) was ferocious and not only remained in dead body but was also embedded in the items put in the coffin. Both body parts and woodchips inside the coffins were contaminated with Väki and, as such, were powerful mediators in magic of both healing and mischief purposes. Sometimes it was important to soothe the power of death and the dead bodies lying under church floors, and this was done by dropping coins below floors (Lipkin 2020). The brooms and wooden dolls placed below floors may have been left behind as a result of healing magic being performed. Fear of death and peculiar death often led to folkloric stories about the event, such as the drowning of parishioners in Iceland (Chapter 7) or ghost stories related to the Carolean death march (Chapter 5). These communal memories may even remain vivid centuries later and lead to places being named after their use generation after generation, as the “death islands” were in Finland (Chapter 6). Additionally, some burial sites used during epidemics have been remembered and made a visible part of the local history and social memory (Chapters 1 and 3).

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Unusual Cause of Death Burial practices sometimes appear to indicate that the dead individual had received a burial according to their social standing and, as such, does not expose peculiarities. Only detailed research of human remains reveals that the actual cause of death may be peculiar. In Sweden and Finland, autopsies were performed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to identify suspected suicide or crime victims. According to folkloristic traditions, the social deviance of murder and suicide victims has been emphasized. It is commonly thought that these individuals could not be buried in the same manner as ordinary people, and that they were feared to be touched (Eilola and Einonen 2009). However, examining Finnish case studies, Ulla Moilanen et al. (Chapter 10) demonstrate that despite folkloristic traditions, the actual archaeological evidence of autopsied human remains indicates that the individual’s socioeconomic status during life defined how they were buried. The treatment of autopsied individuals also reveals care and compassion which are not often associated with atypical cases. The neutron activation analysis by Panova et al. (Chapter 9) revealed mercury and arsenic poisonings of the members of the tsarist family and another noble man buried in the Kremlin in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In 1560, the first wife of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible—the first Russian Tsarina Anastasia Romanovna—was poisoned with mercury. Increased mercury content was also recovered in the bone remains of the son of Ivan the Terrible, Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich (died in 1581), and Knyaz Mikhail Vasilievich Skopin-Shuysky (died in 1610). The study of Tsarina Anastasia’s burial offers new facts about her life (Panova 2018: 279–91). Two variants of the causes of the death are presented in historical literature: she either died from poisoning (Birkin 2002: 13–15) or of exhaustion due to frequent childbirth. The authors suggest that the question of the cause of death of the young first wife of Ivan the Terrible is now resolved. As this Russian material and other chapters show, the official memory may often be only a part of the story, or even an incorrect one. Archaeology and new multidisciplinary research techniques and methods can reveal forgotten and hidden stories. This book seeks to give a voice to international research cases and subjects that are often diminished to atypical, deviant, or negative interpretations. We seek to demonstrate that when taking a closer look at unusual mortuary culture we can bring forgotten human destinies into focus and widen our perspective on the historical ways to handle and commemorate the dead.

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Titta Kallio-Seppä (PhD, MSc [econ]) is an archaeologist, working as a museum director at the Tornio Valley Museum, Tornio, Finland. She specializes in historical archaeology, development of Early Modern towns, dendrochronology, and churches, burials, and graveyards as the site of memory. She recently coedited (with S. Lipkin and P. R. Mullins) Historical Burials in Europe: Natural Mummification, Burial Customs, and Ethical Challenges, a special issue of Historical Archaeology. Sanna Lipkin is an Academy Research Fellow in archaeology at the University of Oulu. Her current research projects, both funded by the Academy of Finland, focus on emotions related to child death as well as daily life and the afterlife of children in post-medieval Finland. Her chapter contribution was written, and the mentioned cemeteries visited, while she was Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She recently coedited (with T. Kallio-Seppä and P. R. Mullins) Historical Burials in Europe: Natural Mummification, Burial Customs, and Ethical Challenges, a special issue of Historical Archaeology and (with T. Äikäs) Entangled Beliefs and Rituals: Religion in Finland and Sápmi from the Stone Age to Contemporary Times. Annemari Tranberg (PhD) is an archaeologist and macrofossil researcher. She specializes in environmental and historical archaeology, archeoentomology, garden history, industrial environments, and culture of death. She works as an archaeologist at the Museum of Tornio Valley. Tiina Väre (PhD, MSc [econ]) is an archaeologist who has studied the health, body proportions, and diet of an Early Modern vicar using CT-scanning and stable isotopes on his mummified remains. Her research interests include paleopathology, Early Modern, and Modern burial customs, as well as breastfeeding and weaning practices. During her postdoc she is specializing in stable isotope studies. Ulla Moilanen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She specializes in interdisciplinary mortuary archaeology from the Late Iron Age to the Early Modern period. She has studied the varied motives behind atypical burials in these periods, and she is also interested in the archaeology of individuals.

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Outsiders in Archaeology, ed. L. Damman and S. Leggett. Archaeological Review from Cambridge 33(2): 19–36. ———. 2021. Variations in Inhumation Burial Customs in Southern Finland (AD 900–1400). Case studies from Häme and Upper Satakunta. Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, Series B. Humaniora. Turku: University of Turku. Mui, S. 2018. “Dead Body Language: Deciphering Corpse Positions in Early AngloSaxon England.” Ph.D. diss., Durham University. Murphy, E. M., ed. 2008. Deviant Burial in the Archaeological Record. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Mytum, H. 2004. Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers. Nilsson Stutz, L., and S. Tarlow. 2013. “Beautiful Things and Bones of Desire: Emerging Issues in the Archaeology of Death and Burial.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Death and Burial, ed. S. Tarlow and L. Nilsson Stutz, 1–14. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nora, P. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De Mémoire.” Representations 1989(26): 7–24. Ojala, C.-G. 2009. Sámi Prehistories. The Politics of Archaeology and Identity in Northernmost Europe. Occasional Papers in Archaeology 47. Uppsala: Uppsala University. Retrieved 17 September 2021 from https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/ diva2:241109/FULLTEXT01.pdf. ———. 2018. “Encountering ‘the Other’ in the North—Colonial Histories in Early Modern Northern Sweden.” In Facing Otherness in Early Modern Sweden. Travel, Migration, and Material Transformations, 1500–1800, ed. N. Naum and F. Ekengren, 209–28. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press. ———. 2020. “Mines and Missions: Early Modern Swedish Colonialism in Sápmi and Its Legacies Today.” In Currents of Saami Pasts Recent Advances in Saami Archaeology, ed. M. Spangen, A.-K. Salmi, T. Äikäs, and M. Fjellström, 160–76. Monographs of the Archaeological Society of Finland 9. Retrieved 17 September 2021 from http://www.sarks.fi/masf/masf_9/MASF9_10_Ojala.pdf. Panova, T. D. 2018. “Биографический очерк” [Biographical sketch]. In Некрополь русских великих княгинь и цариц в Вознесенском монастыре Московского Кремля. Материалы исследований в 4 томах. Том 3. Часть 1. Погребения 16—начала 17 века [Necropolis of Russian grand knyaginyas and tsarinas in the Ascension Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. Vol. 3, Part 1, Burials from the 16th to the beginning of the 17th century], ed. T. D. Panova, 279–91. Moscow: Tipografiya Paradiz. Pihlman, S. 1989. “Hautapaikka ja yhteiskunta 1800-luvun Yläneellä ja Kaarinassa” [Gravesite and community in 19th century Yläne and Kaarina]. In Elämän merkit [Signs of life], ed. M. Taipale and E. Vanhalukkarla, 77–93. Turku: Turun arkkihiippakunta. Raoult, D., N. Mouffok, I. Bitam, R. Piarroux, and M. Drancourt. 2013. “Plague: History and Contemporary Analysis.” Journal of Infection 66(1): 18–26. Reynolds, A. 2009. Anglo-Saxon Deviant Burial Customs. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Riisøy, A. I. 2015. “Deviant Burials: Societal Exclusion of Dead Outlaws in Medieval Norway.” In Cultures of Death and Dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. M. Korpiola and A. Lahtinen, 49–81. Studies Across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, vol. 18. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.

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Rowlands, M., and C. Tilley. 2006. “Monuments and Memorials.” In Handbook of Material Culture, ed. C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands, and P. Spyer, 500–15. London: Sage. Ruin, H. 2019. Being with the Dead: Burial, Ancestral Politics, and the Roots of Historical Consciousness. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Scott, A. B., T. K. Betsinger, and A. Tsaliki. 2020. “Deconstructing “Deviant”: An Introduction to the History of Atypical Burials and the Importance of Context of the Bioarchaeological Record.” In The Odd, the Unusual, and the Strange: Bioarchaeological Explorations of Atypical Burials, ed. T. Betsinger, A. B. Scott, and A. Tsaliki, 1–17. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Smadel, J. E., T. E. Woodward, C. R. Amies, and K. Goodner. 1952. “Antibiotics in the Treatment of Bubonic and Pneumonic Plague in Man.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 55(6): 1275–84. Soja, E. W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Spickler, A. R. 2013. “Plague,” updated September 2013. Retrieved 15 September 2021 from http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/DiseaseInfo/factsheets.php. Toplak, M. S. 2018. “Deconstructing the Deviant Burials of Kopparsvik and the Rite of Prone Burials in Viking Age Scandinavia.” META Historiskarkeologisk tidskift: 79–110. Turner, V. 1992. “Mortality and Liminality.” In Blazing the Trail: Way Marks in the Exploration of Symbols, ed. V. Turner, 132–62. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Van Dyke, R. M. 2020. “Indigenous Archaeology in a Settler-Colonist State: A View from the North American Southwest.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 53(1): 41–58. https://www.doi.org/10.1080/00293652.2020.1778779. Vuorinen, H. S. 2002. Tauti(n)en historia [History of diseases]. Tampere: Vastapaino. Wadsworth, W., K. Supernant, and A. Dersch. 2021. “Integrating Remote Sensing and Indigenous Archaeology to Locate Unmarked Graves: A Case Study from Northern Alberta, Canada.” Advances in Archaeological Practice 9(3): 202–14. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/aap.2021.9. Walter, T. 1994. The Revival of Death. London: Routledge. Watts, S. 1997. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Retrieved 23 February 2019 from http://pc124152.oulu .fi:8080/login?url=. Wong, W. K. 2020. Ethnic Minorities’ Heritage and Archaeological Resources Management: Roma People in Sweden since 1999. Master’s thesis, Uppsala University. Retrieved 17 September 2021 from https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2: 1442527/FULLTEXT01.pdf.

PART I

MEMORIALS, GRAVEYARDS, EPIDEMICS Inequality, Disease, and Sudden Death

CHAPTER 1

Forgotten and Remembered Unusual Memorial Practices at Buffalo’s Old Cemeteries Sanna Lipkin

In A Curious Dream Mark Twain (1870) writes: Night before last I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on a doorstep (in no particular city perhaps) ruminating, . . . more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and moldy shroud, . . . swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray gloom of the starlight. . . . another one . . . was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging a shabby coffin after him by a string. . . . “It is too bad, too bad,” said he, . . . I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty years; and I tell you things are changed . . . , our monuments lean wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged; . . . . And now we cannot hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has stretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in, . . . We are all leaving. We cannot tolerate the treatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants. They open new cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignominy. . . .

Twain ends his short story with: “NOTE.—The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept in good order, this Dream is not leveled at his town at all, but is leveled particularly and venomously at the next town.” Twain’s short story was published in Buffalo Express in spring 1870. Between 1869 and 1870, when Twain lived in Buffalo, many old cemeteries were abandoned in the city (Hodge 1879). In this short story, Twain literally shamed Buffalonians for not taking care of their cemeteries and his text in fact led to local improvements and national reform movements (Davis 1993).

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Inspired by Twain’s story, I conducted fieldwork at Buffalo’s cemeteries in 2018, and explored local memorial practices. The reasons for forgetting and remembering the buried individuals in nineteenth-century Buffalo are explored by contrasting the phenomena of abandoning cemeteries, reinterring human remains, and perpetually memorializing the deceased in relation to their social status, age, disability, ethnicity, or origin. The study considers ways of forgetting and remembering certain individuals, and how these are contextualized in material culture, namely the memorials of individuals and those erected for groups of people removed and reinterred in the cemeteries. Additionally, cemetery records stored at the Margaret L. Wendt Archive and Resource Center (also accessible on the Forest Lawn website, https://www.forest-lawn.com/genealogy/locate-a-loved-one) and the US Census records have been studied to explore in more depth the reasons for different kinds of actions families made while burying their family members and erecting memorials. This chapter asks: Who were remembered and how? Why were others forgotten (and possibly later rediscovered)? How is remembering visible in Buffalo’s streetscape or at the current cemeteries? The variation in treatment of an individual in contrast to communal burial and memorialization practices provides evidence to explore the conception of unusual burial treatment. No burial practice remains the same when cross-cutting social classes, age groups, or gender. To understand the reasons for non-normative, unusual, or special instances requires overall understanding of variability in burial and memorialization practices within a particular community. Individual grave memorials that may be regarded as unusual and have invoked attention both in the past and present are reviewed here. For modern readers, living in an era when modern burial grounds remain more or less perpetual, massive removals that occurred during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries may seem unusual, whereas at the time they were not. However, the purpose of removal or how it was conducted, could be unusual. Modern removals, often conducted by archaeologists, reveal practices that would have otherwise remained unknown. Forgotten dead individuals may become retained through research and modern memorials erected at the original burial sites or reburial cemeteries. The examples presented here are predominantly from Forest Lawn Burial Ground, which in the nineteenth century was situated close to the city boundaries. Even though the ethnic backgrounds of the buried persons vary, the nineteenth-century burials were made mostly by Protestant Americans or immigrants of British origin. The United German and French cemetery as well as separate Irish, German, Polish, Italian, and Jewish cemeteries were established elsewhere in the outskirts of the city (Tables 1.1 and 1.2). The memorials at these cemeteries are predomi-

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nantly different from those at Forest Lawn; the symbolism in the engravings is different, as are the forms of the gravestones.

Abandoning Cemeteries and Establishing New Ones in Buffalo In 1805, Buffalo, NY, was a small community with only a few hundred inhabitants of European origin. Within the surrounding area of Genesee Valley approximately two thousand Seneca were living in the Buffalo Creek Indian Reservation established in 1794 (Goldman 1983: 22–23, 27). During the early years, the history of the town of Buffalo was characterized by the ever-diminishing presence of the Seneca. After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 Buffalo started its growth. An invention that was crucial to Buffalo’s development was a steam-powered grain elevator (1842), and by the middle of the 1850s the city was also the most important producer of iron products in the US. In 1825 there were approximately 2,400 people living in the village, whereas ten years later the city’s population was almost 20,000; in 1855 the population exceeded 74,000. Buffalo officially became a city in 1832 (Goldman 1983: 47, 50, 58, 64, 72), but it was highly polarized, and there was a growing gap between the social classes. Many people coming to live in Buffalo hailed from New England or rural New York, but over sixty percent were immigrants. Half of those were Germans, and a fifth were Irish. The barriers between the groups were self-expressed, with different ethnicities living in their own neighborhoods. The differences were further pronounced by the defensive and hostile native-born Protestant citizenry, whereas the immigrants were largely Catholics. The status of Germans was more stable and economically secure because they were already skilled crafters when they arrived in the country. By the end of the 1850s, Germans started to see themselves more as Americans than German immigrants. Irish laborers working at the canal and factories were the poorest and were treated with class prejudice. Irish immigrants, even though forming a seemingly optimistic group, proud of their own ancestry, were largely invisible to others. They were commonly expected to be unhappy and discontent; many claimed they brought the 1832 cholera epidemic with them from Ireland (Goldman 1983: 39–40, 42, 49, 72–73, 78, 87). Even though in the 1840s Buffalo was famous as a center of antislavery activity, the inhabitants of the city were highly racist. The seven hundred people of African origin who were citizens of Buffalo were considered as “a strange and exotic segment of the population” (Goldman 1983: 88–90). It is normal that as a city grows, there is demand for areas of construction. In Buffalo, even the cemeteries that were in use were not left

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untouched, and a massive reinterment process was started around the mid-1850s. Finding a new place for a cemetery in the outskirts of the city became urgent. In the US, burial ground removals were not a rare occurrence, and cemeteries were abandoned and removed in many cities (Keels 2003: 115). Even though public opinion among Buffalonians generally was in favor of the removals, the treatment of the remains varied according to the social standing of the reinterred and their families. The son of one of the earliest residents in Buffalo, merchant William Hodge (1879: 7–9), states that even though some families removed their members to new cemeteries, many graves were dug up as new streets were established, and collected bones were reburied at Forest Lawn. Hodge mentions for instance that rural Cold Spring Burying Ground was never formally a cemetery, but was used by families living in the neighborhood, and that in 1850 nearly one hundred burials were moved to Forest Lawn. He continues: In the grading and widening of Ferry street, in 1876, at the corner we are speaking of, there were some bones, but no entire skeletons, plowed up. Having learned that there was no one appointed by the proper authorities of our city to look after these relics of early settlers and soldiers, who seem to have had none on the face of the earth to care for them, I took pains to collect from time to time all that were found, carried them to Forest Lawn, and had them buried with the others that had been taken there. (Hodge 1879: 7)

Later on, he gives his opinion to the city’s actions on removals: “Although I ever disapprove of the practice of our city rulers in disturbing and removing the bones from our old burying grounds, yet in this case it seems to be a matter of public necessity; and as part have been removed they may as well all be” (Hodge 1879: 9). Hodge’s own father’s remains were removed to Forest Lawn from High Street Cemetery. The opinions of the lower classes remain undocumented in historical sources produced by Protestant Americans. However, understanding of the ill-nature of the bad state of cemeteries and the removals was concretized in Mark Twain’s short story. Both before and after Mark Twain’s story was published, the human remains, coffins, and the memorials were literally moved around the city. While construction activities have taken place at the sites of disused cemeteries, human remains have often been revealed but not all individuals were remembered equally and reinterred, and many pauper burials were reburied in mass graves. Ignorant attitudes toward the remains of fellow citizens were indeed criticized toward the end of the century and during the twentieth century. William Hodge comments on the High Street Potter’s Field Cemetery’s removals of the poorhouse inhabitants with the following words: “Could no other vacant place be found, that even a pauper might not be allowed

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to rest here without having his last hold on earth made the stamping place for vagrant cattle?” (1879: 8) In the mid-1890s, about ten years later, approximately seven hundred burials were removed from the High Street Cemetery to Forest Lawn. Masten Park High School construction work had started at the site that was first established as a burial ground for the victims of the 1832 cholera epidemic. The Buffalo Enquirer (Saturday, 6 April 1907) reports that altogether six to seven thousand remains were transported to a mass grave at North of Delaware and Hertel Avenue, “in defiance of the storm of protests of many citizens.” The remains “were just piled into a big excavation, and thrown together in one gruesome mass,” and “no names, no marks, nothing to identify the skeletons, were left by which the remains might be claimed.” The Buffalo Enquirer continues that local newspapers reported the scandal: “Fifty cents for each skull was paid to contractors by the city for moving them from Masten Park to the unmarked hole in Delaware Avenue. It was claimed bones were counted as skulls and skulls were cut in two to multiply the number of skeletons. Wooden rough boxes were used in the process, and those who saw the work done remember that from eight to ten skeletons were jammed into each box.” By 1924 the existence of this mass burial at Delaware Avenue was forgotten, at which point excavations for a cellar at the site revealed human remains which were collected in thirty-five boxes. After enquiry, their origin was discovered and the remains were eventually buried at Forest Lawn (Buffalo Enquirer, Saturday, 21 May 1924; Friday, 13 June 1924; Tuesday, 17 June 1924; Saturday, 21 June 1924). Removals from High Street Cemetery occurred in multiple instances, and among the reinterred was America Pinckey Williams, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington (President George Washington’s spouse), who was removed to Forest Lawn with her husband, topographical engineer of the US Army, Captain William George Williams, in April 1901. Captain Williams was originally buried with military honors in 1847. Apparently, the upper-class deceased were removed more respectfully than paupers. The latest removals from this plot were made in 2008, and today the site is marked with a memorial (Figure 1.1a). None of the cemeteries in use during the early nineteenth century still exists today. However, the cemeteries established in the 1850s are still in perpetual use (Table 1.2). Ever since Forest Lawn was taken into use in 1850, most of the burials from old cemeteries were reinterred there. In 1852, a total of 1,158 persons were removed from the Franklin Square Burial Grounds (located at the west side of Delaware street between Church and Eagle Streets) to a specific area at Forest Lawn, and a memorial was erected over them (Figure 1.1b). At various cemeteries in Buffalo, the removals were conducted ten to twenty-four years after the cemeteries were closed. At the time of the earliest removals, even the oldest

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a

b

Figure 1.1a.–b. Some of the old cemeteries and their removed deceased are memorialized by memorials erected at the former site of the old cemetery or at the new burial site. A memorial at the site of former High Street Cemetery records the removals to Forest Lawn (a). At Forest Lawn a memorial was erected for the persons removed from the Franklin Square Burial Grounds (b). © Sanna Lipkin.

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removed burials were relatively recent, between twenty-seven and seventy years old (Table 1.1). It is likely that many of the removed deceased had living descendants at the time of their removal. Both written sources and archaeological investigations indicate that whenever human remains have been found during construction work and road widening, they have been reinterred in the still-existing cemeteries inside the city borders. Those individuals with existing memorials were reinterred in family-owned plots. On Forest Lawn family plots, the removed children’s memorials are usually the oldest ones present. Forest Lawn was a typical American garden cemetery that sold family plots that were perpetual and ensured that the families would remain together forever, whereas at previous cemeteries people were generally buried as parish members rather than in family plots (Forest Lawn 1867; Baugher and Veit 2014: 132–33). As the massive removals in Buffalo Table 1.1. Public cemeteries in Buffalo that are no longer used for burying purposes.

Cemetery

Years In Use

Reinterred at Forest Lawn

Black Rock Burying Ground (old)

1804–1850

1874

Black Rock Burying Ground (new)

1820–1860

1874

City Hall Cemetery (cholera)

1832

Cold Spring Burying Before 1812– Ground 1840s

1850, 1876

Delaware and North Street Cemetery

1830–1865

1884–1892

Delaware Park, Flint Hill (300 soldiers)

1812–1813

Franklin Square Burying Grounds

1804–1836

1852

High Street Cemetery 1832 (Cholera)– (North and Best 1874 Street Cemetery) “Potter’s Field”

1884–1901, 1912, 1907, 1924, 2008

Old North Street Cemetery

1832–?

1859

Seneca Mission Church Cemetery

1820s–?

1884

St. Joseph

1850–1911

Reinterred to Lakeside (established just outside Buffalo in 1875)

1888–1892

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Table 1.2. Public cemeteries still in use in Buffalo. Cemetery

Year Established

Prevalent Origin of the Buried

Concordia Cemetery

1859

German

Forest Lawn

1850

American, British

Pine Hill (several cemeteries)

1859

Holy Cross Cemetery

1849

Irish

occurred at the same time that attitudes concerning family plots changed, it is also likely that the shift toward perpetual cemetery plots was generated through the very acts of removal and the bad state of former burial grounds. The importance of keeping families together for eternity is testified by some memorials and cemetery records which indicate that some children’s remains and memorials were brought by their parents from their old place of residence to Buffalo.

Inequality and Memorialization Often an unequal or clearly controversial status of an individual has led to unusual burial or memorial practices. In Buffalo this is visible alongside other important definers of the buried, such as ethnicity, race, or nationality. Many burials were probably unmarked or originally marked with perishable memorials such as wooden memorials, and today based on cemetery records many burials at Forest Lawn remain unmarked. One of the currently unmarked burials belongs to Elmira Brockenborough, who died in 1874 of scarlet fever at the age of two (Figure 1.2). Her interment at Forest Lawn was the first recorded one of an African American by their full name, even though none of her family members has preserved memorials on the plot. Instead, close to her original burial is a plaque erected in 2010 by the Afro-American Historical Association of the Niagara Frontier. She was the granddaughter of Alexander and Margaret Brockenborough. Margaret was a native of Scotland and Alexander a tailor and a cloth dyer, born in Virginia (New York State Census 1875a). The grandfather’s remains were relocated in 1912 inside the plot thirty-six years after his death in 1876. The funerary record does not indicate why he was removed, but such relocations were quite common at Forest Lawn. For instance, records listing the buried between 1865 and 1875 indicate that internal removals at Forest Lawn were as common as removals to Forest Lawn from other burial grounds in Buffalo, or removals to other burial grounds outside Buffalo. About half of these removals were those of adults, the rest those of children. Such rearrangements may have been

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Figure 1.2. Elmira Brockenborough’s unmarked burial is memorialized by a plaque erected close to the driveway near her original burial site. © Sanna Lipkin.

normal at a burial ground where families were buried in their own plots. It is possible that when families had recently moved to a new city, and did not already own a plot at the cemetery, they buried their first deceased family member in a rented space. Due to high child mortality rates, children were often the first to die. At the United German and French Cemetery at Pine Hill a specific area is set aside for children’s memorials. It is possible that at this Catholic cemetery children’s burials were not generally later removed to the family plots. In 1874, the reinterment of “the White Woman of the Genesee,” Mary Jemison (1742/3–1833), was considered timely and urgent, but it also testifies how care of the surviving family and actions of notable white men—here William Pryor Letchworth—may lead to unforgettable life stories displayed in public. Jemison was born on a ship between Ireland and America, and at the age of twelve she was taken captive after her family was killed by the Shawnees. She was adopted by the Seneca, and was married twice, the second time to a Seneca Chief. Upon request of Jemison’s relatives, her remains were relocated from the cemetery in the vicinity of the Seneca Mission Church at Buffalo Creek Reservation in March 1874, where her memorial was vandalized and chipped into souvenirs after the reservation was abandoned in the 1840s and sold in the

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1850s. Her current memorial is located at the Letchworth Nature Reserve (Figure 1.3a), in the area of the reservation and where she lived for more than seventy years (Seaver 1824; Goldman 1983: 32; some of the above information is available on her first and current memorial, as well as museum exhibition at Letchworth Park). Another famous individual, Seneca leader Sagoyewatha, also known as Red Jacket (who died from cholera in 1830), was also exhumed from the mission cemetery and reburied at Forest Lawn in 1884. Red Jacket played a leading role in the decision of the New York Seneca and the Iroquois of Upper Canada to withdraw from participating in a non-Indian war, the Canadian-American conflict (1812–1815) (Seneca Nation of Indians 2021). In 1792 President George Washington gave Red Jacket the “Red Jacket Peace Medal” which in the words of Seneca Nation President Matthew B. Pagels is “a symbol of peace, friendship and enduring sovereign relationships between the United States and the Six Nations.” The medal was repatriated to the Seneca Nation in May 2021 and is located at the Onohsagwë:dé Cultural Center in Allegany (Seneca Nation Newsletter 2021). Events, newspaper articles, and letters related to the reinterment of Red Jacket were published by the Buffalo Historical Society in 1885 in a book called Red Jacket that is referenced in the following. In a letter by William C. Bryant in 1884 (Red Jacket 1885: 63–64), the old missionary cemetery was described as “the pasture ground for vagrant cattle, and was in a scandalous state of dilapidation and neglect.” Bryant claims that in 1852 the removal of Red Jacket’s remains and erection of a suitable memorial was mentioned by George Copway. Wheeler Hotchkiss, a local businessman, became interested in the idea and together with Copway and an undertaker, Farwell, exhumed the remains. As Bryant describes, this was “an impulsive and ill-advised act on their part.” The violation of the burial was immediately noticed by the Seneca who demanded the remains back. When the remains were surrendered the skull had, as Bryant says, “a thin crust of plaster of Paris showing that an attempt had been made to take a cast of it.” The Seneca gave the remains to Red Jacket’s stepdaughter Ruth Stevenson. The remains were in Stevenson’s cabin for a few years and later she buried them in a secret location. Decades later she delivered them to the Buffalo Historical Society, which according to Bryant’s letter, after consulting the Council of the Seneca Nation, had made plans to relocate the remains to a permanent resting place at Forest Lawn. Before the reinterring that took place on 9 October 1884, the remains were stored in the vault of the Western Savings Bank for six years (Red Jacket 1885: 51). Even though thirty-eight persons of the Six Nations were present at the reinterment (Red Jacket 1885: 45–46), the event was orchestrated by the members of the Buffalo Historical Society. The patronizing language used

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in the Society’s book Red Jacket gives good insight into how the invited members of the Six Nations were regarded as “guests” and “representatives” in the funerary ceremonies. They were a minority among the three thousand guests who took part in the ceremonies (Red Jacket 1885: 24). The attitude is clear in the writing of Buffalo Daily Courier (Red Jacket 1885: 51–52): Mr. Bryant . . . explained to them [the representatives of the Six Nations] the nature of the ceremonials which were intended to commemorate and perpetuate the eloquence and oratory of the Six Nations. . . . It was explained that pall-bearers would have to be selected from the representatives of the several nations, and it was intended that the Indians should commemorate the event in their native tongue by singing of a dirge and by addresses which would afterward be translated and published. They were particularly informed that they were at liberty to celebrate their illustrious dead in their own way, with such assistance from the white man as they might be able to render. (9 October 1884)

Along with Red Jacket, nine other Seneca chiefs were buried at Forest Lawn. These remains were exhumed from the old missionary cemetery. Relative to Red Jacket, Chief William Jones of the Snipe Clan of the Senecas was interviewed by Buffalo Express reporter (Red Jacket 1885: 53–56): The Indians are all very thankful to the white people for the interest they take in us, especially at this time, when they wish to honor Red Jacket and other chiefs. . . . Although we reverence his memory we are too poor to build such a monument. . . . The cemetery which then surrounded the Mission Church was well kept and was not sold. It belongs to us. We intended to fence it in, but have never done so. There we buried all our chiefs, but for the past thirty years we have used the cemeteries at the new reservation, at Cattaraugus . . . . At the old cemetery, where they took up the bones of Destroy Town, Twenty Canoes, Little Billy, Tall Peter, and other chiefs, little remains for us. There were about eight acres, but the white men have encroached upon it inch by inch. The Germans who have settled near it bury their dead there, but they have no right to do it. (7 October 1884)

Even though there is always a reason to suspect that the original wording of the interviewees is published in a newspaper article, this short quotation gives one aspect of how the Seneca people may have thought of the old cemetery and the removal project of the whites. While exhuming the remains of the chiefs, the undertaker, Farwell, had to tunnel under the graves of the white people who had recently buried their dead on top of the previous burials. The volume Red Jacket (1885: 9–10) reveals that seven of the exhumed skeletons were identified and nine “remains of warriors” remained unidentified. All of them were reinterred at Forest Lawn where the grave monument depicting Red Jacket with a larger-than-life statue greets visitors close to one of the cemetery gates. It is surrounded by headstones of a few of his fellow Seneca chiefs (Figure 1.3b). The old

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a

b

Figure 1.3a.–b. Above Mary Jemison’s current memorial stands a statue made by H. K. Bush-Brown (a). Red Jacket’s memorial is visibly located close to one of Forest Lawn’s gates (b). © Sanna Lipkin.

missionary cemetery has never been subject to major construction and is today a small public park, Seneca Indian Park. Two memorials provide information for the park visitors on the space as a final resting place for the Seneca people. In both of the previous cases, the individuals, Jemison and Red Jacket, were influential in their own communities. Jemison’s story was already considered important when she was alive, and she was interviewed by James Seaver (1824). Red Jacket is said to have opposed Christianity, American extension of the schools and laws to the reservation, and treaties regarding land, whereas the opinions among the Seneca were said to have generally been divided (Goldman 1983: 27–29). Jemison was also concerned by the imposed American education: The use of ardent spirits amongst the Indians, and the attempts which have been made to civilize and Christianize them by the white people has constantly made them worse; increased their vices and robbed them of many of their virtues; and will ultimately produce their extermination. I have seen, in a number of instances, the effects of education upon some of our Indians, who were taken when young, from their families, and placed at school before they had had an opportunity to contract many Indian habits, and there kept till they arrived at manhood; but I have never seen one of those but an Indian after he returned. (Seaver 1824: 31)

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Memorials of both Jemison and Red Jacket exist because of American Protestants. They may be seen as a part of the general movement of exhuming the remains from the abandoned cemeteries and reinterring them to the perpetual ones, but as such they represent the white Protestant values and understanding of death, the importance of a certain kind of burial place and memorial as well as cemeteries as spaces. The removals and erected memorials may also be seen to cover up and compensate for the killing, maltreatment, and dispossessing of the Indigenous people. Americanization efforts by the colonial settlers extended from the world of the living to that of the dead, and these efforts materialized in the form of memorials, both at Forest Lawn and the Letchworth Nature Reserve as well as Seneca Indian Park, the original space of burial of the Seneca people living at the Buffalo Creek Reservation. American Protestants were influential also in defining the status of the poor. Public schools were considered a vehicle to assimilate Indigenous people and immigrant children and teach them Protestant American values. Additionally, “Americanizing” was further fostered by establishing almshouses or poorhouses and orphanages, where “corrupted” children were to be resettled into new environments (De Cunzo 2006: 181; Baxter 2019a: 47–49). The superiority of white Americans over other groups of people affected inequality in treatment on death, as highlighted by research on the Erie County Poorhouse cemetery (1851–1913) which was located on the premises of SUNY at Buffalo, South Campus. During infrastructure improvements between 2008 and 2012, remains of 376 individuals were disinterred at the site, about 12 percent of those individuals recorded as interred at the burial ground. Archival work conducted by Jennifer Muller (2017: 121, 132–33) suggests that sixty-six children buried at the cemetery were not representative of all children living in the poorhouse. In addition to those newborns who died at birth or shortly afterwards, many of the children were likely suffering from a disabling disease or impairment and were not considered fit to live in families. Of the disinterred, older children (less than ten individuals) between ages seven and eleven indeed suffered from malnutrition, enamel hypoplasia, and scurvy; one child’s right tibia was broken at two points. Additionally, one of the fifty-eight children less than two years old was buried wrapped in newspaper, which was a cheap option for funerary attire (Muller 2017). The inmates at the poorhouse were mostly physically or mentally impaired and above all, in the eyes of the surrounding society, disabled because they were incapable of work (Byrnes 2017: 209). Contrasts within the divided Buffalo society were prominent, and the two largest immigrant groups, Catholic German and Irish, and their religion, were met with hostility from the American Protestants (Gerber 1989). The Irish laborers in particular had limited possibilities for social mobility, and their

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impoverished identity and hereditary pauperism were stigmatizing. The problem of the poor in the city center was solved by establishing a poorhouse on a more rural site. The effects of institutionalization, physical impairment, age, nationality, and gender led to the pathologizing and disabling of specific children by preventing their social and physical contact with their relatives (Muller 2017: 134). Today, the unearthed remains from Erie County Poorhouse have been reburied at Catholic Assumption Cemetery in Grand Island, New York, and are commemorated with a plaque at their former burial site.

Memorials of Children of Affluent Families In Buffalo, differences between social classes were obvious, and were clearly reflected in the burial customs and memorial stones. Earlier research indicated that late nineteenth century cemeteries reinforced inequality through memorials in North America (McGuire 1988; Baugher and Veit 2014: 198). At Forest Lawn, memorials for the middle-upper- and upper-class families are splendid—often with high obelisks or engraved marble memorials or mausoleums. The class differences are also seen in the children’s memorials. The contrast between being buried wrapped in a newspaper in an unmarked grave at the poorhouse and the children’s memorials of the middle- and upper-class is striking. Based on census records, most of the families who erected exceptional memorials for their children were of the upper-class, which can be verified by the fathers’ professions and that the families had domestic servants. Children of affluent families including those of merchants or politicians were remembered with extraordinary memorials. While during the nineteenth century the idealization of childhood as a time of innocence did not become realized among the children of the poor, the memorials of middle- and upper-class children were filled with symbolism of innocence and purity. Children’s grave memorials differ significantly from adults’ memorials, which are usually simple blocks stating the name of the deceased, familial status and/ or birth and death dates. While child mortality was high (Brosco 1999), it was important to socialize children to understand death. Children were educated in the approved ways to react to the deaths of fellow children. By the 1870s children were given death kits including dolls and coffins with which they could practice dressing “dead” dolls and play funerals. On Sundays, families visited cemeteries, where they spent time promenading and playing. Consequently, the grave monuments were not important only in expressing status and wealth but also in socializing children (Baugher and Veit 2014: 133–34; Baxter 2019a: 139; 2019b: 39–42).

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During the nineteenth century children became more precisely categorized according to stages of childhood (Baxter 2019a: 39), and this is visible in the memorials for children at Forest Lawn. Many of the nineteenth century memorials at Buffalo are illegible or difficult to read because of lichen and erosion, and many children’s memorials remain unidentified. Nevertheless, certain memorial types may be connected to certain age groups. A few newborns are commemorated with marble stones of babies lying on a bed, empty baby beds, or just a bare pillow. These domestic items are typical for urban, more affluent middle-class, Protestant, nineteenth-century children’s memorials. The sculptures depicting children were more expensive than simpler stones, and the sleeping babies, symbolizing a child’s innocence and belonging to the domestic sphere of life, are the most common sculptures depicting children in the US. These sculptures also symbolize final sleep, and babies’ own space in their homes, and nurseries, which were considered safe symbols of innocence and separation from the adult sphere of life. Additionally, innocence is further underlined through lack of clothing; the babies had nothing to hide. An empty bed, with a blanket pulled back and a baby’s head depression still on the pillow, represented unfulfillment and a life cut short (Snyder 1989). These metaphors of sleep and rest symbolize the belief of final sleep before the Resurrection and Final Judgment. Lamb statues, also symbols of innocence, are common among memorials for newborns and small children, and especially among children aged two to five years. If a family had lost more than one child, the memorial stone may represent several lambs, or some of the family’s children were memorialized with sculptures of pigeons. Additionally, small obelisks, crosses, and scrolls are common among small children’s memorials. Occasionally, this age group is also marked with small stone coffins. Memorials of children under five years of age are more common than older children’s memorials, which reflects the mortality figures. The adolescents are commemorated either with simple memorials identical to those of adults or occasionally with similar memorials as older children around ten years old.

Temples Marble temples or temple headstones comprise a significant and distinctive monument form in Forest Lawn Cemetery and were mostly reserved for older children or adolescents. The youngest, marked by a one-and-ahalf meter-high temple with four Corinthian capitals and an urn sculpture on top, was Clarence Rumsey who died from croup in 1868 at the age of three. Based on the New York State Census 1865a record he was the only son of a tanner, and in the marble temple he was memorialized with a phrase: “Gone to His beautiful home.” Another approximately one-meter-

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high temple was erected for eleven-year-old Jeanie Wilson, a daughter of a local merchant (United States Census 1860). Her name, the names of her parents, her age, and birth and death dates were written on a pillow that is situated on a stand inside the temple (Figure 1.4a). William Perkins, the son of a clerk (New York State Census 1865b), died from typhoid fever at ten years old in 1870, according to funerary records. His memorial is a headstone with temple pillars and a roof decorated with calla lilies. Most of the inscription has eroded, but the last line says, “We shall meet again.” Another temple headstone with an incised pigeon and a cross on top belongs to Lizzie Greenwood, who died, based on the funerary record, from consumption at the age of seventeen in 1878 (Figure 1.4b). Her father was a life insurance agent (United States Census 1870). Her memorial reads: “Not lost but gone before, / Gone where no dark sin is cherished, where no woes nor fear invade, gone ere youths first flower had perished, to a youth that ne’er can fade, / Enter as a bird to your mountain, thou who aren’t weary of sin, and to the clear flowing fountain, where you may wash and be clean . . . .” The temples for children and adolescents provide an association with God’s temple in heaven. The inscriptions also speak of immortality, celestial wisdom, and the innocence of the youth. The lily, a symbol of beauty, youth, fertility, and death occurs often in the sculptural memorials. Similar temple headstones also occasionally occur at Forest Lawn on the graves of mothers. a

b

Figure 1.4a.–b. Jeanie Wilson (a) and Lizzie Greenwood (b) were memorialized by temple memorials. © Sanna Lipkin.

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Statues of Children and Angels Whereas babies were depicted lying on beds, older children were also occasionally portrayed in marble sculptures. At Forest Lawn, two girls are sculpted in life-sized statues. As per funerary records, Tacie Hannah Fargo died at the age of one year and nine months in 1866 from consumption (Figure 1.5a). She was the daughter of Jerome F. and Hannah Fargo; Jerome Fargo’s brother William Fargo founded the American Express Company in 1850, and Wells, Fargo & Company in 1852 (Goldman 1983: 60). Tacie Fargo is depicted sitting on a tasseled blanket, wearing a beautiful dress and holding a flower bouquet with daisies and calla lilies, symbols of purity and innocence occurring in children’s memorials. The sculpture was carved by J. Sharkey, Greenwood Gem, NY and is protected by a glass case. Bessie Isabella Hoffman died at the age of four years in 1895 of meningitis (funerary records) and her statue also stands inside a glass case, holding a flower bouquet. The glass cases were erected to protect sculptures carved in soft marble that rather quickly decays, as the other marble monuments show. Another sculpture depicting two children marks the grave of Laura and Willie Gardner who died in 1879 less than one month apart (Figure 1.5b). Laura Gardner’s arm rests on the shoulder of her younger a

b

Figure 1.5a.–b. Occasionally children are memorialized by sculptures depicting them. Tacie Hannah Fargo’s life-sized statue is protected by a glass case (a). Laura and Willie Gardner are depicted in a hug (b). © Sanna Lipkin.

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brother, and in her other hand she holds a bouquet. Willie Gardner has a small lamb in his palm. The child–lamb pairing envisions the child close to nature, associated with peace and virtue during the late nineteenth century (Snyder 1989: 20). Laura Gardner’s cause of death in the burial records is stated as “kidney” and William Gardner died from scarlet fever. They were buried simultaneously in the same grave in a different plot at Forest Lawn, but later removed to the current plot possibly in 1882 when Thomas Clark was buried there and when Wm. F. Gardner was removed from Howard Cemetery. Two children who died during the late nineteenth century and were buried at Forest Lawn received angel statues. Franklin, the only child of the Alberger family, died at the age of five. His father was a store clerk (New York State Census 1855a). The angel on his memorial sits on a rock next to a cut tree and is writing on a board hanging on it; the scroll once had writing that is now illegible. Belle Bingham who died in 1879, aged ten years and six months, is also commemorated with an angel statue (Figure 1.6). In the cemetery records, “accident” is filed as the cause of her death. Her latest address at the Invalids and Tourists hotel suggests that before her death she was considered somehow disabled or dysfunctional. Being disabled often meant exclusion from families, but it was likely different to live in a public institute than in a private one. Belle was the only child of the Binghams who owned an iron foundry (New York State Census Figure 1.6. The angel in Belle Bingham’s memorial stands on stones. One hand is raised 1875b). Her mother was born in England and her father was a while the other rests on an amphora. At the second-generation Englishman in feet of the angel lies an anchor, a symbol of hope. © Sanna Lipkin. Buffalo.

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Dog Sculpture According to his memorial, John Sibley Ganson, son of New York-born lawyer and politician John Ganson (New York State Census 1855b), died at the age of nine (Figure 1.7). The memorial does not record the year of death, but it was probably 1858 or 1859 because in the 1850 Census John Ganson is recorded to have been one year old (United States Census 1850). As with other boys of his age, he likely had started to explore the opportunities and realities outside his home, the public sphere of life, which was rarely available to the mothers and sisters of the middle- and upper-class (see Baxter 2019a: 44). Choosing a marble dog for his memorial could suggest that he may have had a particular kind of relationship with the family’s pet. It is possible that together they explored the neighborhoods around his home. During the nineteenth century, play was considered natural and important for a child’s upbringing (Snyder 1989: 25).

Figure 1.7. In the memorial of John Sibley Ganson, a dog lies in front of a food bowl. © Sanna Lipkin.

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Conclusion: The Importance of Memorialization Today In the modern western world a burial place is often regarded as perpetual and, in religious contexts, sacred. However, there is great variation in laws in different countries on how the right for burial is defined, or what is regulated regarding the memorials. In New York State, it is possible to purchase perpetual care of lots (Not for Profit Corporation Law Article 15 § 1507.b) but without such an agreement, after seventy-five years, if the owners of the lot cannot be identified after a reasonable search, a cemetery corporation may reacquire, resubdivide, and resell the lot (Not for Profit Corporation Law Article 15 § 1513.a). In Finland, the right for a burial place is not perpetual, but ends after fifty years, unless there were other family burials made at the lot (Church Law 26.11.1993/1054 17.2 § [30.12.2003/1274]). Differences in laws and cultural backgrounds naturally affect how removals, research of human remains, and their reburial is understood. This also applies to the past. The massive removals in nineteenth-century Buffalo were viewed as a necessity, and the removal of human remains and memorials occurred regardless of social rank. However, lower social status burials could be left in place, perhaps due to the lack of a memorial, only to be discovered later during construction work. The relatives of the middle- or upper-class deceased ensured that a peaceful resting place was given to their loved ones, but efforts to remove the pauper burials were limited. Differential attitudes toward fellow deceased citizens in Buffalo were apparent during the massive burial removals. In addition to the state of the old cemeteries, Mark Twain was likely also commenting on the unequal removals. Nevertheless, removing remains to Forest Lawn and at Forest Lawn continued up to the beginning of the twentieth century, and according to the cemetery records, it was quite common among all social classes. The idea of perpetual burial grounds evolved during the late nineteenth century and the main purpose of exhumation was to remove remains to keep families together. Middle- and upper-class burials were regarded as perpetual, sacred, and untouchable, marked by headstones. The burial place and the memory of the deceased were a strong experience, and even though the original burial places were not perpetual it seems to have been important to keep the families together even at death and to ensure that the family members had appropriate resting places. Even though the family provided the time, effort, and income for erecting a memorial, without maintenance they have become illegible, collapsed, or covered by leaves and grass. Taking care of the memorials is up to the surviving descendants, and if none exist, the memories may fade. Forgotten burials, such as those of the poor or those considered inferior, were and are even today more frequently disturbed and disrupted by urban development projects

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on sites of abandoned cemeteries. In Buffalo, differences between social classes were obvious, and this was clearly reflected in the burial customs and memorials. For instance, children from some elite families had splendid memorials erected over their graves regardless of their age, gender, or health, whereas an infant who died at the poorhouse could simply be wrapped in a newspaper. Restoring identity or individuality to the deceased has been regarded as important for an archaeologist analyzing the deceased. Human remains from the Erie County Poorhouse were studied for their gender, ancestry, diseases, traumas, cause of death, and religion, and even though they were not historically identified, the remains were handled with care and reburied (Gambini 2017). Hundreds of skeletons had been dug up at the site earlier, for instance in 1964, and have been bulldozed in two possible locations near Amherst’s Audubon Golf Course. The Buffalo Enquirer criticized Buffalo’s dark history of ignorant removals in 1907 and 1924, but today town officials are considering an acceptable way to remember the poorhouse burials. Together with Forest Lawn, they have proposed that the site should now remain untouched, making it an official burial ground by incorporating it into a proposed Amherst Memory Garden (Watson 2020). It remains to be seen if this will be fulfilled. Recently, past burial grounds have been marked with memorials at the sites of the poorhouse, Seneca Missionary Church Cemetery, and High Street Cemetery, though many others remain unmarked. A thorough research of the sites, records, reports, and newspapers can serve as means to commemorate marginalized people similar to how the nondestructive fieldwork and interdisciplinary collaboration of an archaeologist, a historian, a genealogist and a geophysicist at the Brier Hill Cemetery of the Dutchess County Poorhouse in New York has. Almost twenty years of research has restored the narratives of the residents of the poorhouse. Additionally, relocating, remarking, and digitally preserving the locations of the grave markers meets the challenge of their decay and the possibility of erasing the buried people from the landscape. This research speaks to the need to understand the history of one’s own community and to continue care for the people of the past (Beisaw et al. 2021). Location of the unmarked graves was also the objective of Wadsworth, Supernant, and Dersch (2021) who argue that including Indigenous voices in research design of remote sensing can contribute to reconciliation and decolonization. Similar work could be implemented at both Amherst Memory Garden and Seneca Indian Park. As Barker (2018: 1146) frames it, “it is important to understand how memory is rooted in landscape and how deathscapes (a landscape marked by cemeteries, burial sites, and memorials to the dead) as a kind of landscape imbued with particular power are linked into wider geographies of belonging and

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exclusion.” It should be up to local communities, bearing in mind the colonial aspects, to decide and plan how to restore or maintain the memory of the past cemetery spaces that exist or have been erased or significantly altered in the city scape. Restoring dignity and the memory of the lives that were once forgotten, seems to be something that has united the citizens of Buffalo throughout the centuries. Exceptional stories are retold and commemorated by exceptional memorials. Being the first African American buried at Forest Lawn, Elmira Brockenborough’s unidentified burial place was marked by a plaque, and her burial place is along the route of tours that memorize important African Americans of the city. Red Jacket’s efforts to retain his people’s way of life was appreciated and valued by subsequent generations, who, in turn, wanted to offer him everlasting remembrance. Mary Jemison’s special life story has also affected how she is commemorated at the Letchworth Nature Reserve. Stories of human lives are important for local communities. These stories of human lives also attract people, especially if they are somehow unusual. Even this chapter chooses to restore attention to individuals who were remembered in an unusual manner. For instance, Belle Bingham’s cause of death and final moments in a private institution for the sick and disabled would probably have remained unknown if not for a large angel statue marking her grave in place of a more prevalent memorial type such as a lamb or pigeon sculpture. Sanna Lipkin is an Academy Research Fellow in archaeology at the University of Oulu. Her current research projects, both funded by the Academy of Finland, focus on emotions related to child death as well as daily life and the afterlife of children in post-medieval Finland. This chapter was written, and the mentioned cemeteries visited, while she was Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. She recently coedited (with T. Kallio-Seppä and P. R. Mullins) Historical Burials in Europe: Natural Mummification, Burial Customs, and Ethical Challenges, a special issue of Historical Archaeology and (with T. Äikäs) Entangled Beliefs and Rituals: Religion in Finland and Sápmi from the Stone Age to Contemporary Times.

References Barker, A. J. 2018. “Deathscapes of Settler Colonialism: The Necro-Settlement of Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108(4): 1134–49. https://www.doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2017.1406327. Baugher, S., and R. F. Veit. 2014. The Archaeology of American Cemeteries and Gravemarkers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

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Baxter, J. E. 2019a. The Archaeology of American Childhood and Adolescence. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida. ———. 2019b. “How to Die a Good Death: Teaching Young Children about Mortality in Nineteenth Century America.” Childhood in the Past: An International Journal 12(1): 35–49. Beisaw, A. M., W. P. Tatum, V. Buechele, and B. G. MacAdoo. 2021. “Mapping a Poorhouse and Pauper Cemetery as Community Engaged Memory Work.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology. https://www.doi.org/10.1007/ s10761-021-00617-4. Brosco, J. P. 1999. “The Early History of the Infant Mortality Rate in America: ‘A Reflection Upon the Past and a Prophecy of the Future.’” Pediatrics February 103(2): 478–85. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.103.2.478. Byrnes, J. F. 2017. “Injuries, Impairment, and Intersecting Identities: The Poor in Buffalo, NY 1851–1913.” In Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability: Theoretical, Ethnohistorical, and Methodological Perspectives, ed. J. F. Byrnes and J. L. Muller, 201–22. Springer International Publishing. https://www.doi .org/10.1007/978-3-319-56949-9_11. Davis, J. H. 1993. “A Curious Dream: Containing a Moral.” In The Mark Twain Encyclopedia, ed. J. R. LeMaster and J. D. Wilson, 195–96. New York: Garland Publishing. De Cunzo, L. A. 2006. “Exploring the Institutions: Reform, Confinement, Social Change.” In Historical Archaeology, ed. M. Hall and S. W. Silliman, 167–89. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Forest Lawn. 1867. Buffalo: Officers of the Forest Lawn Cemetery. Gambini, B. 2017. “UB to Reinter and Memorialize Remains Uncovered from the Former Erie County Poorhouse Cemetery.” Official UB News and Information for the Media, 10 October. Retrieved 14 February 2020 from http://www.buffalo .edu/news/releases/2017/10/016.html. Gerber, D. A. 1989. The Making of an American Pluralism: Buffalo, New York, 1825– 1860. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Goldman, M. 1983. High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York. Albany: State University of New York Press. Hodge, W. 1879. Buffalo Cemeteries. Excerpts from Publications—Buffalo Historical Society Vol.1. Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society. Keels, T. H. 2003. Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries. Charleston: Arcadia Publishing. McGuire, R. 1988. “Dialogues with the Dead: Ideology and the Cemetery.” In The Recovery of Meaning: Historical Archaeology in the Eastern United States, ed. M. P. Leone and P. B. Potter Jr., 435–80. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Muller, J. L. 2017. “Rendered Unfit: ‘Defective’ Children in the Erie County Poorhouse.” In Bioarchaeology of Impairment and Disability: Theoretical, Ethnohistorical, and Methodological Perspectives, ed. J. F. Byrnes and J. L. Muller, 119–38. Springer International Publishing. https://www.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56949-9_7. New York State Census. 1855a. FamilySearch. Database with images. Erie, Buffalo City, Ward 11, image 34, County Clerk Offices, New York. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9B5S-S1Q?cc=1937 366&wc=M6GQ-668 percent3A237409201 percent2C237564601: 22 May 2014.

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———. 1855b. FamilySearch. Database with images. Erie, Buffalo City, Ward 10, image 29, County Clerk Offices, New York. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9B5S-9XX?cc=1937366&w c=M6GQ-D29 percent3A237409201 percent2C237559701: 22 May 2014. ———. 1865a. FamilySearch. Database with images. Erie, Buffalo, Ward 11, E.D. 01, image 4 of 22, citing multiple county Clerks; Warren and Lewis County Board of Supervisors; Multiple Counties in New York; Utica and East Hampton Public Libraries, New York. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://famil ysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6SLS-5N7?cc=1491284&wc=79J4-SFK percent3A57532501 percent2C57799101: 2 April 2016. ———. 1865b. FamilySearch. Database with images. Erie, Buffalo, Ward 10, E.D. 02, image 23, citing multiple county Clerks; Warren and Lewis County Board of Supervisors; multiple counties in New York; Utica and East Hampton Public Libraries, New York. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://familysearch .org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6SLS-1ZC?cc=1491284&wc=79J4-S6N percent3A 57532501 percent2C57795701: 2 April 2016. ———. 1875a. FamilySearch. Database with images. Erie, Buffalo, Ward 06, E.D. 02, image 14, State Library, Albany. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://family search.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HT-6M4S-7DT?cc=1918735&wc=M6LB-9M9 percent3A209416701 percent2C209605601: 21 May 2014. ———. 1875b. FamilySearch. Database with images. Erie, Buffalo, Ward 10, E.D. 01, image 22, State Library, Albany. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://fam ilysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-XXZ3-VFB?cc=1918735&wc=M6LB-W3J percent3A209416701 percent2C209636001: 21 May 2014. Red Jacket. 1885. Transactions of the Buffalo Historical Society. Vol. III. Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society. Seaver, J. E. 1824. A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison. The Project Gutenberg EBook #6960, November 2004, Last updated 24 June 2013. Retrieved 14 January 2020 from https://www.gutenberg.org/files/6960/6960-h/6960-h.htm. Seneca Nation Newsletter. 2021. “Red Jacket Peace Medal Returned to Seneca Nation after More Than a Century.” The Official Newsletter of the Seneca Nation, 14 May. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://sninews.org/wp-content/up loads/2021/06/5-14-21.pdf. Seneca Nation of Indians. 2021. “Historic Seneca Leaders.” Retrieved 15 September 2021 from https://sni.org/culture/historic-seneca-leaders/#1238. Snyder, E. M. 1989. “Innocents in a Worldly World: Victorian Children’s Gravemarkers.” In Cemeteries Gravemarkers, ed. R. E. Meyer, 11–29. Logan: University Press of Colorado, Utah State University Press. Twain, M. 1870. “A Curious Dream: Containing a Moral.” Buffalo Express, 30 April, 7 May. United States Census. 1850. FamilySearch. Database with images. New York, Erie, Buffalo, ward 5, image 76, NARA microfilm publication M432, Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-D1CQ-KZR?cc= 1401638&wc=95RD-168 percent3A1031313801 percent2C1033446601 percen t2C1033965601: 9 April 2016. ———. 1860. FamilySearch. Database with images. New York, Erie, 4th Ward Buffalo City, image 75, NARA microfilm publication M653, Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Retrieved 12 April 2022

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from https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-9BSC-9NKZ?cc=1473181 &wc=7QPF-1WY percent3A1589422212 percent2C1589431505 percent2C158 9431511: 24 March 2017. ———. 1870. FamilySearch. Database with images. New York, Erie, Buffalo, ward 10, image 53, NARA microfilm publication M593, Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from https://fam ilysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-6X9S-2LC?cc=1438024&wc=9227-SP6 percent3A518819101 percent2C519887601 percent2C520002101: 13 June 2019. Wadsworth, W., K. Supernant, and A. Dersch. 2021. “Integrating Remote Sensing and Indigenous Archaeology to Locate Unmarked Graves: A Case Study from Northern Alberta, Canada.” Advances in Archaeological Practice 9(3): 202–14. https://www.doi.org/10.1017/aap.2021.9. Watson, S. T. 2020. “Beneath Amherst’s Audubon Golf Course, a Long-Forgotten Mass Grave.” The Buffalo News, 9 February. Retrieved 14 February 2020 from https://buffalonews.com/2020/02/09/secret-buried-at-amherst-golf-courseis-revealed-after-55-years/.

CHAPTER 2

Reactions to Tragedy Familial and Community Memorials to Sudden Occupational Deaths in Britain and Ireland Harold Mytum

This volume considers burial, space, and memory of unusual death, and this chapter focuses most on memory, linked to the spaces where that memory is evoked through material culture. This may or may not be at the same location as burial—if in some cases there even was a burial. Commemorative strategies linked to tragedy range in scale of investment, size, and permanence, and need to be set against the far more widespread—but not archaeologically obvious—process of forgetting. The date range of the disasters selected for detailed analysis is from the later nineteenth and the twentieth century before World War I. It overlaps with the development of external war memorials (which started to appear in some numbers following the Boer War) but these are excluded here, as much has been written about such monuments and even though most name individuals in an institution or community, as with the memorials discussed here, they also relate to a wider and well-known national narrative and shared experience that occupational accidents do not. However, some insights made in relation to war memorials can be relevant to other communally experienced tragedies, and these will be noted.

Forgetting as a Cultural Strategy Archaeologists generally study the surviving material culture, seeing absences caused by natural taphonomic processes such as differential decay but also past cultural practices that leave little trace (Hodson 1964; Schiffer 2010). This has generally been portrayed as a negative phenomenon, rather than an opportunity to explore absence and what that might signify. In historical archaeology this may be because of the claim that archaeology can study forgotten segments of society, ignored by historians because of limited evidence in the documentary sources but represented by material remains (Little 1994). That, however, still works

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from existing data sets rather than the archaeologically invisible. Recently, however, there has been a growing appreciation in archaeology as a whole that absences are both significant and potentially informative in and of themselves (Hayes 2011; Russell 2012). Although the largest part of this chapter examines the physically present (though some of the material is extremely ephemeral), first the absent should be considered. The deaths of mariners at sea and those caused by industrial accidents, were rarely commemorated in any permanent way. The examples that we have to consider are, by their very nature, exceptions. Just as the loss of the ship the Ajax at Dun Laoghaire, its heroic leader, Captain John McNeill Boyd, and some of his crew, seized the public attention and compassion and led to significant commemoration, so all the other ships (even the ones whose crews they were trying to rescue) were quietly forgotten. Hundreds of mariners were lost in that one violent storm in February 1861; the only major commemorations were associated with the deaths of those who had attempted to rescue some (Mytum 2017). Stewart (2011) also notes that some maritime deaths were considered tragic and attracted communal fundraising (often among all or the officer component of the crew) to erect a memorial, while most did not. The same process of forgetting was also the norm for terrestrial occupational losses. Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth century suffered many tragic accidents, often associated with travel, construction, and industry. These would be routinely reported in the national and regional press but, once the news was no longer current, they had little impact beyond those immediately affected. Usually no monument was erected, though individual families grieved and may have added their deceased families to their communal grave plot or, whether the body was recovered or not, added their names to a graveyard monument. This inscription may or may not have mentioned the cause of death. All memorial inscriptions are far more a statement of forgetting than remembering, often with a focus on familial relationships and placing the deceased within time and, sometimes, place (Mytum 2006, 2007). Forgetting an occupational tragedy was just part of the selectivity of public commemoration; personal memory may have dwelled on the circumstances of death, but this was rarely publicly acknowledged. Forgetting as a cultural phenomenon has been considered by Connerton (1989), a doyenne of memory studies following his identification and analysis of social memory, with seven types of forgetting listed. Many are not relevant to the analysis of the material considered here, but two forms of forgetting defined by Connerton are worth considering further. While most of his examples relate to the state and its emphasis on selective remembering and forgetting, many also have a wider social forgetting component that was not directed through a political medium

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but was part of group coping strategies whether at the familial, class, or community level. The first type of forgetting relevant to occupational deaths is prescriptive forgetting (Connerton 2008: 61–62), where letting go of the memory allows social healing and a continuity in many aspects of life. With regard to occupational accidents, this forgetting facilitated the downplaying of ongoing dangers to those returning to work in this activity, for example shipping or mining. This was necessary for the capital owners to ensure a workforce for their ships or mines, but also for the mariners and miners themselves so that they could face the prospect of heading off for the unknown and potentially deadly challenges ahead. They had to maintain employment and income for their families, often encouraging other family members to join them in this way of life. Those staying behind in their homes also needed to limit that dwelling on the dangers for their own peace of mind, and forgetting further encouraged multigenerational engagement in the same occupation. Indeed, prescriptive memory was a survival strategy within coastal and mining communities as there were often few other options for the workers or for those with capital tied up in these industries. All were trapped in a network of structural interconnections that could not be allowed to unravel because of a tragedy; prescriptive forgetting is an adaptational strategy which prevents unusual disasters to disrupt the normality of established social and economic structures. The second type of forgetting is forgetting as humiliated silence (Connerton 2008: 67–69). This is a different form of adaptation which is largely associated with those who lost relatives, but it can also have dimension linked to the owners. Communities experienced at times substantial losses of their members in one catastrophe, and this powerlessness in the face of the power relations of business and workers was humiliating. The lack of choices in families was palpable. Even if they abandoned one industry, many others were as dangerous and others unknown, only available with a disrupting move and the breaking apart of social support networks in the place where they lived. Forgetting allowed the survivors to concentrate on their strengths, on their remaining social interrelationships, and rebuild their lives. Likewise, capital owners wished to forget failures so that their investors, their peers and competitors in the industry, and their customers all did not lose confidence in their decision-making powers and their ability to maintain a successful business. Moving on from tragedy meant that survivors of all kinds could concentrate on the future. The danger of forgetting was that lessons were not learned, and history could indeed repeat itself. This was seen in maritime, mining, and construction industries, but partly because all these tragedies cost money for investors and increased risk and partly because workers campaigned for

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better working conditions that included improved safety, remembering disasters could lead to change whereas forgetting tended to maintain the status quo and kept the practices and relationships the same. (This societal effect of remembering is discussed in the section “Conclusion: Beyond Remembering to Agency?”) However, much remembering was also conservative, taking a romantic and emotional view of loss linked to heroism and fate rather than confronting the cause of tragedy and whether it could have been averted. Remembering therefore had a variety of responses, and the monument case studies discussed in this chapter highlight this spectrum and then consider changes in practice which derived from remembering and which led to significant change.

Monuments and Memory The period considered in this study was one where families regularly invested heavily in commemorative strategies, though this declined in the latter part of the period (Mytum 2004a; Tarlow 1999). Memorials provided introductory phrases, details of the deceased in terms of their name, date of death, age, and often key familial relationships. Occasionally their occupation, address or cause of death would be noted. Some memorials also had an epitaph, frequently a Biblical verse. Some tragedies did lead to a response that led to a material focus for remembering. These could be small-scale, but some were physically impressive manifestations of mourning and loss; to date, interest in memorials has tended to focus on the famous, some of whom died in tragic circumstances (Greenwood 1990). Some of the features of family memorials can be seen in the communal monuments for victims of an industrial disaster, but often less information on each person was provided, and sometimes no personal details of victims are given at all. The monument could therefore primarily commemorate the individuals lost, or the tragic event as a whole. Most memorials were at burial sites, whether parish graveyards or cemeteries (Mytum 2004a; Tarlow 2000), and both are locales represented in the case studies here. Examples discussed below consider maritime, construction, and mining memorials, first with a comparative consideration of familial recognition of such losses, and then with a case study of a tragedy for each occupation. Aware that all these are the remembering exceptions rather than the forgetting norm, they nevertheless highlight the ways in which memorials in most cases had limited further impact beyond marking unexpected sudden losses of life and quietly becoming part of the community commemorative landscape, in a state described as generalized significance when no longer socially active (Mytum 2004b). A few, in contrast, were part of a

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larger program of action that led to change and can still act as communal foci to this day.

Families Remembering Occupational Accidents Many family headstones record losses at sea, and similarly they can record industrial deaths. Only rarely does the iconography reflect the event, mostly being standard monuments of the time and also serving to commemorate other family members who led full lives. Occasional memorials occur widely, but when many are found together, as at the iron foundry town of Blaenavon in the South Wales, they create a narrative wherein the individual agency of each family accumulates to make a shared statement of the risk of the community’s workers. It would not be possible to argue that each and every stone was making a political statement, but the assemblage indicates the role of worker assertion of rights through combined pressure of commemoration. Individual memorials often portray a sense of stoic acceptance of a tragedy rather than any apportionment of blame. The memorials of the coastal settlements of west Wales often mention mariner or master mariner as the occupation of the deceased, but these are often records of deaths on land, in many cases of elderly seamen; though the majority of inscriptions have the standard introduction “In memory of,” the location of the body is not explicitly stated. Only in a minority of cases are the circumstances of the death given (Mytum 1990, 2017). Examples of such information include those from St. Dogmael’s, Pembrokeshire: Alexander Beven, lost off the coast of Brazil in 1885, Arthur Bowen when the vessel sank on its way home from Bull-River (British Columbia, Canada) in 1875. Others were lost locally, but their families were elsewhere, such as John Cross, boy on the Pyrence, lost when it was wrecked on Cardigan Bay. Clearly families wished to record details such as the exact date, which was possible when a loss was recorded in a ship’s log but not when a vessel was lost unless there were survivors or it was observed by others. Thus, Alexander Bevan has an exact date on his memorial, but Arthur Bowen has only the month on his. The greatest degree of detail can be seen on the headstone for Thomas Harries, who was washed overboard in the Pacific Ocean on 31 January 1855, at latitude 55˚ south, longitude 79˚ west. There followed an epitaph, from the Gospel of Matthew, which reads “Therefore also you must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour” (24:44). This implies that it was God’s will to take Thomas at this time, an acceptance of his fate and the hope for his salvation. These memorials in all respects regarding form, materials, and decoration are similar to their local contemporaries of similar social

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class and religious denomination. Mariners did not mark themselves out, apart from naming their occupation, on their memorials. Construction workers only rarely have their occupation mentioned on their memorials; indeed, many of the navvies would not have had sufficient disposable income for their families to afford such memorials, especially after the loss of a breadwinner. This is in direct contrast to engineers and architects who often have monuments, though these again may not state their profession. An example of such a monument is that to Thomas Grainger, the Bramhope Tunnel engineer, at Gogar, Fife. He died as a result of a train collision on a line he had been responsible for (“Thomas Granger, Esq. C.E.” 1852: 318), but neither that, nor his occupation, are mentioned on his large neoclassical family monument. An exception regarding a worker’s death being stated is that to James Myers, at Yeadon Methodist Church where the details of the disaster are stated, and a poignant verse was provided (Figure 2.1a.–c.). This is a family memorial, as his daughter is subsequently added to the headstone. Individual memorials to miners are as rare as those to construction workers, but again there are exceptions. One exception is that of Peter Manderson, with details of the Hartley Pit disaster (Figure 2.1a.–c.). This a

c

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Figure 2.1a.–c.  Memorial texts on headstones of victims of occupational accidents. David Griffiths, master mariner, St. Mary’s, Newport, Pembrokeshire (a); Peter Manderson, St. Nicholas Church, Cramlington, County Durham (b); James Meyers, Yeadon Chapel, West Yorkshire (c).

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memorial has others added below his name, though with different surnames so they may or may not have been related; it is heavily eroded, so a full analysis is no longer possible. Other individual memorials may be erected for deceased by their colleagues, sometimes also including management. An example from Furness in Cumbria is of a local man killed at a mine, erected by other mineworkers. It was later used to commemorate his wife.

Maritime Disaster Memorial Maritime safety was in the interests of owners because, despite the rise of the insurance industry, the loss of vessels and their cargos could lead to financial disaster for the owners. Concerns for the crew were generally secondary except for family-owned vessels from small ports where the crew and their families were close-knit, as was often the case also with fishing vessels. The first age of safety, according to Oltedal (2018), ran through all the period under consideration here, where technical failures in construction were seen as the major reason for losses. However, Parsons and Allen emphasize that the need to make profits reduced interest in safety for much of the period, though campaigns led by Plimsoll led to laws being passed in Britain during the 1870s to prevent overloading of ships’ cargoes (N. Jones 2013). The introduction of steam created new dangers, but again it took decades before legislation to improve safety were enacted (Armstrong and Williams 2003). There was no official registering of accidents to create statistical data, but the Parliamentary Committee of 1839 concentrated on technical failure such as boiler explosions and faults in the hull, supporting Oltedal’s (2018: 9–10) analysis. Most maritime losses, if recorded at all, were on family memorials like those discussed above, but a few others received greater notice. Mention has already been made of the captain and some of the crew of the Ajax lost at Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire), examined as part of a study of Irish mariner forgetting and remembering (Mytum 2017). Here the Princess Alice disaster of 3 September 1878 is the case study, because it, like the Ajax, gained a great deal of publicity. In this case, however, it was not heroic rescuers but the scale of deaths of members of the public, on a day trip from Woolwich Dock eastwards along the Thames to Sheerness. Many families were on board the saloon-boat as it was returning on that Tuesday but, because of poor regulations regarding the movement of vessels along the Thames, it collided with a much heavier vessel, the Bywell Castle, after coming round a bend in the river (Lock 2014). The Princess Alice broke into three parts and sank in five minutes. Most were trapped inside, but those on the decks were thrown into the river

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where many drowned because they could not swim. Those that could, attempted to reach shore or the vessels that rapidly appeared on the scene; the Bywell Castle was not badly damaged in the collision, and its crew was able to save around fifty-five people. Unfortunately, the location of the sinking was particularly unfortunate because it was close to the outflow for large amounts of sewage at Barking Reach, with the result that many survivors died of infections within days. The only positive aspect of the location and timing was that the first classes training volunteers in the St. John’s Ambulance Service had only recently been completed at Woolwich, and they could assist the survivors (Pearn 1994). The result was that around seven hundred people died in the disaster, with bodies recovered from the scene and washed up for days afterwards along the shores of the tidal Thames estuary. The coroner’s inquest for the disaster was quickly started, but lasted two months, with reports of proceedings in the newspapers (“Terrible Collision on the Thames” 1878; “The Princess Alice Disaster” 1878). As so many families, including some of the middle classes, had died, this attracted far more attention than any typical maritime loss. A sixpenny fund was rapidly organized and received donations from twenty-three thousand people to pay for the white marble Celtic cross memorial at Woolwich Cemetery, London, where the 120 unidentified dead were interred (Figure 2.2a.–b.). The memorial still stands in the cemetery, adjacent to an area with no memorials where all the unclaimed bodies were interred. The memorial was inscribed on all four faces of the cross base (Figure 2.3a.–b.), but the monument form and decorative style and layout of the text and the monument itself were all standard for the time; only the content of the inscriptions differentiated this from similar memorials chosen for affluent family plots in contemporary cemeteries. Newspapers across the country reported the erection of the cross (“The Disaster to the Steamer Princess Alice” 1880), reflecting the national interest in the tragedy at the time that it happened and throughout the coroner’s inquest. Various improvements came about with the loss of life in this incident being at least one of the reasons given by some of the parties involved. The long inquest and its detailed report, and an enquiry by the Board of Trade, as well as questions in Parliament, all provided evidence that highlighted deficiencies and led to changes in regulations. At a local level, the Thames waterway regulations were both tightened and more widely publicized, and new sewage processing plants were constructed. More widely, whistle signals to indicate which change of course is intended began in 1880 and became compulsory in 1897, and that greater clarity on how vessels should pass was the main outcome (Kemp 2008), with other international discussion using the incident as an example that highlighted the

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a

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Figure 2.2a.–b. Princess Alice steamer disaster. Princess Alice and the Bywell Castle collide on the river Thames (a). Photo by Creative Commons: Harper’s Weekly, 12 October 1878, XXII(1137): 812–813, based on an Illustrated London News image. Celtic cross in Woolwich Cemetery (b). © Marathon on Geograph.

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a

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Figure 2.3a.–b. Inscriptions on the four faces of the Celtic cross base monument to those who died in the Princess Alice disaster 1878 (a). Erected 1880 at Woolwich Cemetery by the graves of the unidentified victims. Inscription on the panel on the Bramhope Memorial, Otley, West Yorkshire (b).

need for other reforms (Twiss 1878). The loss of the Titanic also led to change, in that case the design of lifejackets (Parsons and Allen 2018: 16), but generally losses of ships were seen as an acceptable risk by their owners; the mariners themselves have not been acknowledged by researchers as active in demanding better safety standards.

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Bramhope Tunnel and Memorial Britain was the home of the industrial revolution (Berg and Hudson 1992; Clark and Casella 2009) and the earliest development of an extensive railway network (Turnock 2016). Given the topography of the countryside, this often involved engineering on significant scale to create the gentle gradients needed for the locomotives. Techniques developed during the creation of the canal system were enhanced for the railways. Cuttings, embankments, viaducts, and tunnels were designed by engineers and created by large gangs of navvies, often a mix of local and transient labor. They have often been ignored by industrial archaeologists focusing on the engineering innovations and the architectural achievements, though recent work on navvy camps is beginning to redress this (Brooke 1975; Brennan 2015). One such railway was that joining Leeds to the North Yorkshire market town of Thirsk, thus linking the major industrial city of Leeds to the main London to Edinburgh line. This involved constructing the Bramhope Tunnel over two miles long which newspaper reports indicate involved more complex geology and unexpected amounts of water ingress than had been anticipated (Curley 1858). The tunnel had a number of vertical shafts up to the surface for smoke to escape, and a neoclassical portal at the south end. The north portal was the most elaborate and indeed decorative example in the tradition of railway tunnel portals and arguably the most iconic (Figure 2.4.a). It cost £11,345 9s 6d (Pragnell 2016), equivalent to £1,537,370 in today’s prices. The contractor for the tunnel was James Bray, who lived at Moor Park, Beckwithstaw, North Yorkshire which he rebuilt in 1859 in Elizabethan style at a cost of £8,000, and he lived there for ten years. James Bray was an iron and brass founder, but then he built the Thackley Tunnel before winning the contract to construct the Leeds and Thirsk Railway which included building the Bramhope Tunnel between 1845 and 1849. Though Bray was not experienced in railway work, he employed Thomas Grainger as engineer who had a long career in Scottish and then Yorkshire railway design. Ironically, Grainger died in a railway accident in Stockton-on-Tees in 1852 (“Thomas Granger, Esq. C.E.” 1852: 318). The tunnel construction cost the lives of twenty-four men, causing public concern at the time (Champion 1848); a family headstone commemorating one of the casualties is shown in Figure 2.1.b. But what is notable about this dangerous engineering feat is the communal memorial that was erected in 1849, of the graves of the other twenty-three, twenty were described as miners and the other three as excavators. The memorial at Otley was built by June 1849, when it was inaugurated with a service at the parish church, though work on the tunnel had not been completed and the newspaper report of the service immediately

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a

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Figure 2.4.a.–b. Bramhope Railway. Tunnel North portal (a). © Creative commons, Wikipedia. Memorial to those who died in the construction of the tunnel, Otley, West Yorkshire (b). © Harold Mytum.

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followed one which reported a death in the construction of one of the shafts for the tunnel (“Inauguration of a Tomb” 1849). This memorial can be seen as a monumental example of this benevolence. It is a stunning structure originally made of Caen stone, inspired by the castellated tunnel entrance, set on a base 3.7 m long. It has twice been restored, in 1913 and again in 1988; the original memorial tablet is now at the National Railway Museum (Figure 2.4a.–b.). The memorial reflects the commissioners’ sentiments. The memorial tablet in slate on the south side, facing Church Lane and across the road to the church on the other side of the lane, includes two Biblical verses, not attributed but from Genesis 23:4 and Luke 13:4–5 (Figure 2.3a.–b.). They are illuminating in illustrating some of the justifications for memorials but also the character of those who perished. The Gospel passage was the inspiration for the sermon at the inauguration ceremony by the vicar Joshua Hart. It reflects that many of those killed were workers from elsewhere who deserved to be remembered even though their families were far away. They were working on railway construction on relatively high wages because of the dangerous work, but most would not have been able to afford a memorial. The accidents on this railway project did not lead to any changes in regulations or working practices. The Biblical texts reflect no blame on those who died, nor did they indicate any need for change, but rather seemed an acceptance of the status quo. The memorial had been paid for by many different people involved with the project (Figure 2.3a.–b.), but undoubtedly the contractor and engineer were the driving force over the project, and particularly its grandiose manifestation. Bray and Grainger were active in their Christian faith, and the Brays were widely known in the area for their enterprise and philanthropic works; this memorial could honor those who died but also highlight their ingenuity and design skills by celebrating the iconic design of the north tunnel portal.

New Hartley Colliery Disaster Memorial The tragic events at New Hartley Colliery began on 16 January 1862 when part of the pumping mechanism fell into the pit shaft, trapping over two hundred miners, and ended over a week later with the recovery of 220 bodies (Bronstein 2014). The imagination of the public was captured by this disaster, with full press coverage and afterwards a fundraising initiative to support the bereaved families and those injured and unable to work. The Times printed reports daily from 20 January up to the 7 February, by which time it had progressed to be the leader column. The mass

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funeral on Sunday 26 January was also widely reported, with illustrations. They were buried in ground that was next to the churchyard and was only consecrated after the event in June 1863; the long-term demographic impact appears, however, to have been limited (C. E. Jones 2001). The national interest in the disaster, led to many line drawings being published (Figure 2.5.a), and London photographers W. & D. Downey took four images of the New Hartley Colliery Disaster on 30 January 1862. Copies were sent to Queen Victoria, who followed events with great concern. She had become a widow herself only weeks before, so she empathized with the wives and families of the trapped miners. She was quick to subscribe to the relief fund set up to provide support for the dead men’s families, and this no doubt fuelled many to follow her example (Bronstein 2014). The publicity surrounding this disaster was of a different scale with other mining tragedies, and indeed raised so much money—£ 81,000—that it could not all be sensibly spent on supporting the bereaved (Benson 1974). This is equivalent of over nine million pounds (twelve million US dollars) today. A substantial monument was set alongside the graves of most of the deceased at Earsdon, which was demarcated by cast iron railings (Figure 2.5.b). Designed by monumental mason E. Elliott from the village, and made from stone quarried at Prudham, Hexham, this was a local response to what was by this time viewed as a national tragedy (Martin 2015). This monument listed all the deceased, as was common in newspaper reports that covered such tragedies. Its format is a forerunner of the World War I memorials, and it reflects a change in commemoration whereby workers could be recognized individually at least in some cases. Each person was listed by surname with their age given. It is notable that most were young, with many children and sometimes fathers and sons lost together in the disaster. The names are placed in two columns on all four sides of the monument, and they are in blocks that were generally alphabetical, but this is far from consistent. On one side there is a text stating “ERECTED to the memory of the 204 miners who lost their lives in the Hartley Pit by the fatal catastrophe of the engine beam breaking 16th January 1862.” The number is 204 rather than 220 because some were buried elsewhere. The other faces have short Biblical texts. Most families could not afford headstones over the graves of their relatives, but one example is that for Thomas Chambers who was one of the oldest casualties at fifty-five, together with his son Clark aged nineteen, with “Jesus died for all” on a banner at the top of the stone. The 1862 New Hartley disaster and its wider public impact meant that the Coal Mines Act of 1872 included the rule that all pits should from

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a

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Figure 2.5.a.–c. New Hartley pit disaster, County Durham, 1862. Families waiting for news, image used in contemporary newspapers (a). © Creative commons: https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:L percent27Illustration_1862_gravure_Catastrophe_de_la_mine. Memorial after its dedication (b). © Illustrated London News. Memorial today, Earsdon, County Durham, churchyard (c). © Harold Mytum.

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this point have at least two shafts that connected to every seam, making an alternative exit possible if one became inoperable (Mills 2010). It still lives on in local memory and identity, as reflected in the 150th anniversary service held in the church and at the burial site in 2012; the graveyard is now overgrown, but the monument is still maintained, and the railings painted (Figure 2.5.c). The heroic efforts of the rescuers were officially recognized with the issue of special medals, but a local commemorative tradition was also applied to this tragedy. This was the engraving of inexpensive glass vessels, probably by itinerant cutters. Many events, including deaths, were recorded in this way on items such as jugs and drinking glasses, but very many were produced for the Hartley disaster, suggesting that these were purchased not just by the directly bereaved but those affected by news of the tragedy (Cowan 2013). The engraved glasses do not seem to have been part of a fundraising activity but just regional reactions leading to ad hoc commissions from the itinerant workers. However, there is a variety of material culture which some of the later mining disasters generated as a way of raising funds and awareness of the dangers of pit working. At the end of the nineteenth century and during the early twentieth century, the two main ways of combining remembrance with fundraising after mining accidents were postcards, with the mine and often images of those who died, or handbills or images that could be framed and placed in working class homes. These paper products often had poems or songs printed that lamented the tragic events. By this time the mineworkers were well organized with strong unions who attempted to gain better working conditions from the mine owners, so there was a wider organizational structure within which such fundraising could take place. Paper serviettes overprinted with a commemorative design and text were also popular, and these were produced even for the same disaster by a number of enterprises. For example, the 1909 West Stanley disaster generated at least twenty different designs. These could all be sold to raise funds and involved relatively low levels of outlay; many were then framed and retained, so a surprising number have been preserved in archives and museums. Other memorials were both individual and communal, but in formats widely used for all bereavements of the time, such as memorial cards, as well as on commemorative china produced by manufacturers who would seize on any event—positive or negative—to generate products. However, some tragedy ceramics were produced in limited number editions and sold at a premium price to raise funds.

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Conclusion: From Remembering to Agency? The examples discussed above reveal that occupational tragedies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could be commemorated in a diverse range of ways, even though most received little more than fleeting newspaper reports. Monuments could occasionally be commissioned by employers, as with the Bramhall Tunnel losses, but communal contributions were more common, though the Princess Alice steamer collision and the New Hartley pit disaster attracted an unusually wide range of support. In contrast, families could have their own memorials, or the surviving workers and all the families—particularly linked to mines—could raise funds and share their grief through inexpensive products. Despite public forgetting being the norm in the case of late nineteenthand early twentieth-century occupational accidents, some incidents were remembered in material form. Of these remembrances, most were accepting of the status quo, as with the Bramhall Tunnel, but a small minority was linked to social action leading to changes in industrial practices, though even in these cases such causes were silent on the memorial texts themselves. Some disasters were the triggers for legislative change, though it is unclear whether it was the publicized disaster, or the accumulation of previous similar disasters that cumulatively led to change and these were the “last straw.” Moreover, the extent to which the survivors of a disaster, or those involved with the erection of a memorial, were those who affected the wider social change, is unclear. As most of those who suffered had little political influence, it tended to be others—clergy, politicians, and (in the case of the miners) union leaders that took the lead. Memorials to those who died in occupational accidents largely acted as local communal and familial foci of memory for a generation, but a few helped to mould a longer-term identity. The overwhelming majority are now, as with most family memorials, no longer socially active, but a few have regular commemorative roles in the same way as war memorials do in Britain; this is the case with the New Hartley Memorial. Most monuments served an immediate need, which they may or may not have filled effectively, but which now stand as testament as unusual investments in failure, the few remembered against the many long completely forgotten. Harold Mytum is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Liverpool and has undertaken wide-ranging research within historic mortuary archaeology. His books include Recording and Analysing Graveyards (2000), Mortuary Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period (2004), and Death Across Oceans: Archaeology of Coffins and Vaults in Britain, America and Australia (coedited with L. E. Burgess, 2018). His up-

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dated monument recording and archiving system (2019) is available at http://www.debs.ac.uk/.

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Martin, H. E. 2015. “‘Tragedy, Death, and Memory’: The Commemoration of British Coal Mining Disasters in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century.” Unpublished B.A. Honours diss., Northumbria University. Mills, C. 2010. Regulating Health and Safety in the British Mining Industries, 1800– 1914. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Mytum, H. 1990. “Mariners at St. Dogmael’s, Pembrokeshire; The Evidence from the Gravestones.” Maritime Wales 13: 18–32. ———. 2004a. Monuments and Burial Grounds of the Historic Period. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. ———. 2004b. “Artefact Biography as an Approach to Material Culture; Irish Gravestones as a Material form of Genealogy.” The Journal of Irish Archaeology 12/13: 111–27. ———. 2006. “Popular Attitudes to Memory, the Body, and Social Identity; the Rise of External Commemoration in Britain, Ireland and New England.” PostMedieval Archaeology 40(1): 96–110. ———. 2007. “Materiality and Memory; an Archaeological Perspective on the Popular Adoption of Linear Time in Britain.” Antiquity 81(312): 381–96. ———. 2017. “An Archaeology of Remembering and Forgetting: ‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Deaths on Irish Mariners’ Memorials.” Journal of Irish Archaeology 25: 105–22. Oltedal, H. A. A. 2018. “Setting the Stage for Maritime Safety Management.” In Managing Maritime Safety, ed. H. A. Oltedal and M. Lützhöft, 3–15. Abingdon: Routledge. Parsons, J., and C. Allen. 2018. “The History of Maritime Safety Management.” In Managing Maritime Safety, ed. H. A. Oltedal and M. Lützhöft, 16–31. Abingdon: Routledge. Pearn, J. 1994. “The Earliest Days of First Aid.” British Medical Journal 309(6970): 1718–20. Pragnell, H. J. 2016. “Early British Railway Tunnels. The Implications for Planners, Landowners and Passengers between 1830 and 1870.” PhD diss., University of York. “The Princess Alice Disaster.” 1878. The Cheshire Observer, 21 September: 2. Russell, I. 2012. “Towards an Ethics of Oblivion and Forgetting: The Parallax View.” Heritage & Society 5(2): 249–72. Schiffer, M. B. 2010. Behavioral Archaeology: Principles and Practice. London: Equinox. Stewart, D. 2011. The Sea Their Graves: An Archaeology of Death and Remembrance in Maritime Culture. Gainesville: University of Florida Press. Tarlow, S. 1999. Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archaeology of Mortality. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2000. “Landscapes of Memory; the Nineteenth-century Garden Cemetery.” European Journal of Archaeology 3(2): 217–39. “Terrible Collision on the Thames; Great Loss of Life.” 1878. Illustrated London News, 7 September, 73(Issue 2045): 227. “Thomas Granger, Esq. C.E.” 1852. Obituaries. Gentleman’s Magazine 38(New Series: July to December): 318. Turnock, D. 2016. An Historical Geography of Railways in Great Britain and Ireland. London: Routledge. Twiss, T. 1878. “Collisions at Sea—A Scheme of Inter National Tribunals.” Law Magazine and Review; a Quarterly. Review of Jurisprudence and Quarterly Digest of All Reported Cases 4(4th series): 1–15.

CHAPTER 3

Memory of Epidemic Diseases in Finland Old Disease Cemeteries and Modern Urban Planning Titta Kallio-Seppä and Tiina Väre

Introduction This chapter focuses on social and spatial memory in connection to fatal epidemics and disease cemeteries in historic Finland, first as part of Sweden (–1809) and later Russia (1809–1917). Historian Pierre Nora has introduced the term “realms of memory” to refer to the meaning spaces have in building social identity and bonding communities (Nora 1989). Spaces are given meanings through social action in them (e.g., Halbwachs [1925] 1992; Olick and Robbins 1998; Van Dyke and Alcock 2003; Holtorf and Williams 2006; Delle 2008). According to Sofia Paasikivi, who has studied the nineteenth-century public discussion of cholera outbreaks in Turku, Finland, the disease cemeteries are significant locations for social memory in today’s cityscape (Paasikivi 2016: 10). Our aim is to look at the infamous plague and cholera epidemics in Finland that caused sudden and massive mortality and how their victims were treated and buried. Some of them received a burial that deviated from what was considered the normal burial traditions. We will examine how the new protocols, advocated to create order amid chaos, were perceived by the common contemporary people. For them, the traditional funerary practices and socially valued final resting places represented an integral part of their social status (e.g., Pihlman 1989; Watts 1997: 18). Furthermore, we will examine some of our historical disease cemeteries through the frameworks of necrogeography, social memory, and memory space. Necrogeography, or the research of “deathscapes,” considers the role of place in human mortality. Places can be changed by the burial rituals, but places also can influence the experiences of death (Muzaini

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2017; Semple and Brookes 2020). In this chapter we consider necrogeography further. What happens when the created deathscape and the social memory related to them changes? Our interest is in whether these sites have been remembered and made significant for the local people or the society at large, or instead, intentionally or unwittingly removed from social memory by physically removing their signs in the course of urban planning. The aim is also to look at the possible reasons behind differences in ways of remembering at different sites. Did the social status of the deceased affect the way the victims of the contagious diseases were buried and remembered? What was the role fear played in all this? We will be approaching the issue using examples of disease cemeteries from Turku, Kokkola, and Helsinki, Finland, and Salmis, on the border area between Finland and Sweden. In early modern Europe, death—particularly that of a child—was a constant reality. Many severe infectious diseases, such as measles, whooping cough, and smallpox currently under control in the Western world probably appeared rather mundane to contemporary people at the time. Conditions like these were typically endemic in larger population centers and swept through more remote communities as epidemics that disproportionately impacted those not yet immune to them, especially children (English 1985; Turpeinen 1987: 281; Gardberg 2003: 77–78; Rohani et al. 2003; WHO 2018; CDC 2019a, 2019b). While a cause of sadness due to the mortality they caused, the recurring visits of these diseases were almost expected and would not cause the society to collapse. This was in sharp contrast with an epidemic disease emerging in European awareness by the late Middle Ages, or perhaps even during Antiquity. This disease sowed horror across the continent particularly from the mid-fourteenth century onward, only to gradually loosen its grip in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The destruction it caused was difficult to disregard. Depending on the form it took, about a third of all those afflicted died. The pathogen Yersinia pestis caused the Black Death plague of 1347 and several subsequent epidemics, killing at least one-third of the European population in the fourteenth century (Roberts 1966; Appleby 1980; Kokkonen, Nurmiainen, and Weiss 2000: 225, 232; Kallioinen 2009: 19–22, 35, 42; Raoult et al. 2013). Once it had shown up in the town, no one was safe. Some centuries later, particularly during the nineteenth century, another disease causing disproportionally high mortality across all the demographic groups arrived in Europe as a part of a series of pandemics. Although the occurrence of plague epidemics had slowly become less frequent by the late seventeenth century, the mental imprint their horrors left on social memory must have been reaffirmed. Both diseases—the plague and cholera—left a trail of destruction in their path that required society

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to reassess many of its normal functions, such as burial practices. During the centuries of repeated attacks of the plague, official instructions concerning disease control were still under development. Once the pandemics of cholera arose, many societal structures harnessed for disease prevention were already instituted. During the previous epidemics, many methods had been adapted to mitigate the chaos caused by massive morbidity and mortality rates (Grotenfelt 1912: 158–63; Pihlman 1989; Hakapää and Marjomaa 2000: 347; Kallioinen 2009: 168–83, 284–86). Nevertheless, controlling the spread of epidemics remained inadequate prior to the proper understanding of their ecology and etiology. For a good part of European history, one of the leading explanations for the disease transmission was based on the effect of miasmas, which were invisible particles sensate only through smell, contaminating the air that consequently turned malodorous (e.g., Susser and Susser 1996). The perceived connection between the smell of the rotting corpses and the spread of epidemic disease caused enormous fear. Such terror had a significant impact on folklore, culture, and social memory.

Black Death or Blue Death—Plague or Cholera? The bacteria causing plague, Yersinia pestis, and its complex ecology involving transmission from rodents through a flea (Xenopsylla cheopsis) bite, was only discovered in connection to the wider, so-called bacteriological revolution beginning in the late nineteenth century (Gage and Kosoy 2005; Butler 2014). It inflicts disease in three different forms. The most common is the bubonic plague infecting lymph nodes causing large abscesses to form, accompanied by high fever. In some cases, dark discoloration may appear around the body, although this symptom is more typically connected to the septicemic plague. In this form of the disease the bacteria spreads into the bloodstream with devastating consequences. Both bubonic and septicemic forms spread from rodent hosts through flea bites. The pneumonic form infecting the lungs transmits fast, without a vector, as a human-to-human droplet infection (Gage and Kosoy 2005; Spickler 2013; CDC 2018). In the past, the bubonic form was fatal in approximately 40 to 90 percent of cases, usually within a couple of days from the onset of the symptoms. Even higher case-mortality was observed in septicemic and pneumonic forms killing near all its victims— often within a few hours (Spickler 2013; Butler 2014). Cholera is an acute gastrointestinal disease that potentially becomes symptomatic within hours of contraction. The main symptom of the disease is severe diarrhea associated with excruciating chest pain and sometimes vomiting. The subsequent dehydration gives a blue tint to the skin

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of the sick, which is responsible for the disease’s other moniker, “blue death.” Without proper care, it often brings about multi-organ failure and death. The suffering was often over rather swiftly, as the interval from the beginning of the symptoms until the relief provided by the arrival of death could be as short as eighteen to forty-eight hours—sometimes even less (Kokkonen et al. 2000; Vuorinen 2002: 120–25). Prior to or in the absence of modern medical care, as many as half of the infected died (Fisman and Laupland 2011). The symptoms are caused by a toxin segregated by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae (Vuorinen 2002: 120–25; Fisman and Laupland 2011). The pathogen that causes the plague as well as the one that causes cholera were ultimately only discovered in the late nineteenth century. Prior to quite recent times, the name cholera was used to indicate a variety of gastric diseases and the descriptions of cholera may be confused with certain other diseases due to the similarities in their general clinical picture (Howard-Jones 1974; Vuorinen 2002: 120–25). Cholera vibrios live in and spread through warm still-water sources, and dry conditions are harmful to them. In the temperature of 37°C (98.6°F)—the normal body temperature—their proliferation is particularly vigorous. Cholera can be transmitted through contaminated drinking water or food. In addition, direct contact with a disease-carrier poses a risk of contraction. Humans are the only species in which cholera causes a disease, but excrement of other animals and even houseflies, may aid its spreading (Kokkonen et al. 2000; e.g., Roberts and Manchester 2006: 17). In the battle against cholera, various aspects of urban planning have played a major role, as they still do. Factors such as development of fresh water supplies, drainage, and hygiene practices have impacted the eradication of cholera epidemics in the Western world. Yet, they do sporadically emerge outside the endemic area, one such example is during the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake in 2010 (Fisman and Laupland 2011).

Burying the Victims In addition to the psychological and religious confusion, the chaos following an outbreak of the plague or later cholera caused various practical problems. One of them was burying the massive amounts of dead people, and in some cases the task could not be carried out in a satisfactory manner (Kallioinen 2009: 175; Slack 2012: 58–59). Overall, it was difficult to find a workforce to perform this hideous and dangerous task. Certain beneficial policies in trying to avoid an outbreak or its spread had been commonly acknowledged already in the previous centuries (e.g., McNeill 2004: 168). Nevertheless, in Finland only in 1710, amid an epidemic, all

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official orders concerning conduct and burying during an outbreak were collected in one document. Generally, those claimed by epidemics—and not only the plague—were no longer allowed to be buried in churchyards—and particularly not in churches. Instead, they were instructed to be deposited in remote locations, outside towns. This was to be done without a church service and at nighttime (Grotenfelt 1912: 158–63; Pihlman 1989; Hakapää and Marjomaa 2000: 347; Kallioinen 2009: 168–83, 284–86). By the eighteenth century, the state authorities began to show interest toward the spread of the epidemic diseases claiming its citizens’ lives at an alarming rate. Such losses in turn posed a threat to the potency of the army needed to fight the various wars of the Swedish Kingdom. This was important in the pursuit of regaining the position of a nation with major political and economic power it had had during the previous century. This prompted the officials to attempt to restrict the spread of the epidemics as a means to consolidate population growth (Turpeinen 1987: 280; Kallioinen 2009: 178–80). From a biological and hygienic perspective, burying the rotting corpses was a means to prevent the deceased from transforming into a hazard for others. A corpse might not instantly emit effluvia, but it was considered to become contagious as soon as it started to decompose and smell. Connected to the idea of miasmas, particularly from the eighteenth century onward, the fear of contracting diseases from rotting corpses rose into the awareness of both the officials and the general public. The purpose was to extirpate disease through policies of better hygiene, disinfection, and ventilation of houses (Classen, Howes, and Synnott 1994; Paavola 1998: 39–42, 262; Jenner 2005: 615; Kallioinen 2009: 171–72). Miasma theory, as a popular contemporary explanation for disease occurrence, as such is naturally unfounded. Yet, even though the smell of decomposition itself does not cause diseases to transmit, if not handled accordingly, corpses can for example release contaminated body fluids that may leak into water systems or be spread by small animals and insects. Nevertheless, understanding that the deceased may cause a health risk was indeed a cause of controversy. The frenzy over a burial may be difficult to fully grasp, but for the early modern commoners in the north, to be buried in a dignified manner was an important aspect of living. A respectable burial site preferably near the church, or even better, inside it, was considered to benefit the soul. Considerable funds were used to obtain such a burial site that would additionally function as an indicator of social status and esteem (Lempiäinen 1990; Pihlman 1989; Paavola 1998: 31, 42–43, 195, 219). Even funerary rites being conducted properly were of great importance (Vuorela 1975: 621–26). For example, a French playwright, Jean Francois Regnard, who visited Sweden and Finland in the

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seventeenth century, mentioned that the locals regarded their own funeral as one of the most important events of their lives (Regnard [1731] 1982: 108). Although laced with humor, this statement must have contained a seed of truth in it. In contrast to an under-church-floor burial, a grave outside the fences of a churchyard was considered unprotected. Officially, only murderers, suicides, criminals, and unbaptized or illegitimate children were buried this way (KL [1686] 1986: XVIII; Moilanen, Aalto, and Toropainen 2018). It was difficult to comprehend that a loved one claimed by a horrendous epidemic had to be buried in a distant location outside the town borders without the company of deceased relatives. Not even the official assurances that these newly introduced procedures would not compromise the soul of the deceased were comforting (Rimpiläinen 1971: 289; Watts 1997: 18; Paavola 1998: 34–35, 42–46; Kallioinen 2009: 177, 202). Thus, the threat to be denied a proper burial must have added to the fear of the epidemic diseases. In fact, as a result of opposition displayed by commoners, some plague victims still ended up in churchyards, and even under the churches (Mäntylä 1971: 223). In some parts of Sweden, during the epidemic of 1710 to 1711, instructions to bury in secluded locations caused minor rebellion and there are known examples of secretly using the churchyard during a plague epidemic instead. Sometimes parishioners were utterly unable to accept that their relatives had been denied a burial in sacred ground. They would then have stubbornly proceeded to exhume the deceased from their graves in the plague cemetery and return them to the churchyard for a proper burial (Watts 1997: 19; Kallioinen 2009: 176–77; Hakapää and Marjomaa 2000: 350). As with the plague, to mitigate the destruction brought about by the cholera epidemics, orders were given on how to bury their victims. Those claimed by the disease were to be interred rapidly, during the nighttime following the death and without ceremonies. The required depth of the grave pits was set as 3.5 cubits (1.61 m, 5 ft 3.4). The corpse had to be washed with chloride of lime, and ash was to be scattered on top. The clothes of the deceased were to be put inside the coffin or washed with lye. Additionally, the coffins had to be covered with a layer of chalk, coal, or ash (Fagerlund 1968: 83; Pesonen 1980: 151–52; Paasikivi 2016: 49–50).

The Burial Sites of the Victims of Historical Epidemic Diseases in Modern Urban Planning in Finland The first confirmed plague epidemic in the geographic area currently known as Finland dates to the late fifteenth century and the last to 1710–

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11. During these two centuries there are records of it occurring at least seventeen times, which is at least once in a generation (Kallioinen 2009: 30–41). Nevertheless, it was long understood that the plague was a contagious disease. Thus, certain means, such as escape, quarantine, and isolating households affected with it were employed in trying to avoid contamination. In many cases, because of the ecology of these diseases, these measures were ineffective; rats with their fleas, which were the typical medium of the transmission, would not respect the quarantine or isolation lines (Vuorinen 2002: 110–13; Kallioinen 2009: 171). Just as the plague did during the earlier centuries, cholera’s arrival provoked fear in people. Finland was involved in the series of rapidly recurring cholera pandemics during the nineteenth century. Practically every time an epidemic reached Russia, the disease would spread to the area of present-day Finland as well. The last time Finland was affected on a serious magnitude, was in the year 1872. For comparison, in Great Britain, the development of various preventive methods had been effective a little earlier as the last major cholera epidemic was experienced there between 1866 to 1867 (Kokkonen et al. 2000; Vuorinen 2002: 120–25). The memory of the fear of the plague and later other infectious diseases has been kept alive in place names and locations related to plague victims. In some cases, the original use of these sites was forgotten for decades as they were often officially renamed. In others the names related to the terror of the epidemics has still been preserved by the local social memory—even if the official name would have been more benign.

Ruttopuisto, Helsinki, Finland In Finland the plague epidemic of 1710 to 1711 first arrived at the harbor of Helsinki in September 1710. The source of the spreading infection has been assumed to have been a person who traveled from Tallinn. At the time Helsinki was a densely populated town with refugees, military, and the poor arriving from the countryside, trying to escape starvation. During the following months, the amount of deceased rose to fifteen to twenty persons per day. The victims were ordered to be buried in a separate cemetery outside the town (e.g., Huldén, Huldén, and Heliövaara 2017: 169–70). This plague cemetery is currently used as a public park and it is located in central Helsinki. At the end of the seventeenth century, it was used temporarily for normal burials, and during the last epidemic, for the plague victims. From 1790 to 1829, it functioned as the official cemetery of Helsinki, after which it was transformed to serve as a public park in care of the parish (Gardberg 2003: 63, 69–71, 77–78). During summers, the park is still filled with people using the few remaining gravestones as picnic tables

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and seats. A sign at the entrance reminds visitors of the original use of the land (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). A memorial plaque erected at the entry point of the cemetery says (author’s translation from Finnish): “At this location was the cemetery where, during four months in the year 1710, altogether 1,185 residents of Helsinki were buried. A terrible plague came from outside the town and killed two-thirds of the town’s people. The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (5. Deut. 33:27). The park is officially known as Vanha Kirkkopuisto (Old Church Park), but it is commonly referred to as Ruttopuisto (Plague Park). The material culture, surroundings, structures, and history of the space together with social actions in them, define how the space is understood and used (e.g., Soja 1989; Ingold 1993). Cemeteries with visible memorials, fences, or signs can draw people to these sites that are considered representing spaces of mourning and remembering the passed away ancestors (Mytum 2006: 215). If, in turn, all the visible elements referring to the use of these sites as cemeteries of the victims of severe epidemics are lost, also the social memory related to the history of the place is often forgotten with time (e.g., Connerton 2009). Changing disused cemeteries into parks is a common phenomenon in Europe. Examples of this kind of change of deathscape into part of public space comes from London. Bubonic plagues ravaged London several times during its history. Particularly the epidemic of 1665–66 was severe killing approximately 15 percent or 100,000 of its inhabitants. These and victims of other plague epidemics were buried in innumerable plague pits first dug on the grounds of churches, but later as the body count kept ris-

Figure 3.1. The port of the current Vanha Kirkkopuisto (Old Church Park) in Helsinki reminds the visitors of its original use as a cemetery for plague victims, 2019. © Titta Kallio-Seppä.

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Figure 3.2. Inscription at the port reads that altogether 1,185 Helsinki residents were buried here during the four months in 1710 when plague raged in the town. © Titta Kallio-Seppä.

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ing on various fields and wastelands around the city and its surroundings. Many of the former plague pit sites are still today located on grounds of actively used churches. Some of them are currently located below buildings, and other infrastructure such as streets, or are included in town planning by turning them into public gardens, squares, or other activity areas (Johnson 2021). Changing disused cemeteries into urban green open gardens and playgrounds was the aim during the later decades of the nineteenth century. They were described as “healtheries” to promote health and wellbeing for the poor residents living close to these spaces in the densely populated town. Their change was also seen as a means to sanitize the old cemetery areas that had been used as garbage dumps with rank vegetation. It was a means, with rather small labor and with a small cost, to make the former burial areas into controlled use and part of the public space again (Brown 2013).

Catharina’s Cemetery, Kokkola, Finland Many times, former disease cemeteries are remembered as a part of present-day public spaces either as parks or cemeteries, or in Pierre Nora’s (1989) terms as “realms of memory,” reminding of the past incidents and giving tools to build local social identity and history. Another example of a space that has been remembered as a disease cemetery is Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery). In the small coastal town of Kokkola, a separate cemetery was established on the outskirts of the residential area between 1710 to 1711 when the plague, despite safety precautions, arrived in the town. According to the church records, during November, December, and January the number of victims rose to fifty-two (Söderström 2013: 20). During the winter, the population of the town fell from five hundred to four hundred inhabitants which was a substantial decrease (Wiirilinna 1994). As was the custom, all the inflicted houses were marked with a black cross on the door. All the infected had to carry a white stick as a warning for the healthy. Sick women were additionally required to hold a white scarf in front of their mouths (Söderström 2013: 20). During an outbreak, burying the deceased was in many ways challenging. In Kokkola, a new cemetery for plague victims was established outside the town borders. According to archival sources from the year 1710, all the town residents were ordered to participate in the building work in order to bury the plague victims. The magistrate ordered the bourgeoisie to spread coarse gravel on the graveyard to better cover all the graves. Additionally, the graveyard was to be surrounded with a stone fence (Mickwitz and Möller 1951: 146–47; Kallioinen 2009: 174–75). Thus, building the new cemetery was a joint effort concerning many of the town residents. However, the handling of the dead was done by only

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a few people. Five local men from the lower-bourgeois class were ordered against their will, but with monetary compensation, to bury the plague victims without delay and to take care of their belongings. After the task was finished, the men, Matts Skeppare, Johan Peura, Lars Nilsson, Gabriel Carlsson, and Mårten Kaino, were quarantined and not allowed to touch other people or enter the church while there still was plague in the town (Söderström 2013: 20). Following the plague, burying people in the church and the old churchyard continued. According to archival sources, still in the mid-eighteenth century, the plague cemetery had retained its ominous name, pestkyrkogården. Only in the 1770s, when this former plague cemetery was taken into active burial use again, it was renamed as Catharina Kyrkogård or in Finnish, Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery) (Söderström 2013: 21). Officially, the name was changed after some years of burials at the site in 1777, which is when the new name first appears in the church records. According to Eugen Söderström, the cemetery was probably named after Catharina Pattlin, who a couple of years earlier, in 1774, had bequeathed all her property to the congregation (Söderström 2013: 23–25). During the same period, in 1777, the place got its current appearance (Figure 3.3). The bourgeoisie was building family chamber tombs in the graveyard. In addition, one common temporary burial chamber to be used in winter was built for the poorer residents. Once or twice a year it was emptied, and the deceased buried (Nikander 1945: 279–82). According to the church protocol all the private chamber tombs were cleared in the beginning of the twentieth century as well and the remains reinterred in a joint grave in a new local cemetery (Söderström 2013: 32).

Figure 3.3. Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery), a former plague cemetery, in Kokkola, 2019. © Titta Kallio-Seppä.

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A quite recent legend mentions a pit filled with skeletal remains found in the twentieth century while building a small electrical center on the southern side of the current stone fence surrounding Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery). According to lore, these might be the bones of the victims of the 1710 to 1711 plague epidemic (Wiirilinna 1994: 26– 27). Neither the exact location of the alleged pit nor the location of any of the bones, however, are currently known, and neither has the site or the skeletal remains been scientifically studied. Could these have been the remains of the plague victims? According to the documents concerning the establishment of the cemetery in the 1770s “the area of the new cemetery starts at the southern end of the old cemetery.” Scholars have interpreted this in differing ways. According to some, the new one was to be located entirely to the south of the older cemetery (Nikander 1945; Wiirilinna 1994). Others say that the new one was built to surround the older one (Söderström 2013: 34–35). From cartographical sources from the years 1760 and 1860 it can be detected that within these one hundred years the graveyard grew stretching to the area in the southwest. Hygienic issues were important factors leading to the establishment of new cemeteries that, from the late eighteenth century onward, were to be located outside residential areas. Bearing that in mind, to place a new cemetery on exactly the same location that already was filled with the remains of the plague victims does not seem the most logical option. Nevertheless, at the end of the eighteenth century, certain towns apparently opted for establishing their new outside-town-borders cemeteries on or close to the former plague cemeteries. This was the case for example in 1790 in Helsinki and in 1789 in Porvoo (Gardberg 2003: 70, 78). In the 1910s, the Kokkola parish contacted the Archaeological Commission, which at the time was the legal authority responsible for the ancient monuments, to ask for a statement of the historical value of Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery). The Commission’s response was that the site is a rare example of its kind and because the eighteenthcentury town residents had been buried there it had certain historical value (Söderström 2013: 32). Nowadays Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery) is located within the town borders as a fenced area inside a small park. It is regarded as one of the most important tourist attractions in the town informing visitors about local history. In 2018 the parish received funding from the Finnish National Agency for a planned renovation of the structures in the area (Mustonen 2018). Archaeological noninvasive research methods that used radars and magnetometers could help define the changed borders of the cemetery. Archaeology could reveal new knowledge on the early eighteenth-century residents and the history of the plague that would add new value to the site and its importance. One aspect of the importance of the cemetery lies in the

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material remains describing how the worldview changed and at the same time altered burial traditions.

Itäharju and Kakolanrinne Cemeteries, Turku, Finland In August of 1831, cholera reached the southern Finnish harbor town of Turku, where it raged for the next four months. Two cemeteries were established to bury the victims. Of those Itäharju Cemetery, where the most eminent citizens were generally laid to rest, is still known as the cholera cemetery and it is listed as an official relic. The other, Kakolanrinne or Pakkarinkatu Cemetery, was forgotten for seventy-four years after its short usage period in the early 1830s, until the first archaeological notes were made of exposed burials (Tallgren 1905; Gardberg 2003: 78–79; Paasikivi 2016: 8, 49, 51–52). Kakolanrinne Cemetery has been extensively archaeologically excavated and researched during the 2010s (e.g., Koivunen 1972; Brusila 1986; Hukantaival 2012; Sipilä 2012; Martiskainen and Saloranta 2014; Helamaa and Uotila 2016, 2017; Saloranta 2017). Kakolanrinne was a smaller cemetery in comparison to Itäharju. At the time, Finland had been under Russian rule as its Grand Duchy for over two centuries. Many Russian soldiers from the nearby quarters as well as cholera victims from nearby prisons were buried in Kakolanrinne. Archaeological research has revealed that local people, including small children, were buried there as well. Some had been buried individually whereas others were evidently interred simultaneously in common pits of two to six coffins. In certain parts of the cemetery as many as three to four layers of coffins were stored on top of each other without any soil between them. This indicates that more than one burial was made at the same time, implying a large number of deaths during the same day. The coffins were usually simple, made of just a few boards. What was remarkable in the data was that the height of the coffins was approximately only twenty centimeters. Less than half of the coffins contained artifacts such as personal items, cross pendants, small items in the pockets, and metal parts of garments (e.g., Hukantaival 2012; Sipilä 2012; Helamaa and Uotila 2016). The outlines of the burial pits dug into the clayey soil did not cross one another. This indicates that the extent of each grave was observable on the ground or that opening them took place somewhat concurrently. Remains of wooden sticks with sharpened ends were found in the soil in close proximity to the head end of some coffins; this implies that visible markings above the ground must have served as reminders of the disaster, but the markings have since disappeared. Even though the graves were marked, the coffins were not put in the ground in a certain strict direction. The direction of the bodies varied from the traditional east-west direction to northwest-southeast, presenting even other variations (Sip-

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ilä 2012; Helamaa and Uotila 2016). Yet other examples of deviation from the normal burial traditions besides the haphazard orientation of the grave pits occurred. The generally shallow depth of the burials indicates that the coffins were pressed down on top of one another. The lid of the coffin was in many cases found only at the depth of ca. twenty to thirty centimeters, whereas the bottom of the stacked pile of coffins may have been merely a meter deep. Nevertheless, some of the individually buried coffins reached the depth of one to one and half meters (3 ft. 3.4 in. to 4 ft. 11.1 in.). Further, no traces indicating covering the coffins with chalk, ash, or coal according to the given orders that were found (Helamaa and Uotila 2016). Similar features were also observed at a cemetery for plague victims, Pestbacken (Plague Hill), excavated in southern Sweden, in the county of Blekinge in 2000. The location became the final resting place for several hundred people who died between 1710 and 1711. The deceased were buried in coffins either individually, or with a maximum of three coffins in a row in the same pit. No mass graves were found during the excavations. The material finds from the coffins imply rapid interments without normal washing rituals, with the deceased wearing the same clothes they died in, as it was also in Kakolanrinne. The coffins contained some coins, buttons, garment fasteners, knives, and necklaces made of beads. The coffins themselves were in most cases of simple rectangular shape where boards were hammered together with iron nails. Even though the burials were performed as quickly as possible, burial in the cemetery was done in an organized way. All the graves were in regular rows and the deceased were lying in the same direction. No grave plot was cutting into another. As in Kakolanrinne, also in Pestbacken (Plague Hill), the direction of the coffins deviated from the normal east-west direction of Christian graves. In Pestbacken the coffins were laid in northwest-southeast direction possibly following the natural topography of the site (Jacobsson 2002; Arcini, Jacobsson, and Persson 2006). Similarly, the systematic although dense layout at the Royal Mint Black Death Cemetery (1349) at East Smithfield, London, implies careful planning and organized preparations of the burials even during a strained situation. At the site, the layers of burials were deposited on top of each other, and at certain trenches they could be five layers deep (Grainger and Hawkins 1988). The excavation reports of Pestbacken (Plague Hill) in southern Sweden and Kakolanrinne in southern Finland both highlight a certain planned but at the same time rushed formation of the sites. Even though the situation during an epidemic might have seemed chaotic among the living, the goal to have the deceased buried underground was not approached without plans. Excavation data indicates a certain level of regularity in rows, but the coffins were often not placed in the ground in the strict

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Christian east-west direction (e.g., Jacobsson 2002: 15–16; Helamaa and Uotila 2016).

Salmis, Haparanda, Sweden Another example of a burial site of victims of cholera epidemics is located on the current border area between Sweden and Finland. In the summer of 1866, a cholera pandemic reached the northern parts of Sweden through its harbors. According to folklore the crew and the passengers of a steamer called Haparanda were quarantined in a local house in Salmis Harbor. At the time Salmis was the most important harbor of the town of Haparanda. The steamer was sailing from Stockholm and had already previously stopped in the harbor of Piteå where some passengers suffering from severe stomachache had been left behind. The boat then tried to disembark in Luleå but did not get permission and continued to Salmis. In Salmis Harbor it was clear that some of the passengers were suffering from cholera and the locals hesitated to unload the ship. The house used to quarantine the passengers was appointed as a temporary cholera hospital. The doctor of Haparanda, Carl Josua Wretholm, took care of the infected. A total of twenty-nine people died of the disease and a separate graveyard for the victims of cholera was established close to the cholera hospital. Even Doctor Wretholm himself died of cholera. However, his remains were not buried in the cholera cemetery with the other victims, but instead, his grave is in the Haparanda graveyard. The cholera hospital is today listed as an official monument. In the 1970s the cemetery was fenced with stones and metal chains. In addition, a sign informs visitors of the historical significance of the site (Odencrants 1945: 300–1; Hederyd 1992: 75–76, 292; Asplund, Johansson, and Eriksson 2005: 88–91).

Fear of Diseases as Part of the Belief System and Worldview Adding to the notoriety of the plague was that by afflicting society’s most productive members (that is, not only the elderly and children) it had the ability to incapacitate society’s normal functioning (McNeill 2004: 79). It also often arrived with little warning, and as many of its victims would probably not develop full or long-standing immunity against it, the outbreaks could emerge at rather short intervals (Kokkonen et al. 2000: 195; Kallioinen 2009: 22–23). Contracting the plague typically resulted in sudden, and thus, “bad” death, that left no time to prepare for the afterlife in the form of religious

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rites assuring redemption. This is another reason why it was a particularly infamous disease. After all, for the people of the past, the salvation of their soul, and their expectations for the afterlife were considered much more important than the temporal existence (Watts 1997: 18; Hakapää and Marjomaa 2000: 344, 348–51; Kallioinen 2009: 201–4; Bovey 2015). What is more, in addition to the belief that diseases could emerge from socalled natural causes such as astrological phenomena, miasmas, or the imbalance of humors, a contagion could be considered to represented God’s punishment for personal sins (Kokkonen et al. 2000: 196, 210; Keiser 2003; Watts 2003: 12; Kallioinen 2009: 144–46). On the one hand, periods of epidemics causing uncontrollable massive mortality were arguably well-suited to Christian beliefs. Living amidst the horrors of a fatal epidemic was probably tolerable for those who felt assured of the promises of a blissful afterlife. Death, instead of perdition, stood as an exemption from the profane suffering and led to reunion with the deceased. Yet for many others, any solace the rigid religious rites had to offer must have failed to remain psychologically sufficient. The massive plague epidemics indeed influenced the religious behavior of European people in the forms of rising mysticism and movements diverging from the more organized forms of Christianity (McNeill 2004: 127, 178–80). Particularly during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the general worldview highlighted the fear of contagious diseases. Toxic gases were believed to be transmitted from foul-smelling air straight to the brains of the living. Not only was the widespread tradition to bury rotting corpses under the church floors considered a source of these putrid smells and causes of illnesses, but so were wet residential areas, uncleaned streets, and poor ventilation in houses (Classen et al. 1994: 57). For example, in the 1770s, a plague epidemic ravaging Russia provoked worries of it spreading through harbors to Finland in the springtime as the sun melted the snow exposing and warming up the soil, which was believed to release toxic gases of plague (Suolahti 1917: 100). People tried to protect themselves against the bad smells perceived as harmful by using scent lockets filled with scented ointments. These small objects made of precious metals were fastened to belts or carried as necklaces (Immonen 2009: 271). The fear provoked by the victims of certain infectious diseases is stored in social memory through folktales and even recorded documents. The fear of contamination through remains or material things (e.g., coffins) was strong. The popularity of newspapers increased in Finland from the 1760s. Articles published in the 1770s press were a starting point for the public discussion on the hygienic concerns the corpses and especially the under-church-floor burials were causing (Suolahti 1917: 23–25). In the

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year 1773, a short text published in Tidningar Utgifne Af et Sällskap I Åbo (22–23) tried to raise awareness of the harmful and unnatural habit of church burials. The same text had been published thirty years earlier in 1744 in France (Jenner 2005). It advised that this habit was a threat to the living. Yet, healthy as well as ill churchgoers were forced to attend weekly services in these harmful surroundings containing toxic gases. A couple of years later, in 1777, the same newspaper contained an even longer report on the malign habit, again citing the same French text (Tidningar Utgifne Af et Sällskap I Åbo 1777: 152–56). Both newspaper volumes refer to incidents in which people handling rotting corpses had fallen ill and died. They went as far as to say that gravediggers were an occupational group often marked by paleness and dying young. Certain examples from Montpellier, France, were used to demonstrate that the decomposing and swollen corpses indeed poisoned the air. The article of 1777 further highlighted that burying those killed by epidemics in the churchyard should also be prohibited. Instead, graveyards should be established outside the town borders to prevent their corpses from contaminating the air in the surrounding area of the church. The memoirs of Kustaa Pentti, a man who lived in a small coastal village, Haukipudas, in Finland, during the early twentieth century, tell several tales related to the fear of diseases. In one story, he describes how, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the King of Sweden ordered the cleaning of all the cemeteries (author’s translation from Finnish): Many families had their own house-like chambers in the graveyard where they kept the deceased for the winter in order to be buried in spring when the ground was not frozen anymore. But many of the chambers had become permanent resting places for coffins and they were not thoroughly covered with soil. According to the new orders, these chambers had to be torn down. The vicar of the parish had asked to collect all the wooden remains of these chambers because he was going to use them as firewood to heat water for the cows in his barn. His cattlewoman named Marja did not want to burn this wood. The vicar however insisted she must do so and she fell ill. She caught a long-lasting disease that was gnawing at her bones and whole body for more than forty years. The old people used to call the disease kalma (the death). (Pentti 1930: 69–70, 73)

Handling the wood that had been in touch with the deceased was considered a health hazard. However, sometimes human remains and funerary artifacts were believed to be useful in curing illnesses. For example, toothache could be cured with a chip of wood taken from a coffin. In addition, a metallic stick had the power to heal aching teeth if it was first held against the skin of a deceased person, touching for example the heel or chest of the deceased or placing it in their mouth (Valve 1912: 3–28; Vilkama 2010: 120). Practicing witchcraft and magic on material taken from graves in cemeteries, churches, or some other locations connected

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to dying and the deceased were considered crimes against the Lutheran Church and religion (Lahti 2016). It was common to sentence those caught committing such actions.

Commemoration, Forgetting, and Social Status During the past centuries the towns have had to make conscious decisions on whether to keep the memory of the disease cemeteries alive and the necrogeography of the areas visible to the generations to come. As Paasikivi (2016) pointed out, these sites carry potency to retain a particular meaning in social memory. The examples mentioned in this chapter show that certain burial sites used during the outbreaks of epidemics have been remembered and made a visible part of the local history and social memory. Others, however, have been (purposely or accidentally) forgotten and wiped away from the visible townscape. Social memory as a group level memory is kept alive and strengthened by commemoration. Commemoration, in contrast, is helped by visible monuments invoking the past. (e.g., Halbwachs [1925] 1992). Two of the sites introduced in this chapter, Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery) in Kokkola and Itäharju in Turku are still treated as and physically look like cemeteries with a status as an official ancient monument protected by the Antiquities Act. Salmis in Haparanda, Sweden, as well, is taken care of as a monument with a metal fence surrounding the area. According to Holtorf and Williams (2006) landscapes are most often intended for living people and hardly ever encapsulated the dead and the past. Helsinki’s Ruttopuisto (Plague Park) is a great example of that. In Helsinki, an official plate at the entrance of the former plague cemetery reminds us of its history. Otherwise the current use of the space as a park is interestingly mixing the social memory. The close proximity of the city center and the relaxed use of the green area with gravestones highlights the popular role the park presently has. However, the unofficial but commonly used name of the park, Ruttopuisto (Plague Park), along with the informational signs, keeps the memory of the site’s history alive. Although the cholera cemetery in Kokkola presently has the status of an official ancient monument protected by the Antiquities Act, the memory and infamy of the early 1710s plague had apparently faded by the 1770s. This is when the new cemetery was established on the same location as the former plague cemetery (Nikander 1945: 279–82). In fact, many towns settled upon similar solutions and would establish their new cemeteries on the sites of former disease cemeteries (Gardberg 2003: 70, 78). From the late eighteenth century onwards, the hygienic concerns related to the

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traditional burial customs prompted removing cemeteries from the town centers to the outskirts of their habitation (Modée 1803: 349–51). In this light, the selected location of the former plague cemetery seems controversial. Even though the plague was a feared disease and the understanding of its transmission methods still lacking, the wealthiest residents of the town felt it was safe and acceptable to build their burial chambers close to the earlier plague cemetery. Perhaps this should be viewed as an early representation of a shift from old religious and even magical thinking related to disease transmission, death, and the deceased toward more modern, rational ideologies. Or then it might be a way to proceed with old burial traditions. There are examples from Finland indicating that the wealthiest bourgeoise strongly opposed building new cemeteries. One of the arguments against them was that those cemeteries did not have history as a sacred ground. They wanted to be buried in places where generations before them were laid to rest, so that they could together wait for the resurrection (Kallio-Seppä 2013: 70–72). Possibly in the case of Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery), too, it was more acceptable to continue burials where they had already been done. And as sixty years had already passed since the plague burials, possibly the fear of the illnesses had also faded. In 1777, the old plague cemetery in Kokkola was renamed Katariinan Kalmisto (Catharina’s Cemetery). Although this was likely done in honor of the parish’s generous contemporary benefactor (Söderström 2013: 23–25), it is likely that the new name further downplayed the memory of the (last) plague epidemic and advanced the formation of a new identity of the site. It was only in the early twentieth century, when the parish brought the site to the awareness of the Archaeological Commission that it consequently recognized the site’s historical value (Söderström 2013: 32). It is likely that partly because of this dialogue, the site has been preserved as it once was. At the same time its history as a plague cemetery is however relatively unfamiliar to many locals. The site has thus been remembered in official state-level social history, but at the same time only vaguely in local social memory. Maybe the archaeological works planned to be executed at the site could correct this defect and make the history of the site more widely known? Many of the victims of the plague and cholera were poorer people even though the disease did not distinguish between the social classes. Lower classes, however, usually lived in less-developed sanitary conditions and closer to each other which aided the spread of various diseases. Victims of the epidemics ended up in joint burial sites because of the fear of contamination, because of the novel funeral regulations regarding epidemics embraced during the nineteenth century, but also because of their poverty (Vuorinen 2002: 120–25; Kokkonen et al. 2000). This is well emphasized

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in the Salmis cholera cemetery where the regular people killed by cholera were buried collectively in the official cholera cemetery. The victims of cholera outbreak are part of the social memory of Salmis’s history as a group of people. The cemetery is one entity where individual graves are not marked. The site of the cemetery is today marked in remembrance of the cholera epidemics and not the individual persons as such. However, the local doctor who suffered the same cause of death received a “normal” burial in the local cemetery. Thus, his personal memory is still alive through his family’s gravestone that carries his name without an immediate attachment to the tragedy that claimed his life. Conversely, the regular people who succumbed to the disease in Salmis are only collectively remembered as the unfortunate victims of the outbreak. There is yet another aspect, that is good to acknowledge concerning this difference in the way the deceased were treated after their passing. While those buried in the common grave were simply unfortunate victims of cholera, the doctor, honored with a separate burial place in the cemetery, did lose his life because he was trying to safeguard others. The Kakolanrinne Cholera Cemetery in Turku is a good example of a site that has been forgotten during the decades following its use. Even though since 1905 remains of coffins and skeletal parts have been found from time to time, the first extensive archaeological excavations were not conducted until the 2010s (e.g., Hukantaival 2012; Sipilä 2012; Martiskainen and Saloranta 2014; Helamaa and Uotila 2016, 2017; Saloranta 2017). Because the area has not been distinguishable in the town space for more than one hundred years, it has ceased to be a part of the wider social memory. Archaeology has now helped to raise the awareness of it and to define the physical borders of this once significant deathscape. Archaeology can thus be seen as a vital tool in creating new social memory, and as mentioned, could have similar benefits even in Kokkola. In Turku, the two cemeteries for cholera victims differ from each other namely in terms of the social status of the deceased. Eminent citizens and active townspeople are said to be buried in Itäharju Cemetery, where seven gravestones have still remained whereas Kakolanrinne Cemetery was the place for soldiers and prisoners albeit even some of these burials were made with extra care. Some of the coffins contained wood chips, and plant remains were found placed under the heads of the deceased (Sipilä 2012; Hukantaival 2012). The former function of Itäharju as a cholera cemetery was remembered and the cemetery taken care of while the memory of Kakolanrinne faded within a couple of generations (e.g., Paasikivi 2016: 50, 58). This leads to a consideration of whether one explanation for the distinction in the ways of remembrance between the two sites lies in the effect of social hierarchy or segregation. Many of those laid to rest

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in Kakolanrinne, instead of being locals, were Russian soldiers. The reason for the site having faded from social memory may simply be that the relatives and friends faraway were not able to commemorate their loved ones at the site. Whereas in Catharina’s Cemetery and Itäharju, where the local socialites were buried, this was not a problem. Yet, despite the “population” of the Kakolanrinne Cemetery at least partially consisting of strangers and members of the lower classes, their burials were not made without planning (Helamaa and Uotila 2016). According to traditions, the deceased had to be shown dignity with certain funerary practices (e.g., Korhonen 1929). This goes to show that dignified handling and burial was still a desirable objective under these deviant circumstances. Even though orders were defied by leaving their bodies unwashed (Fagerlund 1968: 83), they were laid down in coffins, not in unorganized large mass graves.

Conclusion In the past, it has, indeed, been very important to prepare the deceased for the afterlife by attending to certain funerary practices and traditions. Without proper procedures the deceased may have ended up trapped in a liminal state and could cause danger to the living. A bad death, such as that suddenly caused by an epidemic disease, was considered particularly dangerous. But the victims of epidemics not only caused concern in a spiritual sense. The understanding that they posed—either real or perceived—a health hazard naturally provoked fear. This made the task of disposing of their remains a particularly heinous task that no one wanted to carry out. The new orders concerning the burials, at least partially rising from the novel ideas of enlightenment, contradicted the old folk beliefs in many ways. Thus, the threat was twofold, consisting of firstly the fear of contagion and secondly the fear of the deceased that had experienced a bad, spiritually uneasy death. Overall, the outbreaks of fatal epidemic diseases must have created a reasonable conflict of emotions in people’s minds and seriously interrupted everyday living. Titta Kallio-Seppä (PhD, MSc [econ]) is an archaeologist, working as a museum director at the Tornio Valley Museum, Tornio, Finland. She specializes in historical archaeology, development of Early Modern towns, dendrochronology, and churches, burials, and graveyards as the site of memory. She recently coedited (with S. Lipkin and P. R. Mullins) Historical Burials in Europe: Natural Mummification, Burial Customs, and Ethical Challenges, a special issue of Historical Archaeology.

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Tiina Väre (PhD, MSc [econ]) is an archaeologist who has studied the health, body proportions, and diet of an Early Modern vicar using CT-scanning and stable isotopes on his mummified remains. Her research interests include paleopathology, Early Modern, and Modern burial customs, as well as breastfeeding and weaning practices. During her postdoc she is specializing in stable isotope studies.

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Modée, R. G. 1803. Utdrag utur alle ifrån år 1783 utkomne publique handlingar, placater, förordningar, resolutioner och publicationer, som riksens styrsel samt inwårtes hushållning och författningar i gemen, Jämwål ock Stockholms stad i synnerhet angå. . . [Excerpts of all publications of 1783, placards, regulations, resolutions and publications . . . ]. Stockholm: Kongl Tryckeriet. Moilanen, U., I. Aalto, and V. P. Toropainen. 2018. “In Terra Prophana: Kuolemaantuomittujen ja syntisten hautaaminen ja rangaistuspaikkojen arkeologinen potentiaali” [In Terra Prophana: The archaeological potential of the burial sites of the death row]. SKAS 2/2018: 2–19. Mustonen, M. 2018. “Kokkolan ruttohautausmaan ja Katariinan kalmiston hoitosuunnitelmaan rahaa Museovirastolta” [The National Board of Antiquities provides funding for a development plan of the plague cemetery and Catharina’s Cemetery in Kokkola.] Keskipohjanmaa, 7 June. Muzaini, H. 2017. “Necrogeography.” In International Encyclopedia of Geography, ed. D. Richardson, N. Castree, M. F. Goodchild, A. Kobayashi, W. Liu, and R. A. Marston, 4707. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Mytum, H. 2006. “Death, Burial, and Commemoration: An Archaeological Perspective on Urban Cemeteries.” In Cities in the World, 1500–2000, ed. A. Green and R. Leech, 213–34. Leeds: Maney Publishing. Nikander, G. 1945. Kokkolan kaupungin historia. II osa, 1714–1808 [History of the Town of Kokkola. Part II, 1714–1808]. Turku: Kokkolan kaupunki. Nora, P. 1989. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De Mémoire.” Representations 1989(26): 7–24. Odencrants, R. 1945. Haparanda stad 100 år [Haparanda town 100 years]. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell. Olick, J. K., and J. Robbins. 1998. “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory’ to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices.” Annual Review of Sociology 1998(24): 105–40. Paasikivi, S. 2016. “‘Waikioita waiwoja watasta.’ Kolera ja siitä käyty keskustelu 1800-luvun Turussa” [Difficult maladies in the stomach. Cholera and the discussion in the nineteenth century Turku]. Master’s thesis, University of Turku. Paavola, K. 1998. Kepeät mullat: Kirjallisiin ja esineellisiin lähteisiin perustuva tutkimus Pohjois-Pohjanmaan rannikon kirkkohaudoista [Light weighing soils: Study of church burials in the coastal region of Northern Ostrobothnia based on written and artifactual sources]. Acta Universitatis Ouluensis B Humaniora 28. Oulu: University of Oulu. Pentti, K. 1930. Kustaa Pentin muistelmat [Memoirs of Kustaa Pentti]. Helsinki: Suomen Kirjallisuuden Seura, Kansanrunousarkisto. Pesonen, N. 1980. Terveyden puolesta, sairautta vastaan. Terveyden- ja sairaanhoito Suomessa 1800- ja 1900-luvulla [For health, against sickness. Healthcare and nursing in Finland in nineteenth to twentieth centuries]. Helsinki: WSOY. Pihlman, S. 1989. “Hautapaikka ja yhteiskunta 1800-luvun Yläneellä ja Kaarinassa” [Gravesite and community in nineteenth century Yläne and Kaarina]. In Elämän merkit [Signs of life], ed. M. Taipale, and E. Vanhalukkarla, 77–93. Turku: Turun arkkihiippakunta. Raoult, D., N. Mouffok, I. Bitam, R. Piarroux, and M. Drancourt. 2013. “Plague: History and Contemporary Analysis.” Journal of Infection 66(1): 18–26. Regnard, J.-F. (1731) 1982. Retki Lappiin [A journey to Lapland]. Translated by M. Itkonen-Kaila. Helsinki: Otava.

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Rimpiläinen, O. 1971. Läntisen perinteen mukainen hautauskäytäntö Suomessa ennen isoavihaa [Western burial tradition in Finland before the Great Northern War]. Suomen Kirkkohistoriallisen Seuran Toimituksia 84. Helsinki: Suomen Kirkkohistoriallinen Seura. Roberts, C., and K. Manchester. 2006. The Archeology of Disease. Bradford: Sutton Publishing. Roberts, R. S. 1966. “The Place of Plague in English History.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 59(2): 101–5. Rohani, P., C. J. Green, N. B. Mantilla-Beniers, and B. T. Grenfell. 2003. “Ecological Interference between Fatal Diseases.” Nature 422: 885–88. Saloranta, E. 2017. Turku, IX Pakkarinkatu 7, lämpöjohtokaivanto, Arkeologinen valvonta [Turku, IX Pakkarinkatu Street 7, heat pipe trench, archaeological surveillance]. Excavation report. Turku: Turun museokeskus. Semple, S., and Brookes, S. 2020. “Necrogeography and necroscapes: living with the dead.” World Archaeology 52(1): 1–15. https://www.doi.org/10.1080/00438243 .2020.1779434. Sipilä, J. 2012. Turku, Pakkarinkatu. Kolerahautausmaan arkeologiset pelastustutkimukset [Turku, Pakkarinkatu Street, archaeological rescue excavations of a cholera cemetery]. Excavation report. Turku: Turun museokeskus. Slack, P. 2012. Plague. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Söderström, E. 2013. “Katariinan hautausmaa ja aikaisempi hautaustapa” [Catharina’s Cemetery and the former burial tradition]. In Siunattuun maahan. Kokkolan neljä hautausmaata: Katariina, Maria, Elisabeth ja Anna [To the holy ground. Four cemeteries in Kokkola: Catharina, Maria, Elisabeth, and Anna], ed. S. Johnson, E. Söderström, M. Himanka, and T. Jokinen, 19–38. Kokkola: Kokkolan Seurakuntayhtymä, K. H. Renlundin Museo, Keski-Pohjanmaan Maakuntamuseo. Soja, E. W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies. The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory. London: Verso. Spickler, A. R. 2013. “Plague.” Retrieved 19 May 2020 from http://www.cfsph .iastate.edu/DiseaseInfo/factsheets.php. Suolahti, G. 1917. Elämää Suomessa 1700-luvulla II [Life in Finland in the eighteenth century II]. Porvoo: WSOY. Susser, M., and E. Susser. 1996. “Choosing a Future for Epidemiology: I. Eras and Paradigms.” American Journal of Public Health 86(5): 668–73. Tallgren, J. M. 1905. “Vid Packaregatan” [In Pakkarinkatu Street]. Report. Turku: Turun museokeskus. Tidningar Utgife Af et Sällskap i Åbo. 1773. “Anmärkning om liks begrafvande i kyrkor” [Remarks about burying bodies in churches]. Tidningar Utgife Af et Sällskap i Åbo, 14 February 1773 (3): 22–23. ———. 1777. “Anmärkningar öfver det wedertagna bruket, att begrafwa lik i kyrkor och inom städers omkrets” [Remarks about the accepted practice of burying bodies in churches and within the town borders]. Tidningar Utgife Af et Sällskap i Åbo, 31 October 1777 (20): 152–56. Turpeinen, O. 1987. “Lastensuojelu ja väestökehitys. Lastensuojelun lääkinnällinen ja sosiaalinen kehitys Suomessa” [Child protection and demographic development. Medical and social development of child welfare in Finland]. In Suomen lastensuojelun historia [The history of Finnish child welfare], ed. P. Pulma, and O. Turpeinen, 269–447. Helsinki: Lastensuojelun keskusliitto.

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Valve, A. 1912. Hammastaudin kansanomaisia parannustapoja Suomessa [Traditional cures for dental disease in Finland]. Helsinki: Suomen Hammaslääkäri-Seuran Toimituksia IX. Van Dyke, R. M., and S. E. Alcock. 2003. “Archaeologies of Memory: An Introduction.” In Archaeologies of Memory, ed. Ruth M. Van Dyke and Susan E. Alcock, 1–13. Oxford: Blackwell. Vilkama, Rosa. 2010. “Hammaskivun lievitystä taikakeinoin” [Relieving toothache with magic]. In Iin vanhan Haminan kirkko ja hautausmaa: Arkeologisia tutkimuksia [Church and cemetery in Ii old Hamina: Archaeological excavations], ed. T. Kallio-Seppä, J. Ikäheimo, and K. Paavola, 120–21. Oulu: Waasa Graphics. Vuorela, T. 1975. Suomalainen kansankulttuuri [Finnish folk culture]. Porvoo: Werner Söderström OY. Vuorinen, H. S. 2002. Tauti(n)en Historia [History of diseases/(Diseased history)]. Tampere: Vastapaino. Watts, S. 1997. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press. ———. 2003. Disease and Medicine in World History. New York: Routledge. WHO (World Health Organization). 2018. “WHO Advisory Committee on Variola Virus Research Report of the Nineteenth Meeting, 1–2 November 2017, Geneva, Switzerland.” Retrieved 19 May 2020 from https://apps.who .int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/272441/WHO-WHE-IHM-2018.2-eng .pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y&ua=1. Wiirilinna, A. 1994. Merestä noussut kaupunki: 3. Kotiseututietoa Kokkolasta [Town risen from the sea: 3. Knowledge of the homeland Kokkola]. Kokkola: Kokkolan Kaupunki, Koulutuslautakunta.

CHAPTER 4

Freethinkers’ Cemeteries and Local Secular Burial Culture in Finland Ilona Kemppainen

Introduction Human burial takes many forms and includes various rituals. Religion is usually important in defining what rituals are essential for proper burial, but local customs shape the particular actions in each case. Who is buried, what was the cause of death, and what other details affect funerals? The place of burial is supposed to reflect the status of the deceased: different denominations may have their own burial spaces, and many people have a strong opinion on where they should be buried when they die (See for example Davies 2002). The growth of secularism interrupted this traditional burial thinking in the late nineteenth century in Finland, like in many other parts of the world. The creation of a modern society meant that old belief systems were at least partly replaced with a science-based, rational worldview. The meaning of burials has never been only religious, however. Personal ties and continuity in the human community ask for rituals: coming together after a loved one has died strengthens the ties of the living and helps people accommodate their grief. In the early days of secular burial, the need to separate nonreligious rituals from religion was strong, and criticism toward religion and particularly the church was essential. This differs greatly from the twenty-first century indifference toward religion and vague unbelief typical of our age (Taira 2006). In this chapter I ask what kind of burial culture has been created in Finnish secular cemeteries, nowadays nine of which are in active use. I use Julie Rugg’s and Hans Ruin’s works to tackle the question of a cemetery and its purposes in local secular burial culture. Until 2007, secular cemeteries in Finland were local, private ventures of particular freethinkers’ associations; after that the Lutheran congregations were obliged to create

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a nondenominational space on their lands. The old freethinkers’ cemeteries continue to exist though. Some of them were fiercely opposed in the beginning by the clergy and conservative politicians; some were difficult to get started due to lack of funds and knowledge. I use interviews of local freethinking activists and other people with experiences of secular burial as my most important research material, supported by archives and literature. Personal visits and photography give a close view on secular cemeteries: how they have been developed and how they differ from and resemble religious cemeteries today.

Theoretical and Historical Background Cemeteries take many forms in different countries and cultures. In the Nordic model, according to Tony Walter, most cemeteries are governed by the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of each country (Walter 2005: 184– 85). This is because of the special religious history of the era: Lutheran churches have been state churches and adherents still hold a majority in the population. Secular cemeteries’ histories are intertwined in this religious background: their creation and maintenance cannot be entirely separated from developments in the religious landscape. In many countries, cemeteries are partly or almost entirely commercial; in parts of Europe, they are municipal. Perhaps only in a nation with a former state church can we see a clear disruption with the emergence of secular cemeteries. Julie Rugg has analyzed various types of burial places, their use, meaning, and symbolism in, “Defining the Place of Burial: What Makes a Cemetery a Cemetery?” Her analysis does not emphasize secular burial in itself. In Rugg’s article cemeteries can be secular, with parts of them reserved for different denominations. Cemeteries are “principally secular institutions that aim to serve the whole community” (Rugg 2000: 264). The Finnish cemeteries fulfill this definition only partially: they are owned and maintained by the Evangelical-Lutheran Church which is obliged by law to give burial space for every citizen. Until 2007 there were no special non-consecrated areas in these cemeteries (Ylikoski 2007). Linguistic differences are also important. In modern Finnish the word churchyard, kirkkomaa, may be used interchangeably with cemetery, hautausmaa, but they are not really the same. Almost all burials around churches were forbidden with the 1879 health legislation (Gardberg 2003: 80). New cemeteries were built outside towns. The old word kalmisto (graveyard) is sometimes reserved for old pagan burial places, but it can also mean an ordinary cemetery in a poetic sense (Talve 1988: 4–7). A burial area, hauta-alue, usually means a certain part of a cemetery. Secular cemeteries are normally called just hautausmaa. No great difference

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is made in language; actually, freethinkers’ cemeteries are rarely spoken of, and people may not know much about them. Secular funeral rituals and special secular burial places are a rather new phenomenon in human history. Only during and after the French Revolution were the first intendedly secular burials and cemeteries seen (BenAmos 2000: 113–18). In many countries entirely secular cemeteries are an alien concept; either cemeteries have specific areas for different burials or municipal cemeteries do not segregate the deceased. In the Finnish context creating a separate secular cemetery has been a reckoned option due to specific conditions of the time and place. In the first half of the twentieth century the idea of creating an entirely new place of burial was not an alien enterprise as it would have been two hundred years earlier to most people: new cemeteries had been built around the country and old ones abandoned. New ideas on hygiene and contagious corpses were common all over the Western world; this led also to the promotion of cremation (Lahtinen 1989: 34–35; Prothero 2001: 46–66). But the idea of an unconsecrated cemetery was a newer prospect: burial outside Christian cemeteries had been part of the punishment for criminals, suicides, and the expected fate of stillborn children in Finland until 1869 (Pentikäinen 1990: 126–27). Few people had actual knowledge of burial situations in other countries. Only those active in the freethinkers’ movement or otherwise enlightened in such matters would know about secular burial as a conscious choice. More general histories of cemeteries recognize this time as an age of secularization: cemeteries intended for the entire community regardless of religion were built, in France and England for example, to replace churchyards. Julie Rugg has criticized earlier writers and theorists for too broad a sweep in these matters: even in England many old churchyards remained in use, and many new cemeteries were actually consecrated by the church. The secularization of cemeteries was not such an all-encompassing phenomenon as some writers have led us to believe, and not with such sinister repressing purposes as theories from earlier decades have claimed (Rugg 2013: 1–28). And, for example, in the Nordic countries it hardly took place at all. When the foundation of a cemetery is not to create an extension to the congregation of the living, like the Finnish religious cemeteries still tended to do in the first half of the twentieth century, we must turn to other ideas about death and afterlife. “Being with the dead,” as Hans Ruin states in the title of his book from 2019, is a constant human need, and the absence of religious belief does not change that. Ruin comments that the Greek word necropolis (cemetery), brings us to the word necropolitics, a term coined by Achille Membe. Ruin uses the term in a more general sense: “Politics—as communal organization and action—involves the dead through the ways

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in which the living community situates, responds to, and cares for its dead” (Ruin 2019: 7–8). The Finnish secular cemeteries have been an example of how communities, both local and ideological, care for their dead and create a space in which the dead and the living are bound together. The theme of immortality through one’s life’s work and values is typical of Finnish secular funeral speech, as it is in other countries (see, for example, Schulz 2013; Nesporova 2019). Secular cemeteries create a community of like-minded people, but they are also extensions of local communities. People are not only buried there, but the local freethinkers’ community also joins together to maintain the cemetery. The separation of the church and the state has been in the Finnish Social Democratic Party program from 1903. The idea was not only socialist: many public figures had supported it from the 1880s. The Evangelical-Lutheran Church was officially a state church until 1869; after that it remained a strong social power and institutionalized in many respects. People could not resign from one denomination without joining another. Examples of secular burials came from foreign countries, especially France in its more revolutionary phases. The burial of Leo Tolstoy had a great impact on the Finnish secular burial culture; a film had been made of his funeral and it was shown in theaters all over the country (see, for example, Työmies, 26 November 1910; Toveritar, 1 December 1910). A funeral was also a statement, a final word about the society and its traditions. Idealistic people wanted to die as they had lived, and their peers fulfilled their wish as much as was possible at the time. A few secular burials took place before World War I; they were natural burials in religious cemeteries. They seem to have followed the ritual concept of religious funerals, with speeches and music at the graveside. This is necessary to understand about secular rituals and burials, like secular cemeteries: the content was slightly altered, but the form remained much the same. Freethinkers’ cemeteries may not look vastly different from afar, compared to religious cemeteries. Only a closer look will bring different symbols into view. Naturally, differences that seem minor to us were considered extreme at the time, especially among the clergy who were responsible for the cemeteries.

The Finnish Civil War When the Finnish Civil War broke out in January 1918, neither the socialist Reds or conservative Whites were prepared for large-scale warfare, and certainly not large-scale burials of the fallen soldiers. The Whites would naturally choose Christian burials for their dead, while the Reds were inclined to prepare for secular burial rituals (Pikkusaari 1998: 345). They

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were carried out to varying degrees, as the Red forces were not as organized as the Whites were at the time. The first orders on Red burials were given in February: “that our fallen comrades will be temporarily buried in a soldiers’ grave in each locality or wherever their relatives want, until a solemn burial is carried out on behalf of the state after the final victory” (Eteenpäin, 12 February 1918). The religious or secular nature is not mentioned in this commander-in-chief ’s order. In March, a more detailed order was given in Kymenlaakso: the local military leader ordered soldiers to be buried in an as yet unconsecrated ground where a cemetery had been planned earlier. If someone wished their loved one to be buried in a church cemetery, that would also be allowed (Eteenpäin, 12 March 1918). Many of such plans were realized only partially or not at all. But a few solemn Red burials were reported in larger cities. For example, in Tampere on 20 March there was a large Red military burial. A funeral procession proceeded through the city, gathering thousands of spectators. The procession was organized as a military parade, but the families of the fallen were placed in the front. The program of the funeral joined the sacrifice of the fallen in the fight of the earlier revolutionaries, especially in France: the Paris Commune was remembered, and the Marseillaise was sung (Kansan Lehti, 21 March 1918). In Tampere the fallen were buried in Pyynikki Park, a popular recreational area. In Helsinki a similar decision was made when the Red fallen were buried in Mäntymäki, a park area close to the city center. After the war, which the Reds lost, these burials were exhumed and moved to less central areas. In Viipuri, the Whites made a lot of effort to desecrate Red burials and moved them from a prominent place to a “dogs’ cemetery” (Fingerroos 2004: 329–35). The Red burials in 1918 may have seemed blasphemous to many people. They were in principle nonreligious, with revolutionary symbolism, especially the French Revolution, in mind as the Russian Revolution and its rituals was only unfolding at the time. Uplifting speeches replaced religious sermons, revolutionary pieces of music took the place of hymns, and the burials took place on unconsecrated ground. Yet a lot was also similar to religious funerals. The form was the same, even if the content was scandalous to conservative minds. The procession to the burial place, music, and speeches, reminded people of “normal” burials (SKS “1918” collection: 16:20). We must remember that most funeral services took place at the graveside since there were few chapels in new cemeteries before World War II. The funerals looked the same, even if the place of burial was “unholy.” The Red military burial grounds were the first official—at the time— secular burial grounds in Finland. These graves were supposed to be either

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temporary, as the war was still going on when decisions about the graves were made, or permanent “heroes’ groves” which would remind people of the revolution and its sacrifices. This was not to be, as the cemeteries were destroyed by the Whites. But the memory of the fallen Red soldiers lived on and was partially revived in future secular cemeteries. The idea of shameful burial outside cemeteries, officially removed in 1879, lived on in 1918. Many Reds were buried outside cemeteries by the Whites, who won the war in the end. To add to the confusion, the Reds and their families were far from unanimous in their preference of secular burials and burial grounds. The revolutionary elite’s ideas were not shared by most workers, as the small numbers leaving the church in 1923 would show (Seppo 1992: appendix 1; Saarela 2008: 514–16). Exhumations and transports have continued to this day, from originally unmarked graves in the woods or near execution fields, to Lutheran cemeteries.

The Early Secular Cemeteries In 1923, only five years after the Finnish Civil War, the law on freedom of religion came into force. In the law, the founding of secular cemeteries was left basically dependent on religious congregations; they also were obliged to give a burial place to those who had left the church. The law included an idea of a secular community being forced to create a cemetery of its own, but this would never be the case (Seppo 1992: 16). On the contrary, Lutheran congregations would resist secular cemeteries furiously, as would the lay authorities. After 1918 the majority of the former Reds, the social democrats, were quickly accepted into the public and political spheres. The far left became communists, and their public presence was limited; in 1932 any Communist action was forbidden altogether. It was the communists that were most active in abandoning the church and in founding secular cemeteries, and this is why these cemeteries were so strongly opposed. Being a member of a freethinkers’ organization was also considered politically suspicious. There were bourgeois radicals in the interwar years in Finland, but the activists behind secular cemeteries in each area were usually socialist and communist. The first Finnish secular cemeteries were founded in an age when religious cemeteries were also rethought and redesigned. The new garden cemetery ideal of the nineteenth century made its way to Finland only partially; in many towns and villages the new cemeteries were not consciously designed. Only in 1929 were the first official orders given to churchmanaged cemeteries about design, planning, and keeping an account of the burials (Wirkkala 1945: 34). Ironically this was the year when the first

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freethinkers’ cemetery was decided to be established in Kotka. We do not know how much the complaints and new ideals about church cemeteries affected secular cemeteries. We do know that some early burials in them were not recorded, though. When the law on the freedom of religion was passed in 1923, the church started to demand higher payments for burial from nonmembers; secular burials on consecrated ground were also opposed and condemned (Riihimäen sanomat, 31 May 1923). Sometimes the church refused to bury people who had left the church—one particularly antagonizing case was that of the two victims of the Tiutinen shipwreck in Kotka, whom the local priest would not let be buried among others. The shipwreck was a traumatic experience in itself and the clergy’s reaction only strengthened the impression of their heartlessness. This incident was one of the main reasons the people of Kotka were motivated to create a secular burial ground of their own (Hömppi 2009: 37). Because of the political inclinations of many influential freethinker activists, a factory town was a typical background for a secular cemetery in Finland. Strong workers’ unions and political representation of the left, with large membership of the freethinkers’ associations at the time, granted the successful establishment of a secular cemetery. The working-class culture of the time, with its theatre groups and choirs, brass bands, and political training, provided an ample background for a vivid culture of death without religious rituals (Eero and Leena Sirén, interview, 2 July 2019). And what is important to note, is that the rituals were particularly local in nature. People attending the funerals knew, not only the deceased, but each other, the musicians, the speakers, the cemetery officials. This sense of place and community is often overlooked today when discussing secular cemeteries. Even freethinkers themselves concentrate on ideological matters. But the cemeteries were always local projects and continue to be that even today. There had to be a group of people, preferably an association, to organize the venture. Often there was a shared experience of mistreatment by the church. The plans had to be accepted by local officials, the land purchased, the maintenance of the cemetery organized. This meant a lot of work and required administrative skills. The national freethinkers’ organization was founded only in 1936 and has always been able to do little to help local communities. Continuity in the association was essential for a successful cemetery project. The political atmosphere of the area was another important matter. Perhaps it is not surprising that the first officially secular cemetery was created in Kotka—a town in which the Finnish Civil War had not been fought as such, and in which there was a strong socialist and communist representation in the administrative offices in the inter-war years. In many other areas the conservative resistance to a secular cemetery was fierce.

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The capital city of Helsinki is another matter: there we may suggest that the price of land was higher than in many other places, and struggles over zoning were constant (Tiukkanen 1998: 120–30). Local freethinkers’ associations are still responsible for cemetery maintenance; in some areas only members are buried in these cemeteries since they are rather small and new land is expensive. Most cemeteries accept non-Christian burials; Christian spouses of freethinkers are accepted. Nowadays religious symbols are usually accepted on gravestones. A special sense of space and time is present in secular cemeteries, since, unlike in present church cemeteries, they do not reuse the graves and rarely remove old gravestones. As Ruin says, “being with the dead” and a sense of community with the living and the dead are essential in a culture of death. Although atheists do not believe in a literal afterlife, a sense of connection between generations and individuals is still necessary, at least among those who wish for a burial in a secular cemetery.

Three Examples of Secular Cemeteries— Kotka, Karkkila, Kemi—and One Nonsecular The Kotka freethinkers’ cemetery was the first one in Finland to be intentionally created by a freethinkers’ association in 1929; the first burial took place in 1931. Kotka had been known as a sinful and radical town for decades: the newly founded (1879), coastal harbor and factory town drew young workers from all over Finland and workers’ ideologies, accompanied by the typical side effects of seafaring, were looming. The first church was built in the town in 1898, but the cemeteries were created far outside the actual town (Harjunpää 2008). In the 1918 Civil War, Kotka was spared from actual fighting. The Red troops retreated there, planning to escape to Russia, but this attempt was unsuccessful. The war was a traumatic experience in Kotka, but after the Civil War the socialists quickly gained the majority in the city council and perhaps some of the wounds were not as deep as in towns where there had been severe fighting and heavy losses in front of the population. Instead, there was a strong feeling of togetherness among the working class and leaving the church immediately when it became possible was more common than in most places (Seppo 1992: appendix 1). The clergy had a sour attitude toward freethinkers’ burials in Christian cemeteries, but before their own cemetery there were no other options. The relationship between clerics and working classes was in general very tense. Already in the founding meeting of the freethinkers’ association in 1929 the cemetery question was central. Planning and eventually building began immediately after the founding of the association; it can be said

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that the cemetery was one of the main reasons the association was needed. It has been calculated that in the Lutheran cemeteries of the Kotka area there had been forty thousand burials until 2009, while in the freethinkers’ cemetery the number was two thousand. This is probably the highest percentage of secular burials in Finland (Hömppi 2009: 37–38). When a basically penurious association buys land and transforms it into a proper cemetery, both money and people are needed. Subscriptions and physical labor were both essential also in Kotka. So it has been through the years. The sense of community grows both from burials and maintenance of the cemetery. The freethinkers’ cemetery is not separated from the larger local community in Kotka. On the other side of the road is the Lutheran cemetery, which was opened in 1913. When the crematorium was built in this area in 1973, the freethinkers were active in the question. They also gained the right to use the crematorium chapel for their funerals—the chapel is comfortably situated almost opposite to the freethinkers’ cemetery. The closeness of the crematorium has made cremation particularly common among Kotka freethinkers (Hömppi 2009: 39–40). The closeness of the sea, and its importance to many locals, has made scattering of the ashes in the sea popular. The cemetery is even threatened by this fashion: when people choose not to pay for a place of burial, funds for cemetery maintenance may prove insufficient (Ulla-Maija Eerola, interview, 3 July 2019). Karkkila is a metal industry town in southern Finland, surrounded by countryside. In Karkkila the founding of the freethinkers’ association happened later and with more difficulty than in Kotka. The history of the Karkkila freethinkers’ association claims that the state and church discouraged people from founding them, but the Kotka example shows that also local aspects must be considered. The year of the first attempt, 1940, was unsuccessful due to the ongoing World War II. Political tensions were high because Finland had been at war against the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1940 and would be again from 1941 to 1944. The association was started only in 1946, when the right-wing nationalism typical of the 1930s and the war years had to give way to a more extensive ideological sphere. Even after that the Lutheran congregation tried to limit the use of the road leading to the freethinkers’ cemetery through the church lands; in Karkkila the relations between the church and workers were tense a lot later than for example in Kotka (Snellman and Holli 2018: 10–11). The first mentions of cemetery planning in Karkkila are from 1947. The cemetery was opened in 1950. As in Kotka, in Karkkila members of the association had to put in a lot of hard work to create and maintain a dignified and legally acceptable cemetery. Even if a cemetery was not openly stated as a motive for founding the association, it took up most of

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the time and energy of the members in the first years. It was a symbol of separation from the arbitrary and unjust treatment of the church and the state in matters of death and burial (Snellman and Holli 2018: 20–22). Karkkila is a town of about nine thousand inhabitants, yet the freethinkers’ cemetery creates a familiar and intimate community. The cemetery keeper tells how he remembers many of the people buried there: some were close friends, some neighbors, some just acquaintances (Erkki Hohenthal, interview, 21 November 2019). It is of course natural that someone with close ties to the freethinkers’ community would end up tending the cemetery, but this comment is telling about local social connections in life and death. Even though the Karkkila cemetery is situated right next to the Lutheran cemetery, it has its own building for small ceremonies and goodbyes. The Kotka situation has been rather unique in the peaceful cooperation between the church and freethinkers; the separation of these two is more common in the Finnish freethinkers’ cemetery culture. The Kemi freethinkers’ association was originally founded in 1930, a year later than the Kotka association. Its journey was much more difficult, yet not as hard as the association in Karkkila. The association was abolished with a court decision in 1931. A new attempt was made in 1936 and a new association founded in 1937. The concept of a freethinkers’ association was considered dangerous communism and anticlerical at the time. When a national freethinkers’ association was created in 1937, it would have been odd if a local association could not have been organized (Salonen 2019); this reasoning would not affect the Karkkila association a few years later though. The founders of the new association had to convince the court that they had not been members of any communist organizations and the association would mostly be founded to create a freethinkers’ cemetery, in which the burial fees would be lower than they were for nonmembers in church cemeteries (Sundström 2007). The cemetery was the main reason the Kemi freethinkers felt they needed an association of their own. It was founded in 1941, and the first burial is said to have been a soldier whose identity is not known, neither is his grave marked (Sundström 2014/2018). Kemi is a northern factory and harbor town, and the cemetery respects—or submits to—the northern landscape. Whereas in Kotka and Karkkila the cemetery area is mostly covered by lawn, in Kemi the typical underbrush of the area, with moss, blueberry, lingonberry, and lichen is respected and intentionally used to create a peaceful space (Pertti Periniva, interview, 26 October 2019). Cremations are becoming more common in the Kemi area, where the closest crematorium is in Oulu, about one hundred kilometers away. But the natural connection between crematorium and cemetery is clearly miss-

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ing. There is not a Christian cemetery with its chapel nearby, so a small room with space for final goodbyes has been built in the cemetery. There is also a refrigerated room for coffins, a small morgue if you wish to call it such. But how did freethinkers manage their lives and deaths without a secular cemetery nearby? One family’s story may give an example. “We didn’t miss a secular cemetery, we had the Malmi cemetery nearby and so many of us were buried there,” says a third-generation atheist who has given many funeral speeches in his time (Eero and Leena Sirén, interview, 2 July 2019). The Malmi Lutheran cemetery in the capital city of Helsinki may be a special case, but a very telling one, of the general secularization of the society. The first burials took place there in 1895. At the time Malmi was a small village quite far outside the Helsinki city area. Nowadays the city has grown around the cemetery. But because the Malmi cemetery was so far from the city, the churches, and from the eyes of the clergy, freethinkers could perform their various funeral rituals in peace compared to many other cemeteries. A chapel was built in 1923, but in the beginning, atheists were not allowed to use it—or did not wish to do so. There is actually an area in the Malmi cemetery where there are numerous graves with the freethinkers’ flame symbol, created long before the 2007 law on special nondenominational areas in each parish. The family in question did not bury their dead in this area, though. A crematorium was built in the Malmi cemetery in 1966; before that the Hietaniemi crematorium, built in 1926, was used for local cremations. Cremation as a modern burial practice goes hand in hand with secularism and loosening of traditional religious ties. As in many other countries, in Finland the churches originally rejected cremation as a pagan tradition, but later had to accept it as a normal part of a funeral. In a study from 1989, Tuomo Lahtinen found out that at the time people still thought cremation to be a leftist and urban practice (Lahtinen 1989: 112–15). Cremation numbers were on the rise in Finland at the time; nowadays over half of the deceased are cremated and the stigma around it has largely disappeared. People no longer think about politics but practicality when choosing their means of disposal. Cremation was naturally an urban prospect for a long time, since the only crematorium in Finland was the Helsinki Hietaniemi crematorium from 1926 until 1964 (Lahtinen 1989: 116). The archive of the Helsinki Freethinkers’ Association confirms that it was also popular among freethinkers: notes from a funeral speaker in the 1960s tell us that many of the funerals took place in the Hietaniemi crematorium (Kansan arkisto, The Helsinki Freethinkers’ Association’s archive, private notebook).

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The Essence of Secular Cemeteries When visiting a secular cemetery in Finland, certain things are typical. There are few, if any, large monuments, or even larger gravestones. Most of the cemeteries were created in an era during which church cemeteries were being remodeled as strictly uniform and easily maintained places of burial. Aesthetics of the time stressed the importance of gravestones of the same size and design (Lempiäinen and Nickels 1990: 68–70). These ideas affected secular cemeteries, not through direct orders since the church could not give them to freethinkers’ associations, but through common cultural understanding of a cemetery. As we have seen, nonreligious funerals were rather similar to religious ones in form if not content. Cemeteries faced the same limitations and possibilities: the peace of the dead would be ensured and the consolation for the families granted with organized and tidy burial grounds. Cemeteries, both religious and secular, have been redesigned and reorganized even after the initial effort, hand in hand with changing burial customs. Old kerbstones, reminding people of times when graves had to be protected with fences from grazing animals, have been removed to facilitate cemetery maintenance (Lempiäinen and Nickels 1990: 72). The rise of the cremation rate has demanded cemetery keepers to create urn burial and ash scattering areas. New memorials have been founded to answer the new ideas on the history of the area and the country. An important matter affecting the outlook of secular cemeteries has been the financial situation of many families in the area. Since most secular cemeteries have been founded in working class towns and by the workers, paying for a large stone has not been an option for most. There may have been large family graves, on the other hand the survivors may have had trouble in paying for a stone at all. A graveyard keeper in Karkkila told that he and his pals built a makeshift gravestone for a deceased friend, who had left no inheritance or means to pay for a stone (Erkki Hohenthal, interview, 21 November 2019). The small memorial was built of kerbstones removed from other graves (Figure 4.1). Usually the graves are marked with ordinary stones, also typical of religious cemeteries, made by stone carvers. Instead of religious symbols the traditional symbol of the Promethean Flame is common, especially on older stones. Nature motifs are being used, sometimes in a way that may be confused with Christianity. This may not have been intentional but an aesthetical choice: roses and stars are beautiful and not the possession of only one denomination. Texts, apart from the name and age of the deceased, are rare. This is the case in most Finnish gravestones independent of their location or size. On older gravestones religious or philosophical

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Figure 4.1. A gravestone made from old kerbstones. Karkkila Freethinkers’ Cemetery. © Ilona Kemppainen.

texts can be occasionally found in Lutheran cemeteries; in the twentieth century this tradition waned and has not returned to date. One text in the Kotka cemetery says: “Thank you father for everything” (Kiitos isä kaikesta). This exception confirms the rule, and in its personal tone also resembles some more vocal Nordic gravestones, for example in Sweden (Gustavsson 2003). Usually there have not been such civilizing purposes in prescribing what kind of monuments are allowed in the cemetery, as there have been in religious cemeteries. The local nature of secular cemeteries must also be considered: while the church had a hierarchical, nation-wide organization, the freethinkers acted via their local associations and the cemeteries were their responsibility. The national organization rarely could or would do more than give moral support to them. The avoidance of texts, typical in Finland, often leaves us asking what the exact intention of a particular gravestone was. But in secular cemeteries the relative freedom to create a monument according to one’s tastes or the wishes of the deceased is sometimes more revealing than in religious cemeteries. There are pillars carved of wood, probably as portraits of the person resting in the grave (Figure 4.2). There are portraits engraved in stone,

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Figure 4.2. A memorial carved of wood. Kotka Freethinkers’ Cemetery. © Ilona Kemppainen.

made in Russia where this craft is well developed. There are simple stone plates resting on the ground and small stones standing with a little seethrough chamber for a candle. Many of the stones are typical of Finnish burial culture. Even abnormally typical: not even the gravestones of the few politicians and officials in secular cemeteries stand out from the other stones. One has to know where to look and who the person was to realize this is a grave of a notable. Local communities are a central feature of Finnish secular cemeteries. Another matter are people who wished to be buried in a freethinkers’ cemetery but did not have ties to the area. For example, the first ashes

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scattered in the Karkkila cemetery came from Sweden; the person in question would have wanted their final resting place to be in Helsinki, but since there was not a secular cemetery, Karkkila was the next option (Erkki Hohenthal, interview, 21 November 2019). Many atheists have been and still are buried in religious cemeteries, but for some people it is essential to be buried in unconsecrated ground.

Waning Communality and Changing Secularism Cemeteries are not only burial grounds but also stages for rituals, especially when there is no chapel or other building for rituals. In the first half of the twentieth century, and often until the 1970s, Finnish funerals were often as large occasions as possible. Secular burials were sometimes also power displays of the workers’ movement, with large crowds, waving flags, and moving speeches and music. Traditions and memories of the Civil War were present, especially when burying veterans of this war (Eero and Leena Sirén, interview, 2 July 2019). These funerals resembled religious funerals in many ways, but alongside large ceremonies there has always existed the option of a silent funeral. It was formerly a punishment, but according to secular thinking—and actually also seventeenth-century radical Protestant thinking (Gittings 2019: 46–47)—it was an appropriate way to bury a person (Saari and Klementjeff 1994: 10–11). Secular funerals may have been small because of lack of funds, or discrepancy about the way of burial. Smaller funerals have become a norm in the past decades everywhere in Finnish society: only the closest family is invited. Secular cemeteries have seen the end result of this process perhaps earlier than other cemeteries in such examples as a lone guitar player by the graveside while the cemetery keeper waits to be able to fill in the grave. Secular funerals have in many aspects been the harbingers of change and new ideas on death and funerals. Smaller funerals, silent burials, and concentrating on the life of the deceased instead of spiritual questions had been routine for secular funerals for a long time before they became part of religious funeral culture in Finland. These new emphases and types of rituals may be understood as an attempt to cope with a changing society and the limits it sets on death rituals and emotions. The changing culture of death has been considered a problem in many countries in the past decades. Death has been hidden in hospitals, funeral parlors, and therapy groups. People have lost the language to discuss death and rituals to cope with it. General secularization has been one of the villains in this discussion, but as we have seen, lack of rituals is not necessarily a sign of secularism.

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Traditional communities have disintegrated. Especially the old workingclass culture has been undone due to structural changes in the economy and society. Brass bands have blown their last horn, choirs have fallen silent, theatre groups have left the stage. Professional speakers or family members keep up the spirit in funerals and paid musicians may be asked to play a tune or two. Mass media, migration, new urban landscapes with creation of new suburbs have left people isolated, in life and in death. The content and meaning of secularism and atheism has changed. They are not political or particularly radical notions as such anymore. Religion, or the lack of it, is considered a private matter. This may be a problem when a person dies: the family does not know what kind of burial and where the person would have wanted to be buried. Life has changed: the young are more likely to join a group on social media or organize a demonstration or a campaign about a pressing issue. Joining an association and maintaining the often tedious organizational routine is no longer tempting. Freethinkers’ cemeteries are maintained by local freethinkers’ associations; when there are no members left, there is no one to take care of the dead either (Ulla-Maija Eerola, interview, 3 July 2019). This has led to problems in secular cemeteries. People still want to be buried in them if they do not choose for their ashes to be scattered elsewhere. But because the cemeteries are maintained mostly by a voluntary workforce and with little funds, disappearing communities endanger the future of these cemeteries. The church has funds and paid workers, but when the last elderly volunteer has to give up maintaining a secular cemetery, new people are not in sight to replace them. Secular cemeteries may have been a step on the path to where the corpse gradually disappears from the funeral scene. Already the cremation ritual does not usually include the entire funeral crowd present in burying the urn. The newest development in Finnish and of course also international funerals is a funeral in which the corpse is not present at all: people go directly to the funeral reception (Eero and Leena Sirén, interview, 2 July 2019). People who wish to have this kind of funeral are motivated by the thought of concentrating on their life, not their death, which is an old secular funeral ideal, even if it has made its way into religious funerals.

Conclusion The growing regulation of Lutheran cemeteries was typical of the Finnish twentieth-century burial culture. One would think that secular cemeteries would have gladly avoided the uniform outlook followed by new norms

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on religious cemeteries, but this does not seem to be the case. Freethinkers’ graves rarely expressed love for grandiosity or experimentation. This was due to the relatively low income of a typical freethinker, but also the Finnish culture of death in general. In the 1920s and 1930s the cemetery ideal that swept the Western world closely resembled a military graveyard: uniform and simple (Rugg 2013: 322–33). Freethinkers gladly thought of themselves as modern and rational, so it was obvious their cemeteries would follow the new norms. What does it mean to be buried in a secular cemetery? It has been both a practical and an ideological question: nonmembers had to pay higher fees to be buried in a religious cemetery, and some clergy did not even want them to be buried there. Many freethinkers thought it to be important to avoid the church in all aspects. Creating a cemetery of their own was a case of necropolitics for the freethinkers of the time: an actual necropolis for those who were not wanted and did not want to be buried among the Christians. Leaving the church has ceased to be the strong political and ideological question it was one hundred years ago. Religion and nonreligion have become individual choices, and the religious landscape has widened to include a lot of variation and fluctuation in personal beliefs. Burial is not anymore as serious a question it was in the past. People concentrate on life and living, and funerals have lost their social significance (Pajari and Haverinen 2019: 335). The idea of religious churchyards and secular cemeteries, as discussed by Julie Rugg, does not get much support from Finnish cemetery culture. Almost all modern cemeteries are owned and originally consecrated by the Lutheran Church. Only a few cemeteries belong to other denominations, and entirely secular cemeteries were for almost a century an exception that confirmed the rule. The sense of community was strong for decades in freethinkers’ cemeteries. Members of the local freethinkers’ associations all knew each other: they worked together, lived together, their children grew up in the common culture. When old factory communities were disbanded, elderly members of freethinkers’ associations were left to maintain the cemeteries after other traditions had disappeared. As one memoir said in a collection of memorable funerals: “I feel that I buried, not just my mother, but also a piece of the working-class culture of a small factory town. My loss is more than a loss of a beloved person” (Näitä hautajaisia en unohda, 188). Freethinkers’ cemeteries have never enjoyed much popularity in Finland. Many people outside the specific area may not have known about them; some atheists may have been indifferent about their burial. Some families may have wanted to bury their atheist member according to their own beliefs. Yet they remain a living memorial of people who wanted to

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be buried as they lived, and of communities that were strong enough to offer this choice to their members and other like-minded people. Ilona Kemppainen (PhD) is a social historian of Finnish death and its rituals and social contexts in war and peace. Her research topics range from war death to funeral traditions, and from manner guides’ etiquette instructions to cemetery design. She is the founding member and present chair of the Finnish Death Studies Association and a coeditor of Thanatos, a peer-reviewed, online journal that promotes interdisciplinary research on death and dying. Her present research project concerns the history of nonreligious burial in Finland.

References Ben-Amos, A. 2000. Funerals, Politics and Memory in Modern France, 1789–1996. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Davies, D. J. 2002. Death, Ritual and Belief. London: Continuum. Fingerroos, O. 2004. Haudatut muistot—rituaalisen kuoleman merkitykset Kannaksen muistitiedossa [Buried memories—The meanings of ritual death in the Karelian peninsula oral history]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Gardberg, C. J. 2003. Maan poveen. Suomen luterilaiset hautausmaat, kirkkomaat ja haudat [Into the bosom of the earth. The Lutheran Finnish cemeteries, churchyards, and graves]. Helsinki: Schidts. Gittings, C. 2019. “Thanatos ja Kleio. Kuolema reformaatioajan Euroopassa” [Thanatos and Kleio. Death in Europe in the age of the Reformation]. In Suomalaisen kuoleman historia [The history of Finnish death], ed. I. Pajari, J. Jalonen, R. Miettinen, and K. Kanerva, 31–60. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Gustavsson, A. 2003. Gravstenar I Norge och Sverige son symboler för känslor, tankar ocj idéer i vår egen tid [Gravestones in Norway and Sweden as symbols of emotions, thoughts and ideas in our time]. Oslo: Novus Forlag. Harjunpää, K. 2008. Hiljaisuus puhuu. Kotka-Kymin seurakuntayhtymän hautausmaat [Silence speaks. The cemeteries of the Kotka-Kymi parish concern]. Kotka: KotkaKymin seurakuntayhtymä. Hömppi, P. 2009. “Parikan hautausmaa” [The Parikka cemetery]. In Kotkan vapaaajattelijat 1929–2009. 80 vuotta ihmisyyden aatetta [The Freethinkers of Kotka 1929–2009. 80 years of humanism], ed. H. Eklund, P. Hömppi, O. Korjus, and E. Lassi, 37–40. Kotka: Kotkan vapaa-ajattelijat ry. Kansan arkisto. The Helsinki Freethinkers’ Association’s Archive. Lahtinen, T. 1989. Polttohautaus Suomessa. Aatehistoria ja kehitys [Cremation in Finland. The history of ideas and development]. Åbo: Åbo Akademi. Lempiäinen, P., and B. Nickels. 1990. Viimeiset leposijamme. Hautausmaat ja hautamuistomerkit [Our final resting places. Graveyards and memorials]. Helsinki: SLEY-kirja. Näitä hautajaisia en unohda [These funerals I will not forget] collection. Finnish Literature Society’s Archives.

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Nesporova, O. 2019. “The Dual Learning of an Ideology. Education and Engagement in Secular Funerals in Communist Czechoslovakia.” An unpublished paper presented at the 14th International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying and Disposal, 4–7 September 2019, University of Bath, UK. Pajari, I., and A. Haverinen. 2019. “Kuoleman julkisuus ja yksityisyys” [Publicity and privacy of death]. In Suomalaisen kuoleman historia [The history of Finnish death], ed. I. Pajari, J. Jalonen, R. Miettinen, and K. Kanerva, 313–36. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Pentikäinen, J. 1990. Suomalaisen lähtö. Kirjoituksia pohjoisesta kuolemankulttuurista [The parting of a Finn]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Pikkusaari, J. 1998. Vaikea vapaus. Sosialidemokratian häviö kirkolle 1850-luvulta 1920luvulle käydyssä Suomen kulttuuritaistelussa [Difficult freedom. How social democracy lost the battle with the church in the cultural struggle of Finland from the 1850s to 1920s]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden Seura. Prothero, S. 2000. Purified by Fire. A History of Cremation in America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rugg, J. 2000. “Defining the Place of Burial: What Makes a Cemetery a Cemetery?” Mortality 5(3): 259–275. ———. 2013. Churchyard and Cemetery. Tradition and Modernity in the Rural North Yorkshire. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ruin, H. 2019. Being with the Dead. Burial, Ancestral Politics, and the Roots of Historical Consciousness. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Saarela, T. 2008. Suomalainen kommunismi ja vallankumous 1923–1930 [Finnish communism and the revolution 1923–1930]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Saari, K., and H. Klementjeff. 1994. Vapaa-ajattelijan käsikirja [Freethinker’s manual]. Helsinki: Vapaa ajattelija. Salonen, T. 2019. “Ajattelun vapaus Kemissä 1930-luvulla” [Freedom of thought in Kemi in the 1920s]. Vapaa-ajattelijat, April. Retrieved 22 May 2021 from http:// vapaa-ajattelijat.fi/blog/2019/12/19/kemi-1930/. Schulz, F. R. 2013. Death in East Germany, 1945–1990. New York: Berghahn Books. Seppo, J. 1992. Vapaa-ajattelijaliikkeen organisoituminen ja sen herättämä kiista Suomessa 1936–1946 [The organizing of the Freethinkers’ Movement and the controversy caused by it in Finland 1936–1946]. Helsinki: Suomen Kirkkohistoriallinen Seura. SKS (Finnish Literature Society’s Archives). “1918” collection. Snellman, J., and M. Holli. 2018. Karkkilan vapaa-ajattelijat ry 1946–2016 [Karkkila Freethinkers’ Association]. Karkkila: Karkkilan vapaa-ajattelijat ry. Sundström, K. 2007. Kemin siviilirekisteriin kuuluvien yhdistys [The association for members of the civil register in Kemi]. Retrieved 20 May 2021 from http://www .ateistit.fi/uutiset/uuti165.pdf. ———. 2014/2018. Ristikankaan hautausmaa Kemissä [The Ristikangas cemetery in Kemi]. Retrieved 20 May 2021 from http://www.ateistit.fi/uutiset/uuti141212 .html. Taira, T. 2006. Notkea uskonto [Flexible religion]. Turku: Eetos. Talve, I. 1988. Kalmisto—hautausmaa—kirkkotarha. Kulttuurihistoriaa Suomen hautausmailla [Graveyard—cemetery—churchyard. The cultural history of Finnish graveyards]. Scripta Ethnologia 38. Turku: Turun yliopiston kansatieteen laitoksen julkaisuja.

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Tiukkanen, A. 1998. Vapaa-ajattelu Helsingissä. Helsingin Vapaa-ajattelijat ry 1936– 1996 [Freethinking in Helsinki. Helsinki Freethinkers’ Association 1936–1996]. Helsinki: Helsingin Vapaa-ajattelijat ry. Walter, T. 2005. “Three Ways to Arrange a Funeral: Mortuary Variation in the Modern West.” Mortality 10(3): 173–92. Wirkkala, I. 1945. Suomen hautausmaiden historia [The history of Finnish cemeteries]. Helsinki: WSOY. Ylikoski, E. 2007. “Tunnustuksettomasta hautaamisesta” [About nondenominatio nal burial]. Helsingin vapaa-ajattelijat. Retrieved 25 May 2021 from http://va paa-ajattelijat.fi/helsinki/2007/08/14/tunnustuksettomasta-hautaamisesta/.

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PECULIAR BURIAL PLACES

CHAPTER 5

Death during Retreat The Burials of Carolean Soldiers in Jämtland and Trøndelag (Sweden and Norway) Kristina Jonsson

Introduction The Great Northern War took place between 1700 and 1721. The Swedish Empire—reigned by Karl XII—took a fatal blow at the battle of Poltava in Poland 1709, and finally crumbled when the warrior king died in battle in southern Norway in November 1718. By that time, an army of about ten thousand Swedish and Finnish soldiers had already been sent to invade Trondheim in the county of Trøndelag in central Norway, having departed from Duved in the county of Jämtland in Sweden. In late December 1718 upon receiving the news of the king’s death, the already weakened army was commanded to retreat to Jämtland, having to cross the mountainous border region. A heavy snowstorm struck, and about 3,700 soldiers perished during the retreat. A number of Carolean soldiers’ graves have been located in Jämtland, and at least one on the Norwegian side of the border. The burials are situated along the route from the Swedish-Norwegian border region toward the east. Some of them are quite large mass burials that have been located by accident or deliberate excavation, while others are known only through local tradition. This chapter focuses on the question of why these men, returning from war on military duty, were not given proper churchyard burials even in cases where it could have been arranged? Why were the Christian burial regulations of the time not followed? Can it all be explained by martial laws during the war, necessity in harsh times, or were there other agendas in operation?

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The Campaign: General Armfeldt and His Army When Karl XII acceded to the Swedish throne in 1697 he was only fifteen years old. The leaders of Denmark-Norway, Saxony-Poland, and Russia hereby saw their chance to reclaim lost lands and signed an attack treaty against the Swedish great power. By the year 1700 the nations were at war, and to make a long story short the Swedish army was initially victorious but finally capitulated in the battle of Poltava in Poland in 1709 with massive land losses as a result. Trade blockades and further setbacks ensued, and after a failed attempt in 1716 to invade Norway the situation was turning desperate. Hence, in 1717 Karl XII prepared a plan for the opening of a new western front against Norway, with parallel forces attacking both the fortress Fredrikshald in Halden and the fortress Fredriksten in Trondheim (Grauers [1920] 2003: 13–22) (see Figure 5.1). The northern campaign on Trondheim was led by General Carl Gustaf Armfeldt. He had a solid military background and since 1700 he had been serving in Finland (then part of Sweden) where he had partaken in numerous war campaigns under the reign of Karl XII. His orders were to set up a suited army, starting with a survey of existing battalions in central Sweden and suitable terrains for marching and storage facilities. The task of planning the actual gathering of supplies was given to Johan Henrik Frisenheim, member of the council of war. They ended up deciding that the attack on Trondheim would begin in the county of Jämtland, where the army would gather in the village Duved where an existing redoubt (Duved skans) was to function as the main storage point. From there the Swedish-Norwegian border was only about forty-five kilometers away (Uddgren 1920; Hansson 2003: 22–24). The army was supposed to leave Duved on 4 August 1718, in order to be able to return before winter. The plan was to gather about ten thousand men, seven thousand horses, and seven to eight thousand cattle, as well as food and fodder supplies for six weeks in the field. A majority of the summoned soldiers came from Finnish regiments, posted along the Baltic Sea coast—some as far away as seven hundred kilometers from Duved. When the last had arrived, it was already 9 August; by then the army consisted of 10,073 persons. As for animals, they managed to gather about 6,800 horses but only 2,500 cattle. Hence the prerequisites for Armfeldt’s army were bad from the start. The departure for Norway was further delayed, and when the first of five divisions left on 18 August they had already consumed a third of the food rations (Hansson 2003: 35–41, 63). As it turned out, they also left too close to the coming winter. The details of the campaign and the army’s route will not be expanded on here, suffice it to say that no serious attempts were made to take Trondheim before the army regrouped further south in the Tydal region. Around

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Figure 5.1. The Nordic countries with today’s capitals and selected villages/towns mentioned in the text marked. © Kristina Jonsson based on open data from Lantmäteriet (the Swedish mapping, cadastral, and land registration authority).

Christmas 1718, the delayed news of King Karl XII’s death in Halden reached Armfeldt, and the army was forced to start its retreat to Sweden. As mentioned, it did not turn out well.

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The Disastrous Retreat Leaving from Tydal, the army had the village Handöl in Jämtland as its destination. The village, or rather the three farms it consisted of, was located twenty kilometers from the border on the Swedish side, twenty-five kilometers from Duved. To get there they had to surpass the mountain Øyfjell, then walk past the lake Essandsjön to reach the valley where the river Enan runs down to Handöl. From there on they could just follow the river. The problem was that the army had to do this in early January, in an already weary and famished state. Already on their way up Øyfjell, a snowstorm struck. Those who lived to tell about it described the storm as having been so heavy that it was impossible to see one’s own hand when held out in front—when the wind is so fierce it has a cooling effect that may have corresponded to a temperature down to fifty degrees below zero (Celsius; -58°F). Already on the way down to the lake and the river valley, people were freezing to death. The army set up a night camp by Essandsjön, and an unknown number of soldiers never got further. From there on, the “Carolean death-march” as it is called in Scandinavia continued to harvest victims along the way. The horrid weather continued, the army grew more and more scattered, and after leaving the second night-camp by the river Enan groups of soldiers separated along two different routes: some of them—the fortunate ones—chose to follow the river as planned, while others in desperation chose to walk as the crow flies toward Handöl. That meant crossing further mountains—the Sylarna mountain massif (Hansson 2003: 185, 198–202). Around 3,700 soldiers perished during the retreat. The majority froze to death in the mountains, some never made it further from the camp sites due to injury or disease, and some died on the further strenuous journey toward home (Hansson 2003: 205). There are gruesome tales from the aftermath of the retreat: stories about exhausted soldiers who fought their way into the three single farmhouses in Handöl, only to die instantly from the shocking increase in body temperature; and about looters ravaging corpses strewn over the mountainsides. In 1742, twenty-three years after the disaster, a participant in a mountain expedition described the area as being strewn with human remains: “Here were skeletons and skulls in every juniper bush, and as shingles about the ground so to speak. Hats lay overgrown with moss, you trod on rusted swords and bayonets . . .” (Hansson 2003: 196–97; author’s translation from Swedish). A local tradition from Överhogdal (see Figure 5.2), a village two hundred kilometers southeast along the way toward Hälsingland which was the base for the Hälsinge Company, describes how seven soldiers froze to death in the outside gallery of a storehouse. The local women were home alone, and they did not dare to let the unknown men inside (Rosander 1968: 115).

Figure 5.2. Soldiers struggling through the snowstorm in the Carolean death-march. © Jämt-trønderska föreningen Armfelts karoliner (JTAK).

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The Burials The graphic depictions of mountains littered with bodily remains indicate that most of the fallen soldiers were left up there. Their remains were most likely covered in snow, and by fall animals and other taphonomic processes took their toll. But there are known burial sites connected to the Carolean army. The most noted, where skeletons have been unearthed and memorials erected, are found close to villages or farms in the vicinity of the attack and retreat routes: in Handöl, Vallan, Hårbörsta, and Skalstugan in Sweden, and in Lillmoen in Norway. Other sites are known through local tradition, in Ljungdalen, Rista, and Rännberg (Figure 5.2). The ones in Skalstugan and Lillmoen are situated along the route from Duved to Trondheim, which goes to show that hardships were imminent after the departure. It is also known from written sources that many soldiers, and horses as well, fell ill immediately. One factor may have been that the march coincided with a “lemming year,” when an unusually high number of (dead) lemmings may have infected the running waters with campylobacter. The rest of the burial sites are located from Handöl, the end point of the retreat, and further along the way toward the east/southeast. Several of them have been deliberately excavated, although not by professional archaeologists in all cases. Hence, there are unfortunately no drawings or detailed records or reports of the excavations, so we have no information about how the bodies were arranged in the graves. Buttons and remains of uniform cloth, etc., have been found, indicating that they were buried in the clothes they died in (Hansson 2003: 243). By Skalstugan there was a military camp during World War II. While digging there in 1940, remains of skeletons were found. They were sent to the county museum, where an archaeologist could ascertain that at least twelve persons had been interred in the grave. It was also obvious that most of the human remains had been placed in two wooden boxes not more than 1.2 to 1.3 meters long. The long bones were broken and shattered, and, given the whole picture, the interpretation was that the remains had been collected after having been exposed in the open for a couple of years. The burial site also contained remains of fabric, lead bullets, and personal belongings indicating soldiers’ burials. A complementary excavation, although only of the top layer of burials, was performed from 1941 to 1942 (Johansson 1985; Hansson 2003: 247–48). In Lillmoen, curious road workers performed an excavation in 1860 at a site where local tradition had placed a Carolean burial. Skeletal parts, coins, and remains of fabrics and soles were found, which led to a speedy closing of the grave. In 1955 a new excavation took place, with more or less the same results. Some pieces of bone from the site were 14C-dated to the early 1700s (Hansson 2003: 249–50).

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Figure 5.3. Sites mentioned in the text: burial sites outside of cemeteries are marked with a cross. © Kristina Jonsson based on open data from Lantmäteriet (the Swedish mapping, cadastral, and land registration authority).

In Handöl a tablet made of soapstone was found in a field in 1889. An inscription on it says: “In the year of 1719 on 20 January, 600 people were buried here” (author’s translation from Swedish). It was not until 1936 that the actual site was located, and a large number of skeletons as well as remains of clothing and personal items were unearthed. After having ascertained the full extent of the mass burial pit, it was closed again. In Vallan, about ten kilometers from Handöl, local tradition has it that between 180 and 300 men died and were buried in the village. A memorial stone bears the inscription “In January 1719 war people were buried here” (author’s translation from Swedish), and it may be as old as from the actual time. In the late nineteenth century a small excavation took place at the site, but no detailed description of the findings remains (Hansson 2003: 241–42).

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In 1935 an excavation was carried out in a field in Hårbörsta, where local farmers had found skeletal remains during plowing. Within an area of ten to twelve square meters numerous skeletal parts were found, among which were ten crania. In a report of the findings, it is noted that local informants knew to tell that “in olden days one or several cartloads with human bones were taken from these burials to the cemetery by Åre Old Church” (Hansson 2003: 246) (see Figure 5.3). In a field belonging to the village Rista, skeletal remains were found during railway construction in the 1880s. Local tradition says it was a mass burial for Carolean soldiers, but nothing was done with it at the time since the workmen kept it a secret so as to not slow down the building project. In 1912 the site was partially excavated, but only scarce remains were found (Johansson 1985; Hansson 2003: 249). Rännberg is a village close to Duved, where a local informant has reported a find of a burial site for seventeen to eighteen Carolean soldiers. It was detected in relation to the construction of a cellar around the year 1918. The then owner of the farm supposedly moved the skeletons to the local dump site, from which the municipality later had them moved to the site of a Carolean memorial monument in Duved (Fornsök 2019). In Ljungdalen, southeast of the Sylarna mountains, local tradition has it that a soldier badly injured from the cold arrived after the retreat. Even though they took him in and tried to help him, he died from his injuries and was later buried “west of the village.” When road construction started in the area his grave was found near the river Ljungan (Gredander 1996: 123). A survey of church registers from the parishes in Jämtland has given some information about churchyard burials of soldiers in early 1719. For the location of mentioned sites, see Figure 5.2. In most parishes there are reported burials of young men in their twenties, with titles such as “soldier” or “dragoon.” There are also some officers of higher rank. Most of these men seem to have made it home after the retreat, only to die shortly after. There was for instance the twenty-five-year-old soldier Ahron Persson who died 26 January in Offerdal, who “in the miserable Norwegian campaign suffered frostbite that caused his death.” On 4 February in the same parish, dragoon Mårten Dahlström died. In the register it says that he “returned quite unharmed from the unfortunate Norwegian march, but was thereafter weakened by disease” (Offerdals kyrkoarkiv 1719: 344). There are however some cases where the descriptions show that already dead soldiers have been transported home; dragoon Joen Jöransson Kjellberg who was buried 15 February in Klövsjö is said to have “died in Åre parish after he came over the mountain on 3 January” (Klövsjö kyrkoarkiv 1719: 31). Klövsjö is located about 170 kilometers from where the soldiers came down from the mountain. In the register for Myssjö parish,

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twelve men of various military ranks died in early 1719. One of them was outrider Per Biörckman, who is described to be “deceased on the mountain,” and another was dragoon Olof Elgh said to have “frozen to death on the mountain” (Myssjö kyrkoarkiv 1719). There are also some examples of nameless soldiers who have been buried in the closest church to where they happened to die. In Rätan, three unnamed soldiers “who died in the village on the march from Norway” were buried 8 February: one from Hälsinge Company who died 3 January, and two from Åboland and Nyland (Finnish companies) who died 23 January and 5 February. A further three “Finnish people who died on the march to Hälsinge Company” were buried 3 March (Rätans kyrkoarkiv 1719: 60). If the soldier from Hälsinge Company died on 3 January, his dead body must have been transported by his companions all the way to Rätan which is a journey of at least 180 kilometers. In Ytterhogdal, about two hundred kilometers from the border area, an unnamed cavalry corporal from Åbo was buried there in February (date uncertain). Earlier in the middle of January, corporal Erich Sedig and soldiers Sam Koppar and Jonas Lilleberg, all from Hälsingland, were also buried in Ytterhogdal after they “died on the march back from Norway” (Ytterhogdals kyrkoarkiv 1719). In Överhogdal, the soldier Eric Jonsson Lindström from Säter in Dalarna County died 3 February and was buried 1 March (Överhogdals kyrkoarkiv 1719: 186) (see the local tradition above on seven soldiers freezing to death in the village). Interestingly there are no reports of any churchyard burials at all—not even of civilians—in January or early February in the parishes of Åre and Undersåker, where all the above-described mass burials are located (more on this in the next section).

Church Regulations and Popular Practices In 1719, church matters such as the burial of the dead were regulated by King Karl XI’s “Church Law and Order” from 1686 (Schmedeman 1706: 1034–36). In Chapter XVIII, “Regarding Christian Burial,” the following extracts can be noted (author’s translation from Swedish): § I: They who have led a Christian life, shall, when they die from this world, honestly, and properly, to the grave be promoted. § IV: No corpse shall for more than half a year remain unburied, lest greater and more important reasons are present, for a longer suspension. The foul practice is hereby forbidden, to self-willingly put corpses in graves, and to let them furthermore remain unburied; likewise, to have them, after they are buried in one place, again deposited with process in the grave. § X: The children who are born out of wedlock, and are murdered, shall be placed aside in the cemetery.

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§ XI: They of foreign religion, who die in this reign, enjoy full churchyard and resting place, but no schola, song or funeral oration. § XII: With their funeral, whom have led a wicked life, and die in major sins, shall the priest not be hasty, but to Secular Law report, that it needs to be examined, and judged, how to execute their burials. Suicides, are examined and judged in the same way by Secular Law. (Schmedeman 1706: 1034–36)

To summarize, Church Law was strict regarding everyone’s right to a burial in a churchyard, albeit a shameful one if you had led a sinful life. Restrictions when it came to funerary ceremonies were also applied for non-Christians, and for dead bodies being reburied in a cemetery after first having been buried in a temporary grave. In the Middle Ages, the discrimination was more rigid: suicides, criminals, unbaptized children, excommunicates, and non-Christians in general were not allowed to be buried in sacred ground at all (Nilsson 1989: 287–90; Jonsson 2009b: 51–52, 80). The above quoted regulations under Paragraph IV are, if interpreted correctly, somewhat ambiguous. On the one hand it stresses the prohibition of having a deceased person buried without proper ceremonies (outside a cemetery?), on the other hand it also stresses the prohibition of moving them to a proper grave (in a cemetery?) with ceremonies. Likely, all the above quoted regulations have one common denominator: deviations from the norm, whether connected to the dead or the living dealing with the dead, resulted in less or no ceremonies in the funerary context. Apart from that, there was no paragraph in the Church Law that directly sanctioned the denial of a churchyard burial, although Paragraph XII opens for it by forwarding the decision to the secular court. In real life, the expulsion of wrongdoers to the outskirts of the cemetery, most commonly on the north side of the church building, was in practice in post-Reformation Scandinavia. This social exclusion took place within the realm of the Church and comprised all kinds of sinners from adulterers to children born out of wedlock. People condemned to capital punishment were an exception, however—there are several examples of executed criminals being buried (or left to rot in public) by the gallows (Sandén 2008; Widerström 2009).

Military Burials Sweden was a nation at war in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries however, so there must have existed rules and practices for when enlisted soldiers and commanders died. At the time of the Great Northern War, military regiments were governed by King Karl XI’s War Regulations of

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1683 (Schmedeman 1706: 802–7). In all war campaigns there was a field priest, and the war regulations addressed the importance of preachers and mass being held to install the fear of God into the army. There is, however, unfortunately no mention of what to do when somebody died. In the Carolean campaign from Jämtland a priest named Nicolao Idman participated. He made it back over the mountains and gave a sermon in the church on Frösön in Jämtland just two weeks after the disaster. The sermon was published a year later (Idman [1720] 1961) and remains the only eyewitness report from the retreat. Idman did not mention the subsequent burials of the casualties and likely did not take part in performing them. We know that King Karl XII was transported back to Sweden after he was shot to death at Fredrikshald, and similar arrangements may have been performed for officers of high rank. Whether the same was possible to consequently arrange for fallen foot soldiers is questionable. Although Sweden was a nation at war from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, no battles took place on Swedish soil in the latest of these centuries. Hence, there are no official war cemeteries. Few large-scale excavations have been made of post-Reformation cemeteries, so archaeological evidence of possible burials of war casualties is scarce. There is one example from Kristinehamn in central Sweden. The town is situated in the County of Värmland, about 170 kilometers from Halden in Norway (see Figure 5.1). Kristinehamn was under pressure during the Great Northern War, since it lay on the transportation route from the eastern parts of Sweden to Norway. Munitions, food supplies, and soldiers needed to be tended to, and the burghers were obliged to bake large amounts of “succarie” bread; diced dry bread intended for long storage during wartime. A cemetery with burials dated to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was excavated in Kristinehamn in the 1990s. The eastern part of the cemetery differed from the rest, and the burials within it (between sixty-five to seventy-five individuals) have been interpreted as soldiers’ graves. The buried were almost exclusively young men, and some of them had been buried in large wooden cases previously used for storing succarie bread. The cases contained up to seven men in each. In the archaeological report the author deems it unlikely that the dead soldiers had been transported back to Sweden from the ongoing war in Norway, since both hygienic and ethical reasons probably prevented such endeavors. He suggests rather that they died in an epidemic or of other types of illnesses (Stibéus 1998: 37–41, 47–54). It cannot be completely ruled out, however, that they were brought back or died in relation to a retreat—the burial of the human remains in bread crates, barely the size to contain a full-grown man, indicates such an explanation (see the crate burial in Skalstugan and the church registers above).

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Discussion How then, can we interpret the burials of the Carolean soldiers in Jämtland? According to Church Law, which should represent “normality,” everyone including foreigners/non-Christians had a right to a churchyard burial. Still around a thousand dead soldiers were buried in other places close to the villages where they died. Most of them died in Handöl where allegedly six hundred men were interred in the same mass burial, and in Vallan there were maybe up to three hundred men. In Rännberg, also close to the border region, the number of bodies is said to have been seventeen or eighteen, but there is no way of knowing if they uncovered the entire mass burial or just part of it when those were found. In all these places the bodies were left there, while at least some of the men buried in Hårbörsta were later moved “in one or several cartloads” to the nearby cemetery. There are two parameters that most likely contributed to the outcome in the cases of the large mass burials: the sheer amount of the dead must have been overwhelming for a small community and a single parish to handle, and the fact that the disaster took place in early January when the ground was frozen made it impossible to dig six hundred individual graves. Furthermore, even if it had been summer there would not have been room for so many bodies in the small parish churchyards in Åre or Undersåker. As mentioned, there were no burials performed in these two parishes either in January or in February in 1719. It seems unlikely due to the circumstances that there were no deaths during this period, but the war events in combination with harsh winter conditions would have caused a temporary state of emergency setting normal societal functions aside. Not only were the parishes flooded with dying soldiers, the king was also dead. On top of this, the parish priest Johannes (Hans) Hammarberg, who oversaw both Undersåker and Åre, died in early February 1719. When this was reported, it was also mentioned that the parish curate was on his deathbed. The cause of Hammarberg’s death is not mentioned in the records, but in October 1718 he was freed from an obligation he had been given in relation to an upcoming clerical meeting since he had been “hard-handled by the bypassing war march.” Most of his hay had been taken (almost fifty tons), and his cattle had either been slaughtered or died from starvation. In January he could not attend another meeting, since he had also had to shoot his horses (Bygdén [1926] 2004: 274–75). On 22 March, ten burials took place in Undersåker (Undersåkers kyrkoarkiv 1719: 227), likely of people having died also during the previous months. In Åre, twenty persons were buried on 15 March (Åre kyrkoarkiv 1719: 368). The parish priest Hammarberg was not buried until 19 July in Undersåker (Undersåkers kyrkoarkiv 1719: 228).

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Regarding the mass burials, suffice it to say that it is clearly understandable why they were arranged under the circumstances. Emergencies have always caused deviations from normal burial practices—we have for instance the numerous burial sites for victims of pestilence and cholera outbreaks. Temporary burials were not unheard of even under normal circumstances: the practice of digging “winter graves” in northern Sweden is known from ethnological sources into the twentieth century. Before the cemetery ground was completely frozen, a pit large enough to hold the estimated number of burials during the winter was dug. If the deceased were not part of families that wanted the body/bodies transferred to a family grave plot, the dead sometimes remained in the winter grave forever (Hagberg 1937: 252–53). Here it can be noted, although it is a diversion from the subject of this chapter, that such practices could indeed in some cases explain why mass burials sometimes are found in churchyard excavations. In remotely located villages and farms, not accessible via roads, the practice was sometimes inverted: since transport to the church was easier during the winter through the use of sleighs, temporary summer graves were constructed for the dead (Hagberg 1937: 253–55). These arrangements were however designed as interim solutions, in the first case already within the churchyard. The mass burials of the Carolean soldiers may very well have been intended as temporary; for sure there was an imminent need to dispose of the bodies as soon as possible, and not wait for what may be arranged later. The soldiers came from near and far, to partake in the Carolean campaign. Most likely few of them were clearly identified before dying, so no record could be held of the names or even nationalities of the deceased who were buried in the mass graves. Hence, arranging a posthumous “redistribution system” in which the human remains could be transferred to suitable cemeteries must also have been an impossible feat. And who was to finance it? Local parishes had their own systems of arranging funerals for the poor (Hagberg 1937: 458–63), but not for a large number of strangers. The Swedish state had lost a war; dealing with war casualties and fallen soldiers was not number one on its agenda. As for the military, rules of war prevailed. As mentioned above, no written regulations for field burials are present in the contemporary war regulation acts, unfortunately. However, since late 2018 work is in progress to update the Swedish Armed Forces’ burial regulations, and from 2020 on they will prohibit burial of fallen soldiers on site (Sadikovic 2019)—the boys (and girls) will be brought back home, but until now it has evidently not been obligatory. In the current burial regulations from 2002 it is stated that deceased army personnel are to be brought home, unless it is “not possible”; then, if an absolute emergency, a burial in the field or at sea can be arranged. A field burial is however meant to be temporary (Försvarsmakten 2003: 7, 19).

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So far, the mass graves are located in the vicinity of the disaster-struck mountains. More difficult to explain are the burials of fewer individuals. Regarding the burials in Lillmoen in Norway, one of the sites along the army’s departure route to Trondheim, the same explanations as the above can likely be applied even if the number of bodies was lower: casualties of war were buried in the field as the army had to move on. In Lillmoen the army was also on enemy soil, and we do not know whether the deceased were buried by their own or by their conquerors or local Norwegian villagers. The human remains buried in Skalstugan are also from soldiers dying shortly after the departure from Duved, still on Swedish ground. In this case, however, the remains seem to have been collected at a later point since the bones were broken and placed in relatively small crates. Why then, were they not transported to a cemetery? The same question applies for the dead soldier in Ljungdalen buried “west of the village” and, if the local tradition agrees with the truth, also for the seven soldiers who met their fate in Överhogdal and of whom there are no burial records (except for perhaps one of them). Church records show that soldiers of different ranks were buried in the churchyards in Rätan, Ytterhogdal, and Överhogdal, in the parishes where they died on their way back to their home regiments further east. There was obviously no general practice not to bury strangers—not doing it would even have been against Church Law. One possible explanation for the exceptions to the rule could be fear (or knowledge) of having done something wrong. The local tradition from Ljungdalen accentuates how the farmers “really tried to save him but failed,” and the one from Överhogdal that “the poor women were home alone so what could they do?” Could the truth be that the local communities, as was the case in Handöl, could not handle the situation since they were famished and desperate themselves? They had to let the soldiers die, or at least felt they had handled the situation inadequately, and tried to cover it up by giving them a clandestine burial. In the case of Ljungdalen it should also be noted that at the time it was a small group of farms at the foot of the mountains in an area without roads, located sixty kilometers as the crow flies from the nearest church—burying the dead soldiers nearby could have been a necessity. The local stories may then have lived on in oral tradition to the present day because of their traumatic origin. There are in fact very few traditions regarding the Carolean soldiers, either in Sweden or in Norway, with happy endings: most of them tell of gruesome deaths, soldiers being killed when asking for help, and ghosts of dead soldiers haunting the area where they died (see Hansson 2003: 223–38). What might have made it easier to forego the usual practices was the fact that people were dealing with unknown soldiers. On the one hand, it was known as common practice that they were buried where they died when

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at war, on the other hand there was no way of knowing if they had practiced a good Christian life since they were not part of the local community. The Great Northern War took its toll on all citizens in the involved countries. The civilian population in the Jämtland/Trøndelag area suffered hard from the Carolean campaign. At the time of the events, only about fourteen thousand people lived in Jämtland—the army of ten thousand men that gathered in Duved corresponded to more than two-thirds of the county’s population. Local farmers both in Sweden and Norway saw their crops, cattle, horses, and food supplies being confiscated by the military—no one was spared as we can see in the example of the parish priest in Undersåker/Åre above. Around 40 percent of the able-bodied men in Jämtland died in the campaign, leaving families behind. Many of those who did survive came back more or less disabled (Hansson 2003: 212–13). Desperate times called for desperate measures: the mass burials in Åre and Undersåker parishes and the singular cases of other fallen soldiers that never made it to a proper cemetery are testimony to that. However, humanity still prevailed, as can be gleaned from church records, local traditions with hints of frustration, and the story from Hårbörsta of subsequent relocation of human remains from a mass burial in a field to the local churchyard. Church records are too scarce to give insight into what may have been done retrospectively in relation to the war victims. As described, a complicating factor in the region where most casualties took place was the demise of the parish priest a month after the campaign ended. His formal successor did not arrive until 1720 (Bygdén [1926] 2004: 276). There may have been posthumous ceremonies for the dead, but it must also be kept in mind that after the Reformation the Protestant Church took less interest in such matters than the Catholic Church had. According to Protestant faith a burial in consecrated ground had nothing to say about the salvation of the soul; neither could the prayers of the living help the dead. Funerary rituals were minimized, and on the whole the Church participated less in the handling of death and burial (see Lindahl 1969: 62–64; Gittings 1984: 22; Houlbrooke 1989: 34–38). So, in conclusion, the soldier burials that took place without proper ceremonies after the Great Northern War were—although they may seem unusual to us—not really unusual at all. There are always exceptions to the rules, and the deviations from the norm that took place in times of heavy societal stress (during famine, epidemics, and war) likely had a function in confirming the norm and what was regarded as “normality.” In traditional folk belief, though, deviations may have caused added stress since no matter what the church officials meant, the general belief was that the dead needed proper handling lest they should return and haunt the living (Jonsson 2009a: 179–82; 2009b: 143–49). The communal memories of the Car-

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olean death-march and the catastrophe that took place in the mountains are still vivid in the region three hundred years later; so the dead are not forgotten despite their final resting places. It is a dramatic story from a war that wiped out a large part of the local populations, so it was bound to leave strong memories behind. No wonder there are still people who claim to have seen or heard revenant soldiers in the mountains, marching by or trying to get into the warmth of the cabins.

Kristina Jonsson works as an archaeologist at Jamtli, the county museum of Jämtland in Sweden. She is also the CEO of the subsidiary company The Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning and Creativity (NCK) in Östersund. Kristina has a PhD in archaeology from Stockholm University, and her thesis focused on medieval and post-Reformation burial practices in Scandinavia.

References Åre kyrkoarkiv [Åre Church record]. 1719. Död- och begravningsböcker [Death and funeral books], Volume SE/ÖLA/11104/C/1, image 187/page 368. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from https://sok.riksarkivet.se/kyrkoarkiv. Bygdén, L. (1926) 2004. Hernösands stifts herdaminne: bidrag till kännedomen om prästerskap och kyrkliga förhållanden till tiden omkring Luleå stifts utbrytning [The personal history of priests in the diocese of Hernösand: Contribution to the knowledge of priests and ecclesiastical relations to the time around the secession of Luleå diocese]. Stockholm: Sveriges släktforskarförbund. Fornsök [The Swedish National Heritage Board’s database for archaeological sites and monuments]. 2019. “Riksantikvarieämbetet.” Retrieved 18 September 2019 from https://app.raa.se/open/fornsok/. Försvarsmakten. 2003. Gravtjänstreglemente för Försvarsmakten: Gravtjänst i kris, krig och vid internationella uppdrag [Burial service regulations for the armed forces: Burial service in crisis, war and at international missions]. Stockholm: Försvarsmakten. Gittings, C. 1984. Death, Burial and the Individual in Early Modern England. London: Croom Helm. Grauers, S. (1920) 2003. “Karl XII.” In Svenskt biografiskt lexikon [Swedish biographical lexicon]. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from https://sok.riksarkivet.se/sbl/ artikel/18800. Gredander, L. 1996. Storsjö socken: Arvet från Ödegårdsmännen [Storsjö parish: The legacy of the Deserted Farm’s men]. Storsjö Kapell: Storsjö byalags redaktionskommitté. Hagberg, L. 1937. När döden gästar: Svenska folkseder och svensk folktro i samband med död och begravning [When death visits: Swedish folklore and swedish popular belief in connection with death and burial]. Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand. Hansson, A. 2003. Armfeldts karoliner [Armfeldt’s carolean soldiers]. Stockholm: Prisma.

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Houlbrooke, R. 1989. “Death, Church, and Family in England between the Late Fifteenth and the Early Eighteenth Centuries.” In Death, Ritual and Bereavement, ed. R. Houlbrooke, 25–42. London: Routledge in association with the Social History Society of the United Kingdom. Idman, N. (1720) 1961. Folcketz roop på norska fiällerne: predikan hållen i Frösö kyrka den 20 jan 1719 av Nicolao Idman [The people’s cries in the Norwegian mountains: Sermon held in Frösö church the 20 January 1719 by Nicolao Idman]. Östersund: Bokmalen. Johansson, S. 1985. Genomgång av “karolinerfynd,” särskilt fynd från gravar i Handöl och Skalstugan, Åre sn, i Jämtlands läns museums samlingar [Survey of “Carolean Finds,” particularly finds from burials in Handöl and Skalstugan, Åre parish, in the Jämtland county museum’s collections]. Archival report. County museum of Jämtland/Jamtli. Jonsson, K. 2009a. “Dangerous Death and Dangerous Dead: Examples from Scandinavian burial practices from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period.” In Döda personers sällskap: gravmaterialens identiteter och kulturella uttryck [On the threshold: Burial archaeology in the twenty-first century], ed. I.-M. Back Danielsson, I. Gustin, A. Larsson, N. Myrberg, and S. Thedéen, 173–86. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 47. Stockholm: Stockholm University. ———. 2009b. Practices for the Living and the Dead: Medieval and Post-Reformation Burials in Scandinavia. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 50. Stockholm: Stockholm University. Klövsjö kyrkoarkiv [Klövsjö Church records]. 1719. Död- och begravningsböcker [Death and funeral books], Volume SE/ÖLA/11067/C/1, batch no A0018087, image 36/page 31. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from sok.riksarkivet.se. Lindahl, G. 1969. Grav och rum: Svenskt gravskick från medeltiden till 1800-talets slut [Grave and space: Swedish burial practices from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19th century]. KVHAA handlingar, Antikvariska serien 21. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Myssjö kyrkoarkiv [Myssjö Church records]. 1719. Död- och begravningsböcker [Death and funeral books], Volume SE/ÖLA/11078/F/1, image 21. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from sok.riksarkivet.se. Nilsson, B. 1989. De sepulturis: Gravrätten i Corpus Iuris Canonici och i medeltida nordisk lagstiftning [De sepulturis: Burial rights in Corpus Iuris Canonici and medieval Nordic legislation]. Bibliotheca theologiae practicae 44. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International. Offerdals kyrkoarkiv [Offerdal Church records]. 1719. Död- och begravningsböcker [Death and funeral books], Volume SE/ÖLA/11085/C/2, batch no A0002907, image 293/page 344. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from sok.riksarkivet.se. Överhogdals kyrkoarkiv [Överhogdal Church records]. 1719. Död- och begravningsböcker [Death and funeral books], Volume SE/ÖLA/11110/C/1, image 107/page 186. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from https://sok.riksarkivet.se/kyrkoarkiv. Rätans kyrkoarkiv [Rätan Church records]. 1719. Död- och begravningsböcker [Death and funeral books], Volume SE/ÖLA/11089/C/1, image 40/page 58–image 41/ page 60. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from https://sok.riksarkivet.se/kyrkoarkiv. Rosander, G. 1968. “Död på fjället”: till 250-årsminnet av Jämtlandsarmén och fälttåget över gränsfjällen 1718–19 [“Death on the mountain”: To the 250-year anniversary of the Jämtland Army and the campaign over the Border Mountains 1718–19]. Fältjägaren 39, 114–17. Östersund: Fältjägarföreningen.

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Sadikovic, A. 2019. “Försvarsmakten stoppar begravningar i skogen” [The Armed Forces stop funerals in the forest]. Sverigesradio.se. Retrieved 18 November 2019 from https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=7092492. Sandén, A. 2008. “. . . och den 3 mars avhöggs han vid galgen och där begrovs” [. . . and on 3 March he was beheaded by the gallows and there buried]. In Döden som straff: glömda gravar på galgbacken [Death as punishment: Forgotten burials at the gallows], ed. T. Fendin, 105–51. Linköping: Östergötlands länsmuseum. Schmedeman, J. 1706. Kongl. stadgar, förordningar, bref och resolutioner, ifrån åhr 1528. in til 1701 angående justitiæ och executions- ährender, med een förteckning på stadgarne främst, och ett fulkommeligit orda-register efterst wid wercket öfwer thes : innehåld; uppå hans kongl. may:tz allernådigste befalning och privilegier, til thet almänne bästas tienst, och hwars och ens särskilte nytto, sålunda med flijt samlade, och genom trycket i dagzliuset befordrade [Royal statutes, ordinances, letters and resolutions, from the year 1528 until 1701 on justice and executive affairs, with a list of the statutes chiefly, and a complete register of words following the work of its contents; upon his Royal Majesty’s most gracious command and privileges, to the service of the general good, and to each and everyone’s special utility, thus collected with zeal, and promoted by print into the daylight]. Stockholm: Tryckt med egen bekostnad af J.H. Werner. [Printed at own expense by J. H. Werner]. Retrieved 18 November 2019 from https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ pt?id=nyp.33433008325049&view=1up&seq=1098&skin=2021. Stibéus, M. 1998. En 1600–1700-tals kyrkogård i Kristinehamn. Arkeologisk undersökning i kv. Jupiter 2, Raä 43, Kristinehamn, Värmland [A churchyard from the 17th and 18th centuries in Kristinehamn. Archaeological excavation in Jupiter Block 2, Archaeological site RAÄ 43, Kristinehamn, Värmland County]. UV Väst rapport 1998: 16. Kungsbacka: Riksantikvarieämbetet. Uddgren, Hugo Edvard. 1920. “Carl G. Armfeldt.” In Svenskt biografiskt lexikon [Swedish biographical lexicon]. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from https://sok .riksarkivet.se/sbl/artikel/18800. Undersåkers kyrkoarkiv [Undersåker Church records]. 1719. Död- och begravningsböcker [Death and funeral books], Volume SE/ÖLA/11100/C/1, image 255/ page 227 and image 256/page 228). Retrieved 18 September 2019 from https:// sok.riksarkivet.se/kyrkoarkiv. Widerström, P. 2009. Döden i Visby: Arkeologisk förundersökning av en gammal avrättningsplats i Visby stad. Förundersökningsrapport. Fornlämning RAÄ 72, Fastigheten Galgberget 1:1, Visby stad, Gotlands län och kommun [Death in Visby: Archaeological preliminary investigation of an old execution site in the town of Visby. Report of preliminary investigation, archaeological site RAÄ 72, estate Galgberget 1:1, Visby Town, Gotland County and Municipality]. Visby: Länsmuseet på Gotland. Ytterhogdals kyrkoarkiv [Ytterhogdal Church records]. 1719. Död- och begravningsböcker [Death and funeral books], Volume SE/ÖLA/11103/C/1, batch no C0035374, image 149–150. Retrieved 18 September 2019 from https://sok .riksarkivet.se/kyrkoarkiv.

CHAPTER 6

Taken to the Island Temporary Burials in Early and Late Modern Periods in Finnish Periphery Tiina Väre and Juha Ruohonen

Introduction Prior to the late eighteenth century—in the area of present-day Finland, which at the time made up the eastern parts of the Swedish kingdom— burials were made in the churchyard or, particularly in the case of those who had higher social status, underneath church floors. Overall, substantial funds were reserved for funerary rites and obtaining suitable burial sites, the division of which was a way of establishing and reflecting social hierarchy (Kuusisto 1929; Juva 1955: 69–70, 181; Regnard [1731] 1982: 108; Sarmela 1994: 57; Jokipii 2001). The acreages of the early and late modern parishes—despite having been dispersedly inhabited, were vast. This was particularly the case in sparsely accommodated northern and eastern Finland. The passages from their edges to the central regions grew extensive. It was not unusual for the straight-line distances to exceed one hundred kilometers (ca. sixty-two miles). As the routes were often made up of meandering waterways with several streams and unkempt foot-trails, the actual distance to travel could be up to one-third or even longer. During summertime, without any roads, the passage from the remote settlements to the parish’s church was particularly laborious. The harsh natural conditions effectively hindered mobility and could even isolate the villages on the edges of the largest parishes. Under such circumstances, the death of a family member was a very unfortunate happenstance. In addition to the normal grievance and hardship related to a death extra harm was brought about by the demands of the Lutheran Church. At least from the sev-

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enteenth century onwards, the Church prohibited burying outside the churchyard even in remote areas, although prior to this, depending on the region, the deceased could be buried in small cemeteries used by one or several villages (e.g., Ruohonen 2010). Now all the burials were to be centralized in the consecrated ground of the church. A peculiar practice emerged from the conflict between such clerical requisites and the preconditions set by nature. Instead of always directly taking the deceased to the parish’s church, it was common to bury those who died during difficult weather conditions in a temporary grave (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 35; Jokipii 2001). This chapter focuses on Finnish temporary burials by describing some of their typical features and looks at some of the names given to these places that carry on the memory of their unusual history. In addition, it briefly considers the practicalities that have promoted the adaptation of the custom as well as beliefs related to dying, burying, and the deceased that have influenced its formation. We also take a closer look at the practice through two case studies: Ruumissaari Island located in Ranuanjärvi, Ranua, Finnish Lapland and Kalmosaari Island located in Autiojärvi, Valtimo, the Province of North Karelia (Figure 6.1). For this chapter, in addition to local histories and research articles, we utilized the responses to the ethnological surveys related to temporary burial sites and practices archived in the ethnological collections of the Finnish Heritage Agency in Helsinki (KM:K8/130 1961; KM:K27/78 1980).

Temporal Burial—An Institution of the Hinterlands The early modern temporary burial places utilized to balance between the requirements set by the environment and the Lutheran Church were typically located on islands. There are examples of other locations being used, but they were usually still situated near bodies of water, such as capes or riverbanks (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 37; Jokipii 2001). Most sites were relatively easily accessible from the settlement and temporarily hosted the bodies of namely those who died during summer. Their remains would be retained in these graves until the snow cover facilitated their easy transportation. In the relative cold provided by such a grim depository, the corpse escaped the most severe postmortem changes that would have otherwise accelerated by the summer climate. At the same time the living members of the community were able to avoid any detriment that a presence of a dead body may have inflicted on them (M. Mönkkönen 2001; see Vilkuna 2001). Many sites were used repeatedly for decades. They either belonged to families or villages. Still, some of them were used only in a nonrecurring

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Figure 6.1. Map of Finland, showing locations of sites mentioned in the text. © Juha Ruohonen.

fashion. A site could be isolated, housing a single burial or composed of several burial pits (Jokipii 2001). Sometimes, albeit seldom, the dead person in a coffin was hoisted up on tree branches, instead of storing them underground, until the conditions allowed transportation to the church. This treatment would protect the corpse from animals but also slowed down decay by drying out the tissues. An extra benefit was that a dried corpse was much lighter and thus easier to transport (Jokipii 2001; M. Mönkkönen 2001). Interestingly, coniferous trees even have antibacterial qualities (Vainio-Kaila 2017). Thus, using such tree species for this purpose may have had extra benefits in temporarily preserving the remains. Variants of this practical custom were known in a rather extensive area ranging from Swedish Lapland to eastern and southern Finland, and even to Siberia which may imply its earlier origin (Jokipii 2001; M. Mönkkönen 2001).

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Despite the hardships of the passages and road conditions, exceptions were sometimes made. The inconveniences were occasionally either mitigated by the considerable wealth and status of the deceased or also by the relative size of the burden (Jokipii 2001). For instance, in certain villages of a vast parish of Kuusamo, where at least eighteen known temporary burial sites can be found, the most prominent householders were regularly delivered to the church with very little delay even in summer. Similarly, small children could sometimes relatively effortlessly be carried straight to their permanent graves (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 39, 41). In addition to temporary burials during summertime, often referred to as “summer graves,” in many places, those who died during winter were stored in outbuildings such as saunas, granaries, or barns in the courtyard, or even in the churchyard in separate buildings designed for the purpose. This latter custom, particularly common in Ostrobothnia, on the west coast of Finland, was practiced in an effort to avoid the trouble of opening the ground during frost. The deceased were brought to the church and consecrated for a burial. Yet, instead of an immediate internment, they would be buried only once the frost melted in the spring. In addition to the winter’s frost or difficult summer routes, rasputitsa sometimes caused hindrance in delivering the deceased to their final resting place. Rasputitsa describes the two seasons of the year, spring and autumn, when travel on unpaved roads or cross country becomes difficult due to muddy conditions from rain or thawing snow. During it, the weather conditions prevented usage of horses, as the ice was not strong enough to carry the mourners, and the boats were unable to sail in the slush. Such a situation may have called for a temporary burial even when the church was normally relatively easily accessible by water or ice routes (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 37; Jokipii 2001). Although burying the corpse temporarily in this manner, from a modern perspective seems rather unusual, in Indonesia, traditional mortuary practices offer a parallel. It was customary to place the dead either in temporary shelters or keep—particularly the bodies of affluent individuals—in their own homes for extended periods prior to the final burial. Sometimes the deceased—much like in the Finnish hinterlands—were buried in the ground only to be dug up later for the final burial. Another modification of the practice was to wrap the dead body in bark and leave it exposed to the elements on the branches of trees (Hertz [1907] 1960: 29–30). Interestingly, it seems that the latter has been practiced rather widespread geographically, in areas including Nordic regions (Finnish and Swedish Lapland, central regions of Finland), but apparently even by peoples in Siberia and the First Nations in North America which may suggest a very ancient origin (Jokipii 2001).

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Chronology of Temporary Burial Sites There is quite remarkable temporal fluctuation in the island burial sites and dating them can be difficult. Some were used for a considerably long time, and according to Jokipii (2001) they likely precede Christianity. The oldest frequently contain permanent burials i.e., they were not temporary in their nature. Many sites that formed prior to the permanent settlement are hosting burials of occasional wanderers who, for instance, died during hunting trips and, for practical reasons, had to be buried in the wilderness (Laitinen 2001). Only the most affluent and wealthy would later be reclaimed and reburied closer to their communities. The situation likely remained similar still during the Catholic period and it is uncertain whether all the corpses were ever intended to be exhumed. Burial in consecrated ground was, however, already expected. Yet at the time, and in general, prior to the Lutheran Church regulations becoming stricter in the mid-seventeenth century, instead of requiring all burials to be removed from the distant islands, a priest or chaplain of the parish may have arrived at regular intervals and consecrated the burials on the site (Jokipii 2001). Especially during crises, such as war, famine, or severe epidemy, conditions could make it impossible to perform normal funerary rites for all the individuals which were buried on islands (Laitinen 2001). Nevertheless, even much later, the lack of social networks or funds could cause a temporary grave to become a permanent one (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 43). According to the Catholic and later Lutheran Church, when considering salvation, the concrete burial place had no dogmatic significance (Nilsson 1989: 37–41). Nevertheless, customarily, only those who died under special circumstances—those who committed suicide, criminals sentenced to death, and also unbaptized children—could sometimes be denied the consecrated grounds (Talve 1997: 204; Vuorela 1975: 625). It was generally important to end up in the protected area of the churchyard if humanly possible. Nevertheless, the eighteenth-century victims of such destructive epidemics as the plague were already ordered to be buried in forests outside of villages and towns. This order was likely obeyed to a certain extent, although there are examples of rebelling parishioners refusing to bury their dead in the scary plague pits (Watts 1997: 18–19; chapter 3, this volume). Typically, the late seventeenth century—and the 1686 Swedish Church Law, in particular, has been considered the onset for the temporary burial practice. Still even earlier, requests to bury in Christian grounds were issued in certain parishes. The practice had certainly been institutionalized by the following century, but its roots likely extend to much earlier times, perhaps even as far as the Middle Ages (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 35; Ruohonen 2005: 30). Generally, by the late sixteenth century, the population

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growth, the subsequent death toll, and hence, the need for temporary burial sites took an upturn even in the more remote areas of the vast parishes. These parishes, that were few, remained very substantial in size until the mid-seventeenth century, when splitting them into smaller chapels with their own churchyards began. Following this development, for many, the journey to the church in more densely populated heartlands would have shortened, especially by the nineteenth century. This further implies that in these regions the majority of the temporary burial islands date to the period of Swedish rule (Jokipii 2001). In the mid-seventeenth century, the Lutheran Church specified that burial was to take place within a couple of weeks, but already some decades later, in the aforementioned church law, the interval between a death and burial was already extended to six months (KL [1686] 1986; Ruohonen 2005: 29). Much longer periods than the ordered half a year were tolerated and intervals of several months were not uncommon for the higher social classes or clergy burials (Regnard [1731] 1982: 108; Kuusisto 1929; Paavola 1998: 150–52, 155, 162). The death cases in the remotest villages, far from the church, also called for leniency due to the long and harsh passages and exceeding the set duration was not unusual (Ruohonen 2005: 29). The Kuusamo parish that was mentioned earlier had become an independent congregation in 1675. Still a decade later, in 1685, the vicar paid attention to the fact that the dead were often buried in random places instead of in the churchyard. In his report, he stated that it was not a suitable practice to cast away the body of a fellow Christian in this manner (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 35; Jokipii 2001). However, in addition to the religious reasoning, such “wild burials” without priests and outside the churchyard were prohibited because they made it difficult to monitor the parishioners and collect the necessary taxes. The national interests over the census increased particularly during the eighteenth century in connection to the attempts of regaining the great power status the Swedish Kingdom had during the previous century. As mentioned, new parishes were formed already in the early eighteenth century, which is when the need to temporarily store the deceased diminished (Laitinen 2001). Furthermore, once, from the nineteenth century onwards, the cemeteries apart from the church or even outside the settlement area generalized, and from the latter part of the same century, the more comprehensive network of roads was completed, temporary burials gradually became unnecessary even in the periphery. Burying temporarily was forbidden in the health statute of 1879, although ten years earlier in the 1869 Church Law the six months’ hiatus persisted (KL 1869 10:80; Ruohonen 2005: 30). The health statute would standardize the burial depth at six feet despite the season and instruct against establishing burial

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grounds on densely inhabited areas (Lempiäinen 1990; Jokipii 2001; M. Mönkkönen 2001). Such official actions further prompted establishing local cemeteries even in the more remote villages (Jokipii 2001). Despite the development toward the abolition of temporary burial practices, the last known cases date as late as the first half of the twentieth century. For example, in Kittilä, Finnish Lapland, the summer burial sites on Manalaissaari (“Island of Those Living in the Underworld”) on Lake Kelontekemäjärvi were still used in 1918 (KM:K8/130 1961: 603). In Ivalo village in Inari, Finnish Lapland, a cemetery was established only in 1930. Prior to this, the deceased were, for the duration of winter, stored on Ulkusaari Island on the Ivalojoki River and in the summer taken to the churchyard located in Inari. The coffins were placed in uncovered pits for the winter and rasputitsa periods, then lifted up and taken to Inari by boat along the river once the waters had cleared of ice (KM:K27/78 1980: 2799). In Kuusamo, some regions got their own graveyards by the 1880s, while in others, the practice continued well into the twentieth century. In certain villages the tradition completely ended only after World War II when proper roads were built in the region (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 37, 39–40, 42).

Memory of Temporary Burials in Geographic Nomenclature The islands hosting temporary burial sites were often named in a way that hinted to their use (Vuorela 1975: 625). Ruumissaari (Corpse/Dead Body Island) and Kalmasaari/Kalmosaari (Death Island) are the two most common names for these islands. Due to the differences in eastern and western Finnish dialects, while the first is more commonly used in west, the latter is more frequently encountered in the eastern regions. In addition, names of the likes of Kuolinsaari/Kuolosaari/Kuolonsaari (Death/ Dying Island), Ristisaari (Cross Island), Hautasaari (Grave Island), or Kirkkosaari (Church Island), were often used (Jokipii 2001). Sometimes reasons other than temporary burials explained the selection of a name pointing toward burial activities. For instance, the kirkko(church) prefix may imply other ecclesiastic functions, while hauta- (grave) may also mean a tar pit (in Finnish: tervahauta) instead of an actual burial pit. On the other hand, not all islands that hosted temporary burials have such gruesome names. Jokipii (2001) estimated that half of these sites carry an unrelated toponym based upon their occurrence in folklore concerning the temporary burial sites. For instance, one such island is on Lake Ranuanjärvi, which will be later addressed in this chapter, called Pirttisaari (Cottage Island) (Nurmi 2016: 1). Unofficially, by the local

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people, the same island was, however, also parallelly known as Hautasaari (Grave Island) (KM:K27/78 1980: 273). Raatosaari (Corpse/Carcass Island) is also a relatively common name for islands in Finland. Although it does not necessarily translate any differently from Ruumissaari, the prefix raato- usually carries a much more pejorative meaning. In southern Finland, islands named this way have typically been used to dispose of animal carcasses. From the modern perspective such use would appropriately explain the name selection, as calling a loved one or even an acquaintance raato is hardly reasonable (see also M. Mönkkönen 2001). For example, in Kuhmoinen, Central Finland, the local Raatosaari was used for burying animals (KM:K27/78 1980: 2734). In the north, however, the same name was apparently sometimes given to an island used for temporary burials as well (M. Mönkkönen 2001). For example, on Lake Toljanjärvi, in Ranua, there is one such island that functioned as a temporary burial place (S. Pentikäinen 1990: 504). This name could also be given to an island hosting graves of enemy—predominantly Russian—soldiers, suicides, lawbreakers, or victims of particularly fierce epidemics (M. Mönkkönen 2001). In the past, such severe epidemics were sometimes considered to be reflections of God’s anger upon sinners, and thus, their own fault (Keiser 2003). Other pejorative names may, as well, commemorate unusual graves or events. For example, in Orivesi, Pirkanmaa, a ditch called Haisevaoja (Stinking Ditch) has, according to folklore, been named after unburied corpses of enemy soldiers of the so-called Finnish War (1808–9) that were dumped in it to rot (KM:K8/130 1961: 535). Similarly, on Lake Kuohattijärvi in Nurmes, North Karelia, there are two distinct islands containing graves. Kal(a)mosaari1 (Death Island) had hosted temporary summer burials, while the soil of the quite significantly larger and perhaps slightly derogatorily called Sikosaari2 (Swine Island) is, according to the lore, rumored to contain the burial of Russian enemy soldiers of the Great Northern War from the beginning of the eighteenth century (KM:K27/78 1980: 2713). It has, however, been suggested that even some of these places to which legends concerning times of war, famine, or epidemy were connected, were in fact old temporary burial sites of the local people (Laitinen 2001). It should even be considered that folktales may have formed around place names invoking imagination even in the absence of true events explaining the name selection. The historian Jukka Korpela has suggested that at least some of the islands called Matosaari (Worm Island) are old island cemeteries. According to him, rotten corpses could have provided exceptional conditions for worms (Korpela 2008: 223). However, there are only three examples where Matosaari is a parallel name for known burial islands. Yet another peculiarity found in archives, related to the names of these islands was

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in Ilmajoki, South Ostrobothnia, where Ruissaari Island (Rye Island) had been used to store the deceased during summertime: at that time the name of the island had in fact been Ru(u)missaari Island (Corpse Island)3 (KM:K27/78 1980: 272).

Practicality and Beliefs Dealing with the dead body is a biological necessity. The preferred location of temporary burial places on small uninhabited islands or sometimes in other locations near bodies of water was not a coincidence (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 37). For example, in Heinävesi Parish, in the southern Savonia region, all the known or suspected burial places were archaeologically surveyed in the year 2001: as many as eleven of the twelve sites were located on small islands and only one on a cape (Ruohonen 2002: 34–35). The water functioned as a barrier, that separated the decomposing corpse from the living before it would turn into a contamination risk. In addition, it prevented most of the scavengers from getting to and feeding on the buried corpses. Generally, even on an island, it was necessary to bury deep enough and preferably use layers of logs to further protect the buried (Jokipii 2001; M. Mönkkönen 2001). At times, animals such as bears did find their way to graves (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 41). For example, in Inari the first local church and churchyard was inaugurated on the mainland in 1763. Soon, however, against the normal practice, the whole official graveyard had to be moved away from the church because scavenging species kept uncovering the fresh graves. In the year 1793, Hietasaari (Sand Island) on Lake Inarijärvi was consecrated as the parish’s official cemetery. Eventually, nevertheless, space for graves ran out on the island and a new location was consecrated for burials. However, the remains on Hietasaari would not get to rest in peace. The fluctuation of Lake Inarijärvi’s water levels eroded its banks exposing some of the buried skeletal remains causing them to crumble into the water (KM:K8/130 1961: 35; cf. Ruohonen 2011: 73–76). Other practicalities, as well, promoted the selection of locations near water. A route to the church via water systems was often the fastest and most convenient. In some places it even facilitated timely burials during the summertime (Jokipii 2001). In Pielavesi Parish, in the northern Savonia region, those who passed away during rasputitsa were left temporarily in a convenient place by the aquatic route to the church (KM:K8/130 1961: 240). During such conditions neither boats nor sledges could be used to facilitate the journey to the church. These temporarily buried deceased only continued their way to their eternal rest in the churchyard once the water route was cleared (Jokipii 2001; J. Pentikäinen 1990: 37).

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The selection of islands as burial places even had mythical and supernatural reasoning behind it (M. Mönkkönen 2001). In early modern Finland, people’s worldview still contained many remnants of the earlier belief system, although they were rather inseparably intertwined with the more recent influences of the Christian faith (Virtanen 1999: 230–32). From the dogmatic viewpoint of the Lutheran Church, many of these pieces of tradition still represented heresy. Once death occurs, the loss of a social being causes a crisis in survivors. The once beloved person is replaced by a lifeless corpse without a mind or self—a fear-provoking abject that is not quite a living subject but bears enough resemblance to the once living person not to be perceived as an object either. Such a liminal cadaver is in an irreversible, dynamic state of change brough on by decomposition gradually turning it increasingly unlifelike. The process is further contributing to the liminal character of the cadaver defined by its uncontrollable, unclassifiable, dangerous, polluting, and appalling nature, which is still similar enough to the living to make it simultaneously appealing. The liminal stage of transition is connected to the period of grieving and the survivors are required to deal with and redefine the identity of the cadaver through culture-specific mortuary rituals. They are performed to enable the surviving to get to terms with the change caused by the death and to reach a closure by finally separating from the loss. The rituals mitigate the threat the cadaver—no longer controlled from within—causes to social order, which is essential in the experience of death and dying. It also makes a distinction in the social identity of the once living individual and the object it will become after being stripped of its status as a human being. Nevertheless, mortuary rites, when performed right, not only aid the survivors, but assure the transition of the dead through an ambiguous liminal stage to new existence in the binary model consisting of the realms of life and death. The properties in this conceptual liminal period in the middle are different from those of either the preceding or succeeding state. The required rites generally include handling the dead body in ritualized ways. This aids the deceased transitional being out of the category of living into that of ancestors, angels, or other such characters occupying the realm of the afterlife (Turner 1967; Nilsson Stutz 2003: 68–70, 81–82, 95–103; Hertz [1907] 1960: 34–37). Issues related to the afterlife formed one major part of these versatile traditional beliefs in Finland and in many ways, it resembled earthly living (Vuorela 1975: 621). The concept of the soul was dualistic. It consisted of the henki (spirit) responsible for the vital signs of life and the itse (self), which operated separately from the bodily functions and continued to exist after the spirit had left, and thus, the body had died (J. Pentikäinen 1990: 21–27; Talve 1997: 223). Certain actions needed to be taken to

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separate the deceased from the community of the living and for protection against the dangerous power of kalma (death). Kalma could be contracted from the deceased either directly or indirectly. Human remains and even the objects connected to dying and funerals held considerable magical power inflicting disease or even death. It was the responsibility of the living to take care that through proper rituals, the deceased could find their place among the world of the dead. This was initially facilitated by isolating the dead body as soon as possible and burying it. If it was impossible to reach the church in due time, a temporary burial had to momentarily suffice. However, without adequate rituals, there was always the risk that the deceased who had died a bad death or had unfinished worldly business would try to make their way back home. According to the traditional Finnish beliefs, water was capable of functioning as a barrier on a more spiritual level as well. By separating the burial island from the settlement, a limit was formed between the realms of the dead and the living and could obstruct the restless spirits from returning home (Vuorela 1975: 621–26; Vilkuna 1992: 201; Talve 1997: 202–3, 223; M. Mönkkönen 2001). Robert Hertz ([1907] 1960: 36) encountered similar beliefs in his study of Indonesian mortuary rite practices also including temporary burials. According to him, the period between the death and the final burial is associated with unrest of the soul that may during this time visit both the worlds of the living and the dead. It can wander around, even posing a danger to the living as it is unhappy and lonely, which is why it may go as far as to try to drag or lure someone with it to the realm of the death. Additionally, its confused state brought on by the sudden change caused by the death makes it prone to remember all the experienced injustices and to demand justification. In Finnish contexts, restless sprits trying to return was always particularly likely before a proper consecration by a priest and a burial in the parish’s holy ground had been performed (M. Mönkkönen 2001). Thus, those stored in temporary graves, waiting for the road conditions to allow for a journey to the church formed a special group. Performing the funerary rites in remote locations was forbidden by the 1686 Church Law—each burial was to be consecrated only once, at the church. The funerary rites for those buried temporarily seem to have been ascetic and lacking any usual ceremonials (KL [1686] 1986; S. Pentikäinen 1990: 509–12). Therefore, those deceased remained in a liminal state until a proper consecration. What are the connotations related to the world of beliefs connected to the practice of temporarily hiding the cadaver that once had embodied a relative or a friend in an island without performing any rituals? Yet, people must have been quite used to this occurrence, and for agriculturalists, this

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temporary burial could even have halted the period of grief for the duration of the busiest time of work. The liminal, abject—even scary—cadaver was dealt with by transporting it out of sight and out of mind. The roots of the beliefs behind the mortuary rituals in Finland lie in very old traditions. Traces of them can be seen in Karelian folklore, which is believed to have preserved the old Finno-Karelian traditions in their original form for the longest time, but they also clearly connect to even more universal belief systems. Karelian cemeteries of families and villages were traditionally located on islands, which ensured that the realm of the dead was separated from that of the living in a spiritual but also more concrete sense. Thus, the tradition of establishing temporary burial places specifically on islands may be considered a modification of the preChristian tradition of Karelian island burials (Jokipii 2001).

Lake Ranuanjärvi, Ranua Case One example of islands involved in the tradition of temporary burials is in Ranuanjärvi, in southern Lapland. A bushy, narrow, and rather shallow island with rocky shores and the length of less than one hundred meters called Ruumissaari (Corpse Island) is located in the eastern part of the lake (Figure 6.2). This island is one of many in the region. It was used to store the deceased from the nearby settlement of Laivamaa/Laivala in the summertime (P. Laivamaa, pers. comm., 30 October 2018). Ruumissaari still carries signs of its former use as there are several distinctive pits of varying size. As usual, there are no records of the burying practices, which could have aided to date the period during which Ruumissaari was in use. Traditionally, the resources of the (present-day) Ranua region were used sporadically by nomadic people, who relied on hunting and fishing as their main source of livelihood. Even occasional hunters traveling from the more sedentary regions would sometimes roam there as well. A permanent settlement of peasants practicing agriculture, livestock rearing, and reindeer herding only gradually occupied the region. For a long time, the rather hostile climate combined with the scarcity of resources in the roadless wilderness surrounding the area of Ranua were responsible for its settlement remaining peripheric, small, and scarce. The majority of the settlers originated from the larger parishes neighboring Ranua. These migration activities partially resulted from the state-controlled colonialist transplantation efforts of King Charles IX of Sweden to populate Lapland in order to maximize tax collection gain but also for the political advantages related to the power struggle between Sweden and Russia at the time (Vahtola 1987: 79–80; Hiltunen 1990: 53, 60, 67–68, 70–71).

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Figure 6.2. Ruumissaari (Corpse Island) of Ranuanjärvi, Ranua, Finnish Lapland was used as a temporary burial site. Ruumissaari is the smaller island on the right. © Tiina Väre.

In Ranua, the first significant increase in the population, which during the seventeenth century consisted of less than ten households, was experienced in the mid-eighteenth century. In the 1770s, the region was inhabited by one hundred people—a headcount that doubled during the next thirty years. Nevertheless, it was not before the late nineteenth century that the habitation of Ranua reached any considerable size. This was due to the demands of the rapidly growing wood processing industry on which, for a good part of the twentieth century, the economy of the northern regions was based (Hiltunen 1990: 66, 68–75, 94–95). In Laivamaa, which was the settlement that primarily used Ruumissaari island for temporary burial purposes (P. Laivamaa, pers. comm., 30 October 2018), the first croft was built in the 1740s (Hiltunen 1990: 73). The increase in the size of the settlement prompted a willingness toward ecclesiastical as well as municipal independence. Finally, as a result of lengthy negotiations, in 1899, the independent parish of Ranua was established. A little later, in 1914, a church was erected by Lake Ranuanjärvi. The municipal organization efforts took hold a bit slower but finally, in July 1917, mere months before the Republic of Finland gained its independence, the municipality of Ranua was officially formed. Nevertheless,

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already between 1873 and 1895, three cemeteries had been consecrated in the villages surrounding the parish center, which in the early twentieth century, got its own churchyard (Onnela 1990: 145, 150; S. Pentikäinen 1990: 469, 505, 514, 520, 523, 600). This development, along with the new road between Ranua and Pudasjärvi a little later, gradually ceased the utilization of temporary burial islands in the Lake Ranuanjärvi region. Those who were born in the 1890s seldom had their own experiences of temporary burials (S. Pentikäinen 1990: 505). Before the independent parish of Ranua was established, the area was divided between three parishes. The region surrounding Lake Ranuanjärvi belonged to the parish of Pudasjärvi established in 1639 (Onnela 1990: 131). This meant that the church of Pudasjärvi, which via modern roads is located at a distance of seventy kilometers (43.5 mi), was the home church of the villagers. The parishioners typically gathered in Pudasjärvi during religious holidays such as Christmas, the Feast of the Annunciation, Easter, and Midsummer to mention a few, but from the outermost cottages the arduous journey was usually made only once a year. Before the road from Ranua to Pudasjärvi was completed in the early years of the twentieth century, the summer and winter routes to the church were different. Winter substantially eased traveling. In the summertime, part of the journey was traveled via water systems, but even then, the rapids and stretches of counterflow impacted traveling. The journey included several different bodies of water and at least thirty to forty kilometers (nineteen to twenty-five miles) of walking. This implies significant effort even without being burdened with a corpse and a coffin. In winter, traveling could be facilitated by sledges dragged using manpower, but sometimes even by animals such as horses and reindeer (S. Pentikäinen 1990: 470–82; 507–8). Before depositing the bodies in the temporary graves, the normal funerary rites were not performed. The neighbors gathered in the house in mourning. A couple of men then took the deceased on a boat to the burial island. And while they were launching the boat a hymn was sung. The coffins were placed in pits covered with wooden lids. Usually in November or December the graves were exhumed and the deceased taken on their final journey from Ranua to Pudasjärvi Church quietly, apparently without normal ceremonies (KM:K27/78 1980: 273; S. Pentikäinen 1990: 506, 509–12). According to the study “Ranuan historia” (The history of Ranua) (S. Pentikäinen 1990: 504–5) there were at least fourteen temporary burial sites used by nine smaller settlements. There were certainly more since at the least the Ruumissaari burial site is missing from the list. Pirttisaari— another island on the same lake used for temporary burials as late as at the end of the nineteenth century—is listed however. Those buried in

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Pirttisaari, just as those in Ruumissaari, were ultimately buried in the churchyard of Pudasjärvi (KM:K27/78 1980: 273). Pirttisaari was surveyed archaeologically in 1922 (Europaeus 1922). Both islands are mentioned as summer burial sites in the 2016 inventory of the fixed relics of Rovaniemi and Eastern Lapland (Nurmi 2016: 1, 3). As usual, all sites in the Ranua region are located in the vicinity of water—on islands or peninsulas and some of them have been used only once while others have housed subsequent burials. These sites may represent time-ranges from the pre-Christian period up until modernity. Some—particularly those preceding the influence of the Lutheran Church—probably still contain human remains (S. Pentikäinen 1990: 505). Along with the two aforementioned islands, the small Raatosaari Island (Corpse/Carcass Island) is situated on the northeastern part of Lake Ranuanjärvi, close to its shore, but no information implying its having been used for burials exists. Unlike its namesake on Lake Toljanjärvi, its use may have been different (S. Pentikäinen 1990: 504). What is more, according to local lore, the soils of the island next to Ruumissaari still house the remains of a so-called vihavenäläinen (P. Laivamaa, pers. comm., 30 October 2018). The term is roughly translated as an “enemy Russian” and possibly refers to one of the Russian military expeditions, which targeted the region during Early Modernity—most likely during the Russian occupation of Finland (1713–21). Ruumissaari was mainly used by the inhabitants of the close-by settlement of Laivamaa (P. Laivamaa, pers. comm., 30 October 2018). On the basis of this information, a rough estimate of the range of dates for the usage of Ruumissaari is possible. The first dwelling in the named settlement dated to the 1740s (Hiltunen 1990: 73). This period may tentatively be discussed as a terminus post quem date for the temporary burials in Ruumissaari. It is, however, possible that prior to this period, an occasional nomad or an unlucky hunter may have been buried there. The establishment of the village cemeteries in the Ranua region in the 1870s, and the new road to Pudasjärvi in the early years of the twentieth century, at the latest minimized the need for the practice (S. Pentikäinen 1990: 505). This period preceding the end of the nineteenth century could represent a terminus ante quem date. This is further substantiated by the fact that those born after the 1890s do not recall the custom being practiced.

Autiojärvi Kalmosaari, Valtimo Case The second example is located over 250 kilometers south from Ranua, in the former Valtimo municipality, of the Northern Karelia region. In the year 2020, Valtimo was annexed back to the town of Nurmes from which

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it was separated as a parish in 1910. Valtimo has grown beside a water route formed by a continuous band of lakes and rivers. The waters of the Valtimo route run from the Maanselkä watershed through several rivers and lakes into the vast Lake Pielinen. In the past this waterway created an important route for travelers and was an important factor when the area was inhabited (e.g., Saloheimo 1986: 70–71). The site is on Lake Autiojärvi, some thirty kilometers north as the crow flies from the Nurmes church. The small Kalmosaari Island is located on the southern side of the lake, near the mouth of the Autiojoki River (Figure 6.3). The site has been archaeologically surveyed in both 1972 and 2011 (Lönnberg 1972; R. Mönkkönen 2011; Laakso and Ruohonen 2012). The lake and its surroundings belonged to the historical village of Sivakka. Twenty grave-like depressions indicating the existence of grave pits have been discovered in the middle of the island. The total number of pits might be twice as many if all visible depressions are included. The length of the oval shaped pits varied from 1.5 meters to 2.2 meters. Most of the grave pits were quite shallow but the deepest one was approximately seventy centimeters deep (Figure 6.4). In the year 1888, H. R. Damstén from the Finnish Antiquarian Society collected archaeological, historical, and folkloristic information from ancient sites in the Valtimo area. According to Damstén (1888: 7), the

Figure 6.3.  Kalmosaari, Autiojärvi, Nurmes, Northern Karelia is one of the many temporary burial islands in Finland. © Juha Ruohonen.

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Figure 6.4. A grave depression in Kalmosaari, Autiojärvi, Nurmes, Northern Karelia. © Juha Ruohonen.

deceased were first buried on Kalmosaari Island during the summertime, and then dug up and taken to the Nurmes churchyard in the winter. The local people also said that the place was already in use some four hundred years ago. The island was first archaeologically surveyed in 1972 by Maarit Lönnberg from the National Board of Antiquities. Without further information she claimed that the site was a local Orthodox cemetery. However, the earliest known settlement dates back to only the seventeenth century. According to tradition, Sivakka’s oldest settlement would have been located on the northeast shores of Lake Autiojärvi. Historical sources indicate that the inhabitants of the Valtimo area were not Orthodox but Lutheran settlers from the neighboring Savonia area. The pits without any bone finds, local settlement history, and oral tradition suggest that the place was used as a temporary cemetery (Laakso and Ruohonen 2012: 35–36). Based on the church records of the deaths and burials of Nurmes Parish, for example, farmer Thomas Keränen (Keräin) from Sivakka died on 10 May 1741 and was buried in the Nurmes church as late as 9 November. He was probably one of the deceased temporarily buried on Kalmosaari Island. At least five other burial sites are known in the Valtimo area. Of these, two are located on small islands called Kalmasaari and Kalmosaari (par-

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allelly Ruumissaari) and one on a cape called Kalmoniemi; in addition, two are near the hillside next to the settlement. It is noteworthy that all the mentioned sites are located next to the historical villages. It seems that every village had its own summer cemetery, or even several cemeteries. Cemeteries are missing, at least for now, only at the Karhunpää and Maanselkä villages. The Valtimo area was inhabited by Lutheran settlers from the beginning of the seventeenth century (Saloheimo 1971: 200–2). Some of the oldest sites may even contain permanent graves.

Concluding Remarks In many sparsely accommodated but vast early modern parishes, journeys to churches were long, and rough temporary burials were commonly practiced with most relevant sites located on islands. Some of them consisted of only one burial pit used by a single family, while others, often presenting with multiple pits, may have temporarily stored the deceased of several households. Most deceased who ended up buried temporarily had died in summer, but difficult traveling conditions in either spring or autumn sometimes generated the need to bury temporarily as well. There were means to avoid this, too. The small size of the coffin, as well as the capacity of the survivors to sufficiently compensate for the journey to church may have hastened the delivery there despite the road conditions. Temporary burial sites present with plenty of temporal and geographic variations. This practice survived the longest in North and East Finland. Dating these burial sites or determining the exact manner of their use is not a straightforward task. As mentioned, their use spreads over an extensive time period and some of them were not temporary burial sites but rather were permanent burials of nomads or settlers in the wilderness. These precede the period during which burials were required to be centralized at the churches. Although the Catholic Church already recommended burials be centralized in churchyards, it became stricter after the Reformation and the 1686 Swedish Church Law. According to it, the deceased could be kept unburied without consecration at the church for six months. It seems that temporary burials took place already in the late seventeenth but especially in the eighteenth century. During the latter, however, in more densely populated areas, where the distances to the churches were no more than ca. fifty kilometers (thirty-one miles), the deceased began to be transported to the church right after their death without temporarily burying them. By the nineteenth century, the need for the temporary burial sites had significantly diminished as the increase in the number of parishes had split the areas of the former sites making the journeys to the churchyards shorter. In the hinterlands, the practice

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continued into the late nineteenth or even early twentieth century. They were altogether banned in the health statute of 1879. Nevertheless, the latest documented date to the post-World War II period when a proper network of roads reached the remotest, northeastern areas in the Lapland and Kainuu regions. Even after this, the deceased was often stored, for example, in a sauna or granary shed for a few days prior to their funeral. Information concerning them cannot generally be found in historical documents. Their use was never fully officially acknowledged, but likely not perceived as anything spectacular by the people of the hinterlands. Unfortunately, many mundane functions have not been deemed important enough to be properly recorded for posterity. The sources to be used in the research of these peculiar sites are mainly derived from archaeological surveys, documented local traditions, toponyms, and the few existing scientific studies. Many place names carry on the memory of historical events as is often the case for the temporary burial sites as well. Some general names for these places, the likes of Ruumissaari or Kalmosaari (Corpse Island), very clearly indicate their former temporary burial use. Others, however, have an unrelated story behind them. On the other hand, the names that do not directly, if at all, reveal any such activities are common as well. What is more, at least one seemingly benign name turned out to represent a modification of a name implying funerary use—Ruissaari (Rye Island) was shortened from Rumissaari, which is a dialect form of Ruumissaari (Corpse Island). As such, an unusual name is not proof of the site’s former use as a temporary burial site, nor does a benign name mean that the site did not have such a function. Island locations with slightly pejorative names, sometimes referring to dead bodies (Raatosaari, Corpse/Carcass Island) form a separate group that likely has not been used for temporary burials. Instead, they have functioned as depositories for animal carcasses or graves of enemy soldiers. The selection of islands for temporary burial sites was no coincidence. Firstly, getting to the church was simplest using clear or frozen waterway routes. Additionally, water formed a barrier that separated the dead from the living in a practical but supernatural manner as well. Those waiting in the temporary burial pits remained in a liminal state until their burial in the churchyards, and they were considered particularly dangerous in terms of attempting to reach back to the realm of the living. For religious reasons, it was generally important for the parishioners to ensure a burial in the churchyard’s sacred grounds. Thus, representatives of the Church wishing to monitor the size of the population in order to maximize the tithes and taxes were not the only ones motivated to take care that the deceased ended up at the church. The deceased’s relatives, to the best of their abilities, would make sure to fulfill this final service for their loved ones instead of leaving them buried in the wilderness. To be buried out-

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side the churchyard was perceived as scary and inglorious, as typically only suicides, criminals, and outcasts were treated this way after their passing. In conclusion, temporary burials were largely a matter of practicality, even necessity, although it can be argued that traditional beliefs influenced the selection of suitable temporary burial sites as well. Ruumissaari on Ranuanjärvi is one of many islands in the region that functioned as a summer burial site. On the ground there still are several pits that were utilized to store the deceased, who were taken there by boat during difficult weather conditions and in winter, when the snow and ice facilitated traveling, who were then exhumed to be buried at the church. Funerary rituals for these individuals were quite restrained in comparison to the norm, but they would still end up in consecrated ground. The island was mainly used by the inhabitants of the close by smaller settlement of Laivamaa where the first dwellers arrived in the 1740s. This gives an estimation for when the utilization of Ruumissaari first began, although even before this, people who died during hunting trips for example, may have been buried there. By the late nineteenth century—or the early twentieth century at the latest—the necessity to use temporary burial sites had faded. First, new village cemeteries were established in the region and later the new road to Pudasjärvi was completed. As those born after the 1890s have no recollection of temporary burials, the timing for the end of the practice in the Ranuanjärvi region is likely close to correct. Kalmosaari Island located in Autiojärvi, Valtimo, in North Karelia was used as a temporary cemetery island from the beginning of its settlement in the 1630s to the middle of the eighteenth century. It is clear that dozens of grave pits indicate its extensive and long-term use. It is also possible that the oldest pits may still contain remains of the deceased. Based on the church records of the Nurmes parish, which Valtimo was part of, the island was used as a temporary graveyard until the 1740s. After that, dead villagers were regularly taken to the churchyard located in Nurmes.

Tiina Väre (PhD, MSc [econ]) is an archaeologist who has studied the health, body proportions, and diet of an Early Modern vicar using CT-scanning and stable isotopes on his mummified remains. Her research interests include paleopathology, Early Modern, and Modern burial customs, as well as breastfeeding and weaning practices. During her postdoc she is specializing in stable isotope studies. Juha Ruohonen (MA, PhD candidate) is an archaeologist and historian working as a university teacher in the Department of Archaeology, University of Turku, Finland. His research focuses on Late Iron Age, medieval and post-medieval rural society and material culture, especially the study

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of the Christianization process, organization of the church, and burial customs in Finland, Lapland, and Karelia.

Notes 1. The informant used the form Kalamosaari which is a dialect form of the word Kalmosaari. 2. The prefix siko is a modified form of the word sika and best translates as “swine.” 3. The informant referred to the island using the form rumis, which is a regional dialect word for ruumis, meaning a corpse.

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Paavola, K. 1998. Kepeät mullat: Kirjallisiin ja esineellisiin lähteisiin perustuva tutkimus Pohjois-Pohjanmaan rannikon kirkkohaudoista [Light weighing soils: Study of church burials in the coastal region of Northern Ostrobothnia based on written and artifactual sources]. Acta Universitatis Ouluensis B Humaniora 28. Oulu: University of Oulu. Pentikäinen, J. 1990. Suomalaisen lähtö. Kirjoituksia pohjoisesta kuolemankulttuurista [Departure of a Finn. Writings of Northern death culture]. Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seuran toimituksia 530. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden Seura. Pentikäinen, S. 1990. “Seurakunta syntyy erämaahan” [A parish rises in the wilderness]. In Ranuan historia [The history of Ranua], ed. M. Hiltunen, 469–717. Kemi: Pohjolan Sanomat Oy. Regnard, J.-F. (1731) 1982. Retki Lappiin [Journey to Lapland]. Translated by M. Itkonen-Kaila. Helsinki: Otava. Ruohonen, J. 2002. “Väliaikaista kaikki on vaan? Historiallisen ajan hautasaaret arkeologisina kohteina” [Everything is contemporary? Historical burial islands as archaeological sites]. Muinaistutkija 4: 32–43. ———. 2005. “Rauha eläville, lepo kuolleille. Kirkkomaan ulkopuoliset hautapaikat arkeologisen aineiston, historiallisten lähteiden, paikannimistön ja perimätiedon kuvaajana” [Peace for the living, rest for the dead. Burial sites outside churchyard as reflections of archaeological material, historical sources, place names, and folklore]. Master’s thesis, University of Turku. ———. 2010. “Kuolleiden saaret. Historiallisen ajan keskisuomalaisten saarihautausmaiden luonne ja käyttö hautapaikkoina” [The islands of the dead. The nature and use of the island burial grounds of historical central Finland]. J@rgonia 8(17). Retrieved 19 May 2020 from http://research.jyu.fi/jargonia/artikkelit/jar gonia17_ruohonen.pdf. ———. 2011. “Kalmistoja, kaivauksia, kallonmittausta. Fyysisen antropologian tutkimuskohteita Pohjois-Suomessa” [Cemeteries, excavations, craniological measurements. Studies in physical anthropology in Northern Finland]. Faravid 36: 57–85. Saloheimo, V. 1971. “Pohjois-Karjalan asutusmuodot 1600-luvulla” [Dwellings in Northern Karelia in the 1600s]. Joensuun korkeakoulun julkaisuja series A, no 2. Joensuu: Pohjois-Karjalan Kirjapaino Oy. ———. 1986. Pohjois-Karjalan historia II. 1617–1721 [The history of Northern Karelia II. 1617–1721]. Joensuu: Karjalaisen Kulttuurin Edistämissäätiö. Sarmela, M. 1994. Suomen perinneatlas [Atlas of Finnish tradition]. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran toimituksia 587. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Talve, I. 1997. “Finnish Folk Culture.” Studia Fennica Ethnologica 4. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Tampere: Tammer-Paino Oy. Turner, V. W. 1967. “Betwixt and Between. The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage.” In The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual, ed. V. Turner, 93–111. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Vahtola, J. 1987. “Oulun historia kaupungin perustamisesta isoonvihaan” [History of Oulu from the establishment of the city until the Great Northern War]. In Valkean kaupungin vaiheet: Oulun historiaa [Chapters of the white city: History of Oulu], ed. K. Julku, 70–100. Oulu: Pohjois-Suomen historiallinen yhdistys. Vainio-Kaila, T. 2017. “Antibacterial Properties of Scots Pine and Norway Spruce.” PhD diss. Aalto University publications series 179, Aalto University.

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Vilkuna, J. 1992. Suomalaiset vainajien karsikot ja ristipuut. Kansantieteellinen tapaustutkimus [The karsikko and cross trees of Finnish deceased. An ethnological case study]. Kansantieteellinen arkisto 39. Helsinki: Suomen muinaismuistoyhdistys. ———. 2001. “Vainajien matkassa: Karsikot” [Traveling along with the deceased: Cross-tree tradition]. In Ruumis ja Kalmasaaret. Etäällä kirkkomaasta [Corpse and death islands—Far from churchyard], ed. E. Laitinen, 102–14. Kotiseutuyhdistyksen julkaisuja 3. Hankasalmi, Kirkkonummi: Hankasalmen Havusalmen kirjapaino. Virtanen, L. 1999. Suomalainen kansanperinne [Finnish folk tradition]. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran toimituksia 471. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Vuorela, T. 1975. Suomalainen kansankulttuuri [Finnish folk culture]. Porvoo, Helsinki: Werner Söderström OY. Watts, S. J. 1997. Epidemics and History: Disease, Power, and Imperialism. New Haven: Yale University Press.

P A RT III

MEMORIES AND FOLKLORE OF UNUSUAL DEATH

CHAPTER 7

“On the Apparitions of Drowned Men” Folklore and the Memory of Unnatural Death at Haffjarðarey, Western Iceland Sarah Hoffman

In ancient days the church is said to have been not here [Miklaholt], but on the Haffiorderó, that island lying well out to sea over the sands. . . . the narrow stream that separated it from the mainland was spanned by a plank. But the waters encroached. By degrees; a boat took the place of a plank; and in this the worshippers passed over to the house of God; til at last, the clergyman and thirteen souls were engulphed in the breakers. —The Oxonian in Iceland, Or, Notes of Travel in that Island in the Summer of 1860: With Glances at Icelandic Folk-lore and Sagas, F. Metcalfe

Introduction Frank Metcalfe recorded his travels through Iceland in the second half of the nineteenth century in true romantic fashion, combining detailed descriptions of the physical environment with the landscape of the sagas and occasional local folklore. While on his way to the church at Miklaholt, in Western Iceland, he struggled to come to terms with how a priest could be convinced to live in such a difficult terrain (Metcalfe 1861: 301). He found, to his relief, that the church was not always located there, but on the nearby tidal island of Haffjarðarey, where the local priest hunted seals for additional income (Metcalfe 1861: 301) (Figure 7.1). The story Metcalfe recorded (above) outlines the final days of the island church when it was closed due to encroaching waters and perilous travel conditions between the coast and the island. However, this is not the only version of this folktale recorded in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

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This island church, long abandoned by the time Metcalfe arrived in Iceland, was active from ca. 1200–1563 CE and was dedicated to Saint Nicholas (DI I: 116, 421– 23;1 Hoffman 2019a, 2019b). For approximately four hundred years the church served the entire parish of Eyjahreppur (now part of Eyjaog Miklaholtshreppur) and acted as the primary burial site for a dispersed coastal and riverine community (DI I: 116, 421–23; Hoffman 2019a, 2019b). While prosperous in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the wealth of this popular church seems to have waned in the sixteenth century until finally it was Figure 7.1. The western coast of Iceland deconsecrated in 1563 (Hoffman showing the location of Haffjarðarey in 2019b). Over the next two hunrelation to Reykjavík. © Sarah Hoffman. dred years, erosion took a toll on the island, until finally the farm was relocated to the coast at Hausthús in the eighteenth century (JÁM V: 45–47). Although no one lived on the island permanently after this point, the land was still used by the new farm at Hausthús well into the modern era. Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan describes myth and folklore has having a particular kind of power over the cultural landscape due to the fact that they are “not just any story, but are foundational stories that provide support and glimmers of understanding for the basic institutions of society; at the same time, myths, by weaving in observable features in the landscape, strengthen a people’s bond to place” (Tuan 1991: 686). At Haffjarðarey, folklore did not serve to strengthen people’s bond to place, but instead attempted to sever that bond by referencing mass death and labeling the place dangerous. How and why this narrative came into existence is tied to religious transformation, environmental change, and landscape perception, not only in the Middle Ages but also the post-medieval periods that followed. This chapter does not aim to prove or disprove the historical validity of the folklore surrounding Haffjarðarey, rather it focuses on how elements of social memory come together over several generations to create a cohesive narrative of place that has influenced both landscape perception and archaeological interpretation for hundreds of years.

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The Church Along the southeastern edge of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in Western Iceland are a series of tidal islands once home to a wealthy farm and Catholic church. Looking southwest across the beach and tidal flat from the coastal farm at Hausthús it is possible to see a series of small islands scattered across the tidescape.2 While a direct land bridge may have made the island more accessible by land in the Middle Ages, today it is only accessible on foot during low tide through an inundated indirect path stretching just under three kilometers. Access by sea, however, would have been as easily attainable in the past with coastal fishing boats as it would be now (Figure 7.2). Islands are one type of landscape that Tuan (1974) singles out as holding particular importance within the human imagination. Heide (2011) refers to islands, especially those within tidal flats where it is possible to reach them on foot during the rise and fall of the tide as “super-liminal” islands. These super-liminal island places are a part of both the land and the sea and are simultaneously accessible and inaccessible on foot at different times of the day (Petts 2019: 50–56). The normalized placement of medieval holy places on tidal islands and the nature of these places as simultaneously liminal and deeply embedded in local and widespread

Figure 7.2. The island of Haffjarðarey looking southwest from Hausthús on the southern edge of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. © Sarah Hoffman.

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social networks is expertly detailed by David Petts (2019) in his recent publication regarding archaeological interpretations at Lindisfarne. In addition to its placement within a phenomenological tidescape (Petts 2019), Haffjarðarey was the ideal location, not only as a sacred space but also an economic and community center (Hoffman 2019b). Located at the physical gateway to the entire parish, Haffjarðarey was accessible by all members of the coastal and riverine community (Hoffman 2019b). Economically, the farm and church there would go on to own coastal and riverine fishing rights that played on its tidal location and role in the maritime community (Hoffman 2019b). In these ways, far from being an isolated place, the tidal island of Haffjarðarey presented the ideal locale for a church in terms of practicality and ideology. The farm on Haffjarðarey likely predates the construction of the church by about two hundred years (Hoffman 2019b). Most of the earliest churches in Iceland were built on farms immediately following the conversion to Christianity in the year 999/1000 (Zoëga 2014). While its possible, even probable, that the church at Haffjarðarey was one such early structure the first church charter (máldagar) dates its consecration and dedication to St. Nicholas to 1223 CE (DI I: 116, 421–23). Given the nature of these charters as continually updated and edited documents, as well as the potential antiquity of the associated farm, it is safe to adjust this date to ca. 1200 (Cormack 1994: 27–28; Vésteinsson 2012: 128). Following its consecration and dedication to the patron saint of fishermen and merchants, Haffjarðarey and its wealth and importance increased within the coastal community as the fishing industry began to play a larger role in Icelandic society. Three charters dated to throughout the fourteenth century show increasing land and fishing rights, taxes due, church services rendered, and expensive furnishings (DI I: 116, 421–23; DI III: 43, 82–83; DI IV: CCIX (209), 179–180; Hoffman 2019b). Archaeological excavation of the church cemetery at Haffjarðarey revealed a densely packed cemetery with multiple overlapping and vertically stacked burials (Steffensen 1946). This organizational phenomenon seems to occur not as the result of mass death events like plague, but due to long-term community use of cemeteries not initially made to fit such large populations (Zoëga 2014). Bioarchaeological analyses of the human remains from the Haffjarðarey cemetery support a direct dietary and occupational link to the growing fishing industry (Gestsdóttir and Price 2003; Gestsdóttir 2014; Hoffman 2018b, 2019b). The relationship between this place and the increasing importance of fishing likely played a role in the long-term success of this island church, however by the early sixteenth century things seemed to take a downward turn. The last charters to mention Haffjarðarey in the sixteenth century no longer list its vast holdings and belongings, instead they barely note

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the existence of a church at that location and its need for a priest from the southern diocese of Skálholt (DI VII: 621, 664–65; DI XII: 11). Gísli Jónsson, bishop of Skálholt from 1558–87, wrote that the farm at Hausthús originally located on Haffjarðarey was an unusable wasteland (Gíslamaldaga AM Dpl. Isl. Fasc. LXXV, 24; DI I: 116, 422). In 1563 he deconsecrated the church lands at Haffjarðarey, ceasing all burials and church services on the island (DI I: 116, 421). The last priest of Haffjarðarey, Bjarni Gíslason, relocated to a new church at Staðarhrauni where he lived in the latter half of the sixteenth century after Haffjarðarey closed (DI I: 116, 421; Níelsson 1869: 98). After the closure, Bishop Jónsson divided the parish of at least ten farms and five chapels into two separate parish communities who attended mass at newer, presumably reformed, churches further inland (DI I: 116, 421–23). While the church and cemetery were abandoned, the farm on Haffjarðarey endured until 1708 (Gestsdóttir 2014: 40; JÁM V: 45–47). Since then, the island was used as a locale for seal hunting in the nineteenth century and, until very recently, farming from the relocated Hausthús on the coast (Metcalfe 1861: 301).

The Folklore The 1714 Jarðabók written by Arna Magnússon and Pals Vídalíns describes readily visible signs that there was an old cemetery on Haffjarðarey, namely the presence of human remains exposed by the weather (JÁM V: 45). By the late eighteenth century, ongoing erosion was only intensified by the presence of massive storms hitting the southern coast of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula. One such storm hit in January of 1798 destroying fourteen farms and forever altering the landscape (Herrmann 1907–10: 93; Hoffman 2019b: 110). The nineteenth century saw the trend of historical, environmental, and geographic surveys of wide geographic areas of Iceland carried out by both local Icelandic researchers and visitors from overseas (Aldred 2006: 10–13). These surveys tended to focus on both cultural and physical landscape-recording archaeological sites, places mentioned in the sagas and folklore, and contained environmental descriptions complete with local plant and animal species, climate events, and so on (Aldred 2006: 10–13). The first time that folklore regarding Haffjarðarey appears is in a survey that is included in a comprehensive geographical encyclopedia (Gruber and Ersch 1855, Vol 31.2: 174). This version states that “Once a priest and 13 lay people crossing the flat were surprised by a flood and perished” (Gruber and Ersch 1855, Vol 31.2: 174; translation by the author). After this comes Metcalfe’s (1861) description of the encroaching tides that

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ultimately led to a similar, albeit more drawn out, event resulting in the death of the last priest and thirteen souls. Finally, the last and most recent version can be found in a compilation of farms and place name histories written by Luðvik Kristjánsson in 1935. In this final version there is less detail in terms of the number of individuals who died, but more information regarding time of year. He writes that, “It is said [people/folklore says] that the priest and many parishioners, on the last Christmas Eve before the church closed, died on their way back to land” (Kristjánsson 1935, translation by the author in Hoffman 2018a). The manner of death is not specified as with the previous accounts, however Gestsdóttir (2014: 40) states that they likely fell through the ice while walking over it from the island to the mainland. Kristjánsson does not stop with this brief account however, and also notes in his description that accidents became more frequent as people crossed over the tidal flat in the years leading up to the abandonment (1935). Finally, and importantly, he notes that the story may have no basis in reality as the last priest did not die in 1563, but simply relocated to another church as noted above (Kristjánsson 1935).

The Archaeology Archaeology at Haffjarðarey picked up where erosion left off. If human remains were beginning to emerge in 1714 as Jarðabók suggests, then the process was in full swing by 1883. That year erosion had damaged the island so much that local inhabitants along the coast gathered together to collect human remains that had been exposed on the surface (Steffensen 1946: 146). In Sögur af Sagnir af Snæfellsnesi, Óskar Clausen estimates that the number of individuals removed during this episode was 109 (Steffensen 1946: 146; Clausen 1967–68). Jón Steffensen, an archaeologist working in Iceland at Haffjarðarey in the twentieth century, spoke to a local woman living at Hausthús who told him the number was closer to 250. Although it is unclear how many remains were removed in 1883, it is agreed that they were reburied in a mass grave (Steffensen 1946: 146). The appearance of human remains on the surface of a medieval cemetery piqued the interest of two researchers out of Harvard University who were specifically looking for archaeological remains to prove a theory about Icelandic dental health (Stefansson 1964: 51–53). In 1905 John W. Hastings and Viljalmur Stefansson were informed that “the authorities would certainly permit [them] to carry away any skulls that had been disinterred by the sea,” and returned to Harvard with the commingled remains of sixty-one individuals (Hastings 1905; Stefansson 1964: 52–53; Hoffman 2019b). After they left, a local priest visited the island only to

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find yet more human remains exposed on the surface. These remains may have been the post-cranial remains left behind by Hastings and Stefansson who were primarily concerned with skulls, or newly exposed graves; he gathered an unknown number of remains and this time reburied them in the churchyard at Miklaholt (Steffensen 1946: 147). In 1945 Jón Steffensen and Kristján Eldjárn carried out the first systematic archaeological excavation on Haffjarðarey as a salvage expedition. Again, erosion caused human remains to emerge from the cemetery, but this time the individuals intervening were careful to record their excavations. They established the only record of what the cemetery structure may have been before abandonment and before four-hundred years of human and environmental cemetery disturbance (Eldjárn 1945; Steffensen 1946; Hoffman 2019a). Steffensen and Eldjárn identified twenty-four in-situ burials and thirty-four disturbed burials, but did not identify any structural elements from the church, churchyard, or farm (Steffensen 1946). Many of these graves were found in eroded areas of the island and, without context, could have appeared as a mass grave of commingled remains. The graves that were found in-situ were found in typical east-west orientation with no grave goods (Steffensen 1946). Untypically, many were found to be overlapping or intercut with earlier or later burials. In one case the burial of an adult disturbed the earlier burial of two children who were then reburied with the adult (Steffensen 1946: 150). In another instance the burials of three women were stacked vertically one on top of the next. Although slightly unusual, densely packed burials such as these are not necessarily the result of mass death events such as plague in Iceland, but rather the continual use of bounded cemeteries over long periods of time (Zoëga 2014: 41). Specifically, smaller farm-based churches later expanded into community parish churches serving considerably larger living and dead populations than previously expected (Zoëga 2014: 41). Although Steffensen and Eldjárn did not identify the boundaries of the cemetery, they did provide a glimpse into not only the cemetery organization, but also the appearance of the eroded and exposed areas of the cemetery (Eldjárn 1945). While Hastings and Stefansson described exposed human remains “rolling in the surf ” of the tides, Steffensen and Eldjárn painted the picture of exposed graves commingling in multiple eroded pits (Eldjárn 1945; Steffensen 1946: 149; Stefansson 1964: 52–53). It is possible that this was not the first eroded “mass grave” to be exposed at Haffjarðarey given that human remains began to emerge, and continued to do so, since the early eighteenth century. Archaeology at Haffjarðarey shows a long cyclical history of continual grave disturbance as a result of erosion and human intervention. In each case the emergence of human remains prompts a specific response: first, in the abandonment of place, and second, in the collection and reburial of remains (including archaeological

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collections). Alone, the archaeological data from Haffjarðarey does not suggest anything out of the norm for the type of church and the time it was active, however, when considered in conjunction with historical and social context, an understanding of environmental changes taking place throughout the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and the timeline and details of post-medieval folklore, a very different interpretation of place emerges.

Discussion: Place Attachment, Abandonment, and Creating a Narrative of Unnatural Death Tuan (1974: 122) argues that, while positive and negative sentiments of place are “irretrievably lost,” it is possible to understand them on some level through the art, artifacts, and literature that survive. These material and literary artifacts, when combined, can help us understand the meaning of place in the past, and the perception of place in later populations. Social processes, such as structuration and practice, create place from space over time, taking specific events and nature into consideration. Place then, is not simply a dot on a map, but is the product of human experience and natural environment (Ingold 1993; Tuan 1974, 1991). Place refers to a physical space of variable size and scope that has been given meaning through individual, group, or community processes (Low and Altman 1992). Places are sites of historical and cultural significance, memory, and belonging (Harmans¸ah 2014). They are the direct result of social structure and practice as well as localized events over time and can contribute to the creation and perpetuation of individual and group identity (Pred 1984; Dallago et al. 2009; Harmans¸ah 2014). Places may be tangible or symbolic, known and experienced, or conversely, unknown and not experienced, but in all cases emotion and feeling are central to the concept (Tuan 1974, 1975; Low and Altman 1992). Given this, it can be difficult to fully comprehend and appreciate the variable nature and meaning of place in the modern day, let alone in the past. And yet, place, place attachment, and sacred space are often the focus of archaeological interpretation in prehistoric and historic societies. If place is created and maintained by social structure and practice, then place attachment is also generated from them. Place attachment, or what Tuan refers to as topophilia is the “bonding that occurs between individuals and their meaningful environments” (Scannell and Gifford 2010). This emotional bond can occur at the individual, group community, or even cultural scale. At the individual level, place attachment is related to personal memory and experience. Within larger groups and communities, it is related to a space where people can practice their cul-

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ture in both symbolic and/or tangible ways (Scannell and Gifford 2010). Communal places can create and support networks between individuals, larger groups, and even mercantile organizations (Dallago et al. 2009). Individuals within a specific cultural group or community can be linked, or attached, to place through “shared historical experiences, values, and symbols,” some of which may be religious in nature (Scannell and Gifford 2010). Changes in place can prompt emotional distress, anger, fear, and anxiety (Million 1992; Cox and Holms 2000). Topophobia is the opposite of topophilia in the sense that one is a positive attachment to place, and the other is the result of fear, anxiety, and distrust in the nature of a place (Tuan 2013). A place cannot invoke topophilic sentiment without others inherently inspiring topophobic sentiment (Tuan 2013). At Haffjarðarey, there was a transformation of place from the active, positive, phase of attachment to the abandoned, negative, stage. This transformation takes place during and long after the historical abandonment and can be understood at least partially from the post-medieval folklore narrative that became linked to the place. Narratives become inseparable from places when specific events and historical episodes become linked to unique place identities (Harmans¸ah 2014). The creation of historical place narratives has been linked to communities with a strong attachment to place or physical environment (Burholt and Naylor 2005). History, mythology, folklore, and oral tradition feature heavily in instances where a strong sense of place attachment outweighs the risk of environmental disaster (Bonaiuto et al. 2016). The loss of a sense of place attachment, or the loss of a place of attachment, has been linked to physical and emotional symptoms including negative emotion, grief, depression, and in extreme cases post-traumatic stress (Scopelliti and Tiberio 2010; Bonaiuto et al. 2016). On the other hand, positive attachment to place has also been linked to negative health impacts, specifically in the risk of injury and negative health impacts as a result of natural disaster and displacement, or continuous exposure to harmful conditions within a specific place (Gazerro et al. 1996; Daniel, Moore, and Kestens 2008; Pluhar et al. 2009; Marcu, Uzzell, and Barnett 2011; Small et al. 2012; Bonaiuto et al. 2016; Smit et al. 2016). Positive and negative perceptions of place directly affect how humans interact emotionally with their physical environments. Positive perception and attachment can paradoxically result in negative health impacts and negative perception can result in a reorganization or reinterpretation of a landscape and its history (Hoffman 2019b). How humans conceptualize, memorialize, and reinterpret past landscapes of attachment can be addressed though folklore and narratives attached to those places (see Jones and Russell 2012; Jones 2012; David et al. 2012; Cheallaigh 2012).

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Silva (2015: 159) points out that social memory recorded as folklore has the potential to survive the longue durée of history and even prehistory. Social memory as folklore is “composed of the fragmented stories that surround specific places and events, that are passed around within and between generations” (Jones and Russell 2012: 271). It can contain information not only about these specific peoples, places, and events, but also inform our understandings of how people, places, and events were perceived by those who created the lore and by later generations. In this way historical or archaeological accuracy is less important than the meaning imparted by the folklore (Gazin-Schwartz and Holtorf 2005: 13). Folklore can then, regardless of historical accuracy, preserve elements of social memory and perception and play an integral role in archaeological interpretations (Gazin-Schwartz and Holtorf 2005: 5; Silva 2015: 169–70). Jones and Russell (2012: 271) write that social memory is “a realm of controversy, where people actively engage with the past in the present, mobilizing memory to interpret present events and relationships and to inform the production of identity and place.” A stratigraphic profile assembled from pieces of history, oral tradition, firsthand accounts, and the process of remembering and forgetting (Taithe 1999: 125; Jones and Russell 2012: 271). The abandonment folklore at Haffjarðarey may then be interpreted through this lens, as an assemblage of local history, place attachment, long-term environmental perception, post-medieval oral tradition, and wider themes in Icelandic folklore as a way of remembering a place that was once embedded in local community identity. Haffjarðarey was not abandoned and deconsecrated in a social vacuum, but at the height of renewed Reformation policy and practice. The Reformation conflicts between 1537 and 1551 ended with a show of Danish force and the apathetic acceptance of Reformation ideology, but even then large-scale changes in the religious landscape did not occur immediately (Cunningham 2011: 90–91). One of the first changes came with the closing of religious houses in the northern and southern diocese and the confiscation of their lands and treasures (Hood 1943: 185; Cunningham 2011: 90). This was carried out, in part, by remaining Danish forces who stayed to maintain a presence and enforce new policy (Cunningham 2011: 90). In 1558, Gísli Jónsson became the third Lutheran bishop of Skálholt and proved to be more zealous about Reform than his predecessor (Hood 1943: 187). Not only did he destroy a popular religious icon (the Kaldarnes Cross), but he also worked closely with Danish governors to push ecclesiastic reform (Hood 1943: 187). In September of 1563 one of these governors, Pall Stigsson, wrote to the Danish king describing his working relationship with Bishop Jónsson as well as a list of farms and properties to be confiscated for the crown, some of which were likely

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previously owned by Catholic institutions (Hid– Íslenzka bókmenntafélag 1856: 131–32). Although Haffjarðarey is not listed in this correspondence it is clear that the post-medieval Icelandic landscape was undergoing considerable reorganization in the 1560s, at least in terms of land ownership. As a popular and prominent Catholic institution embedded in the maritime identity of the region, the closure of Haffjarðarey may have been unpopular despite its waning economic position. The parish community was divided to congregate at two newer churches inland, thus separating the community physically and socially (DI I: 116, 421–23). In a previous interpretation the author suggested the possibility that the abandonment folklore served to reinforce place abandonment in the wake of the Reformation (Hoffman 2018a). Indeed, the folklore, specifically Kristjánsson’s (1935) version occurring on Christmas Eve 1563, does seem to draw on longstanding traditions of Christmas and Yuletide hauntings as the result of unnatural death to establish a sense of topophobia, or a fear of place (Tuan 2013; Hoffman 2018a). By creating a sense of fear, both of unnatural death and the potential for hauntings, the folklore then reinforced the displacement and reorganization of the former parish community (Hoffman 2018a). While this interpretation has merit as one aspect of the overall post-medieval perception of place it neglected the other, more environmentally focused, versions of events (Hoffman 2018a). It also neglects the role of social memory in the post-medieval community as they witnessed, firsthand, the impacts of extreme climatic events and the constant progression of coastal and inland erosion. Erosion and environmental/climatic events are cited as the primary driving force behind the abandonment of Haffjarðarey in folklore and post-medieval accounts of the landscape (DI I: 116, 421–23; JÁM V: 45–47; Gruber and Ersch 1855, Vol 31.2: 174; Metcalfe 1861: 301; Kristjánsson 1935). It would be a mistake to write off these natural phenomena as entirely metaphorical or allegorical. Taithe’s description of social memory as layered sedimentary strata suggests that the social memory in question may be added to or altered as the experience of the society itself changes over time (1999: 125). The memory, or narrative, may be in a constant state of flux that is revised, altered, contested, and reinforced by living social groups (Purser 1992: 26; Jones and Russell 2012: 274). These social groups “determine what is memorable and how it will be remembered”; however at Haffjarðarey there is the question of which group determined what was included in the narrative—the medieval or the post-medieval (Jones and Russell 2012: 269)? Folklore often includes meaningful elements that are observed in daily life and social practice (Jones 2012: 348). How groups give meaning to their history is constantly negotiated and informed by culturally rele-

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vant pre-understanding of social norms (David et al. 2012: 321, 341–42). Proxy data suggests that the climate of the fourteenth century was variable, but the following mid-fifteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries were relatively mild (Ogilvie and Jónsdóttir 2000: 386). The later sixteenth century was harsher, with a cooling trend beginning in the late seventeenth century (Ogilvie and Jónsdóttir 2000: 386). The eighteenth century featured multiple instances of hardship for the Icelanders related to climate, disease outbreak, and volcanic activity (Gunnarsson 1980: 23; Ogilvie and Jónsdóttir 2000: 390–91). The long-term effects of soil erosion began in the settlement period and paused for a period of ecosystem recovery in Western Iceland between 1200 and 1500, before declining rapidly in the late seventeenth century and reaching an extreme from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries (Arnalds 1987: 510; Gísladóttir, Erlendsson, and Lal 2011: 531). Historical accounts of massive storms and floods along the southeastern coast of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula throughout the eighteenth century as well as research into erosion and relative sea level rise suggest that the coastline and tidal flat at Haffjarðarey have been considerably altered in the approximately 450 years since abandonment (Herrmann 1907–10; Gehrels et al. 2006; Saher et al. 2015). Coastal storms, erosion, and a slowly rising coastline would have been a part of the daily landscape experienced by the post-medieval community, inevitably shaping perception of place. Adding to these environmental experiences it was the post-medieval community, specifically in the eighteenth to -nineteenth century, who witnessed the constant emergence of human remains from the former church yard. Common themes in post-medieval Icelandic folklore include incidents of drowning at sea and unidentified bodies washing up on shore, some specifically at Christmas like Haffjarðarey, all resulting in the production of ghosts/hauntings or other supernatural beings (Gunnell 2005, 2017; Hoffman 2018a). Folktales such as these outline social protocols, preunderstandings, and general attitudes toward the bodies of deceased individuals that appear along the coast (Gunnell 2005, 2009). This phenomenon was well known to those living along the coast, especially those living near areas of historical shipwrecks, and potentially eroding cemeteries (Gunnell 2005; see Edvardsson and Egilsson 2015 for a description of a shipwreck at Haffjarðarey). Two core concepts from this type of post-medieval folklore regarding those who perish at sea are relevant to this discussion. First, that individuals who perish at sea are regarded as trapped between worlds and second, that if an individual were to encounter a deceased body washed ashore, they must take action to bury or rebury the individual or be haunted (Gunnell 2005). The folklore surrounding Haffjarðarey suggests a knowledge of social expectations of these protocols because in every instance of

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bodies emerging from the cemetery, prior to archaeological intervention, local inhabitants reburied them. The mere fact that bodies did emerge, en masse as seen with the eroded mass grave from the 1945 excavation, may have suggested to the post-medieval community that some kind of catastrophic event took place resulting in mass death. Mass death that must have included the last priest, who did not, in fact, die that night. This post-medieval community experienced the effects of long-term soil erosion as well as massive storm and flood events that shaped their perception of the landscape and environment. These lived experiences in turn informed the perception of place at Haffjarðarey where they become integral to the abandonment narrative. The church at Haffjarðarey was likely closed due to a combination of waning economic success and Reformation policy, however it became a symbol of tragedy and death within the landscape. Historic landscapes and ruins related to past peoples and events are “constantly reworked and actively negotiated in the present” (Jones 2012: 347). The narratives that formed around Haffjarðarey reflect the negative emotional response that resulted from the closure of a place of significant community attachment, but they also reflect generations of revisions reflecting the landscape and environment as perceived and experienced by the post-medieval community. Renegotiation of the past through the creation or transformation of the narrative served not only to reference social protocol in the present, but also to reinforce a shared historical place and identity (Gazin-Schwartz and Holtorf 2005: 5).

Conclusion The folklore surrounding unnatural death and place abandonment at Haffjarðarey, Western Iceland may be based in medieval traditions of hauntings and metaphorical climatic events, but it more likely reflects the post-medieval perception of the experienced landscape and environment that became linked to a historically important place. Eighteenth and nineteenth century folklore describing the abandonment of Haffjarðarey can tell us not only about how the post-medieval community perceived their past, but also how they conceptualized their present landscapes as a direct product of that past. The post-medieval community, aware of the former role of that place within the landscape needed an explanation when human remains began to emerge from the ground frequently, and in large numbers. Mass death, on Christmas Eve, at a known point in time would not only explain the abandonment of a former focal point within the community, but it would also explain historical period discoveries of eroded “mass graves” such as

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those observed archaeologically. Folkloric tradition provided guidelines for social protocol in these situations and is in turn referenced in the narratives surrounding Haffjarðarey. Inclusion of flash floods and storms, frequent eighteenth-century occurrences, as a cause of sixteenth-century folkloric deaths supports the idea that folkloric narratives can be altered and reinterpreted by later generations within the same generational community (Jones 2012: 357). Folklore of unnatural death emerged at Haffjarðarey in the nineteenth century following the loss of a place of community attachment that occurred generations earlier. The place of attachment was consequently transformed into one of fear through the creation and perpetuation of a narrative that drew on pre-understood social protocol. A narrative that was renegotiated over time to reflect changes in the climate and physical environment. The narrative of this dangerous, desolate, eroded place led researchers to the island at the beginning of the twentieth century and informed later archaeological interpretations of place, and continues to do so.

Sarah Hoffman is a bioarchaeologist and Research Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo. Her dissertation (2019) combined bioarchaeological analysis, folklore, and local history to better understand the relationship between human health and place attachment/abandonment in medieval Iceland. Her research interests include North Atlantic medieval/ historical archaeology and the applications of paleopathology to clinical and translational medicine.

Notes This chapter’s title comes from a chapter in Olaus Magnus’s “Description of the Northern Peoples” ([1555] 1998) that focuses on the ghosts of dead men who drowned at sea dancing off the coast of Iceland. 1. This citation is for the various volumes of the Diplomatarium Islandicum, formatted as (DI VOLUME: SECTION, PAGES) throughout this chapter. 2. The term tidescape is defined by David Petts (2019) and refers to tidal environments that cannot be easily fit into the landscape-seascape dichotomy.

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CHAPTER 8

Death Lives with Us Witchcraft on the East Coast of Bothnian Bay during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Annemari Tranberg

Introduction Even after they die, loved ones live with us as memories. This is a fact of modern life, but it was also a fact during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We grieve and commemorate our loved ones and even talk to them in certain situations, even though we know we cannot cross the border between the dead and the living. Different kinds of communication between the living and the dead have occurred constantly in the past. However, the Western dualistic separation of life, nature and culture, may not be the right way of seeing this communication, or any ritual. We tend to give scientific definition to most issues. In the past, what we now consider superstitious or unusual behavior, was considered part of daily life, a way to survive (Lehikoinen 2011: 267). In this chapter, I review what items found under church floors tell us about everyday magic and witchcraft on the coast of Ostrobothnia during the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century was the age of the Enlightenment in Sweden, a time to challenge authorities and gradually enhance the perspective toward human rights and nature. During this process, the Reformation also took place. Ostrobothnia (Finland) was part of Sweden until 1809, when the area became an autonomic part of the Russian Empire. Oulu, the main town of Northern Ostrobothnia, was occupied by Russia from late 1808. From the sixteenth century onward, the Lutheran Church in Sweden became the main church. In Ostrobothnia and in Finland this happened under the Crown of Sweden. The Lutheran Church started to frown on the Catholic way of seeing the relationship between the dead and the living, and also on superstitious rituals. It has been suggested (Lehikoinen

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2011: 267) that a difference between the old Finnish cult of the dead and Lutheran belief is that the dead became frightening, while they had previously been viewed as guardians of the living. Still, churches and graveyards remained theaters of witchcraft. Although all kinds of superstitious rituals were conducted at familiar places, church-related rituals were more common during the eighteenth century than they had been previously (Eilola and Einonen 2009: 186). Good magic aimed to heal and to increase success and protection. However, healing, especially with plants, was not considered either magic or witchcraft. Bad witchcraft sought to harm other people or their livestock, livelihood, or wealth. Some church buildings are more divine than others. Oulunsalo Church, on the coast of Ostrobothnia, was one of the more divine ones. The first church in Oulunsalo, built in 1665 and known as the sacrificial church, was located in the present cemetery of the parish. The church of Oulunsalo was called a sacrificial church because merchants, sailors, fishermen, and other travelers in the area met on their way to work to give votive offerings to the church to guarantee their success. The Catholic method of sacrifice was exercised even though the church was Lutheran (Lahti 2016: 167–69). Witchcraft persisted during the next century. Ostrobothnian and especially Finnish witchcraft and magic has been studied from different multidisciplinary viewpoints and sources. Witchcraft of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been studied based on judicial proceedings, while witchcraft from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been studied with a greater focus on ethnography (Halila 1954; Nenonen 1992). In addition to ethnographers and historians, archaeologists have recently studied witchcraft as well (for instance, Herva 2010; Hukantaival 2016). Rituals of death have traditionally been studied by comparing Finland’s early modern culture with Finno-Ugric and Uralic, but connections with Western Christianity have subsequently been observed. However, some rituals are highly localized, so an analogy between any other culture is not always useful. In ethnographical, archaeological, and linguistic research from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, death-related witchcraft has been discussed by comparing it with early “Finnish religion” but was later discussed as part of agricultural tradition. The analogy between prehistoric finds and ethnographical research has been critiqued lately (Borg 1853; Varonen 1891; Holmberg [Harva] 1916; Vilkuna 1956; Anttonen 1996; Uotila 2017). During the Catholic Church’s primacy, rural and remote areas of Finland were not controlled by the church. It was difficult in such sparsely populated country. During the times of the Lutheran Church, however, more comprehensive surveillance was possible. The authoritative attitude differed from practice. If we study the trial judgments for witchcraft and magic in rural Northern Ostrobothnia between 1620 and 1700, we can

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see the division between male and female witches. During the early seventeenth century, it was mostly men who were responsible for witchcraft, while toward the end of the century it was mostly women. Women were mostly accused of household-related witchcraft and men mostly of business-related magic. Originally the prosecutors were usually individuals, whereas toward the end of the seventeenth century the prosecutors were usually selected from among the authorities. The official attitude toward witchcraft was becoming more restrictive, but rituals remained part of active folklore during the nineteenth century (Nenonen 1992: 47, 58, 144–45). In the second half of the eighteenth century, ordinary people’s witchcraft was commonly performed in households, forests, and fishing places, but half of alleged witchcraft occurred in graveyards. The peak of the activity of church- and death-related magic can be compared with the time of most active church burial period: the second half of the eighteenth century. The way in which the legal system or community dealt with witchcraft was dependent on the occasion and also on the wizardry motives (Tittonen 2008: 2; Eilola and Einonen 2009: 186). In the eighteenth century, in contrast to the strict attitude toward magic in the preceding century, official opinions had turned it into superstition, or less dangerous magic (Lahti 2016: 164). Witchcraft and white magic were part of everyday life during the seventeenth and eighteenth century’s Ostrobothnia and open to everyone, yet some people had more expertise than others. Witchcraft in the church or graveyard also occurred on the border area between two worlds: those of death and life. This border is thin around holy places, such as the church, and the holy times, such as Easter, and therefore easier to pierce. Even this borderline is socially defined (Koski 2011: 158), it is realized in practicing witchcraft. The practitioners’ goal was to seek luck, prosperity, and protection, but also to heal and foresee. Healing with herbs was not considered witchcraft; it was a social institution for dealing with disorders caused by illness (Nenonen 1992: 81). The rituals connected to death and church people were about controlling balances; they used the power of death, and anything related to it, and were supposed to prevent death-related matters from entering everyday life (Koski 2011: 158). Väki means both the congregation of dead people—the church people (kirkonväki)—but also the power of what they represented. As a concept, Väki is Western Finnish. In this chapter, the concept is specifically associated with Western Finland and Northern Ostrobothnia. Thanks to trade and population movement, the area has been inhabited by people originally from many different directions. Occupation, peasantry and urbanity defined people more strongly than their ethnic origin (Salmi, Tranberg, and Nurmi 2018). Names are mentioned in court books, but no specific ethnic identity, only peasantry or some other rural social role, is revealed.

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Although, the documentation for Northern Ostrobothnia is really incomplete in terms of housing registers (Nenonen 1992: 201–5). The judicial proceedings show that a wide variety of people did magic, sought help for their problems, and that a large proportion of the performers were older women. Customs, such as superstitious rituals in general, are very local. This term, Väki, has actively been under discussion during the twentieth century. Väki was harnessed to the magic. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it did not, depending on the power of the Väki or powerless or incompetent witch, who could not handle the ritual. This same kind of power, Väki, was in every creature; some were strong, like iron, bears, or fire, but some were weak, like wood chips. Certain things or creatures were most powerful; supernatural, natural forces and everything connected to the death (Holmberg [Harva] 1916: 7–8; Apo 1995: 21–22; Björklund 2018: 43). Church people’s Väki was one of the strongest and it was typically perceived by stench and sense of movement (Koski 2011: 187–90). It would have been understandable to connect miasmatic features to the amount of power, Väki (Lipkin, Chapter 1, this volume; Hukantaival 2020). Miasma was the foul-smelling “bad air” that caused illness and death (Kallio-Seppä and Tranberg 2021; Väre et al. 2020). Did more smell mean more church people’s Väki? A lot of the death-related witchcraft was performed shortly after death; within days and weeks after the death and funerals, when the church was impregnated with miasmatic fumes. Graveyards were poorly managed until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Animals were able to dig the graves, which were buried shallowly. Not only the appearance and architecture of the graveyards but also the location of them, became consistent from the mid-nineteenth onwards (Karvosenoja and Niskala 2003). Eighteenth-century graveyards typically gave easy access to body parts and the soil could be exploited in magic and witchcraft. Because graveyards and churches were respected and daunting places, they became both a source of and a place for witchcraft. Ossuariums—bone houses, houses for bodies or bones to be buried or reburied, inside the graveyards—also provided easy access to the bones (Talve 1988; Jokipii 2001). If we consider witchcraft rituals, exploiting under-floor graves as material or place may have been convenient. The quantum of witchcraft related to churches and graveyards increased during the eighteenth century (Eilola and Einonen 2009: 186). This was also the period when death became more present due to the smellscape of church services. Items used in rituals were placed between stones in the churches’ foundations and dropped between floor planks (Issakainen 2006: 5). It is difficult to define what the artifacts symbolize to people, especially in archaeological context. Analysis is often based on artifacts being in “wrong places,” like iron items under a building’s foundation or a horse’s

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head inside the wall of a baking oven, but also based on artifacts being more good looking than functional. For instance, prehistoric artifacts are not functional based on improper material or size. Items inside foundations or walls have mainly been interpreted as witchcraft, but stone replica of bronze tools have been interpreted as status items (Sherratt 2001: 191). Virtually any item could have magical magnitude (Eilola 2004: 158). If investigating churches and under-floor graves and especially the spaces, we can find different types of artifacts whose presence is unexplained. During macro fossil research of under-floor burials of the area, some items have attracted attention. Wood chips are not the only items from under-floor space, used for magic and witchcraft. Pages of hymnals or coins wrapped in fabric have also been found. A coin can accidentally drop between the flooring planks, but a coin wrapped inside a cloth would have been dropped intentionally (Lipkin 2020). Pentikäinen (Vuorela 1937: 9) wrote about rituals related to coins. Coins—offerings to the dead—were contrasted with taxes. The dead are in debt to the living. When you drop coins under a floor for dead people, you can request something in return (Koski 2011: 242, 259). Coins were sometimes used to substitute other missing parts of a rite or spell or simply work as a pledge (Merrifield 1987: 4; Mauss 2000: 45, 105–09). In Lapland, Kolari, pages of hymnals were nailed inside coffin lids to prevent malevolent deceased from harassing the living (Koski 2011: 236). It is possible that pages found under the floors of churches of coastal Ostrobothnia are simply a precaution to avoid haunting. Coffins with dead frogs under the floor are strange objects that have been ethnographically, but also in historiography, interpreted as witchcraft (Hukantaival 2015). Placing a frog coffin under a floor was believed to give luck to a fisherman, to the detriment of someone else. It was believed that there was a fixed amount of good luck, so increasing one person’s luck would reduce the amount available to others (Hukantaival 2015: 192). However, small coffins found under-floor at the research area (Kempele, Haukipudas, Keminmaa, Tornio) belonged to prematurely or newly born infants, yet none of the tiny coffins were opened. No frog graves were noted. However, faggots and brooms (Figure 8.1) were occasionally found inside the stone foundations of churches. Bundles of different plants and tree branches (commonly alder and rowan) were a part of rituals, especially healing. They were planted between the stones as part of a ritual, in the same way as magic bags and dolls of alder were (Issakainen 2006: 6). These faggots may have been a part of rituals but were sometimes part of a coffin’s interior. Also, a wooden doll was found under-floor (Figure 8.2), but its material remains unknown. This doll may have been a toy, but it resembles an alder doll. In some places in Finland, alder dolls were placed at the graveyards for protection from evil. In other cases, these dolls may represent an

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Figure 8.1. Plant material, faggots, and brooms are often found in under-floor spaces and inside coffins. © Sanna Lipkin.

Figure 8.2. Dolls of magic or just a doll of a child? © Sanna Lipkin.

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enemy, but also perhaps a patient or even a wood spirit or elf. In all cases, these dolls were used as instruments in witchcraft (Issakainen 2006: 3).

Plants and Other Under-Floor Talismans The custom of burying the dead beneath churches continued until around the end of the eighteenth century (Paavola 1995, 1998), before the Russian Tsar gave an order to end it in 1822 (Paavola 1998: 43). Under-floor burials in several churches of Northern Ostrobothnia (historical province) coast were inventoried in the 1990s and re-examined in 2013–15 (Alakärppä 1997; Alakärppä and Paavola 1997; Joona and Ojanlatva 1997a, 1997b; Ojanlatva and Paavola 1997; Paavola 1991; Kangasvuo and Pöppönen 1997; Marjomaa and Ruonakoski 1997; Tikkala 1997; Núñez, Paavola, and García-Guixe 2008; Väre et al. 2014; Tranberg 2015). In this later inventory, plants and insects were sampled and identified from coffins dating from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century in Tornio, Keminmaa, Haukipudas, Oulu, Hailuoto, and Kempele. Coffin furnishing in the Ostrobothnian area seems to have typical Swedish and Nordic ritualistic features, but indicators of locality and migration (from different directions) can be seen as well. For example, the use of birch bark is distinct to the rural island of Hailuoto, near Oulu. This is also a very Arctic feature. As described by folklorist Samuli Paulaharju (1914), Karelian practices appear in death rituals of Hailuoto. It seems, based on partial inventory of Ostrobothnian church burials, that herbs were less common than in the western part of Sweden (today’s Sweden), whereas spruce twigs were abundantly used in Tornio, indicating Swedish connections (Tranberg 2018; Hagberg 2015). Although the burial customs have global and international features, witchcraft is highly local, even within family (Pajari et al. 2019: 81). Grave plants found in burials are generally associated with the desire to make the coffin more comfortable. Odorous plants formed a mattress, pillow, and cover for the deceased. The largest groups of these plants are birch bark, spruce branches, and hay. In addition, the bottom of the coffin was usually covered with wood chips or sawdust. Shrubs and moss have also been used as padding. In the world of Väki, moss represented earth or ground and, in this case, death (Ratia 2009: 74). In the rituals of Christianity and in everyday life based on Christianity, smells, incense, and smoke have played a central role. Health, vision, and medical care were based on the concept of miasma. Bad odors spoke of illness and sin, but good odors revealed goodness, good health, and effective communication with God (Kallio-Seppä and Tranberg 2021). Smoke has been considered a channel to the other world. The Garden of Eden

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has been described as an entrance to the sky (Reinarz 2014: 25, 43). In this sense, the coffin with its garden perfumes helped the deceased reach Heaven more easily. The smell of Eden helped the dead to communicate with God. The bad smell indicated a strong contact with death and the power of death, and church people and Väki. The sleeping dead were believed to remain with the living after their death. It has been suggested that, in pre-Christian husbandry societies, conceptions about dead people helping the living were similar (Koski and Moilanen 2019: 66, 78). Between these worldviews was Catholic purgatory (Lahti 2016: 172, 179). Furnishing coffins as comfortable beds, with the right odor and creating good-looking bodies seems obvious. Were these good-looking bodies assumed to retain some of the Väki that they had while living? It seems that using church people and Väki in magic is a different concept from using the actual body parts of a murdered or executed person. The power was different due to the nature of the deceased and the premature end of life. Using bare bones in witchcraft was not equal with witchcraft conducted with fleshy bones, so stealing a finger from a freshly dead body was understandable from a witchcraft point of view. Some of the life still remains in bodies who had died before their time, such as victims of murder or execution (Eilola and Einonen 2009: 193; Koski and Moilanen 2019: 68). Church burials continued longer in the Ostrobothnian area than in other countries of Europe. A seventeenth-century painting in the church in Isokyrö, south of Ostrobothnia, describes both the dead and the living family members. This could indicate that the dead were equal members of the living family (Ylimaunu 2011: 60). In some way, the dead remained a member of the family, either in memory or by providing help.

Wood Chips—Medicine and Witchcraft Wood chips were placed at the bottom of the coffins in Kempele Church and Haukipudas. The burial with wood chips from Kempele Church was dated to the late eighteenth century. The floor space of these churches in the area overall are covered with wood chips resulting from the construction of the churches. Different types of chips can be recognized, but the connection or origin is not always certain. The coffins have been moved and opened, not only by “witches,” but also by different causes, such as construction workers, over time. Some coffins have also been broken. Why singular wood chips are under the floor can be considered mostly theoretically. Wood chips as magic items are well known in contemporary literature and ethnography, but their origin and reason under floors has not

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been considered. Wood chips as building and coffin-making waste may be considered obvious (Herva 2010). They have not been studied fully but appear occasionally in ethnographies and judicial proceedings (Nenonen 1992; Piela 2011; Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seuran kansanrunousarkisto), from which we can conclude that they were part of everyday magic for everyday people. Ethnographer Samuli Paulaharju (1914: 107; Paulaharju and Laaksonen 1995) described the funeral traditions of Hailuoto, an island near Oulu. The chips generated from the construction of the coffin were to be cast into the coffin or burned. This is also the case for objects belonging to the deceased or those that had been in contact with the deceased, such as clothing, hair, teeth, and tools. The wood chips acted as a bed, but they were contaminated by death too; they belonged to the deceased. Ideas of metonymia and pars pro toto were the basis of witchcraft made in churches and graveyards. A part represents the whole, so anyone who had the power over a part could rule the whole (Eilola and Einonen 2009: 196). Hence, the Väki could stick to an object by touch. In this case, wood chips transmitted Väki of the death. Even ethnology recognizes the basic sources and forces of Väki; power could be transmitted by almost any object related to any other. For instance, sawdust from the church wall was sometimes put inside a magic bag, where it represented the power that the church wall had (Piela 2011: 109, 112). In Finnish folk poetry, first collected from the nineteenth century (Nenonen 1992: 47), in the logging of the Great Oak, wood chips that were cast around were collected and used by witches and envious people (Haavio 1967: 47). This story reflects the tradition of witchcraft made with death-related artifacts—objects infected by death—in this case, wood chips. Trees had an important role in Finnish healing and folklore and also in common life. Some trees were considered more powerful than others. Alder (Alnus) had the established status as a material for talismans and a healer. Splinters of alder were used to create light. Dolls made from alder were used as ritualistic items (Issakainen 2006). Another tree that was considered powerful was rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) (Piippo 2008: 385; Ratia 2009: 83), while juniper’s smoke purified diseases and helped avoid the infection of death (Ruoff 2003: 179). On the other hand, smoke and smell could help people connect with God (Reinarz 2014: 25). Most of the tools and containers were made from wood. Wood chips provided almost inexhaustible material for magic. For instance, birch bark was used in every facet of life, such as insulators or covers of roofs and wells, as tools, or as containers, but it was also part of death, under or around the dead or covering the grave. Lastukon väki (the power of wood chips) was part of traditional medical treatment. Paulaharju (1923) wrote about people in Lapland treating

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cows using splinters taken from wood chips. The Väki is less in wood chips than in some other items or natural features, such as fire or rapids; therefore, their power is easily controlled and can be used by average people. Somehow, in places where wood was chopped and a lot of wood chips were present, the holiness and Väki was present. According to the idea of pars pro toto, one part presenting the whole, the Väki of a tree, but also the Väki of disease was transmitted. Lastukon väki has been specified as being connected with carpenters and the iron tools they use. Väki would then have the power of iron. However, it is clear that different wood species play a central role in Finnish traditional medicine and witchcraft. For instance, walking on wood chips during Easter was believed to strengthen one’s foot tracks. The splinters of Great Oak were also material for the hex arrow (Paulaharju 1923: 219; 1932; Björklund 2018: 43; Leppälahti and Toikka 2012: 163). Wood chips and splinters were used to carry questions for the dead or power of the Väki. The questions were asked from the dead. It was possible to use chips to investigate theft, but the way of doing it differed depending on the location. Sometimes it was advised to throw wood chips in the air inside a church, and at other times they were recommended to be put inside a coffin. One person may have been advised to bite wood of the church altar in order to heal toothache, and another would be advised to take a splinter from an outhouse and make a portion of it in order to use it as a medicine to heal illness (Nenonen 1992: 80). Apparently, a tree or wood could possess powers of its own, but other powers also. Using dead people for protection was a Western feature in Finland. To some extent, people carried magical items with them in the eastern part of Finland. Believing in and “seeing” haunting church people was a northern feature (Lahti 2016: 183–84). Dead people also had varying amounts of Väki (Apo 1995: 21–22); criminals, murder victims and other suddenly deceased had more Väki than others (Lahti 2016: 185). Then again, death was always the strongest and most dangerous partner for witchcraft (Koski 2011: 158, 256), although wood chips were feeble and therefore the easiest tools for common people.

Conclusion When venturing underneath church floors, one might find items such as wood chips, coins, dolls, tiny coffins, brooms, faggots, and pages of hymnals. For some, these are just ordinary items, but for others they might have been instruments of rituals. Churches and graveyards are border areas between life and death—suitable spaces for death-related rituals. The power of death was the strongest one, while some were weaker, like wood

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chips exclusively, but as carrier of the Väki of death, wood chips were strong. The dead were considered more frightening among the Lutheran Church than the Catholic Church as the former was supposed to be the guardian of the parishioners. While attempting to get rid of Catholic customs, the Lutheran Church created an even stronger tradition of witchcraft. Forbidding magic made it a more serious matter. Accompanied by bad-smelling miasma—a symbol of sin, death, and illness—the churches became even more obvious places for magic toward the end of eighteenth century and the connection with the dead remained active. Using wood chips was a common way for a person to seek healing, practice witchcraft, or even operate as a private investigator. Perhaps, the habit of exploiting death was not so abnormal at the time.

Annemari Tranberg (PhD) is an archaeologist and macrofossil researcher. She specializes in environmental and historical archaeology, archeoentomology, garden history, industrial environments, and culture of death. She works as an archaeologist at the Museum of Tornio Valley.

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maailmassa” [Changing the relationship between the environment and human on the Bay of Bothnia in the early modern period: Macrofossil study of the use of plants in a changing world]. PhD diss., University of Oulu. Uotila, N.-U. 2017. “Uno Harvan käsitys muinaissuomalaisesta hautaustraditiosta: Tieteenhistoriallinen analyysi” [Uno Harva’s perception of ancient Finnish burial tradition]. Muinaistutkija 1: 2–16. Väre, T., M. Heino, J.-A. Junno, S. Lipkin, J. Niinimäki, S. Niinimäki, M. Niskanen, M. Núñez, A. Tranberg, S. Tuovinen, R. Vilkama, T. Ylimaunu, and T. Kallio-Seppä. 2014. “Kempeleen ja Keminmaan vanhojen kirkkojen muumiot” [Mummies of old churches of Kempele and Keminmaa]. Muinaistutkija 2014(1): 17–32. Väre, T., A. Tranberg, S. Lipkin, T. Kallio-Seppä, L. Väre, J-A. Junno, S. Niinimäki, N. Nurminen, and A. Kuha. 2020. “Temperature and Humidity in the Base-floors of Three Northern Finnish Churches Containing 17th–19th-century Burials.” In European Crypt Burials: A Heritage at Risk between Science and Public Display, ed. M. Majorek, A. Alterauge, K. Grömer, T. Väre, and H. Mytum, 189–215. Folia archaeologica 35.Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Varonen, M. 1891. Suomen kansan muinaisia taikoja: 1–2, Metsästys-taikoja; Kalastustaikoja. [Ancient magic of Finnish folk: 1–2, Hunting spells; Fishing spells]. Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Vilkuna, A. 1956. Das Verhalten der Finnen in “heiligen” (pyhä) Situationen [The behavior of the Finns in “holy” (pyhä) situations]. Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. Vuorela, T. 1937. Heinänteosta Etelä-Pohjanmaalla ja karjan istuttamisesta uuteen olinpaikkaan Suomen kansan taikuudessa [Haymaking at South Ostrobothnia and planting cattle into new home in Finnish folk witchcraft]. Forssa. Ylimaunu, T. 2011. “Materiaaliset muistot kirkoissa: Ajallisuuden ymmärtämisen haaste” [Materialistic memory in churches: Challenges of understating the secularity]. In Harmaata näkyvissä: Kirsti Paavolan juhlakirja [Seeing gray: A book for Kirsti Paavola], ed. J. Ikäheimo, R. Nurmi, and R. Satokangas, 57–68. Oulu: Kirsti Paavolan juhlakirjatoimikunta.

P A RT IV

UNUSUAL CAUSE OF DEATH

CHAPTER 9

The Cause of Death—Arsenic or Mercury? Investigation of Human Remains from Entombments in the Moscow Kremlin (Sixteenth–Early Seventeenth Century) Tatiana Dmitrievna Panova, Andrey Yurievich Dmitriev, Sergey Borisovich Borzakov, and Constantin Hramco

Introduction In the second half of the nineteenth century, human remains became an important historical resource in Russian science. Using an integrated approach to this material, scientists now study the ecology of the past and the history of everyday life of people of the Middle Ages and modern history, including paleo diets, human health, and the causes of death. The circumstances surrounding the deaths of some of the characters in Russian history have been controversial for more than a century. This is primarily due to the brief and contradictory information from written sources, which include Russian chronicles (annals) and notes of foreign travelers such as ambassadors, doctors, merchants, and military mercenaries. The chroniclers did not describe the early death in 1560 of the first Russian Tsarina Anastasia (at the age of about twenty-seven) in detail, leaving historians to suggest a variety causes. The unexpected death of Tsarevich Ivan (the son of Ivan the Terrible) in 1581 at the age of twenty-seven from a traumatic brain injury could not be confirmed even during an anthropological study of his remains in 1963. Thus, it was not possible to clarify the information of written sources that presented different accounts of this family drama. The sudden death in 1610 of a talented young military leader, Knyaz Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, at the age of about twenty-three, gave his contemporaries grounds to assume he was

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poisoned. All three deaths were unusual, which is reflected not only in Russian but also in European historiography. This chapter presents the results of a special study of samples of biological materials from the graves of these three representatives of the Russian nobility of the second half of the sixteenth–early seventeenth century. In the sociopolitical history of the reign of Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1530– 84) and the Time of Troubles of the beginning of the seventeenth century, the struggle for power led to sad consequences for its participants. In the first case (in Ivan the Terrible’s days) these were clashes of groups of the court nobility and conflicts within the tsarist family; in the second case the civil war and the war with Poland exacerbated the situation. The results of field and special studies of the historical persons remains make it possible to present reasonable versions of the causes of death of some of them.

Historical Background In Russian historiography, all publications concerning the first Russian Tsarina Anastasia (including publications from the beginning of the twenty-first century) belonged to the circle of romantic and mythologized literature. The study of her burial and the results of special studies expanded the range of sources for a more reliable description of her life (Panova 2018: 279–91). Scarce information about the Tsarina has been preserved in written chronicles. The year of her birth is unknown, but indirect data indicates it was 1533 or 1534. The marriage of Anastasia from the family of the Koshkin-Zakharyin boyars with Tsar Ivan took place on 3 February 1547. The age of the bride (thirteen or fourteen years old) was traditional for the Russian Middle Ages, as well as for Europe as a whole. The first child in the family was born in October 1552. Anastasia gave birth to three daughters and three sons over thirteen years of marriage, but only the boys Ivan and Fedor (born in 1557) survived; the remaining children died in infancy. While it is known that Tsarina Anastasia fell ill in November or December 1559, there is no description of the nature and development of her disease in the chronicles. According to anthropologists, she died on 7 August 1560 (Patriarch’s Chronicle 2000: 328) aged between twenty-five and twenty-seven (Panova, Vasiliev et al. 2018: 238) and was buried in the tsar’s tomb of the ruling family—in the Ascension Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin. The cathedral was destroyed between the 1920s and 30s, but the burial places of this tomb have survived to the present day. The poisoning of Tsarina Anastasia was reported by a contemporary of the events, German Heinrich von Staden, in his notes. He was in the service of Ivan the Terrible (von Staden 2002: 100). Tsar Ivan himself wrote about this in his petition to the church authorities when he asked for per-

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mission for a fourth marriage in 1572 (AAE 1836: 329). Two variants of the causes of death of the Russian Tsarina Anastasia are presented in historical literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. According to one version, she died from poisoning (Birkin 2002: 13–15). According to the other version, Anastasia Romanovna died of exhaustion due to frequent childbirth (Skrynnikov 1975: 15, 207; Florea 1999: 139; Jena 2006: 32; Bezelyansky 2003: 58). Some historians refer to a “bouquet” of causes of her death—frequent childbirth, exhaustion, and even the severe climate of Russia (de Madariaga 2007: 207). The question of the cause of the death of the young first wife of Tsar Ivan the Terrible remained open for centuries. Ivan, the eldest surviving son of Tsar Ivan the Terrible from his six marriages, was born in Moscow on 28 March 1554. Historical chronicles rarely mention the name of this child and messages about Tsarevich Ivan were preserved only in descriptions of the events of 1570–81. It is known that he was married three times, but his first two marriages were dissolved at the request of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. The tsarevich’s first and second wives were forcibly admitted to the veil. The third wife of Ivan Ivanovich caused a quarrel between the tsarevich and his father, during which he received a blow to the head with a staff. This caused his death after several days of illness. He did not leave children. The circumstances of Tsarevich Ivan’s death on 19 November 1581 at the age of twenty-seven are still controversial among historians, although most are inclined to believe that he died as a result of a serious head injury caused by his father during a family scandal. That is why anthropologists during the research of the burial in 1963 showed great interest in the remains of Tsarevich Ivan. All members of the commission wondered about the condition that Ivan’s skull would be in. Field studies could tell a lot about the trauma suffered by the young man, but experts, especially M. M. Gerasimov, were disappointed. Only parts of the upper and lower jaws remained from Ivan Ivanovich’s skull; the rest was not preserved and looked like grayish-white crumb with chestnut hair. Scientists had to pay the closest attention to special studies of materials from the tsarevich’s sarcophagus. It should be noted that the skulls of Ivan the Terrible and Tsar Fedor, buried next to Tsarevich Ivan, were not destroyed. This serves as an additional argument that the trauma of the head of Tsarevich Ivan caused the destruction of his skull. Separate parts of Tsarevich Ivan’s ribs and sternum, as well as hair, decay, and nails, were given to forensic chemical experts to study. At the same time, according to the fluoroscopy of Tsarevich Ivan’s bones, tertiary lues was detected. This was written down in the final conclusion of the commission (“Final conclusion” 1966: 72). The historical chronicles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not mention Tsarevich’s vene-

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real disease. This disease was never, until recently, mentioned in publications elucidating the results of research of burial places. Members of the commission of the 1960s decided not to publish data on diseases of people from the past based on ethical reasons; in fact, paleoanthropologists continue to debate whether to do so even today. As a result of hearsay, lues was ascribed to Tsar Ivan the Terrible. A paper was published in 2009 containing the analysis of old (1960s) X-ray photographs of skeleton bones of Tsar Ivan the Terrible and his son Ivan, expressing a cautious assumption about the diagnosis of Ivan Ivanovich (Buzhilova 2009: 73–80). Lues, starting from the sixteenth century, became a nuisance in almost all European countries. As one Russian chronicler noted, interest in a “sore that is reputed to be French” was shown in 1499 by the Grand Knyaz Ivan III of Russia, the grandfather of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Ivan III charged his ambassador in Lithuania, Ivan Mamonov, to clarify whether “somebody ill with that disease had come to Vyazma from Smolensk” (Solovyov 1983: 176). It is necessary to note that, in the territory of ancient Russia, this disease was fixed on the bones of people of the early Middle Ages. Syphilitic changes were found in burial places of the eleventh and twelfth centuries under excavations in the vicinity of Staraya Ladoga. On the skull of one of the perished in 1241 fighter found in Izyaslavl town (killed during the invasion of Batu Khan in Rus’), two gummy lesions were noted in the left parietal bone (Rokhlin 1965: 95). Syphilitic lesions were revealed under excavations in Chernigov land in burials from the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Rokhlin 1965: 95). The signs of this infection (in tertiary form) were fixed on the skeletons of two men buried in the Mikhailovsky sidechapel of the Dormition Cathedral of Kiev-Pechersk Lavra in Kiev. They were preliminarily dated between the end of the fifteenth century and the first third of the sixteenth century (Ivakin and Balakin 2007: 116–17). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, under archaeological excavations of burial vaults of the Russian nobility of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Suzdal, cases of syphilis were noted side by side with other diseases (Belyaev 2011: 75). The doctor of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov, Englishman Samuel Collins, wrote in an essay about Russia (written in 1667): “Madame Lues Venerea is also known in Poland . . . Having conquered Vilno and many other Polish towns . . . Madame Lues Venerea was taken by Russians as a prisoner” (Collins 1997: 216–17). However, the assertion that this disease was brought from South America at the end of fifteenth century does not correspond with reality. This South American stem of syphilis was a sharp and active outbreak on the European continent of what had already been shared by war among France and Italian city-states at the end of 1490s. There is still no consensus among scientists on this issue.

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Knyaz Mikhail Vasilievich Skopin descended from an old and noble family of Knyazes Shuisky. He was born on 8 November 1586. His father died when the boy was eleven years old, and Mikhail was brought up by his mother, Boyarynia Elena Petrovna. At the age of eighteen, Mikhail began court service when the Tsar’s throne in Russia was seized by Pseudo Dmitry I. As was customary for a youth from a noble family, Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky chose a military career. His father had been a military leader as well. From 1606 to 1608 he took part in battles against uprising peasants (the well-known rebellion led by Ivan Bolotnikov), he was engaged in the creation of a new Russian army that was destroyed by the Tsars Pseudo-Dmitriys (there were several of them in the history of Russia). Then he left that occupation but became engaged in further getting things in order in the country together with the Swedish mercenary army. Having defeated the Russian-Lithuanian-Polish detachments of Pseudo Dmitry II in 1609, Mikhail Skopin was engaged in the creation of the regular army in order to beat off the Polish invasion into Russia. In March 1610 he led troops into Moscow, whose inhabitants saw him as a liberator and a unitor of the country. That provoked a malicious reaction from Tsar Vasily Shuisky and his relatives, who did not enjoy the confidence of the Russian people. This fact predetermined the fate of the young and talented military leader (Bogdanov 1996: 46–65). Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky’s legacy as a man whose services for the country were never questioned facilitated his burial in the most important necropolis of Russia. Knyaz Mikhail died in 1610 at the age of twenty-three. His grave is placed in a side altar of the Cathedral of the Archangel of Moscow Kremlin. Historical literature suggests that Knyaz Mikhail was of such enormous stature that a sarcophagus for his burial could not be found and so it was created from two stone coffins put together. However, such legends were disproved when the burial place of the young military leader was opened. The sarcophagus of Knyaz Mikhail was 2.20 m in length. Taking into account the thickness of its walls, etc., the height of Knyaz Mikhail Vasilyevich would have been 185–190 cm—he was tall, but not incredibly so (Panova 1987: 116–17). All historians hold up the death of the young military leader Knyaz M. Skopin as a classic example of the elimination of a talented and very popular man. Those responsible were envious uncles—one of whom occupied the Russian throne at the time, albeit not firmly at that historical moment (Bogdanov 1996: 62–63). An analysis of the written sources that tell about the events of the Time of Troubles offers a striking conclusion—most of the sources contain a story about the death of Knyaz Mikhail with the names of the participants in the conspiracy against him and the scene of action. The events occurred during a christening at the house of Knyaz Vorotynsky in April 1610 and the main member of the

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plot was Yekaterina, the wife of Dmitry Shuisky and daughter of the infamous Malyuta Skuratov, the executor of the secret death sentences of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. It was not easy to poison the young M. Skopin-Shuisky. He did not touch wine and he ate, like all the present, from the common dishes on the table, but he could not refuse the cup of honey offered by a relative. Knyaz Mikhael was forced to take the cup and drink from it. At that very moment he became ill. Some sources report that the knyaz’s nose bled, he weakened and was carried away from the feast; others add that “ore [blood] was empty from the nose and mouth” (Bogdanov 1996: 64–65). Soon the knyaz passed away. Although Knyaz M. Skopin was removed from the historical scene, this did not significantly extend the agony of his uncle’s power. Two years later, Tsar Vasily Shuisky lost his throne and ended his days in captivity in Poland, where he died in 1612. A contemporary of the events Pole N. Markhotsky, wrote about the death of Knyaz Mikhail: “If Mikhail Skopin-Shuisky, whom I mentioned above, were alive, he would then have a good chance: everyone in the state would agree to choose him. But uncles, sensing in time (danger), poisoned him. And so, he died in the great tribulation of all Muscovites” (2000: 79).

Toxic Minerals in Russia in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times The written sources tell us that toxic minerals were well known in Russia. And that is quite explicable. Paints were needed for drawing icons and frescos in churches of Russian towns, and they were all based on toxic minerals. They were also used for making remedies such as ointments, lotions, etc. Historical literature and archeological findings witness the appearance of metallic mercury in Rus’. In 1814 a 7.5 cm thick layer of pure mercury was found under the wooden floor of the old Spassky Cathedral during the rebuilding of the church in Torzhok (Malygin 2004: 8). There are known archeological findings of fragments and intact forms of special vessels of the eleventh–fourteenth centuries from hardened clay spherecones. Mercury and other toxic substances were transported in Central Asia and the Caucasus in vessels such as corks covered with wax. An entire fourteenth-century vessel filled with mercury was found on the territory of Moscow Kremlin in 1843 (Panova 2017: 24). Evidence of how the painters worked in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was discovered during archaeological excavations in Veliky Novgorod. In the country estate of the painter known as Grechin (Greek), lead and bronze plates and rods were found that were used for making white and green paint. Analysis showed that the mercury was subjected to thermal treatment in the ceramic vessels found there to obtain red paint.

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This method was described in the work of Monk Theophil in the twelfth century. The fact that European women of different social layers used cosmetics is known not only from prose but also from poetic works of the twelfth– seventeenth centuries. An example is the twelfth-century poem by Primas of Orléans entitled “Loose woman” (Monuments of Medieval Latin Literature 1972: 498). Information has been preserved about what “face” compositions were made in the time of the English Queen Elizabeth I. The white powder of lead carbonate was the base on which the paints were put on. The cheeks were then covered with rouge from red ocher. The make-up from above was covered with a thin layer of egg white glare. Going outdoors a lady put on a mask on her face which she had to hold on with the help of a button . . . by her teeth! (Panova 2017: 117–19). A pale face was fashionable for women during Elizabeth’s reign. Cosmetics were not in great demand in Rus’ in the Middle Ages. For instance, it can be seen from the microelement composition of bone remains of Grand Knyaginya Yevdokia. She lived in the second half of the fourteenth century and no excessive harmful substances were found in her remains (Panova and Alexandrovskaya 2015: 64). Gradually, especially in the early modern period, the fashion for cosmetics began to penetrate into Russian territory. A lot of information about it is provided in the reports of foreigners who visited Russia at the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Moreover, all those diplomats and merchants noted an excessive amount of paints on faces of Russian women. The Swede Peter Petreius (1997: 419) wrote in 1617 about how they disfigured themselves: “not only face, but also eyes, neck and hands they colored with different paints: white, red, blue and dark; black eyelashes they made white, white they made again black or dark, and did them roughly and thick that everybody would notice it especially when they went on a visit or to the church.” Russian women even blackened their teeth and the whites of their eyes (Collins 1997: 208). Cosmetic means came to Russia from Europe, but they were partially made and sold at a row of stalls in Moscow’s Red Square (Tverskaya 1959: 25, 45, 54–55, 89, 105). The fact that the women used painter’s paints as cosmetic means is contained in the chronicles and notices of foreigners. Museum collections have special vessels of seventeenth century for lead white, antimony, and cinnabar coming from tsarist palaces. The base of remedies in the Middle Ages (including Russia) was made up of vegetable substances combined with minerals and salts of heavy metals. Russian medical books (which date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) described symptoms of the disease and medicines, as well as their prices. They marked properties of elements and minerals such as arsenic, sublimate, cinnabar, tin, ocher, mercury, and white lead (Lakhtin 1912: 7). Many of them were used in manufacturing (glaze for

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pottery) and for fighting rodents. So, in 1631, one person made an arsenic deposit of 2.5 kg in the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius (Deposit Book 1987: 195). It was used for poisoning mice (hence the name “mice’s potion”). Prescriptions presented in old medical books today arouse smiles, and sometimes disgust, because they even offered such uses as manure of domestic animals. The amount of mercury in some ointments is astonishing—up to a pound (four hundred grams). Today, the results of special research being carried out on the remains of people from that time show the influence of these compositions.

Research Method The main objective of this study is to check the results concerning the poisonous substances that have been found in the remains of the three mentioned individuals by other methods of analysis (chemical, emission spectra, X-ray fluorescence); this is done using neutron activation analysis, which is recognized as the primary method in international analytical practice (Bode, Greenberg, and De Nadai Fernandes 2009). The main elements of interest to us were mercury and arsenic. Unique samples were studied using a rare method: neutron activation analysis (NAA). In the framework of the method, the studied samples are irradiated with a neutron flux. Irradiation causes the emergence of radioactive isotopes that emit gamma quanta with certain energies for some time after irradiation. Gamma-ray intensities and energies are determined using semiconductor detectors from high-purity germanium. As a result of the induced activity measuring, a spectrum is obtained—a set of peaks with different energies and “areas”—the number of detector counts in the peak corresponding to a certain energy. The hard work of spectrum processing follows. Each isotope has its own set of peaks. By analyzing the spectrum, the researcher determines the elements that are present in the analyzed sample. The greater the peak area, the more the mass fraction of the element in the sample. Of course, the process is much more complicated. The NAA method is the most accurate; the most sensitive (the method sees the mass fractions of elements starting with ppm—part per million, and in some cases even ppb—part per billion); the longest (as a rule, the analysis process from receiving samples to obtaining the final result can range from one and a half months to two months); the most expensive (still, only very complex facilities—research nuclear reactors—can serve as a source of neutrons suitable for analysis); and, unfortunately, the most harmful (the researcher is subjected to controlled irradiation during the work process, and after the research the sample is sent for permanent storage in the radioactive

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waste storage). For analysis, only a miniscule amount of the sample is necessary—only one-tenth of a gram, in some cases a little more. The main thing is that this quantity must be representative; that is, it must represent a large sample. To achieve this, we take a few grams of the sample and, after cleaning, grind it in a mill to a powder state. Since the method allows traces of elements to be determined, the researcher must not contaminate the sample while working. For example, one touch with a hand will impair the final results. Therefore, researchers work in a clean chemical laboratory, wearing robes, shoe covers, disposable gloves, hats, and masks. The samples for research were transferred to the Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR). The unique research facilities at the FLNP JINR—the IBR-2 pulsed fast reactor (Dragunov et al. 2012) and the IREN resonance neutron source (Belikov et al. 2010)—make it possible to carry out NAA at a high level. Archaeologists did not provide information about the identification of the remains for the purity of the experiment. The following photographs are of investigated samples. Sample 1 (Figure 9.1) is elements of hair of the first wife of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible, the first Russian Tsarina Anastasia Romanovna. Sample 2 (Figure 9.2) is a rib from the burial of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich, the son of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Sample 3 (Figure 9.3) is a rib from the burial of Knyaz Mikhail Vasilievich Skopin-Shuisky.

Figure 9.1. Hair of the first Russian Tsarina Anastasia Romanovna. © Andrey Dmitriev.

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Figure 9.2. Rib of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich before cleaning. © Andrey Dmitriev.

Figure 9.3. Rib of Knyaz M. V. Skopin-Shuisky before cleaning. © Andrey Dmitriev.

Note that it is very rare for such unique samples to fall into the hands of nuclear physicists from JINR. More often we have to work with archaeological ceramics and glass (Dmitrieva et al. 2017; Koval et al. 2019). Details on working with samples are described in the article by Panova, Dimitriev et al. (2018).

Preparation of Samples for Irradiation Working with fragments of the skeleton and the hair required different approaches. Rib bones were cleaned several times using distilled water, 3 percent solution of sodium bicarbonate, and 96 percent ethyl alcohol. Since the porous ends of the bones could absorb a certain amount of cleaning solutions, and the removed particles of contaminations, small sections of the ends of the ribs were removed after cleaning. Figures 9.4 and 9.5 show the bone tissues after cleaning.

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Figure 9.4.  Cleaned rib of Tsarevich Ivan Ivanovich. © Andrey Dmitriev.

Figure 9.5.  Cleaned rib of Knyaz M. V. Skopin-Shuisky. © Andrey Dmitriev.

Samples of bone tissue were dried in a drying oven during the day at temperature of 40°C. This enabled the evaporation of the maximum possible water quantity. Grinding samples to a powder was performed using a planetary mill, equipped with agate cup and balls. The ground samples were dried for seventy-two hours at a temperature of 40°C to constant weight. The hair sample was cleaned using acetone in accordance with the method used by Zorina et al. (2013: 36–44).

Irradiation The first set of samples and standards was irradiated at the IREN facility for 115.5 hours. The IREN installation consists of a linear electron accelerator and neutron-produced target and worked in the following mode. The maximum energy of electrons was 55 MeV and the average current was 2.4 μA. The flux density of the thermal neutrons was approximately

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Фth = 6.0·107 n/[CM2·sec] and the flux density of the resonance neutrons was at 1 eV—Фres1 = 7.6·106 n/[CM2·sec·eV]. The second set of samples and standards was irradiated at the IBR-2 reactor. The installation for irradiation is described in (Bulavin and Kulikov 2018). The total irradiation time was approximately fifteen days: Фth = 5.2·1011 n/[CM2·sec], Фres1 = 7.5·1010 n/[CM2·sec·eV].

Data Collection and Analysis Gamma-ray spectra were measured twice after irradiation using the automation system for measurement of spectra developed at FLNP JINR. This automation system includes the high-purity germanium detector with high resolution, the sample changer, and the special software (Frontasyeva, Pavlov, and Dmitriev 2016; Pavlov et al. 2014). The energy resolution of the detector is 1.8 Kev for the 1173 keV line of 60Co, relative efficiency is 40 percent. The Genie-2000 program was used for spectra processing. Calculations of the mass fraction of elements were made by two methods: the relative method (using the standards, the elemental composition of which is well-known and certified) and the absolute one (based on the equation of activation) (Kuznetsov 1974). The “Concentration” software, created at FLNP JINR (Dmitriev and Borzakov 2019; Dmitriev and Pavlov 2013), was used to calculate the mass fraction of elements by the relative method. Nuclear constants from Belanova et al. (1986) and the Radiation Search website (http://nucleardata.nuclear.lu.se/toi/radSearch .asp) were applied. The results of the calculations are summarized in Table 9.1, which shows data on the composition of elements in modern people, from the article by Zaichick and Zaichick (2011) for ease of comparison. Table 9.1. Mass fraction of elements in the samples. Fe

Zn

As

Ag

Sb

Au

Hg

Sample

mg/kg

mg/kg

mg/kg

mg/kg

mg/kg

mg/kg

mg/kg

Anastasia Romanovna, hair

< 1170

< 100

1.2 ± 0.2

3460 ± 480

2.7 ± 0.4

6.4 ± 0.7

47 ± 1.2

Ivan Ivanovich, rib bone

1210 ± 97

620 ± 20

0.19 ± 0.1

0.13 ± 0.02

0.21 ± 0.05

7.5·10-5 ± 1.4·10-5

0.36 ± 0.07

Mikhail Skopin, rib bone

1370 ± 100

460 ± 20

0.23 ± 0.1

4.8 ± 0.5

< 0.1

1.3·10-2 ± 3.9·10-3

0.2 ± 0.06

Ribs of modern 135 ± people in Russia* 10

89.7 ± 1.6

< 0.1