Kainuun asuttaminen

Abstract

A Lapp population and hunting and fishing from both the east and the west preceded a steady population and made the wilderness more suitable for living. The settling of Kainuu was an essential part of East-Finnish, mainly Savo, settling expansion, which started spontaneously as early as the end of the 15th century, but did not achieve its climax until the middle of the 16th century through the activity of the central government. Kainuu was settled twice: the first time towards the end of the 16th century, almost solely by the efforts of Savo people. As the 25 war years with Russia (1570-1595) had destroyed the whole settlement, the area began to be resettled from the end of the 16th century, again principally by Savo people. The role of the Ostrobothnians, who were the last hunters and fishers in Kainuu, was, however, remarkably bigger in resettling than in the 16th century. The earliest settling places were mostly chosen near waterways, which served as traffic channels and gave food. In the second settling era a tendency began to move to supra-aquatic hills because of their fertility and often also very cultivable soil and the suitability of local climate factors. Paying attention to climate factors was of great importance to the settlers in an::as which were much farther north than the earlier ones and could be critically northern as far as farming was concerned. The fact that the so-called Minor Ice Age took place in the 17th century underscored the importance of the climate. The settling of Kainuu was part of Sweden-Finland's tendencies towards expansion and provided the remarkably enlarged population of Savo with more living space. Kainuu was the largest and also the most uniform Savo colony in Finland outside Savo.