Forest and settlement fires in Fennoscandia, 1600–1800
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Short summary
The purpose of this project is to better understand how forest and settlement fires have affected rural societies in early modern Fennoscandia (Sweden, Finland, Norway).
The project aims to create new knowledge concerning why and when the fires occurred, what agricultural and industrious practices and everyday activities caused fires, what socio-economic consequences they had, and how it impacted the resilience and vulnerability of rural peasant communities.
The aim is also to investigate what was done by rural populations, local authorities, and legislators in order to prevent and extinguish fires and estimate how effective these measures were. By using quantitative and qualitative methods in analysing written historical sources in combination with climatological data and methods, the results of the project will greatly contribute to our understanding of how past societies have dealt with problems related to fire disasters. Since the project will bridge over several research disciplines (social, economic, agrarian, political, and disaster history, and considering that historic as well as climatological methods and approaches are applied) it will create a holistic image of how forest and settlement fires were topics and problems more widely discussed during past centuries than current historical research makes clear.
The research is interdisciplinary and based on sources such as court records, legislation, climatological data, and taxation lists. These will be analysed from theoretical perspectives based on resilience and vulnerability, disaster studies, institutions, and common and private ownership. Qualitative and quantitative methods will be used which will make it possible to establish with what frequency fires occurred, the reasons for their outbreak, what ecological devastation they left behind, as well as what socio-economic consequences followed.
The results will explain how the use and management of fire and the consequences of fires have been the subject of recurring discussion, conflict, and legislative measures during the study period, and how this played a central role in peasant society, industry, legislation, and institutional organisations.