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    • Main contributor: Juha Vuorela
    by Carl Petter Hällström, published by Samuel Gustaf Hermelin - National Archives of Finland public domain
    Das Grossfurstentum Finnland - a map of Finland 1789

    Finland is one of the countries where genealogy is relatively easy. Church records begin at the end of the 17th century and tax records as early as the 1540s. Individual documents exist even earlier. Finland was part of the Swedish realm until 1809, after which it became an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. Finland gained independence in 1917. However, the southeastern part of the country belonged to Russia as early as the 1720s and 1740s. This part of the country is referred to as Old Finland.

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    Oldest records

    In principle, Finnish ancestry can be reliably traced back to 1540. At that time, by order of King Gustav Vasa, land registers, or lists of land-owning peasants, began to be kept. The land registers recorded the tax base of a particular farm. For the first couple of hundred years, the names of the farms were missing from the land registers, as the names of the farmers were recorded in the documents instead. Gradually, tithe lists were also started, in which the taxes paid by the farms were recorded. These documents are called bailiff and county accounts depending on the time. Until 1634, taxes were collected by bailiff, so we are talking about bailiff accounts. From then on, the county division came into effect in Finland, so the same documents became county accounts. The research is greatly facilitated by finding out which bailiff or county a certain parish belonged to at the time.

    Court records

    National Archives of Finland - public domain
    Church book page of Helsinki parish 1785-1795.

    Court records refer to the minutes of the district courts in the countryside and the magistrate and chamber courts in the cities. Court records can also include the minutes of the higher courts, i.e. the appellate and appellate courts. In addition to these, there were various special courts. A draft minute was made at the trial session, which was then written clean after the session. These clean copies are called renovated minutes. The Turku Court of Appeal was founded in 1623, and from that year onwards, Finland has, in principle, an unbroken series of trial minutes. However, for example, the fire of Turku in 1827 destroyed a lot of material.

    Finnish Church records

    Finland's oldest church records date back to the mid-17th century.[1] Ecclesiastical population records developed significantly thanks to the Bishop of Turku, Johannes Gezelius, who in the 1660s gave detailed instructions on the maintenance of church records. The Church Law of 1686 confirmed the maintenance of church records throughout the Swedish realm. The establishment of Sweden's tabular institution in 1749 and the collection of population statistics further refined church record entries. The information was collected and sent to the national statistics in Stockholm. By the mid-19th century, church records had become very accurate also from the point of view of population records. It was not until the 18th century that uniform church record series became common. From the mid-19th century onwards, the coverage and diversity of the archives increased significantly. The language of church archives changed from Swedish to Finnish at the end of the 19th century. During the Swedish rule, only the Evangelical Lutheran faith was allowed to be practiced publicly. In the eastern part of the country, the practice of the Greek Catholic religion was also allowed. Representatives of other denominations had to practice their faith behind closed doors, and there were not many of them in Finland.

    Digitized archives

    The best thing about Finnish genealogy is that the National Archives has extensively digitized the aforementioned tax sources. Similarly, the National Archives has extensively digitized all parish registers and lists of christenings, marriages and burials from the oldest to around 1870. Some of them have been digitized from later times as well, for example, the church records of the so-called ceded area. The ceded area refers to the areas that remained in the then Soviet Union after the last wars from Finland. All the aforementioned archives can be researched completely freely via the Internet and you do not need to log in separately. However, it should be noted that due to data protection regulations, church records that are less than a hundred years old cannot be put on the Internet. You can study documents less than 100 years old at the National Archives' various locations, but you need a permit for this. Through MyHeritage you will find a large number of clean parish registers and lists of christenings, marriages and burials.

    Finnish naming culture

    In Finnish genealogy, it is important to remember the different naming culture of different parts of the country. Surnames have been used in the Savo-Karelia region for hundreds of years. In Ostrobothnia, the surname always changed according to the house in which the person lived. In Satakunta, Häme and Southwest Finland, surnames were not used for a long time, but people were identified using patronyms and matronyms. The first surname law in Finland came only in the early 1920s. Before that, the surname could be used, not used, or changed completely freely. This also means that the same surname does not always mean kinship between two people. The official language of the priests was Swedish until 1863. After this, a 20-year transition period began, during which Finnish-speaking parishes had to switch to using Finnish in church records. In practice, this means that for a long time, priests recorded Finnish names in Swedish form. As for first names, it is important to distinguish between the name itself and the spelling of the name in the document. They are two different things. It is also easy to forget that the scribes and the people themselves may have made a distinction between the actual name and the numerous archetypal forms of address, which may have varied according to age or whether they were used within the family or among the villagers. There have also been different ways of using first names in different parts of Finland. A patronym (/matronym) could be briefly defined as an expression appearing in a document (or, for example, a family report) that states whose son or daughter the person mentioned by the first name is. The patronymic is, in a way, an attribute of the first name, a clarifying addition. A patronymic is not the same as a surname.

    HisKi

    A good help for doing genealogy is the HisKi service of the Genealogical Society of Finland. With it, you can search for christenings, marriages and burials in plain language, and to some extent those who have moved. The service is made by volunteers and it does not cover all time periods and/or parishes.

    See also

    Explore more about Finnish genealogy

    References

    1. ↑ Parish Registers. The Genealogical Society of Finland


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