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Roots in Lapland


Generation No. 2


      2. Olof Anundsson2 Tulkki (Anund1) was born Abt. 1500 in Armassaari, Hietaniemi., Ofvertornea, Sweden, and died 1562 in Armassaari, Hietaniemi., Ofvertornea, Sweden.

Notes for Olof Anundsson Tulkki:
Olof was a "birkarl" and "lappfogde" 1555-1558.

I shall begin by quoting a few pages from: Bjorn Collinder. "The Lapps." New York: Greenwood Press, publ., 1969. pgs. 13-

"It may be asked whether the Lapps really have a history. We have but little information about them from the time when they were politically independent. For all we know, the Lapp people may always have been split up insmall tribes without any political or military organizations. According to their own popular traditions, confirmed by historical documents, the Lapp tribes or hordes earlier had judges of their own, but we are not told to what extent such a judge had the authority of a ruler. The Norwegians at the end of the viking epoch thought that there were or had been Lapp chieftains. In the short prose introduction to the Edda song on Volund (the Daedulus of the ancient Norsemen) it is said that Volund and his brothers were the sons of a Lapp chieftain (Finnakonungr) and that they were ski-runners and hunters.

"The Icelandic saga of Egill Skallagrimsson was probably written in the thirteenth century; it has been suggested that it may be a work of Snorri Sturluson. The first chapters deal with events that are assumed to have taken place in the second half of the ninth century, during the reign of King Harald Fairhair (see his file). According to the saga, an opulent Norwegian land owner named Thorolf Kveldulfsson went in two subsequent winters to what is now Swedish Lappland (and Norwegian Finnmark) to raise taxes from the Lapps in the name of the king of Norway. In order to emphasize the just and righteous claim of the Crown, Thorolf had an armed retinue of about one hundred men. There were also other tax-cravers and merchants moving around in those regions - Karelians, Kolybags (descendants of Swedish colonists in Russia?), and Quens (Kvens). The last-mentioned may or may not have been identical with the Finnish-speaking "Kainulaiset" of northern Ostrobotnia; some scholars think that they were Scandinavians. Thorolf allied himself to the king of the Quens, and together they fought the Karelians.

"That the Lapps had to pay taxes to their Norwegian neighbors is confirmed by the relation of Ohthere, quoted by King Alfred the Great.
To the court of King Alfred the Great there came a rich Norwegian landowner, whose name was Ottarr; the English called him Ohthere. He told the King that he lived farther north than any other Norwegian. Once he had made a voyage still farther north, and then east, and then south, and finally westward; in other words, he had rounded the Kola Peninsula, which probably nobody had done before him. Ohthere was more than a pioneer and an explorer; he should also be mentioned in the annals of comparative linguistics. He said that the language of the "Beormas", living in the Kola Peninsula, resembles the language of the "Finnas", i. e., Lappish. Now we know from the report of another Norwegian explorer, Thorir Hundr (the beginning of the eleventh century), that the "Bjarmar" of the Kola Peninsula had a big wooden idol, which they called "Jomali" (accusative "Jomala"). This word is identical with Finnish Jumala, "God," and suffices in itself to demonstrate that the "Beormas" were Finns or Karelians.

"This is the substance of what Ohthere told King Alfred about the Lapps ("Finnas"):

"He said that he lived in the land to the northward, on the West Sea. He said, however, that the land is very long north from thence; but it is all waste, except that in a few places Lapps dwell here and there, hunting in the winter, and in the summer fishing in the sea. He said that he wished to find out, at one time, how far the land extended northward, or whether any one lived to the north of the wilderness. He then went northward along the land for three days. He was then as far north as the whalehunters go at the farthest. Then he went on northward as far as he could sail within another three days. then the land there inclined eastward, or the sea into the land, he did not know which; he only knew that he there waited for a west wind and a little north, and then sailed eastward along the land as far as he could sail in four days. Then he had to wait there for a due north wind, because the land there inclined southward, or the sea into the land, he knew not which. He then sailed thence along the land southward as far as he could sail in five days. Then there lay a river up into the land. They then turned up into the river, because they dared not sail on past the river for fear of hostility, because all the land was inhabited on the other side of the river. He had not before met with any inhabited land since he left his own home. But all the way he had waste land on his starboard, except for fishers, fowlers, and hunters, and they were all Lapps. The Biarms had cultivated their country very well. But the country of the Ter Lapps was all waste, except where hunters, fishers, or fowlers lived.

"It seemed to him that the Lapps and the Biarms spoke nearly one language.

"He was very rich in the kind of property of which their riches consist, that is to say, in deer. He had six hundred unbought domesticated deer. These animals are called "hranas". Six of them were decoy reindeer; they are very expensive among the Lapps, for with them they capture the wild reindeer. He was one of the greatest men in that country; and yet he had only twenty heads of cattle, and twenty sheep, and twenty pigs; the little that he ploughed, he ploughed with horses. But most of their incomve derives from the taxes which the Lapps pay to them. The taxes consist in skins and bird feathers and whale bones (teeth) and ship-robes made of the hide of whales and seals. Everybody pays according to his condition. The most opulent shall pay fifteen marten skins and five reindeer and one bear skin and ten ambers (forty bushels) of feathers and a coat of bear skin or otter skin and two ship-robes; each of them shall be sixty ells long, and one of them shall be made of whale's hide and the other one of seal's hide."
(p. 209-11)

"From the "Egilssaga" we know that the northern Lapps were attacked from other directions too. It may be that the Lapp legends about the raids of the Chudes (or Karelians) are reflexes from the time when Karelia was independent, that is to say, before the beginning of the fourteenth century. In these legends there is little mention of battles or even skirmishes; almost always the enemies are outwitted by the Lapps, or by a single Lapp.

"One of these legends tells us how the Lapps onced killed a lot of Russians (or Karelians) by letting down a heap of logs on them when they were climbing a steep hill. This story has been localized to several different places. Accoding to Per Hogstrom's description it happened at Kappuvare in the parish of Gallivare. The Russian historian Dergachev (quoted by Kharuzin) says that this legend reflects a battle fought by Lapps and Russians in 1318, but I do not know where he has got this sensational information. Here is a variant from Jockmokk, taken down in 1943 (phonograph collection of Uppsala Lansmals- och Folkminnesarkiv):

"Once I heard a tale about the old Russian war, there on the southern side of Peuraure. There was a cliff, a huge steep cliff. The Lapps knew that a horde of Russians were approacing their settlement . . . . First they made a path and this path they made slippery with ice; they at the top they made what the Lapps in the old days used to call a "satim" or "partom" (a trap for big beasts) . . . . Two children were out of doors the day the Russians were expected to reach the camp. One of the children gave a sign and said, "Look, a dog is coming." The Lapps heard, but paid no attention - they were sitting and eating in the tents. Then the child gave another sign (gave alarm again) and said, "Look, another dog is coming." But the Lapps still gave to indication of being frightened. Then the child pointed to the third Russian and said, "Here comes still another dog." By this time three Russians had managed to climb up the path, all the way to the tents. The Lapps rushed out and shot the three Russians with their bows and arrows, and ran to their traps which they had prepared in order to kill more Russians.

"By now the Russians were on their way up the side of the cliff. The Lapps had made fast logs with rope and twine; that was their trap. Now they cut the ropes and the logs thundered down the path which the Lapps had covered with ice, and on which the Russians were approaching. And in this manner they killed many Russians. . . . And so peace was established in the tract where the Lapps had killed the horde of Russians by the cliff. And the cliff has since been called "Karjelpakte."

"In the thirteenth century the whole north coast of Fennoscandia was a bone of contention between Norwegians and Karelians. After the Republic of Novgorod (shortsightedly founded by Swedish Vikings in the ninth century - see RURIK KLAKHARALDSSON of Kiev file) had annexed Karelia, the conflict was settled by a peace treaty in 1326. The frontier between Norway and Russia has not changed much since them; the overlapping economic and fiscal claims survived to some extent and appeared again as late as the middle of the nineteenth century.

In 1277, the King of Sweden, Magnus I Ladislaus, Duke of Svear, and son of Birger Jarl (c. 1266) by Ingeborg, daughter of King Eric X, ratified the rights of the "Pirkkalaiset" to extract tribute (squirrel skins) from Lapps and to fish in northern rivers. These Finnish trappers were the only ones who were in a position to guard the interests and rights of the Swedish Crown in the Arctic wilds. " Pirkkalaiset" is the Finnish term for the Swedish "Birkarlar" who collected taxes from and had sole trading rights with the Lapps. "Lappfogde" could also collect taxes but had the additional responsibility of representing the Lapp's rights.

According to folklore, the founder of the Kurkki family was Chief of the Lapland Fur Traders from Pirkkala (the "pirkkalaiset"). Interestingly, the last Catholic Bishop (of Abo) was Arvid Kurki (Kurck), who drowned in the Gulf of Bothnia.

Zakari Topelius in "Maame Kirje", Edlund Publ., Helskinki, 1899. p. 275-6 states:
"Viela Birger Jaarlin aikana kuljeskelivat lappalaiset porokarjoineen pojois- ja keski-suomessa aina Pirkkalan pitajaan asti Satakunnassa. Tama pitaja on saanut nimensa pirkkalaisista, jotka olivat aseellisia kauppamiehia, joilla oli varastopaikka nailla tienoin. He kavivat kauppaa lappalaisten kanssa ja saivat sitte kuninkaalta luvan kantaa veroa heilta, jotta lappalaiset seten tulisivat Ruotsin vallan alamaisiksi. Ja pirkkalaiset osoittivat, lappalaisia kukistaessaan, suurta julmuutta ja omanvoiton pyyntoa.

"Eraan pirkkalisen paallikon nimi sanotaan olleen Matti ja tama oli rohkeana sankarina kuuluisa kautta maan. Hanesta kerrotaan seuraava tarina. Venalaisten suuriruhtinaalla oli erinomaisen vakeva sankar, jonka nimi oil Pohto. Taman lahetti suuriruhtinnas vaatimaan parhaimman Ruotsin kuninkaan uroista kaksintaisteluun. Pohto tuli, eika kukaan uskaltanut astua hanta vastaan. Silloin lahetettiin sana Matille, joka asui Vesilahdella. Matti oli heti valmis ja vaati ainoastaan, etta tappelu jatettaisiin seuraavaan aamuun. Matti tiesi, etta Pohto oli noitakeinon avulla tehty haavoittumattomaksi, ja kayttti yon, Phodon nukkuessa, heikontaaksensa hanen taikavoimaansa viela voimakkaammilla noitasanoilla.

"Seuraavana aamuna katsottiin saari Vesilahden jarvessa taistelutantereeksi. Molemmat uroot soutivat sinne kumpikin veneessaan. Matti tarttui Pohdon veneesen ja toytasi sen ryskinalla jarven poikki toiselle rannalle - Mita sina teet? kysyi Pohto. - Ken talla saarella leposijaan saa, ei tarvitse venetta, vastasi Matti. Silloin tempasi Pohto julmistuneena miekkansa ja loi ensi sivalluksella Matin oikean kaden poikki. Matti vaipui polvilleen, ja Pohto huusi ilkkuen; hyppaathan kuin kurki. Mutta Matti, joka oli vasenkatinen, karkasi pystyyn ja huusi: voin mina viela lentaakin! ja sivalsi samassa Pohdon paa poikki. Palkinnoksi tasta urotyosta sai Matti kuninkaalta Laukon kartanon Vesilahdella, ja siita ajasta alkain oli hanen nimensa Kurki. Han oli mainion Kurki-suvun esi-isa.

"Pirkkalaiset kulkivat pakenevain lappalaisten jaljessa, surmasivat monta heista ja tunkeutuivat Pohjanmaahan. He panivat maan valtansa alle, perustivat Kyron pitajan etta elivat ruhtinasten tavalla. Mutta lappalaiset tulivat yha koyhemmiksi ja pakenivat yha etemmaksi pohjoiseen pain, kunnes viimein saivat turvapaikan pohjolan lumisissa eramaissa."

In 1293, Viipuri Castle was built by Marshall Tyrgils Knutsson. Viipuri was in Karelia's zone of interest which at that time extended to include the northwest coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. The headquarters of the Birkarlar (of Hame) in the North was at Tornio on the salmon rich Tornio River. The headquarters in the south was at Pirkkala, on the Kokemaen River, in the ancient province of Satakunta (now part of Hame) where they probably came from Birka, a little to the west of Stockholm. Old maps include the area as part of Kyrialand, extending from the north shore of the Neva River into the Lappland area, right up to the Gulf of Bothnia and Tornio. This greater Karelia formed a wedge between the Lapps and the interests of the Ostrobothnian Finns. And, of course, there was Ingria and Novgorod south of the Neva River, in present day Russia. St. Petersburg would be in Ingria; the Finns call the city Pietari.

Both Novgorod and Sweden derived an increasing share of their wealth from the hinterland in Lappland, and their prosperity depended on contacts with affluent traders from other regions. So, they positioned themselves along the main routes of access in both directions. Viipuri was on this route, with Tornio to the far northwest, and Stockholm, Tallinn (Reval), and all kinds of river routes via the Varangian Sea (Baltic Sea) through Gulf of Finland, to Novgorod, and south via the Volga, Dnieper, one could get to Tsargard (Constantinople). Whoever could get possession of Viipuri, Kakisalmi, Pahkilanlinna (Schlusselberg) or any of the other fortresses would have a better jockeying position for control of the resources of the Far Northern territories beyond Ladoga, for instance.

This system was a way of getting animal products from a region beyond the reach of merchants who would pay a much higher price for them at the Baltic markets. There were many parts of the equation to be fulfilled along the way, and there was much hardship involved. As Eric Christiansen, in "The Northern Crusades", New York: Penguin, 1997, p. 178: "...the colder the climate, the better animals are protected against it by fur, skin, and fat; and, the smaller the human population, the more numerous the beasts and birds. Arctic varieties of fox, hare and weasel are found even on the mountains where the snow never melts, with whiter, denser and finer fur than their downhill cousins'. There also lives the glutton, whose pelt "gleams with a tawny blackness, variegated with figures like cloth of damascus; and is made more beautiful to look at by skilful artifice, and coloured to match whatever kind of garment it be joined to. Only princes and magnates use this fur as winter clothing, and they have it made up like tunics" (ft. 128, Olaus Magnus, "Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus", Rome, 1555), VI, ch. 21) . Lower down the mountains there were sable, marten, otter, beaver and ermine - the last also a mark of noble ostentation, as when Charles, son of St. Bridget of Sweden was presented to the pope wearing "a mantle on which were sewn whole ermine skins from top to bottom, so that when he walked it looked as if ermines were running all over him; and each ermine's head had a little gilded bell hung about the neck and a gold ring in its mouth" (J. E. Rietz, "Scriptores Suecici medii aevi cultum culturamque respicientes (Lund, 1845), III, 208 - from Abbess Margaret of Vadstena's "De Sta. Birgitta Chronicum"). "You are a son of the world", said the pope - accurately, no doubt, but ermine was a lot cheaper in Sweden. The beaver gave a more serviceable pelt, was good to eat and easy to catch; it was being trapped and hunted to extinction in the Scandinavian lowlands in this period, and the pursuit of fresh stocks was what brought dealers and trappers to the Far North in greater numbers about the turn of the 13th century. As all furs, except plain squirrel, grew harder to find further south, these pioneers increased in number and importance.

The immense summer congregations of birds on (Lake) Enara (Inari) and other lakes, which had been plundered for meat and feathers at least since King Alfred's time, continued to supply the mattresses and cushions of affluent burghers and nobility. Seals and whales were hunted for the oil, and their skins for making cables. Soon the town of Tornea (Tornio) became a great international fish-market, where Russians, Lapps, Karelians, Finns, Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans came with or for their herring, mackeral, pike, and salmon: the herring, small, the salmon sometimes seven-feet long; the pike dried hard, and broken up with hammers.

As the animals preyed on each other, so did the men who obtained their living from them, each exploiting the other to satisfy those lolling on their feather beds in Western Europe and Russia. The Lapps were at the lowest end of the scale, and were divided into three categories: (1) sea-Lapps, (2) forest-Lapps and (3) fell-Lapps depending on where they lived. They migrated with their reindeer as herdsmen and hunters from Norway to the Kola Peninsula, some 1200 miles. For centuries they paid tribute to the King of Norway, and then to the Kings of Sweden, and then in the 13th century to a new wave of "entrepreneurs" among whom the Karelians were dominant. The new intruders offered better prices, higher yields, and a closer personal dependence, use of grazing grounds and protection in return for tribute (taxes). The Norwegians always considered the area its Finnmark. They referred to the Finns as Lapps. Now, in the 13th C., Novgorod claimed that the Kola Peninsula is its province of Ter, and the Lapps, or Sam, the dependants of their Karelians.

In the 14th century contacts between Swedish middlemen settled at the mouths of the Bothnian rivers - the "birkarlar" - and their Lapp clients led Swedish kings to refer to the upriver region as their Lappmark, over which the crown had those mysterious rights which European rulers pretended to possess over wilderness since Merovingian times. But Finnmark, Lappmark, Karelia and Ter were not defined areas, Eric Christiansen continues, they were names applied to roughly the same area by virtue of a common pursuit carried on within it - exploiting the Lapps. Next in scale of exploitation came the Karelian Finns, the people most able to move freely in and out of Lapland and compete as transhumant grazers and hunters with the Lapps. While out on their seasonal journeys, the Karelians appear to have taxed, and traded with, dependent Lappish groups all the way from the Norwegian mountains to Kola; but the homesteads from which they came lay on the edge of Swedish Finland and Novgorod, and by 1295 were subject to either one or the other tributary system. Like Lapps, they handed over furs and other produce to their overlords, but unlike Lapps they were well-enough armed and organized to conduct raids on each other and on neighbouring settlements, and could bring their gains direct to market in Finland, Sweden or Russia. In 1252 the king of Norway and the prince of Novgorod agreed to leave the Far North open to tax-collectors and traders from both countries, but the result was not concord: Norwegians were under sporadic attack from Karelian raids from then onwards, and the competing Russian and Swedish intersts within settled Karelia gave marauders increased scope for action. Thus the Karelians served as an electric current passing between the colonial settlements and the sub-Arctic world, transmitting shocks from one to the other whenever local conditions gave rise to friction.


Alongside the Karelians, from the late 13th century onwards, came frontiersman of other nations: land-hungry peasants from Finland and Sweden, pushing up the eastern and western shores of the Bothnian Gulf; Germans on the rivers at the northern end; Norwegian fishermen, farmers and traders along the Arctic Ocean (as far as Vardo by 1307); Russian "boat-men" and peasants making for the shores of the White Sea by way of Lakes Ladoga and Onega. Hunger and greed drove them into a region so inhospitable that their hopes of survival were always, more or less bound up with the running of the fur, fish and Lapp trade, as trappers, hunters or dealers.

Therefore they were inextricably bound to the more organized and stratified societies they had left behind them, which provided them with their only profitable markets, and, Eric Christiansen continues, asserted political mastery by taxes and military obligations. They paid less in "skatt" and tithe, and could claim free ownership of the land they brought under cultivation; they could recoup by such levies as the "birkarlaskatt", contributed by the Lapps to the "birkarlar"; but, still, they paid, and could only maintain their position on the fringes of Lapland by virture of the grain, butter, salt and metals that came in from the south.

There were two main types and areas of warfare. One was the result of competition between the basic suppliers of produce, fought out by small raiding parties over the whole of Lapland, Karelia and Bothnia; the other was a battle for control of the territories at the head of the Gulf of Finland, fought by the techniques of devastation, siege, castle-building and amphibious invasion. These territories were the provinces (volost or gislalagh) of Savolaks (north-west of Lake Ladoga), Jaaskis (between Ladoga and Viborg) and Ayrapaa (the coastland from Viborg to the Neva), which were peopled by Karelians; Ingria, or Izhora, south of the Neva; and Vod, or Watland, on either side of the river Luga, sometimes known as the province of Koporye. These lands were the gateway through which Lapland produce and the Baltic trade reached Novgorod and Novgorod exported to the West. Castles and fortresses popped up at Kakisalmi (Keksholm), Koporye, Pahkilanlinna (Sclusselburg), Viipuri, Landskrona (where St. Petersburg is today), Oreshek (Noteborg, now Petrokrepost), etc.

The Northern Crusades appeared to arrive here around 1320, when the regent reaffirmed Sweden's ties with the Teutonic Order.

The first frontier between Russia and Sweden-Finland was drawn in 1323. (Collinder, p. 15). According to the opinion of many modern historians, the boundary line crossed the Finnish peninsula from southeast to northwest, reaching the Botnian Gulf at 64 degrees 40' N. Swedish popular traditions make it plausible that the Karelians up to that time had laid claim to the western coast of the gulf north of that latitude. (This configuration obviously follows the topographical layout of the Finnish peninsula - wj). It must be kept in mind that northern Ostrobotnia was more or less uninhabited at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the settlements on the opposite coast, in what is now called Norrbotten, were scarce and recent. The Karelians, on the other hand, had a firm foothold on the west coast of the White Sea even in the ninth century. We know from the "Egilssaga" that they made raids into the Scandinavian part of Lappland. They could reach western Lappland along different routes. It is highly probable that they went along the Ule river to the Botnian coast, crossed the gulf, and levied taxes on the western Lapps. But this means of livelihood became precarious as soon as the Swedish Crown succeeded in colonizing Norrbotten, in the thirteenth century. From this epoch dates a Swedish-Finnish expansion, which was not checked until the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Immediately after the peace of 1323, the Swedish Crown started a farsighted colonization in the Uleaborg (Oulu) region. this was only the beginning of a movement that almost two centuries later bore fruit in the peace treaty of 1595, which confirmed a boundard line which in its northern parts did not differ much from the Finnish-Russian frontier of today.

"The peace of 1595 secured Kemi Lappmark to Sweden-Finland. Tornio Lappmark had been taken earlier, though not from the Russians or the Karelians. The Tornio Valley was a Finnish sphere of interest as early as the thirteenth century, perhpas still earlier. It had been occupied by Finnish hunters and fur traders, known under the name of Bircarls (Swedish "birkarlar", Finnish "pirkkalaiset").

"The first mention of the bircarls of which we have a record was made in a document from the year 1328, in which it was stipulated that nobody was allowed to hinder the Lapps (homines silvestres et vagos vulgariter dictos Lappa) in their hunting, or molest the bircarls who visited the Lapps. In 1358 the King of Sweden confirmed the trading and tax-raising privilege of the bircarls.

"Bircarls" no doubt means the inhabitants of "Pirkkala" ("Birkala"). Pirkkala is nowadays a country parish close to the factory town Tampere (Tammerfors) in southwestern Finland. The territory was very large during the Middle Ages."

In 1346, the Archbishop of Uppsala and Bishop Hemming of Turku agreed that the easternmost fishing river of the "pirkkalaiset" (the Tornio) was under jurisdiction of Archbishopric of Uppsala and that northernmost salmon river (the Kemi) emptying on the Karelian coast belonged to Diocese of Turku (this border remained until 1809). The annexation of the Karelian coast of the Bothnian Gulf (Karelia's old northwestern border) to Finland took place without notifying Novgorod (per Joutikainen (?) "History of Finland", p. 36).

To conclude, I will offer a condensed Sami history from FINFO: The Sami in Finland (http://virtual.fi/finfo/english/saameng.html>>:

"Biologically, the Sami are an European indigenous population to which other populations have assimilated. The Sami and the Finns originally had a common language. By the beginning of the Christian Era, the Sami and the Finns had become two distinct groups in terms of language and living area. The sami practised fishing, hunting, and small-scale reindeer herding in a area reaching from Lake Ladoga to the Arctic Ocean and from the White Sea to the Koli Ridge.

According to Sami tradition, the Sami people have come about as a result of several settlement waves. The Samis - who were from the year 325BC till the 12th century AD called "phinoi" in Greek and "fenni" in Latin - had communities of their own in which they developed their livelihood, religion, ornamentation, metal casting skills and trade. During this period, the different Sami languages emerged.

Between 1251 and 1550, the bordering states of Norway, Russia (Novgorod) and Sweden made agreements on peace, borderlines and taxation rights in the Sami (Lapp) area. Finland was, at that time, part of Sweden and under the influence of the Catholic Church, and Lapland also became part of these. Swedish Lapland now extended all the way to the Arctic Ocean. The Skolt Sami of the Kola Peninsula fell under the control of the Orthodox Church and Russia (Novgorod). In terms of taxation, Russian rule covered all of Norwegian Lapland, Finnmark. The Czars of Moscow granted the Skolt Sami letters of protection for lands, waters and taxation on the basis of land registers and land ownership.

Under Swedish rule (1551-1808), the Sami, as citizens, were comparable to the peasants in terms of rights and duties. They made use of their main sources of income - reindeer herding, fishing and hunting - within the boundaries of their Lapp villages without building houses or cultivating the soil. The Lapps (Sami) were permanent owners of their lands, for which they paid the state "Lapp taxes". The basis for land-surveying in Lapland was a "Lappish league". In 1602, the Lapps (Sami) were granted representation in the Diet, and the Swedish Crown was also "King of the Lapps of Norrland". The Lapps (Sami) were under rule of the Swedish judicial system, administration and church. In 1751, in their mutual border agreement, Sweden and Norway prohibited the Lapps (Sami) from "being owners of taxable land" in more than one country.

According to Katrin Ohgren in an e-mail dated 19 March 2000, "As for the "pirkkalaiset" wives, many of them probably were Lapps, but the problem is that we don't know the wives' names. In the records they weren't noted with their names unless they were widows with underaged children and therefore standing as owner to the farm. And even then usually only with her first name. The records look like this: Olof Henriksson wife: 1 child: 5 son in law: 1 daughter in law: 1 cows: 4 horse: 1 and so on. . . wives and children was noted among the live stock.

"It was common, Katrin continues, for the "pirkkalaiset" to have mistresses among the Lapps. I've just read that they owned reindeers and let their mistresses take care of them. In 1546 four of them had to pay fines to the King and Bishop for making love to mistresses: Olof Anundsson Tulkki in Armasaari, Olof Henriksson Kaisa in Niemis, Nils Olofsson Kumppani in Niemis and David Persson Taavola in Juoksengi. They each paid 6 marks to the King and 2 marks to the Bishop. Three years later (1549) 8 of the "pirkkalaiset" were fined for the same thing. "Pirkkalaiset" children with their mistresses usually bore their father's surname."

More About Olof Anundsson Tulkki:
Fact 1: 1546, Making love with mistress fine of 6 marks to King and 2 marks to Bishop.

      Children of Olof Anundsson Tulkki are:
+ 3 i.   Anund Olofsson3 Tulkki, born Abt. 1530 in Armassaari, Hietaniemi., Ofvertornea, Sweden; died Abt. 1600 in Armassaari, Hietaniemi., Ofvertornea, Sweden.
  4 ii.   Nils Olofsson Tulkki.
  5 iii.   Olof Olofsson Tulkki.
  6 iv.   Anna Olofsson Tulkki, born Abt. 1535. She married Hans Knutsson Fordell.
  Notes for Hans Knutsson Fordell:
I opine that Hans Knutsson Fordell is of the family of Brown (Bruun), which was originally from Fordell, Scotland. Family would have been called Brown (Bruun) af Fordell. I have seen the Fordell name in either Oulu or Vaasa parish records, too.

Katrin Ohgren said in one of her e-mails that there was a BRUUN CROFT of soldiers at Kainuunkyla where great-great grandfather Oskar Wilhelm Johansson Kummu was born in 1864. This is perhaps where Oscar Wilhelm received the idea of changing his name to BROWN.

I have also seen an Alatornio Parish record referring to a child of JOHAN BRUUN and BRITA MENLOOS.




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