question about the finnish war 1808-1809

16 comments

1. Most finnish peasants did not have a surname at those times. So when they were drafted, they were given a swedish surname. Since the army command was swedish.

2. https://preview.redd.it/yuyxr01pxrag1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2dc85a166a37486448ae9969b25ffbbed36d64d3

   1808: 13k finns and 8k swedes 1809: just says 36k

3. The Finnish Wikipedia says that in 1808 there were 13,000 Swedish and 8,000 Finnish troops. The total number of soldiers was 36،000 by the next year. EDIT: it was the other way round – 13,000 were Finns

4. Probably most of the soldiers were Finnish. Commanders were often Swedish.

5. The Finnish-language article on Wikipedia has a lot more information, for starters (for obvious reasons) [https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_sota](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_sota)

   and there is also a separate article detailing the units involved:
   [https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Suomen_sodan_joukoista](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luettelo_Suomen_sodan_joukoista)

   The Swedish side had about 13,000 Finnish soldiers and 8,000 Swedish soldiers at the start of the war in 1808. The units were for the most part named after Finnish regions (Savo, Ostrobothnia, Uusimaa, Häme) or towns (Turku, Pori). Generally speaking they drew their recruits from the regions/towns whose names they bore. Some of these attained near-legendary status, thanks in part to the poetry collection by J.L. Runeberg extolling the heroics of Finnish soldiers in the war (*Fänrik Ståls sägner*, ‘Tales of Ensign Stål’). The *March of the Pori Regiment* was adopted as the honour march for the President of Finland in the late 20th century.

   The officers in the war of 1808-1809 were for the large part Swedish, and even those who were Finnish often had Swedish names, so on the face of it is difficult to tell who is Finnish and who is Swedish unless you just know which families were from where.

6. https://preview.redd.it/9jlaumz40sag1.jpeg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=07eea761e25206343841d7514ef4931715ff6880

   How did you manage not to stumble upon this painting? Björneborgarnas marsch/Porilaisten marssi by Albert Edelfelt.

   If you find one picture of the Finnish War, it’s probably this one. Inspired by a song by our national poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg. He made Porin läänin jalkaväkirykmentti/Björneborgs läns infanteriregemente kind of superfamous. If you know of one unit that participated in the war, it’s probably this one. Even though it may not have been the most significant.

7. I’d imagine the companies were named after their commanders, so there would be many Swediah noble names and very few Finnish peasant names.

8. Translate this with translation service of your choice: [https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotilasnimi](https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sotilasnimi)

   Soldiers were commonly given “soldier name” – which often became there surname. They might get them from their equipment, looks, or just some random thing (animals, plants). Lång (long), Stålt (brave), Hammar (hammer)

9. I dunno, I wasn’t there.

10. Sweden was affraid of an invasion from Denmark too, which forced Sweden to keep a large proportion of the army in southern Sweden.

11. Technically they all were Swedes as Finland belonged to Sweden.

12. In those days (since the Medieval times) Finland and Sweden were considered to be one country under the Swedish monarch. So it’s hard to determine, especially after all this time, who was considered to be of which “tribe” – especially when part of the even the native population of what was considered “Finland” in those days was (as is today) Swedish speaking.

13. Time to pay back to the world to educate me as a master.

    *stretches fingers*

    So. The Finnish war was a mess. The Swedish army was unequipped, unprepared, unmamned and lacked a lot of experienced leaders.
    The Swedish army was based on allotion system; every soldier was also a farmer who did not get other payment than the yealding of the positional housing. This was from captain to a clarinet player. So technically, if you had a military position, you were living there, in a place that had been given to you as a part of your payment. If you were too old to soldier on, your son, stepson, daughters husband or any living breathing young man was allowed to fill the position. If you did not find someone to do it, you and your family were kicked out and new soldier was searched by other means.

    As a soldiers they did got a new name. It was maybe inherited from the previous soldier or given my character. But they are in Swedish and here are few examples from Siikajoki area. One of them was my own ancestor.

    Corporal
    Gustaf Spets

    Soldiers
    Anders Elefant

    Johan Trumpet

    Jacob Brax

    Simon Khula

    Matts Willing

    Henric Brännare

    Simon Nordström

    Eric Enterman

    Matts Glafven

    Mickel Carling

    They all had different Finnish names, but makes you wonder how they gained these names.

    The officiers were largerly born to be officiers or were able to get the position. Technically one had to be a noble man to be an officier. They enrolled very young boys (have seen 10-years-olds listed) to ensure that the positional houses were kept in the family. There are some interesting books about the matter.
    Anyway they often owned other kind of material goods, such as potentially other mansions and could rent their positional housing forwards. They were expected to be avaible in case something was to happen, because they had duty to collect their own soldiers from their positional houses. So they needed to be around and know the area.
    Some officiers were foreign, but the majority was from Finland as it would have been very difficult to transport troops to Finland at the start of the war.

    When the Finnish war started lots of soldiers who had already left the military joined in for one or another reasons. Also a lot of teenagers joined as well, but the majority of the 1808-1809 were so called “old-Patu’s”. We don’t even know for sure how many were there as the war was so huge mess.

    Also in retreat phase there was serious outbreaks of diseases and in example in Oulu they had to make mass burials for the dead soldiers. (There is a memorial in Toppila is someone is interesred. ) Many soldiers went AWOL as well.

    So. Many of them were Finnish. The situation just was super chaotic and the subject lacks a lot of studying and there are lot of material for books etc.

    Hope this gave even vague answers.

14. Finns had generally Swedish first names in parish registries at the time (as parish registries were kept in Swedish), and even Finnish-language family names were Swedicized in ortography, e.g. *Kärkkäinen* became Kerckein or Kärckäin or such. In addition to this, regular soldiers received simple Swedish-language names, usually of military context; levies were marked just with their parish registry markings, possibly lacking a last name.

    Priests could also Finnish first names with Swedish ortography, but this was relatively rare; even rarer would be that there’d be the Swedish name as primary and Finnish . In later ages people often use the Finnish versions (which were the names the people were actually known by), so if a Finnish family which knows its ethnic history does genealogical research, Johan Karlsson in parish registries becomes Juhana (or Johannes) Kaarlenpoika (or Kallenpoika) etc.

15. At that time, it was quite typical that all around in Europe that only noble people were officers. You need recommendations and a good reputation to be accepted into a military academy.

    Since most educated and noble people in Finland were swedish families, it would be natural for them to be officers.

16. What is your definition of being Finnish? If it is being born and raised in Finland then Adlerkreutz and Kronstedt were Do Finnish. Our current Minister of education is Anders Adlerkreutz. The officers came from the nobility which was entirely Swedish speaking. Of course Swedish was the command language of the army.

    At the end of the war they kept a ceremony of separation of the troops in the Västerbotten. All the Swedish troops were given new clean uniforms while the Fibkidjo ones were in the old battle worn uniforms.