The Birkarlians in the melting pot

Abstract

In 1924 the Finnish historian, Jalmari Jaakkola, published a study Pirkkalaisliikkeen synty (The Birth of the Birkarlian Movement) in which he argued convincingly for the theory that the Birkarlians (Pirkkalaiset), who lived in the sixteenth century in the northernmost corner of the Gulf of Bothnia and levied taxes on the Lapps, were of Finnish origin. In Jaakkola's opinion, the Birkarlians were the successors of even older west-Finnish armed Lapland-farers, the men of Kainuu, who from at least the thirteenth century onwards made long hunting treks, chiefly from the parish of Pirkkala (Birkala) in Upper Satakunta, into Lapland and along the coast of the Arctic Ocean, and gradually subjected a great proportion of the Lapps to taxation. This theory has been generally accepted in Finnish historical literature, and a number of Swedish scholars have even given it their blessing with minor reservations.¹ In the summer of 1964, six months after the death of Professor Jaakkola, a complete surprise was sprung from the Swedish side. Birger Steckzén, former keeper of Sweden's military archives, published a 500-page work entitled Birkarlar och lappar (Birkarlians and Lapps). In it, he tried to refute the Finnish theory and made the Birkarlians of the Far North into Swedes. The Swedish word 'birkarls', in his opinion, is an archaic form of the ‘biurkarl’ (biur = beaver in Old Swedish). The Birkarls, i.e. beavermen, were thus, he claimed, Swedish beaver trappers who subjugated the whole of Lapland in the early Middle Ages.