Manslaughter, Fornication and Sectarianism: Norm-breaking in Finland and the Baltic Area from Mediaeval to Modern Times (review)

According to the foreword by Heikki Ylikangas, "the only common links between the articles [in this volume] are history and criminal illegality" (8), to which we might add the focus on Finland, extended by colonial history to Sweden and Russia. Some studies focus on all of Finland; others treat only certain areas. One focuses not on Finland but on Estonia, thus justifying the reference to the "Baltic Area" in the title. The time frame of the various articles is long—from the Middle Ages to the end of the twentieth century.

The range of criminal illegality treated is suggested by the book's title. Of the four articles that treat violent crime, three examine homicide (Kirsi Salonen, "Violence in Finland in the Middle Ages and the Sixteenth Century in the Light of Source Material from the Vatican Archives" [100–120]; Anu Koskivirta, "The Dynamics of Homicide and Control in Eastern Finland at the Final Stage of Swedish Rule (From the Mid-Eighteenth Century to the First Decade of the Nineteenth Century" [121–147]; Martti Lehti, "Homicide in Finland from 1905 to 1932 [148–164]; and idem, "Trends in Homicidal Crime in Estonia 1919–99" [165–216]). The other three articles treat illegal religious gatherings (Ylikangas, "From Witchcraft to Revivalist Movements: On the Support for Revivalist Meetings and Their Background in Ostrobothnia in the 1830s and the 1840s" [9–46]), fornication (Pekka Hirvonen, "Maintenance, Honour or Control? Fornication Trials in the Late Eighteenth Century" [47–76]), and the fourth amendment (Kirsi Warpula's "'Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother.' The Formation of Authority in Seventeenth-Century Finland" [77–99]).

The essential methodology is that of social history, and the primary source material is largely archival. Broadly speaking, each article establishes a basic crime trend and aims for an explanation based on historical factors. Since the archival records primarily document criminal trials, most of the articles have a local focus. The two articles by Lehti, which treat homicide as a national phenomenon in Finland and Estonia, are exceptions. So is the article by Salonen, which treats Finnish clergy as a whole and uses not local records but cases in which the clergymen petitioned the Apostolic Penitentiary in Rome for clemency regarding such violent crimes as murder, manslaughter, and assault. Information on cases of this nature is not available from other sources; they show that the Finnish clergy was hardly above acts of violence.

The articles uniformly embed their explanation for criminal activity in the context of social change: growing entrepreneurial activity for the illegal revivalist movements (Ylikangas); the reduced role of the church for fornication trials (Hirvonen); the seventeenth-century notion of social authority as a Reformation process extending the fourth amendment and the duty of individuals to obey their parents (Warpula); a breakdown in the court system during a period of social upheaval that, in effect, transferred repression from the state to individuals (Koskivirta); and the impact of demography and changing social conditions, with a specific sensitivity to levels of alcohol consumption, on murder (Lehti). The value of the book lies in casting light not from an unusual source but onto a relatively neglected set of topics.