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TheGreat Famine of 1695–1697, or simply theGreat Famine, was a catastrophicfamine that affected the present-dayFinland andEstonia (1695–1697),[1]Latvia,[citation needed]Norway (in 1696) andSweden (1696–1698),[2] all of which then belonged to theKingdom of Sweden with the exception of Norway. The areas worst affected were Finland andNorrland inSweden proper.[citation needed]
The Great Famine of 1695–1697 was concurrent with the "Seven Ill Years", a period of national famine inScotland in the 1690s.
In Finland, then part of Sweden, the Great Famine of 1695–97 was also referred to as "The Years of Many Deaths" (Suuret kuolonvuodet) by some Finnish historians, because it killed about a third of theFinnish population in only two years,[1] or about 150,000 out of 500,000.[3] People widely relied on eatingbark bread. It was Finland's worst demographic catastrophe.
The summer of 1695 was particularly cold, and grains grew abnormally slowly. Rye was reported to grow as late as August 6, and early frost destroyed the little that had grown.[4] January and February 1696 were exceptionally warm, and the harvest was started as early as mid-February, but the frost that came in March destroyed the harvest again.[4] The abundant snow caused massive floods in the Spring, which delayed the harvest again.[5]
People resorted to begging on the streets for food, and even cannibalism was reported at least once.[6] The consumption offamine foods appears to have caused death bydiarrhea in 1696.[2]
Mortality peaked in the spring and summer of 1697, with the spread ofdysentery,typhus andtyphoid.[2]
From 1688 onward, Sweden had been affected by earlyfrost and bad harvests. This culminated in the winter of 1695, which was described as the coldest since 1658 and therye did not flower before July. Because of this, the Great Famine of 1695 is also referred to asDet stora svartåret ("The Great Black Year").[3] The harvest of 1696, furthermore, was reportedly so bad that each farm produced only one loaf ofrye bread.
Outside of Finland, the northernmost provinces of Sweden were the most severely affected. Desperate famine victims from the countryside left for the cities in search for food, especially to the capital of Stockholm, where in the spring of 1697 the streets were reportedly strewn with corpses and people dying of starvation.[3]
During 1696–1698, thecrude death rate in northern and central Sweden was over double its normal value. In the south, the surplus fromScania's modest harvest was sent to adjacent counties; in addition, several hundred thousand barrels of grain were imported from the Baltics.[2]
Israel Kolmodin wrote the psalmDen blomstertid nu kommer in 1695 in connection to the famine, intended as a prayer to God that the next summer would bring food.[3]
Following a year with epidemic-related mortality and a failed September harvest (due to cold) in 1695, the famine hit major parts of Norway in the winter and spring of 1696.[2]
The 1690s marked the lowest point of theLittle Ice Age, of colder and wetter weather.[7] This reduced the elevation at which crops could be grown and shortened the growing season by up to two months in extreme years, as it did in the 1690s.[8] The massive eruptions of volcanoes atHekla in Iceland (1693) andSerua (1693) andAboina (1694) in Indonesia may also have polluted the atmosphere and filtered out significant amounts of sunlight.[9]
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