The Impact of Wildfire and Climate on the Resilience and Vulnerability of Peasant Communities in Seventeenth-Century Finland

This chapter explores the impact of wildfire and climate on the resilience and vulnerability of peasant communities in Finland. It examines the socio-economic consequences of forest and settlement fires by analysing several different source categories, including local district court protocols, tax records and seventeenthcentury legislation. The occurrence of fire disasters is compared with reconstructions of climatic conditions during the century and the chapter estimates the relative impact of climate anomalies on the frequency of fire disasters, as well as establishing different factors of resilience and vulnerability of the Finnish rural population.