Combining Written and Tree-Ring Evidence to Trace Past Food Crises: A Case Study from Finland

Abstract

The lack of written source material on population and food availability has hindered studies on medieval and early modern food crises in many parts of the world. Examining the case of sixteenth and seventeenth century Finland, this article explores how indirect evidence—so called proxy data—could be used to identify past food crises. The proxies of past climate, grain harvest, storage capacity and population variability were derived from tree-ring studies and early administrative accounts. Evidence from “natural” and written archives supplemented each other. The applicability and limitations of using proxy data to trace past food crises is further discussed by comparing the examples of the sixteenth and seventeenth century to the better documented famine period of the 1860s. It was found that tree-ring data and early administrative accounts provides valuable material to identify past food crises.