Finnish Nobility - Medieval Nobility

Medieval Nobility

The formal nobility in Finland dates back to 1280 when it was agreed in the entire Swedish realm by the Decree of Alsnö that magnates who could afford to contribute to the cavalry with a heavily equipped horse-soldier were to be exempted from tax - at least from ordinary land taxes - as the clergy already had been. The archaic term for nobility, frälse, also includes the clergy when referring to their exemption from tax.

The background was that the outmoded system of a leiðangr fleet and a king on constant travels in the realm (between the estates of Uppsala öd) was in need of replacement. The crown's court and castles were now to be financed through taxes on land.

Quite soon, conditions were attached: land up to certain amount was tax-exempted in exchange for one soldier. Wealthier magnates took it upon themselves to maintain several soldiers, in order to have tax exemption for their other manors. The concept of the nature of land, if it was frälsejord, exempt from land taxes or not, evolved and was registered on tax rolls. From the 17th century onwards, non-nobles were not allowed to purchase noble land (but they might however inherit it).

Generally, the nobility grew from wealthier or more powerful members of the peasantry, those who were capable of assigning work or wealth to provide the requisite cavalrymen. In Finland, there never existed outright serfdom. Hence, nobility was basically a class of well-off citizens, not owners of other human beings. In the Middle Ages and much of the modern age, nobles and other wealthy men were landowners, as well as lords of villeins and servants. Members of the nobility utilized their economic power and sometimes also other powers to have smaller farmowners sell their lands to manor lords, so landowning centralized gradually more in the hands of the noble class.

Cavalry and battle exercises (often in forms of tournaments) became the lifestyle of the nobility, as it already was in feudal Western Europe. Usually, a lord was himself one of the soldiers, being the commander of his military retinue, a heavily equipped, constantly exercised mounted warrior, often with destrier, and pursuing the royal grant of knighthood which was a valued title and formed an upper level of the nobility (the uppermost was the circle of royal councillors). Some lesser noblemen remained squires, armigers for their whole lives. Sometimes a nobleman was himself the only soldier that his manor provided for the cavalry and possibly with less-than-adequate equipment. In some cases, some impoverished nobles provided a cavalryman together (it was actually unavoidable if a manor of lesser gentry was divided between several heirs, as the Swedish inheritance law provided, contrary to the primogeniture inheritances of French countries). It was also possible to have the obligation fulfilled by a paid employee - no particular condition required the lord himself to be a soldier (as evidenced by lord Bo Jonsson Grip, fiefholder of most of Finland, never becoming a soldier himself), it was just the evolving lifestyle of the noble class.

Soon it was also agreed that the king should govern the Swedish realm (to which Finland belonged) in cooperation with a Privy Council (or Royal Council) where the bishops and the most distinguished magnates (i.e. the noble most prominent economic contributors to the army) participated. When troublesome decisions were necessary all of the frälse was summoned to diets. Finland sometimes had its own assemblies for the nobility, provincial diet, convened by royal order.

The Finnish nobility had no hereditary fiefs except for a brief period in the early modern era. If they were appointed to a crown castle, their heirs couldn't claim their civil or military authority as inheritance. The lands of the magnates who were the medieval nobility were their own, allodial properties, and not "on lease" from a feudal king. If by their own means (including the suffering of the local peasantry) they built a castle, and financed troops, then the castle was theirs, but the troops, of course, were additionally expected to serve as a part of the realm's army.

For extended periods the medieval commanders of Vyborg castle, on the border with republic of Novgorod, did in practice function as margraves, keeping all the crown's incomes from the fief to use for the defense of the realm's eastern border. However, it was not formally hereditary, though almost all appointees were from certain families, related to the Swedish earldom of Orkney. See Margraviate of Wiburg.

Sporadically, at the very uppermost level of feudal society, the position of Duke of Finland was created, three times for a brother of a king and once for a more distant relative (Benedict, Duke of Halland), he also from a family of high nobility.

Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor granted the archdeacons of Turku an HRE estate and status as ecclesiastical counts palatine (pfalzgrave) during the tenure of Magnus of Särkilax (later bishop Magnus III). This foreign honour was used also by his archdeaconal successors, at least catholic ones, but sometime in the next centuries it fell into disuse.

Despite the heavy German influence during the medieval age, the elaborate German system, with numerous specific - especially comital - titles such as Landgraf, Reichsgraf, Burggraf and Pfalzgraf, was never applied as such in Finnish fiefs and nobility.

Medieval Finnish frälse families included those of Särkilax, Tavast, Karp, Horn, Villnäs, Kurk of Laukko, Lepaa, Fincke, Dufva, Harviala, Sydänmaa, Karppalainen, Boije, Hästesko, Jägerhorn af Spurila, Pora (Spore), Gesterby and Sarvlax, as well as foreign-originated but establishedly Finlandic Danske, Fleming, Frille, Bidz and Diekn.

The previous basis of entrance to the frälse was mostly demolished by Gustav I of Sweden in 1536 when he, among his rearrangements of the military, made a new organization of the cavalry. Practically continuing the old system of a large farm (manor) maintaining a cavalryman, he created a new name for these, rusthåll, and greatly enlarged their number. A rusthåll, generally speaking a plain manor, was to support a horseman, his horse and equipment, in exchange for tax exemption. This no longer carried a noble status with it, and the cavalryman was not required to permanently be in the king's garrisons, but was summoned to service only for wartime, being allowed to remain in the farm in peacetime, off-duty (after a century, this became obsolete as Sweden was continuously at war somewhere, or maintained all-too-big an empire, wherefore off-duty for cavalrymen became an unknown concept). This organization did not change in essence when in 1682 Charles XI of Sweden introduced the new Swedish allotment system, where rusthålls continued as its cavalry element. (In the 1st century of rusthålls, the farm owner himself often served as a cavalry soldier, but later that role was often filled by a hired employee, who enjoyed a rider croft and pay from the farm. Thus, in later centuries, owners of rusthåll again became a sort of local higher class, though not endowed with formal nobility. In exceptional cases, one rusthåll could support as many as seven horsemen. The system of rusthålls continued until the 19th century in Finland.) People thus lost in 1536 the original entranceway to the frälse which continued to enjoy its privileges, continuing to provide cavalrymen on behalf of their allodial manors, and becoming a much more closed class.