Urban Life in Nordic Countries (Routledge Advances in Urban History) 1032387211, 9781032387215, 9781032387239, 9781003346456

Citation preview

Urban Life in Nordic Countries

Based on empirical studies, this book investigates the particular urban history of the North from the 17th century until today in a comparative, Northern perspective. Urban Life in Nordic Countries is the result of a conference on ‘Urbanity in the Periphery’, held in Stockholm on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Institute of Urban History at Stockholm University, aimed at establishing the field of the urban history of the North and creating a network of urban historians of the North. With a broad range of contributions from Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Estonia, the volume seeks to further the discourse on the region within national and transnational lenses and to highlight possibilities for new cooperation among researchers. Urban history is a transdisciplinary subject, engaging not only historians but also ethnologists, sociologists, urban planners, and cultural geographers, and this book targets all scholars whose work requires a historical understanding of the Northern town. European urban historians outside the region will also find this text valuable as one of the few studies to consider the urban history of the continent from a North-centred viewpoint. Heiko Droste is Professor of Urban History at Stockholm University. His research interests concern Swedish and Baltic premodern history, welfare cities, urban memory cultures, and nostalgia.

Routledge Advances in Urban History Series Editors: Bert De Munck

Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp

Simon Gunn

Centre for Urban History, University of Leicester

This series showcases original and exciting new work in urban history. It publishes books that challenge existing assumptions about the history of cities, apply new theoretical frames to the urban past, and open up new avenues of historical enquiry. The scope of the series is global, and it covers all time periods from the ancient to the modern worlds. 10 Urban Emotions and the Making of the City Interdisciplinary Perspectives Edited by Katie Barclay and Jade Riddle 11 Values in Cities Urban Heritage in Twentieth-Century Australia James Lesh 12 Water in the Making of a Socio-Natural Landscape Rome and Its Surroundings, 1870–1922 Salvatore Valenti 13 Politics of Urban Knowledge Historical Perspectives on the Shaping and Governing of Cities Edited by Bert De Munck and Jens Lachmund 14 Medium-Sized cities in the Age of Globalisation Inès Hassen 15 Imperial Cities in the Tsarist, the Habsburg, and the Ottoman Empires Edited by Ulrich Hofmeister and Florian Riedler 16 Urban Life in Nordic Countries Edited by Heiko Droste For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Urban-History/book-series/RAUH

Urban Life in Nordic Countries Heiko Droste

First published 2024 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Heiko Droste; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Heiko Droste to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-38721-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-38723-9 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-34645-6 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456 Typeset in Sabon LT Pro by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of boxes viii List of figures ix List of tables xii List of Contributors xiii Prefacexvii   1 Northern cities in European perspective

1

PETER CLARK

PART I

Cities and state-building in early modern empires25   2 Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals in the early 17th century: visions and reality

27

MARIANNE RÅBERG

  3 Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict in Nyen: Ingria’s nationality question

53

PIRET LOTMAN

  4 The economic–military position of Nyen in the Swedish kingdom and the Baltic Sea area in the late 17th century

77

KASPER KEPSU

  5 A tale of two fortress towns: Militarisation generating urbanisation in 18th-century Helsinki-Sveaborg and Ruotsinsalmi JUHA-MATTI GRANQVIST AND SOFIA GUSTAFSSON

104

vi  Contents PART II

Planning the Nordic cities127   6 Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns

129

STEINAR AAS

  7 New towns?: urbanisation in Finland between the 1920s and the 1970s

147

MATTI O. HANNIKAINEN

  8 Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe

180

MIKKEL THELLE

PART III

Social fabric and infrastructures195   9 Skjern from within: a social network analysis of religious revival and social elites in a small Western Jutland New Town, 1880–1930

197

CHRISTIAN RINGSKOU

10 Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery: mass housing, resident democracy, and acts of citizenship in 1970s’ Denmark

214

MIKKEL HØGHØJ

11 Care, curiosity, and government: a comparative history of hospitals in the Nordic countries, 1750–2000

237

ROLF HUGOSON

PART IV

Nordic cities meeting the 21st century261 12 The Øresund metropolis: the history of the inter-Scandinavian urban region

263

HENNING BRO

13 Phases of urbanisation: Sweden, 1800–2020 LARS NILSSON

291

Contents vii 14 Creative internationalism

304

MARJATTA HIETALA

PART V

Making sense of urban history323 15 Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration: national cities associations and municipal movement in 1903–1913 in Nordic countries

325

LAURA KOLBE

16 Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå: questioning historical plans to inform the design of urban space

351

JAIME MONTES BENTURA

17 Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns

379

JENNIE SJÖHOLM AND ANNA ELMÉN BERG

Index399

Boxes

2.1 Phases in the formation of the Øresund metropolis 1 12.2 Urban regions and municipal bodies

264 276

Figures

1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 4.1 4.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 9.1 9.2

Urban trends in large European regions, 1500–1990. 3 Copenhagen in 1611. 29 Heinrich Thomé: Copenhagen 1624. 30 Johan Sems: Christianshavn 1617. 31 Christianshavn ca. 1636.  32 A plan for expansion of Copenhagen. Before 1616. 33 Oktogonplanen.34 A detail of a map published as late as 1674. 35 Copenhagen 1649. Swedish copy from 1659. 36 View over Stockholm from the west (1620s–1630s), detail. 37 The oldest map of Stockholm. Before 1625. 37 Heinrich Thomé: Stockholm 1626, South at the top. 38 Georg Hoffmann, a copy of a Swedish map from the 1640s with additions and locations marked out. North is to the left. 41 Reconstruction of a geometrical system by the author founded on a simplified fair drawing of a map of Stockholm from around 1650. 42 Stockholm in around 1650. 43 A theoretical fortification ring drawn by the author on a present-day map. 44 An illustration from Jacques Perret. 46 The most important towns and waterways around Nyen. 78 The siege of Nyen 1703. 92 Finnish municipal typology. 150 Urban and rural population in Finland, 1850–1980. 152 A street view from the centre of Parkano township in the 1930s.158 Engineer Viljo Halonen posing with the local plan of Ylivieska (27 September 1962). 162 Family connections, three sections. 202 Family connections, two sections. 203

x  Figures 9.3 9.4 9.5 9.6

Sponsorship and best men, central section. 204 Sponsorship and best men, section. 205 Votes for parish council, central section. 206 Cooperation in associations, committees, and initiatives, central section. 207 9.7 Business association, central section. 208 9.8 Social network and religious affiliation in Ringkøbing, central section. 209 12.1 Phases in the development from the Øresund Region to the Øresund metropolis. 265 12.2 Øresund in about year 1600. 268 12.3 The capital metropolis, 1970. 269 12.4 This motive from 1960 could just as well have been from one of Malmö’s suburbs but is from one of the western suburban belts in the capital metropolis (Forstadsmuseet). 271 12.5 The Øresund Council’s vision for an Øresund metropolis in 1969. 274 12.6 Øresund bridge and Peberholm immediately before the opening in the year 2000. 279 12.7 The Øresund train on the way from Copenhagen Central Station to Karlskrona in Blekinge in Sweden. 281 13.1 Urban ratio, Sweden, 1800–2020. 292 13.2 Annual average changes of the Swedish urban ratio, 1800–2020.293 13.3 Rural growth rates in Sweden, 1950–2020. 296 13.4 Proportion of shrinking Swedish urban regions, 1950–2020. 297 13.5 Annual population growth rates for metropolitan areas and minor Swedish urban regions, 1950–2020. 299 15.1 Employees in the headquarter of Swedish Association of Cities in 1910. 330 15.2a The cover of the Swedish Svenska stadsförbundets tidskrift.334 15.2b The cover of the Finnish journal Suomen Kunnallislehta.335 15.3 The Tampere City Hall on the edge of the central square was built in 1890. 337 15.4 Leo Ehrnrooth was one of the central Helsinki-based educated upper-class men, who became engaged in the municipal movement in Finland during 1910. 339 15.5 The Finnish Association of Cities celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1932 by a jubilee meeting. 342 16.1 The web of towns founded or reconstructed by the Swedish centralized state around the Baltic between 1550 and 1800. 357

Figures xi 16.2 Stockholm and Umeå urban extension during the four historical moments studied in the text. 16.3 Transmission of trends in the web. European processes and trends that influenced Swedish planning during the modern period. 17.1 Piteå main square and main street, with the former school and town hall built around the square on each side of the main street. 17.2 The so-called Ängesbyhuset in Svartöstaden, which was determined to be demolished in the 1980s, but now it is one of the best-preserved houses in the area. 17.3 Part of the reconstructed shanty town in Malmberget, built in 1988 at the 100th anniversary of Malmberget and the opening of the railway. 17.4 Kiruna church by architect Gustaf Wickman, built 1912, which is a strong symbol of the so-called model town.

362 370 382 384 387 389

Tables

6.1 Distribution of people in main Norwegian cities, 1875–1970131 6.2 Sverre Pedersen’s involvement in urban planning (1918–1939)136 7.1 The number of Finnish towns and townships according to their population, 1900–1990 156 9.1 The top 18 of the five networks combined 208 13.1 Number of urban net births and net migrants, 1971−2015 296 13.2 Number of net births and net migrants for growing and shrinking cities, respectively, 2001−2015 298 13.3 Number of net births and net migrants for shrinking cities (2006–2010) that started to grow, 2011−2015 298 13.4 Percentage distribution of employment by industries, Sweden, 1960–2020 300 13.5 Percentage changes of the labour force for various branches, 2005–2010 and 2010–2015, respectively 301

Contributors

Steinar Aas is a professor at Nord University in Bodø and has done a wide variety of research on urban issues. He has among others written the history of Bodø (1890–1950) as well as Narvik’s history (1890–1950), where the modernization processes of the first part of the 20th century had a specific focus. Other interests have been social history, polar history, historiography, and memory studies, and the time period of his research has been 19th and early 20th century. Henning Bro, PhD, is a former city archivist and now an urban history consultant at the Frederiksberg City Archives. His research areas include economic and social history, industrialization and urbanization after the mid-19th century, the history of the welfare state, urban history, and the history of the Danish capital metropolis as an urban region. Peter Clark was born in Kent in England and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford University. He was afterwards a research fellow at Oxford and Princeton (USA) before becoming a lecturer and then a professor at the University of Leicester. In 1985, he helped establish the Centre for Urban History at Leicester, where he was the director for many years. In 1989, he co-founded the European Association for Urban History and was its treasurer until 2010. In 2000, he was elected Professor of European Urban History at the University of Helsinki; he is now an emeritus professor. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Stockholm University in 2012. He has lectured in England, the United States, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Japan, and in numerous other countries. He has written or edited over 20 books including the Cambridge Urban History of Britain (Cambridge, 2000), European Cities and Towns 400– 2000 (Oxford, 2009), and the Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford, 2013). Recently, he edited with Denis Menjot, Subaltern City? Alternative and Peripheral Urban Spaces in the Pre-Modern Period (13th–18th centuries) (Brepols, 2019). His current research includes work on Finnish and Nordic urban history and European capital cities from 1850 to 2000.

xiv  Contributors Heiko Droste is a professor of urban history, Institute of Urban History at Stockholm University. His research interests concern Swedish and Baltic premodern history. His main publications are on Sweden’s diplomats in the 17th century (2006) and the early modern news market (2018/2020). His current research interests focus on welfare cities and urban memory cultures and nostalgia. Anna Elmén Berg received her PhD in the History of Art and Architecture at Umeå University and is a conservation specialist of built environments at Piteå Museum. She specializes on different aspects of cultural heritage: church restorations, town planning, and in the past years, tangible and intangible heritages in a Sami context. Juha-Matti Granqvist received his PhD at the University of Helsinki and has published research on burghers and their economic, political, and social roles in the early modern Nordic society. He has recently co-authored and edited the anthology Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki University Press, 2021). Sofia Gustafsson received her PhD at the University of Helsinki and has earlier published about the history of the sea fortress of Sveaborg and the town of Helsinki in the eighteenth century. Her works mainly focus on economic and social aspects of the army’s activities and the relations between the civilians and the army. Matti O. Hannikainen, PhD, works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He has specialized in urban and environmental history. His recent focus is on the urban development of Finland in the 20th century, and he is currently researching the history of Vantaa from 1972 to the present. Marjatta Hietala is a professor (emerita) of general history at the University of Tampere, Finland. Her research fields are urban history, history of innovations, and history of networks of scholars. Her main publications are Services and Urbanization (1986), Helsinki, Finland’s Innovative Capital (2017), and Finnisch-deutsche Wissenschaftskontakte (2017). She has been the president of the International Committee of Historical Sciences (CISH/ICHS) during 2010–2015. Mikkel Høghøj is a postdoctoral researcher at the National Museum of Denmark. His research interests include urban welfare history, the social history of architecture and planning, urban environmental history, and critical theory. He holds a PhD from Aarhus University and has been a guest researcher at the Centre for Urban History at the University of Leicester (2018) and the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (2020). In 2022, he was awarded the Planning Perspectives Prize 2022 by the International Planning History Society.

Contributors xv Rolf Hugoson is an assistant professor of political science at Umeå University. Besides works on Swedish urban history, he has published works on cultural policy and diplomatic history and also, in a more theoretical vein, on rhetoric and conceptual history. A recent study focuses collaboration in the life sciences. Kasper Kepsu, PhD, holds the title of docent in Nordic history at Åbo Akademi University. He completed his PhD thesis, Den besvärliga provinsen, at the University of Helsinki in 2014. His postdoctoral research focused on the town of Nyen, and he is currently writing a book on Qvidja manor in southwestern Finland. Laura Kolbe is a professor of European History at the University of Helsinki. Kolbe’s main research field is Finnish and European history, urban and university history. Her latest research deals with urban and municipal governance, elites and policymaking during the 20th and 21st centuries. Kolbe is the founder and chair of the Finnish Society for Urban Studies (2000). Piret Lotman, PhD, is a senior researcher at the Estonian National Library. Her main fields of research are cultural development of Ingria in the 17th and 18th centuries, the Lutheran Church in Estonia in the 17th century, and the history of Estonian book culture. Jaime Montes Bentura is a PhD candidate at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, in the programme in urban sustainability and regeneration. He integrates in research his teaching as an adjunct lecturer at the SUPD master at KTH Stockholm, and formerly at the Umeå School of Architecture, with his practice in architecture and urbanism with focus on sustainability and participatory processes. Lars Nilsson is a professor emeritus and a former director of the Institute of Urban History, Stockholm University. He has published widely on the history of cities and local authorities and on urbanization and urban development from a variety of perspectives. Nilsson is a former president of the European Association for Urban History (EAUH). Marianne Råberg, PhD, is a former city conservation director in Stockholm. She has published several studies on the history of Stockholm’s town planning and architecture as well as on heritage protection. Her dissertation concerned the town planning of Stockholm in the 17th century. Christian Ringskou is a curator and historian with Ringkøbing-Skjern Museum in Western Jutland since 2009. He recently enrolled with Aarhus University and affiliated with Danish Centre for Urban Studies where he defended his PhD thesis ‘The Market Town and the New

xvi  Contributors Town – Ringkøbing and Skjern in Dependent and Independent Variables 1880–1921’ in 2021. Jennie Sjöholm is a senior lecturer in Conservation at University of Gothenburg, guest researcher in Conservation at Uppsala University, and guest lecturer in History at Luleå University of Technology. She has a background from practice as built environments conservation specialist. Her research focuses on how cultural heritage is conceptualized and heritagization processes in transforming landscapes. Mikkel Thelle is a senior researcher at the National Museum of Denmark. He is working with welfare society and public space, combined with an interest in environmental perspectives. Recently, experiences and practices of welfare society have been more prevalent in his research, tracing the biosocial becomings of modern citizenship.

Preface

From 28 to 30 August 2019, the Institute of Urban History celebrated its 100th anniversary with an international conference on the topic, ‘Urbanity in the Periphery: Nordic Town History in a Comparative Perspective’. Urban historians from across the Nordic, including the Baltic, countries were invited. Discussions were fruitful, and we soon agreed to publish the results of the conference to advance and encourage future comparative studies and scholarly cooperation on the urban history of the North.1 The institute was founded in 1919 by representatives of the Swedish municipalities. This occurred at about the same time as a substantial number of national organizations of different kinds came into being. The nationstate was simply a matter of course, initiating institutions and research of all kinds that would demonstrate the nation’s place in both historical and modern societies. The Institute of Urban History defined its tasks accordingly. It also responded to the rapid, but late, urbanization and industrialization of Stockholm and many other cities in Sweden. These processes would cause several waves of modernization that would change the face of most cities completely. There was a sense of loss of the ‘old Sweden’ and its towns, and this feeling has been a part of the interest in Swedish urban history ever since.2 The Institute’s research and publications have mostly dealt with Sweden’s urban history, working within the national context that framed the Institute’s foundations. However, the Institute has always been interested and active in international cooperation, not least in light of the apparent similarities between Sweden and other Nordic countries.3 The decision to organize an international conference on the occasion of the Institute’s birthday was therefore almost a foregone conclusion. Relationships between the Nordic countries have been vivid and fruitful; however, they have not been able to question their national frameworks. This national focus within Nordic urban history is also responsible for the fact that research is regularly published in the relevant national language and aimed at an audience within that nation-state.4

xviii  Preface The same can probably be said about the interest in urban history in other Nordic – and for that matter, European – countries as in Sweden. Although there have been studies of many other countries, and despite cooperation and conferences on Northern and European topics,5 the nation-state is a paradigm, as well as a frame of reference, that is seldom ignored. Presentday research agendas tend to strengthen this national focus out of a desire for readily applicable results that target the nation-states’ present needs. The field of urban studies is thus a typical case for this presentist approach to academic and publicly funded research. Cities are once again in need of change due to their de-industrialization and their countries’ rurbanization,6 as well as the numerous challenges caused by climate change. The role of historical studies in this new research landscape is unclear. This might be explained by an urban norm in society planning, which has since antiquity equated cities with progress and modernization. This notion continues to affect urban research in many ways, in particular because it questions the need for historical studies and perceives the non-urban in terms of antithetical backwardness. On top of that, Nordic urban history still lingers on the periphery of European urban studies, in the same way as Eastern European urban history. Handbooks usually make only superficial contact with these urban regions, which, due to their peripheral location, also tend to be described as less urbanized. Within the urban narrative of progress, the North and the East have been diagnosed with a lack of the urban achievement and patriotism that is at the core of many historical studies of numerous Golden Ages in the central, western, and southern parts of Europe. A Whig approach to the history of European urbanity, particularly for the medieval and early modern periods, is still common. Thus, Northern and Eastern European urban history constitutes a lacuna in the broader field of Europe’s urban history. One example among many is Maarten Prak’s inspiring study on the heritage of premodern European urban political structures and their role for today’s political ideas.7 In this study, the Nordic and Eastern European urban regions are not mentioned at all. The role of local communities in the development of democratic institutions, which is discussed often in Nordic contexts, simply fails to align with the notion of a progressive urban political culture. The same lack of interest in the details of Nordic urban history is also visible in most handbooks on European urban history, which do not include more than occasional references to Northern and Eastern Europe.8 And certainly, the Nordic countries are not easily comparable to cities in the urban blue banana. In his book European Cities and Towns,9 Peter Clark distinguished between four urban regions in Europe. According to him, the Nordic countries, together with Scotland and Ireland, constitute a region that he calls the Outer Northern region. However, in his book, Clark did not

Preface xix explain his idea in detail. He elaborated on this concept in his presentation at the Urbanity in Periphery conference, in which he suggested several defining markers for this region.10 His paper opens this volume and sets the agenda for several papers that target this Outer Northern region in comparative studies. Thus, this volume is meant to open the field of Nordic urban history for comparative studies within the North and with other European countries, by engaging in studies that try to bridge the paradigm of the national that has been so strong. However, there is also a growing interest in regional and area studies, deliberately counteracting the national perspective by focusing on the region. That concerns not only regions like the Øresund Region11 but also the Arctic region, which has its own distinct urban culture.12 The Arctic region, especially the coastline in the Bothnian Bay, was deliberately urbanized in the early 1600s as a marker of the Swedish Crown’s ambition to colonize the northern parts of its territory.13 The results of this comparative endeavour reveal a variety of similarities and simultaneous developments, particularly for the 19th and 20th centuries. Next to the process of industrialization, these resemblances can be explained by the political, cultural, and religious similarities of the Nordic countries, which have, since the late 19th century, engaged in strengthening contacts between planners and state and city officials.14 At the same time, contacts with Scotland and Ireland, which in their urban development show distinct similarities to the North are not regularly considered, despite intense contacts in particular between these countries and Norway. Clark offers an interesting explanation, referring to the history of the concept of the North, which since the 19th century has been part of the national self-image of those countries that are considered part of ‘the North’. In this concept of the North, Scotland and Ireland are not included. The North is, thus, a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, both in the eyes of politicians and in our own, as urban historians. There is no doubt that similarities exist between the Nordic countries, partially created as well as strengthened by way of Nordic cooperation. However, we lack a discussion about the region’s borders. When do the effects of the North fade out – and why? Being situated in Stockholm, it is quite easy to feel that the boundaries of the region make sense. The ways in which Scotland and Ireland in the West, or the Baltic countries in the South-East, are part of this region – and thus a specific model of urban settlements – are not easy to ascertain.15 The Baltic countries, with their strong position of culturally German trade cities, are especially interesting in this respect. The chapters by Piret Lotman and Kasper Kepsu demonstrate the conflicts that occurred when the major Baltic harbour cities were incorporated into the Swedish Realm and the Crown’s urban policy. That had many consequences for the economic interests of these Baltic harbour cities.16

xx  Preface The following 17 chapters are all based on presentations at the 2019 Urban Peripheries conference. They try to answer the need for comparative, as well as transnational, perspectives. However, they cannot fill all the gaps and do in fact themselves highlight more lacunae, such as the lack of comparative studies including Scotland and Ireland. There is also the oftneglected topic of the religious fabric of nations and cities: for example, the role of a specific kind of orthodox Lutheranism, which was and still is particularly strong in the Nordic countries due to its significance for the Crowns’ and later the nation-states’ legitimacy already in the early modern period, is not discussed sufficiently. The topic of the dominance of just one capital city in the economic, political, and cultural life of the respective nation-states also remains underexplored. These metropoles are hard to incorporate in their countries’ urban history, not least because the centrally located governments exerted a strong influence over their capitals. In premodern times, Swedish – and for that matter also Danish – urban politics were shaped by the Crown’s rather distinct ideas of the city’s role for the realm, with little resistance to their agendas on behalf of their respective governments, even if they worked against the interests of the cities themselves.17 In other regions, local power holders or a peripheral location afforded cities an agency that was not always intended but could not be overruled by a far-away capital. This perspective was suggested by Knut Dørum to compare the premodern urban history of the Northern countries.18 Strangely enough, it was not easy to counter his perspective on the basis of the urban history studies in Sweden, simply because national research traditions are not always compatible even within the North.19 The lack of transnational comparisons is even more problematic when the Nordic cities are to be compared to the rather autonomous ‘city-republics’ on the continent. The last point alerts us to another lacuna that needs to be addressed in the future. As mentioned earlier, the Institute of Urban History was founded at the time of the nation-state’s organizational formation. That did lead to a strong paradigm of nation-based research. It has, however, also offered an almost self-evident framework of research questions, based on each respective nation’s perception of urban history. That is not a criticism of the research in itself. The different research agendas in the Nordic countries are relevant for the understanding of their respective trajectories of urban history. However, there is a strong focus on aspects of the social and administrative organization, as well as the planning processes, of cities, with too little attention paid to specific urban cultures or questions of political representation within the cities. Indeed, the latter topic is often neglected in favour of questions of the organization of rural settlements. In all Nordic countries, rural communities attract much more attention than

Preface xxi in continental historical research, because peasant cultures are an integral part of the region’s national memory cultures. Urban ‘culture’ is, furthermore, a notoriously fuzzy concept. Perhaps, we should try to define a specific Nordic urban culture, marked by administrative and planning achievements, which in their turn might explain why the Nordic countries are among the most urbanized countries in the world today, although they had been rather rural until at least the late 19th century, possibly with the exception of Denmark.20 Many of today’s towns are not at all unlike many smaller towns in other parts of Europe and do not match the more idealistic view of urban culture that tends to set the agenda for European urban research, which consequently explains the lack of interest in these small towns.21 Nordic cities urbanized late and quite often on the basis of their acquired or assigned industrial or infrastructural functions – and thus not primarily as merchant cities or academic centres. They were then appointed by the nation-state to manage many tasks and resources in the field of social welfare, which, based on a long tradition of local self-government in both cities and countryside parish communities, was perceived as a municipal matter. There is also a long tradition of social welfare in premodern rural and urban settlements.22 However, the specific result of this process – the Nordic welfare cities  – does not receive sufficient attention, even within the Nordic countries, because this form of welfare is mostly perceived as the result of state politics, which caused a process of municipalization that eventually questioned the cities’ status as privileged settlements.23 However, the role of welfare cities can explain several distinct markers of the urban cultures of the North, which are more concerned with local selfadministration and less with questions of ‘high culture’.24 That is particularly obvious in parts II and III of this volume, where questions of planning and social infrastructure are at the fore. The second Industrial Revolution caused many urban settlements to grow rapidly, often without a distinct urban planning process. The new towns and urban settlements often appeared in less populated parts of the North, inserted by the state into a hierarchy of urban settlements with different sets of privileges.25 However, even these urban settlements were shaped by a variety and density of urban functions that towns of similar size in more central parts of Europe rarely offer.26 Both utopian concepts of urbanism in peripheral regions27 and town-like settlements of shifting legal status were common; however, they are not always easy to define according to prevalent concepts of the town and, thus, are often poorly researched.28 Urbanization took place in many smaller cities for a very long time before de-industrialization and the modern service economy favoured just a few metropoles and university cities.29

xxii  Preface These planning ideas concerned not only the cities themselves but also the supply of water,30 healthcare,31 and housing.32 In modern times, the Nordic capital cities are gaining international recognition as centres of creative industries, design, and a rich living environment, as well as for their proximity to nature and their innovative infrastructures.33 The history of the urban North, therefore, offers a variety of examples for a better understanding of today’s cities. They help us broaden our understanding of urban developments, which are more varied than a perspective on the achievements of major urban centres in the blue banana alone demonstrates. The current volume wants to open up possibilities for new cooperation within the North and for comparative studies on aspects that are common for the region, within national frameworks, but also focusing on the transnational regions, which seem to be strengthened despite the nationstates’ reluctance to transfer functions and resources. Many topics need to be addressed more, some of which have already been mentioned here. We hope that this first conference in 2019, as well as this publication, will pave the way for continuous collaborations and common research projects. Moreover, the volume wants to question the long-established hierarchy of urban regions in Europe. The Nordic cities look and work differently than the usual merchant capitals, which are still on almost everybody’s agenda. There is a different set of functions, creating a different kind of urbanity. However, the concept of urbanity seems to have lost interest among historians lately, not least as this urbanity – in the same way as ‘urban culture’ – is a concept that needs to be sharpened. The rich archaeological research in the Nordic countries has, however, changed how this urbanity is discussed. There is, therefore, every reason to consider more cooperation with archaeologists, who offer a less idealistic perspective on urban settlements, which prospered with or without the Crown’s approval.34 Many chapters in this volume also suggest that the specific urbanity of the North is not so much about participation in a higher urban culture as it is about a culture of administration and self-government, which so far has delivered a comparatively high level of legitimacy for urban settlements of all kinds. Many topics wait for transnational, trans-disciplinary, historical research, with a long historical perspective. This volume – as well as the conference in 2019 – was made possible by generous support from Stockholm University, the City of Stockholm, and not least the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SKR). The editor also wants to thank in particular Nils Fabiansson for his diligent help with the preparation of the manuscript, Gwendolyne Knight for her help with language editing of several papers, and not least the authors for their willingness to answer all comments and suggestions. Finally, I  am

Preface xxiii thankful for the support from Routledge and the possibility to publish this volume in the series Routledge Advances in Urban History. Heiko Droste Stockholm, 25 March 2023 Notes 1 There is a new network in the Urban History of the North, which was initiated on the occasion of the conference in 2019 and more formally founded in September 2022 at the EAUH-conference in Antwerp. See the network’s webpage for updates: http://urbanhnorth.com. 2 See part V: Making sense of urban history. 3 Since the 1970s, there has been a series of local history workshops, organized by members from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, partially published in a series called for Nordisk seminar i lokalhistoria. 4 There are many studies on the Nordic countries’ urban history; cf. Knut Helle, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan Eivind Myhre and Ola Svein Stugu, Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax, 2006); Søren Bitsch Christensen (ed.), Middelalderbyen (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2004); Søren Bitsch Christensen (ed.), Den moderne by (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2007); Hans Krongaard Kristensen & Bjørn Poulsen, Danmarks byer i middelalderen (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2016); Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1981–1984), 4 vols.; Mats Berglund, Lars Nilsson and Per-Gunnar Sidén, Svensk stadshistoria: En introduktion (Stockholm: Stads- och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2019). The English version was published as Swedish urban history. An introduction (Stockholm: Stads- och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2023). 5 There are many books and conferences on this topic, not least since the European Association for Urban History came into being in 1989, in order to further studies in European urban history. 6 Kjell Andersson et al. (eds.), Metropolitan Ruralities (Bradford, West Yorkshire: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2016). The topic of rurbanization world-wide will change our picture of urban culture once again, not least as both national economies and lifestyles are thoroughly urbanized, even outside of urban centres. 7 Maarten Prak, Citizens Without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c.1000–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 8 Rosemary Wakeman, A Modern History of European Cities 1815 to the Present (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020) is an interesting effort to remedy this perspective. The upcoming Cambridge Urban History of Europe, edited by Maarten Prak, forthcoming probably in 2024, will contain some articles on Northern urban history, however rather few. 9 Peter Clark, European Cities and Towns: 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 10 See Chapter 1 by Peter Clark: “Northern Cities in European Perspective”. 11 See Chapter 12 by Henning Bro: “The Øresund metropolis: The history of the inter-Scandinavian urban region”. 12 See Chapter 17 by Anna Berg Elmén and Jennie Sjöholm: “Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns”. 13 Arctic cities are increasingly recognized, for example, by the European Union; https://arctic2050.info/cases/arctic-cities/. Søren Rud, Colonialism in

xxiv  Preface Greenland: Tradition, Governance and Legacy (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) on similar Danish urban politics in Greenland after the Second World War. 14 See Chapter 15 by Laura Kolbe: ‘Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration: national cities associations and municipal movement in 1903–1913 in Nordic countries”. 15 Jørgen Mikkelsen, Urbanisering og bysystemer i Europa indtil ca. 1800: En oversigt over nyere forskningsresultater (Aarhus: Dansk Center for Byhistorie, 2012); Sven Lilja, Befolkningar, städer och stater: Strukturella maktresurser i det skando-baltiska området cirka 1500–1820: en studie i historiska makroprocesser (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2021), have presented alternative models for urbanization processes in the North and Europe in premodern times. 16 Enn Küng was at the conference, but his paper ‘City and State: Reval’s economic and political history in 17th century’ has been published in Enn Küng, Mercuriuse ja Marsi vahel. Hansalinn Tallinn Rootsi riigi haardes 1561–1632 (Tallinn: Tallinna Linnaarhiivi Toimetised, 2022). 17 See Chapter 2 by Marianne Råberg: ‘Copenhagen and Stockholm: Two kings and their capitals in the early 17th century. Visions and reality’, and Chapter 5 by Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson: ‘A tale of two fortress towns: Militarisation generating urbanisation in 18th-century Helsinki-Sveaborg and Ruotsinsalmi’. 18 Knut Dørum (ed.), Hvem styrte byarne? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Agder: Capellen Damm Akademisk, 2022), has shown in his volume that the ways the Norwegian urban cultures of the premodern times are perceived is not easy to translate into other Nordic countries. 19 Heiko Droste, ‘Svenska städer under tidigmodern tid’, in Dørum 2022, pp. 53–84. 20 Mikkelsen 2012. 21 David Bell and Mark Jayne (eds.), Small Cities: Urban Experience Beyond the Metropolis (London: Routledge, 2006); Sven Lilja & Peter Clark (eds.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 22 Annika Sandén, Stadsgemenskapens resurser och villkor: Samhällssyn och välfärdsstrategier i Linköping 1600–1620 (Linköping: Linköpings universitet, 2005); Eva Österberg, ‘Svenska lokalsamhällen i förändring ca 1550–1850: Participation, representation och politisk kultur i den svenska självstyrelsen: ett angeläget forskningsområde’, Historisk tidskrift (Sweden), 107 (1987), pp. 321–40; Eva Österberg, ‘Stat, makt och bönder i modern svensk historieforskning: en historiografisk skiss’, in Carsten Due-Nielsen (ed.), Struktur og funktion: Festskrift til Erling Ladewig Petersen (Odense: Odense universitets forlag, 1984), pp. 153–67. 23 Mats Hallenberg and Magnus Linnarsson (eds.), Nordic Welfare Cities in a Changing World (London: Routledge, forthcoming), will discuss examples of welfare cities during the second Industrial Revolution. 24 See Chapter 9 by Christian Ringskou: ‘Skjern from within – A social network analysis of religious revival and social elite in a Western Jutland New Town 1880–1930’. 25 See Chapter 7 by Matti O. Hannikainen: ‘New towns? Urbanisation in Finland between the 1920s and the 1970s’. 26 Åke Sandström, Skellefteå och Strängnäs: Moderniseringen av två svenska småstäder 1880–1914 (Stockholm: Stads- och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2018).

Preface xxv 27 See Chapter 6 by Steinar Aas: ‘Urban “minor utopias” in the planning of Norwegian towns’. 28 The book by Berglund, Nilsson and Sidén 2019 exemplified the intricate problems of translating Swedish technical terms for different kinds of urban areas into English, see ‘Introduction’ by Lars Nilsson in Berglund, Nilsson and Sidén 2023, pp. 11–26. 29 See Chapter 13 by Lars Nilsson: ‘Phases of urbanisation: Sweden, 1800–2020’. 30 See Chapter 8 by Mikkel Thelle: ‘Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe’. 31 See Chapter  11 by Rolf Hugoson: ‘Care, curiosity, and government: A  comparative history of hospitals in the Nordic countries 1750–2000’. 32 See Chapter  10 by Mikkel Høghøj: ‘Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery: Mass housing, resident democracy, and acts of citizenship in 1970s Denmark’. 33 See Chapter 14 by Marjatta Hietala: ‘Creative internationalism’. 34 Magdalena Naum & Fredrik Ekegren (eds.), Facing Otherness in Early Modern Sweden: Travel, Migration and Material Transformations, 1500–1800 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018); Hanna Dahlström, Bjørn Poulsen & Jens Olsen, ‘From a port for traders to a town of merchants: Exploring the topography, activities and dynamics of early medieval Copenhagen’, Danish Journal of Archaeology, 7 (2018), pp. 69–116.

Bibliography Aas, Steinar, ‘Urban “minor utopias” in the planning of Norwegian towns’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Andersson, Kjell et al. (eds.), Metropolitan Ruralities (Bradford, West Yorkshire: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2016). Bell, David  & Mark Jayne (eds.), Small Cities: Urban Experience Beyond the Metropolis (London: Routledge, 2006). Berg Elmén, Anna  & Jennie Sjöholm, ‘Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Berglund, Mats, Lars Nilsson  & Per-Gunnar Sidén, Svensk Stadshistoria: En Introduktion (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2019). Bro, Henning, ‘The Øresund metropolis: The history of the inter-Scandinavian urban region’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Christensen, Søren Bitsch (ed.), Middelalderbyen (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2004). Christensen, Søren Bitsch (ed.), Den Moderne by (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2007). Clark, Peter, European Cities and Towns: 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Clark, Peter, ‘Northern cities in European perspective’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Dahlström, Hanna, Bjørn Poulsen & Jens Olsen, ‘From a port for traders to a town of merchants: Exploring the topography, activities and dynamics of early medieval Copenhagen’, Danish Journal of Archaeology, 7 (2018).

xxvi  Preface Dørum, Knut (ed.), Hvem styrte byarne? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Agder: Capellen Damm Akademisk, 2022). Droste, Heiko, ‘Svenska städer under tidigmodern tid’, in Knut Dørum (ed.), Hvem styrte byarne? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Agder: Capellen Damm Akademisk, 2022). Gustafsson, Sofia & Juha-Matti Granqvist, ‘A tale of two fortress towns: Militarization generating urbanization in 18th century Helsinki-Sveaborg and Ruotsinsalmi’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Hallenberg, Mats & Magnus Linnarsson (eds.), Nordic Welfare Cities in a Changing World (London: Routledge, forthcoming). Hannikainen, Matti, ‘New towns? Urbanisation in Finland between the 1920s and 1970s’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Helle, Knut, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan Eivind Myhre  & Ola Svein Stugu, Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax, 2006). Hietala, Marjatta, ‘Creative internationalism’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Høghøj, Mikkel, ‘Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery: Mass housing, resident democracy, and acts of citizenship in 1970s Denmark’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Hugoson, Rolf, ‘Care, curiosity and government: A comparative history of hospitals in the Nordic countries 1750–2000’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Kolbe, Laura, ‘Between socialist ideals and Bourgeois aspiration: National cities associations and municipal movement in 1903–1913 in Nordic countries’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Krongaard Kristensen, Hans  & Poulsen, Bjørn, Danmarks byer i middelalderen (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2016). Küng, Enn, Mercuriuse ja Marsi vahel: Hansalinn Tallinn Rootsi riigi haardes 1561–1632 (Tallinn: Tallinna Linnaarhiivi Toimetised, 2022). Lilja, Sven, Befolkningar, städer och stater: Strukturella maktresurser i det skandobaltiska området cirka 1500–1820: En studie i historiska makroprocesser (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2021). Lilja, Sven & Peter Clark (eds.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Mikkelsen, Jørgen, Urbanisering og bysystemer i Europa indtil ca. 1800: En oversigt over nyere forskningsresultater (Aarhus: Dansk Center for Byhistorie, 2012). Naum, Magdalena & Fredrik Ekegren (eds.), Facing Otherness in Early Modern Sweden: Travel, Migration and Material Transformations, 1500–1800 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018). Nilsson, Lars, ‘Phases of urbanization: Sweden, 1800–2020’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Österberg, Eva, ‘Stat, makt och bönder i modern svensk historieforskning: En historiografisk skiss’, in Carsten Due-Nielsen (ed.), Struktur og funktion: Festskrift til Erling Ladewig Petersen (Odense: Odense Universitets Forlag, 1984).

Preface xxvii Österberg, Eva, ‘Svenska lokalsamhällen i förändring ca 1550–1850: Participation, representation och politisk kultur i den svenska självstyrelsen: Ett angeläget forskningsområde’, Historisk tidskrift, 107 (1987). Prak, Maarten, Citizens Without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, c.1000–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Prak, Maarten (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Europe (2024). Råberg, Marianne, ‘Copenhagen and Stockholm: Two kings and their capitals in the early 17th century. Visions and reality’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Ringskou, Christian, ‘Skjern from within: A  social network analysis of religious revival and social elite in a Western Jutland new town 1880–1930’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Rud, Søren, Colonialism in Greenland: Tradition, Governance and Legacy (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Sandén, Annika, Stadsgemenskapens resurser och villkor: Samhällssyn och välfärdsstrategier i Linköping 1600–1620 (Linköping: Linköpings universitet, 2005). Sandström, Åke, Skellefteå och Strängnäs: Moderniseringen av två svenska småstäder 1880–1914 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2018). Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1981–1984). Thelle, Mikkel, ‘Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Urban Life in the Nordic Countries (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Wakeman, Rosemary, A Modern History of European Cities 1815 to the Present (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

1 Northern cities in European perspective* Peter Clark

Europe is (and historically has always been) a continent of regions. European policymakers and social scientists have long recognised the phenomenon. Historians have been slow to study and comprehend the crucial role of regions, particularly large regions, in European development, though this is starting to change, not least in the field of urban history.1 In this chapter, I argue the case for examining Northern cities in a wide regional perspective. I  outline a possible taxonomy of the defining attributes of Northern urbanism and highlight from the current literature some of the key phases of urban interaction across the region. Hopefully, some of my general arguments will tie up with the detailed analyses of Nordic urban development presented in the subsequent chapters. However, to start, it is important to stress the value of a regional approach, particularly focusing on the large European regions. In my book European Cities and Towns 400–2000 (2009), I suggested that there were four main historic regions in Europe: Western Europe, including England; Mediterranean Europe; Central/Eastern Europe, with European Russia; and outer Northern Europe, reaching from Ireland, through Scotland to the Nordic countries. The differential importance of these regions is well documented by demographic trends from the Middle Ages to the present time, a point I will return to shortly. Other indicators of regional variations include the divergent development of their capital cities, a subject I discuss in detail elsewhere.2 After the Second World War the brilliant Fernand Braudel pioneered a regional approach in his study La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II (1949). Though not specifically urban in focus, the work illuminated the complex urban links right across the Catholic and Islamic Mediterranean region. There are undoubtedly limitations in Braudel’s work, but what is particularly valuable is that his conception of the Mediterranean is not narrowly defined but open-ended, reaching out to the Middle East, North Africa, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean. After Braudel, however, interest in a regional approach failed to gain traction, DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-1

2  Peter Clark whether in the Mediterranean or elsewhere: even Braudel turned to other subjects in later years.3 The neglect of a regional approach is especially serious in the case of Northern Europe. Though research on Northern cities has increased in the last two decades, there has been limited regional collaboration by urbanists in the field, with the first meeting of Nordic urban researchers in recent times only in 2019.4 Comparative studies of Northern urban development have been relatively few and far between.5 Though the first volume of the Cambridge History of Scandinavia has two important chapters on medieval towns, volume 2, on the period up to 1850, has no chapter and indeed virtually no references at all to towns. The yet-to-be-published volume 3 has no chapter devoted to modern Nordic cities.6 One consequence of this relative lack of regional research is that the urban North has been a historiographical black hole in the general European literature, largely ignored in surveys of the European city that have appeared since the 1980s. Jan De Vries in his seminal book European Urbanisation (1984) lumped the North together with Western Europe as an analytical category. Paul Hohenberg and Lynn Lees in The Making of Urban Europe (1985) has one reference to Scandinavia and none to Finland. Alex Cowan’s Urban Europe (1998) has no mention of Scandinavian cities at all. This is not just a case of Anglo-Saxon amnesia. The French literature on the North European city is hardly any better.7 In sum, the underdeveloped narrative of the Northern city is striking and has important implications for how European urbanisation is conceptualised. Lurking behind the lack of comparative regional research on the urban North are other major problems. First, there is the problematic definition and indeed conceptualisation of Norden, which has been largely determined by cultural and intellectual historians. Reviewing the literature, one is struck by the strong emphasis put on the external political and cultural determinants (such as the perception of the North from abroad) and by comparison the limited recognition given to the internal economic and particularly urban factors defining the concept of Northern regionality.8 Second, there is the general problem of defining urban regions: how coherent, how convergent, how autonomous need they be? This may be a particular issue on Europe’s urban periphery and will be discussed later. Third, and coming full circle, much of the research on Northern towns has had a strongly local or national focus. Here, as in other parts of Europe, divergent national research agendas seriously complicate wider comparative studies. In the detailed chapters of this book, the focus is on Northern urban development in the early modern and modern periods. But one cannot start there. Northern urban regionality has a long history dating back at least to the early Middle Ages, and in the following pages I want to outline that

Northern cities in European perspective 3 framework development which is critical to understanding modern and contemporary trends. As well as examining the Northern region over the longue durée, it is necessary, following Braudel’s Mediterranean model, to adopt an expansive, open-ended view of the urban North, centred on the Nordic countries but encompassing on its margins Ireland, Scotland, and possibly the Baltic states. Only by combining these two perspectives can one obtain a clearer understanding of the dynamic nature of the Northern city region. A first and fundamental task is to identify a taxonomy of the defining attributes of Northern urbanism. Contextually, this outer Northern region, was (and is) distinguished from the rest of the continent by its cold climate, its often difficult soil, its proximity to the sea, its sparsity of population. In other words, geophysical factors are vital for understanding the region’s urban narrative.9 In terms of urbanisation, one finds a distinct trajectory, compared to other European regions (see Figure  1.1). In the late Middle Ages, the North had very low urbanisation rates, at the bottom of the European spectrum, indicative of the low number and size of towns. In the early modern period, with many new town foundations, the Northern trend caught up with Eastern Europe. In the late 19th century, with increased industrialisation urban growth accelerated in the North and overtook the Mediterranean by the mid-20th century. In the late 20th

Figure 1.1 Urban trends in large European regions, 1500–1990. Source: Based on data in Peter Clark, European Cities and Towns 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009).

4  Peter Clark century the trend stabilised with similar levels of urbanisation to Mediterranean and Eastern Europe.10 Framing this specific developmental trajectory was the distinctive and long-lasting architecture of the overall urban system across outer Northern Europe. First, without the legacy of Roman occupation, only a few towns were established before the 11th century: the majority were founded from the high or late Middle Ages into the early modern period – the 17th century was particularly formative in Ireland, Scotland, and Finland. This late development is in marked contrast, for example, to Western and Mediterranean Europe, where the vast number of towns had been founded before the Black Death in the 14th century.11 Second, it was an urban region of predominantly small towns. In Norway, in 1801, of the 30 towns only Bergen could claim a European status with 18,000 inhabitants. In 17thcentury Ireland, apart from Dublin and the major regional ports, many towns numbered only a few hundred inhabitants. In Scotland, in 1639, only 11 per cent of towns had more than 2,000 people, the rest much less. In the Swedish-Finnish kingdom during the 1770s, 93 per cent of towns had fewer than 5,000 inhabitants.12 As numerous chapters in this book demonstrate, small towns remain important in the region into the 20th century: Christian Ringskou looks at Skjern, a small Danish town in Western Jutland, over the years 1880–1930, analysing the social networking that underpinned community life, while Matti O. Hannikainen shows the significance of new small towns and townships for Finnish urbanisation after independence. In Norway, planning policy after 1924 sought to transform small towns, a major part of the urban system, into ‘minor utopias’ as Steinar Aas discusses in his chapter.13 Third, almost all the larger established towns were (and are) ports, often located on mouths of rivers giving access to the interior. A  necklace of early port towns dominated the east coast of Scotland from Aberdeen to Edinburgh and its haven of Leith. In premodern Ireland, port cities like Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Belfast served as regional centres, playing commercial second fiddle to the international port of Dublin. There was a similar pattern of important ports on the coasts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark. In the premodern period, larger Nordic port towns often acquired a royal monopoly of foreign commerce, leaving small ports or inland towns, mired by poor communications, with the bits and pieces of local trade. Strikingly, ports and coastal cities remain a dominant feature of the contemporary urban map of the region. In the Øresund Region around the Sound, the proximity of ports on the Swedish and Danish sides led to close historic interaction and rivalry, but globalisation and the opening of the Øresund Bridge have given the opportunity, as Henning Bro explains, to develop the area into a transnational Øresund metropolis.14

Northern cities in European perspective 5 A fourth feature of the outer Northern urban system was the important position of a handful of bigger cities, usually only one per country, mostly capitals. Even these were modest or small by European standards. In 1500, none figured among the bigger European cities. Sixteenth-century Edinburgh was scorned by foreign visitors as on the level of a French country town. In 1650, according to de Vries, Copenhagen had 23,000 inhabitants; Stockholm 40,000; Dublin 17,000; and Edinburgh 35,000. This compared to populations of 400,000 or more for London and Paris and 175,000 for Amsterdam.15 Into the early 19th century, Nordic capitals were hardly any more impressive. One British traveller to Stockholm in 1827 complained of the city’s main street being narrow, lined with miserable-looking shops; Copenhagen was hardly any better. Even at the start of the 2lst century, the Northern metropoles appear modest on a European, let alone a global, scale: none figured in the biggest 20 European urban agglomerations in 2020.16 Not only were Northern cities and towns predominantly small, but they shared other features into the modern period. In contrast to the many walled towns of the Mediterranean, and Western and to some extent Eastern Europe, they were mostly open towns. In the Swedish-Finnish kingdom only Stockholm, Kalmar, and Viiborg had walls. Turku had fences, reinforced by trenches, and Bergen in 1580 had wooden palisades.17 In Ireland, over 50 of the bigger centres boasted stone walls, but lesser towns made do with earthen embankments, hedges, or fences. Only the biggest older Scottish burghs had walls, other towns had ditches, fences, or nothing. The lack of stone walls was partly a function of their high cost and the poverty of many Northern towns, but it also reflected the weakness or absence of municipal government, as well as the limited perception of external threats. A recent study by Karin Sennefelt of migration into Stockholm in the decades before and after 1700 suggests that the relative permeability of the city and the lack of effective means of excluding outsiders created a different attitude and policy towards incomers than in mainland Europe: one concerned more with capacity to work than identity. There are various studies of European walled towns. More comparative research is needed on what forms of communal identity and policy were shaped by unwalled or open towns.18 The weakness (or absence) of civic self-governance in Northern towns in the premodern era is striking. After their conquest of medieval Ireland, the English kings sought to create a network of chartered boroughs to attract English settlers, but many of the small boroughs barely functioned as towns, and in some cases the burgesses never lived there. In the 17th century, the new towns founded in Ulster were handed over to local landowners who installed manorial not civic institutions.19 In Scotland, there

6  Peter Clark were many chartered towns, but only some, usually the bigger ones, had privileges from the Crown, including monopolies of foreign trade; by 1707, there were 66 royal burghs, as against around 350 baronial burghs created after 1450, many short-lived, under noble or landowner control.20 In Scandinavia, town charters were widely used by kings to promote economic and political control. In Sweden, all the towns had royal charters, and the situation was similar in Denmark. In Norway, royal charters came later and more slowly: in 1801, just over half of towns were chartered.21 At the same time, municipal autonomy seems to have been limited. In the 17th-century, Swedish and Danish kings, both ruling militarised states, interfered extensively in the running and planning of urban communities while access to foreign trade was frequently regulated.22 Several of these themes are explored in Part I of this book. In her chapter Marianne Råberg discusses how Christian IV and Gustavus Adolphus sought to expand their capital cities with new town plans, plans for military facilities, and modern fortifications. Kasper Kepsu examines the Swedish new fortress town of Nyen on the Finnish-Russian border, which also developed as a trading centre. And Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson consider two more Swedish fortress towns established in Finland, 18th century-Helsinki-Sveaborg and Ruotsinsalmi, and their contribution to urbanisation.23 In a follow-up study, Jaime Montes Bentura discusses with reference to Stockholm and Umea how 17th-century state planning models in Sweden continue to influence modern urban development.24 External pressures on towns are also evident elsewhere in the Northern region. In Scotland, the baronial burghs were subject to seigneurial interference, though this may have diminished in the 17th century, and royal influence probably increased. In Ireland, corporate autonomy was undermined by the colonial context of the state and associated religious divisions within urban communities. Generally fundamental was the smallscale and economic and financial weakness of many of the towns of outer Northern Europe, their small elites overshadowed by the power of landowners and the Crown. Certainly, it is difficult to reconcile the limited role and autonomy of Northern burghers with the wide-ranging, dynamic picture of citizenship in premodern Europe presented by Maarten Prak in his important study Citizens Without Nations (2018), which focuses mainly on the big, prosperous ‘Blue Banana’ cities reaching from England through the Low Countries and western Germany to northern Italy. Prak hardly mentions Northern cities at all in his analysis.25 All this would suggest that townscape, political institutions, civic culture, and policymaking may well have been significantly different in the urban North into the 19th century compared to other European urban regions. In the modern period, one can identify similar shared trends in these areas, with Nordic cities in particular distinctive for their spatial compactness, their high levels of

Northern cities in European perspective 7 civic autonomy, and their municipal activism-points which are illustrated in subsequent chapters. As we know from a global perspective, regional urban development was always shaped by specific local factors, but it was also forged by shared common responses to structural contexts, such as we noted earlier, and by common problems. At the same time, we know regional urbanism was often influenced by interconnectivity and interaction between cities.26 And this is particularly evident in outer Northern Europe, facilitated by its proximity to the sea. Fundamentally, this was an urban system constructed on the shores of the North Atlantic, North Sea, and Baltic and one structured, as will be seen, by a great deal of maritime and human contact. Having set out some of the key identifiers of the urban North, I want to note some of the most important phases of interaction across the wider region. Once again, it is important to recognise the long pedigree of such interaction with modern developments erected on the shoulders of earlier exchanges and networking. While proto-urban trading centres probably existed earlier in parts of the region, the first establishment of meaningful towns owed much to the Vikings. From the eighth century a number of towns emerged in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Ireland, though not in Scotland. Fortunately, there is extensive research on towns in the Viking era, though because of the difficult, fragmented nature of the evidence little is conclusive. Whether Viking invaders brought existing notions of towns from Scandinavia to Ireland (perhaps mediated by Viking centres in Northern England) or whether Viking urban innovations in Ireland, as at Dublin, were transhipped northwards remains unsure. If raiding was an important ingredient of the early invasions, so too was long-distance trade (with links to the east, to the Volga, complementing those across the North Atlantic). Goods were exchanged around the region, along with culture, practices, and people. In Viking Ireland similarities between sites suggests a Hiberno-Norse town with common distinguishing features.27 From the 12th century, the outer Northern region was affected by state formation in Scandinavia and waves of external pressure from Western Europe. The English invasion of Ireland and the growing impact of German Hanseatic traders on Northern port cities had important consequences. Irish towns were colonised and rebuilt, and new ones established on the English model; and German merchants and traders came to dominate economic life in bigger Nordic and Baltic towns while they also sought to exclude competitors from Scotland and beyond.28 However, from the later Middle Ages political alliances between Scotland and Scandinavia served to facilitate the revival of urban interaction across the region. Benefitting from the decline of the Hanseatic League, trade between Scottish and Norwegian ports increasingly flourished with imports of timber exchanged for grain, salt, and other goods. From 1580 to 1625, a third of all ships arriving in Dundee came from Norway. At

8  Peter Clark the end of the 16th century, Scottish trade with Swedish ports likewise expanded, imports of Swedish ore becoming vital for the Scottish iron industry.29 As Steve Murdoch and others have demonstrated, from the 16th century Scottish merchants became leading figures in Nordic towns, bringing capital and overseas trading networks to their new communities. In Norway, Trondheim was an important location where Scottish fish, timber, and iron merchants were based while Bergen had over 300 Scots; elsewhere in the Danish kingdom, Scots were important at Copenhagen and particularly Elsinore. In Sweden, Stockholm hosted around 350 resident Scots, some on the city council and in government posts. At Gothenburg, two of the 12 seats on the city council were reserved for Scots when the town was founded by the Swedish king in 1621, and this together with tax concessions attracted leading Scottish entrepreneurs whose families grew powerful in the town. Gothenburg’s Scottish magnates became prominent in the China trade of the East India Company founded there in 1731. Naturalised Scots embedded in Swedish state institutions exploited this to promote inter-urban commerce between their countries.30 Meanwhile, Scottish towns maintained close ties across the wider region to Irish urban development. A number of the towns established or re-established in Stuart Ireland were populated by Scots, with large inflows in the late 17th century, while the linen industry which developed in Ulster in the 18th century had links with Glasgow and other Scottish towns. The large-scale rebuilding of Dublin as an Enlightenment city from the end of the 17th century attracted Scottish artisans across the Irish sea (many Scottish towns at that time were in crisis) while Dublin’s classical-style terraces served as a model and inspiration for the construction of Edinburgh’s New Town from the 1780s.31 By the late 18th century, Edinburgh with its many learned societies, publishers, and intellectuals had become the leading cultural and intellectual centre in Northern Europe: the Athens of the North.32 In the 1760s, James Macpherson’s publication there of the poetry of the Gaelic writer Ossian, mostly famously the epic work Fingal, set off a literary and cultural explosion. Connecting with the drama of the wild and harsh landscape of the North, the poetry, despite being dogged by doubt and controversy, sparked powerful interest in all the countries bordering the North Sea (and beyond). Already from the late 17th century there had been growing antiquarian and literary interest in ancient Nordic literature, but enthusiasm for Ossian took off from the 1770s, notably in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Turku, Copenhagen, and in Iceland (mostly Reykjavik). Interest also crossed the Irish Sea to Dublin. In 1781, the Swedish poet Thomas Thorild wrote for the Stockholm literary society a poem with the lines: OSSIAN, king of the Bards! before whom nature stands obedient Ah! before whom Homer disappears and Voltaire is as nothing!

Northern cities in European perspective 9 Into the early 19th century, interest in Ossian helped fuel enthusiasm amongst the Northern urban literati for ancient languages, including Finnish language and culture, contributing probably to the publication of Kalevala. For others, Ossian encouraged attention to the close historical and cultural relationship between the Ancient Celtic peoples of the British Isles and those of Scandinavia.33 Yet in some ways, this marked the high-water mark of interaction across the urban region. During the 19th century, connectivity amongst the cities of outer Northern Europe continued but at a lower ebb. Rather, the region was overshadowed by external forces and undermined by internal tensions and contradictions. The rapid economic and urban growth of Western Europe, combined with large-scale state formation had major disruptive effects. Cities of both Scotland and to a much lesser extent Ireland were sucked into the dynamic world of an expansive British imperium. Ports and manufacturing towns were increasingly geared to global and colonial trade, and Glasgow proclaimed itself the Second City of the Empire. At the end of the Napoleonic wars, Britain and its European allies got Denmark to cede Norway and its urban network to Sweden, despite Norwegian demands for independence, while another Coalition ally, the Russian Empire, secured Finland from Sweden in 1809 and soon after imposed a new capital city, Helsinki, on its new grand duchy. Subsequently, Denmark faced growing pressure from a resurgent Germany, led by Prussia, which annexed Danish provinces and cities after the Schleswig-Holstein war in 1864 and reasserted its economic power in the Baltic, evinced by the rise of Hamburg, Bremen, and other North German ports. All this contributed to fragmentation across the regional urban network.34 At the same time, foreign pressures encouraged the growth of Scandinavianism in Nordic university towns such as Lund, Copenhagen, Uppsala, Helsinki, and Christiana (Oslo) in the 1830s and 1840s, with calls for a Nordic union against Germanism, though the German victory in 1864 dampened pan-Nordic enthusiasm for a while.35 Yet by the end of the 19th century, one can identify indications of a new parallelism, convergence, and interconnectivity in the Northern region, especially in the Nordic core. A precondition was strong urban growth, as we noted earlier, linked to manufacturing expansion and agricultural transformation. Particularly striking was the rapid population increase of the Nordic capital cities: by 1910/1911 Copenhagen had 559,000; Stockholm 342,000; Helsinki 147,000; and Oslo 243,000. While there was accelerating urban and economic parallelism or convergence across the Nordic region before 1914, the extent of economic integration seems more problematic, as the big economies of Western Europe increasingly dominated trade.36 However, focusing on cultural developments, one can identify more connectivity between Nordic cities, as those major urban triggers of competition and emulation came into play. From the 1890s, the National

10  Peter Clark Romantic Movement left a distinctive imprint on the urban landscape of public buildings in Finland, Sweden, and Denmark (more so than elsewhere in Europe), and after 1910, this in turn gave way to the advent of Nordic Classicism exemplified by the Stockholm City Library, the Finnish Parliament House, and the Copenhagen Police Headquarters. In the same way, Ebenezer Howard’s British Garden City movement created suburban developments across the region but mediated by a distinctive Nordic style, usually with wooden houses, just as allotment gardens (with cabins for overnight stays) spread from Danish cities to Stockholm, and so to Finnish cities like Helsinki. While innovations often originated from outside the region, they were adapted, even transformed inside it. The Nordic adaptation of urban architecture and planning developments is particularly evident in the spread of the Functionalist variant of International Modernism before and after the Second World War. By this time there was active networking among Nordic architects and landscape designers.37 Institutional links between Nordic cities were increasingly strong by the interwar period. As Laura Kolbe shows in her chapter (Chapter 15), the decades before the First World War saw the establishment of Unions of cities in Denmark, Sweden (1908), Finland (2012), and Norway as elsewhere in Europe. The Finnish union rules privileged international cooperation, and during the war there was growing informal contact involving members of the Nordic unions. From the 1920s, formal joint meetings were held. In 1920, the Finnish meeting in Turku invited delegates from Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and this was followed by Finnish visits to Norway. Thereafter, Nordic gatherings of city representatives were increasingly regular and were extended to include Baltic cities. Meetings were used to promote good governance and showcase industrial development and other innovative developments in Nordic towns. Delegations coming to Helsinki were taken to visit allotment garden areas and the Käpylä garden suburb.38 After the Second World War inter-urban links were solidified by other Nordic organisations such as Helsingfors Tjänstebröder, which was established in 1948 as a forum for cooperation between officials in the Nordic capitals and other big cities. More recently, there have been conferences of Nordic capitals.39 Contact and emulation between Nordic cities led to urban improvements as in sanitation before 1900 as Mikkel Thelle notes in his chapter (Chapter 8). In the same way Marjatta Hietala (Chapter 14) details how Nordic city contact and cooperation promoted urban creativity in the 20th century.40 Other joint activities, often based in Nordic capitals, involved sports organisations, trade unions, temperance organisations, and social policymakers. In 1952, the Nordic Council was established but inter-urban cooperation has been uneven.41 The late 20th century saw growing Nordic convergence in a number of areas, particularly social welfare and health as

Northern cities in European perspective 11 Rolf Hugoson outlines in his chapter on Nordic hospitals (Chapter 11).42 However, to return to the point raised earlier about the nature of urban regionality, it would seem that collaboration, emulation, and convergence between cities (and states) were always complicated by competitive tensions. What about the rest of the wider urban North? Whilst Scottish cities throve in the Victorian era from their integration into British global commerce and industry, Irish towns generally stagnated except for Belfast and other Ulster towns which prospered from exports of the linen manufacture and later shipbuilding and engineering industries. The Irish famine in 1848 drove many rural and small-town Irish to migrate to Scottish cities, creating there large ethnic and religious enclaves. Irish urbanisation continued to stagnate after independence from Britain in 1922 due to political uncertainty, protectionism, and high emigration.43 However, benefitting from the European Community, from the 1980s Dublin and the bigger cities of the Republic grew strongly as centres of new style tech and service industries – not unlike those found in Nordic cities in the later 20th century.44 In contrast, Scottish cities from the 1960s were adversely affected, as in England, by the decay of heavy industry and the loss of traditional markets. But recently links with Scandinavia, through the energy industry and European Union-sponsored educational and research cooperation, proved significant in reversing the trend. By the time of Brexit (2016), Norway had returned to being one of Scotland’s main trading partners while thousands of Nordic and Irish students attended Scottish urban universities. In 2007, the thenScottish chief minister talked of a new Arc of Prosperity linking Ireland, Scotland, and the Nordic states, in which their cities had become leading players. It remains to be seen if this Arc can be turned into increased interurban reality.45 In the contemporary world the urban North faces a number of major challenges, linked in part to those systemic or structural issues discussed earlier. First, the systemic small size of many Northern towns makes them highly vulnerable to declining birth rates, and many outside metropolitan areas are seeing population decline. Here foreign immigration, as Lars Nilsson shows in a wide-ranging chapter on Swedish urbanisation, offers one of the opportunities for stabilisation.46 Heritage tourism also presents economic possibilities as Anna Elmén Berg and Jennie Sjöholm explain in their account of Swedish Arctic towns.47 Second, though Northern capitals continue to dominate national networks, comprising up to a quarter of national populations, their modest size on the European stage, and indeed status as veritable pigmies in world rankings, often pushes them to the margins of the global urban system, with small numbers of international company headquarters located there.48 This raises a third structural issue: the pressure of living on the doorstep of Western Europe with its assertive

12  Peter Clark states and powerful economies and corporations, too often dominating European policymaking. Finally, there is the recurrent challenge of competition between Northern cities, particularly metropolitan centres. Nonetheless, such challenges also offer important opportunities for the urban North. Urban smallness on a global scale may allow space for flexibility and innovation, indeed creativity. The comfortable compactness of most Northern capitals helps explain their high standing in the global liveability, happiness, and sustainable city rankings.49 Proximity to Western Europe offers advantages of economic networking and integration with leading global players while urban competition frequently (albeit not invariably) leads to inter-urban cooperation. In conclusion, there is a strong case for regarding the urban North as one of the major urban regions of the continent. Shared features of this Northern system with its late town foundations, its late urbanisation, and its specific urban hierarchy of small towns, ports, and dominant but modest-sized metropoles are quite distinctive in a European, indeed in a global, context. But this Northern system was never static. As has been evident, it expanded and contracted over time. Still there was important interconnectivity between cities across the region of outer Northern Europe. One final remark. Clearly, more sustained comparative research is needed on the urban North, and doubtless this book will serve as an important step towards our better understanding and recognition of the Northern city in a European perspective. Notes * I am grateful to Profs. Jari Ojala and Howard Clarke for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. 1 The new three-volume Cambridge Urban History of Europe, general editor Maarten Prak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2024) has chapters on major urban regions. Wim Blockmans adopts a regional approach in his Voice: Political Participation in Europe Before the Great Revolutions (forthcoming). 2 Peter Clark, European Cities and Towns 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 4–7 et passim; Peter Clark, ‘Capital cities 1850–2020’, in Dorothee Brantz  & Gabor Sonkoly (eds.), Cambridge Urban History of Europe: III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024). 3 Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II (Paris: Colin, 1949); 2nd ed. English translation by Sian Reynolds, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London: Collins, 1972–1973); Gabriel Piterberg et  al. (eds.), Braudel Revisited: The Mediterranean World 1600–1800 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2010), esp. chapter  2 by Geoffrey Symcox, ‘Braudel and the mediterranean city’; Cavan W. Concannon  & Lindsey A. Mazurek (eds.), Across the Corrupting Sea: Post-Braudelian Approaches: Post-Braudelian Approaches to the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (London: Routledge, 2016), chapter 1.

Northern cities in European perspective 13 4 See Preface by Heiko Droste, p. xvii. 5 For notable exceptions, see Lars Nilsson & Sven Lilja (eds.), The Emergence of Towns: Archaeology and Early Urbanization in Non-Roman, North-West Europe (Stockholm: Municipal Institute, 1996); also Finn-Einar Eliassen et al. (eds.), Regional Integration in Early Modern Scandinavia (Odense: Odense University Press, 2001), also Knut Dorum (ed.), Hvem styrte Byene? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk/NOASP (Nordic Open Access Scholarly Publishing, 2022). 6 Knut Helle (ed.), Cambridge History of Scandinavia: I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), chapters by Hans Andersson, ‘Urbanisation’ & Göran Dahlbäck, ‘The Towns’, pp.  312–42, 611–34; Erkki Kouri  & Jens E Olesen (eds.), Cambridge History of Scandinavia: II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); information on volume 3 from the publisher. Hans C. Johansen, ‘Scandinavian urbanisation 1850–1970’, in Magnus Jerneck et  al. (eds.), Different Paths to Modernity (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2005), pp. 166–80 is largely about Denmark. 7 Jan De Vries, European Urbanization 1500–1800 (London: Methuen, 1984); Paul M. Hohenberg  & Lynn H. Lees, The Making of Urban Europe 1000– 1950 (London: Harvard University Press, 1985); Alexander Cowan, Urban Europe 1500–1700 (London: Arnold, 1998); Jean Meyer, Etudes sur les villes en Europe Occidentale: I (Paris: C.D.U.-S.E.D.E.S, 1983); Jean-Pierre Poussou et al., Etudes sur les villes en Europe Occidentale: II (Paris: C.D.U.-S.E.D.E.S, 1983); Jean-Luc Pinol (ed.), Histoire de l’Europe Urbaine (Paris: Seuil, 2003) has only brief discussions of Nordic towns. 8 Marja Jalava & Bo Stråth, ‘Scandinavia/Norden’, in Diana Mishkova & Balazs Trencsenyi (eds.), European Regions and Boundaries: A  Conceptual History (New York: Berghahn, 2017), chapter  2; also Diana Mishkova et  al. (eds.), “Regimes of Historicity” in South-Eastern and Northern Europe 1890–1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Mary Hilson et al., Contesting Nordicness: From Scandinavianism to the Nordic Brand (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021); Peter Stadius, Southern Perspectives on the North: Legends, Stereotypes, Images and Models (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2001). The chapter by Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz  & Sofia Gustafsson on ‘The Hanseatic World and Scandinavia’, in Patrick Lantschner & Maarten Prak (eds.), Cambridge Urban History of Europe: II (forthcoming in 2024) conflates Scandinavia with North-West and East/Central Europe. Mikkel Thelle’s chapter ‘Northern Europe’, in Dorothee Brantz & Gabor Sonkoly (eds.) (forthcoming in 2024), chapter 7 is primarily concerned with Nordic developments. 9 Cf. James G. Kellas, The Scottish Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 219. Kellas writes here specifically about the highland zone, but what he says is equally applicable to the wider region. 10 Clark 2009, passim. 11 Nilsson & Lilja 1996, pp. 22, 25; Andersson 2003, p. 323 et seq; Raymond Gillespie, ‘Small towns in early modern Ireland’, in Peter Clark (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.  148–51; Peter Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain: II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp.  157, 434–5; Sven Lilja, ‘Small towns in the periphery: Population and economy of small towns in Sweden and Finland during the early modern period’, in Clark (ed.) 1995, pp.  54–5; Marko Lamberg  & Mari Välimäki, ‘The urban network and new towns in the 16th to 18th centuries’, in Peter Clark & Marjaana Niemi (eds.),

14  Peter Clark The Development of Finnish Cities and Towns (forthcoming); David Nicholas, The Later Medieval City 1300–1500 (London: Longman, 1997), chapter 1. 12 Finn-Einar Eliassen, ‘The mainstays of the urban fringe: Norwegian small towns 1500–1800’, in Clark (ed.) 1995, p.  25; Gillespie 1995, pp.  152–5; Ian D. Whyte, Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution (London: Longman, 1995), p. 174, Lilja 1995, p. 54. 13 See Chapter 6, Steinar Aas, ‘Urban “minor utopias” in the planning of Norwegian towns’, p. 203; Chapter 7, Matti O. Hannikainen: New Towns?, p. 228, and Chapter 9, Christian Ringskou: ‘Skjern from within’, p. 291. 14 E. Patricia Dennison & Grant G. Simpson, ‘Scotland’, in David Palliser (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain: I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 723 et seq.; Robin E. Glasscock, ‘Land and people c. 1300’, in Art Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland: II (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987), pp. 234–7; Eliassen et al. (eds.), Regional Integration; Eliassen 1995, pp. 34 et seq.; Lilja 1995, pp. 65 et seq.; Lukas Smas, ‘Urbanisation: Nordic Geographies of Urbanisation’, in Julien Grunfelder et al. (eds.), State of the Nordic Region 2018 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2018), p. 36 et seq. See Chapter 12, Henning Bro, ‘The Øresund metropolis’, p. 373. 15 Clark 2009, pp. 37–8; Michael Lynch, Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1981), p. 2; De Vries 1984, pp. 270–1, 275. 16 Mark Davies, ‘A perambulating paradox: British travel literature and the image of Sweden c. 1770–1865’ (doctoral dissertation, Lund University, Lund, 2000), pp. 151–2; Henriette Steiner, The Emergence of a Modern City: Golden Age Copenhagen 1800–1850 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), pp. 27, 78; www.statista. com/statistics/1101883/largest-european-cities. 17 James D. Tracy (ed.), City Walls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapters 3, 4, 7, 11 et passim. Riitta Laitinen, Order, Materiality and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017), pp. 51–4, 60; Karin Sennefelt, ‘Ordering identification: Migrants, material culture and social bonds in Stockholm, 1650–1720’, in Hilde Greefs  & Anne Winter (eds.), Migration Policies and Materialities of Identification in European Cities: Papers and Gates, 1500–1930s (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), p. 72; Kimmo Katajala et al. (eds.), Viipuri: Historiallinen kaupunkikartasto: Historic Towns Atlas (Helsinki: Atlas Art, 2020), p. 8; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen#/media/File:Scoleus.jpg. 18 https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/346feed88b6542dc8da79f97a485a1a4 (Ireland); Glasscock 1987, p.  237; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ town_defences_in_Scotland; Palliser (ed.) 2000, pp. 174, 374; Sennefelt 2019, pp. 72–83. Contrast this with other chapters on Italian and German cities in Greefs & Winter (eds.) 2019. 19 Glasscock 1987, pp.  224–5, 234 et seq.; John Bradley, ‘Rural boroughs in medieval Ireland’, in Jan Klapste (ed.), Ruralia III (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 288–93; William H. Crawford, ‘The creation and evolution of small towns in Ulster in the 17th and 18th centuries’, in Peter Borsay  & Lindsay Proudfoot (eds.), Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 99 et seq. 20 Alan Dyer, ‘Small market towns 1540–1700’, in Clark (ed.) 2000, pp. 448–9. 21 Lilja 1995, p.  52 et passim; Birgitta Ericsson, ‘The foundation and function of small towns in Sweden in the early modern period’, in Antoni Maczak & Chistopher Smout (eds.), Gründung und Bedeutung kleinerer Städte im nördlichen Europa der frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991), p. 106

Northern cities in European perspective 15 et seq.; Hans C. Johansen, ‘Small towns in Denmark in the 18th century’, in Maczak & C. Smout (eds.) 1991, pp. 137–8 et passim; Ole Degn, ‘Small towns in Denmark in the 16th and 17th centuries’, in Maczak & Smout (eds.) 1991, p. 151; Eliassen 1995, p. 28 et seq. 22 Laitinen 2017, p. 34 et passim; Soren B. Christensen & Jorgen Mikkelsen (eds.), Danish Towns During Absolutism: Urbanisation and Urban Life 1660–1848 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2008), p. 28 et passim. 23 See Chapter 2, Marianne Råberg: ‘Copenhagen and Stockholm’, p. 73; Chapter  4, Kasper Kepus: ‘The economic-military position of Nyen’, p.  131, and Chapter 5, Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson: ‘A tale of two fortress towns’, p. 168. 24 See Chapter  16, Jaime Montes Bentura, ‘Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå’, p. 480. 25 Paul Glennie  & Ian Whyte, ‘Towns in an agrarian economy 1540–1700’, in Clark (ed.) 2000, pp.  170–1; Borsay  & Proudfoot (eds.) 2002, pp.  24–6 et passim; Maarten Prak, Citizens Without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World c. 1000–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 26 Peter Clark (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 4. 27 Nilsson  & Lilja (eds.) 1996; especially the chapter by Anngret Simms, ‘The Vikings in Ireland’, p. 50 et seq.; Howard B. Clarke & Ruth Johnson (eds.), The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015), pp. 150, 297, 301, 303 et passim; Howard B. Clarke et al. (eds.), Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998); James GrahamCampbell & Gareth Williams (eds.), Silver Economy in the Viking Age (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007), pp. 163, 167, 177, 187; Patrick F. Wallace, ‘Ireland’s Viking towns’, in Anne-Christine Larsen (ed.), The Vikings in Ireland (Roskilde: Viking Ship Museum, 2001), p. 49; Dawn M. Hadley & Letty den Harkel (eds.), Everyday Life in Viking-Age Towns (Oxford: Oxbow, 2013), pp. 9–10, 15 for a more critical view of Viking influence on Irish towns. 28 Margaret Murphy, ‘The economy’, in Brendan Smith (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland: I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 440–3; Brian Graham, ‘Urbanisation in Ireland during the high middle ages c. 1000–c. 1300’, in Terry Barry (ed.), A History of Settlement in Ireland (London: Routledge, 2000), chapter  5; Philippe Dollinger, The German Hansa, trans. D. S. Ault & S. H. Steinberg (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1970), pp. 127–8 et passim; Donald J. Harreld (ed.), A Companion to the Hanseatic League (Leiden: Brill, 2015), p. 33 et passim; Grant G. Simpson (ed.), Scotland and Scandinavia (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1990), p. 77. 29 Simpson (ed.) 1990, pp. 78, 79, 81; T. Christopher Smout (ed.), Scotland and Europe 1200–1850 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986), pp.  82, 83 et passim; T. Christopher Smout, Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union 1660–1707 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1963), pp. 154–9; S. G. Edgar Lythe, The Economy of Scotland 1550–1625 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1960), pp. 146, 150–2. 30 Nina O. Pedersen, ‘Scottish immigration to Bergen in the 16th and 17th centuries’, in Alexia Grosjean  & Steve Murdoch (eds.), Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp.  135–65; Steve Murdoch, ‘Community, commodity and commerce: The Stockholm-Scots in the 17th century’, in David Worthington (ed.), British and Irish Emigrants and Exiles in Europe, 1603–1688 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 31–60; Steve Murdoch, ‘The Scots and early modern Scandinavia: A  2lst century review’, Northern

16  Peter Clark Studies, 45 (2013), pp.  38 et seq.; Alexia Grosjean  & Steve Murdoch, ‘The Scottish community in 17th-century Gothenburg’, in Grosjean  & Murdoch (eds.) 2005, pp. 192–220. 31 Patrick Fitzgerald, ‘Scottish migration to Ireland in the 17th Century’, in Grosjean  & Murdoch (eds.) 2005, pp.  27–52; Conrad Gill, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925), pp. 15–16, 22. Kind information from Prof. Rab Houston; Liam McIlvanney & Ray Ryan (eds.), Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society 1700–2000 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005), p. 38. 32 McIlvanney & Ryan (eds.) 2005, p. 48; Davis D. McElroy, Scotland’s Age of Improvement (Pullman, Washington State: Washington State University Press, 1969). 33 There were already doubts at the time whether the work was authentic. Gauti Kristmannsson, ‘Ossian in the North’, Translation and Literature, 22 (2013), pp. 361–82; Peter Graves, ‘Ossian in Sweden and Swedish-speaking Finland’, in Howard Gaskill (ed.), The Reception of Ossian in Europe (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004), pp. 198–208; Thorold cited on p. 202. Derek Fewster, ‘ “Braves step out of the night of the barrows”: Regenerating the heritage of early medieval Finland’, in Robert J. W. Evans  & Guy P. Marchal (eds.), The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 31–51 on the Finnish context of Kaleva. Michael Mac Craith, ‘ “We know all these poems”: The Irish Response to Ossian’, in Gaskill (ed.) 2004, chapter 4. 34 Andrew Lees & Lynn H. Lees, Cities and the Making of Modern Europe, 1750– 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), chapter 2, pp. 45–6, 254, 257; John M. McKenzie, ‘ “The second city of the empire”: Glasgow – imperial municipality’, in Felix Driver  & David Gilbert (eds.), Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003), chapter  12; Gill 1925, p.  176 et seq.; Andy Bielenberg, ‘The Irish economy 1815–1880’, in James Kelly (ed.), Cambridge History of Ireland: III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp.  189–90, 195–8; Henrik Meinander, A History of Finland, trans. T. Geddes (London: Hurst and Co., 2011), p.  73 et seq.; Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg 1830–1910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 28–32, 299–300; Clark 2009, p. 247. Peter Aronsson & Lizette Graden (eds.), Performing Nordic Heritage (London: Ashgate, 2013), p. 167 et seq. 35 Aronsson & Graden (eds.) 2013, p. 250 et seq., 260, 302; Thelle forthcoming. 36 Brian R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Europe 1750–2005 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp.  76–8; Thelle forthcoming; Lars Bruno, Jari Eloranta, Jari Ojala & Jaakko Pehkonen, ‘Road to unity? Nordic economic convergence in the long run’, Scandinavian Economic History Review (2022), pp. 1–18, has less to say about economic integration (I owe this reference to the kindness of Prof. Ojala). In 1920, Finland had limited trade with Nordic countries compared to that with Russia and Western Europe (Tilastokeskus, Suomen Tilastollinen Vuosikirja 1920 (Helsinki: Tilastokeskus, 1921), p. 128. 37 John Stewart, Nordic Classicism: Scandinavian Architecture 1910–1930 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 4, 6–7, 9, 11 et passim; Barbara M. Lane, National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Peter Clark (ed.), European Cities and Green Space 1850–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006),

Northern cities in European perspective 17 pp. 8–9, 20, 102, 130–41, 146–7, 180, 182, 190 et passim; Jennifer Mack & Justin S. Parscher, ‘The right to the garden’, in Peter Clark, Marjaana Niemi, & Catherina Nolin (eds.), Green Landscapes in the European City, 1750–2010 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017), pp. 89 et seq. I am grateful to Prof. Catherina Nolin for her advice on this last point. 38 See Chapter 15, Laura Kolbe, ‘Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspirations’, pp.  448; Yrjö Harvia, Suomen Kaupunkiliitto 1912–1937 (Helsinki: Kunnallinen keskustoimisto, 1938), chapter 5; Katri Lento, ‘The role of nature in the city: Green space in Helsinki’, in Peter Clark (ed.), The European City and Green Space 1850–2000 (Aldershot: Routledge, 2006), pp. 194–6. 39 Sven Hirn, Helsingin TB – Helsingfors TB 1950–2000 (Helsinki: Helsingin TB, 2003); https://tidningenelektrikern.se/2019/12/11/det-som-sker-i-vara-grannlander-kommer-ocksa-till-oss. I  owe these points to the kindness of Ms  Asta Manninen. 40 See Chapter  8, Mikkel Thelle: ‘Urban metabolism on the fringe of Europe’, p. 270, and Chapter 14, Marjatta Hietala: ‘Creative internationalism’, p. 422. 41 Henrik Meinander & James A. Mangan (eds.), The Nordic World: Sport in Society (London: Cass, 1998), esp. pp. 85–92; Henrik Stenius, Frivilligt – jämlikt – samfällt: Föreningsväsendets utveckling i Finland fram till 1900-talets början med speciell hänsyn till massorganisationsprincipens genombrott (Helsinki: Swedish Literature Society, 1987); Mary Hilson  & Andrew Newby, ‘Nordic and Scottish welfare models’, in John Bryden et  al. (eds.), Northern Neighbours: Scotland and Norway Since 1800 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), p. 216 et seq. 42 See Chapter 11, Rolf Hugoson, ‘Care, curiosity, and government’, p. 341. 43 McIlvanney & Ryan (eds.) 2005, pp. 251–2; Philip Ollerenshaw, ‘Business and industry’, in Alvin Jackson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp.  149–56, 162–3; Dermot Keogh et al. (eds.), The Lost Decade: Ireland in the 1950s (Cork: Mercier Press, 2004). 44 Tom Inglis, Global Ireland (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008), pp. 166–73; Ollerenshaw 2014, p. 163. 45 John Foster, ‘The twentieth century 1914–79’, in Rab A. Houston  & William J. Knox (eds.), The New Penguin History of Scotland (London: Penguin Books, 2001), pp.  465–78, 478 seq. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_ of_Scotland#International_trade Norway was Scotland’s fifth foreign trading partner with Ireland sixth and Denmark seventh. The Impact of International Students in Scotland: Scottish Government Response to the Migration Advisory Committee’s Consultation (Edinburgh: Scottish Government, 2018), pp. 8–9; Bryden et al. (eds.) 2015, pp. 2, 16, 140, 142, 223. 46 See Chapter 13, Lars Nilsson, ‘Phases of urbanisation’, p. 405. 47 See Chapter 17, Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg, ‘Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns’, p. 514. 48 https://transportgeography.org/wp-content/uploads/Map_Fortune-250_city. pdf. A notable exception is Dublin with many global tech companies having European headquarters there. 49 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking (Copenhagen); https:// wagecentre.com/immigration/country/the-happiest-cities-in-the-world (Helsinki, Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm in the top 10); www.arcadis.com/en/knowledgehub/perspectives/global/sustainable-cities-index (Oslo, Stockholm, Copenhagen).

18  Peter Clark Bibliography Aas, Steinar, ‘Urban “minor utopias” in the planning of Norwegian towns’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Andersson, Hans, ‘Urbanisation’, in Knut Helle (ed.), Cambridge History of Scandinavia: I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). www.arcadis.com/en/knowledge-hub/perspectives/global/sustainable-cities-index. Aronsson, Peter  & Lizette Graden (eds.), Performing Nordic Heritage (London: Ashgate, 2013). Berg Elmén, Anna  & Jennie Sjöholm, ‘Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish arctic towns’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Bielenberg, Andy, ‘The Irish economy 1815–1880’, in James Kelly (ed.), Cambridge History of Ireland: III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Blockmans, Wim, Voice: Political Participation in Europe Before the Great Revolutions (forthcoming). Bradley, John, ‘Rural boroughs in medieval Ireland’, in Jan Klapste (ed.), Ruralia III (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). Braudel, Fernand, La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen à l’Epoque de Philippe II (Paris: Colin, 1949). Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London: Collins, 1972–1973). Bro, Henning, ‘The Øresund metropolis’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Bruno, Lars, Jari Eloranta, Jari Ojala & Jaakko Pehkonen, ‘Road to unity? Nordic economic convergence in the long run’, Scandinavian Economic History Review (2022), pp. 1–18. Christensen, Søren Bitsch & Jørgen Mikkelsen (eds.), Danish Towns During Absolutism: Urbanisation and Urban Life 1660–1848 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2008). Clark, Peter (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain: II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Clark, Peter (ed.), European Cities and Green Space 1850–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006). Clark, Peter, European Cities and Towns 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Clark, Peter (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Clark, Peter, ‘Capital cities 1850–2020’, in Dorothee Brantz  & Gabor Sonkoly (eds.), Cambridge Urban History of Europe: III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2023/2024). Clarke, Howard B.  & Ruth Johnson (eds.), The Vikings in Ireland and Beyond (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2015). Clarke, Howard B. et al. (eds.), Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998). Concannon, Cavan W. & Lindsey A. Mazurek (eds.), Across the Corrupting Sea: Post-Braudelian Approaches to the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean (London: Routledge, 2016).

Northern cities in European perspective 19 Cowan, Alexander, Urban Europe 1500–1700 (London: Arnold, 1998). Crawford, William H., ‘The creation and evolution of small towns in Ulster in the 17th and 18th centuries’, in Peter Borsay & Lindsay Proudfoot (eds.), Provincial Towns in Early Modern England and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Dahlbäck, Göran, ‘The towns’, in Knut Helle (ed.), Cambridge History of Scandinavia: I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Davies, Mark, A Perambulating Paradox: British Travel Literature and the Image of Sweden c. 1770–1865 (Lund: Lund University Press, 2000). Degn, Ole, ‘Small towns in Denmark in the 16th and 17th centuries’, in Antoni Maczak & Chistopher Smout (eds.), Gründung und Bedeutung kleinerer Städte im nördlichen Europa der frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991). Dennison, E. Patricia  & Grant G. Simpson, ‘Scotland’, in David Palliser (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain: I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). de Vries, Jan, European Urbanization 1500–1800 (London: Methuen, 1984). Dollinger, Philippe, The German Hansa (London: Macmillan, 1970). Dorum, Knut (ed.), Hvem styrte Byene? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk/NOASP, Nordic Open Access Scholarly Publishing, 2022). Droste, Heiko, ‘Preface’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Dyer, Alan, ‘Small market towns 1540–1700’, in Peter Clark, (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain: II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Eliassen, Finn-Einar, ‘The mainstays of the urban fringe: Norwegian small towns 1500–1800’, in Peter Clark (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Eliassen, Finn-Einar et al. (eds.), Regional Integration in Early Modern Scandinavia (Odense: Odense University Press, 2001). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen#/media/File:Scoleus.jpg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Scotland#International_trade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Ranking(Copenhagen). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_town_defences_in_Scotland. Ericsson, Birgitta, ‘The foundation and function of small towns in Sweden in the early modern period’, in Antoni Maczak & Chistopher Smout (eds.), Gründung und Bedeutung kleinerer Städte im nördlichen Europa der frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991). Evans, Richard J., Death in Hamburg 1830–1910 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Fewster, Derek, ‘ “Braves step out of the night of the barrows”: Regenerating the heritage of early medieval Finland’, in Robert J. W. Evans  & Guy P. Marchal (eds.), The Uses of the Middle Ages in Modern European States (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). Fitzgerald, Patrick, ‘Scottish migration to Ireland in the 17th century’, in Alexia Grosjean  & Steve Murdoch (eds.), Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005).

20  Peter Clark Foster, John, ‘The twentieth century 1914–79’, in Rab A. Houston & William J. Knox (eds.), The New Penguin History of Scotland (London: Penguin Books, 2001). Gill, Conrad, The Rise of the Irish Linen Industry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925). Gillespie, Raymond, ‘Small towns in early modern Ireland’, in Peter Clark (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Glasscock, Robin E., ‘Land and people c. 1300’, in Art Cosgrove (ed.), A New History of Ireland: II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Glennie, Paul & Ian Whyte, ‘Towns in an agrarian economy 1540–1700’, in Peter Clark (ed.), Cambridge Urban History of Britain: II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Graham, Brian, ‘Urbanisation in Ireland during the high middle ages c. 1000–c. 1300’, in Terry Barry (ed.), A History of Settlement in Ireland (London: Routledge, 2000). Graham-Campbell, James & Gareth Williams (eds.), Silver Economy in the Viking Age (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2007). Graves, Peter, ‘Ossian in Sweden and Swedish-speaking Finland’, in Howard Gaskill (ed.), The Reception of Ossian in Europe (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004). Grosjean, Alexia  & Steve Murdoch, ‘The Scottish community in 17th-century Gothenburg’, in Alexia Grosjean & Steve Murdoch (eds.), Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Gustafsson, Sofia & Juha-Matti Granqvist, ‘A tale of two fortress towns’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Hadley, Dawn M. & Letty den Harkel (eds.), Everyday Life in Viking-Age Towns (Oxford: Oxbow, 2013). Hannikainen, Matti, ‘New towns?’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Harreld, Donald J. (ed.), A Companion to the Hanseatic League (Leiden: Brill, 2015). Harvia, Yrjö, Suomen Kaupunkiliitto 1912–1937 (Helsinki: Kunnallinen keskustoimisto, 1938). Helle, Knut (ed.), Cambridge History of Scandinavia: I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Hietala, Marjatta, ‘Creative internationalism’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Hilson, Mary  & Andrew Newby, ‘Nordic and Scottish welfare models’, in John Bryden et  al. (eds.), Northern Neighbours: Scotland and Norway Since 1800 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015). Hilson, Mary et al., Contesting Nordicness: From Scandinavianism to the Nordic Brand (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2021). Hirn, Sven, Helsingin TB  – Helsingfors TB 1950–2000 (Helsinki: Helsingin TB, 2003). Hohenberg, Paul M. & Lynn H. Lees, The Making of Urban Europe 1000–1950 (London: Harvard University Press, 1985).

Northern cities in European perspective 21 Hugoson, Rolf, ‘Care, curiosity and government’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). The Impact of International Students in Scotland: Scottish Government Response to the Migration Advisory Committee’s consultation (Edinburgh: Scottish Government, 2018). Inglis, Tom, Global Ireland (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008). Jalava, Marja  & Bo Stråth, ‘Scandinavia/Norden’, in Diana Mishkova  & Balazs Trencsenyi (eds.), European Regions and Boundaries: A  Conceptual History (New York: Berghahn, 2017). Johansen, Hans C., ‘Small towns in Denmark in the 18th century’, in Antoni Maczak & Chistopher Smout (eds.), Gründung und Bedeutung kleinerer Städte im nördlichen Europa der frühen Neuzeit (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1991). Johansen, Hans C., ‘Scandinavian urbanisation 1850–1970’, in Magnus Jerneck et al. (eds.), Different Paths to Modernity (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2005). Katajala, Kimmo et  al. (eds.), Viipuri: Historiallinen kaupunkikartasto: Historic Towns Atlas (Helsinki: Atlas Art, 2020). Kellas, James G., The Scottish Political System (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Keogh, Dermot et al. (eds.), The Lost Decade: Ireland in the 1950s (Cork: Mercier Press, 2004). Kepus, Kasper, ‘The economic-military position of Nyen’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Kolbe, Laura, ‘Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspirations’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Kouri, Erkki & Jens E Olesen (eds.), Cambridge History of Scandinavia: II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Kristmannsson, Gauti, ‘Ossian in the North’, Translation and Literature, 22 (2013). Laitinen, Riitta, Order, Materiality and Urban Space in the Early Modern Kingdom of Sweden (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017). Lamberg, Marko  & Mari Välimäki, ‘The urban network and new towns in the 16th to 18th centuries’, in Peter Clark & Marjaana Niemi (eds.), The Development of Finnish Cities and Towns (forthcoming). Lane, Barbara M., National Romanticism and Modern Architecture in Germany and the Scandinavian Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Lees, Andrew & Lynn H. Lees, Cities and the Making of Modern Europe, 1750– 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Lento, Katri, ‘The role of nature in the city: Green space in Helsinki’, in Peter Clark (ed.), The European City and Green Space 1850–2000 (Aldershot: Routledge, 2006). Lilja, Sven, ‘Small towns in the periphery: Population and economy of small towns in Sweden and Finland during the early modern period’, in Peter Clark (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Lynch, Michael, Edinburgh and the Reformation (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1981). Lythe, S. G. Edgar, The Economy of Scotland 1550–1625 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1960).

22  Peter Clark Mac Craith, Michael, ‘ “We know all these poems”: The Irish response to Ossian’, in Howard Gaskill (ed.), The Reception of Ossian in Europe (London: Thoemmes Continuum, 2004). Mack, Jennifer & Justin S. Parscher, ‘The right to the garden’, in Peter Clark, Marjaana Niemi & Catherina Nolin (eds.), Green Landscapes in the European City, 1750–2010 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). McElroy, Davis D., Scotland’s Age of Improvement (Pullman, Washington State: Washington State University Press, 1969). McIlvanney, Liam & Ray Ryan (eds.), Ireland and Scotland: Culture and Society 1700–2000 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005). McKenzie, John M., ‘ “The second city of the empire”: Glasgow – imperial municipality’, in Felix Driver & David Gilbert (eds.), Imperial Cities: Landscape, Display and Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003). Meinander, Henrik, A History of Finland (London: Hurst and Co., 2011). Meinander, Henrik & James A. Mangan (eds.), The Nordic World: Sport in Society (London: Cass, 1998). Meyer, Jean, Etudes sur les villes en Europe Occidentale: I (Paris: C.D.U.-S.E.D.E.S, 1983). Mishkova, Diana et  al. (eds.), “Regimes of Historicity” in South-Eastern and Northern Europe 1890–1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Mitchell, Brian R., International Historical Statistics: Europe 1750–2005 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Montes Bentura, Jaime, ‘Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Murdoch, Steve, ‘Community, commodity and commerce: The Stockholm-Scots in the 17th century’, in David Worthington (ed.), British and Irish Emigrants and Exiles in Europe, 1603–1688 (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Murdoch, Steve, ‘The Scots and early modern Scandinavia: A 2lst century review’, Northern Studies, 45 (2013). Murphy, Margaret, ‘The economy’, in Brendan Smith (ed.), The Cambridge History of Ireland: I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Nicholas, David, The Later Medieval City 1300–1500 (London: Longman, 1997). Nilsson, Lars, ‘Phases of urbanisation’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Nilsson, Lars & Sven Lilja (eds.), The Emergence of Towns: Archaeology and Early Urbanization in Non-Roman, North-West Europe (Stockholm: Municipal Institute, 1996). Ollerenshaw, Philip, ‘Business and industry’, in Alvin Jackson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Pedersen, Nina O., ‘Scottish immigration to Bergen in the 16th and 17th centuries’, in Alexia Grosjean & Steve Murdoch (eds.), Scottish Communities Abroad in the Early Modern Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Pinol, Jean-Luc (ed.), Histoire de l’Europe Urbaine (Paris: Seuil, 2003). Piterberg, Gabriel et al. (eds.), Braudel Revisited: The Mediterranean World 1600– 1800 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2010). Poussou, Jean-Pierre et al., Etudes sur les villes en Europe Occidentale: II (Paris: C.D.U.-S.E.D.E.S, 1983).

Northern cities in European perspective 23 Prak, Maarten, Citizens Without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World c. 1000–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). Råberg, Marianne, ‘Copenhagen and Stockholm’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Ringskou, Christian, ‘Skjern from within’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Sennefelt, Karin, ‘Ordering identification: Migrants, material culture and social bonds in Stockholm, 1650–1720’, in Hilde Greefs & Anne Winter (eds.), Migration Policies and Materialities of Identification in European Cities: Papers and Gates, 1500–1930s (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019). Simms, Anngret, ‘The Vikings in Ireland’, in Lars Nilsson & Sven Lilja (eds.), The Emergence of Towns: Archaeology and Early Urbanization in Non-Roman, North-West Europe (Stockholm: Municipal Institute, 1996). Simpson, Grant G. (ed.), Scotland and Scandinavia (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1990). Smas, Lukas, ‘Urbanisation: Nordic geographies of urbanisation’, in Julien Grunfelder et al. (eds.), State of the Nordic Region 2018 (Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, 2018). Smout, T. Christopher, Scottish Trade on the Eve of Union 1660–1707 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1963). Smout, T. Christopher (ed.), Scotland and Europe 1200–1850 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1986). Stadius, Peter, Southern Perspectives on the North: Legends, Stereotypes, Images and Models (Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2001). www.statista.com/statistics/1101883/largest-european-cities. Steiner, Henriette, The Emergence of a Modern City: Golden Age Copenhagen 1800–1850 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014). Stenius, Henrik, Frivilligt – jämlikt – samfällt: Föreningsväsendets utveckling i Finland fram till 1900-talets början med speciell hänsyn till massorganisationsprincipens genombrott (Helsinki: Swedish Literature Society, 1987). Stewart, John, Nordic Classicism: Scandinavian Architecture 1910–1930 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/346feed88b6542dc8da79f97a485a1a4. Symcox, Geoffrey, ‘Braudel and the Mediterranean city’, in Gabriel Piterberg et al. (eds.), Braudel Revisited: The Mediterranean World 1600–1800 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2010). Thelle, Mikkel, ‘Urban metabolism on the fringe of Europe’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Thelle, Mikkel, ‘Northern Europe’, in Dorothee Brantz & Gabor Sonkoly (eds.), Cambridge Urban History of Europe: III (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2023/2024). Tilastokeskus, Suomen Tilastollinen Vuosikirja 1920 (Helsinki: Tilastokeskus, 1921). https://tidningenelektrikern.se/2019/12/11/det-som-sker-i-vara-grannlander-kom mer-ocksa-till-oss. Tracy, James D. (ed.), City Walls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). https://transportgeography.org/wp-content/uploads/Map_Fortune-250_city.pdf.

24  Peter Clark https://wagecentre.com/immigration/country/the-happiest-cities-in-the-world. Wallace, Patrick F., ‘Ireland’s Viking towns’, in Anne-Christine Larsen (ed.), The Vikings in Ireland (Roskilde: Viking Ship Museum, 2001). Whyte, Ian D., Scotland Before the Industrial Revolution (London: Longman, 1995). Wubs-Mrozewicz, Justyna & Sofia Gustafsson, ‘The Hanseatic world and Scandinavia’, in Patrick Lantschner & Maarten Prak (eds.), Cambridge Urban History of Europe: II (forthcoming 2023/2024).

Part I

Cities and state-building in early modern empires

2 Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals in the early 17th century Visions and reality Marianne Råberg Introduction In the early 17th century, we had two kingdoms in Scandinavia that competed to be the greatest and the best. Denmark was the most prominent of the two in the beginning, but Sweden was soon on its way to become a great European power. Both countries had kings who were interested in developing the realm, designing plans for cities, new and old, and erecting buildings. Their regents were extraordinarily skilled in military science, and both were at war for long periods of time. They lived in a time when military disciplines were developing extensively in Europe. The art of town planning was closely linked to the art of fortification; indeed, the town planners were mostly fortification officers. Both kings had close contacts with the professional centre of this knowledge, which had moved from Italy to the Netherlands.1 It was also a time when plans for new, and often wider, fortification systems around many European cities were drafted: the old medieval walls could no longer resist new military technology. Sometimes, these plans took decades to be carried out; sometimes, they were never fulfilled. This chapter compares the intentions of the Danish and Swedish kings to develop their capitals. The analysis concerning Copenhagen is to a great extent founded on research by Björn Westerbeek Dahl and the analysis of Stockholm on the author’s own research and theory of a hypothetical general plan for the capital. Christian IV reigned Denmark for a long period from 1588 to 1648. His interest in the development of Danish cities is well known: we can mention plans for Christianstad (now in Sweden), Christiania (present-day Oslo, Norway), and Glückstadt (now in Germany). Copenhagen, his Jerusalem, developed remarkably rapidly during his time and many – though not all – of his projects were fulfilled. Much is known about his visions for the capital, but the ratified town plans are lost.2 DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-3

28  Marianne Råberg During Gustavus Adolphus’s much shorter reign (1611–1632), farreaching ideas of reforming the Swedish Realm were put forward. Due to wars, the realisation of these plans often dragged on. The development of cities was an important issue: an edict from the period says that all Swedish cities should be mapped to make plans for their improvement possible.3 The sources regarding planning ideas are, however, very limited: a number of maps and town plans for Swedish cities are preserved, but they are only an accidental part of what was once produced.4 In my opinion, the king’s ambition for the capital was not considerably lesser than that of his Danish colleague. One text from 1650 says that Gustavus Adolphus had a highly praised and distinguished plan for the capital, which he, due to the war actions, had not had the possibility to fulfil; however, no such plan has been preserved.5 A  plan, and also plans for different parts of the city during his reign, are referred to in other documents.6 Only three maps of Stockholm that can be dated to the reign of Gustavus Adolphus have been preserved; two of them are without plans for the future, and one shows the city core with a plan for rebuilding a burnt area.7 The hypothetical design of an overall plan for the capital from Gustavus Adolphus’s reign is based on contemporary ideas on how to build a modern capital and will be presented in the following chapter. It is obvious that both kings’ visions for their respective capitals centred on the military aspects: besides the defences, expansions of military institutions, industrial plants, harbours, and living quarters for soldiers were also important. Some of these establishments are preserved in Copenhagen; in Stockholm almost all the buildings that we know were erected by the crown during Gustavus Adolphus’s reign have been pulled down later.8 Copenhagen Christian IV began his building activities within and around the royal castle soon after his ascension to the throne in 1596. In connection with his coronation the main tower was heightened and provided with a spire with three crowns. The arsenal was enlarged to an impressive scale in 1598–1604: it surrounded a part of the harbour, and the south side housed provision stores. The canon hall had the reputation to be the longest vaulted room in Europe. A brewery was built between 1610 and 1618. In order to house the marines, the skipperboderne was built in the years 1614–1624. It was situated north of an anchor forge, which after 1619 was remodelled as a church for the seaman, Holmens Kirke. Commercial development, also important for the

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 29

Figure 2.1 Copenhagen in 1611. The arsenal is to the left. Source: Engraving by Jan Dircksen after a lost painting by van Wijck. Antikvarisk Topografisk Arkiv, Nationalmuseet, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

Danish king, was supported by the building of an exchange, a very long building with a remarkable tower, begun in 1620. The king acquired a large area outside the fortified city, where beginning in 1606, he laid out a park and erected a little royal country seat, Rosenborg, which later was enlarged. Renewal of the fortifications that surrounded the city took place between 1607 and 1624, with a pause during the Kalmar War. The medieval walls were replaced by new bastions, earth-walls and fossemoats in the ordinary late-16th-century Dutch and German manner; a plan may already have existed in 1600, when peasants were convened to work on improvements, and some widened the fortifications. The old city gates at Vesterport and Noerreport were preserved, but modernised and provided with new spires, and regulation works in the suburbs were undertaken.9 In the Swedish Military Archives we have a map of Copenhagen designed by Heinrich Thomé from 1624, the earliest preserved map showing the new fortification around the city. Thomé was in Swedish service in June 1624, and he may have drawn the map to give the Swedes information about the Danish capital.10 It is a work made in a hurry with many defects. In the 1610s, ideas of expanding the city more extensively came up. In 1617, on the island Amager a brand-new city – Christianshavn – was planned, initially intended for soldiers in the navy. Johan Sems, educated in Leiden, drafted this town plan the year after he was appointed engineer by the king.11 The plan shows a circular ring of bastions and a radial street pattern with a square and a church.

30  Marianne Råberg

Figure 2.2 Heinrich Thomé: Copenhagen 1624. Source: The Swedish National Archives, Military Archives (RA. Krigsarkivet) Utländska stads-och fästningsplaner, Köpenhamn nr 1, 0406/11/013/001.

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 31

Figure 2.3 Johan Sems: Christianshavn 1617. Source: Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library), Copenhagen KS. Christianshavn -o-1617/1.

But soon the intentions changed: now the city was intended for tradesmen with larger building plots. Thus, in December 1617, a new plan by Sems, where the radial streets were abandoned and the street-net had become a grid with a transversal channel and simpler fortifications, was accepted. The plan has not been preserved, but figure 2.4 may represent it.12 In 1620, Sems disappeared from Denmark. Even more expansions were planned. A  remarkable undated map, likely designed before the plans for Christianshavn were actualised and probably made by a person who was not fully professional, shows an expansion of the city out to ‘Soerne’ and a citadel with a royal castle in the north ‘Arcis Regiae nouae’ area. In the new areas, the street network is a grid with two large squares. No bastions surround the city, only a wall with towers.13 In 1625, Christian IV mentioned a citadel that he intended to build at St. Anna Bro. Jacob Rettich, appointed engineer by the king in 1626, was ordered to demarcate a new plan in a large area north of the old city in

32  Marianne Råberg

Figure 2.4 Christianshavn ca. 1636. Source: Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library), Copenhagen KS. Christianshavn-o-1636/1.

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 33

Figure 2.5 A plan for expansion of Copenhagen. Before 1616. Source: The Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet): Byarkiver, København: Plan over København (1610–1620).

1627. A plan, presumably designed by Rettig, who had left Copenhagen in the same year, survives from this time; called oktogonplanen, it has 16 streets radiating from a central plaza formed in the form of an octagon.14 A  rectangle, probably for a planned castle, is marked inside the citadel. Work started on the citadel and continued up to around 1640; later, however, it was given another form that was more effective for defence. Construction of the royal castle never started, although a wooden model is mentioned.15 This plan was the basis for the enlargement of the city in the 1630s, but the details were changed before long. In 1631, the construction of Nyboder, the row houses with apartments for the marines, began. The street network was later on largely replaced by a grid. In 1649, a new general plan for the capital was drawn. The plan was now initiated by the Council of the Realm. It is lost, but its shape is known thanks to a Swedish copy with notes on the Swedish siege, dated 1659.16

34  Marianne Råberg

Figure 2.6 Oktogonplanen. Source: Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library), Copenhagen HA, GKS 350 fol. supplement 4.

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 35

Figure 2.7 A detail of a map published as late as 1674. A project for a castle within the citadel is shown. Source: Peder Hansen Resen: Copenhagen 1674. Engraving. Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library), KS K-o-1674/1. Detail.

36  Marianne Råberg

Figure 2.8 Copenhagen 1649. Swedish copy from 1659. Source: The Swedish National Archives, Military Archives. (RA. Krigsarkivet). Sveriges krig 6:93.

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 37 Stockholm In 2009, a drawing of Stockholm from the west was discovered – the only image we have that illustrates the capital from the time of Gustavus Adolphus’s reign. We see a rather rural and not especially modern city, probably not the image that the Swedish king and his government wanted to be circulated over Europe.17 Gustavus Adolphus, 17  years younger than Christian, has not been especially well remembered as a builder: his activities in war have tended to overshadow any other interests. His deep interest in military science,

Figure 2.9 View over Stockholm from the west (1620s–1630s), detail. Source: Drawing. Stockholms stadsmuseum (City Museum of Stockholm), SSM 106701–0.

Figure 2.10 The oldest map of Stockholm. Before 1625. Source: Stockholms stadsarkiv (Stockholm City Archive), Handritade kartor 68.

38  Marianne Råberg

Figure 2.11 Heinrich Thomé: Stockholm 1626, South at the top. Source: The Swedish National Archives. Military Archives. (RA. Krigsarkivet). Handritade kartverk 12. Nr 17.

however, which included the art of fortification, is well known. This discipline was, as previously mentioned, strongly related to town planning, and even architecture, at this time. The fortification officers were the ones who planned the important cities; how to conquer and how to defend a city were really the central questions at that time.

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 39 The sources for our knowledge regarding what was thought and planned for the capital before the 1630s are limited.18 We know, however, that Swedish cities saw a huge amount of planning activity in the 1620s – orders to map and make plans were given, and new cities were founded.19 In my opinion, it would be very strange if plans for the future capital were not discussed as well. Only three maps of Stockholm from the 1620s have been preserved. The one called ‘the oldest map’ is a rather bad survey.20 We can see that the western part of the old city has not yet burnt, and thus the map can be dated to before 1625. In the suburbs we see the built-up areas with a pattern of roads. A fence demarcates the northern suburb, Norre förstaden, which since 1602 was a city with its own city-rights on land owned by the crown. In the late 1620s, this was one of Sweden’s largest towns, whose population likely exceeded 3,000 inhabitants. The southern suburb, Södermalm, belonged to Stockholm and had at least 2,000 inhabitants in 1627.21 There is also a map with a similar shape but without road networks.22 Another map is included in an atlas by the engineer Heinrich Thomé that was found in Poland in 1656.23 It shows a newer survey of the old city with a plan to rebuild the burnt area (though in reality it was not possible to refill the plots identically, and the rebuilding process went slowly). The map displays a remarkable lack of knowledge of the environment. The new planned area also meant that the old fortifications here would be demolished. On the eastern side, at Skeppsbron, the intention was to replace the town wall and its towers with a row of modern brick buildings, which would give an imposing view of the city when approaching from the Baltic.24 The realisation of this plan took a long time, and the king would ultimately not live to see any of these buildings. The suburbs were already overcrowded in 1621 due to a statement from the king.25 In spite of the plague that struck Stockholm in 1623, which made the king utter ‘See my poor destroyed Jerusalem’,26 the number of inhabitants, often engaged by the crown as boatsmen or workers in the military industries, soon increased again. To their number were added temporary large numbers of soldiers, sometimes several thousands. A new domestic tax, lilla tullen, was introduced in 1622. Fences were necessary, and in Stockholm they were in place by 1624.27 Both the cities were seen as a single entity. The fences created a distinctive border around what was seen as the capital. Besides the northern suburb, a large part of the southern suburb was also included. Some sort of planning clearly must have preceded the locations of the fences and the new toll gates, for whose shape the royal architect Kaspar Panten had been given responsibility.28 We know that a proposal for privileges for the northern suburb from 1624 contains instructions to build as has been demarcated.29 A  plan should therefore exist. In 1627, Norre förstaden received a stern warning concerning the disorder of the construction works.30 Building activities in the suburbs seem to have been chaotic and ungoverned and followed the old building pattern regardless of existing plans.

40  Marianne Råberg In 1630, Gustavus Adolphus selected a property for a town hall northeast of the main marketplace in the northern suburb, now Gustav Adolfs torg. Plans for a harbour east of the square were also mentioned.31 A large royal stable had already been under construction east of the square since 1622.32 A comprehensive redesign of an existing racecourse was realised in the first half of the 1620s.33 These enterprises ought to have been preceded by city planning. A  very large project was set forth in 1627: an arsenal covering almost the whole of Blasieholmen. Louis de Geer was contracted for the task in 1627, but the work was subsequently abandoned.34 In 1642, the arsenal’s location shifted to a royal estate on Ladugårdslandet (now Östermalm) where workshops and stores for military purposes had been situated from at least the early 1630s.35 A still-existing royal bakery was under construction at that time. Anders Bure made a survey of the surrounding area, which was then outside the northern suburb, in 1629.36 By 1639–1640, the territory was incorporated within the city: the plots ought mainly to have been at the disposal of the crown mariners. The area may have been planned and partly settled earlier.37 Initially, Gustavus Adolphus had plans to expand the royal castle. A new wing for offices was completed in 1624, but the following year he decided not to build more on the castle.38 There are several concordant statements from the time after the king’s death that indicate that he initiated plans for the future of the whole city, including the suburbs. One text says that he got the idea after the fire in 1625.39 Another source from 1650, mentioned earlier, says that Queen Christina had fulfilled her father’s ‘highly praised’ plan which he, due to his war activities, had not been able to realise himself and that the late king had plans for a ‘remarkable fortress and residence for the court’ on Södermalm.40 Orders from the regency government to the city concerning the realisation of a plan from 1637 and 1638 also refer to the late king (see later), as do very precise details in a trial from the year 1654.41 We can, moreover, observe that in 1668 the war collegium wrote that ‘as within this last thirty years as well as before, several projects for the fortification of Stockholm and the suburbs were made’.42 Nevertheless, very little was done in reality until after the king’s death. In the summer of 1636, Axel Oxenstierna came back to Stockholm after his martial engagement on the continent. As a member of the regency government, he immediately addressed the question of the capital’s development. It was decided that nothing should be built that ran counter to the late king’s plan.43 The quartermaster general, Olof Hansson Örnehuvud (who had travelled with the same boat back to Sweden as Oxenstierna), received a commission to draw a plan for the streets in the suburbs and the city, making them as broad as he could.44 It may indeed have been Örnehuvud’s own

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 41 insight that a revision of an existing plan was needed. In 1637 and 1638, instructions issued to the city administration of Stockholm, which since 1635 formed one entity with Norre förstaden, which had been forming into one entity since 1635, state that the plan originally made by the late king had now been revised and improved and that several instructions had been given earlier to follow that plan.45 The city council had published a decree in 1635 indicating that those who had decaying buildings or empty plots of land, even in the suburbs, must follow the plan that the late king had left the city.46 This way of realising a plan was of course not very efficient. From 1637 onwards, the realisation was to have been carried through with an iron hand: all buildings obstructing the new streets had to be demolished or moved to a new plot of land. The practical work was led by the engineer Anders Torstensson, who had the plan made by Örnehuvud in his possession. The plan that had been delivered to the city by Bure and Örnehuvud after the king’s death – an extract, probably without fortifications – was

Figure 2.12 Georg Hoffmann, a copy of a Swedish map from the 1640s with additions and locations marked out. North is to the left. Source: Det Kongelige Bibliotek (The Royal Library), Copenhagen. KS x-1967/99.

42  Marianne Råberg

Figure 2.13 Reconstruction of a geometrical system by the author founded on a simplified fair drawing of a map of Stockholm from around 1650. Source: Drawn by the author.

kept at Stockholm’s building board.47 These plans have not survived, but we have a number of maps from this time onwards.48 One of them is known only through three Danish copies with completions produced by Georg Hoffmann.49 I have used another map as the foundation for a geometrical analysis, which gives the clear impression that a general plan for the city had a geometrical construction as its basis. This technique was common in contemporary theoretical handbooks. You can see the focus on the castle tower, the equal distance to the fences, the streets positioned at right angles in the different districts, and so on. A possible citadel with a castle on the cliffs of Södermalm fits into this pattern well. In reality, however, this pattern was not carried out with such geometrical exactness: the planners naturally needed to take the

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 43

Figure 2.14 Stockholm in around 1650. Source: The National Land Survey of Sweden (Lantmäteristyrelsens arkiv) A 99–1:10. Reconstruction of the geometrical system added.

troublesome topography in consideration. This and most of the other contemporary maps are considerably inaccurate, even concerning the orientation of the streets. I  believe that something similar, built on a geometric pattern like this, was planned from the beginning. Exactly how – and to what extent the improvements were done before realisation – is of course not possible to ascertain.50 In my opinion, it is clear that a general plan for a capital city in the 17th century must have been designed with the possibilities for defending the city in mind.51 That a European capital should lack fortifications deliberately is almost unthinkable at this time. Nevertheless, fortifications were expensive and

44  Marianne Råberg

Figure 2.15 A theoretical fortification ring drawn by the author on a present-day map. The ring has 32 angles and a radius of 2,400 Swedish alnar (cubits) that might have been a basis for a plan. This ideal form is, however, not realisable due to topographical circumstances  – which the planners of course were aware of. A  plan should therefore contain certain irregularities, which the professional handbooks also gave advice about.

required a lot of labour. In wartime, both the money and the labour often were needed elsewhere. Sometimes, in the case of other cities, we can see instructions such as ‘design the plan so that the city is possible to be fortified in the future’.52 Axel Oxenstierna talked in 1643 about the need to be able to defend the capital and that permanent fortifications could be fulfilled within 10–20 years. Queen Christina, however, was not fond of fortifications.53 Nevertheless, some defence works were planned and built in the

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 45 1640s; these were located at the entrance to Stockholm from the south and at the cliff Fåfängan, both on Södermalm.54 A plan for a total fortification ring around the city was worked out during the reign of Charles X Gustav; the fortification ring is described in detail, but no drawing survives, and the ring was never built.55 Conclusion Both kings wanted to expand their respective city areas substantially. Christian IV made plans for Christianshavn in the 1610s and for the north part, ‘New Copenhagen’, in the 1620s. During Gustavus Adolphus’s reign, in the 1620s, Stockholm got new toll fences and city gates, and the city’s area was obviously intended to be enlarged substantially. A general plan for these improvements was probably worked out but has not been preserved. For both the cities, we lack not only sufficient planning material but also records regarding their resolution. The description of planning processes is much more difficult than describing what was executed in practice, as accounts and contracts are preserved more frequently at this stage. We know that at this time, when old, medieval town walls no longer could resist an attack; it was common for European cities to plan for a widened fortification ring, sometimes including suburbs with their own city rights, and even rural areas, and it seems obvious that the kings in both Denmark and Sweden were influenced by these ideas. Both kings had access to up-to-date knowledge of town planning, which was at this time a task for fortification experts. The experts Christian IV used for the planning of Copenhagen, Sems and Rettig, stayed in Danish service only very briefly, but we know that the king had other experts around him. In Stockholm, Anders Bure, who worked continuously with the king, had contact with Simon Stevin. Georg Ginther Kräill von Bemebergh, pupil to Stevin, published Tractatus geometricus & fortificationis in 1618 and dedicated it to Christian IV; the work was recognised by Dilich as one of the ten most important works for the development of fortifications.56 Christian IV probably contracted Kräill for the planning of Glückstadt.57 However, around 1620, we find Kräill in Swedish service; as of 1631, he was the first domestic quartermaster general, and he ought therefore to have had the main responsibility for planning the fortification of Swedish cities.58 Several other experts were recruited to Swedish service from the Netherlands, such as Adam Freitag, whose Architectura militaris nova et aucta (1630) is mentioned as one of the main works in the field. Bure’s most competent pupil, Olov Hansson Örnehuvud, was highly esteemed by the king and in 1634, appointed quartermaster general. Örnehuvud is, as mentioned earlier, presumably the author of the plan for Stockholm; Bure

46  Marianne Råberg

Figure 2.16 An illustration from Jacques Perret. Source: Des fortifications et artifices, architecture et perspective. Paris 1601. Krigsarkivets bibliotek.

had also had a role in the planning of Stockholm. It seems that Sweden had a more stable presence of expertise. Christian IV’s experts, Sems and Rettig, did not stay in Danish service for very long. We can also assume that the plans in both cities initially looked more theoretical and hewed closely to the contemporary handbooks, as in the case of the radial schemes in Copenhagen and that they were replaced later on by simpler grids that were more adapted to the local topography. In Copenhagen, the old city

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 47 remained essentially unaltered. In Stockholm, the western part of the city was changed due to fire and the eastern part due to the demolition of the city wall. But the city core, already in stone and densely built, was not a priority to change. Both kings were concerned with building modern, effective edifices for the military forces, and, in the case of Christian IV, creating housing for the marines was a particularly powerful motivation. I believe that such concerns were also important for Gustavus Adolphus: many of the inhabitants in the suburbs of Stockholm, especially in Norre förstaden, were connected to the navy and the industries of war. It is obvious that the responsibility for the defence of the city, which had previously rested with the city authorities to a much greater degree, had by this time been taken over by the Crown in both countries. Christian IV had erected a country seat. It is possible that Gustavus Adolphus also wanted one; indeed, his widow, Maria Eleonora, had planned a castle on Kungsholmen.59 A lost map, mentioned by Elers in 1801, shows a castle there.60 We must presume that each king wanted to know as much as possible about what happened in the other capital. Thomé’s map of Copenhagen and the Danish map of Stockholm are but two examples of this interest. The most spectacular conclusion is of course that both kings wanted to build new royal castles within citadels; both had presumably had those ideas during the 1620s but did not manage to fulfil them. But the ideas did not die, as evidenced by the Copenhagen map from 1674 and Charles X Gustav’s well-known project to build a castle on Södermalm. The greatest difference is that Christian IV had time to realise many of his plans while, following his early death, Gustavus Adolphus was succeeded by a more pragmatic government and, later, by his daughter Christina, whose interest in developing magnificent fortification works was apparently very limited. Maybe Jacques Perret’s ideal city from 1601 was one of Christian IV’s and Gustavus Adolphus’s sources of inspiration. This plan was well known and was surely familiar to both kings. Notes 1 Mauritz of Nassau’s (after 1618 of Orange) Quartermaster General Simon Stevin was a leading figure. The education at ‘Duytsche Mathematicque’, a school linked to the university in Leiden, was important. 2 A very thorough description of the planning of the capital in this time is given in Björn Westerbeek Dahl, Til Rigets forsvar og Byens gavn: Köbenhavns byplanlaeggning 1600–1728 (Copenhagen: Tusculanums forlag, 2017). My analysis of the Danish capital here is mainly based on this work. Christian IV’s building projects are treated in many architectural historic works, such as in Joakim

48  Marianne Råberg Skovgaard, A King’s Architecture: Christian IV and His Buildings (London: Evelyn, 1973). 3 Instruction for Anders Bure as General Mathematicus 1928. Samlingar I: Landtmäteri I (Stockholm, 1901) p. 5. 4 Most of them are published in Nils Ahlberg, Stadsgrundningar och planförändringar: Svensk stadsplanering 1521–1721 (Uppsala: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2005). Town plans ratified by the king are almost totally lost  – one exception is potentially a plan without fortification intended to be given to the city board in Jönköping – as are all productions of some of the most important professionals in this field, especially Anders Bure, who had a key role. 5 For Wolfgang Hartmann’s text on his view of Stockholm 1650, cf. Uppsala universitetsbibliotek (UUB), S 133 (Palmsköldska samlingen). 6 For instance, decrees to Stockholm city from the government 24/3 1637 and 20/3 1638. Karl Hildebrand & Arnold Bratt, Stockholms Stads Privilegiebref: 1423–1700, Utg. af Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet genom Karl Hildebrand och Arnold Bratt. 1900, Urkunder rörande Stockholms historia (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1900). This plan is also mentioned in a trial from 1654, Svea Hovrätts arkiv, Liber causarum 1654, nr 104, Riksarkivet [The Swedish National Archives] (SNA). Our better knowledge of contemporary plans for other important Swedish cities is often due to letters to the governors mentioning, for instance, that a fortification officer was sent to the city to lay out a new plan. Such information was not necessary in Stockholm. 7 Marianne Råberg, Visioner och verklighet I: En studie kring Stockholms 1600-talsstadsplan. II. Stockholmskartor från 1600-talet (Stockholm: Kommittén för Stockholmsforskning, 1987), nr 54 maps 1, 2 and 5. The third dated 1626 was found in Poland 1656 in a fortification officer’s album. 8 Tord O:son Nordberg has emphasised the king’s role as initiator of many building projects; his activities in this field have been disregarded in the shadow of his other undertakings. Tord O:son Nordberg, ‘Gustav II Adolf som byggherre’, Fornvännen, 26 (1931), pp. 94–131. 9 Björn Westerbeek Dahl, Til Rigets forsvar og Byens gavn: Köbenhavns byplanlaeggning 1600–1728: 1 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums forlag 2017), p. 43 seq. 10 Ibid., p. 91 seq; Råberg 1987, vol. I, p. 201 seq. 11 Westerbeek Dahl 2017, pp. 78–81. 12 Ibid., p. 82. 13 Ibid., pp. 95–8. 14 Ibid., pp. 142–7. 15 Ibid., pp. 102, 109. 16 Ibid., pp. 164–9. 17 Marianne Råberg, ‘En ny bild av Stockholm’, in Ulf Sörensen (ed.), Stockholm. Den gröna storstaden (Stockholm: Lind & Co, 2009), pp. 134–147. 18 Our sometimes-better knowledge of planning for other Swedish cities is often founded on written instructions to the local governors. In the capital this was not necessary. The national archives were partly reduced by the fire in the royal castle in 1697. The city archives are also incomplete, especially before 1636. 19 See for instance Ahlberg 2005 and Nils Ahlberg, Svensk stadsplanering: Arvet från stormaktstiden resurs i dagens stadsutveckling (Stockholm: Formas, 2012). 20 Råberg 1987, vol. II, p. 8.

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 49 21 In a taxation list from 1629 for Norre förstaden, around 3,000 people are registered. Peter Parsons estimates a population of around 7,000 individuals in the year 1634. Peter Parsons, ‘Ur Stockholms norra förstads historia 1602–35’ (unpublished licentiate degree paper, Stockholm University, 1967), p. 274; Kammararkivet, Städers acta, Stockholm, vol. 21, SNA. The number of inhabitants in the southern suburb is taken from a population census from 1627. 22 Råberg 1987, vol. II, p. 16. 23 Ibid., p. 10. 24 ‘Widh Siön Östann till skulle byggias store och sköne Huus, och alldeles efter dänn disseign som H.K.Mt behagade’ (1629 and 1630). Stockholm stads tänkeböcker från år 1592 utg. av Stockholms stadsarkiv, del 21, no. 8/7 1633 (Stockholm: Stockholms stadsarkiv, 2006), p. 164. 25 Hildebrand & Bratt, 1900, 24 June 1621, p. 178. 26 Peder Galt, Peder Galts depescher 1622–1624, Historiska handlingar. del 26, no. 1 (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1920), p. 91 (28/8 1623). 27 And Anton v. Stiernman, Alla riksdagars och mötens besluth . . . (Stockholm, 1728), pp. 902–3. 28 Nordberg 1931, p. 113. To build the fences around Norre förstaden, 300 soldiers were called up. RR 2/10 1622. One statement says that this fence was a stone wall (W. Hartman 1650). 29 Hildebrand & Bratt 1900, August 1624, p. 185. Brick houses were prescribed along broader streets, p. 200. 30 Kammarkollegiet, Registratur 12/1 1627, SNA. 31 Peter Parsons, ‘Ur Stockholms norra förstads historia 1602–35’ (unpublished licentiate degree paper, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 1967), p. 57. 32 Tord O:son Nordberg, ‘Stormaktstidens kungliga stallbyggnader och rännarbanor’, in Samfundet S:t Eriks årsbok 1940 (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1940), pp. 89–91. 33 Nordberg 1931, p. 114; Nordberg 1940, p. 103. The establishment is clearly documented on the earlier-mentioned drawing. 34 Lars Ericson, Det organiserade militärsamhällets framväxt i stormaktstidens Sverige: Artillerigården i Stockholm 1638–1700 (Stockholm: Armémuseum, 1985), p. 165. 35 Ibid., p. 167 seq. 36 G. E. Klemming, Ur en samlares anteckningar (Stockholm: G. E. Klemming, 1883), p. 87, 5/5 1629. 37 Hildebrand & Bratt 1900, 28/2 1639, pp. 241–3 and 5/3 1640, pp. 245–7. In the first letter it is said that the part of Ladugårdslandet that shall now be settled would be under the jurisdiction of Stockholm; the second letter mentions that the beginning of a settlement is already there. On a portrait of Queen Christina as a child in the royal palace from 1634, you can see a settlement on Ladugårdslandet in the background. Råberg I 1987, p. 84. 38 RR, SNA, 16/10 1625, fol. 581v. 39 Sigismund von Vogel, Stockholms stadz härkomst och beskrifvelse (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1911) p. 55. 40 Hartmann, UUB, S 133, pp. 184–6. 41 Svea Hovrätts arkiv, Liber Causarum Nr 104, SNA. 42 Krigskollegiet registratur 12/6 1668, Krigsarkivet, SNA. See also later, emphasis by the author.

50  Marianne Råberg 43 Severin Bergh, Svenska Riksrådets Protokoll 6, 1636 (Stockholm, 1891), 15/7, 16/7, 19/7 1636 (VI pp. 398, 406, 438); Samuel Hedar (ed.), Kammarkollegiets protokoll med bilagor 1: 1620–1638 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1934), 12/8 1636, p. 83. 44 Berg 1891, 20/8 1636 (VI, p. 565). 45 Hildebrand & Bratt, 1900, 24/3 1637, 20/3 1638. 46 Magnus Lagerström, Stockholms Stads-ordinantier, Påbud Och Publicationer. Med Flijt Hopsamlade, Och Til Almänn Nytta Och Tienst, Med Fulkomligit Orda-register Framgifne Af Magn. Lagerström. Jun. (Del 1), Första Del, Som Innehåller De äldre Ordinantier, Påbud Och Publicationer Til 1679 års Slut (Stockholm: Hartwig Gercken, 1731), pp. 25–6. 47 This work is possible to follow to a great extent through records preserved in the city archive, especially from the 1640s onwards. That Torstensson had the original plan made by Örnehuvud in his possession while the later plan was delivered to the city after the king’s death is mentioned in a trial from 1654. Svea Hovrätts arkiv, Liber Causarum nr 104, SNA. 48 The maps are all published in Råberg 1987, vol. II. 49 Björn Westerbeek Dahl, Tre stockholmkartor från 1650-talet (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1989), pp. 43–54. 50 I have treated this topic in my dissertation (1987) and in later articles (published in 2007, 2016 and 2018). The idea that a general plan was made during Gustavus Adolphus’s reign has, however, been brought into question; see Thomas Hall, Huvudstad i omvandling: Stockholms planering och utbyggnad under 700 år (Stockholm: Sveriges radios förlag, 1999), pp.  87–8; Ahlberg 2012, pp. 255–6. I find it difficult to be convinced by their arguments. They presume, for instance, that the aforementioned statements made some years after the king’s death are not reliable. I prefer to trust these sources and am convinced that the city council was well aware of earlier plans, not least through the brothers Anders, the king’s general mathematicus, and Olov Bure, lord mayor of Stockholm between 1621 and 1633. 51 Even this hypothesis has been questioned with reference to the king’s preference for aggressive wars outside of Swedish borders. I also find it difficult to agree in this case. There are several instances where contemporary plans for other Swedish cities smaller than Stockholm included a fortification ring, but not much of this planned defence was realised. The lack of fortifications around Stockholm aroused astonishment later in the 17th century. 52 For instance, concerning Helsinki. 53 Bergh 1891, 8/5 1643 (x, p. 127). In one of the queen’s maxims she says that fortifications prevent a town’s development; Gerhard Eimer, Die Stadtplanung im Schwedischen Ostseereich 1600–1715 (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1961), p. 210. 54 Stockholm stads huvudbok, Stockholms stadsarkiv 1644, p.  121; Stadskamrerens arkiv, Stockholms stadsarkiv, Riksrådsprot. 8/5, 17/5 1643 and 21/3 1644 (X, pp. 127, 158, 471). 55 Krigskollegiet, Krigsarkivet, SNA; Inkomna skrivelser 15/8 1660. Karl XI writes 1677: ‛Att Residentzstaden Stockholm effter Kongl.M:tz Sahl Herfaders glorwördigst I åminnelse sampt förra Konungars tanckar (italics are mine) måtte blifwa I  en god fortification och säkerheet satt’. The collegium had in 1668 written ‛hurusåsom utj desse nästförwekne trettijo åhren, så wähl som tillförende, åthskillige proiecter over Stockholms och dhes förstäders befästande gjorde warit;’ and wrote in 1677 fordom så många frambledne Konungar,-deropå hafwa rättat sine åthskillige tanckar och proiecter  – Men som denne ort, som framför andra

Copenhagen and Stockholm – two kings and their capitals 51 aldrabäst borde wara försäkrat, aldraminst ähr j acht tagen, och står fast till all tijderners omskifften, faarligheet och Discretion, blått och yppen. 56 Wilhelm Dilich, Peribologia oder Bericht von Vestungsgebewen (Frankfurt am Main: Johannem Wilhelmus Dilichium, 1640), p. 6. 57 Christian Boldt, ‘Georg Günther Kröll und die Festung Glückstadt – Eine Spurensuche’, in Christian Boldt (ed.), 400 Jahre Glückstadt: Festschrift der DetlefsenGesellschaft zum Stadtjubiläum (Detlefsen-Gesellschaft, 2017), pp.  19–20; Merten Kröncke, ‘Die Glückstädter Stadtplanung und Christian IV  – Neue Deutungen’, in Boldt 2017, pp. 57–70. 58 He owned an estate in Stockholm’s northern suburb from 1626, and presumably worked in the royal castle. Most of his plans are lost, and we don’t know much about his work. 59 Råberg I 1987, p. 76. 60 Johan Elers, Stockholm 1 (Stockholm: Nordström Junior, 1800), p. 21.

Bibliography Ahlberg, Nils, Stadsgrundningar och planförändringar: Svensk stadsplanering 1521–1721 (Uppsala: Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, 2005). Ahlberg, Nils, Svensk stadsplanering: Arvet från stormaktstiden resurs i dagens stadsutveckling (Stockholm: Formas, 2012). Bergh, Severin, Svenska Riksrådets Protokoll 6, 1636 (Stockholm, 1891). Boldt, Christian, ‘Georg Günther Kröll und die Festung Glückstadt – Eine Spurensuche’, in Christian Boldt (ed.), 400 Jahre Glückstadt: Festschrift der DetlefsenGesellschaft zum Stadtjubiläum (Norderstedt: Detlefsen-Gesellschaft, 2017). Dahl, Björn Westerbeek, ‘Tre stockholmkartor från 1650-talet’, Samfundet Sankt Eriks Årsbok, (1989), pp. 43–54. Dilich, Wilhelm, Peribologia oder Bericht von Vestungsgebewen (Frankfurt am Main: Johannem Wilhelmus Dilichium, 1640). Eimer, Gerhard, Die Stadtplanung im Schwedischen Ostseereich 1600–1715 (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1961). Elers, Johan, Stockholm 1 (Stockholm: Nordström Junior, 1800). Ericson, Lars, Det organiserade militärsamhällets framväxt i stormaktstidens Sverige: Artillerigården i Stockholm 1638–1700 (Stockholm: Artillerigården, 1985). Galt, Peder, Peder Galts depescher 1622–1624, Historiska handlingar. Del 26 No 1 (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1920). Hall, Thomas, Huvudstad i omvandling: Stockholms planering och utbyggnad under 700 år (Stockholm: Sveriges radios förlag, 1999). Hedar, Samuel (ed.), Kammarkollegiets protokoll med bilagor 1: 1620–1638 (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1934). Hildebrand, Karl & Arnold Bratt, Stockholms Stads Privilegiebref: 1423–1700, Utg. af Kungl. Humanistiska Vetenskapssamfundet genom Karl Hildebrand och Arnold Bratt. 1900, Urkunder rörande Stockholms historia (Stockholm, 1900). Klemming, G. E., Ur en samlares anteckningar (Stockholm: G. E. Klemming, 1883). Krigsarkivet, Riksarkivet (The Swedish National Archives), Stockholm.

52  Marianne Råberg Kröncke, Merten, ‘Die Glückstädter Stadtplanung und Christian IV – Neue Deutungen’, in Christian Boldt (ed.), 400 Jahre Glückstadt: Festschrift der DetlefsenGesellschaft zum Stadtjubiläum (Norderstedt: Detlefsen-Gesellschaft, 2017). Lagerström, Magnus, Stockholms Stads-ordinantier, Påbud Och Publicationer. Med Flijt Hopsamlade, Och Til Almänn Nytta Och Tienst, Med Fulkomligit Orda-register Framgifne Af Magn. Lagerström. Jun. (Del 1), Första Del, Som Innehåller De äldre Ordinantier, Påbud Och Publicationer Til 1679 års Slut (Stockholm: Hartwig Gercken, 1731). Nordberg, Tord O:son, ‘Gustav II Adolf som byggherre’, Fornvännen, 26 (1931). Nordberg, Tord O:son, ‘Stormaktstidens kungliga stallbyggnader och rännarbanor’, in Samfundet S:t Eriks årsbok 1940 (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1940). Parsons, Peter, ‘Ur Stockholms norra förstads historia 1602–35’ (unpublished licentiate degree paper, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 1967). Råberg, Marianne, Visioner och verklighet I: En studie kring Stockholms 1600talsstadsplan. II. Stockholmskartor från 1600-talet (Stockholm: Kommittén för Stockholmsforskning, 1987), nr 54. Råberg, Marianne, ‘Att planera för en huvudstad’, in Ulf Sörenson (ed.), Stockholm huvudstaden (Stockholm: Lind & Co, 2007), pp. 56–73. Råberg, Marianne, ‘En ny bild av Stockholm’, in Ulf Sörensen (ed.), Stockholm. Den gröna storstaden (Stockholm: Lind & Co, 2009), pp. 134–147. Råberg, Marianne, ‘Stadsbyggandet under 1600-talet. En militärvetenskaplig disciplin’, in Ann Pålsson (ed.), Invandrat och utvandrat: Stockholms stadsmiljö i ett internationellt perspektiv (Lund: Historiska media, 2016), pp. 47–57. Riksarkivet (The Swedish National Archives), Stockholm. Samlingar I: Landtmäteri I (Stockholm, 1901). Skovgaard, Joakim, A King’s Architecture: Christian IV and His Buildings (London: Evelyn, 1973). Stiernman, And Anton von, Alla riksdagars och mötens besluth . . . (Stockholm, 1728). Stockholm stads tänkeböcker från år 1592 utg. av Stockholms stadsarkiv, del 21 (Stockholm: Stockholms stadsarkiv, 2006). Stockholms stadsarkiv (The City Archive, Stockholm). Uppsala universitetsbibliotek (Uppsala University Library). von Vogel, Sigismund, Stockholms stadz härkomst och beskrifvelse (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1911). Westerbeek Dahl, Björn, Til Rigets forsvar og Byens gavn: Köbenhavns byplanlaeggning 1600–1728: 1 (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanums forlag, 2017).

3 Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict in Nyen Ingria’s nationality question Piret Lotman Ingria was added to the Kingdom of Sweden in 1617 as part of the Treaty of Stolbovo, which Sweden signed with Russia. The social structure of the freshly added province was the same as in Estonia and Livonia: nobles, soldiers, urban citizenry, clergy, peasantry, servants, craftsmen, and labourers. However, the ethnic and confessional composition of the population was entirely different. Although the indigenous population of the province consisted of Votes and Izhorians, who spoke Finno-Ugric languages, the region was culturally dominated by a Russian minority. Influenced by Russia, the Votes and Izhorians adopted Greek Catholicism. They were given Russian names upon their baptism, and both the Votes and the Izhorians identified themselves based on their confessional allegiance rather than their mother tongue.1 This was not the case with the Lutherans. For the 17th-century Lutherans, it was expected that their pastor would proselytise in their native language. For them, their Christianity was inextricably connected to linguistic affiliation, their identity derived from their mother tongue. After the proclamation of the peace treaty, Swedish Lutheran military and civil servants, clergy, schoolteachers, merchants, craftsmen, landowners, and peasants settled in Ingria. Finnish peasantry, looking for better living conditions, also migrated from Savo and Karelia.2 Nevertheless, the population density of the kingdom remained sparse, which led the government to attempt to attract new settlers, particularly merchants from Holland and Germany, using a favourable tax policy.3 Their advantageous economic position enabled the merchant class to become established in other spheres of urban life, including the ecclesiastical. The Lutheran communities were delineated by nationality, which is why relations between the different nationalities of this province are most clearly reflected in this sphere. While hearing Scripture in their native language brought people closer to understanding Christian thought, the practice separated Lutherans of different nationalities, as their community was determined by their native tongue. The lack of both Lutheran church buildings and clergymen DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-4

54  Piret Lotman in Ingria led to conflicts primarily between the Swedish and German communities, who were often forced to participate in the same church service or share the same church building. These conflicts found particularly acute expression in Ingria’s towns, Narva and Nyen. Narva and Alutaguse, which were previously part of the Governorate of Estonia, were added to Ingria in 1641 as part of the creation of Ingria’s superintendency.4 German merchants constituted the upper crust of Narva’s citizenry, with Swedish civil servants and Estonian, Finnish, and Russian labourers also living in the town. The Swedish government considered Narva to be a prospective merchant town and encouraged its development through the liberalisation of mercantile regulations for foreigners.5 Although Swedish laws were imposed after the signing of the Treaty of Stolbovo, the German citizenry of Narva retained their ancient ecclesiastical privileges, which were confirmed by Gustav II Adolph on 28 November 1617.6 This included granting the right of patronage, that is, the responsibility of the fiscal affairs of the Church along with the ordaining of clergymen, to the town’s magistrates and burgomasters instead of the Church but preserved the right of inspection for the bishop.7 The church building was shared between the German and Swedish communities of Narva, with the tensions between the two communities coming to a head when Narva became the residence of the superintendent, effectively making it an episcopal town. The superintendent, whose responsibility was to create a uniform ecclesiastical organisation in Ingria, acted according to Swedish church order8 and did not recognise the customs and special rights of the German community. The magistrate of the town, representing the German community, regarded the subjugation of the church to Swedish church laws as an attack on the national church tradition. In numerous letters of complaint, the magistrate accused the superintendent of partaking in activities directed against the ‘German nation’ while deploring the behavioural conduct of the Swedish community in their shared church building. The attempts at implementing Swedish church order in Narva, and in Ingria more broadly, has thus far been most thoroughly treated by Jaak Naber in his monograph Motsättingarnas Narva.9 By analysing the educational and ecclesiastical policies of the Swedish government in Ingria, the author concludes that its primary aim was the Swedification of the local German citizenry and, subsequently, the prevention of the Germanisation of the urban Swedes. Naber has also treated the ‘Swedification’ of the subjects of Ingria in his earlier works, albeit with the caveat that this process did not reach the socially lower classes.10 Therefore, Naber’s focus is on the opposition between the members of Narva’s German community and the representatives of Swedish secular and clerical power in Ingria. The attempt of the German community at Narva to retain their independence has both historical and juridical explanations. However, the German

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 55 citizenry across the rest of Ingria did not enjoy the same privileges as those community members in Narva. These other areas were the ones conquered from Russia, where Swedish law now applied. Both German and Swedish settlers were newcomers there. The subsequent chapter examines the relationships between German and Swedish communities in a town that did not have ancient privileges or ecclesiastical traditions, which was indeed created as a Swedish town according to Swedish laws, that is, in Nyen. Nyen’s Magistrate The plan to establish a new town in the delta of the Neva River proceeded from Sweden’s mercantile economic policy. The decision to develop a town in a location for prospective foreign trade was made by Gustav II Adolph in the summer of 1632.11 The town received its privileges from the regency government only ten years later on 20 September 1642. According to Swedish city law, administrative affairs and the solving of disputes fell under the jurisdiction of the magistrate and burgomasters, whose responsibilities and duties were delineated with privileges. The privileges did not concern the national make-up of the magistrate;12 however, the national make-up of the magistrate was determined in Sweden’s medieval city law. The concept of city law (Stadslagen) reached Sweden during the reign of Magnus IV along with German merchants. Swedish city law did indeed derive from German town privileges, especially Lubeck’s; it is from there that the terms ‘city council’ and ‘burgomaster’ derive. Stockholm’s city council consisted of six burgomasters and 30 councillors, of which half were German and half were Swedish, with nationality being determined by paternal heritage. The same ratio of nationalities was established in smaller cities with fewer councillors, such as Västerås, Arboga, Uppsala, Enköping, Sigtuna, and Strängnäs. The right of Germans to participate in Swedish urban governance was abolished in October 1471 after the Swedish victory over Denmark in the Battle of Brunkeberg.13 However, Swedish city law did not grant absolute power to the city council – all decisions needed to be coordinated with the local representative of royal power.14 In Nyen, too, the governor-general needed to be present at the election of town councillors and at the undertaking of important decisions. According to the decrees of 1660 and 1671, the magistrate had the right to decide over matters of urban construction, but the consent of the governor-general was needed in more important matters.15 The original inhabitants of Nyen, which was planned as a mercantile town, were Swedes and Finns. There were a few Russians in the town and even fewer Germans. Enn Küng’s data indicates that only ten Germans lived in Nyen at the beginning of the 1630s.16 In the 1640s, 41 Finns, 14 Germans (11 from Germany and three from the Baltic provinces), six

56  Piret Lotman Russians, and six Swedish citizens lived in Nyen.17 The Russo-Swedish War of 1656–1658 interrupted the development of the town, but its economic development in the later decades of the century made it attractive to foreigners.18 This influence did not derive from the power associated with urban governance. The number of councillors was not determined by privileges; in Nyen, their reputed number ranged from five to seven. The town had a single burgomaster until 1663, when a second burgomaster was appointed. In the following years the number of burgomasters could reach three; however, during 1684–1698 their number was reduced to two. According to the resolution of 1679, their elections were free for all citizens, but the members of the magistrate had to be of the Lutheran confession and preferably Swedish.19 Nationality played an important role in the election of burgomasters in that year. To avoid a situation in which both burgomasters were German, the governor-general did not confirm the candidate chosen by the town council and the citizenry but appointed the second burgomaster himself.20 In Narva, the magistrate stood up for the rights of the German community, whereas the situation was different in Nyen. At the time of the town’s foundation there was no German community or church, not even a pastor. The Church Dispute of Nyen The Lutheran church located in the southern part of the town was first mentioned in 1632 in relation to the appointment of Henricus Martin Fattebuur as the pastor of Nyen.21 Born in Vyborg, Fattebuur had studied in Rostock and Wittenberg, where he defended his master’s dissertation.22 He was thus able to communicate with all the members of his community in their native tongue, and he should also have sufficed for the town’s resident Germans. Even so, in the 1640s, the German residents of Nyen invited two German students to conduct home preaching and Bible lessons. For the pastor, this was unacceptable, and with the consent of the consistory23 the students were promptly exiled from the town.24 On the other hand, the current superintendent of Ingria, Heinrich Stahl (1641–1657), who was born in Tallinn and had also studied in Rostock and obtained his master’s degree at Wittenberg, thought the desire of the German citizens of Nyen for a German pastor well justified and asked the government to grant their request.25 The government resolution of 31 August 1646 replied that there was no need for German preachers, since few Germans inhabited the town. Two years later, after negotiations between the community and the governor-general and magistrate, a German preacher was invited to the town. The preacher in question was Daniel Brockhausen, who had earlier served as private tutor in the household of Governor-General Mörner.26 Born in

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 57 Hinterpommern, Daniel Brockhausen had studied in Greifswald and had also been a deacon for the German community at Narva.27 In Nyen, his duty was the administration of sacraments to the town’s Germans and any German merchants passing through the town, as well as preaching during Sunday evening church services and during the solemn mass, which was celebrated every third Sunday. In addition, he could also teach the children of nobles and merchants on a trivial level, in the case of private agreements. However, he was forbidden to interfere in the duties of other clergymen or to lay claim to their profit. Nevertheless, it is from this point onwards that the Germans began to perceive themselves as an independent community, with their next step being an application for a permit to build a church building for their own community. In this matter they were supported by superintendent Stahl, and in the king’s resolution of 6 September 1649, the Germans attained the right to build a church at their own expense – under the condition that the right of patronage would be retained by the government and that the community would remain under the supremacy of the consistory. However, under the pretence of fortification works, the governor-general delayed determining a suitable area for the German church for several years.28 The German community did not relent in their demands but instead applied for a permit from the consistory for Brockhausen to be appointed the pastor of the community. They did not want anyone else to be their shepherd; in six years, Brockhausen had earned their trust both as a preacher and as a person. As a compelling argument in favour of appointing him, they claimed that it helped to grow the German population of the town.29 This application was supported by the superintendent, even though the magistrate of the town annulled the vocation that the congregation had given to Brockhausen. The separation of the German community was especially vehemently opposed by Nyen’s new pastor, Erlandus Jonae Hiärne, who had even travelled to Stockholm without the consistory’s permission with an appeal to forbid preaching in German in Nyen.30 Despite the fact that Nyen’s governor-general also did not consider the demands of the German community justified, the first significant church conflict of Nyen concluded with a German victory. Regardless of the appeal by Erlandus Jonae, on 16 September 1653, the queen appointed Daniel Brockhausen the pastor for Nyen’s German community with a salary of a hundred riksdaler per year. On 19 October in the same year, the queen compelled GovernorGeneral Erik Stenbock to locate a suitable place for the establishment of their church and to supervise its construction.31 Despite his success, Brockhausen did not last even a full year in his new position. He was forced to leave Nyen due to conflict between the consistory and the superintendent that had supported his candidacy. While Heinrich Stahl thought it right that the German community be given a

58  Piret Lotman certain degree of independence, his unwavering demand was the adherence to Swedish church order and Swedish liturgy.32 Brockhausen ignored the orders of the superintendent, claiming that Nyen’s German community was not subject to the consistory. He also managed to start quarrels with several influential persons in Ingria, and his lifestyle was allegedly not suitable for a clergyman.33 Already by August 1654, the community had invited Michael Scholbach from Narva to replace the divested pastors.34 Scholbach, who had served the German community at Narva for 12 years, accepted the invitation, since the magistrate of Narva had not offered to him the position of senior pastor Scholbach had hoped he would.35 The work of a pastor in the small German community of Nyen was merely a substitute for him and did not compensate for the loss of the position as Narva’s senior pastor. Scholbach fled from the town in June 1656 during an attack from the Russians and subsequently left Ingria altogether; his clerical career continued in Estonia.36 Although displaced, Brockhausen did return to Nyen after the war, after having lived in locations across Ingria. The Ingria’s ecclesiastical leadership had in the spring of 1658 gone to Johannes Rudbeckius the Younger (1658–1663), who had been born in Västerås and had studied in Uppsala and Leipzig.37 Rudbeckius, who had acquainted himself with the situation in the province, deplored the decision of the preceding superintendent to give Nyen’s few Germans, who all spoke Swedish, the right to summon their own pastor and to construct their own church. The tensions between the Swedish superintendent and the German community were further heightened by the provocative behaviour of Brockhausen, who had been reinstated as pastor.38 Rudbeckius recalled Brockausen, who was then sent to Moloskowits, one of two rural German communities in Ingria.39 The despatch of Brockhausen to Moloskowits led to the conflict between himself and the superintendent growing to even greater proportions, as it now included the nobles who had summoned him there. The background of the opposition between the superintendent and the German community in Moloskowits can contribute to a better understanding of the attitudes that the German community of Nyen held towards the head of the Church of Sweden. The nobles who had summoned Brockhausen to be pastor at Moloskowits had appealed to the privilege given to them to do so:40 Gustav II Adolph had, in the capitulation act of 1622, given German landowners the right of patronage over their church.41 New German settlers constructed a stone church at Moloskowits in 1632, in which Balthasar Franck served as the pastor of the community in the period preceding the Russo-Swedish war.42 By the beginning of Johannes Rudbeckius’s tenure as superintendent, the majority of the community was composed of Finnish peasants and Swedish officials. According to Swedish custom, the community summoned the

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 59 new pastor. In 1661, Rudbeckius, the superintendent, ordained Georg Schroderus, who was from Turku and who spoke both Finnish and Swedish, as pastor at Moloskowits.43 The appointment of Schroderus, who allegedly did not speak German, was disputed by the knights of Ingria. According to them, peasants, who themselves belong to their masters, have no right of vocation. The privileges of the nobles encompass both the right to summon a pastor and the right to ordain him. For peasants, an assistant cleric who spoke Finnish would suffice.44 The right of patronage obviously did not extend to the Germans living in Nyen, but they were able to appeal to the permission given by Queen Christina to construct a separate church. It seemed that the German community could not share the same church with the Swedish simply because it would have been difficult to agree on the language in which the first church service ought to be given. A  joint church service was out of the question, since finding a pastor who spoke both Swedish and German perfectly proved, allegedly, to be impossible. Scripture could only be preached in pure and precise language. While many members of the German community did speak Swedish, along with Finnish, Russian, and Latvian, the expectation of knowing Swedish could not be imposed upon everyone. The privileges given to the German people in this town did not include a requirement to learn Swedish. The fear that the existence of two communities divergent in language would tear apart the citizenry of the town was allegedly baseless.45 The split between Ingria’s Swedish and German communities persisted for the duration of the century. It manifested itself more sharply during periods where a superintendent from Sweden was head of the local church; they attempted to homogenise the Lutheran Church of Ingria and subjugate the German communities to the demands of the consistory. In 1663, Johannes Rudbeckius became the pastor for the Swedish community in Falun. Only a year later, Petrus Brommius (1663–1664), his successor, became the Bishop of Vyborg.46 During the autumn of 1664, the senior pastor of the German community in Narva, Salomon Matthiae (1664– 1665), became the superintendent of Ingria. Born in Lüneburg, Matthiae had worked in Tartu for years as the professor at the Academia Gustaviana and had also served as the pastor for Tartu’s German community.47 Matthiae, however, was in poor health and unable to fulfil the duties of the superintendent: he died in Stettin already in 1665.48 However, the appointment of a German clergyman to be head of the church alarmed the Swedish clergy of Ingria. Since Rudbeckius had simultaneously been the pastor of the Swedish cathedral parish, their community had been left without a shepherd. The Swedish clerics did not consider a German superintendent assuming control of the position possible. Therefore, the Swedish community of Narva strongly requested that their pastor

60  Piret Lotman be found from within Sweden: a pastor who would honour their people by his training, lifestyle, and reputation. In addition to his pastoral duties and the educating of the youth in a Christian manner, he would need to assist the bedridden superintendent in the fulfilment of governmental orders and serve as his worthy successor, since not one of the clerics serving in Ingria would suffice.49 Nevertheless, Matthiae was succeeded as superintendent of Ingria by the Finnish professor of theology at the University of Turku, Abraham Thauvonius. Thauvonius, who had an academic background, was doubtless a dignified head of the church; indeed, he was so acclaimed as a scholar that he was offered the position of religious tutor to Charles XI. He nevertheless renounced that position and headed to Vyborg in 1672 to become a bishop.50 Erik Albogius was also appointed to be Ingria’s superintendent. Born in Sweden, but educated in Turku and Tartu, Albogius had already served in Ingria ever since the creation of the superintendency.51 As far as we know, neither of the superintendents developed any significant conflict with Hans Frisius, who was from Rostock and had been appointed the pastor of Nyen’s German community.52 According to Carl Öhlander, one reason was that the governors-general of Charles XI’s guardian government were not particularly interested in interfering with Ingria’s ecclesiastical life.53 During this period, the governors-general did not need to settle any significant disputes between the superintendents and the communities, but they did have to concern themselves with the practical aspects of ecclesiastical life. Both of Nyen’s churches had been destroyed during the RussoSwedish War (1656–1658). The new church for the Swedish community was completed in 1671, and it had to be shared with the German community again.54 The Germans did not find this sufficient, and they applied for a permission to construct a separate church. In this endeavour, they were supported by Simon Gründel Helmfeld, the governor-general of Ingria and Kexholm during the years 1659–1664 and 1668–1673. He claimed that the opportunity for merchants travelling through the town to take part in mass in their native tongue would serve the interest of Nyen’s mercantile development. The governor-general requested financial support for constructing the German church and to ensure equal opportunity of development for the communities.55 The German community did build their own church, but it was destroyed in 1681 in the same fire that devastated threequarters of the town.56 During the final quarter of the century, after Erik Albogius’s death in 1678, the possibility that the pastor of Narva’s German community would be appointed superintendent arose once again. One of the candidates for the new head of the church was Herbert Ulrich, who had arrived in Narva at the behest of Simon Gründel Helmfeld.57 According to the Swedish

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 61 clergy of Narva, Ulrich was not qualified to be superintendent already due to his character. They were even more concerned by the growing influence of Germans in Ingria’s ecclesiastical life. Contrary to the statute of the consistory, two German clergymen were members.58 The consistory, which had focused on internal problems, had lost its authority and agency. Joachim Meincke, pastor of Nyen’s German community, enjoyed a particularly poor reputation.59 In an appeal to Charles XI, Ingria’s clergymen asked for the restitution of the province to the Diocese of Vyborg. Since all of the Lutheran communities in Ingria, with the exception of Narva’s German community, were proficient in Swedish or Finnish, all of Ingria should have adhered to the Church Ordinance of 1571, according to the orders of the guardian government in 1668. This was not something that the German pastors had any intention of doing.60 The Swedish community of Narva would have preferred Petrus Bång, the professor of Theology at the University of Turku, as superintendent because ‘such an educated man is desperately needed in this country, where different nations and religions collide’.61 Their opinion was shared by Governor-General Jacob Johan Taube; under the pretence of Ulrich’s inability to speak Finnish, which was ‘the tongue of this land’, Taube found him to be unqualified to be head of the church and instead appointed Petrus Bång as superintendent (1678–1681).62 Born into a clerical family in Norrbo and having obtained a master’s degree at the University of Uppsala, Petrus Bång was keenly interested in the development of the Swedish church. A few years before, he had written Sweden’s first systematic history of the Church. In Ingria, he saw harmonising the ecclesiastical life of the overseas province to the church of his motherland as his mission.63 After having become acquainted with the conditions in Ingria, the new superintendent journeyed to Stockholm, where he presented to the king a memorial consisting of 37 proposals to improve the ecclesiastical life of the province.64 His proposals were based on the king’s resolution of 1673, which required all of Ingria’s inhabitants, both urban and rural, to adhere to the Swedish church order, church handbook, liturgy, and church discipline, and to obey the orders of the king in celebrating holidays and prayer days. One of Bång’s demands was that Germans had to forfeit their existing tradition of not celebrating Swedish church holidays. He reproached the German community of Nyen for their right of patronage over the church, which had been imposed arbitrarily. The community’s lack of participation in the visit of the superintendent was completely unacceptable. Bång’s firm position was that, despite the variety of nationalities present in Ingria, they were all subjects of His Majesty, and the magistrates of cities were also subject to the orders of the king.65 Nyen’s German community had claimed to be loyal to the king, but they had no intention of forfeiting their special rights, which had taken

62  Piret Lotman them a long time to achieve. The superintendent issued an accusation that the German community’s right of patronage was based on the royal resolution of 1671, of which Governor-General Helmfeld has informed the consistory. In the answer given by the town’s burgomaster and magistrate, the magistrate of the town reproached the superintendent for overstepping his jurisdiction and interfering in political affairs, which led to the violation of the rights of free citizens. The superintendent’s wish to examine the entire citizenry during a general visitation was interpreted by Nyen’s magistrate as a humiliation: the visitations were meant for the inspection of the religious knowledge of peasants, not urban citizens. They were not prejudiced towards the differences between nationalities; they had always strived towards the unity of the urban citizenry. However, this peripheral town could develop only by means of foreign merchants arriving from Germany or Holland, whose interests needed to be considered.66 Nyen’s magistrate’s objection to the superintendent’s accusations was signed in February 1681; already two months later, Petrus Bång had been appointed Bishop of Vyborg.67 According to Carl von Bonsdorff, the church dispute then resolved on its own.68 The reality was not so simple. It was not the ambitions of powerful individuals that clashed during Nyen’s church dispute; rather, it was the church–political and political–economic goals of the Swedish state. On the one hand, the devoutly religious Charles XI had set the goal of legitimising Sweden’s unitary national church. The plan was to replace the existing church law with a contemporary version that would homogenise the church practices of the kingdom and provide a theological basis for the absolute power of the king. The new church policy had a more practical orientation than the preceding one: the foundational motive of the 1686 church law was the welfare of the state. The welfare of the state could be guaranteed only by citizens abiding by pure faith and observing correct church ceremony. The good believer and the good citizen may as well have been synonymous.69 The contemporary ideas circulating in Sweden are observable in Petrus Bång’s plan to improve Ingria’s ecclesiastical life. He doubtless sought to participate in the contemporary affairs of Sweden’s ecclesiastical life because he was a candidate to become Sweden’s archbishop during the Synod of 3 August 1681.70 On the other hand, German merchants played an important role in the mercantile development of Ingria’s towns. The town had enjoyed prosperous growth during the post-war era: by the end of the century, the population of Nyen totalled 2,000. Nyen’s magistrate was dominated by Germans, and it was referred to as a German-Swedish mercantile town in literary correspondence.71 In the last decade of the 17th century, the city’s elite consisted of a dozen influential German families.72 The Germans’

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 63 strong position in the economic life of the town enabled them to advance their demands in church politics as well. Bång’s successor as Ingria’s superintendent, Johannes Gezelius the Younger (1681–1689), who had also stood as a candidate to become the Swedish archbishop, tried to unite the religious and mercantile interests of the state.73 However, he did not do this by means of concessions to the German urban community, from whom he relentlessly demanded adherence to Swedish church ceremony and church holidays, but instead by pursuing freedom of religion for members of the Anglican Church.74 The claim of Nyen’s German citizens that the foreign merchants stopping in the town needed access to church services in their mother tongue was true, but increasing amounts of English and Dutch ships stopped in the town during the closing decades of the century.75 England had signed mercantile treaties with Sweden in the second half of the 17th century, and English merchants were interested in attaining citizen rights in Swedish towns. In 1684, the governor-general of Ingria Jöran Sperling raised the idea of giving freedom of religion to the Anglican Church to improve mercantile conditions in Narva and Nyen.76 An exception for the Anglican Church in strictly Lutheran Sweden required a theological justification. Johannes Gezelius, who had studied at Cambridge and Oxford and who was therefore well acquainted with the Anglican Church conceded that its primary difference lay in the theology of the Eucharist, but as for church organisation, ceremony, and church holidays, the differences here were smaller than between the Swedish Lutheran Church and other Lutheran churches. The English attained the right to private church services in their native tongue only in Narva, on the condition that it be held in a private building, that no individuals of other nationalities take part, and that the clergy have sworn allegiance to the king of Sweden.77 According to the Swedish church law of 1686, all the subjects of the Swedish kingdom were required to adhere to Sweden’s established liturgy, including in matters that were not relevant to the subject of salvation (adiaphora); this also applied to those whose church services were conducted in other languages. It was forbidden for the preacher to say something vituperative about any foreign state or nation. All of Sweden’s church holidays, as well as days of repentance and prayer (Buß- und Bettag) also remained mandatory.78 In the question over the right of patronage, the church law drew an exception for the German community. According to the church law, the right of patronage was retained by those communities that had constructed and furnished the church either by themselves or by their ancestors. Earlier special privileges also continued to apply but on the condition that the bishop’s opinion would be taken into account. A  certain concession

64  Piret Lotman was also made in celebrating the Feast Days of the Apostles, during which one could partake in everyday activities after the church service. However, market days that fell on Sundays or church holidays had to be delayed.79 Ingria’s consistory signed the church law on 26 January 1688. Two days later, the estates and all communities swore allegiance to the king, and Gezelius, the superintendent, conducted a solemn sermon in Narva’s cathedral church, in which he compared Charles XI to King Solomon.80 To Nyen’s German community, the superintendent introduced the new church law on 4 October and the next day he examined the youth of the community.81 With the passing of the church law, Nyen’s church conflict had at least found a formal solution. The German community had attained the right of patronage and of conducting church services in their native tongue; the consistory could insist on the adherence to Swedish liturgy and church holidays. The church in the middle of the village had been completed. Literally in the middle: according to Carl von Bonsdorff, at the turn of the century German church was located at the northern portion of the town, near the market square and town hall.82 Nevertheless, the problems of Nyen’s German community did not stop with this. The right of patronage also included financial obligations, the fulfilment of which was difficult for a relatively small community and even proved impossible during the years of crop failure in the mid-1690s.83 The German community’s beneficial effect on the town’s mercantile life also did not provide them any relief. The granting of religious freedom to Calvinists was out of the question in Sweden, a fact that nevertheless did not hinder Dutch merchants from visiting Nyen’s harbour. Therefore, one cannot use economic interest or foreign conditions to explain the conflict between Nyen’s German community and the Swedish church authority. Nor can one use a theological explanation: the Swedish and German Lutheran churches shared the same creed and dogmatic theology. The particularly diverse social composition of Nyen exacerbated the ethnic conflicts common at the time.84 Kasper Kepsu describes several sharp conflicts between people of different nationalities and social backgrounds. Even if the conflict between people of different nationalities arose for other reasons, it still led to insults denigrating one’s nationality.85 German merchants were distinguished in the city by their higher social status, which aroused envy and contempt in other citizens.86 There were, however, more complicated reasons behind the long-lasting confrontation between the German church and the Swedish clergy and authorities. Possible Reasons for the Church Dispute The creation of Ingria’s superintendency served two purposes: first, to convert the Russian Orthodox population to Lutheranism, and second,

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 65 to create a cohesive Lutheran Church organisation. Until the end of the seventeenth century, the Swedish government identified Greek Orthodox Christians only by confession, without indicating their ethnic origin or mother tongue. Despite the efforts of Ingria’s first superintendent, the programme of conversion was unsuccessful. This was sharply felt during the Russo-Swedish war, during which Ingria’s Greek Orthodox population supported Russian forces. Since the religious confession of the population was closely related to loyalty to the state, the conversion of Greek Orthodox Christians was essential but required a new strategy. Already the first post-war Swedish superintendents Johannes Rudbeckius and Petrus Bång considered an emphasis on Finnish Orthodox Christians – Izhorians and Votes – and abandoned the attempt to convert ethnic Russians. Johannes Gezelius, upon being appointed Ingria’s superintendent in 1681, began to execute this plan in earnest.87 Gezelius was the first superintendent of Ingria who took interest in the language, customs, and origins of the Izhorians and the Votes. However, he does not use the word nation to describe them in his ethnographic descriptions. Governor-General Jöran Sperling simply refers to them as Izhorian and Votian peasants.88 Furthermore, the nobles of Ingria referred to the Finns of the Moloskowits community as peasants and thus unable to possess the right of vocation. In their correspondence, Germans never referred to the Finns using the word nation. For them, the Swedes, and of course the Germans, each constituted a nation. However, Ingria’s Finns were considered a distinct nation by Swedish officials and clerics. In their correspondence, the importance of the Finnish language in this province was repeatedly emphasised, and one of the arguments for appointing Johannes Gezelius as superintendent was his good command of the Finnish language.89 For Gezelius, as well as for the Swedish authorities, the ethnic identification of the Ingrian natives with their language had a specific purpose: to distinguish them from the Russian Orthodox and convert them to Lutheranism. At the same time, there is no evidence that Izhorians and Votes defined themselves by their mother tongues.90 Therefore, in addition to confessional, social, and linguistic identity, one can observe in the inhabitants of Ingria the acknowledgement of belonging to a nation, with regard to both themselves and others. What does ‘German nation’ – tyske nation – mean in the correspondence of Nyen’s citizens? The content of this term does not merely signify people who speak the German language; in the 17-century Kingdom of Sweden, nation was not determined by one’s language use. German, the private language of King Gustav II Adolph, was a permitted language in the Council of the State, and it was occasionally used in official correspondence.91 Furthermore, some correspondence between the magistrate and Nyen’s German community was written in Swedish; for instance, the German community’s

66  Piret Lotman vocation for Michael Scholbach or the letter of complaint over superintendent Petrus Bång.92 Multilingualism was commonplace in Ingria during Swedish dominion. The concept of ‘nation’ as it applies to Nyen’s Germans is most adequately characterised by Benedict Anderson’s definition: ‘it is an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign’.93 The sentiment of national belonging among Ingria’s Germans was not associated with territory; rather, it was the result of a shared past heritage, a highly sophisticated literary culture, and a feeling of confessional cohesion. The roots of this cohesion, based on a perception of their laws, customs, and influence, extended from the Late Middle Ages, as did the beginning of national delineations in the Western Church.94 According to the decision by the Council of Constance, the five territorial regions, which were called nations, had to be equally represented in the College of Cardinals. In addition to Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Denmark, Norway and Sweden were also counted as German nations.95 The transformation of an ethnic community into a nation in the narrower sense is related to the evolution of a literary language, the creation of a vernacular literature, and particularly to the translation of the Bible. The first complete Bible in German had already been printed in 1466; by the eve of the Reformation, in 1518, 14 editions of the complete Bible in German had been published.96 The Reformation further strengthened the cultural and religious meaning of a nation. Already in the early 16th century, humanists such as Konrad Celtius, Ulrich von Hutten, and Lorenz Fries had highlighted the purity, originality, and exceptionalism of the German language. Martin Luther elaborated on the idea: to him, German was comparable to Hebrew and Greek. The notion that the German language was supreme in its purity and culture did not disappear after the Thirty Years’ War.97 The important role that written language played in the spread of Lutheranism was also one of the reasons why the Reformation quickly gained the support of the urban citizenry. Lutheran texts were interesting and readable to educated citizens, and they rapidly created a strong bond between the citizenry and the church community.98 The German language, Luther, and the language of the Lutheran Church also nourished the perception of Nyen’s Germans of themselves as citizens of a nation; for them, Scripture in Swedish was unimaginable. The German community’s demand for the right of patronage and the confrontation between Ingria’s consistory and superintendent also traced their roots to the Reformation-era urban church. According to Swedish church order, the community had the right to summon a pastor in Ingria, but he needed to be examined and appointed by the superintendent.99 Although the Swedish Reformation was essentially Lutheran, its organisational development occurred in an independent fashion, preserving a

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 67 continuity with the Medieval church.100 The office of bishop formed the backbone of Swedish church organisation. The tradition of consecrating someone as bishop was not interrupted, nor was their rights to ordain. At the same time, superintendents in Germany were taking the place of Catholic bishops. The superintendent was appointed by the local ruler, whose agenda he also fulfilled. The governing of the church was thus transferred to secular powers.101 In Lutheran Germany, doctrine was distinguished from external church ordinance, with the responsibility for the latter resting with the secular powers.102 Theologically, this division was grounded in Luther’s treatment of three estates – economic, political, and clerical – each of which had its own purpose to fulfil. This model of governance was derived from the Fourth Commandment, which compelled a person to honour their parents, with the definition of parent encompassing not merely biological parents but all higher elements of the social hierarchy whose commands one had to obey. In this manner, the harmonious function of society was to be guaranteed, though this was of course predicated on the politics of secular power serving evangelical creed.103 In the cities, secular power was exercised by the urban government, that is, by the magistrate. Cities with a prominent German citizenry preserved their national identity even outside Germany proper for centuries by means of language and culture.104 In Livonia, the government of the church was transferred to urban magistrates following the decision taken at the diet of Volmar of 1533. The appointment and divestment of clerics, their vocational oversight and the solving of disputes, as well as the supervision of church order and liturgy, were henceforth transferred to the magistrate.105 The model of church governance widespread in Lutheran Germany reached Swedish towns thanks to the German merchants who lived in them. Influential merchant families sent their sons to mercantile towns on the shores of the Baltic, where they then became residents. However, their strong link with Lubeck and other German towns persisted.106 Thus, the Lutheran Church tradition was not interrupted: its continuity was considered important. The draft of Tallinn’s church order, completed in 1606, consistently refers to the old tradition – doing as our ‘commendable forefathers have always done’.107 That Nyen’s urban German citizens relied on the church culture of their town of origin is directly indicated by the arguments to defend their rights used in their correspondence. Thus, the German community justified their separation by claiming that it served the public interest (Gemeinnutz, bonum publicum).108 In contemporary German terminology, this meant that it served to achieve balance in a community of citizens.109 Nyen’s German community reproached Petrus Bång for interfering in affairs of a political nature (forum Politicum) and in doing so violating the rights of their ‘union of free citizens’ (status respublica).110 We observe here a conflation of

68  Piret Lotman the religious with the political that was typical of the early modern period and which created the basis for a formation of self-consciousness among the citizenry.111 Thus, it would be erroneous to assume that the struggle of Nyen’s German citizens to attain their ecclesiastical autonomy proceeded merely from personal ambition or conflicts with the superintendent. Their ideas for independence derived from the political culture of Lutheran German towns, the confidence for it from a feeling of national superiority. Both of Nyen’s German citizens’ disputes with Ingria’s consistory discussed here – that is, the right to preach in German and the right of patronage over the church – were solved in favour of the Germans by the church law of 1686. This was not the case with the conduct of the church service: here, Swedish liturgy remained mandatory, although it was called adiaphora – that is, theologically insignificant. The Swedish church service had retained more Catholic elements, namely the pastor wore mass vestments, songs were sung after readings from the epistles and the Gospel, the Eucharist was received on one’s knees, and the communion bread was round sacramental bread. On the other hand, German liturgy contained aspects of the Catholic mass that the Swedish one lacked.112 Unfortunately, no sources remain as to indicate if and how Nyen’s German community accepted Swedish church ceremony. How many German citizens lived in Nyen by the time of the church law’s implementation remains unknown, but they certainly did not constitute a numerical majority. If 116 students studied in the town’s Swedish school in 1687, the German school had half that number: 33 boys and 12 girls in 1697.113 Nevertheless, Nyen’s German community had managed to establish themselves and achieve a dominant position in the town by the end of the century.114 Of course, this situation was not unique to Nyen or even Ingria as a whole. In Vyborg also, for example, the Swedish dominated in the case of burgomasters and councillors in the 16th century, but the magistrate belonged to the Germans by the end of the following century.115 Conclusion In 1617, the ethnically and confessionally diverse Ingria was added to the Kingdom of Sweden. The different mother tongues did not divide the Russian Orthodox congregations, but they caused sharp conflicts among the Lutheran congregations. The confrontation between the confessionally Lutheran Swedish and German communities and the conflicts between the latter and Ingria’s consistory and superintendent are especially apparent in Ingria’s towns. In Narva and Nyen, these communities had to temporarily share church buildings and listen to the preaching of the same preacher.

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 69 Until the establishment of the Province of Ingria in 1641, the independent position of Narva’s German community, part of the Diocese of Estonia, from church government can be explained by means of historically developed traditions and privileges. Founded in 1632 and receiving town privileges in 1642, Nyen was established based on Swedish city law, and its Lutheran community was required to adhere to Sweden’s church order of 1571 and church handbook of 1614. One can presume that Henricus Fattebuur, who was Nyen’s first pastor and who had studied at Wittenberg and Rostock, spoke Finnish, Swedish, and German and was therefore able to fulfil his duties as shepherd for all of his church members. Despite this, Nyen’s German citizens applied for the right to summon a German preacher for themselves. The arrival of the German preacher, Daniel Brockhausen, marked the separation of the German community from Nyen’s Lutheran church. The next step was the accession of a German pastor and the construction of a church building. Sharp conflicts between the German community and Ingria’s church government arose during the tenure of vigorous Swedish superintendents who tried to create a uniform church in Ingria. The main cause for the conflicts that lasted for three-quarters of the century was the demands of the German community for the rights of patronage of the church and for church services in their mother tongue. Additional causes of tension were Swedish church holidays, which the German community did not celebrate, and differences in liturgy. In applying for clerical autonomy, Nyen’s German citizens appealed to the ancient traditions of the ‘German nation’ and the rights of the ‘union of free citizens’. Here, the ‘German nation’ was not a linguistic or ethnic category. The meaning behind this term must be found in the intertwining of religious and political culture that is characteristic of the early modern era. Secular and clerical powers were inseparable, both were mandated by God and had to function in accordance with each other. In post-Reformation urban Germany, this accordance was expressed by the magistrate church. The resident Germans of Nyen relied on the model of the magistrate church and considered it to be the only correct model. Germany was the cradle of the Lutheran Church, texts of theological significance were written in German; thus, the ‘German nation’ had a right to their church in the Kingdom of Sweden as well. Therefore, it was not individuals nor ethnic identities that clashed in Nyen but rather the diverging developments within the Lutheran Church. Additionally, Nyen’s church conflicts reflect the conflict of the political– economic goals of the Kingdom of Sweden with its plans to impose uniform church policy.

70  Piret Lotman Notes 1 Alvin Isberg, Svensk segregations-och konversionspolitik i Ingermanland 1617–1704 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1973), pp. 9–10. 2 For more information on migration in Ingria, see Kasper Kepsu, Den besvärliga provinsen: Reduktion, skattearrendering och bondeoroligheter i det svenska Ingermanland under slutet av 1600-talet (Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps Societen, 2014), pp. 50–5; Antti Kujala, Sweden’s Russian’s Lands, Ingria and Kexholm Province, 1617–ca. 1670: The Interaction of the Crown with Its New Subjects (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2016), p. 551. 3 Isberg 1973, p. 12. 4 Ibid., p. 39. 5 Enn Küng, Rootsi majanduspoliitika Narva kaubanduse küsimuses 17. sajandi teisel poolel (Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 2001), pp. 13–14. 6 Jaak Naber, Motsättningarnas Narva: Statlig svenskhetspolitik och tyskt lokalvälde i ett statsreglerat samhälle 1581–1704 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet 1995), p. 42. 7 Isberg 1973, pp. 72–3. 8 This refers to the church order of 1571 and the church handbook, which was printed in 1614. 9 Naber 1995. 10 Ibid., p. 147; Jaak Naber, Statlig svenskhetspolitik och tyskt lokalvälde i stormaktstidens Estland (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1994). 11 For more detail, see Enn Küng, ‘Die Entwicklung der Stadt Nyen im zweiten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Forschungen zur Baltischen Geschichte, 1 (2006), pp. 88–94. 12 Carl Gabriel von Bonsdorff, Nyen och Nyenskans (Helsingfors: Finska litteratur-sällskapets tryckeri, 1891), pp. 385, 459–61. 13 Karl Hegel, Städte und Gilden der germanischen Völker im Mittelalter, Erster Band (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1891), pp. 275–87; Dieter Strauch, Mittelalterliches Nordisches Recht: Eine Quellenkunde (Berlin: De Gruyter 2016), pp. 570–1; Åke Ohlmarks & Nils Erik Bæhrendtz, Svensk kulturhistoria: Svenska krönikan (Stockholm: Forum, 1993), p.  159. See also Sofia Gustafsson, who, though she considers German influence on Sweden’s medieval urban culture overrated, does not deny the influence of the German example on city organisation. Sofia Gustafsson, Svenska städer i medeltidens Europa (Stockholm: Stockholms universitet 2006), p. 222; Robert Sandberg, ‘The state and the integration of the towns of the provinces of the Swedish Baltic empire’, in Kekke Stadin (ed.), Baltic Towns and Their Inhabitants: Aspects on Early Modern Towns in the Baltic Area (Stockholm: Södertörns högskola, 2003), p. 12. 14 Sandberg 2003. 15 von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 398–9. 16 Küng 2006, p. 103. 17 Torsten G. Aminoff, ‘Borgerskapet i Narva och Nyen 1640’, in Genealogiska Samfundets i Finland årsskrift 41 (Lahti: Kirjapaino ja Sanomalehti Oy, 1979), p. 127. 18 Kasper Kepsu, ‘Stad och stat: Nyen, migrationen och borgarna under 1600-talets andra hälft’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 104:4 (2019), p. 466. 19 von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 399–404. 20 See Kepsu, ‘Stad och stat’, 2019, pp. 488–9. 21 П.Е. Сорокин, Ландскрона, Невское устье, Ниеншанц (С.-Пб: Литера, 2001), стр. 74.

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 71 22 Kyösti Väänänen, Herdaminne för Ingermanland (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1987), p. 185. 23 With the creation of Ingria’s superintendency, a clerical consistory was established, which was supervised by the superintendent and whose membership consisted of a Swedish, German, Finnish, and Russian pastor and the lecturer of theology of Narva’s trivial school, in addition a notary and translator. The consistory did not always function in full. For example, see also Väänänen 1987, pp. 18–19. 24 von Bonsdorff 1891, p. 440. 25 Swedish National Archives (SNA), Oxenstiernska samling E 732: H. Stahl’s letter to Axel Oxenstierna (8 October 1643). 26 von Bonsdorff 1891, p. 441. 27 Väänänen 1987, p. 162. 28 von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 441–2. 29 SNA, Livonica II:207 Request by Nyen’s German citizens (10 June 1653). 30 SNA, Oxenstiernska samling E 732; H. Stahl’s letter to Axel Oxenstierna (14 June 1653). 31 von Bonsdorff 1891, p. 442. 32 SNA, Livonica II:202. Heinrich Stahl, 22 September 1641. 33 SNA, Livonica II:483 (5 August 1663). 34 SNA, Livonica II:205. Letters between Michael Scholbach and Nyen’s German community, 9.08.1654. 35 SNA, Livonica II: 450. Scholbach’s letter (22 August 1656). 36 Väänänen 1987, p. 271. 37 Ibid., p. 264. 38 SNA, Livonica II:202, Johannes Rudbeckius (13 August 1661). 39 Väänänen 1987, pp. 162–3. 40 SNA, Livonica II:176 Letter from Ingria’s nobles to the governor-general (22 June 1663). 41 Carl Öhlander, Bidrag till kännedom om Ingermanlands historia och förvaltning I: 1617–1645 (Uppsala: H. Wretman, 1898), pp. 27–9. 42 Väänänen 1987, pp. 119–20. 43 Väänänen 1987, p. 273. 44 SNA, Livonica II: 176. Ingrian noblemen to Georg Schroderus (10 December  1663); SNA, Livonica II: 176 Ingrian noblemen to general-governor (10 December 1663). 45 SNA, Livonica II:483. Undated letter from the German community. 46 Väänänen 1987, p. 163. 47 Ibid., p. 236. 48 Ibid., pp. 236, 264. 49 SNA, Livonica II: 177. Narva’s Swedish community to the governor-general (19 November 1664). 50 Väänänen 1987, pp. 284–5. 51 Ibid., p. 145. 52 Ibid., p. 192; von Bonsdorff 1891, p. 444. 53 Carl Öhlander, Om den Svenska kyrkoreformationen uti Ingermanland: Ett bidrag till Svenska kyrkans historia åren 1617–1704 (Uppsala: Almquist  & Wicksell, 1907), p. 122. 54 Piret Lotman, ‘Unustatud uus linn’, in Tuna. Ajalookultuuri ajakiri (Tallinn: Rahvusarhiiv, March 2003), pp. 23–34, here p. 30. 55 Livonica II:207 Simon Gründel Helmfeldi undated letter.

72  Piret Lotman 56 Gerhard Eimer, Die Stadtplanung im Schwedischen Ostseereich 1600–1715 (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1961). 57 Väänänen 1987, pp. 290–1. 58 Livonica II:208 Justus Albogius’s undated letter to the Swedish Council of State (1678?). 59 Albin Simolin, Petrus Bång: En biografisk studie (Helsingfors: Finska kyrkohistoriska samfundet, 1912), pp. 72–3. 60 SNA, Livonica II:202. Undated letter of Ingria’s Swedish clerics, likely 1678. 61 SNA, Livonica II: 208. Letter of Narva’s Swedish Community. Undated (1678?). 62 Väänänen 1987, p. 291; Isberg 1973, p. 87. 63 Väänänen 1987, pp. 166–7. 64 Isberg 1973, p. 88. 65 Simolin 1912, p. 194; SNA, Livonica II: 202. Petrus Bång undated. 66 SNA, Livonica II:207. Nyen’s city council and magistrate (5 February 1681). 67 Väänänen 1987, p. 167. 68 von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 443–5. 69 Ingun Montgomery, Sveriges kyrkohistoria 4: Enhetskyrkans tid (Stockholm: Verbum i samarbete med Svenska kyrkans forskningsråd, 2002), pp. 140–5. 70 Sven Kjöllerström, Biskopstillsättningar i Sverige 1531–1951 (Lund: C.W.R. Gleerup, 1952), p. 129. 71 von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 55, 409. 72 Kasper Kepsu, ‘Kronans hantlangare eller självständiga elitborgare? Den tyskbördiga eliten i den svenska staden Nyen i slutet av 1600-talet’, in Knut Dørum (ed.), Hvem styrte byene? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2022), p. 138. 73 Isberg 1973, p. 129. 74 Lars Hagberg, ‘Johannes Gezelius d.y. och engelsmännens religionsfrihet i Narva 1684’, in Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 1948 Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift (Stockholm & Uppsala: Svenska kyrkohistoriska föreningen, 1948), p. 117. 75 Enn Küng, ‘Nyen (Nevanlinna) transiitkaubanduse keskusena Neeva jõe suudmealal 1632–1703’, Tuna, 2 (2003), p. 26. 76 Enn Küng, Anglikaani kogudus Narvas 17. sajandi lõpukümnenditel (Narva: Narva Muuseumi Toimetised, 2005), pp. 79–81. 77 Hagberg 1948, pp. 116–17. 78 Kirchengesetz und Ordnung, so der Großmächtige König und Herr Karl den Elfte der Schweden, Gothen und Wenden König etc. im Jahr 1686 hat verfassen und im Jahr 1687 im Druck ausgehen und publicieren lassen. Mit denen dazu gehörigen Ordnungen (Riga: Nöller, 1687), quoted after reprint (Mitau: Johann Friedrich Steffenhagen, 1796), pp. 70, 9–13. 79 Ibid., p. 42. 80 Johannes Gezelius, Hålt konungens ord okså för Gudz eedz skull [etc.] (Åbo: Johan Winter, 1688). 81 Johan Jacob Tengström, Gezelii de yngre minne (Helsingfors: G. O. Wasenius, 1833), pp. 61–2. 82 von Bonsdorff 1891, p. 394. 83 SNA, Livonica II:202 Joachim Wittstock to the King (19 December 1698). 84 von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 408–9. 85 Kasper Kepsu, ‘Niin kauaksi kuin Itämerta riittää: Merenkulku, laivanvarustus ja haaksirikot 1600-luvun lopun Nyenissä ja Narvassa’, in Mikko Huhtamies  & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Onnettomuus ja onni: Kauppalaivojen haaksirikot ja pelastustoiminta Itämerellä 1600–1800 luvulla (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2019), pp. 74, 80–2.

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 73 86 Kepsu, ‘Niin kauaksi kuin Itämerta riittää’, 2019, pp. 479–80; Mika Sivonen, ‘Sprache und Religion als Instrumente des Grenzgangs in Ingermanland im 17. Jahrhundert’, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 23 (2010), pp. 158–79. 87 For more details, see Pentti Laasonen, Vanhan ja uuden rajamaastossa: Johannes Gezelius nuorempi kulttuurivaikkutajana (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallissuuden Seura 2009), pp. 175–91; Kari Tarkiainen, Moskoviten: Sverige och Ryssland 1478–1721 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2017), pp. 256–63. 88 SNA, Livonica II:202. November–December  1684, Jöran Sperling’s resolution. Johannes Gezelius’s report. 89 Laasonen 2009, p. 173. 90 Mika Sivonen, ‘Sprache und Religion als Instrumente des Grenzgangs in Ingermanland im 17. Jahrhundert’, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 23:1 (2010), p. 163. For more on the self-determination of Ingria’s indigenous people, see Mika Sivonen, ‘Me inkerikot, vatjalaiset ja karjalaiset’, in Uskonnolinen integrointi ja ortodoksisen vähemmistön identiteetin rakentuminen Ruotsin Inkerissä 1680–1702 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2007). 91 Bo Andersson  & Raimo Raag (eds.), Från Nyens skans till nya Sverige: Språken i det Svenska riket under 1600-talet (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2012), pp. 137–9. 92 For example, see SNA Livonica II:207. Nyen’s magistrate and burgomaster (5 February 1681). 93 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London & New York: Verso, 1989), p. 15. 94 Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 107. 95 Hans Walter Krumwieder, Zur Entstehung des Landesherrlichen Kirchenregimentes in Kursachen und Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), p. 58. 96 Hastings 1999, pp. 12, 107–8. 97 Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 197. 98 Luise Schorn-Schütte, Die Reformation: Vorgeschichte, Verlauf, Wirkung (München: C. H. Beck, 2006), pp. 61–2. 99 SNA, Livonica II:644. Instruction for Heinrich Stahl. 100 Edvard Rhode, Studier i den svenska reformationstidens liturgiska tradition (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1917), p. 1. 101 Ragnar Askmark, Svensk prästutbildning fram till år 1700 (Stockholm: Svenska kyrkans diakonistyrelse, 1943), pp. 116–31. 102 Krumwieder 1967, pp. 64–5. 103 Luise Schorn-Schütte, ‘Obrigkeitskritik und Widerstandsrecht: Die politica Christiana als Legitimitätsgrundlage’, in Luise Schorn-Schütte (ed.), Aspekte der politischen Kommunikation im Europa des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft 39 (München: Oldenbourg, 2004), pp. 197–202. 104 Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 4–6. 105 Aleksi Lehtonen, Die Livländische Kirchenordnung des Johannes Gezelius (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1931), p. 10. 106 Kekke Stadin, ‘Seventeenth century Baltic merchants’, in Kekke Stadin (ed.), Baltic Towns and Their Inhabitants (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2003), p. 67.

74  Piret Lotman 107 Lea Kõiv, ‘Die Christliche Kirchenordnung der Stadt Reuall’, in Mati Laur & Karsten Brüggemann (eds.), Forschungen zur Baltischen Geschichte, 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2021). 108 SNA. Livonica II:483. An undated letter from the German community. 109 Schorn-Schütte 2004, p. 202. 110 SNA. Livonica II:207. Nyen’s magistrate and citizens (5 February 1681). 111 Schorn-Schütte 2004, pp. 203–4. 112 David Lindquist, ‘Uniformitetsproblemet i Stockholms tyska församling’, in Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift (Uppsala: Svenska kyrkohistoriska föreningen, 1956), pp. 108–13. 113 von Bonsdorff 1891, p. 448. 114 Ibid., p. 410. 115 Aino Halila, Suomen kaupunkien kunnalishallinto 1600-luvulla I: Historillisia tutkimuksia XXVIII (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura 1942), p. 210.

Bibliography Aminoff, Torsten G., ‘Borgerskapet i Narva och Nyen 1640’, in Genealogiska Samfundets i Finland årsskrift 41 (Helsinki: Suomen sukututkimusseura, 1979). Anderson, Benedict, Imagined communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London & New York: Verso, 1989). Andersson, Bo & Raimo Raag (eds.), Från Nyens skans till nya Sverige: Språken i det Svenska riket under 1600-talet (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 2012). Askmark, Ragnar, Svensk prästutbildning fram till år 1700 (Stockholm: Svenska kyrkans diakonistyrelse, 1943). Brubaker, Rogers, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 1992). Сорокин, П.Е., Ландскрона, Невское устье, Ниеншанц (С.-Пб: Литера, 2001). Eimer, Gerhard, Die Stadtplanung im Schwedischen Ostseereich 1600–1715 (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1961). Gezelius, Johannes, Hålt konungens ord okså för Gudz eedz skull [etc.] (Åbo: Johan Winter, 1688). Gustafsson, Sofia, Svenska städer i medeltidens Europa (Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, 2006). Hagberg, Lars, ‘Johannes Gezelius d.y. och engelsmännens religionsfrihet i Narva 1684’, in Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 1948 (Stockholm  & Uppsala: Almqvist  & Wiksell, 1948). Halila, Aino, Suomen kaupunkien kunnalishallinto 1600-luvulla I: Historillisia tutkimuksia XXVIII (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1942). Hastings, Adrian, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Hegel, Karl, Städte und Gilden der germanischen Völker im Mittelalter, Erster Band (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1891). Isberg, Alvin, Svensk segregations- och konversionspolitik i Ingermanland 1617– 1704 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1973). Kepsu, Kasper, Den besvärliga provinsen: Reduktion, skattearrendering och bondeoroligheter i det svenska Ingermanland under slutet av 1600-talet (Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps Societen, 2014).

Swedish laws and the German nation – the national conflict 75 Kepsu, Kasper, ‘Niin kauaksi kuin Itämerta riittää: Merenkulku, laivanvarustus ja haaksirikot 1600-luvun lopun Nyenissä ja Narvassa’, in Mikko Huhtamies  & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Onnettomuus ja onni: Kauppalaivojen haaksirikot ja pelastustoiminta Itämerellä 1600–1800 luvulla (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2019). Kepsu, Kasper, ‘Stad och stat: Nyen, migrationen och borgarna under 1600-talets andra hälft’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 104:4 (2019). Kepsu, Kasper, ‘Kronans hantlangare eller självständiga elitborgare? Den tyskbördiga eliten i den svenska staden Nyen i slutet av 1600-talet’, in Knut Dørum (ed.), Hvem styrte byene? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2022). Kirchengesetz und Ordnung, so der Großmächtige König und Herr Karl den Elfte der Schweden, Gothen und Wenden König etc. im Jahr 1686 hat verfassen und im Jahr 1687 im Druck ausgehen und publicieren lassen. Mit denen dazu gehörigen Ordnungen (Riga: Nöller, 1687). Kjöllerström, Sven, Biskopstillsättningar i Sverige 1531–1951 (Lund: C.W.R. Gleerup, 1952). Kõiv, Lea, ‘Die Christliche Kirchenordnung der Stadt Reuall’, in Mati Laur  & Karsten Brüggemann (eds.), Forschungen zur Baltischen Geschichte, 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2021). Krumwieder, Hans Walter, Zur Entstehung des Landesherrlichen Kirchenregimentes in Kursachen und Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967). Kujala, Antti, Sweden’s Russian’s Lands, Ingria and Kexholm Province, 1617–ca. 1670: The Interaction of the Crown with Its New Subjects (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2016). Küng, Enn, Rootsi majanduspoliitika Narva kaubanduse küsimuses 17. sajandi teisel poolel (Tartu: Eesti Ajalooarhiiv, 2001). Küng, Enn, ‘Nyen (Nevanlinna) transiitkaubanduse keskusena Neeva jõe suudmealal 1632–1703’, Tuna, 2 (2003). Küng, Enn, Anglikaani kogudus Narvas 17. Sajandi lõpukümnenditel (Narva: Narva Muuseumi Toimetised, 2005). Küng, Enn, ‘Die Entwicklung der Stadt Nyen im zweiten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts’, Forschungen zur Baltischen Geschichte, 1 (2006). Laasonen, Pentti, Vanhan ja uuden rajamaastossa: Johannes Gezelius nuorempi kulttuurivaikkutajana (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallissuuden Seura, 2009). Lehtonen, Aleksi, Die Livländische Kirchenordnung des Johannes Gezelius (Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1931). Lindquist, David, ‘Uniformitetsproblemet i Stockholms tyska församling’, in Kyrkohistorisk årsskrift 1956 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1956). Lotman, Piret, ‘Unustatud uus linn’, in Tuna. Ajalookultuuri ajakiri (Tallinn: Rahvusarhiiv, 2003), pp. 23–34. Montgomery, Ingun, Sveriges kyrkohistoria 4: Enhetskyrkans tid (Stockholm: Verbum i samarbete med Svenska kyrkans forskningsråd, 2002). Naber, Jaak, Statlig svenskhetspolitik och tyskt lokalvälde i stormaktstidens Estland (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1994). Naber, Jaak, Motsättningarnas Narva: Statlig svenskhetspolitik och tyskt lokalvälde i ett statsreglerat samhälle 1581–1704 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1995).

76  Piret Lotman Öhlander, Carl, Bidrag till kännedom om Ingermanlands historia och förvaltning I: 1617–1645 (Uppsala: H. Wretman, 1898). Öhlander, Carl, Om den Svenska kyrkoreformationen uti Ingermanland: Ett bidrag till Svenska kyrkans historia åren 1617–1704 (Uppsala: Almquist  & Wicksell, 1907). Ohlmarks, Åke & Nils Erik Bæhrendtz, Svensk kulturhistoria: Svenska krönikan (Stockholm: Forum, 1993). Rhode, Edvard, Studier i den svenska reformationstidens liturgiska tradition (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1917). Riksarkivet (The Swedish National Archives), Stockholm. Sandberg, Robert, ‘The state and the integration of the towns of the Provinces of the Swedish Baltic Empire’, in Kekke Stadin (ed.), Baltic Towns and Their Inhabitants: Aspects on Early Modern Towns in the Baltic Area (Stockholm: Södertörns högskola, 2003). Schorn-Schütte, Luise, Die Reformation: Vorgeschichte, Verlauf, Wirkung (München: C. H. Beck, 2006). Schorn-Schütte, Luise, ‘Obrigkeitskritik und Widerstandsrecht: Die politica Christiana als Legitimitätsgrundlage’, in Luise Schorn-Schütte (ed.), Aspekte der politischen Kommunikation im Europa des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts, Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft 39 (München: Oldenbourg, 2004). Simolin, Albin, Petrus Bång: En biografisk studie (Helsingfors: Finska kyrkohistoriska samfundet, 1912). Sivonen, Mika, ‘Me inkerikot, vatjalaiset ja karjalaiset’, in Uskonnolinen integrointi ja ortodoksisen vähemmistön identiteetin rakentuminen Ruotsin Inkerissä 1680–1702 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2007). Sivonen, Mika, ‘Sprache und Religion als Instrumente des Grenzgangs in Ingermanland im 17. Jahrhundert’, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 23:1 (2010). Smith, Anthony D., Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Stadin, Kekke, ‘Seventeenth Century Baltic Merchants’, in Kekke Stadin (ed.), Baltic Towns and Their Inhabitants (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2003). Strauch, Dieter, Mittelalterliches Nordisches Recht: Eine Quellenkunde (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). Tarkiainen, Kari, Moskoviten: Sverige och Ryssland 1478–1721 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2017). Tengström, Johan Jacob, Gezelii de yngre minne (Helsingfors: G. O. Wasenius, 1833). Väänänen, Kyösti, Herdaminne för Ingermanland (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1987). von Bonsdorff, Carl Gabriel, Nyen och Nyenskans (Helsingfors: Finska litteratursällskapets tryckeri, 1891).

4 The economic–military position of Nyen in the Swedish kingdom and the Baltic Sea area in the late 17th century Kasper Kepsu Nyen, situated at the far end of the Gulf of Finland, was the easternmost Swedish town in the 17th century. It was located in the province of Ingria on the eastern edge of the Swedish kingdom, in the same place as presentday Saint Petersburg. However, Nyen, also called Nyenskans and Skantz der Nie (fi. Nevanlinna), has almost been forgotten, and there are practically no traces left of the town. Similarly, historical research about Nyen is insufficient and outdated, even though some scientific articles concerning the town have been published during the last few years. Nevertheless, the basic work dealing with the history of Nyen is still Carl von Bonsdorff’s Nyen and Nyenskans from 1891.1 In this chapter, I will examine the economic and military role of Nyen in the Swedish kingdom and the Baltic Sea area from the mid-17th century to the last decades of that century, which was a period of great change in both Nyen and Ingria. I will address the relationship between state and town as well as the economic development of Nyen. Finally, I will try to analyse the town’s significance in general. This chapter is primarily based on correspondence material produced by different authorities. Correspondence between the council of Nyen, the Governor-General of Ingria, the Commerce College (Board of Commerce, Sw. Kommerskollegiet), and the king shed light on how the central government, as well as the town itself, saw the position of Nyen. The source material is mainly kept at The National Archives in Sweden; however, some of it has been printed. The quite extensive collection of maps and fortress plans regarding Nyen enables the examination of the potential military ambitions the crown had for the town. Foundation and early decades Nyen was located at the mouth of the river Okhta, close to where the river Neva empties into the Gulf of Finland. The location for the town was not selected randomly. It was an old trading place where the Swedes had built DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-5

78  Kasper Kepsu a fort called Landskrona already in 1300. The fortress of Nyenskans was built in 1611 during the Ingrian War (1610–1617) at the same location.2 The first decades of Nyen, the 1620s and 1630s, were not very successful, as the legal status of the town was not clear. In practice, the town was founded by a proclamation by Gustavus Adolphus in 1632; however, it wasn’t granted actual town privileges until a decade later, in 1642. The foundation of the town was connected to the so-called derivation policy, an economic programme of Gustavus Adolphus and Axel Oxenstierna, which aimed to move the routes for transit trade between Russia and Western Europe from Archangelsk to Nyen and Narva.3

Figure 4.1 The most important towns and waterways around Nyen. Source: Map drawn based on a map in the work Sveriges krig (1936).

The economic–military position of Nyen 79 This commercial aim was not unrealistic: both towns were located along the Baltic Sea, one of the most important and strategic trade routes in Europe. Indeed, a trade system where every town had its specific function had already existed in the Baltic Sea region during the Middle Ages. Transit trade between Russia and Western Europe was mainly based on grain and naval stores. The demand for timber and other naval stores was immense in Western Europe, particularly in the Netherlands. Timber, tar, hemp, and iron from the Baltic Sea region were crucial in building and maintaining the enormous merchant and war fleets.4 The derivation policy was connected to Swedish political aspirations. Commercially, Sweden’s ultimate aim was to control trade in the Baltic Sea, which triggered many wars during the 16th and 17th centuries. Sweden aimed to establish a strong state-protected trade, which in turn would generate income to the state.5 Thus, Ingria was an important buffer zone for Sweden against Russia, and the fortress of Nyenskans had an important position in Swedish military strategy. Consequently, commercial and strategic aims went hand in hand.6 According to the Swedish commercial plan, the central government wanted to steer the trading routes from Russia to Western Europe through the Ingrian towns of Nyen and Narva and away from the trading routes of Archangelsk and the White Sea. Conditions for trade were improved through different kinds of tax and customs relief measures. The eastern part of the Baltic functionally evolved into a free trade zone in 1648, as Nyen, Narva, and Reval constituted a common customs region with low customs tariffs.7 Interestingly, the derivation policy also benefitted the personal economy of those members of the Swedish high nobility who possessed large land grants in the Eastern Baltic provinces. Manors in Estonia, Livonia, and to some extent in Ingria, produced a large surplus of grain, one of the most important commodities in Baltic trade. A more intensive trade through the Baltic Sea would boost the market for manorial products and consequently also boost the manorial economy on the land grants of the high nobility. At the same time, land grants had deprived the state of a great deal of its tax income, which meant that the state had to rely more on taxing trade.8 The manorial aspect, highlighted by Per Nyström, is not very visible in recent studies, but it is a good complement to strictly fiscal aims. After all, the power of the Swedish high nobility peaked during the years when the derivation policy was in force. Nyen became one of the leading centres of Russian transit trade in the Baltic, even though the commercial aims of the Swedish government were not entirely fulfilled in the mid-17th century. Nyen was important for trade between north-western Russia and Stockholm, but it did not attract a lot of foreign merchants with the capital to initiate transit trade on a large

80  Kasper Kepsu scale.9 The first boom of Nyen ended abruptly with the Russo-Swedish War of 1656–1658 (part of the Second Northern War). Nyen, and, largely, Ingria as a whole, were completely destroyed during the war. This war was a major setback for the whole province. In Finnish historiography, this war is called ‘the rupture war’. Rupture refers to a crack or split, which describes the consequences of the war very well.10 Consequently, commercial activity in Nyen was quite low during the 1660s and 1670s. Trade with Russia was plagued by problems almost constantly. Russo-Swedish agreements in 1661 and 1666, as well as a Swedish diplomatic mission which was sent to Russia in 1673, did not have the effect the Swedish central government hoped for. Neither did numerous memorandums that Swedish commercial institutions and experts wrote in order to boost trade. The most obvious reason was that Russia was not genuinely interested in turning trade flows to the Baltic Sea. Instead, it favoured the Archangelsk route. Tolls in Russia were kept high, and foreign merchants faced many kinds of difficulties and restrictions.11 To top it all off, Nyen was again largely destroyed in a fire in 1681. And yet, the Swedes still had high expectations of Nyen (and Narva). Above all, the location of these towns was excellent. Navigable waterways, which led from Nyen to Karelia, eastern Finland, and north-western Russia, not least Novgorod, connected large inland areas to the Baltic Sea. From Nyen and Narva it was possible to reach the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, even though portages had to be used to reach the Volga and Dnepr river systems.12 The burghers and the Crown Nyen was, in a way, in a grey area compared to other towns in the Swedish kingdom. It followed Swedish town law but was not represented in the Swedish Diet. Consequently, Nyen, like Narva, was not controlled as closely as towns in the core areas but was controlled more strictly than, for example, Reval or Riga.13 It was typical for Swedish provinces that they were ruled in various ways, which aligns with the concept of the conglomerate state.14 Regarding commercial rights, Nyen had a position similar to Reval and Narva. Above all, the towns followed a similar tax policy. According to Kari and Ülle Tarkiainen, the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland constituted an economic free zone based on transit trade.15 Nyen was inhabited by different ethnic groups; specifically, Finns, Swedes, Ingrians, Karelians, Russians, and Germans. In addition, the townsmen included a few Dutch and British burghers. It is estimated that the town had between 2,000 and 3,000 inhabitants in total. The multicultural character of the town was a result of the location of Nyen, and Ingria, at the crossroads of Western and Eastern culture.16 The Dutch burghers were a noticeable group in the town. They were mostly shipmasters but

The economic–military position of Nyen 81 were also technological experts in sawmills and shipbuilding. Craftsmen, petty burghers, and servants, in turn, migrated mostly from south-eastern Finland.17 The most powerful burghers were of German or Baltic-German descent and were tied together closely through marriage. They had an important position as mediators in the transit trade between the merchant houses in Western Europe and the raw materials from north-eastern Europe. They had commercial experience, good transnational networks, and they could communicate with the Dutch shipmasters and merchant houses in Amsterdam, not least through Middle Low German. Migration sped up in the 1680s and 1690s, when German merchants and craftsmen arrived from Lübeck and other parts of northern Germany. Some Germans, or ‘BalticGermans’, moved from Reval. Court cases show that migrants to Nyen maintained contact with their hometowns.18 An interesting question is whether Nyen should be considered a Swedish, Finnish, German, or Baltic town. The biggest proportion of the population were probably ethnic Finns while the most influential group had a German background. At the same time, the town was a part of the Swedish kingdom, and the administration and jurisdiction were Swedish. Militarily, Nyen was important to Sweden, but regarding trade, it largely served Dutch interests. The Crown’s commercial policy, in turn, treated Nyen like other Baltic port towns in the Eastern Baltic provinces, above all Narva and Reval. In addition, Nyen was situated at the crossroads of the Baltic (Livonian), Finnish–Swedish, Karelian, and Russian cultural spheres. The Swedish and Finnish impact was strong, above all through the Swedish town law, so it is not unjustified to consider the town Swedish.19 However, it is more appropriate to regard Nyen as a border town characterised by different cultures and ethnic groups. For the central government in Sweden, the ethnic heterogeneity of Nyen was problematic, as the Crown tried to promote cultural uniformity within the kingdom. However, it seems that Finns were not a problem. Lutheran Finns in particular were actually seen as an integrating element. The attitude was different towards German and Dutch migrants. In order to restrict the German influence, the Crown implemented a kind of ‘Swedification’ policy in the Ingrian towns. Swedification is a concept used by the Estonian scholar Jaak Naber; it was connected to an integration and centralisation policy that Charles XI launched in the 1680s towards all Swedish provinces to integrate them more thoroughly into the realm. In Ingria, it consisted mainly of administrative reforms, changes in tax collection, and a conversion policy aimed at the orthodox population. These measures were taken to strengthen Sweden’s financial situation and above all to bolster its military strength in Ingria. Trade was also seen as a way to improve the fiscal situation.20

82  Kasper Kepsu The integration policy in Narva, where the German burghers had a more powerful position than their counterparts in Nyen, has been studied thoroughly by Naber. However, the integration policy also affected Nyen. Reforms in city administration were implemented in both towns. Half of the members in the city council were supposed to be ‘Swedes’, and the Swedish language was to be used during court sessions. Similar quotas were also used in some other towns in the Swedish kingdom.21 In Nyen, this decree was first enforced in 1687 when a new judicial burgomaster (Sw. justitieborgmästare) was to be elected. The magistrate proposed Balthasar Lado, a veteran city councillor. However, since the second burgomaster in the town, Herman Hartz, was, like Lado, of German descent, Gabriel Hinnel was elected instead of the doubtlessly competent Lado. Hinnel was of Swedish origin and probably also had knowledge of Finnish. At the same time, Governor-General Göran Sperling also got his right-hand man in administration, crown bailiff Lars Malm, elected to the magistrate. These changes led to a significant increase in the Crown’s control over Nyen.22 Because of them, the German elite could not dominate the city council; it became more practical to cooperate with the Crown.23 Other measures were implemented as well. In 1688, for example, a ceremonial oath of loyalty deepened the allegiance of all burghers to the king. The integration policy also included cultural homogenisation, such as through church seating. In the 1680s, there were many cases of disturbance and disorder in church when burghers and their wives argued about who had the most dignified seats. Burghers generally followed a German custom in Nyen, where wives were seated according to the length of their marriage. In core areas in Sweden, however, the social status of the husband was the deciding factor. The problem was eventually discussed in the magistrate in 1689, when a strict order arrived from Governor-General Sperling. The city councillors proved loyal to the central government, and the disputes ended.24 The cases mentioned earlier highlight the increase in Crown control. Moreover, they indicate that the Swedish Crown had an ambivalent attitude towards immigration. Foreign merchants and different kinds of specialists were encouraged to settle in Swedish cities through tactics like tax exemptions. Another important reason for this attitude was the possibility to gain credit through foreign merchants, which was needed for financing the never-ending wars. At the same time, Nyen’s strategic location close to the border resulted in a policy where the Crown restricted the political power of immigrants and strove, to a degree, for cultural uniformity. However, if the elite burghers respected the Crown’s authority, they could enjoy particular benefits and act with relative freedom.

The economic–military position of Nyen 83 The economic boom in Nyen The 1680s were a turning point for trade and commerce. The Swedish Crown’s actions to improve conditions for trade through different kinds of tax and customs relief started to bear fruit, and political agreements paved the way for commercial development. A shipping agreement in 1679 and an alliance (Sw. Garantitraktat) with the Netherlands in 1681, as well as a confirmation of the peace treaties with Russia in 1684, were all equally important.25 When Peter I and Ivan V acceded to the throne in 1682, the relations between Sweden and Russia improved. The tsars, with tsarevna Sophia Alexeyevna as regent until 1689, had an interest in opening Russia up to the West, which had an effect on the transit trade.26 Trade conditions favourable to Sweden that appeared because of the Nine Year’s War (1688–1697) were even more important. The war between France on the one side and the Netherlands and England on the other resulted in an economic boom for neutral states.27 According to recent estimations, Swedish exports from Baltic ports through the Danish Sound increased almost fivefold between 1672 and 1694, resulting in a share of almost 50 per cent of the total exports from the Baltic. The ports in Sweden’s Eastern Baltic provinces, Riga in particular, accounted for a major part of the increase in Swedish exports.28 Merchants from Nyen took part in the trade with Russia. Private accounts have not survived, but court records and various petitions show that Nyen merchants travelled to north-western Russia. Trading and credit relations existed with Russian merchants specifically from Novgorod, Tichvin, Olonets, and (Staraya) Ladoga, which all belonged to the Nyen hinterland. A complaint that was handed to the Russians during the Russo-Swedish trade negotiations in Moscow in 1684 demonstrates that several Nyen merchants had claims in these Russian towns. Some merchants had been badly treated.29 In the 1690s there were similar cases: merchant Carl Dobbin, for example, had at least two disputes with Russian traders.30 Dobbin’s stepfather Jost Stewen was also very active in Russian trade, together with his brothers Daniel and Martin Stewen from Narva. The Stewen brothers even tried to get a monopoly of the timber trade in Narva and Nyen in 1684, but their application was turned down by the Commerce College.31 The experiences of the Nyen merchants confirm the fact that there were still a lot of problems and disruptions in the trade with Russia, even though trade volumes increased. In 1691, Governor-General Göran Sperling mentioned the trade conflicts to the king and hoped for a diplomatic agreement with Russia.32 Likewise, Russian merchants complained about mistreatment, also in Nyen, and about problems in the transit trade.33 Despite continuous problems, trade volumes increased significantly in the last decades of the 17th century. The economic boom in Nyen, like

84  Kasper Kepsu in Narva, was based on timber exports. With the help of Dutch capital and professionals, new fine-blade sawmills and shipyards were established along the Narva and Neva rivers to make more timber available for shipment to the Netherlands. At this time, Dutch sawmilling technology spread along the Gulf of Finland, from Riga and Narva to Nyen, and later in the 18th century to Viborg and other Finnish towns.34 Proto-industrialisation in Nyen also included brick and lime factories, a ropewalk, and various workshops.35 The Swedish central government supported the founding of manufacturing sites according to its mercantilist and cameralist commercial policy. During the 17th century, states, mostly in Northern Europe, became more interested in their resources to increase income and to create a well-ordered state, a practice later known as cameralism. Exporting refined products instead of raw materials was preferred.36 In earlier decades, areas in the eastern part of the kingdom had traditionally focused on tar production but increasingly turned to manufacturing refined timber products such as deals, balks, and planks.37 Charles XI and the Commerce College recommended this change: in a letter from 1689 to the Chamber and Commerce colleges, it is stressed that exporting timber products can be very profitable and increase the crown’s income from tolls. Sawmills must be established, and merchants in coastal areas should trade in timber products, whereas people inland could continue with tar production.38 The Crown thus had a fiscal interest in supporting manufacturing and in boosting trade, as these increased the Crown’s income in the provinces. According to Swedish provincial policy, the most important financial aim was to prevent a province from becoming a fiscal burden on the central government.39 Ingria had been a major burden in the 1660s and 1670s, but the centralisation and integration policy during Charles XI’s reign aimed to make the province self-supporting. A reduction of the estates and the initiation of tax farming were essential measures to achieve self-support. The Swedish commercial policy in the Eastern Baltic provinces was another way for the crown to strengthen Ingria fiscally.40 Governor-General Göran Sperling, the main architect of the Crown’s provincial policy in Ingria, was a key figure in the initial phase of the Ingrian towns’ economic boom. Sperling recommended and promoted several applications for establishing sawmills. In some cases, he more or less persuaded the burghers to start up manufacturing industries.41 Overall, Sperling was very influential, and Charles XI followed his recommendations almost every time. His role in the rise of manufacturing in Ingria has not been highlighted by earlier research very much, but it seems that Sperling’s importance was significant. Without his support, it would probably not have been possible to establish manufacturing sites.

The economic–military position of Nyen 85 The burghers of Nyen were involved in the establishment of at least seven fine-blade sawmills. The sawmills were all situated in Nöteborg County along the Neva River system and were built in the 1690s under the command of Dutch specialists. One of the sawmills was located in the outskirts of Nyen, in Tukela along the Ochta River, which is a tributary of the Neva River.42 Shipbuilding also increased markedly in the 1690s, above all in Narva, but also in Nyen. In total, the burghers of Nyen owned at least three dockyards along the Neva River system. Two of these were most likely situated just outside Nyen. Some ten large merchant ships (Eng., Du. fluitship, fluyt) were built. In total, Nyen burghers were shipowners in some 20 ships, some of which were built in Ingrian dockyards.43 Sawmills, dockyards, and ships were owned by a rather small group of merchants, mostly of German origin. Dutch technological specialists were also crucial at the dockyards, both as master-builders and as artisans, such as carpenters. Finnish carpenters and sawyers also worked at sawmills and dockyards and were considered skilful by a Swedish civil servant.44 The ethnic diversity underlines the pivotal role of immigration in early modern commercial activity. Shipbuilding was boosted significantly by the Nine Years’ War. If the ship was Swedish, it had many benefits with regard to custom duties, particularly the Sound Toll. There was also a lower risk for privateering. Therefore, Dutch merchant houses used merchant ships from neutral countries.45 It is possible that many ships were in reality owned by Dutch merchants, even though maritime passports contained only the names of local merchants. It is, however, difficult to examine the financing arrangements in detail, as no private merchant accounts have survived.46 Still, bills of exchange found in town court records do prove that the merchants in Nyen had excellent international networks. In addition to Russia and Amsterdam, elite burghers had contacts with Stockholm, Lübeck, and Hamburg.47 Consequently, shipping and timber exports increased greatly. Tar export from Nyen decreased significantly in the 1690s while the amount of timber export more or less exploded. According to calculations made by the Finnish economic historian Sven-Erik Åström, the increase was greatest regarding deals (sawn boards). In the 1680s, 52,620 deals were exported to the Netherlands from Nyen, but by the following decade the number of deals had risen to 705,816. The export of balks also increased rapidly.48 Consequently, estimations relying on The Sound Toll Registers show a large growth in total exports. In the 1670s, total exports from Nyen amounted to around 150 tonnes yearly; by the 1680s, exports had grown to around 1700 tonnes yearly, and in the 1690s to about 3000 tonnes. Exports peaked at almost 9,000 tonnes in the year 1700, after which numbers fell for the last listed years, 1701 and 1702.49

86  Kasper Kepsu According to The Sound Toll Registers, between 1681 and 1703 some 30 ships sailed yearly from Nyen through the Sound, with the total number reaching 684 ships. A great majority of the ships sailed to Amsterdam and were loaded with shipbuilding material, mostly deals and balks. When compared to other towns in the Gulf of Finland, the shipping activity of Nyen was almost on the same level as Reval.50 Ships from Nyen also sailed to other Baltic ports, particularly Stockholm and Lübeck. Approximately 100 ships left the port of Nyen yearly. Roughly half of them were Russian vessels (Sw. lodja) coming from Novgorod and other parts of north-western Russia, underlining the pivotal role of Nyen in transit trade.51 A few ships sailed to England, but timber export from Ingria to England was dominated by Narva. The Persian trade was likewise concentrated in Narva and did not have an effect on Nyen.52 When comparing neighbouring towns, it is important to bear in mind that Nyen, Narva, and Reval had different hinterlands. Consequently, the relations between these towns seemed to be quite harmonic. By contrast, Nyen’s relation to Viborg was quite tense, because the rise of the former had to a notable degree taken place at Viborg’s expense. Before the rise of timber export in Nyen, the town attracted tar smugglers, which irritated Viborg merchants.53 Commercial plans in the 1690s In earlier research, the general aims of the derivation policy have been analysed, but the commercial plans of the Swedish Crown regarding the Ingrian towns during the final decade of Swedish rule have received less attention. However, in 1690–1692, the central government evaluated the Russian trade thoroughly. From the central government, the issue was commented on by the Chamber, Chancery and Commerce Colleges, as well as by Christoff von Kochen, a veteran Swedish diplomat.54 Von Kochen had recently taken over the appointment as burgrave (Sw. borggreve) in Narva and had earlier worked in Moscow for several decades, first as a Swedish correspondent and later as a commercial representative (Sw. kommersefaktor). Consequently, von Kochen was one of the most prominent experts in the Russo-Swedish commerce and transit trade in general.55 The Ingrian towns and the Governor-General of Ingria took part in the discussion as well. In documents preserved from 1691, Nyen, Narva, the Ingrian Governor-General, and the central government discussed the prospects of the Ingrian towns. The discussion offers an interesting perspective and complement to the Swedish commercial aims for the 1690s. At that time, timber exports and shipbuilding had started to flourish, which made the situation slightly different compared to the mid-17th century.

The economic–military position of Nyen 87 In addition, the Crown had, through Charles XI’s centralisation policy, increased its control over trade, as well as towns and provinces. In the summer of 1691, the Governor-General for Ingria and Kexholm County, Göran Sperling, travelled to Stockholm to discuss a variety of matters regarding his government, including the development of commerce and both Nyen and Narva. He had visited the towns earlier, both of which submitted petitions (‘Desiderier’) to him to present to the king. In a letter to the king, Sperling mentions the problematic trade relations between Sweden and Russia but believes that it would be possible to improve them. According to Sperling, the young tsar Peter had proven willing to develop friendly relations with Charles XI.56 However, both Sperling and von Kochen noted the bad treatment of Swedish merchants in Russia.57 In its petition, Nyen described the situation in the town in a quite pessimistic tone. The petition emphasised that Nyen had not recovered from the Russo-Swedish War of 1656–1658 and the fire in 1681. This obviously functioned as an overture to hopes for extending the town’s tax exemptions (Sw. frihetsår). The town stressed in particular its position as a border town close to Russia that was still not sufficiently fortified. According to the Nyen magistrate, that insecurity prevented foreigners from settling in the town and increased the risk that the town would become desolate.58 The magistrate of Nyen also made other applications, such as an extension of the quota for tar export and the abolition of some restrictions or payments, such as a toll for grain export. The magistrate also hoped for a salary increase for the burgomasters and city councillors. In an interesting point, the town applied for an extension of the right to cut down timber in Nöteborg County, the area that surrounded Nyen.59 Previously, it had been a prerequisite for founding sawmills and shipyards that the timber was imported from Russia, not from the Ingrian woods. In the Swedish kingdom, there was a general fear of deforestation, as timber formed the basis for all kinds of manufacturing. Restrictions of forest use also appeared in Ingria.60 According to the town, there was a risk that the Russians would either deny the use of Russian timber or increase the toll radically if they were to gain knowledge of the limitations in Ingria. In order to guarantee raw material for manufacturing in Ingria, Nyen suggested granting permission for a modest cutting of timber. There were a lot of suitable balks in the swampy forests of Nöteborg County, remarked the town, which was probably the case.61 In this question, the magistrate of Nyen shows a deep knowledge of the delicate relations with Russia. At the same time, the magistrate skilfully took advantage of the town’s position close to the border, as in the matter with the tax exemption. The town did not hesitate to use the border and the weaknesses of the state as arguments to gain an advantage.62 However, the central government also recognised the problem later on. In a

88  Kasper Kepsu discussion from 1692, it was suspected that the Russians had noticed the increase in timber exports from the Swedish towns in the Eastern Baltic provinces. Charles XI recommended not to beat the drum about the aim of harming the Archangelsk trade, as it would probably provoke the Russians into hindering the flow of trade to Swedish towns. His Royal Majesty proposed that the transit trade should be left in its current state and utilised as well as possible while the Russian trade should be attracted to the ports in the Swedish provinces in an indirect and undetectable way.63 The Commerce College issued its memorandum regarding the petition of Nyen in the autumn of 1691, after discussions with GovernorGeneral Göran Sperling. The geopolitically delicate position of the town close to the border was recognised, as were the inadequate fortifications. It was acknowledged that the burghers still had not completely recovered from the Russo-Swedish War and the fire; however, costly investments in sawmills and shipbuilding had already begun. To ensure that the promising economic development would continue, the College recommended continuing the ‘freedom years’. Regarding the cutting down of Ingrian timber, the Commerce College agreed that the availability of timber for sawmills and shipyards was vital; however, the College did not instantly recommend a moderate cutting. Useful forests (Sw. nyttigh Skoug) should be conserved, but woods with no actual use could be cut down.64 The general fear of deforestation is, therefore, clearly visible in the memorandum. Charles XI issued his proclamation concerning the grievances from Nyen a short while after the Commerce College had produced its memorandum. The king more or less confirmed the recommendations from the College. The petitions for a continuation of the tax exemption and a moderate cutting of woods were largely accepted, even though Charles XI demanded some clarifications in both matters.65 Finally, the Chamber and Commerce Colleges resolved the matters brought up in Nyen’s petition. As long as the town was not properly fortified, the tax exemption would continue. Forests which could not be used otherwise could be cut down for commercial purposes to prevent the Russians from believing that the Swedes were trying to make Russian forests extinct. Nevertheless, forests in Ingria should be conserved as far as possible. In other matters the central government accepted a rise in the salary of city councillors and indirectly promised a higher quota regarding tar export. The toll for grain export was, however, not to be abolished.66 Overall, the crown proved to be quite understanding to the applications from Nyen. Clearly, this proves that the town had quite an important commercial position in the Swedish kingdom. The central government supported the town and had probably high hopes for the commercial development of Nyen.

The economic–military position of Nyen 89 The petition from Nyen probably influenced the commercial policy of the central government, at least when it comes to avoiding provoking the Russians with the derivation policy. Otherwise, no great changes in the policy appeared in the final decade before the Great Northern War. However, the question of whether the low toll of 2 per cent in Nyen, Narva, and Reval should be increased was also discussed in 1692. In accordance with a recommendation from the Colleges, Charles XI stated that changes were not to be made for the moment. Toll increases to raise the Crown’s income might still be possible in the future, in particular since goods that were traded through Swedish provincial ports mostly originated from towns with difficult connections to Archangel.67 Another modification to the commercial policy was the idea to restrict the travel of Russian merchants to other towns than Reval, Dorpat, Narva, and Nyen. However, the idea did not become a reality before the outbreak of the Great Northern War.68 Regarding the complaints of bad treatment from Swedish merchants in Russia, the Swedish central government decided not to take any action, since it was believed that challenging Russia in this matter would only lead to more damage. Instead, diplomats should highlight the advantages of Baltic shipping in the Netherlands and England to increase shipping in the Swedish Baltic ports.69 This cautious policy is also evident in a memorandum from 1698, when the Swedish central government was preparing to send an embassy to Moscow: the memorandum states that compensations for violations against earlier peace treaties should be pursued on a later date.70 Trade and security Since Nyen was a border town, military and economic factors were intertwined, as they were in every commercially important border city. This appears clearly in a resolution made by Charles XI in 1679, wherein he stated that the fortress was to be strengthened to secure the kingdom but also to increase trade.71 The fortification specialist Erik Dahlberg had also highlighted the commercial importance of Nyen in several memorandums regarding Swedish fortresses.72 The control of commerce and trade routes brought notable revenues to the Crown through custom duties and licent tolls. According to various estimates, they comprised some 20–50 per cent of Crown incomes in the Eastern Baltic provinces. In Nyen, the licent toll brought some 5,000–8,000 thalers yearly to the Crown.73 However, the state also had to rely on other sources to strengthen the fortresses. In Ingria, most of the Crown’s income derived from the Crown’s manors through tax farming.74 The fortification of Nyen was discussed in the central government regularly during the Swedish rule of Ingria, and numerous plans were

90  Kasper Kepsu made to fortify the town. However, limited means was a major problem, even though means for fortification increased greatly through the reduction of estates and the initiation of tax farming. As noted earlier, these measures were explicitly taken to strengthen the financial situation and, above all, to bolster the military strength in Ingria.75 Consequently, the Crown did not implement the fortress plans as a whole. Most of the plans, for instance, suggested that the actual town should be moved to the fortress side of the Okhta, but this was not implemented. Fortification works focused on improving the Nyenskans citadel, which remained the main defensive structure. However, already in 1681, fortification specialist Erik Dahlberg criticised the fortress and questioned its condition and military capacity.76 Most of the income that the state gained from Ingria was invested in Narva, where trade was more prosperous and the geopolitical position more secure. In Nyen, fortification work remained quite modest, which worried the local burghers. The burghers of Nyen had quite a clear opinion about the fortification. In fact, they themselves demanded a ‘strong wall’. The Nyen magistrate complained in 1667, 1681, and 1691 that no foreigners had the courage to settle in Nyen, because fortification work had stalled. In 1697, the magistrate once again pleaded for action. However, the burghers were not interested in investing in the fortification themselves, not even after the outbreak of the Great Northern War.77 In 1695 and 1698, Erik Dahlberg repeated his concern regarding the inadequate fortification of Nyen. In fact, he emphasised Nyen’s position as of the highest priority: the fortress had to be brought to perfection and not a minute should be wasted.78 Some fortification works were actually carried out during the final years of the Swedish rule. Town and fortress plans indicate that embankments were constructed or improved outside the citadel. It is, however, likely that they were built of earth and not entirely completed. Fortification works were modest even at this time, and still focused on improving the Nyenskans’ citadel.79 The connection between Nyen’s trade and military importance links the town with international discussions about early modern European state formation. Previous research has debated whether the increase of long-distance trade or military competition between states was the main driving force for the development of states.80 Similar arguments have been employed in the debate over the motives for Swedish empirebuilding in the 16th and 17th centuries: was it based on a goal to control East–West trade routes in the Baltic Sea or were defensive motives the triggering factor? For Sweden, it is obvious that control of the Baltic Sea was one of the most important objectives during its Age of Greatness. However, recent research has emphasised that neither one

The economic–military position of Nyen 91 of the arguments can be used in isolation: instead, both aspects must be combined.81 Both aspects are relevant in the case of Nyen, since it was a border town and therefore important regarding both trade and military strategy. The strategic position of Nyen was in principle equally important for trade and military purposes, these being different sides of the same coin. As Jan Glete has stated, territorial rulers could sell protection to trade. Military presence secured the preconditions for trade. At the same time, strong and wealthy burghers benefitted the Crown, for example, through customs and possibilities for credit, which again could be used for military expenses.82 In the case of Nyen, protection was not provided by direct protection from the Swedish navy; rather, it was provided by strengthening the Ingrian fortresses of Nyen and especially Narva. In addition, political agreements and negotiations of trading regulations with the Russian central government were part of the state’s responsibility. As can be seen, the Swedish defensive strategy in the Eastern Baltic provinces relied on strong fortresses. Since Ingria was a border province and served as a buffer zone, the governors constantly emphasised the need to strengthen the fortresses and garrisons.83 However, the connection between trade and security was not always recognised by the central government. Military aspects were often neglected in memorandums regarding trade. It seems that the governors were more concerned by military matters. Governor-General Göran Sperling commented during the discussions in Stockholm in 1691 that security should be strived for by every means necessary in relations with Russia. According to Sperling, every man could realise the benefits if friendship and confidentiality could be reached with the Russian tsars Peter and Ivan.84 There was also a paradox in the relation between trade and security, at least when it comes to Ingria. The same can be said regarding the relation between Sweden and Russia: commercially, Russia represented a great possibility for Sweden, but it also formed a potential military threat. The central government, in particular the Commerce College, did not necessarily recognise that the profitable transit trade and the derivation policy also formed a security risk. In the 1690s, it was recommended not to beat the drum too loudly about shifting trade from Archangel to the Baltic Sea; still, this was only seen as a commercial problem which might hinder transit trade. The protection of trade, in particular in Nyen, became in praxis unsatisfactory from the Swedish point of view. However, it is important to bear in mind that the Swedish authorities could not have foreseen the outbreak of the Great Northern War; nor could they have anticipated that the kingdom would lose all its possessions in the Eastern Baltic provinces, including all the most important ports for transit trade.

92  Kasper Kepsu Desired and unplanned consequences Although the commercial aims remained, as a whole, unfulfilled, in the late 17th century, Nyen emerged as one of the leading centres of Russian transit trade in the Baltic, highlighted by a heavy increase in timber export, shipbuilding, and shipping. The Swedish state was a part of this development. The Crown protected and supported the actors on the market, for example, by encouraging the migration of foreign merchants and technological experts. In this process, knowledge, expertise, and encouragement from governors and commercial specialists were essential, as were the elite burgher’s commercial skills and networks. However, the strategic location close to the border led to the Crown trying to regulate the political power and seek uniformity, particularly with regard to the German elite. The position of Nyen was therefore ambivalent. It was ideal for the profitable transit trade, but it called for high-risk investments. The state tried to stimulate trade but in the end was not strong enough to protect it. In 1703, during the Great Northern War, the Russians invaded Nyen, and both the town and the fortress of Nyenskans were burnt down. Saint Petersburg was founded soon after. Another consequence was the economic

Figure 4.2 The siege of Nyen 1703. Source: Collection Sweden’s War, nr 11:46, Military Archives, National Archives Sweden.

The economic–military position of Nyen 93 development in Finnish towns after Nyen’s destruction. The burghers of Nyen fled to different coastal towns, and their mutual network survived for a few decades. It resulted in the growth of trade and establishment of sawmills in Viborg, Fredrikshamn, and Helsingfors. Both in the Viborg and in Fredrikshamn hinterland, roughly half of the sawmills were founded and owned by merchants with a background in Nyen.85 The significance of Nyen for the Swedish kingdom did not meet the ambitious aims of the government. With limited resources, Sweden was not able to utilise the town’s full potential. However, the economic boom in Nyen, as well as in Narva, was noticed by Peter I and the Russian government. Conquering Ingria and its towns was the main objective for Peter I in the Great Northern War.86 The founding of Saint Petersburg was in this way a logical consequence of the increase in trade in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland. Notes 1 Carl von Bonsdorff, Nyen och Nyenskans: Historisk skildring (Helsingfors: Finska vetenskaps-societeten, 1891). Another standard work from the 19th century is A. J. Hipping, Neva och Nyenskans intill S:t Petersburgs anläggning: Historisk skildring I (Helsingfors: J. C. Frenckell & Son, 1836), translated to Russian in 1909. 2 Enn Küng, ‘Die Entwicklung der Stadt Nyen im zweiten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Mati Laur  & Kersten Brüggerman (eds.), Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 1 (Tartu: Akadeemiline Ajalooselts, 2006), pp. 86–8; Bengt Jangfeldt, Svenska vägar till S:t Petersburg: Kapitel ur historien om svenskarna vid Nevans stränder (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widström, 1998), pp. 29–33; von Bonsdorff 1891, pp.  357–63. During the 21st century, archaeological excavations have provided more knowledge, in particular about the fortress of Nyenskans, see for example, P. E. Sorokin, Arkheologicheskoye naslediye Sankt-Peterburga [Archaeological Heritage of Saint-Petersburg], Vyp. 3 (StPeterburg: SZI Naslediya, 2009), pp. 188–203. 3 Kari Tarkiainen, Moskoviten: Sverige och Ryssland 1478–1721 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2017), pp.  286–90; Küng 2006, pp. 89–100; Stefan Troebst, Handelskontrolle – ‘Derivation’ – Eindämmung: Schwedische Moskaupolitik 1617–1661 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997), pp. 158–66. 4 Werner Scheltjens, North Eurasian Trade in World History, 1660–1860: The Economic and Political Importance of the Baltic Sea (London & New York: Routledge, 2022), pp. 198–9; Leos Müller, Neutrality in World History (New York  & London: Routledge, 2019), pp.  53–4; Clé Lesger  & Eric Wijnroks, ‘The spatial organization of trade: Antwerp merchants and the gateway systems in the Baltic and the low countries c. 1550’, in Hanno Brand (ed.), Trade, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange: Continuity and Change in the North Sea area and the Baltic c. 1350–1750 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2005), pp.  16–20; Milja van Tielhof, ‘The Mother of All Trades’: The Baltic Grain Trade in Amsterdam from the Late 16th to the Early 19th Century (Leiden, Boston & Köln: Brill, 2002), pp. 1–5; Markku Kuisma, Metsäteollisuuden maa:

94  Kasper Kepsu Suomi, metsät ja kansainvälinen järjestelmä 1620–1920 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1993), pp. 23–5, 45–6. 5 Jan Glete, ‘Cities, state formation and the protection of trade in northern Europe, 1200–1700’, in Hanno Brand & Leos Müller (eds.), The Dynamics of Economic Culture in the North Sea and Baltic Region: In the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2007), pp.  14–15; Leos Müller, Consuls, Corsairs, and Commerce: The Swedish Consular Service and Long-Distance Shipping, 1720–1815 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2004), pp. 30–1. The mercantile theory as a motive for Swedish expansion in the 16th and 17th centuries has been stressed by the Swedish scholar Artur Attman, see, for example, Artur Attman, Swedish Aspirations and the Russian Market During the 17th Century (Gothenburg: Kungl. Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhället, 1985). The question has been much debated, see Tarkiainen 2017, pp. 275–7; Nils Erik Villstrand, Sveriges historia 1600–1721 (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2011), pp. 141–8; Stefan Troebst, ‘Narva und der Außenhandel Persiens im 17. Jahrhundert: Zum merkantilen Hintergrund schwedischer Großmachtpolitik’, in Aleksander Loit & Helmut Piirimäe (eds.), Die schwedischen Ostseeprovinzen Estland und Livland im 16.–18. Jahrhundert (Stockholm: University of Stockholm, 1993). Tarkiainen and Villstrand tend to highlight the security aspect in the debate, even though they accept the economic theory to some extent. 6 Kasper Kepsu, ‘The unruly buffer zone: The Swedish Province of Ingria in the late 17th century’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 42:4 (2017), pp.  416, 426–8. 7 Tarkiainen 2017, pp. 279–90; Kari Tarkiainen & Ülle Tarkiainen, Provinsen bortom havet: Estlands svenska historia 1561–1710 (Helsingfors  & Stockholm: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland & Atlantis, 2013), pp. 280–2; Enn Küng, ‘Die schwedische Ostseepolitik, die internationale Handelskonjunktur und die Entstehung der Narvaer Handelsflotte in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Mati Laur & Kersten Brüggeman (eds.), Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 3 (Tartu: Akadeemiline Ajalooselts, 2008), pp. 87–9; J. T. Kotilaine, Russia’s Foreign Trade and Economic Expansion in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2005), pp. 145–59, 178; Troebst 1997, in particular pp. 239–54; Per Nyström, ‘Mercatura Ruthenica’, Scandia, 10:2 (1937), pp. 264–5. 8 Nyström 1937, pp. 265, 282–3. 9 Troebst 1997, pp. 277–80, 513–24. 10 Tarkiainen 2017, pp. 288–98. 11 Ibid., pp. 298–302; Nyström 1937, pp. 278–88; von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 421– 5. The most detailed and analytic writing was Johan Filip Kilburger’s Mercatura Ruthenica from 1674. It reveals that the Swedish central government had a deep knowledge of the premises for trade in Russia. 12 Kasper Kepsu, ‘Niin kauaksi kuin Itämerta riittää: Merenkulku, laivanvarustus ja haaksirikot 1600-luvun lopun Nyenissä ja Narvassa’, in Mikko Huhtamies  & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Onnettomuus ja onni: Kauppalaivojen haaksirikot ja pelastustoiminta Itämerellä 1600–1800-luivuilla (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2018), p. 64; Tarkiainen 2017, pp. 272, 286, 301; Arnold Soom, Die Politik Schwedens bezüglich des russischen Transithandels über die estnischen Städte in den Jahren 1636–1656 (Tartu: Õpetatud Eesti Seltsi Toimetised, 1940), p.  74; Nyström 1937, pp.  293–5. In Sweden, there was a great interest for a channel that could offer a route from the Baltic Sea to

The economic–military position of Nyen 95 the Volga River system. Such a channel was ultimately realised during Peter I’s reign in the beginning of the 18th century. 13 Kasper Kepsu, ‘Stad och stat: Nyen, migrationen och borgarna under 1600-talets andra hälft’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 104:4 (2019), pp.  486–7; Küng 2006, pp. 98–100; Robert Sandberg, ‘The state and the integration of the towns of the provinces of the Swedish Baltic empire’, in Kekke Stadin (ed.), Baltic Towns and Their Inhabitants: Aspects on Early Modern Towns in the Baltic Area (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2003), pp. 22–4. 14 Kasper Kepsu, Den besvärliga provinsen: Reduktion, skattearrendering och bondeoroligheter i det svenska Ingermanland under slutet av 1600-talet (Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2014), pp. 56–63, 72, 299–300; Harald Gustafsson, Makt och människor: Europeisk statsbildning från medeltiden till franska revolutionen (Göteborg  & Stockholm: Makadam förlag, 2010), p. 115; Villstrand 2011, pp. 147–8; Kimmo Katajala, ‘Differentiering och unifiering: Provinspolitiken vid det svenska rikets östgräns ca 1617–1809’, in Max Engman & Nils Erik Villstrand (eds.), Maktens mosaik: Enhet, särart och självbild i det svenska riket (Helsingfors & Stockholm: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland & Atlantis, 2008), p. 159. 15 Tarkiainen & Tarkiainen 2013, pp. 281–3. 16 Kepsu 2019, pp.  465–6; Piret Lotman, ‘Der Kirchenstreit zwischen schwedischen und deutschen Geistlichen in Nyen’, in Mati Laur  & Kersten Brüggeman (eds.), Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 2 (Tartu: Akadeemiline Ajalooselts, 2007), pp. 9–12; Küng 2006, pp. 102–5; Jangfeldt 1998, pp. 33–5; Saulo Kepsu, Pietari ennen Pietaria: Nevansuun vaiheita ennen Pietarin kaupungin perustamista (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1995), pp. 22–7; von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 410–1. 17 Kepsu, 2019, pp. 465, 470–2, 484–6. 18 Ibid., pp. 465–81, 486, 491–2. 19 As the town had a strong Swedish and Finnish character, it is possible to deal with it in a Nordic context, even though such a concept was not used during the 17th century. 20 On the centralisation and integration policy in Ingria, see Kepsu 2017; Kepsu 2014; Mika Sivonen, ‘Me inkerikot, vatjalaiset ja karjalaiset’: Uskonnollinen integrointi ja ortodoksisen vähemmistön identiteetin rakentuminen Ruotsin Inkerissä 1680–1702 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2007); Jaak Naber, Motsättningarnas Narva: Statlig svenskhetspolitik och tyskt lokalvälde i ett statsreglerat samhälle, 1581–1704 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1995). It should be pointed out that with ‘Swedification’ Naber does not mean a conversion of the population to ethnic Swedes, see Naber 1995, pp. 8–9. 21 Naber 1995, pp.  120–41. See also Adam Grimshaw, ‘Aspects of “British” migration to Sweden in the 17th century’, in Magdalena Naum & Fredrik Ekengren (eds.), Facing Otherness in Early Modern Sweden: Travel, Migration and Material Transformations 1500–1800 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018), pp. 176–7. The German migrants insistently defended their rights already in the mid-17th century, in particular in questions regarding their church community, see Piret Lotman’s article in this book and Lotman 2007. 22 Kepsu 2019, pp. 487–9. 23 On the relationship between the Crown and the merchant elite in Nyen, see Kasper Kepsu, ‘Kronans hantlangare eller självständiga elitborgare? Den tyskbördiga eliten i den svenska staden Nyen i slutet av 1600-talet’, in Knut Dørum

96  Kasper Kepsu (ed.), Hvem styrte byene? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2022). 24 Kepsu 2019, pp. 490–1 with references. 25 Michael North, Geschichte der Ostsee: Handel und Kulturen (München: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2011), p. 153; Küng 2008, p. 96; von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 421–3. 26 Tarkiainen 2017, p. 302. 27 Küng 2008, pp. 95–6; Glete 2007, pp. 21–2; Jaap R. Bruijn, ‘The long life of treaties: The Dutch Republic and Great Britain in the eighteenth century’, in Rolf Hobson & Tom Kristiansen (eds.), Navies in Northern Waters 1721–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2004), p. 42. 28 Scheltjens 2022, pp. 59–60. 29 List of injustices against Swedish merchants in Russia in 1684, in Artur Attman (ed.), Ekonomiska förbindelser mellan Sverige och Ryssland under 1600talet: Dokument ur svenska arkiv (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien, 1978), pp.  256–61. The complaints demonstrate that City Councillors Antoni Timmerman and Jürgen Wulffert had contacts and debts to claim in Tichvin while City Councillor Henrik Blanckenhagen and Burgher Mårten Retto (Ketto) had claims in Olonets and Novgorod. In addition, merchant Hans Pölke had claims in Jaroslav and Detleff Jochmis had been badly treated on a trip to Staraya Ladoga. 30 Lower town court of Nyen 1698, pp. 244–5, n:23, Kansallisarkisto/Riksarkivet (Finnish National Archives), Helsinki (FNA); Lower town court of Nyen 1694, 465, n:19, FNA. In the Nyen court material, trade relations to Novgorod stand out. 31 See, for example, Lower town court of Nyen 1691, pp. 1–6, 7–12, n:16, FNA; Town court of Nyen 1691, pp. 5–6 etc., n:5, FNA; Commerce College to Charles XI (16 June 1684), Kommerskollegium till Kungl. Maj:t:6, Riksarkivet (Swedish National Archives), Stockholm (SNA); Sven-Erik Åström, ‘Holländarna och trävaruexporten från Finska vikens hamnar kring 1700’, in Historiska och litteraturhistoriska studier 51 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1976), p.  75. The application by the Stewen brothers was turned down on Governor-General Göran Sperling’s recommendation. 32 Governor-General Göran Sperling to Charles XI (21 July 1691), Kommerskollegium, Kungliga brev och remisser 1691, E I a:12, pp. 231–2, SNA. 33 Kotilaine 2005, pp. 170–1; von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 424–5. 34 Tarkiainen 2017, p. 303; Enn Küng, ‘Vattensågar och skeppsbyggande i Ingermanland under 1600-talets senare hälft’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 96:1 (2011); Karel Davids, The Rise and Decline of Dutch Technological Leadership: Technology, Economy and Culture in the Netherlands 1350–1800, vol. 2 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 347–9, 362; Kuisma 1993, pp. 45–52; Jorma Ahvenainen, Suomen sahateollisuuden historia (Helsinki: WSOY, 1984), pp. 58–121; Sven-Erik Åström, ‘Technology and timber exports from the Gulf of Finland 1661–1740’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 23:1 (1975). 35 Kotilaine 2005, pp. 172–3. 36 Marten Seppel, ‘Introduction’, in Marten Seppel & Keith Tribe (eds.), Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), pp. 1–6; Küng 2011, pp. 2–3; Kuisma 1993, pp. 59–60. 37 Kuisma 1993, pp.  41–3; Sven-Erik Åström, From Tar to Timber: Studies in Northeast European Forest Exploitation and Foreign Trade 1660–1860 (Helsinki: Societas scientiarum Fennica, 1988), pp. 29–34.

The economic–military position of Nyen 97 38 Charles XI to the Chamber and Commerce Colleges (2 August 1689), in A. Stiernman, Samling utaf Kongl. bref, stadgar och förordningar angående Sweriges rikes commerce, politie och oeconomie uti gemen, ifrån åhr 1523 in til närvarande tid, del 5: 1689–1707 (Stockholm: Kongl. tryckeriet, 1766), pp. 84–5. See also Åström 1976, pp. 74–6. 39 A. F. Upton, Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 179; James Cavallie, Från fred till krig: De finansiella problemen kring krigsutbrottet år 1700 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1975, p. 23; Sven Lundkvist, ‘The experience of empire: Sweden as a great power’, in Michael Roberts (ed.), Sweden’s Age of Greatness 1632–1718 (London & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1973), pp. 22–3. 40 Kepsu 2017, p. 420; Kepsu 2014, pp. 100, 114–15. 41 This was the case with the Mustala sawmill, established by Diedrich Buschardt in 1690, see Commerce College to Governor-General Göran Sperling (1 July  1690), Kommerskollegium, Registratur 1690, B I  a:29, SNA. Sperling also strongly supported Jacob Porteus’s sawmill in Narva, see Küng 2011, pp. 19–20. 42 Kepsu 2019, pp. 481–5; Kepsu 2018, pp. 65–9; Küng 2011, pp. 30–4; Åström 1976, pp. 60, 66–8; Åström 1975, pp. 5–6, 8. There was possibly another sawmill along the Ochta, which the locals called ‘Svarte bäcken’. 43 Kepsu 2019, pp. 483–5; Kepsu 2018, pp. 67–75; Küng 2011, pp. 30–4. 44 City Councillor Lars Malm to Commissary Gustaf Hierpe (28 May  1691), Kommerskollegium, Kungliga brev och remisser 1691, E I a:12, SNA; Kepsu 2019, pp.  483–5; Kepsu 2018, pp.  65–75. The most influential merchants included Christian Hueck, Henrik Luhr, Johan Henrik Frisius (Frisenheim), Detleff Jochims, Diedrich Buschardt, and Hans Pölck. Later, the widows of Pölck (Catharina Petersdotter) and Jochims (Birgitta Barckman) were active in shipping. 45 Leos Müller, ‘Swedish shipping industry: A European and global perspective, 1600–1800’, Journal of History for the Public, 6 (2009), pp. 32–4. 46 Tarkiainen & Tarkiainen 2013, pp. 286–7; Küng, ‘Meresõit ja laevaehitus Narvas 17. sajandi teisel poolel’, in Enn Küng (ed.), Läänemere provintside arenguperspektiivid Rootsi suurriigis 16./17. sajandil III (Tartu: Eesti ajalooarhiivi, 2009), p. 490. 47 Kepsu 2019, pp. 478–9, 492. 48 Åström 1975, pp. 2–10. 49 Ports of departure of exports from the Baltic, 1670–1856, Tetradas: Tonnage estimates of trade through the Danish Sound, 1670–1856, https://journaldata. zbw.eu/dataset/tetradas. 50 Sound Toll Registers, www.soundtoll.nl. 51 Portorium records for Nyen, Avkortningsböcker för Ingermanland 1688–1696, vol. 9759–9791, FNA. 52 On the timber and Persian trade in Narva, see Scheltjens 2022, pp.  59–69; Troebst 1993; Åström 1976. 53 Åström 1988, pp.  29–31; Åström 1975, pp.  12–13; von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 435–7. 54 Tarkiainen 2017, pp. 302–3; Kotilaine 2005, p. 171. 55 Heiko Droste  & Ingrid Maier, ‘Christoff Koch (1637–1711): Sweden’s Man in Moscow’, in Siv Gøril Brandtzæg, Paul Goring & Christine Watson (eds.), Travelling Chronicles: News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2018, pp. 123–9. As a correspondent,

98  Kasper Kepsu von Kochen reported to the Swedish central government regularly about the political situation in Russia through the Ingrian Governor-Generals, and he was therefore well known to Göran Sperling. 56 The magistrate of Nyen to Charles XI (2 April  1691), Kommerskollegium, Kungliga brev och remisser 1691, E I a:12, SNA; Governor-General Göran Sperling to Charles XI (15 June 1691), Livonica II: 189 (mf. FR 89, FNA), SNA. 57 Kotilainen 2005, p. 171. 58 The magistrate of Nyen to Charles XI (2 April  1691), Kommerskollegium, Kungliga brev och remisser 1691, E I  a:12, SNA; Chamber and Commerce College on the petitions of Nyen (30 September and 27 October 1691), Kommerskollegium, Registratur 1691, B I a:31, SNA; Kepsu 2019, pp. 474–5. 59 The magistrate of Nyen to Charles XI (2 April  1691), Kommerskollegium, Kungliga brev och remisser 1691, E I a:12, SNA. 60 Kepsu 2018, p.  66; Kuisma 1993, pp.  56–61; Ahvenainen 1984, pp.  22–6; Åström 1975, pp. 12–14. 61 The magistrate of Nyen to Charles XI (2 April  1691), Kommerskollegium, Kungliga brev och remisser 1691, E I  a:12, SNA; Chamber and Commerce College on the petitions of Nyen (30 September and 27 October 1691), Kommerskollegium, Registratur, B I a:31, SNA. 62 Sperling applied to get permission to leave his assignment because of age and health problems. Charles XI did not accept the resignation, because Sperling was simply too valuable for the Crown in Ingria and Karelia. However, Charles promised to relieve Sperling soon from his post. While back in Narva later in September 1691, Sperling’s health got worse, and he died. 63 Charles XI to Chancery, Chamber and Commerce Colleges (23 March 1692), in Stiernman 1766, pp. 308–17. 64 Commerce College on the petition of Nyen, 30 September 1691, Kommerskollegium, Registratur 1691, B I a:31, SNA. 65 Charles XI to the Chamber and Commerce Colleges (16 October  1691), in Stiernman 1766, pp. 274–80. 66 Chamber and Commerce College on the petitions of Nyen (27 October 1691), Kommerskollegium, Registratur, B I a:31, SNA. 67 Charles XI to Chancery, Chamber and Commerce Colleges (23 March 1692), in Stiernman 1766, p.  308–17; Memorandum by the Chancery, Chamber and Commerce Colleges to Charles XI (8 March  1692), in Attman 1978, pp. 267–76. 68 Tarkiainen  & Tarkiainen 2013, p.  283; Enn Küng, Rootsi majanduspoliitika Narva kaubanduse küsimuses. 17. sajandi teisel poolel (Tartu: Eesti ajalooarhiiv, 2001), pp. 66–76. 69 Kotilaine 2005, p. 171. 70 Commerce College to Charles XII (6 December  1698), Kommerskollegium, Registratur 1698, B I a:42, SNA. 71 Charles XI’s resolution, 4 June 1679, in von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 479–84. [O]rthen, warandes een gräntzort, der till både för des situations, so wäll som och andra bequemlichheeter skull fast tienlig ähr, så att der jgenom icke allenast landetz säckerheet widh all påkommande händellse, uthan och handelens märkelige tilltagande sampt jnwåhnarnes conservation och wählståndh förmodeligen skall kunna befodras. 72 Director-General of Fortifications Erik Dahlberg’s report (22 February 1698), Försvars- och befästningsplaner 7:28, Krigsarkivet (Swedish Military Archives)

The economic–military position of Nyen 99 Stockholm (SMA); Ludvig W:son Munthe, Kungl. fortifikationens historia: 3:2, Fortifikationsstaten under Dahlbergh, Stuart och Palmquist, 1674–1719 (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1911), pp. 251, 266, 433; Ludvig W:son Munthe, Kungl. fortifikationens historia: 3:1, Fortifikationsstaten under Dahlbergh, Stuart och Palmquist, 1674–1719 (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1908), pp. 244, 335; von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 369–73. 73 Enn Küng, ‘Die staatlichen Zölle – Portorium und Lizent – in den Städten der schwedischen Ostseeprovinzen’, Hansische Geschichtsblätter, 133 (2015), pp. 156–61. 74 Kepsu 2017, p. 419. 75 Ibid., pp. 418–21. 76 von Bonsdorff 1891, pp. 366–74. Director-General of Fortifications Erik Dahlberg’s report from December  1681 is cited in von Bonsdorff’s work. For an overview of the fortification of Nyen, see Munthe 1911; Munthe 1908. 77 Kasper Kepsu, ‘The Burghers of Nyen as creditors and suppliers in the Great Northern War (1700–1714)’, in Juha-Matti Granqvist & Petri Talvitie (eds.), Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021), pp. 92–6; Kepsu 2019, pp. 474–6; Munthe 1911, pp. 232, 433; von Bonsdorff 1891, p. 377. 78 Director-General of Fortifications Erik Dahlberg’s report (22 February 1698), Försvars- och befästningsplaner 7:28, SMA; Munthe 1908, pp. 335–6. 79 Munthe 1911, pp.  266–9, 276–7, 287, 433–4; Munthe 1908, p.  245; von Bonsdorff 1891, pp.  373–4. The outwork was called ‘The new work’ (‘Nya wärcket’). 80 For the discussion, see Hendrik Spruyt, ‘War, trade, and state formation’, in Robert E. Goodin (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 81 Villstrand 2011, pp.  141–8; Jan Glete, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500– 1660 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 176–8. 82 Glete 2007, pp. 14–15; Glete 2002, pp. 52–66. See also Müller 2004, pp. 30–1. On the Nyen merchants and credits during the Great Northern War, see Kepsu 2021. 83 Kepsu 2017, p. 421. 84 Governor-General Göran Sperling to Charles XI (21 July 1691), Kommerskollegium, Kungliga brev och remisser 1691, E I a:12, 231–2, SNA. 85 Kasper Kepsu, ‘Det nyenska nätverket: Borgarna från staden Nyen i Viborg, Helsingfors och Fredrikshamn’, in Henrika Tandefelt et al. (eds.), Köpa salt i Cádiz och andra berättelser: Festskrift till professor Henrik Meinander den 19 maj 2020 (Helsinki: Siltala, 2020) with references. 86 Werner Scheltjens, ‘The influence of spatial change on operational strategies in early-modern Dutch maritime shipping: A  case-study on Dutch maritime shipping in the Gulf of Finland and on Archangel 1703–1740’, International Journal of Maritime History, 23:1 (2011), pp. 115–16.

Bibliography Ahvenainen, Jorma, Suomen sahateollisuuden historia (Helsinki: WSOY, 1984). Åström, Sven-Erik, ‘Technology and timber exports from the Gulf of Finland 1661–1740’, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 23:1 (1975).

100  Kasper Kepsu Åström, Sven-Erik, ‘Holländarna och trävaruexporten från Finska vikens hamnar kring 1700’, in Historiska och litteraturhistoriska studier 51 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1976). Åström, Sven-Erik, From Tar to Timber: Studies in Northeast European Forest Exploitation and Foreign Trade 1660–1860 (Helsinki: Societas scientiarum Fennica, 1988). Attman, Artur (ed.), Ekonomiska förbindelser mellan Sverige och Ryssland under 1600-talet: Dokument ur svenska arkiv (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien, 1978). Attman, Artur, Swedish Aspirations and the Russian Market During the 17th Century (Gothenburg: Kungl. Vetenskaps- och Vitterhets-Samhället, 1985). Bruijn, Jaap R., ‘The long life of treaties: The Dutch Republic and Great Britain in the eighteenth century’, in Rolf Hobson & Tom Kristiansen (eds.), Navies in Northern Waters 1721–2000 (London: Frank Cass, 2004). Cavallie, James, Från fred till krig: De finansiella problemen kring krigsutbrottet år 1700 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1975). Davids, Karel, The Rise and Decline of Dutch Technological Leadership: Technology, Economy and Culture in the Netherlands 1350–1800, vol. 2 (Leiden  & Boston: Brill, 2008). Droste, Heiko  & Ingrid Maier, ‘Christoff Koch (1637–1711): Sweden’s man in Moscow’, in Siv Gøril Brandtzæg, Paul Goring & Christine Watson (eds.), Travelling Chronicles: News and Newspapers from the Early Modern Period to the Eighteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2018). Glete, Jan, War and the State in Early Modern Europe: Spain, the Dutch Republic and Sweden as Fiscal-Military States, 1500–1660 (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). Glete, Jan, ‘Cities, state formation and the protection of trade in northern Europe, 1200–1700’, in Hanno Brand & Leos Müller (eds.), The Dynamics of Economic Culture in the North Sea and Baltic Region: In the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2007). Grimshaw, Adam, ‘Aspects of “British” migration to Sweden in the 17th century’, in Magdalena Naum  & Fredrik Ekengren (eds.), Facing Otherness in Early Modern Sweden: Travel, Migration and Material Transformations 1500–1800 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2018). Gustafsson, Harald, Makt och människor: Europeisk statsbildning från medeltiden till franska revolutionen (Göteborg & Stockholm: Makadam förlag, 2010). Hipping, A. J., Neva och Nyenskans intill S:t Petersburgs anläggning: Historisk skildring I (Helsingfors: J. C. Frenckell & Son, 1836). Jangfeldt, Bengt, Svenska vägar till S:t Petersburg: Kapitel ur historien om svenskarna vid Nevans stränder (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widström, 1998). https://journaldata.zbw.eu/dataset/tetradas. Kansallisarkisto/Riksarkivet (Finnish National Archives), Helsinki. Katajala, Kimmo, ‘Differentiering och unifiering: Provinspolitiken vid det svenska rikets östgräns ca 1617–1809’, in Max Engman  & Nils Erik Villstrand (eds.), Maktens mosaik: Enhet, särart och självbild i det svenska riket (Helsingfors & Stockholm: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland & Atlantis, 2008).

The economic–military position of Nyen 101 Kepsu, Kasper, Den besvärliga provinsen: Reduktion, skattearrendering och bondeoroligheter i det svenska Ingermanland under slutet av 1600-talet (Helsingfors: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 2014). Kepsu, Kasper, ‘The unruly buffer zone: The Swedish Province of Ingria in the late 17th century’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 42:4 (2017). Kepsu, Kasper, ‘Niin kauaksi kuin Itämerta riittää: Merenkulku, laivanvarustus ja haaksirikot 1600-luvun lopun Nyenissä ja Narvassa’, in Mikko Huhtamies  & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Onnettomuus ja onni: Kauppalaivojen haaksirikot ja pelastustoiminta Itämerellä 1600–1800-luivuilla (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2018). Kepsu, Kasper, ‘Stad och stat: Nyen, migrationen och borgarna under 1600-talets andra hälft’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 104:4 (2019). Kepsu, Kasper, ‘Det nyenska nätverket: Borgarna från staden Nyen i Viborg, Helsingfors och Fredrikshamn’, in Henrika Tandefelt et al. (eds.), Köpa salt i Cádiz och andra berättelser: Festskrift till professor Henrik Meinander den 19 maj 2020 (Helsinki: Siltala, 2020). Kepsu, Kasper, ‘The Burghers of Nyen as creditors and suppliers in the Great Northern war (1700–1714)’, in Juha-Matti Granqvist  & Petri Talvitie (eds.), Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021). Kepsu, Kasper, ‘Kronans hantlangare eller självständiga elitborgare? Den tyskbördiga eliten i den svenska staden Nyen i slutet av 1600-talet’, in Knut Dørum (ed.), Hvem styrte byene? Nordisk byhistorie 1500–1800 (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2022). Kepsu, Saulo, Pietari ennen Pietaria: Nevansuun vaiheita ennen Pietarin kaupungin perustamista (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1995). Kotilaine, J. T., Russia’s Foreign Trade and Economic Expansion in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2005). Kuisma, Markku, Metsäteollisuuden maa: Suomi, metsät ja kansainvälinen järjestelmä 1620–1920 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1993). Krigsarkivet (Swedish Military Archives), Stockholm. Küng, Enn, Rootsi majanduspoliitika Narva kaubanduse küsimuses. 17. sajandi teisel poolel (Tartu: Eesti ajalooarhiiv, 2001). Küng, Enn, ‘Die Entwicklung der Stadt Nyen im zweiten Viertel des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Mati Laur & Kersten Brüggerman (eds.), Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 1 (Tartu: Akadeemiline Ajalooselts, 2006). Küng, Enn, ‘Die schwedische Ostseepolitik, die internationale Handelskonjunktur und die Entstehung der Narvaer Handelsflotte in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Mati Laur & Kersten Brüggeman (eds.), Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 3 (Tartu: Akadeemiline Ajalooselts, 2008). Küng, Enn, ‘Meresõit ja laevaehitus Narvas 17. sajandi teisel poolel’, in Enn Küng (ed.), Läänemere provintside arenguperspektiivid Rootsi suurriigis 16./17. sajandil III (Tartu: Eesti ajalooarhiivi, 2009). Küng, Enn, ‘Vattensågar och skeppsbyggande i Ingermanland under 1600-talets senare hälft’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland, 96:1 (2011). Küng, Enn, ‘Die staatlichen Zölle  – Portorium und Lizent  – in den Städten der schwedischen Ostseeprovinzen’, Hansische Geschichtsblätter 133 (2015).

102  Kasper Kepsu Lesger, Clé  & Eric Wijnroks, ‘The spatial organization of trade: Antwerp merchants and the gateway systems in the Baltic and the low countries c. 1550’, in Hanno Brand (ed.), Trade, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange: Continuity and Change in the North Sea Area and the Baltic c. 1350–1750 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2005). Lotman, Piret, ‘Der Kirchenstreit zwischen schwedischen und deutschen Geistlichen in Nyen’, in Mati Laur & Kersten Brüggeman (eds.), Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte 2 (Tartu: Akadeemiline Ajalooselts, 2007). Lundkvist, Sven, ‘The experience of empire: Sweden as a great power’, in Michael Roberts (ed.), Sweden’s Age of Greatness 1632–1718 (London & Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1973). Müller, Leos, Consuls, Corsairs, and Commerce: The Swedish Consular Service and Long-Distance Shipping, 1720–1815 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2004). Müller, Leos, ‘Swedish shipping industry: A  European and global perspective, 1600–1800’, Journal of History for the Public, 6 (2009). Müller, Leos, Neutrality in World History (New York & London: Routledge, 2019). Munthe, Ludvig W:son, Kungl. fortifikationens historia: 3:1, Fortifikationsstaten under Dahlbergh, Stuart och Palmquist, 1674–1719 (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1908). Munthe, Ludvig W:son, Kungl. fortifikationens historia: 3:2, Fortifikationsstaten under Dahlbergh, Stuart och Palmquist, 1674–1719 (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Söner, 1911). Naber, Jaak, Motsättningarnas Narva: Statlig svenskhetspolitik och tyskt lokalvälde i ett statsreglerat samhälle, 1581–1704 (Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1995). North, Michael, Geschichte der Ostsee: Handel und Kulturen (München: Verlag C. H. Beck, 2011). Nyström, Per, ‘Mercatura Ruthenica’, Scandia, 10:2 (1937). Riksarkivet (Swedish National Archives), Stockholm. Sandberg, Robert, ‘The state and the integration of the towns of the provinces of the Swedish Baltic empire’, in Kekke Stadin (ed.), Baltic Towns and Their Inhabitants: Aspects on Early Modern Towns in the Baltic Area (Huddinge: Södertörns högskola, 2003). Scheltjens, Werner, ‘The influence of spatial change on operational strategies in early-modern Dutch maritime shipping: A case-study on Dutch maritime shipping in the Gulf of Finland and on Archangel 1703–1740’, International Journal of Maritime History, 23:1 (2011). Scheltjens, Werner, North Eurasian Trade in World History, 1660–1860: The Economic and Political Importance of the Baltic Sea (London & New York: Routledge, 2022). Seppel, Marten, ‘Introduction’, in Marten Seppel & Keith Tribe (eds.), Cameralism in Practice: State Administration and Economy in Early Modern Europe (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017). Sivonen, Mika, ‘Me inkerikot, vatjalaiset ja karjalaiset’: Uskonnollinen integrointi ja ortodoksisen vähemmistön identiteetin rakentuminen Ruotsin Inkerissä 1680–1702 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2007). Soom, Arnold, Die Politik Schwedens bezüglich des russischen Transithandels über die estnischen Städte in den Jahren 1636–1656 (Tartu: Õpetatud Eesti Seltsi Toimetised, 1940).

The economic–military position of Nyen 103 Sorokin, P. E., Arkheologicheskoye naslediye Sankt-Peterburga [Archaeological heritage of Saint-Petersburg], Vyp. 3 (Sankt-Peterburg: SZI Naslediya, 2009). www.soundtoll.nl. Spruyt, Hendrik, ‘War, trade, and state formation’, in Robert E. Goodin (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Stiernman, A., Samling utaf Kongl. bref, stadgar och förordningar angående Sweriges rikes commerce, politie och oeconomie uti gemen, ifrån åhr 1523 in til närvarande tid, del 5: 1689–1707 (Stockholm: Kongl. tryckeriet, 1766). Tarkiainen, Kari, Moskoviten: Sverige och Ryssland 1478–1721 (Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, 2017). Tarkiainen, Kari  & Ülle Tarkiainen, Provinsen bortom havet: Estlands svenska historia 1561–1710 (Helsingfors  & Stockholm: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland & Atlantis, 2013). Troebst, Stefan, ‘Narva und der Außenhandel Persiens im 17. Jahrhundert: Zum merkantilen Hintergrund schwedischer Großmachtpolitik’, in Aleksander Loit & Helmut Piirimäe (eds.), Die schwedischen Ostseeprovinzen Estland und Livland im 16.–18. Jahrhundert (Stockholm: University of Stockholm, 1993). Troebst, Stefan, Handelskontrolle  – ‘Derivation’  – Eindämmung: Schwedische Moskaupolitik 1617–1661 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 1997). Upton, A. F., Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 179. van Tielhof, Milja, ‘The Mother of All Trades’: The Baltic Grain Trade in Amsterdam From the Late 16th to the Early 19th Century (Leiden, Boston  & Köln: Brill, 2002). Villstrand, Nils Erik, Sveriges historia 1600–1721 (Stockholm: Norstedts, 2011). von Bonsdorff, Carl, Nyen och Nyenskans: Historisk skildring (Helsingfors: Finska vetenskaps-societeten, 1891).

5 A tale of two fortress towns Militarisation generating urbanisation in 18th-century Helsinki-Sveaborg and Ruotsinsalmi Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson In early modern Europe, the military was everywhere, affecting most towns at least a little and some towns quite profoundly. The military impact could revolutionise the course of a pre-existing town’s history or even create towns out of nothing. One emblem of the era was the military town, where ‘economy, physical and political milieu, and socio-cultural life were all shaped by the permanent presence of the military’.1 Even though such towns had existed as long as the organised military, early modern Europe provided exceptionally favourable circumstances for them to flourish. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a military revolution swept Europe as rulers replaced rudimentarily trained temporary armies with professional standing troops, spears and swords with firearms and gunnery, and medieval castles with bastion fortresses. As a result, European rulers had larger and more expensive military machines to maintain than before. To solve the problem, they turned to their civilian subjects, using both cooperation and coercion as their tools. Wealthy merchants functioned as financers and under-contractors for the armies while smaller businessmen sold food and drink to soldiers. Civilians in both urban and rural areas were obliged to lodge soldiers in their homes, to transport goods and people, and to run other errands for the army. This development created a strong co-dependence between military strongholds and urban settlements. A  garrison, fortress, or naval base needed a permanent group of civilian entrepreneurs to maintain them. Lodging soldiers and fulfilling other needs of the army were often arduous tasks for the community, but at the same time selling products and services to the military created new jobs, stimulated the local economy and lured new people into the towns. At best, this created a cycle where urbanisation sustained militarisation, and militarisation sustained urbanisation.2 Although the fortress cities and towns of Western and Central Europe are the best-known examples of this phenomenon, the European North also provides us with plentiful data about the birth and evolution of military DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-6

A tale of two fortress towns 105 towns. Though towns in early modern Russia and Sweden may have been smaller and further away from each other than in the climatically more favourable and more densely populated parts of the continent, both realms were prominent military powers – Sweden had its age of greatness in the 17th century, and Russia went through a powerful period of militarisation in the 18th century – and the largest fortress and naval towns in the region did not pale in comparison with their Western or Central European counterparts. The majority of the fortresses, naval bases, and other military settlements were placed in pre-existing towns. If strategic arguments dictated otherwise, a strong military state could resort to drastic measures to secure the maintenance of their base. This was enabled by the relatively weak selfgovernance of Nordic and Russian towns and the broad authority of local monarchs over municipal matters.3 In 1680, the Royal Swedish Navy was relocated from Stockholm to the uninhabited island of Trossö, on the southern coast of Sweden, to be closer to its perennial foe, Denmark. To assure the necessary commercial services, the Swedish Crown abolished the nearest town Ronneby and ordered its burghers to relocate to Trossö, thus creating the naval town of Karlskrona.4 A hundred years later, the Russian Empire conquered and fortified the towns of Azov and Taganrog on the Black Sea. The Russian Crown launched an aggressive campaign to convince civilian entrepreneurs to settle in the newly acquired towns, paying lavish monetary subsidies to each merchant and handcrafter as an enticement.5 In this chapter, the link between early modern militarisation and urbanisation is demonstrated using two 18th-century cases: the sea fortress Sveaborg and the sea fortress Ruotsinsalmi.6 Although both are today located inside the borders of Finland, they were originally built by two opposing military powers, the Swedish Realm and the Russian Empire. From a strategic standpoint, the fortresses were mirror images of each other: large fortified naval bases designed to guard the Russo-Swedish border and secure military dominance over the Finnish coast.7 Their maintenance needs were also largely identical: the fortresses needed stone, brick, timber, and lime for construction, and they needed to provide lodging, food, and drink for the construction workers and garrison soldiers. The biggest difference between the two fortresses was their geographical location. Sveaborg Fortress was adjacent to the town of Helsinki, whereas Ruotsinsalmi Fortress was built on an uninhabited island far from an urban centre. This profoundly affected the ways in which the builders were able to make use of local civilians to resolve their maintenance problems. The builders of Sveaborg had the merchants and businessmen of Helsinki at their beck and call, whereas the builders of Ruotsinsalmi lacked such a ready pool of subcontractors.

106  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson This chapter compares the ways in which the builders of Sveaborg and Ruotsinsalmi solved two major maintenance issues: purchasing construction material and arranging lodgings, food and drink for workers and soldiers. In the case of Sveaborg, it assesses how the Swedish army utilised the burghers and other civilian residents of Helsinki to meet its supply needs and analyses how such activities affected the urbanisation of the town of Helsinki. In the case of Ruotsinsalmi, it describes how the Russian army was able to arrange its maintenance issues without recourse to a similar civil society and how these arrangements also created a pattern of urbanisation, albeit in a different and more indirect manner. Background – Fight Over Dominance of the Finnish Coast The Great Northern War (1700–1721) tipped the balance of power in the European North. It marked the end of Sweden’s age of greatness and the beginning of the military rise of the Russian Empire as well as the beginning of a century-long period of hostility between the two nations. This period included two short revanche wars  – the Russo-Swedish Wars of 1741–1743 and 1788–1790 – and a constant game of military one-upmanship. The stress was on maritime defence. Emperor Peter the Great had modernised the Russian navy and founded the Kronstadt naval base on an island off the coast of his new capital St. Petersburg, acquiring naval hegemony over the Gulf of Finland. The Swedes, for their part, did their best to challenge this hegemony. In 1747, King Frederick I of Sweden approved plans to build the sea fortress Sveaborg on a group of islands off the coast of the small town of Helsinki. Sveaborg was to be a large garrison fortress with both infantry and artillery troops, but most importantly, it would become the home port for the Swedish Archipelago Fleet,8 a naval squadron consisting of small vessels and designed to operate in the shallow waters and narrow straits of the Finnish archipelago. Helsinki was known for having the best harbour in the Gulf of Finland, and the town had been used as a strategic transit port by the Swedish army already in the 16th and 17th centuries.9 The massive construction project, too expensive for the diminished national finances of the Swedish Realm, was bankrolled by France, which paid the Swedes lavish yearly subsidies to weaken the growing military might of Russia. The work started in the spring of 1748, and the fortress was supposed to be completed within five years. The plans were, however, overly ambitious, and Sveaborg was still uncompleted when Sweden joined the Seven Years’ War in 1757, bringing a halt to the fortification work. After the war, the work continued sporadically until the French Revolution (1789) cut off the subsidies. Although large parts of the original plan were

A tale of two fortress towns 107 never realised, Sveaborg was both defendable and functional as a fortress and naval base at least from the 1760s onwards.10 The Swedish Archipelago Fleet proved its worth in the Russo-Swedish War of 1788–1790 by winning a decisive battle against the Russians at the strait of Ruotsinsalmi. For the Russians, the war was fought uncomfortably close to St. Petersburg  – the gunfire from Ruotsinsalmi rattled the windows of the Tsarskoye Selo Imperial Palace –, and it demonstrated that Kronstadt was too far from the border for the Russian naval defence to effectively react to Swedish attacks. Immediately after the war, Empress Catherine the Great ordered that a fortified naval outpost be created in the vicinity of the border. Based on its experiences from the war, Kotka Island next to the strait of Ruotsinsalmi was chosen as the place for the naval base. In the late 18th century, the Russian Empire entered into a strong period of militarisation and as a result was willing to invest large sums of money in naval bases and fortresses. The port town of Sevastopol was built from scratch in the 1780s after Russia had annexed the Crimean Peninsula, and St. Petersburg’s naval outpost of Kronstadt was expensively reconstructed at the same time.11 Although the Ruotsinsalmi Fortress was relatively small in comparison, it rivalled Sveaborg, the largest and most expensive construction project in the history of the Swedish Realm in both scope and status. Furthermore, it was built much faster. When Catherine the Great’s successor, Emperor Paul I, halted all construction work on the fortress in 1796, the Ruotsinsalmi sea fortress and naval base were practically ready. The fortification work continued again in 1801 by the order of Paul’s successor, Emperor Alexander I. This time, the work concentrated on the mainland side. The Napoleonic wars were raging in Europe, and Russia strengthened the defence of its borders. The small earth fort of Kyminlinna, built in the 1790s to secure Ruotsinsalmi from the mainland side, was expanded into a large star fort with stone ramparts. By 1807, Ruotsinsalmi had become a strong double fortress, with a fortified naval base on Kotka Island and Kyminlinna on the mainland.12 Helsinki-Sveaborg – the Town With a Fortress When the construction of Sveaborg began, Helsinki had some 1,500 inhabitants. As mentioned, the town had a long history as a military transit port thanks to its excellent harbour. As a tragic side effect, it had suffered great damage in previous wars and was still slowly recovering from being burnt to the ground in the Great Northern War. Aside from sporadically catering to the Swedish army’s needs, local merchants had traditionally made their money through the timber trade. Technically advanced, Dutch-style sawmills were becoming commonplace in the Baltic Sea region in the 18th

108  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson century, and they had first arrived in Helsinki in the 1730s. As the result, sawn timber had replaced hand-hewn beams as the main export product of Helsinki.13 The Swedish parliament appointed a special committee to handle the purchases of the Sveaborg construction site, as was the standard procedure in all similar projects. The burghers of Helsinki were in a preferred position as subcontractors, as the Swedish law granted them a monopoly on trade and commerce in their own town and in the surrounding hinterlands.14 Although some exceptions could be made, the principle could not be completely ignored, especially since political leaders stressed the importance of developing Finland economically to help it recover from the wars.15 The special committee was chaired by the local governor, and its three members represented three of the four Estates of Sweden: the nobility, clergy, and burghers (not the peasants). The representative of the clergy was the vicar of Helsinki, and various local merchants alternated as the representative of the burghers. The system thus gave the locals plenty of influence over the purchases and access to inside information about the fortress’ needs.16 At first, the range of products that the fortress required was a problem for the burghers, as the only big businesses they were previously engaged in was sawmills and the timber trade. The timber purchases functioned relatively satisfactorily from the beginning – the army complained tirelessly about prizes and quality, and the merchants complained about the army’s unreasonable demands, but this was (at least partially) an obligatory bargaining ritual. At its heyday, the fortress required more timber than the local merchants could sell from their own sawmills, but they managed to fill the void by importing sawn timber from Old Finland,17 using their business connections.18 When it came to brick and lime, the situation was more dire. The entire province of Uusimaa had only two brickworks, one in Helsinki and another in the remote countryside, and it had no lime quarries. To obtain enough bricks, the Crown was at first forced to resort to its own production. The only brickwork factory in the town was rented from its owner and rebuilt, equipped with the latest technical innovations to increase production and supplied with skilled workers recruited from other parts of the Swedish Realm and from German-speaking areas. Lime was purchased from Gotland, the leading lime production area in the Baltic Sea region. The local merchants tried to act as go-betweens in the lime trade, but to cut costs the Crown quickly established direct contacts with Gotland.19 Later, merchants established a lime quarry close to Helsinki, but the dismal quality and quantity of the lime could not compete with the products from Gotland.20

A tale of two fortress towns 109 The lime was purchased directly from Gotland for the whole construction period. The brick industry, on the other hand, fell relatively quickly into the hands of the local businessmen. The Crown wanted to use the soldiers mainly for construction work and began to purchase more goods from private sellers as soon as it was possible.21 In 1752, the Crown stopped renting the brickworks and started to buy bricks purely from private entrepreneurs. After the start of construction on the fortress, local merchants, especially those who owned land in the countryside, founded their own brickworks. Local civil servants, officers, and other landowners also became involved in this business. According to Governor G. S. Gyllenborg, there were 17 brickworks in the province of Uusimaa either in operation or under construction in the year 1756, with the vast majority of them being in and around Helsinki.22 Many of them went bankrupt during the Seven Years’ War, but the most profitable ones were still in business in the early 19th century.23 The ledgers of the Fortification Department illustrate how the burghers’ standing improved as they gained more experience and capital. During the first and most intense building period (1748–1757), some 40 per cent of construction material was bought from the merchants of Helsinki. In addition to lime and limestone shipped from Gotland, the remaining 60 per cent included purchases from local civil servants, officers, and landowners.24 When the construction work was revived after the Seven Years’ War, the merchants’ share rose to 60 per cent and then to 80 per cent during the last major building period in 1770. The purchase committee was abolished in the 1760s, and the fortress commandant started to order the construction materials independently, which cost the townspeople their direct link to purchase decisions. However, by this point the locals were already firmly attached to the business and had developed the necessary infrastructure, and thus, they had no problem in retaining their standing.25 The second main branch of military maintenance was food and drink. Sveaborg had two types of soldiers: seasonal construction workers, who arrived in the spring and left in the autumn, and garrison soldiers, who lived permanently inside the fortress. At first, the Crown provisioned both by handing out victuals from army warehouses, as the local burghers did not have enough resources.26 Gradually, as the burghers’ resources improved, the maintenance of garrison troops was left to local petty burghers. This arrangement was formalised by an agreement made in 1763, which committed the burghers to equipping the fortress with enough butchers, grocers, innkeepers, and restaurateurs. After the construction work ended, the burgher community of Helsinki took care of the entire food and drink supply of the fortress.27

110  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson As in any early modern military town, the alcohol trade was especially lucrative and keeping a tavern a prosperous business. Although the local petty burghers dominated the field, everyone from the richest merchants to the poorest widows participated. Indeed, brewing, distilling, and keeping a tavern was largely a female business: the wives of petty burghers often ran the family taverns, and the town council routinely granted poor widows the right to sell alcohol to help them financially. In 1747, before the construction work on Sveaborg started, there were 13 legal innkeepers in Helsinki, but already by the next year the number had increased to 75. The figure fluctuated during the years following the conjunctures related to the construction work, totalling more than 80 at one point and stabilising at around 30 after the construction had permanently ended.28 Both the construction material business and the tavern business brought plenty of money to the town. Between the years 1751 and 1756, when the construction work was at its most intense, the fortress purchased materials and equipment for around one million daler silver.29 To put this figure into context, the worth of Gumtäkt manor, the most lavish country estate in the Helsinki area, was at around the same time evaluated to be worth 6,700 daler silver.30 With the money spent on purchases during those six years, the Crown could have bought the entire town of Helsinki. The amount of money spent on food and alcohol is impossible to calculate, but it is probably safe to assume that the majority of the daily allowances paid to the soldiers ended up in the pockets of the grocers and innkeepers. A large part of this money was invested in economic activities other than those directly connected to the fortress. The most notable was shipbuilding and seafaring. One of Helsinki’s biggest problems in the early 18th century was the lack of large ships capable of trading directly with Southern Europe. The Swedish Realm had adopted a maritime policy that prohibited an indirect import on foreign ships, driving out of the market the Dutch skippers who had traditionally functioned as commercial intermediators. Helsinki’s first ocean-going ship, the frigate Generalguvernören von Rosen, was built in 1746 as a joint project involving the whole local merchant society, one that required huge effort and big financial sacrifices. After the construction work on Sveaborg had started, the merchants invested their acquired capital in ships, and the shipbuilding boom continued until the end of the 18th century.31 The fortress also brought skilled shipbuilders to Helsinki, since the lack of a skilled workforce was a severe problem; for the second shipbuilding project in 1755, the burghers received help from the army, which provided them with 20 skilled soldiers from Ostrobothnia.32 Thanks to the fortress and the army, the small town of Helsinki grew rapidly. In 1747, it had around 1,500 civil inhabitants, but by 1763 the town’s civil population rose to nearly 2,400. The stagnating construction

A tale of two fortress towns 111 works and international recession took their toll in the 1760s, though, and by the end of the decade the population had dropped to around 2,100; but during the Gustavian era, Helsinki’s population again grew steadily, surpassing 2,500 in 1780 and 3,000 in 1795.33 These numbers exclude the garrison at the Sveaborg Fortress, which had between 4,000 and 5,000 persons during the Gustavian era.34 The military influx contributed to civil urbanisation, creating a growing market for different professions. Many craftsmen arrived from other parts of the Swedish Realm or from German-speaking areas, some to work on the fortress construction projects or for the army, others to serve the civilian clients. The rising demand for luxury goods, fuelled by the noble officers and civil servants as well as enriched local merchants, provided work for new kinds of handcrafters. As proof of both growing local luxury consumption and growing local business capital, Helsinki had a small glassworks, a small whiteware factory, and a small sugar factory by the end of 18th century. The town needed a growing number of petty burghers, grocers, fishermen, and butchers to continually provide both soldiers and civilians with food and drink. The growing population also employed more and more servants, luring many young women from the surrounding countryside to town in search of employment.35 Sveaborg did not bring only benefits, capital, and business opportunities to Helsinki and its people. The billeting system, that is, the system for accommodating soldiers in the townspeople’s homes, placed a heavy burden on the civilian townspeople, especially during the first decade of the fortress construction. It was abolished to a considerable extent in the late 1750s, after sufficient barracks had been built, but it never entirely disappeared, and at least during the Russo-Swedish War of 1788–1790 billeting was again in wide use.36 Furthermore, the Crown needed to pause or entirely halt construction work several times, bringing various troubles for the burghers who had tied their livelihoods to doing business with the Sveaborg Fortress or its soldiers. The 1760s was a particularly low period in this regard, with population growth stagnating and every fifth burgher declaring bankruptcy. However, the garrison troops remained nearly constantly at Sveaborg, providing the locals with possibilities to sell food, drink, tobacco, and other goods to soldiers even when construction work was stopped.37 The town never entirely depended on the army, as the merchants of Helsinki also engaged in timber export, shipping, and victual trade with Stockholm. The army provided a much-welcomed extra income, but it was not the base of the town’s economic life. Helsinki and its burgher community had existed before the army arrived, and the army merely boosted

112  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson its economic development and urbanisation, which likely would have also occurred without the fortress, albeit at a much slower pace. Ruotsinsalmi – the Fortress With a Proto-Town The construction history of the Ruotsinsalmi Fortress is relatively short compared to its Swedish counterpart. Whereas Sveaborg was built more or less continuously for more than four decades, Ruotsinsalmi was constructed in only a little over ten years. The rising Russian Empire had more resources and human labour at hand than the regressing Swedish Realm. The project is made even more impressive by the fact that the Ruotsinsalmi Fortress had to battle far greater maintenance problems than Sveaborg. Using civilian businessmen as subcontractors was also a commonplace arrangement in the late 18th-century Russian army. The rebuilding of the Kronstadt naval base in the 1780s was outsourced to a Petersburgian merchant named Dubrovin for the sum of almost 55,000 roubles, and similar smaller contracts are known from other military settlements as well.38 In Ruotsinsalmi, the Russian army adopted a mixed system. It made purchases from civilian entrepreneurs and used independent contractors, but it also manufactured a large part of the construction material itself.39 The nearest town to Ruotsinsalmi was Hamina. In contemporary documents, their distance is estimated at 30 versts or a little under 32 kilometres.40 The burgher community of Hamina was reasonably well off, as the town was one of the centres of the sawmill industry that developed in late 18th-century Old Finland. During the construction years for Ruotsinsalmi, Hamina and the neighbouring town of Vyborg exported more sawn timber than all the ports in the Swedish Realm combined.41 Furthermore, the sea enabled relatively easy maritime transport between Hamina and Ruotsinsalmi. However, Hamina had its own military burdens that limited its burghers’ ability to act in Ruotsinsalmi. Hamina already then had a long history as a fortress and garrison town. It had been a Swedish outpost against Russia until the Russo-Swedish War of 1741–1743, which had turned it into a Russian outpost against Sweden. After the Russo-Swedish War of 1788–1790, the garrison of Hamina was expanded and its fortifications rebuilt.42 This meant that the merchants and petty burghers of Hamina had their hands full in serving the army in their own town. They were obligated to lodge soldiers in their homes, provide firewood, candles and other necessities for barracks, and build arsenals and stables for the artillery, but they also received lucrative contracts to sell construction material, grain, and victuals to the military.43 The biggest merchants in Hamina also made business deals with Ruotsinsalmi, but they were unable to take care of everything.

A tale of two fortress towns 113 Of the main construction materials needed to build the fortress, the Russian army was most self-sufficient in producing bricks. When construction of the naval base began, the Russian army built three brickworks on the nearby island of Mussalo at the beginning of the 1790s. One brickwork factory was built next to the Kyminlinna Fortress, and later, when the fortress was being rebuilt from 1801 onwards, it was joined by another factory. During the most intense building years, the army had to supplement its own production by purchasing bricks from the merchants of Hamina and even by shipping them from St. Petersburg, but it still manufactured most of the bricks on its own.44 In contrast to bricks, sawn timber was produced by a private entrepreneur. Carl Bruun, the richest merchant in Hamina, owned the Korkeakoski sawmill, the largest mill in the area and located quite close to the fortress construction site. The arrangement, though functional, did not please the army, which did not want to be dependent on one private supplier. At the turn of the century, the fortress commandant launched a project to build an army sawmill for Kyminlinna next to the brickworks. Deemed too expensive, the army then tried to buy the Korkeakoski sawmill from Bruun. The negotiations were still under way when the Finnish War broke out in 1808.45 It can be argued that organising its own production was considerably cheaper for the Russian army than it was for the Swedish army. At Sveaborg, the construction workers were soldiers of the Swedish army. Furthermore, most of them were allotted soldiers, who normally lived off the income from their allotment farms.46 When these men engaged in construction work, the Crown had to pay them an allowance, and thus, they constituted a large expenditure with respect to the Crown’s public finances. The construction workers at Ruotsinsalmi, in contrast, were a mixture of soldiers, peasants, serfs, and convicts. Serfs and convicts were especially prominent, as the use of forced labour in the military industry and for fortress construction projects was a distinct feature of late 18th-century Russia.47 Serfs were transported to work at Ruotsinsalmi from as far away as the Vitebsk region in present-day Belarussia. After the Russian army had crushed the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising in Poland, Catherine the Great ordered Polish prisoners of war to be shipped to Ruotsinsalmi, where they worked for two years before their release in 1796.48 Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that the material purchases for construction of the Ruotsinsalmi Fortress did not accelerate urbanisation in the same way as they did at Sveaborg. The money spent for purchases at Sveaborg was channelled to the entrepreneurs of Helsinki and sped up the economic growth of the town. At Ruotsinsalmi, only a small amount of the construction budget went to purchases due to the army’s own large-scale

114  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson production operations. It partly ended up in the pockets of Carl Bruun and other entrepreneurs of Hamina  – to whom the construction of Ruotsinsalmi was a small side business compared to catering to the army in their own town – and partly to other purveyors of Russian contracts. The other main branch of military supply operations, that of food and drink, was left to the Russian army peddler system. The military peddlers were independent small-time entrepreneurs who followed the army, purchased food and drink and sold it to the soldiers, working under the army’s approval. After Hamina had become a Russian town, numerous peddlers settled there to serve the garrison population, and the most successful of them had penetrated the local merchant society. At the beginning of the 19th century, one-third of the merchants of Hamina had a Russian background.49 When Ruotsinsalmi was being built, it received peddlers partly from the Russian burgher community of Hamina and partly from Russia. These entrepreneurs settled in what was to become known as ‘Ruotsinsalmi town’. In addition to the naval base and the fortifications guarding it, the plan for Kotka Island included a residential area. It resembled a small town, with an intersecting network of (at least partially) stone-paved streets and a canal dug to keep the marshy area dry. This ‘fortress town’ had barracks for soldiers, buildings for military staff and administration, residences for the fortress commandant and regimental commanders, a Russian Orthodox garrison church, a military hospital with a botanical garden, a school for the soldiers’ children, and an 18-shop market hall for military peddlers. Part of the area was reserved for officers and civilian entrepreneurs who wanted to build private houses.50 The most important stimulus to construct this township was the total absence of civilian homes suitable for soldier billeting. Normally, the Russian army avoided building barracks and used the common European practice of billeting soldiers in civilian homes  – in fact, it used it more prominently than any other European nation. As late as the 1860s, less than one-third of Russian garrison soldiers were quartered in barracks.51 However, as there were no civilian homes in Ruotsinsalmi that could lodge soldiers – prior to the founding of the fortress, only one crofter had lived on Kotka Island – building the ‘fortress town’ was a necessity. The most reliable source on the inhabitants of the Ruotsinsalmi Fortress town is an 1802 report sent by Major General Johan Sutthoff, the commandant of the fortress, to the authorities of Old Finland.52 According to Sutthoff, Ruotsinsalmi had 7,994 inhabitants, 7,284 of whom were military personnel. The remaining 795 persons included the soldiers’ family members, discharged and resigned soldiers, merchants, army peddlers, fishermen, and manual labourers. Twenty-seven persons belonged to merchant families and 64 persons belonged to peddler families.

A tale of two fortress towns 115 Just who had authority over the civilian entrepreneurs of Ruotsinsalmi proved to be a difficult question. In 1796, after numerous complaints over misdeeds pertaining to the Ruotsinsalmi alcohol trade, the Old Finland provincial government gave the Hamina town council jurisdiction over all civilian entrepreneurs operating within the fortress. This immediately ignited a territorial battle between the town council and the commandant of Ruotsinsalmi, with the latter arguing that the businessmen should be categorised as military personnel since they worked as army suppliers authorised by the army. The provincial government resolved the quarrel with a compromise: the merchants stayed under the town council’s jurisdiction, but their daily supervision was the duty of the fortress commandant.53 The existing maps suggest that the residential area of the fortress town followed the normal social topography of an early modern European township. The canal, lined with roads on both sides, functioned as the ‘main street’. It was overlooked by the houses of the high officers and officials and the wealthiest businessmen. Soldiers and sailors who had private houses, as well as the peddlers, fishermen, and labourers lived on the outskirts of the community. The heart of the town was the marketplace with its market hall. Originally, the garrison church also stood next to the marketplace, but it was later relocated closer to the barrack quarters. The only major thing missing from the stereotypical townscape was a town hall – as the community had no official town privileges and therefore no municipal self-governance.54 Practically, everyone affiliated with the business community of this small town had a Russian background. The communion book of Kymi parish, which included all Lutheran residents of Ruotsinsalmi Fortress, mentions only one businessman, a baker named Johan Fredrik Stier.55 All others belonged to the Russian Orthodox fortress congregation. Most peddlers were small-time operators with shops and taverns, selling food they had purchased from the nearby countryside as well as beer and spirits. Several of them also had small gigs working as army subcontractors  – they did repair work at the barracks and sold an array of items to the army that they had managed to acquire by some means. As life in the Ruotsinsalmi Fortress town gradually stabilised, some entrepreneurs gained enough capital and connections to work as important material suppliers or independent contractors. The Sinebrychoff family is the most prominent and famous example. Pjotr Sinebrychoff, a peasant from Gavrilov, near Moscow, moved to Ruotsinsalmi with his family in the late 1790s. He opened a shop that sold tobacco, groceries, beer, and spirits. After the shop had earned him enough capital, he built a brewery and became the leading beer manufacturer in Ruotsinsalmi. When Pjotr Sinebrychoff died in 1805, his 16-year-old son Nikolai took over the family business and expanded it further. The family

116  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson built a small brickwork factory and a small sawmill and sold construction material to the fortress. Nikolai Sinebrychoff made contracts with the army for construction and painting work, using his ‘own materials and own workers’. In 1809, the 20-year-old Nikolai officially achieved the status of a merchant with the St. Petersburg merchant guild; in the Russian guild system, the only requirement for this position was sufficient wealth.56 Based on the scope of their business, which included shops, taverns, a brewery, a sawmill, a brickyard, and large contracts with the army, the Sinebrychoffs can be categorised as the only Ruotsinsalmi-based big-business merchants. However, there were others in their shadow growing steadily wealthier, a good example being the brothers Gavril and Jakov Vavulin. Gavril Vavulin ran a grocery shop and a tavern while his brother Jakov worked as a general handyman for the fortress. Jakov Vavulin repaired the barracks, bridges, ramparts, and army boats using hired hands from the nearby countryside as his workers. He also sold timber, tools, miscellaneous hardware, and even ten tonnes of alabaster stone to the army – probably used for the construction of a new garrison church.57 When the fortress of Ruotsinsalmi was founded, it did not have any big business owners suitable for subcontracting work at hand, but it quickly created the means for such business leaders to emerge. By the eve of the Finnish War (1808–1809), the most successful army peddlers had grown wealthy enough to sell construction materials to the army and to become subcontractors for the construction of the fortress – in other words, they started to act just like town merchants. However, this evolution was cut short after only 16 years. After 1809 On the eve of the Finnish War (1808–1809), Helsinki-Sveaborg and Ruotsinsalmi were roughly the same size as population centres. With civilians and soldiers added together, Helsinki-Sveaborg had roughly 9,000 inhabitants and Ruotsinsalmi a little under 10,000. Both were notably large urban settlements for their time and place. They had passed in size Hamina and Vyborg, the saw-industry towns of Old Finland, as well as Tallinn, Tartu, and Narva, the old Hanseatic trading towns of Estonia. Even Turku, the traditional main town of Swedish Finland, was in danger of being bypassed by them. In Helsinki-Sveaborg, about one-third of the residents were military personnel and the remaining two-thirds civilians. By the standards of the Swedish Realm, the town was extremely militarised – even Karlskrona, the home port of the Royal Swedish Navy, had a smaller percentage of soldiers.58 In Ruotsinsalmi, a whopping 90 per cent were military personnel and only a little over 10 per cent civilians.59 Whereas Helsinki-Sveaborg was a town

A tale of two fortress towns 117 with a military base, Ruotsinsalmi was a military base with a town – or, more precisely, a military base with some features of a proto-town. In the Finnish War, Russia conquered the entire eastern part of the Swedish Realm. As its decisive phase was fought in wintertime, when the sea was frozen, the sea fortresses and their fleets did not contribute to the action in any major way. Ruotsinsalmi was far from the battle lines throughout the whole war; Sveaborg surrendered without a fight after a two-month siege. With the Treaty of Hamina (1809),60 the conquered area became the Grand Duchy of Finland, a semi-autonomous part of the Russian Empire. Three years later, Old Finland was annexed to the Grand Duchy, combining all Finnish-speaking areas in the Russian Empire under the same system of governance. For Ruotsinsalmi, this was the beginning of the end. The former frontier fortress was now deep inside the borders of the Grand Duchy of Finland, its strategic importance therefore lost. All fortification work came to a halt, and Ruotsinsalmi was downgraded to a second-class fortress. Most of the troops were transported elsewhere, and their barracks were demolished. Also, the bulk of civilian entrepreneurs moved away, either following the troops to their new posts or seeking business opportunities elsewhere. Many of them ended up in Helsinki, which was going through a whole new golden age. In 1812, Emperor Alexander I chose Helsinki as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland. Turku, the traditional commercial and administrative centre of Finland, was deemed to be too far from St. Petersburg and too oriented towards Stockholm and Sweden. Helsinki, as the imperial declaration pointed out, had an excellent harbour and a lively economic life, and it was protected by the Sveaborg Fortress, making it the prime candidate amongst Finnish towns to become the new capital.61 The merchant community in the new capital became a mixture of old and new. Most of the old Swedish-era merchant families retained their positions, but they were joined by new Russian-born entrepreneurs. In the 1820s, one-third of the merchants had Russian origins.62 Several of them were former army peddlers with backgrounds in Ruotsinsalmi. Nikolai Sinebrychoff settled in Sveaborg in 1816 and gained an official monopoly to produce and sell alcohol in the fortress. Later, he relocated to the mainland and became the biggest beer manufacturer in Finland.63 The three sons of Jakov Vavulin also joined the growing community: Ivan and Nikolai co-owned a spirit factory while Pjotr ran a grocery and haberdashery business.64 While Helsinki and Sveaborg flourished, Ruotsinsalmi only limped along. Despite its downgrade in status, the fortress still had a permanent garrison that provided a living for a small group of entrepreneurs. However, they were gradually losing their standing. The business in Ruotsinsalmi had

118  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson always been borderline illegal, but so long as the fortress had been a strategically important military outpost the army had protected its merchants and peddlers. After 1808, this protection ended, as Ruotsinsalmi was no longer a military priority. In 1816, in response to a complaint from a Finnish official, Emperor Alexander I  declared all civilian business in Ruotsinsalmi illegal, as the fortress did not have town privileges. The soldiers were instructed to use the commercial services of the burghers of Hamina. A  proposition was made65 to give Ruotsinsalmi an official town charter, but the burghers of Hamina strongly opposed the idea and managed to get the high officials on their side. According to them, Ruotsinsalmi provided a living for only a handful of shopkeepers and innkeepers, too few to form a proper burgher community and too poor to cover all the costs of a municipal government. The emperor’s decision did contain a loophole, though, as it allowed official army peddlers to continue doing business there. However, this bought the last entrepreneurs only a little extra time before the inevitable demise. On the order of Alexander I’s successor, Emperor Nicholas I, the Ruotsinsalmi naval base and fortress was permanently closed down in the 1830s. The Russian army kept only the small island outpost of Fort Slava, manned by a few hundred soldiers. When the British Baltic Fleet ravaged the Finnish coast during the Baltic offensives of the Crimean War (1854–1855), even Fort Slava was abandoned, as the military strategists at St. Petersburg did not consider Ruotsinsalmi to be worth the fight. In July 1855, the British landed in Ruotsinsalmi, blew up the deserted fortifications and burnt the abandoned fortress town to the ground.66 At the time of their arrival, the only residents of Kotka Island were a handful of retired soldiers and soldier widows plus a couple of farmers who had settled on the island after the military had left.67 The burgeoning protourban community had regressed to that of a sleepy agrarian village. Conclusions Sveaborg and Ruotsinsalmi provide two different examples of how early modern militarisation generated urbanisation. Both fortresses increased urbanisation in their areas, albeit in different ways. Sveaborg accelerated the growth of a pre-existing town, whereas Ruotsinsalmi almost created a new town out of thin air. At Sveaborg, the military was able to outsource its maintenance to the town and its businessmen, though the process required a lengthy period of adjustment. Serving the large fortress profoundly altered the development of Helsinki, accelerating its demographic and economic growth beyond the national average. This development culminated when Helsinki became

A tale of two fortress towns 119 the capital of Grand Duchy of Finland. The effect of militarisation revolutionised its history, turning an ordinary small town into the administrative, economic, and military centre of Finland in little over 60  years. Indeed, Helsinki may thank the effects of 18th-century militarisation for its present-day position as the capital city of Finland. 19 November 1747, when the King of Sweden decided to fortify Helsinki, is no doubt the most important date in the city’s history – more important than 1812, which can be seen as just the culmination of a development process started in 1747. At Ruotsinsalmi, the army was forced to conduct most of its own maintenance work. Despite this, the army’s needs created a civilian community that, its short history notwithstanding, could be described as a proto-town. The army peddlers that moved to the Ruotsinsalmi fortress to sell food and drink to soldiers formed a lively business community, and fairly quickly the most successful of them started to function as independent contractors and purveyors of the army. In other words, the fortress gave rise to a burgher community in its own right – a community able to take care of its maintenance needs, from peddling and innkeeping to purchases of construction material and contracting. Had the evolution continued along the same lines, Ruotsinsalmi would have grown into a privileged town with a real bourgeoisie. However, this development was cut short when the fortress lost its strategic importance and was ultimately shut down, the civilian business community withering into oblivion with it. The town of Kotka, which today stands on the former site of Ruotsinsalmi, has no urban continuum with its predecessor. It grew around the W. Gutzeit & Co. saw and paper mills founded in the 1870s, 20 years after the last remains of the fortress town had been blown up and burnt down by the British. The sole reminder of Ruotsinsalmi in Kotka’s townscape is the Russian Orthodox St. Nicholas Church, the former garrison church of the fortress town and its only remaining structure – constructed out of, among other materials, the ten tonnes of alabaster sold by the industrious army peddler Jakob Vavulin. Notes 1 This definition of a military town is taken from the Swedish historian Gunnar Artéus, who was the leader of the pan-Nordic ‘Garnisonsstäder i Norden’ (‘Nordic Garrison Towns’) project in the 1980s. See, for example, Gunnar Artéus, ‘En vetenskaplig obelyst lokalsamhällestyp: Den svenska garnisonsstaden 1620–1985’, in Gunnar Artéus & Kari Selén (eds.), Den nordiska garnisonsstaden (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1988), p. 23. 2 The term military revolution was first coined in the 1950s by Michael Roberts and later refined mainly by Geoffrey Parker; see, for example, Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West

120  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). It has profoundly shaped the discourse on early modern European history, but it also attracted criticism for allegedly exaggerating and oversimplifying matters, see, for example, Jeremy Black, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society 1550–1800 (London: Macmillan Education Ltd, 1991). For more on the role of private entrepreneurs in Western European military supply chains, see, for example, Gordon Bannerman, Merchants and the Military in EighteenthCentury Britain: British Army Contracts and Domestic Supply 1550–1800 (London: Routledge, 2008); Giulio Ongario, Peasants and Soldiers: The Management of the Venetian Military Structure in the Mainland Dominions Between the 16th and 17th Centuries (London: Routledge, 2017), and the various articles in Jeff Lynn-Paul (ed.), War, Entrepreneurs and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean 1300–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). For Nordic perspectives on the theme, see the publications by the ‘Garnisonsstäder i Norden project’, for example, Gunnar Artéus  & Kari Selén (eds.), Den nordiska garnisonsstaden (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1988); Gunnar Artéus (ed.), Nordens garnisonsstäder (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, 1997), and the recent anthology Petri Talvitie & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021). 3 See Chapter 1 by Peter Clark, ‘Northern cities in European perspective’, p. 37. 4 Janrik Bromé, Karlskrona stads historia: Del I: 1680–1790 (Karlskrona: Karlskrona stad, 1930), passim. 5 Janet M. Hartley, Russia 1762–1825: Military Power, the State and the People (Westport: Praeger, 2008), p. 100. 6 Sveaborg is the Swedish name for the fortress, while it is called Suomenlinna in Finnish. The former is its original name while the latter was coined only in the 20th century. The Ruotsinsalmi Fortress was named after a strait that is known as Svensksund in Swedish and Ruotsinsalmi in Finnish; when the Russian army fortified the strait, it adapted the Finnish name and called the fortress Krepost Ruotsinsalmi. Therefore, this chapter uses systematically the names Sveaborg Fortress and Ruotsinsalmi Fortress. 7 Ulla-Riitta Kauppi, ‘Kustaa III:n sodan seuraukset. Ruotsinsalmen linnoituksen rakentaminen, rakennuskanta ja elämä linnoituksessa’, in Kustaa III:n sota ja Ruotsinsalmen meritaistelut: VIII Itämeri-seminaari Kotkassa 5.–7.7.1990 (Kotka: Kymenlaakson maakuntamuseo, 1990), pp.  93–6; Joachim Mickwitz  & Jyrki Paaskoski, Itärajan vartijat 4: 1700-luku (Helsinki: Schildts, 2005), pp. 123–52, 229–33. 8 The official name of the fleet was Arméns Flotta (‘Army Fleet’), which illustrates its military function of operating near the coasts in collaboration with the army. However, it is commonly referred to by the name Skärgårdsflottan (‘Archipelago fleet’). 9 Seppo Aalto, Sotakaupunki: Helsingin Vanhankaupungin historia 1550–1639 (Helsinki: Otava, 2012), passim; Seppo Aalto, Kruununkaupunki: Vironniemen Helsinki 1640–1721 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2015), passim. 10 The 18th-century history of the Sveaborg Fortress has recently been studied as part of the Academy of Finland-funded project ‘Connections, Associations and Innovations. The Case of Sea Fortress Sveaborg, its Founding, Socio-Economic Impact and Innovative Role ca. 1730–1808’ (2010–2013), in which both of the authors of this chapter took part. The project publications are extensively referenced in this chapter. 11 Hartley 2011, pp. 73–4.

A tale of two fortress towns 121 12 The history of the Ruotsinsalmi Fortress has never been thoroughly, systematically, or comprehensively researched. Our knowledge rests almost entirely on the work done by Olli Airola and Ulla-Riitta Kauppi; the former has studied construction work on the fortress and the strategic significance of Ruotsinsalmi in Olli Airola, Kymenkartanon linnoitus  – Kyminlinna (Kotka: Kymenlaakson Maakuntaliitto, 1970); Olli Airola, ‘Ruotsinsalmen merilinnoitus ja sen sotilaallinen merkitys’, in Ruotsinsalmen merilinnoitus 1790–1855 (Kotka: Kymenlaakson museo, 1978). The latter has published articles about the Ruotsinsalmi Fortress community in Kauppi 1990; Ulla-Riitta Kauppi, ‘Kymenlaakson linnoitustyöt taloudellisena vaikuttajana 1700–1800-lukujen taitteessa’, in Jussi T. Lappalainen (ed.), Kasarmin aidan kahden puolen: Kaksisataa vuotta suomalaista varuskuntayhteisöä (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1993); Ulla-Riitta Kauppi, ‘Elämää Ruotsinsalmen merilinnoituksessa’, in Eeva-Liisa Oksanen (ed.), Kahden kruunun alla. Kymijoki rajana 1743–1811 (Kotka: Kymenlaakson Liitto, 1998). 13 Markku Kuisma, Kauppasahojen perustaminen Suomessa 1700-luvulla (1721– 1772): Tutkimus päätöksentekoprosessista (Helsingfors: Finska VetenskapsSocieteten, Helsingfors, 1983), pp. 198–212; Seppo Aalto, Sofia Gustafsson & Juha-Matti Granqvist, Linnoituskaupunki: Helsinki ja Viapori 1721–1808 (Helsinki: Minerva, 2020), pp. 96–124, 214–26. 14 Eino Jutikkala, Yrjö Kaukiainen & Sven-Erik Åström, Suomen taloushistoria 1: Agraarinen Suomi (Helsinki: Tammi, 1980), pp.  255–7; Lars Magnusson, Sveriges ekonomiska historia (Stockholm: Prisma, 1999), pp. 115–20. 15 For more on the economic politics, see, for example, A. Mickwitz, De finska deputationerna och ekonomiekommissionerna under Frihetstiden II (Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps-Societeten, 1914); Toivo J. Paloposki, Suomen talouden kehittäminen 1750–1760-lukujen valtiopäiväpolitiikassa (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1976). 16 Sofia Gustafsson, Leverantörer och profitörer: Olika geografiska områdens och sociala gruppers handel med fästningsbygget Sveaborg under den första byggnadsperioden 1748–1756 (Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps-Societeten, Helsingfors, 2015), pp. 77–81. 17 Old Finland (Straja Finljandilja) was the Russian name for the Finnish-speaking provinces acquired from Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700–1721) and Russo-Swedish War of 1741–1743. 18 Gustafsson 2015, pp. 88–123; Aalto, Gustafsson & Granqvist 2020, pp. 164– 6, 219–25, 267–71, 365–9. 19 Gustafsson 2015, pp. 204–13. 20 Henric Forsius, Historisk och œconomisk beskrifning öfwer stapelstaden Helsingfors uti Nyland (Åbo: Direct. och Kongl. Boktr. i Stor-Forstendömet Finland Jacob Merckell, 1757), p. 63. 21 Gustafsson 2015, p. 76. 22 See Gyllenborg’s report for the Diet of 1755, published in A. R. Cederberg (ed.), Suomen maaherrojen valtiopäiväkertomukset 1755–1756 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1950), p. 52. 23 Markku Kuisma, Metsäteollisuuden maa: Suomi, metsät ja kansainvälinen järjestelmä 1620–1920 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1993), pp. 283–6. 24 Gustafsson 2015, pp. 95–9. 25 Aalto, Gustafsson & Granqvist 2020, pp. 365–7. 26 Sampsa Hatakka, Pohjoista huoltovarmuutta: Kruunun makasiinijärjestelmän toiminta Suomessa Viaporin rakennuskauden aikana 1747–1756 (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2019), pp. 47–88.

122  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson 27 Juha-Matti Granqvist, Helsingin porvaristo Viaporin rakennuskaudella (1748– 1808) (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2016), pp. 172–83. 28 Aalto, Gustafsson  & Granqvist 2020, p.  175–84, 369–74; Granqvist 2016, pp. 112–16. 29 Gustafsson 2015, pp. 72–7. 30 See the estate inventory of Maria Tesche, the wife of merchant Jacob Johan Tesche, published in Birger Åkerman (ed.), Bouppteckningar i Helsingfors stad 1679–1808 (Helsinki: Suomen Sukututkimusseura, 1937), p. 55. 31 Aalto, Gustafsson & Granqvist 2020, pp. 86–8, 226–31, 397–407. 32 Sofia Gustafsson, ‘Rörlig kunskap och flyttbara färdigheter: Skolad arbetskraft vid fästningsbygget Sveaborg på 1750-talet’, Sjuttonhundratal: Nordic Yearbook for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 13:31–53 (2016), p. 42. 33 Oiva Turpeinen, ‘De finländska städernas folkmängd 1727–1810’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 2:62 (1977), pp.  124–5; see also Aalto, Gustafsson  & Granqvist 2020, pp. 281–6, 461–8. 34 Sampsa Hatakka, ‘Viaporin väestö kustavilaisella ajalla 1772–1807’, in Sophie Holm  & Magdalena af Hällström (eds.), Viapori  – linnoitus, lähiseutu ja maailma (Helsinki: Ehrensvärd-seura, 2012), p. 107. 35 Aalto, Gustafsson & Granqvist 2020, pp. 281–6, 418–22, 461–8; Juha-Matti Granqvist, ‘Army Maintenance Shaping the Local Burgher Community in 18thCentury Helsinki’, in Petri Talvitie  & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021), pp. 239–47. 36 Sofia Gustafsson, ‘Billeted soldiers and local civilians in 1750s Helsinki’, in Petri Talvitie & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021), pp. 262–84; Sofia Gustafsson, ‘Friend or foe? Soldiers and civilians in Helsinki 1747–1808’, in Sari Nauman, Wojtek Jezierski, Christina Reimann & Leif Runefelt (eds.), Baltic Hospitality from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century: Receiving Strangers in Northeastern Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), pp. 278–81. 37 For more on the enlisted regiments in Helsinki, see, for example, Hans Hirn, Från Lantingshausen till Jägerhorn: Ett värvat regemente i Finland 1751–1808 (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1970); J. E. O. Screen, The Queen Dowager’s Life Regiment in Finland 1772–1808 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010); Jonas Hedberg, Kungliga finska artilleriregementet (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1964). 38 See Hartley 2011, pp. 99–100. 39 The surviving source material on the construction material purchased at Ruotsinsalmi is meagre compared to the existing material for Sveaborg. According to Ulla-Riitta Kauppi, who has studied the material in the Russian archives, the Russian State Military-Historical Archive (RGVIA) has ledgers only from the last construction year, 1807. The facts presented here are mostly taken from Kauppi’s article based on the 1807 ledgers (Kauppi 1993). 40 A verst is a historical Russian unit of length equal to 1,066.8 metres. 41 Kuisma 1993, pp. 44–65. 42 Ulla-Riitta Kauppi  & V.-P. Suhonen, ‘Haminan ympyrälinnoitus’, in V.-P. Suhonen (ed.), Suomalaiset linnoitukset 1720-luvulta 1850-luvulle (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2011), pp. 156–73. 43 Sigurd Nordenstreng, Haminan kaupungin historia: Toinen osa: Venäjän valtaan yhtymisen aika (Hamina: Haminan kaupunki, 1910), pp.  388–402; Kauppi 1993, pp. 55–8. 44 Kauppi 1993, pp. 56–8.

A tale of two fortress towns 123 5 Ibid., pp. 61–3. 4 46 The Swedish allotment system, introduced in the 1680s, obliged every village to recruit a soldier and give him a cottage and a patch of land. This allowed the realm to maintain a low-cost standing army, as aside wartime and annual military exercises, the soldiers lived on their farms and did not receive any kind of monetary payment. 47 See, for example, Hartley 2011, pp. 96–7. 48 Veikko Mattila, ‘Pitäjän itsenäistymisestä Vanhan Suomen yhdistymiseen’, in Kymin historia I (Kymi: Kymin seurakunta – Kymin kunta – Karhulan kauppala, 1960), pp.  605–6; Ulla-Riitta Kauppi, Helena Rosén, V.-P. Suhonen  & Sanna Ihatsu, ‘Kotkan maa- ja merilinnoitus Kyminlinna ja Ruotsinsalmi’, in V.-P. Suhonen (ed.), Suomalaiset linnoitukset 1720-luvulta 1850-luvulle (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2011), p. 98; Galina Vangonen, ‘Aarteita arkistoista – Ruotsinsalmi kartoissa ja piirustuksissa’, in Rakennettu ranta  – Ruotsinsalmesta Kotkan satamaan (Kotka: Kymenlaakson museo, 2013), p. 13. 49 Nordenstreng 1910, pp. 410–45. 50 H. Palmberg, Ruotzinsalmi: Blad ur Kotkanejdens historia (Kouvola, 1938), pp. 24–8; Ragnar Rosén, ‘Kotkan esivaiheet’, in Kotkan historia (Kotka: Kotkan kaupunki, 1953), pp.  52–62; Airola 1978, pp.  47–52; Päivi Hakanpää, Kotkansaari  – Ruotsinsalmen linnoituskaupunki: Kaupunkiarkeologinen inventointi (Helsinki: Museovirasto, 2007), passim. 51 Hartley 2011, pp. 108–9. 52 Sutthoff wrote the report for a survey commission mapping economic and social conditions in the so-called Old Finland (see note 17). Summaries of his report have been published in Rosén 1953, pp. 52–62 and in Kaisu Harjunpää, ‘Ruotsinsalmen linnoitusyhdyskunta ja sen elämä’, in Ruotsinsalmen merilinnoitus 1790–1855 (Kotka: Kymenlaakson museo, Kotka 1978), p. 89. 53 Kauppi 1993, pp. 67–8. 54 Ibid., pp. 128–30; Hakanpää 2007, passim. 55 Kansallisarkisto [Finnish National Archive], Kymin seurakunnan arkisto [Kymi parish archive] I Aa:3. The communion book for the Kymi parish, 1793–1799. 56 Arja Pullinen, ‘Sinebrychoffit – marketentistä kauppiassuvuksi’, in Svante Konstantin Kuhlberg (ed.), Venäläiset kauppiaat Helsingin historiassa (Helsinki: Helsingin venäläinen kauppiasyhdistys, 2002), pp. 137–40. 57 Kauppi 1993, pp. 59–60. 58 Hatakka 2012, pp. 119–20. 59 The estimation is based on statistics provided by Commandant Jakob Sutthoff to the Old Finland Inspection Committee in 1802 (see, e.g. Harjunpää 1978, p.  89). Sutthoff’s figures were collected before the garrison of Ruotsinsalmi received enforcements on the eve of the Finnish War; therefore, the percentage of civilians was probably even lower in reality. 60 In the English-language historical literature, the peace treaty is traditionally called the Treaty of Fredrikshamn after the Swedish name for Hamina. However, to maintain internal consistency within the chapter, the variant Treaty of Hamina is used here. 61 Matti Klinge, Pääkaupunki. Helsinki ja Suomen valtio 1808–1863 (Helsinki: Otava, 2012), pp. 51–4. 62 Ibid., p. 295. 63 Mäkelä-Alitalo 2009, passim; Pullinen 2002, pp. 137–40. 64 Harry Halén (ed.), Venäläisperäinen kauppiaskunta Suomessa 1808–1917 (Helsinki: Unholan Aitta 2015), p. 229.

124  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson 65 Although the proposition was dealt with and commented on by numerous officials, its original author was never stated. It is possible that the proposition was made by the Ruotsinsalmi entrepreneurial community. 66 Rosén 1953, pp. 62–79. 67 Hakanpää 2007, pp. 18–19.

Bibliography Aalto, Seppo, Kruununkaupunki: Vironniemen Helsinki 1640–1721 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2015). Aalto, Seppo, Sotakaupunki: Helsingin Vanhankaupungin historia 1550–1639 (Helsinki: Otava, 2012). Aalto, Seppo, Sofia Gustafsson & Juha-Matti Granqvist, Linnoituskaupunki: Helsinki ja Viapori 1721–1808 (Helsinki: Minerva, 2020). Airola, Olli, Kymenkartanon linnoitus – Kyminlinna (Kotka: Kymenlaakson Maakuntaliitto, 1970). Airola, Olli, ‘Ruotsinsalmen merilinnoitus ja sen sotilaallinen merkitys’, in Ruotsinsalmen merilinnoitus 1790–1855 (Kotka: Kymenlaakson museo, 1978). Åkerman, Birger (ed.), Bouppteckningar i Helsingfors stad 1679–1808 (Helsinki: Suomen Sukututkimusseura, 1937). Artéus, Gunnar, ‘En vetenskaplig obelyst lokalsamhällestyp: Den svenska garnisonsstaden 1620–1985’, in Gunnar Artéus  & Kari Selén (eds.), Den nordiska garnisonsstaden (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1988). Artéus, Gunnar (ed.), Nordens garnisonsstäder (Stockholm: Försvarshögskolan, 1997). Artéus, Gunnar  & Kari Selén (eds.), Den nordiska garnisonsstaden (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1988). Bannerman, Gordon, Merchants and the Military in Eighteenth-Century Britain: British Army Contracts and Domestic Supply 1550–1800 (London: Routlegde, 2008). Black, Jeremy, A Military Revolution? Military Change and European Society 1550–1800 (London: Macmillan Education Ltd, 1991). Bromé, Janrik, Karlskrona stads historia: Del I: 1680–1790 (Karlskrona: Karlskrona stad, 1930). Cederberg, A. R. (ed.), Suomen maaherrojen valtiopäiväkertomukset 1755–1756 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1950). Clark, Peter, ‘Northern Cities in European Perspective’, in Heiko Droste (ed.), Nordic Urban History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2023). Forsius, Henric, Historisk och œconomisk beskrifning öfwer stapelstaden Helsingfors uti Nyland (Åbo: Direct. och Kongl. Boktr. i Stor-Forstendömet Finland Jacob Merckell, 1757). Granqvist, Juha-Matti, ‘Army Maintenance Shaping the Local Burgher Community in 18th-Century Helsinki’, in Petri Talvitie & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021). Granqvist, Juha-Matti, Helsingin porvaristo Viaporin rakennuskaudella (1748–1808) (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2016).

A tale of two fortress towns 125 Gustafsson, Sofia, ‘Billeted soldiers and local civilians in 1750s Helsinki’, in Petri Talvitie & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021). Gustafsson, Sofia, ‘Friend or Foe? Soldiers and Civilians in Helsinki 1747–1808’, in Sari Nauman, Wojtek Jezierski, Christina Reimann & Leif Runefelt (eds.), Baltic Hospitality from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century: Receiving Strangers in Northeastern Europe (London: Palgrave & Macmillan, 2022). Gustafsson, Sofia, Leverantörer och profitörer: Olika geografiska områdens och sociala gruppers handel med fästningsbygget Sveaborg under den första byggnadsperioden 1748–1756 (Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps-Societeten, Helsingfors, 2015). Gustafsson, Sofia, ‘Rörlig kunskap och flyttbara färdigheter: Skolad arbetskraft vid fästningsbygget Sveaborg på 1750-talet’, Sjuttonhundratal: Nordic Yearbook for Eighteenth-Century Studies 13:31–53 (2016). Hakanpää, Päivi, Kotkansaari – Ruotsinsalmen linnoituskaupunki: Kaupunkiarkeologinen inventointi (Helsinki: Museovirasto, 2007). Halén, Harry (ed.), Venäläisperäinen kauppiaskunta Suomessa 1808–1917 (Helsinki: Unholan Aitta 2015). Harjunpää, Kaisu, ‘Ruotsinsalmen linnoitusyhdyskunta ja sen elämä’, in Ruotsinsalmen merilinnoitus 1790–1855 (Kotka: Kymenlaakson museo, Kotka 1978). Hartley, Janet M., Russia 1762–1825: Military Power, the State and the People (Westport: Praeger, 2008). Hatakka, Sampsa, Pohjoista huoltovarmuutta: Kruunun makasiinijärjestelmän toiminta Suomessa Viaporin rakennuskauden aikana 1747–1756 (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2019). Hatakka, Sampsa, ‘Viaporin väestö kustavilaisella ajalla 1772–1807’, in Sophie Holm & Magdalena af Hällström (eds.), Viapori – linnoitus, lähiseutu ja maailma (Helsinki: Ehrensvärd-seura, 2012). Hedberg, Jonas, Kungliga finska artilleriregementet (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1964). Hirn, Hans, Från Lantingshausen till Jägerhorn: Ett värvat regemente i Finland 1751–1808 (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland, 1970). Jutikkala, Eino, Yrjö Kaukiainen & Sven-Erik Åström, Suomen taloushistoria 1: Agraarinen Suomi (Helsinki: Tammi, 1980). Kauppi, Ulla-Riitta, ‘Elämää Ruotsinsalmen merilinnoituksessa’, in Eeva-Liisa Oksanen (ed.), Kahden kruunun alla. Kymijoki rajana 1743–1811 (Kotka: Kymenlaakson Liitto, 1998). Kauppi, Ulla-Riitta, ‘Kustaa III:n sodan seuraukset. Ruotsinsalmen linnoituksen rakentaminen, rakennuskanta ja elämä linnoituksessa’, in Kustaa III:n sota ja Ruotsinsalmen meritaistelut: VIII Itämeri-seminaari Kotkassa 5.–7.7.1990. (Kotka: Kymenlaakson maakuntamuseo, 1990). Kauppi, Ulla-Riitta, ‘Kymenlaakson linnoitustyöt taloudellisena vaikuttajana 1700–1800-lukujen taitteessa’, in Jussi T. Lappalainen (ed.), Kasarmin aidan kahden puolen: Kaksisataa vuotta suomalaista varuskuntayhteisöä (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1993). Kauppi, Ulla-Riitta, Helena Rosén, V.-P. Suhonen & Sanna Ihatsu, ‘Kotkan maa- ja merilinnoitus Kyminlinna ja Ruotsinsalmi’, in V.-P. Suhonen (ed.), Suomalaiset

126  Juha-Matti Granqvist and Sofia Gustafsson linnoitukset 1720-luvulta 1850-luvulle (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2011). Kauppi, Ulla-Riitta & V.-P. Suhonen, ‘Haminan ympyrälinnoitus’, in V.-P. Suhonen (ed.), Suomalaiset linnoitukset 1720-luvulta 1850-luvulle (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2011). Klinge, Matti, Pääkaupunki. Helsinki ja Suomen valtio 1808–1863 (Helsinki: Otava, 2012). Kuisma, Markku, Kauppasahojen perustaminen Suomessa 1700-luvulla (1721–1772): Tutkimus päätöksentekoprosessista (Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps-Societeten, Helsingfors 1983). Kuisma, Markku, Metsäteollisuuden maa: Suomi, metsät ja kansainvälinen järjestelmä 1620–1920 (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1993). Lynn-Paul, Jeff (ed.), War, Entrepreneurs and the State in Europe and the Mediterranean 1300–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). Magnusson, Lars, Sveriges ekonomiska historia (Stockholm: Prisma, 1999). Mattila, Veikko, ‘Pitäjän itsenäistymisestä Vanhan Suomen yhdistymiseen’, in Kymin historia I (Kymi: Kymin seurakunta – Kymin kunta – Karhulan kauppala, 1960). Mickwitz, A., De finska deputationerna och ekonomiekommissionerna under Frihetstiden II (Helsingfors: Finska Vetenskaps-Societeten, 1914). Mickwitz, Joachim  & Jyrki Paaskoski, Itärajan vartijat 4: 1700-luku (Helsinki: Schildts, 2005). Nordenstreng, Sigurd, Haminan kaupungin historia: Toinen osa: Venäjän valtaan yhtymisen aika (Hamina: Haminan kaupunki, 1910). Ongario, Giulio, Peasants and Soldiers: The Management of the Venetian Military Structure in the Mainland Dominions between the 16th and 17th Centuries (London: Routledge, 2017). Palmberg, H., Ruotzinsalmi: Blad ur Kotkanejdens historia (Kouvola, 1938). Paloposki, Toivo J., Suomen talouden kehittäminen 1750–1760-lukujen valtiopäiväpolitiikassa (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1976). Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution: Military Innovation and the Rise of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Pullinen, Arja, “Sinebrychoffit – marketentistä kauppiassuvuksi’, in Svante Konstantin Kuhlberg (ed.), Venäläiset kauppiaat Helsingin historiassa (Helsinki: Helsingin venäläinen kauppiasyhdistys, 2002). Rosén, Ragnar, ‘Kotkan esivaiheet’, in Kotkan historia (Kotka: Kotkan kaupunki, 1953). Screen, J. E. O., The Queen Dowager’s Life Regiment in Finland 1772–1808 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2010). Talvitie, Petri & Juha-Matti Granqvist (eds.), Civilians and Military Supply in Early Modern Finland (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2021). Turpeinen, Oiva, ‘De finländska städernas folkmängd 1727–1810’, Historisk Tidskrift för Finland 2:62 (1977). Vangonen, Galina, ‘Aarteita arkistoista – Ruotsinsalmi kartoissa ja piirustuksissa’, in Rakennettu ranta – Ruotsinsalmesta Kotkan satamaan (Kotka: Kymenlaakson museo, 2013).

Part II

Planning the Nordic cities

6 Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns Steinar Aas

In 2006, senior researchers in Norway published the anthology on the Norwegian urban process, Norsk Byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Norwegian Urban History: Urbanisation during 1300 years).1 The work was the cornerstone of research projects in the Norwegian tradition of urban monographies on Norwegian cities and towns such as Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Kristiansand, Tromsø, Sandefjord, Fredrikstad, Narvik, and Tromsø. By this first anthology on Norwegian urbanisation, the senior researchers extracted and synthesised the individual studies of Norwegian towns into a broad overview of the tendencies and development characteristics of Norwegian urbanism. This chapter will introduce some of the synthesis of the Norwegian urbanisation process of the modern period. In addition, it aims to focus on urban development and planning through highlighting some local case studies. It also demonstrates the international influence of English and German urban planning on Norwegian urban structures and particularly in small towns, primarily in the 19th and 20th centuries. One aspect is also the connection between urban planning and the visions for a good life – utopians for the good urban life. Late urbanisation – strong urban growth According to the urban historian Jan Eyvind Myhre, the Norwegian urbanisation process is mainly a phenomenon of the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1830, the legal towns of Norway were small, and the main part of the Norwegians lived primarily in rural areas. First, it is important to note some imminent problems with the Norwegian concept of towns and cities: urban areas without legal status were not considered towns or cities; this status was designated only for towns and cities with formal resolutions in the Norwegian parliament. Thanks to the geographer Hallstein Myklebost’s PhD thesis of 1960, there was a growing awareness of the difference between legal towns and cities and functional ones. The use of the concept tettsted was thus utilised when DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-8

130  Steinar Aas one spoke about urbanised areas like those the Swedes called tätort. Both concepts can be explained as densely populated areas or urban settlements. In this way, Myklebost altered the shape of the urban–rural landscape of Norway; informal towns were subsequently included in the growing national web of urban areas. The definition was based on the idea that densely populated places  – those with more than 200 people living in houses less than 50 metres from one another – were urban areas as well. In addition, it was estimated that more than 75 per cent of the population in such areas were engaged in secondary and tertiary industries, in contrast to the rural areas where primary industries like farming and fishing were the dominating livelihood. In the urban areas people lived by private or public administration or services, trade, handicraft, miscellaneous industry, communication or service provision. Under this new definition, a much greater number of areas were considered urban.2 According to the 1930 census, only 67 small cities and towns in Norway at that time had formal status as a city.3 In contrast, there were 992 densely populated areas – either suburbs outside of designated towns and cities and industrial areas or other centres with an average of 534 people each. In other words, the majority of urban settlements were of a rather modest size, although some formerly small towns grew rapidly during the 19th and 20th centuries.4 The Norwegian historian Finn-Einar Eliassen noted that only six of the 34 legal towns in Norway in the early 1800s had more than 4,000 inhabitants.5 The typical Norwegian was a farmer, and some of the Norwegian provinces had no urban settlements. At this time, about 13 per cent of Norwegians were living in urban areas, which included legal towns and villages. However, by 1920, the degree of urbanisation had risen from 13 per cent to 43.4 per cent.6 In the 1920s, Norwegians were as likely to be factory labourers as they were to be farmers. The Norwegian urbanisation process had not yet reached its peak, and from 1920 to 2000, the urban population rose significantly. By the turn of the century in contrast, three-fourths of Norwegians lived in densely populated areas, and the rest of the population lived under the influence of a town or city to some degree.7 One reason for this increased urbanisation was the state-operated planning of new towns both as a means of developing the country economically and as a means of nation-building. The state-established towns were meant to develop and unify the nation under the logic that trade, public administration, and communications should be combined in a growing network of towns organised in a hierarchy scattered throughout the nation-state. Combined with more liberal legislation related to trade, most towns grew as a result of the increased demand for goods and services in the towns as well as in their hinterlands.8

Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns 131 The hierarchy of towns Another Norwegian-specific urban concept is the national ‘town system’ with its detailed ‘town hierarchy’. During the first half of the 19th century, the country’s new capital Christiania (renamed Oslo in 1925) distanced all other Norwegian cities when it comes to size and even bypassed Bergen as the biggest city in Norway. This rapid period of growth was due to the fact that the city was named the capital of the new nation-state after the foundation of the constitution of 1814. This function as the capital city became more developed once the constitution was established with a loose Swedish-Norwegian personal union after 1814, which also paved the way for capital institutions in the city.9 The small provincial town of approximately 10,000 inhabitants established central buildings for entertainment; a national bank; a newly established national university; and a monarchic residence consisting of a royal castle, department buildings, and a parliament. This development triggered tremendous growth in the city, and by 1845, Oslo grew by more than 20,000 inhabitants, becoming bigger than Bergen (Norway’s largest town until the 1830s) by nearly 10,000 inhabitants. This growth continued, and by 1875, Oslo had grown by 201 per cent to 100,000 inhabitants and was more than twice the size of Bergen (Table 6.1).10 The capital Oslo was the main city in the nation-state. At the next level of the hierarchy were regional centres, which served important functions as centres for trade and administration in other regions, like Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, and Kristiansand. Next in this hierarchical web of urban areas were the provincial centres, like Bodø, Tromsø, and Ålesund, followed by the smaller market towns, staple towns, and then the villages.11 Myhre observed that the hierarchy of Norway was not similar to the beautiful geometric pattern of southern Germany, illustrated by Christaller in both Carter’s and Hohenberg and Lees’s works, where the theory about the regular urban pattern of southern Germany was demonstrated; in Norway, the hierarchy was a result of the nation’s topography.12 Myhre categorises Table 6.1 Distribution of people in main Norwegian cities, 1875–1970

Oslo Bergen Trondheim Stavanger

1875

1900

1920

1946

1970

100,000 42,250 23,800 23,500

255,000 79,150 39,000 32,000

341,000 104,500 62,000 50,400

482,000 139,800 79,100 60,300

685,000 205,500 124,700 83,650

Source: Jan-Eivind Myhre, ‘Hovedstaden, som snart, praktisk talt, vil være Norge’, in Knut Helle (ed.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006), pp. 336–7.

132  Steinar Aas the emerging Norwegian town system of the 19th century according to two types of towns or cities: central towns or cities and network towns or cities. Central towns served functions for the hinterland or the region surrounding the town or city; network towns were part of a network for international trade, which often involved goods specific to the region around the town, such as timber, fish, or minerals. In the Norwegian hierarchy of towns, the trade of the central town created a stronger distinction between the town and the hinterland, as were the exchange of public services, administrative functions, and specialist services within the private or public sphere.13 The connection between the urban elites in the capital and the regional centres and the populations of the provincial towns and villages was articulated as well. With the growth of the central administration and its senior government officials, bureaucrats, and civil servants in the public sector as well as the growth of servants within private businesses and organisations, combined with a nationwide web of national organisations, national political parties, political newspapers, and a national public sphere, the nation was linked together by urban elites within this national hierarchy of towns and cities. Cultural expressions like the national romanticism became a part of this urban culture, developed and cultivated by the urban elites as an urban phenomenon. Cultural activities were transitioned from predominantly private and exclusive to more public and accessible within this urban web, where national singers, actors, or authors found an arena for mediation. Myhre claims that the urban national web played a key role in creating the nationwide project of cultural modernisation led by the urban elites. The web became part of a national cultural system too, and it united the nation, with Oslo as the capital city.14 The aim of the urban elites was to establish an enlightened general public within the urban web, with a broader goal of ultimately creating an enlightened general public of urban citizens across the nation. Their urbanist vision was thus to fight against provincialism and to stress the importance of enlightenment and education, Myhre upholds. These were some of the main principles espoused in connection with nation-building, urban development, and cultural modernisation in the age of nationalism.15 The urban grid was intended to be part of a communication system covering the whole nation with harbours, stations, and administrative towns and cities that would commercially and administratively unify the state. This urban system was meant to play a vital role in the creation of a liberal economy, situating the cities as centres of trade and export as well as centres of communication, administrative public services, and advanced business and finance.16 This new and active policy on the urban field was a culmination of events from the 1830s in particular, when preindustrial towns became part of industrialisation. The population of Norway increased due to two factors:

Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns 133 the demographic transition as people moved from the countryside to towns because of industrialisation and the development of central functions such as service, trade, and communications. Many new towns were established, and a town hierarchy was created – containing the bigger cities with the capital on top of the hierarchy, with lesser populated regional capitals and regional centres beneath, and then local centres under them, as described.17 Urban planning in Norway before and after 1800 Urban planning was not prominent in creating a national urban system. For many years, the general opinion in Norway was that towns should be developed within the framework of the customary ‘grid plans’ or grid pattern plans, where the centre of the city was drawn by the town planners in straight quarters and roads, creating quadrangular quarters. However, this was not easy to accomplish because of Norway’s topography and geographical pattern. Some towns developed and evolved without any outside assistance or management. Most of these towns and villages were small compared to those in other European countries. Before 1800, only Bergen could be considered medium-sized from an international perspective.18 During the 19th century, the common attitude of Norwegians to themes like urban planning changed mainly as a result of the strong urban expansion during the late decades of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries. Although there had previously been a narrow-minded, static perspective on urban settlements and towns, this urban growth resulted in a new awareness of issues related to urban crowding, housing shortages, sanitation, and fire hazards. Rapid migration from rural to urban areas triggered off a menace to the urban order, as well, where new overcrowded towns could be the corner stones of criminality and social unrest. The fright for the growing underclasses grew, together with the menace of the crowding trade unions and labour parties of Scandinavia. This led to a vision for a new type of town: a rustic country-like suburb where well-off citizens would desire to live as opposed to the existing structure wherein the poorest inhabitants lived outside the city borders due to the high price of land in the towns. The new awareness also sparked a renewed interest in developing the city centre by making legal demands about the building materials used there. For instance, after a fire in the city of Ålesund in 1904, a new law required developers to build using brick and stone in the centre of the town.19 According to Myhre, Norwegian urban development was about to turn into a different course in this period between 1880 and 1940 due to the urban growth of the period. However, Norwegian city centres were small, as were the towns compared to the rest of Europe. Despite this, there were a lot of defects which had to be arranged for. Water supply was inefficient, and sanitary conditions could be really bad. However, the quality of the

134  Steinar Aas water and the housing standard were about to be improved. Cholera epidemics were not typical after 1860, which could be an indication of better water quality. Fire hazards remained an issue in Norwegian towns due to the wooden structures dominating city centres for decades despite the new legislation of compulsory use of brick and stone in the most densely populated areas. Wooden houses still dominated the most densely populated areas in most Norwegian town well into the 20th century. The liberal political hegemonic elites, in governance in most of the Norwegian urban municipalities, were reluctant to dictate or support too strict interventions in to urban planning. Nevertheless, a planning and building act (Den alminnelige bygningslov av 6. september 1845) was introduced in Norway in 1845. This law instituted a commission for development and regulation in every town. In addition, a new resolution regulated the size and shape of the quarters in towns. Due to potential fire hazards, one town required rectangles (50×80m) or quadrats (63×63m), and the streets had to be of a certain width and have 90° angled corners. These requirements were relics of the old-fashioned grid system, which acted as a straightjacket for urban planning in many Norwegian towns until the 1920s.20 This chapter discusses the concepts behind Norwegian urbanisation and examines small Norwegian towns in particular to trace the pattern of town planning and identify how visions for favourable urban life were enacted. This section investigates the ‘minor utopias’ behind urban development of the 19th and 20th centuries. The concept of minor utopias was coined in 2006 by the American historian Jay Winter in his book Dreams of Peace and Freedom: Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century, wherein he attempted to re-establish the belief in utopian movements despite past political and social movements that resulted in catastrophic disasters such as the fascist and national socialist utopias of Italy and Germany or the utopian Soviet Union society. The ‘gigantic plans for the transformation of society through murderous social engineering and the elimination of internal enemies produced suffering and injustice on a scale which beggars description’, Winter concludes.21 He also criticises ‘vast projects of urban development’ which have emerged from ‘utopian visions’ with mixed results ‘at best’. However, he does voice his support for ‘minor utopias’: those without totalitarian visions and that do not ‘uproot, cleanse, transform, exterminate’.22 The urban plans for the small cities of Norway can be studied through the lens of such utopias, in which ‘imaginings of liberation’ occur on a smaller scale and which lack the ‘grandiose pretentions’ or ‘unimaginable hubris and cruelties’ of ‘major utopias’.23 By the end of the 19th century, the urbanisation process began to produce suburbs for the urban elites outside of the city centres: they had the means to live in their own single-family houses with gardens and additional surrounding space. This development continued both outside big cities and

Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns 135 around the centres of smaller towns, and it illustrated the growing class barrier that seemed to be more visible in urban settlements. In addition, the well-regulated areas around the cores of cities became more naturefriendly. In these places, residents could experience the concept of Ebenezer Howard’s (1850–1928) Garden City from 1898.24 Howard’s ideas were published in Norwegian in 1921, and the concept of ‘havebyer’ – the direct translation for ‘garden city’ was introduced to the Norwegian public. By then a Norwegian adaption to Howard’s concept was about to be developed in Norway.25 The idea which found fertile soil in Norway was the vision that people should rather live in the green, natural environment in residential areas secluded from industrial zones away from noise, pollution, and the dust of the city centre.26 They should move away from the stench of the privies and horse stables as well as the dust from the gravelled roads in more urban areas. The British ideal for urban society has largely resulted from urban development in Norway, particularly in the bigger cities where the suburbs drew visibly from Howard’s ideas. Nevertheless, the smaller towns and villages developed similarly, and we shall see how small peripheral towns in Norway were marked by the new international ideals of urban planning, imported among others from Howard’s British universe. Sverre Pedersen and the ideas of urban planning for smaller towns The first plan to utilise this new ideology inspired by Howard was the city plan for Trondheim in 1913, developed by a pioneer in Norwegian urban planning, Professor Sverre Pedersen (1882–1971).27 He was the city architect of Trondheim from 1914 to 1920, and he became a professor at the Norges Tekniske Høyskole (NTH)  – The Norwegian Institute of Technology – in Trondheim in 1920. Because of his profound interest in the urban planning of small towns, he became a familiar face in most Norwegian small towns and villages between 1920 and 1940. The reason for his position as the most prominent planner in Norway from then on was due to the resolution of a new planning and building act of 1924 (Lov om bygningvesenet av 22. Februar 1924). From the decision of this law even densely urbanised areas with no legal status as cities were required to initiate urban plans.28 Sverre Pedersen’s involvement in urban plans in Norway before 1940 was extensive (Table 6.2). From the time of this legislation, Pedersen worked alongside his students in a private firm that provided urban planning to all of Norway. This section traces his path and examines a number of the towns he worked on. One such town was Narvik, which had a population of 10,000 inhabitants

136  Steinar Aas Table 6.2 Sverre Pedersen’s involvement in urban planning (1918–1939) 1918–1924

1925–1930

1931–1939

Åndalsnes Svolvær Bodø Hamar, Vang, Furnes Namsos Mo i Rana Tromsø Akershus fortress Blindern, Oslo

Brønnøysund Narvik Steinkjer Lillehammer, Fåberg

Trondheim Molde Vika, Oslo Kongsvinger Holmestrand

Source: Helga Stave Tvinnereim, Sverre Pedersen, Pioner i norsk byplanlegging (Oslo: Kolofon forlag, 2015).

in the beginning of the 1930s. The town was formally established in 1901 after a short period of construction work that took place from 1898 to 1902. Narvik became a network town connected to the Swedish iron ore mines in the newly colonised Sami region of northern Sweden. The use of network town is due to the idea that the function of Narvik was to be a link between the iron ores in Sweden and the steel works of the Ruhr area in Germany waiting for the iron ore to be manufactured. The harbour of Narvik was the harbour for the new mines, in an ice-free fjord connected with the iron ore markets bound up with the Atlantic Ocean, to harbours in the neighbouring countries of Belgium (Antwerp) and the Netherlands (Rotterdam).29 Narvik was originally planned by traditional grid-oriented planners in line with the conventions in the late 19th century. However, by the urban expansion at the beginning of the 20th century, the grid plans were challenged in Narvik, too. The topography of the town indicated that the expansion had to take place in the adjacent steep hillside around the town centre. The main quarters had been the only flat fields in town. These challenges had to be overcome, and inspired by the ideals of a much more visionary urban planner, the Austrian Camillo Sitte, Sverre Pedersen came to the rescue.30 Sitte’s ideas had been introduced in the Swedish twin town to Narvik, Kiruna, which like Narvik was not placed on a flat field, established at the same time as Narvik, due to the expansion of the Swedish mining industry along the railway to Narvik.31 In Kiruna, the Swedish state had been involved in town planning and their attitude to planning was much more up to date and inspired by Sitte, who through the architects Per Olof Hallmann and Gustaf Wickman, was to be demonstrated in the Swedish Lapland. In contrast to other Northern Swedish towns traditionally formed as grid plans, like Skellefteå (1883) and Luleå (1888), a new generation

Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns 137 of town planners like Hallman were to be inspired by Sitte’s theories during the early part of the 1890s. The idea was to adapt the expansion and establishment of the town more to the nature, for instance, by not adapting the roads to a regular pattern of quadrats, pedantically measured out by engineers on a drawing board.32 Pedersen’s approach to the town’s planning process was to break with the old planning methods and combine the new ideas of Camillo Sitte with those of Ebenezer Howard. The municipality of Narvik hired Pedersen in December 1924 to develop a new plan, as he had an existing relationship with the Narvik political regime, which was led by the Labour Party from 1913 on. One former labour major, now member of the Norwegian Storting, Julius B. Olsen, was also member of the newly founded movement for social reforms in urban planning and housing policy. Sverre Pedersen was also member of the association called Norsk Forening for Boligreformer (NFB) (The Norwegian Association for Housing Reforms). Pedersen and Olsen formed the regional North Norwegian branch of the association in 1921. There were indeed a growing awareness of modern town planning and its use for the general improvement of the society, and in the Narvik case one can get the impression of an interconnection between vital partners.33 The two, Pedersen and Olsen, usually met each other on a regular basis to discuss urgent matters even though the communications between Narvik or Oslo, where Olsen resided as a parliamentary and Trondheim was not the most convenient. Pedersen held the work on Narvik in high regards and told his friend Olsen in a private letter that he looked forward to creating the new plans for the ‘beautiful landscape’.34 Pedersen was put in a connection with a local committee representing the municipality of Narvik, almost 900 kilometres apart, and this cooperation was characterised as both fruitful and easy. The city engineer in Narvik, John K. Roald (1876–1978), was an experienced architect who contributed to the reconstruction of Ålesund after the city’s fire and had also participated in the building of the Helsinki railway station, as well as participated in projects in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. He, too, was a good friend of Pedersen and shared Pedersen’s views on urban planning.35 They planned to better connect the residential areas with the industrial zones, which contained the iron ore stores and harbours; in addition, they discussed the use of the urban landscape for recreation with areas of look-out points – places of view out to the nearby nature – where the urban dwellers could interact with, or have visions out to the surrounding landscape.36 This idea of the ‘look-out points’ to the nearby nature from the urban areas was one of Pedersen’s main visions in urban planning; indeed, it was a characteristic included in all of his urban plans. His approach to Sitte’s use of and adaption to the topography also was to be visible in the future

138  Steinar Aas plans for Narvik. Combined with the introduction of the car, which came to the county of Nordland in 1913, the future plans had to make way for the future expansion of motoring. So the roads had to take this in to consideration and be planned with a low ascending gradient.37 We can trace Pedersen’s visons in urban planning in the plan of Narvik when a first draft was presented to the public in the town in the summer of 1926. And the regulation committee of the town supported the plan unanimously. It was later to be well-known abroad as well, as Pedersen presented it during the Internationaler Wohnung und Städtebaukongress (International Housing and Town Planning Congress) in Vienna in 1926. The following year, Pedersen presented a paper about the plan on Svensk Byggnadsdag (Swedish Builders’ day) in Stockholm. Pedersen’s belief in what he had done while working on the town plan of Narvik was again confirmed by an article demonstrating his ideas and visions for the good urban life published in the German journal Städtebau in 1928.38 The Narvik plan was indeed put on display internationally. Pedersen’s plan centred on two aspects: he defined some areas which he described as ‘underdeveloped’ and also tried to correct and improve existing urban areas, by opening them more up. This was done through either squares or room at the end of a street or road, using streets to make the axis between squares. In addition, the mountains and the adjacent scenery surrounding the town could play a part as a fond or background at the end of the axis.39 The Pedersen plan included ideals from the Norsk Forening for Boligreformer (NFB) (The Norwegian Association for Housing Reforms): to transform undeveloped areas into a genuine ‘garden city’ where residents would have access to light and fresh air. The plan also challenged the oldfashioned grid plan of the city centre. The old ‘chess board plan’ was not adapted enough to the terrain. This was obvious when one studied the existing roads, which mainly were planned for the use of horses or pedestrians. The crossroads were almost impossible to enforce due to their steepness. In addition, the original-mentioned rectangular ‘grid plans’ were not efficient and uneconomic: too many streets required large expenses for maintenance and due to the steep roads they actually did not function properly as means of communication. Only the harbour’s street was sufficient as a modern street, connecting the harbour with the city centre.40 Pedersen adapted the road system to better align with the modern principles mentioned earlier, so new roads were to be designed more in line with the topography and terrain.41 Another aspect with the visions of the new plan was the idea of combining recreational grounds with fire prevention. Pedersen planned the physical intervals, such as parks and green lungs in between the clump of houses. These areas should form ‘powerful arms into the densely populated areas’,

Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns 139 he wrote, and these green open areas creating ‘fire intervals’ into the urban areas were of vital interest even for small-town Norwegian urban planning, he concluded in a paper presented at a conference in New York in 1925.42 The use of the ‘fire intervals’ thoroughly considered as an encouragement for quality of life. They could for instance be used as sledding slopes for kids during wintertime and playgrounds during the warmer months, and they simultaneously provided protection from fires for the town’s buildings. This aspect gave small towns an advantage over big cities, as the children in small towns were spared from growing up ‘in the stony wasteland of the big city’.43 However, one of the most fundamental aspects both in Pedersen’s overall aspects of town planning and in the new Narvik plan was his vision for the garden city with single-unit dwellings, which would provide the residents with more sunlight and energy. When this idea was presented in the Städtebau journal in 1925, the German concept ‘besonnung’, or sunlight, was a recurring theme.44 The journal was established by Camillo Sitte and Theodor Goecke in 1904.45 The aspects of how one had to combine access to light and sun and building tradition were to be Pedersen’s mantra for almost every urban plan he was involved in. Later, Pedersen was to get the leading role in reconstruction of war-damaged towns and cities in Norway during the Second World War. This resulted in a breakthrough for his ideas in a score of new Norwegian towns after the war, and his ideas were ascribed great importance in the designs of more than 30 reconstructed towns and villages during the post-war period as well.46 The underlying perspective was to be that the angle of the sun, the construction of the roof, and the height of the building had to be taken into consideration when planning urban structures like quarters, public houses, residential areas, and roads. The interconnection between the space between buildings and their positions in relation to one another was vital. Pedersen believed that one building should not cast shade on another in the residential areas of a garden city, and for the majority of Norwegian towns, the realisation of the ideas from Howard’s garden city was not only feasible but also desirable.47 In Narvik, as in other urban areas, it was vital to identify the areas that were most suitable for such ideas: where were the best areas for maximum sun? Where were the areas, ‘following the slogan of Ebenezer Howard’, where one could combine urban and rural living, he asked.48 ‘We Norwegians love a beautiful view’, he added, consequently, it was also important to position houses in such a way that as many of them as possible had a good view. By meticulously planning the residential areas according to the vision of light and sun, combined with the ideal of giving the houses view out at the landscape surrounding the town, would give

140  Steinar Aas most Norwegian towns and the majority of Norwegian town dwellers a view of the ‘beauty of the landscape’ surrounding them, he concluded.49 Although the inner cities and towns of Norway had previously experienced problems with fire hazards, the surrounding garden city, which was designed in rings around the central town, contained wooden-framed houses. The Norwegian climate does not get very hot during summertime, eliminating the need to cool the houses; during the cold season, the wooden houses were easy to heat with wood-burning stoves. During the 1920s and 1930s, some of the new residential areas gained electricity, and the use of electric wall heaters subsequently increased.50 The potential for fire hazards could be prevented by the aforementioned fire intervals between the quarters as well as by restricting the size of the quarters and the houses. The small towns of Norway were, in Pedersen’s opinion, the towns best adapted to the concept of a garden city. In terms of sanitary conditions, and to give town dwellers a rich and valuable life, the small towns really had the priority before the bigger cities, because they could offer the qualities of the garden cities within its urban borders. This was the small towns’ ‘big mission’. In addition, the small towns were considered the optimal place to raise children due to these qualities of the vision ‘small is beautiful’.51 However, Pedersen disagreed with Howard on one point: Howard believed that cities should be limited to fewer than 30,000 inhabitants; he considered it illegal for a town to grow beyond that size. Pedersen viewed this belief as both ‘reactionary’ and ‘despotic’.52 The Narvik town plan worked out and developed by Sverre Pedersen in cooperation with the municipal planner John Roald and the local planning committee was finalised by 1926. When the city council in Narvik discussed the plan on 26 September 1926, it was passed by a unanimous vote. Communists, social democrats, liberals, and conservatives all agreed with Pedersen’s vision. The liberal paper Ofoten Folkeblad, and the conservative paper Ofotens Tidende characterised the plan as a ‘giant step forward’ and by this expressed visions of a prospective better life for the inhabitants of the town.53 Norway compared to the other Nordic countries How was the situation for urban planning and development compared to the neighbouring Nordic countries then? First, Norway was different than Denmark, which had a much longer and more developed urban grid, established as early as in the Medieval period. Second, there were great differences in topography, especially between Norway and Denmark when it comes to the density of the population, the diffusion of the population, and the geographical challenges of the Norwegian landscape, with the mountains and fjords making it more difficult for urban spatial planning.54

Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns 141 Compared to Sweden, it seems that Norway from the 1920s onwards changed its path in the direction similar to those of some of the Swedish town planning pioneers like Per Olof Hallmann and Gustaf Wickman. The way planning was influenced by Camilo Sitte’s ideas has to do with the foundation of a planning regime, and the main reason for this change was because the education of town planners was dominated by Sverre Pedersen in Trondheim. Because of his contribution to urban regulation with the new planning and building act of 1924, he became vital in the way small towns in Norway adapted its urban landscape to the topography, which in the case of Norway played a significantly important role for the outcome of urban planning. Pedersen’s way of attacking urban planning was to dominate the Norwegian urban landscape for years to come, creating a Norwegian townscape where the surrounding landscape generally became incorporated in the urban open spaces and roads. Compared to Sweden there was probably a more profound idea in Norwegian small towns to avoid tall buildings to realize one of Pedersen’s causes, the sunlight. We do lack comparison between Norway and Sweden, but having a quick look at the outlook of Norwegian towns compared to the Swedish, the house building seems more dispersed in Norway. In addition, the garden city seems to be more distinguished in the central areas of the Norwegian towns, particularly when observing the towns developed after the planning and building act of 1924. However, one has to keep in mind that many of the Norwegian towns were established long before the expansion in the 20th century and that the diversity between old and new Norwegian towns will be significant as well. Nevertheless, this is a topic for further research and debate. Concluding remarks The process of urban development in small Norwegian towns can be viewed as urban planning for ‘minor utopias’. The town was a legal unit, demarcated from the surrounding areas, and the measures available for the regulation of life within the urban borders were to be further developed through the planning and building act of 1924. By this act, it was not only illegal not to have development plans for urbanised areas; it gave an invitation to raise a public debate in the municipality about the vision for a good life in even small Norwegian towns. By raising general awareness about improving sanitation and standards of living, the urban plans of Norwegian small towns demonstrate a dialogue-based, scientific approach to town planning through the small-scale development of controlled variables within planning. The renewed interest in public involvement in urban planning was not perceived as a major interference in the lives of the urban population. The result of the new approach was also that there was a

142  Steinar Aas new-found awareness of the human influence in future development of the whole society, whose politics could be instrumentally implemented into society by its citizens. Sverre Pedersen was instrumental as a participant in this cultural change, as vision for a social housing scheme also was part of this new-found ideas. People should find peace in the residential quarters and that, where assurance and comfort could be found, peaceful conditions would exist. Regardless, there were not economic instruments for a social housing scheme. Better solutions for the development of a more egalitarian society were found after the Second World War, when Norske Boligbyggelags Landsforbund (1946) (i.e., the national cooperative building association) increased its presence throughout Norway. Together with the more active municipalities and the Norwegian National Housing Bank (1946), the association instituted a shift towards more favourable financial aid for funding the lower-class housing in Norwegian towns. Before the Second World War, the social housing scheme was primarily about to develop only in the capital city of Oslo.55 As previously noted, the role of the capital city was to lead the other cities and towns in Norway when it comes to the question of social housing before the Second World War. For the urban areas as a whole, the rise in standard of living through urban planning as well as social housing was to take place after the war. Then the era of the welfare state emerged and lifted large portions of the lower classes out of poverty through a more social housing policy led by the Labour Party as in other Nordic countries. The urban development became part of the ‘social democrat era’ wherein various means were enacted to promote social equality, public sanitation, welfare, and housing shortages, both when it comes to public funding of building programmes and during the establishment of cooperative building associations.56 But that is another story. The ideas and foundation for visions of later utopias were already laid in the 1920s and 1930s. Notes 1 Knut Helle, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan-Eivind Myhre & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006). 2 Hallstein Myklebost, Norges Tettbygde steder (Oslo & Bergen: Universitetsforlaget, 1960). 3 Nos, VIII. 182, Folketellingen i Norge 1. Desember 1930, første hefte: Folkemengde og areal i Rikets forskjellige deler. Bebodde øier. Hussamlinger på landet (Oslo: Aschehoug forlag, 1932), www.ssb.no/a/histstat/nos/nos_viii_182. pdf (30 January 2020). 4 Peter Clarke (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 2. 5 Finn-Einar Eliassen, ‘Norwegian small towns’, in Clarke (ed.) 1995, pp. 27–9.

Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns 143 6 Jan Eyvind Myhre, ‘Tre generasjoner rivende byvekst’, in Knut Helle, Knut Einar Eliassen, Jan Eyvind Myhre & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006), p. 254. 7 Ibid. 8 Myhre 2006, p. 255. 9 Jan Eivind Myhre, ‘Byene som redskaper for samfunnsbygging og arenaer for modernisering’, in Helle, Eliassen, Myhre & Stugu (eds.) 2006, pp. 283– 7; Jan-Eivind Myhre, Norsk historie 1814–1905 (Oslo: Samlaget, 2012), pp. 34–5. 10 Jan Eivind Myhre, ‘Hovedstaden, som snart, praktisk talt, vil være Norge’, in Helle, Eliassen, Myhre & Stugu (eds.) 2006, pp. 336–7. 11 Myhre 2006, pp. 283–7. 12 Myhre 2006, p.  283, is referring to Walter Christaller, Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland: Eine ökonomisch-geographische Untersuchung über die Gesetzmässigkeit der Verbreitung und Entwicklung der Siedlungen mit städtischen Funktionen (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1933); Harold Carter, An Introduction to Urban Historical Geography (London: Edward Arnold, 1983); Paul M. Hohenberg  & Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 1985). 13 Jan Eivind Myhre, ‘Tre generasjoner byutvikling’, in Helle, Eliassen, Myhre & Stugu (eds.) 2006, p. 268. 14 Myhre 2006, pp. 287–9. 15 Ibid., pp. 287–9. 16 Myhre 2012, pp. 176–7. 17 Jan Eivind Myhre, ‘Innledning’, in Helle, Eliassen, Myhre & Stugu (eds.) 2006, p. 249. 18 Jan Eivind Myhre, ‘Striden om den gode by’, in Helle, Eliassen, Myhre & Stugu (eds.) 2006, p. 358. 19 Myhre 2006, pp. 358–9. 20 Ibid., pp. 359–62. 21 Jay Winter, Dreams of Peace and Freedom, Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 2–3. 22 Ibid., pp. 3–5. 23 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 24 Ebenezer Howard, ‘Garden cities of to-morrow, introduction (reprinted)’, Organization & Environment, 16 (2003), pp. 98–107. 25 Ebenezer Howard & Halfdan Bryn, Havebyer og jordbruksbyer i Norge (Kristiania: Aschehoug, 1921), pp. 1–16 (Forordet). 26 Myhre 2006, pp. 358–68. 27 Ibid., p. 370; Ulf Grønvold, Historiens hus: Norsk arkitektur gjennom 1000 år (Oslo: Norsk Arkitekturmuseum, 1996), p. 44. 28 Carl Kaas, Bygningsloven: Lov om bygningsvesenet av 22. februar 1924 samt vedtekter for Oslo stadfestet 1. oktober 1928 med kommentar; Forskrifter for Oslo; Arbeidsdepartementets forskrifter av 9. oktober 1928 (Oslo: Tanum, 1935). 29 Steinar Aas, ‘Narvik a Swedish-Norwegian border town’, Mesto a Dejiny, 8 (2019), pp. 54–79. 30 Steinar Aas, Narviks historie, bind 1: Byen, Banen og Bolaget (Narvik: Stiftelsen Narviks historieverk, 2001), p. 287. 31 Lasse Brunnström, Kiruna: Ett samhällsbygge i sekelskiftets Sverige, del 1 (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 1981), pp. 125–6.

144  Steinar Aas 2 Brunnström 1981, pp. 127–9. 3 33 Statsarkivet i Trondheim (State Archive in Trondheim) (SAT) ‘Sverre Pedersensamlinga’, Manuskr., MSSP 70, Brev fra T. Høyer til S. Pedersen, dated 19 December 1924; Aas 2001, p. 284. 34 SAT, ‘Sverre Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskr., MSSP 70, Brev fra S. Pedersen til ordføreren i Narvik, (11 February 1924). 35 Ofotens Tidende (12 August  1941); ‘John Roald’, www.artemisia.no/arc/ arkitekter/norge/roald.john.html; Helga Stave Tvinnereim, Sverre Pedersen, Pioner i norsk byplanlegging (Oslo: Kolofon forlag, 2015), pp. 173, 393. 36 SAT, ‘S. Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskr., MSSP 70, Brev fra T. Høyer til S. Pedersen (19 December 1924). 37 Ibid. 38 SAT, ‘S. Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskripter MSSP 517, ‘Professor Sverre Pedersens nye Byplan for Narvik’. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ofoten Folkeblad (26 July 1926). 42 SAT, ‘S. Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskripter MSSP 517, S. Pedersen: ‘Plotting and planning of building sites’, p. 16. 43 SAT, ‘S. Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskripter MSSP 517, ‘Norsk byregulering, særlig de mindre byers planlegging. Professor Sverre Pedersens foredrag’. 44 Sverre Pedersen, ‘Bebauungsplan für Narvik-Norwegen’, Städtebau, 7 (1928), p. 169. 45 Detlef Jessen-Klingenberg, ‘Camillo Sitte als “leidenschaftlicher Verehrer des Barock”: Zur Rezeption im Umfeld Werner Hegemanns’, in Karin Wilhelm & Detlef Jessen-Klingenberg (eds.), Formationen der Stadt, Camillo Sitte weitergelesen (Basel, Boston & Berlin: Wirkhäuser, 2005), pp. 97–127. About the journal Städtebau https://d-nb.info/011278765 (The German National Library, 2 November 2022). 46 Steinar Aas, ‘Gjenreisningsbyen Bodø. Ein omstridt byplan sosialdemokratiet gjorde til sin’, Fortidsminneforeningen Årbok (2015), pp. 165–84. 47 Articles in the newspaper about the sun-topic; Adresseavisen (2 September, 24–25 November 1931). 48 SAT, ‘S. Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskripter MSSP 517, S. Pedersen, ‘Plotting and planning of building sites’, p. 16. 49 SAT, ‘S. Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskripter MSSP 517, ‘Professor Sverre Pedersens nye Byplan for Narvik’. 50 SAT, ‘S. Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskripter MSSP 517, ‘Kortfattet oversikt over byreguleringen i Norge’. 51 SAT, ‘S. Pedersen-samlinga’, Manuskripter MSSP 517, ‘Norsk byregulering, særlig de mindre byers planlegging. Professor Sverre Pedersens foredrag’. 52 SAT, S. Pedersen-samlinga, Manuskripter MSSP 517, ‘En ny slags by. Nogle bemerkninger i anledningen av Howard-Bryns bok’. 53 Ofoten Folkeblad (26–27 July 1926); Ofotens Tidende (21 September 1926). 54 Thomas Hall, ‘The North – does it exist?’, in Thomas Hall (ed.), Planning and Urban Growth in the Nordic Countries (London: Taylor & Francis, 2008). 55 Erling Annaniassen, Hvor NR. 13 ikke er. . .. Boligsamvirkets historie i Norge, Bind 1 (Oslo: Gyldendal norsk forlag, 1996), pp. 189–213. 56 Erling Annaniassen, Nå bygger vi den nye tid: Boligsamvirkets historie i Norge, Bind 1 (Oslo: Gyldendal norsk forlag, 1996), pp. 15–40.

Urban ‘minor Utopias’ in the planning of Norwegian towns 145 Bibliography Aas, Steinar, Narviks historie, bind 1: Byen, Banen og Bolaget (Narvik: Stiftelsen Narviks historieverk, 2001). Aas, Steinar, ‘Gjenreisningsbyen Bodø: Ein omstridt byplan sosialdemokratiet gjorde til sin’, Fortidsminneforeningen Årbok (2015), pp. 165–84. Aas, Steinar, ‘Narvik a Swedish-Norwegian border town’, Mesto a Dejiny, 8 (2019). Adresseavisen (2 September and 24–25 November 1931). Annaniassen, Erling, Hvor NR. 13 ikke er . . .: Boligsamvirkets historie i Norge, Bind 1 (Oslo: Gyldendal norsk forlag, 1996). Annaniassen, Erling, Nå bygger vi den nye tid: Boligsamvirkets historie i Norge, Bind 1 (Oslo: Gyldendal norsk forlag, 1996). Brunnström, Lasse, Kiruna: Ett samhällsbygge i sekelskiftets Sverige, del 1 (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 1981). Carter, Harold, An Introduction to Urban Historical Geography (London: Edward Arnold, 1983). Christaller, Walter, Die zentralen Orte in Süddeutschland: Eine ökonomisch-geographische Untersuchung über die Gesetzmässigkeit der Verbreitung und Entwicklung der Siedlungen mit städtischen Funktionen (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1933). Clarke, Peter (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Eliassen, Finn-Einar, ‘Norwegian small towns’, in Peter Clarke (ed.), Small Towns in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Grønvold, Ulf, Historiens hus: Norsk arkitektur gjennom 1000 år (Oslo: Norsk Arkitekturmuseum, 1996). Hall, Thomas, ‘The North  – does it exist?’, in Thomas Hall (ed.), Planning and Urban Growth in the Nordic Countries (London: Taylor & Francis, 2008). Helle, Knut, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan Eivind Myhre  & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006). Hohenberg, Paul M. & Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 1985). Howard, Ebenezer, ‘Garden cities of to-morrow, introduction (reprinted)’, Organization & Environment, 16 (2003). Howard, Ebenezer  & Halfdan Bryn, Havebyer og jordbruksbyer i Norge (Kristiania: Aschehoug, 1921). Jessen-Klingenberg, Detlef, ‘Camillo Sitte als “leidenschaftlicher Verehrer des Barock”: Zur Rezeption im Umfeld Werner Hegemanns’, in Karin Wilhelm & Detlef Jessen-Klingenberg (eds.), Formationen der Stadt, Camillo Sitte weitergelesen (Basel, Boston & Berlin: Wirkhäuser, 2005). Kaas, Carl, Bygningsloven: Lov om bygningsvesenet av 22. februar 1924 samt vedtekter for Oslo stadfestet 1. oktober 1928 med kommentar; Forskrifter for Oslo; Arbeidsdepartementets forskrifter av 9. oktober 1928 (Oslo: Tanum, 1935). Myhre, Jan Eivind, ‘Byene som redskaper for samfunnsbygging og arenaer for modernisering’, in Knut Helle, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan Eivind Myhre  & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006).

146  Steinar Aas Myhre, Jan Eivind, ‘Hovedstaden, som snart, praktisk talt, vil være Norge’, in Knut Helle, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan Eivind Myhre & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006). Myhre, Jan Eivind, ‘Innledning’, in Knut Helle, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan Eivind Myhre & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006). Myhre, Jan Eivind, ‘Striden om den gode by’, in Knut Helle, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan Eivind Myhre & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006). Myhre, Jan Eivind, ‘Tre generasjoner byutvikling’, in Knut Helle, Finn-Einar Eliassen, Jan Eivind Myhre & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006). Myhre, Jan Eyvind, ‘Tre generasjoner rivende byvekst’, in Knut Helle, Knut Einar Eliassen, Jan Eyvind Myhre & Ola Svein Stugu (eds.), Norsk byhistorie: Urbanisering gjennom 1300 år (Oslo: Pax forlag, 2006). Myhre, Jan Eivind, Norsk historie 1814–1905 (Oslo: Samlaget, 2012). Myklebost, Hallstein, Norges tettbygde steder (Oslo & Bergen: Universitets forlaget, 1960). Nos, VIII. 182, Folketellingen i Norge 1. Desember 1930, første hefte: Folkemengde og areal i Rikets forskjellige deler. Bebodde øier. Hussamlinger på landet (Oslo: Aschehoug forlag, 1932), www.ssb.no/a/histstat/nos/nos_viii_182.pdf. Ofoten Folkeblad (26–27 July 1926). Ofotens Tidende (21 September 1926 and 12 August 1941). Pedersen, Sverre, ‘Bebauungsplan für Narvik-Norwegen’, Städtebau, 7 (1928). Statsarkivet i Trondheim (State Archive in Trondheim). Sverre Pedersensamlinga. Stave Tvinnereim, Helga, Sverre Pedersen, Pioner i norsk byplanlegging (Oslo: Kolofon forlag, 2015). Winter, Jay, Dreams of Peace and Freedom, Utopian Moments in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).

7 New towns? Urbanisation in Finland between the 1920s and the 1970s Matti O. Hannikainen

In October  1958, the headline of the Suomen Kunnallislehti declared ‘New Towns at last!’ The journal reminded its readers that the last town established in Finland had been Lahti in 1905, whereas urban growth had continued.1 The six proposed towns were not satellite towns planned to accommodate surplus population from the overcrowded cities like elsewhere in Europe. Instead, they were townships (kauppala in Finnish, köping in Swedish) that had applied for an administrative promotion to the status of a town in accordance with the prevailing municipal typology.2 Why were towns considered important and, more importantly, why had no new towns been created despite continuous urban growth? To answer these questions, this chapter will reassess the history of Finnish urbanisation from the 1920s to the late 1970s, depicting its general trends. How did urban development unfold, and how did Finnish urban development differ from Swedish? Who was active in promoting urban growth? Today, Finland is an urban nation with over 86 per cent of its population of some 5.5 million people living in cities and towns. More precisely, nearly 3.9  million Finns live in the 50 largest towns, with over 1.2  million in the capital region alone, which underlines the dominant role of the capital city.3 Finland urbanised late, however, compared to most European countries and to the other Nordic countries, most notably Sweden.4 Most previous studies have perceived urbanisation as a relatively short phenomenon that took place between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, a period which witnessed a mass exodus from the countryside mostly into the larger towns, which itself led to half of the population living in urban areas by 1970.5 Nonetheless, the Finnish society had been urbanising since the 1870s, given the continuously increasing population followed by migration from the countryside to the urban communities, with urbanisation accelerating during the 1920s. Thus, urbanisation was a longer process that had begun in the late 19th century with continuous growth, especially between the early 1920s

DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-9

148  Matti O. Hannikainen and the late 1970s, that affected every municipality in the country. More importantly, these years witnessed two profound changes. First, the structure of Finnish society transformed from rural to urban. Second, urban policy changed from top-down to bottom-up, because the era of towns and townships created by the ‘state’ had ended by 1920.6 The perception of urbanisation in Finnish culture and in politics has been repulsive, almost anti-urban, given the dominance of agriculture and forestry as both employment and a way of life until the 1950s. These were manifested in, for example, settlement policies in the 1920s and 1940s.7 This chapter sheds new light on different actors who attempted to control urbanisation from an administrative perspective by drafting policies, each tackling a particular problem. By scrutinising legislative changes which enabled urban development, which contemporaries described as urban policy, this chapter focuses more on the administrative issues related to urban development and leaves social and cultural perspectives outside the following discussion. Instead of the government and its policies, this chapter concentrates on the Finnish Town Association or the FTA (Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1917–1993), which was a non-governmental organisation that played a dominant role in drafting various urban policies and administratively advising local communities in how to urbanise, highlighting the importance of locally initiated bottom-up urbanisation.8 The following analysis is based on the lesser-used archival material of the FTA that is located at the archive of the Finnish Municipal Authorities (Suomen Kuntaliitto).9 This archive comprises the minutes of the FTA board, the official correspondence of the FTA, for example, with the Ministry of Interior and various municipalities concerning urban development and the minutes of the biannual Urban Days. The Urban Days were symposia where contemporary issues concerning urban municipalities were discussed and draft legislation was commented and revised. Moreover, the archive holds the Suomen Kunnallislehti, which contains articles on contemporary municipal issues. Given the dispersal of archival materials dealing with urbanisation across various archives, the archive of the FTA holds one of the most complete collections regarding Finnish urban history. The chapter follows a thematic order as we scrutinise different perspectives on urban growth, though the structure is based on a rough chronology beginning in the early 1920s and ending in the late 1970s. First, we will reassess the concept ‘urban’ and the problems inherent in creating towns; we will then discuss the role of unchartered communities in urban growth. Third, we will focus on the development of densely populated communities and townships into new urban centres that played a pivotal role in urbanisation process during this period. Finally, we will analyse the creation of new towns along with the new urban policy that became the municipal policy.

New towns? 149 Problematic ‘urban’ While urban history has a strong and lively scholarly tradition, there has so far been little scholarship on urbanisation in the 20th century. In a recent book on the structural history of Finland, urbanisation is considered a mere by-product of industrialisation, highlighting an influential and widespread perception.10 Moreover, few scholars have argued that there was no official urban policy in Finland prior to the 1990s.11 These perceptions result from overemphasis of the town in the Finnish urban history. Towns dominated the municipal typology until 1977 and continue to dominate urban studies, including urban history. Only towns were perceived as ‘urban’ in official documents, such as official statistics, and in public as well as political discussions. Less urban(ising) communities, like townships, were simply considered as municipalities, despite the fact that they were thoroughly urban, as we shall discuss later. The publication of Suomen Kaupunkilaitoksen historia (The History of Finnish Town System, three volumes) between 1982 and 1984 was the pinnacle of town-oriented historiography, highlighting an approach that paid much less attention to townships and densely populated communities, not to mention unchartered communities. Previous studies remain important, however, providing detailed data, as well as a starting point for this chapter. However, to understand Finnish urban development, we need to analyse the concept ‘urban’. The principal problem in previous studies on Finnish urbanisation has been their narrow conceptual framework, which has recognised towns as urban due to their ancient privileges instead of analysing the municipal system and the urbanising communities, most notably townships. Since the turn of the twentieth century, municipal governance was organised according to a municipal typology, which was composed of five municipalities that each had different legal standing and duties, not to mention finances in relation to the state. Three were autonomous municipalities: the town (–1977), township (1850–1977), and rural municipality (1860–1977). These ruled over the two quasi-autonomous municipalities: the semiautonomous township (1858–1891, although the township of Ikaalinen remained semi-autonomous from 1858 until 1972) and the densely populated community (1898–1956) (Figure 7.1). The typology was hierarchical, whereby the town occupied the throne, followed by the township and rural municipality, because of their autonomy. Given the dominance of a town, an urbanising community was first required to practise proper municipal (also urban) government as a densely populated community controlled by a rural municipality, and then as a township, before it could become a town. Of course, not all municipalities were expected to follow this course, but the typology, and the fact that it continued to control creation of new urban communities until the municipal reform of the 1970s, indicates its

150  Matti O. Hannikainen

Figure 7.1 Finnish municipal typology.

significant role in an urban policy that connected urban growth with local government. Thus, in addition to ‘urban’, we shall employ ‘municipal’ as a concept, enabling us to recognise and classify different kinds of urbanising communities and to analyse urban development in more detail than previous studies, which have mostly focused on official urban centres, notably towns.12 We shall pay more attention to these new kinds of urbanising communities, because their growth transformed the structure of Finnish society from an agrarian into an urban nation. There were problems within urban development. No new towns emerged in Finland between 1906 and 1959, whereas in Sweden, 28 new towns were created between 1920 and 1958 alone.13 There were two main reasons for this difference. The first was the tradition according to which the sovereign donated land to the town. While this practice had been abandoned in Sweden in the mid-19th century, it was considered as binding as law in Finland.14 In 1919, Torsten Malinen (1877–1951), who worked as the mayor of Pori, argued that the Finnish government should recognise that the practice had represented royal goodwill in a different historical context and that it was not obligatory to donate land for new towns.15 Numerous township leaders disagreed, however, claiming that the tradition had given the old towns invaluable landownership in contrast to the townships, which were forced to purchase land for public infrastructure like roads and schools. Unsurprisingly, the government considered donating land too expensive, given the rising land values in urbanising communities.

New towns? 151 Moreover, old towns like Helsinki had begun to purchase land outside their boundaries in the 1910s in order to control suburban expansion; in addition to this, they began to annex these suburbs later in the 1920s, as we discuss later, to secure land for future housing.16 Whilst urbanisation followed local initiative, the transformation of urban communities into official municipalities remained slow given the complicated legal questions requiring legislative changes. The second factor that affected town creation was financial, and it can be separated into two parts: custom duties and state subsidies.17 Despite the fact that ancient town privileges had been abolished in 1879, old seaside towns and those towns connected to the sea via canals, for example, were entitled to bear a special custom duty on imports (tuulaaki in Finnish, tolag in Swedish). These towns were to use this income to cover the expenses for their magistrate, among other duties, whereas the state provided these funds to other municipalities. Despite the fact that in Sweden this tax had been abolished in the late 19th century, it was retained in the Grand Duchy of Finland, and later in the independent republic, because the state was reluctant to increase its expenditure. In the 1920s, if not earlier, the custom duty was smaller than the expenditure it was supposed to cover for most towns apart from Kotka, which was the most thriving import port. During the economic depression in 1931, the government cut the custom duty from two per cent down to a quarter of a per cent, which further increased the towns’ financial burden. In Oulu, for instance, the custom duty provided a meagre sum of 31,250 Finnish marks compared to the expenditure, which reached 772,200 marks.18 Similarly, in 1931, new legislation forced the towns to cover one-third of the expenses of the local police, whereas the state covered these expenses for rural municipalities.19 The FTA and towns attempted repeatedly to abolish custom duty. In 1923, for example, the parliament abandoned a bill that proposed abolishing the custom duty, stating that it continued to provide an adequate reimbursement for the towns. Despite constant appeals, subsequent governments refused to revise the custom duties. Towns also received fewer state subsidies than rural municipalities for education. For elementary schools, for example, state subsidies were smaller for towns than rural municipalities. In 1948, Erkki O. Mantere (1899–1977) argued that town formation had been discontinued given the disparity of state subsidies.20 In the late 1940s, for instance, most towns received less than 5 per cent of their total expenditure as subsidies, in contrast to the 25 per cent allocated to the rural municipalities. To give an overall comparison of state subsidies, old towns like Helsinki received only 7.1 per cent compared to both new towns like Salo, which received 12.1 per cent, and townships like Espoo which received 11.6 per cent, whereas rural municipalities like the rural municipality of Helsinki (later the city

152  Matti O. Hannikainen of Vantaa) enjoyed rather lavish subsidies that covered over 29 per cent of their annual expenditure in 1964.21 Unsurprisingly, towns and townships petitioned the government to grant similar subsidies for all municipalities without success. Underlining the situation, in 1955, the editorial in the Suomen Kunnallislehti claimed with heavy irony that ‘town was without any doubt the most expensive title in the country’.22 Consequently, many townships hesitated to apply for a town charter, because being a town was more expensive and because a township could carry out almost all the same duties of a town, such as town planning. Unchartered communities In 1920, Finland was an agrarian country with a majority of its 3.3 million people living in the countryside (Figure 7.2). There were only 37 towns, in addition to five townships and four densely populated communities. Though acknowledging the problems with the concept ‘urban’, there were numerous unchartered communities across the country demonstrating that the society was urbanising rapidly. In 1919, for example, there were some 65 communities whose population varied greatly from fewer than 300 to over 12,000, with 28 communities having over 2,000 inhabitants. All of these were officially classified as rural, because each belonged to a rural municipality. According to the FTA, their population densities set them apart from mere villages. Some of these were suburbs of the nearby towns.23 The fact that these communities remained unchartered underlines

Figure 7.2 Urban and rural population in Finland, 1850–1980. Source: Tilastollinen päätoimisto, STV 1912, pp. 7, 10; STV 1923, pp. 7, 9; STV 1935, pp. 8, 12; STV 1940, pp.  11–15; STV 1946–47, pp.  7, 12–13; STV 1953, pp.  5–6, 10–11; STV 1963, pp. 5–7, 10–11; Tilastokeskus, STV 1972, pp. 5–6, 9–10; STV 1981, pp. 5–6, 8–9.

New towns? 153 the role of municipal typology over urban growth and the prevailing perception of urbanisation in Finland. This conceptual mismatch that divided Finland between towns and the countryside has prevented any accurate analysis of urban growth, further obscuring the real rate of urbanisation, a situation that an article in the Suomen Kunnallislehti had already pinpointed in 1927.24 The pace of urbanisation accelerated during the interwar years. In 1933, for instance, the Statistical Office published an article in the Suomen Kunnallislehti describing the recent growth of Finland’s urban population, which had risen from 16 per cent to 19 per cent between just 1920 and 1930. The most interesting point in the article was that its statistics for urban population included only towns, without any reference to townships, densely populated communities, and unchartered urbanising communities.25 The case of the rural municipality of Helsinki demonstrates this development with its conceptual controversy. In the early 1930s, the population of the rural municipality had grown to some 20,000 inhabitants, which included the population of its administrative centre – Malmi – as well as neighbouring Tapanila, which together had some 10,000 inhabitants. Malmi and Tapanila were actually densely built with suburbs, such as Pukinmäki and Rekola, as well as the densely populated community of Tikkurila within the rural municipality. However, its population was officially classified as rural.26 These other urban municipalities were part of the countryside. It has been argued that in 1936 nearly a third of the Finnish population lived in urban communities.27 In 1939, Yrjö Harvia (1887–1947), who worked as the leader of the FTA from 1918 until his death in 1947, wrote that it was futile for the government to try to suspend new housing in towns to prevent increasing migration from the countryside and that it was equally futile to concentrate all financial support in the countryside.28 Although Harvia influenced Finnish urban development more than any other person between the 1920s and the late 1940s, he basically argued that urbanisation was a process that could not be stopped by government policies. In the 1920s and the 1930s, many unchartered communities, most notably suburbs, were either annexed by towns and townships or applied for and were promoted to the status of official municipalities, as we discuss later. A problem concerning official population statistics reinforced the conceptual mismatch, because the statistics followed the rigid administrative classification until 1950 instead of recognising these unchartered communities as urban. It has been argued that in 1950, nearly 10 per cent of the Finnish population, which had grown to slightly over four million people, lived in these unofficial urban communities. There were over 260 unofficial communities, each having over 500 inhabitants, most of whom were not employed in agriculture, marking a clear separation between the

154  Matti O. Hannikainen countryside and urban environments. These communities comprised 109 village centres, 63 industrial communities, 48 suburban settlements, and 46 railway crossings, in addition to seven roadside communities, three harbours, three garrisons, and three hospital communities. The largest were industrial and mining communities, such as Kuusankoski-Voikkaa, with its 15,000 inhabitants, followed by Outokumpu (7,700), Myllykoski (4,900), and Karhula (4,600).29 The Ministry of Interior urged these largest communities, Kuusankoski in particular, to apply for township, indicating a change in urban policy.30 Witnessing this change, the professor of social policy Heikki Waris (1901–1989) wrote that new urban centres were mushrooming everywhere, with the result that the previously clear separation between the town and the countryside was vanishing.31 In the early 1950s, the importance of these unchartered communities was finally recognised. A new definition of taajama (tätort in Swedish), which meant a densely built-up and inhabited area, was introduced, allowing the government to monitor the growth of these unofficial communities in more detail. According to the new concept, it has been suggested that most Finns were living in urban communities by 1960.32 Thus, these unchartered communities played an important, if little understood, part in Finnish urban development; hence, the subject requires more research. Until 1950, the official population statistics followed municipal boundaries and recognised only towns as urban; therefore, we need to adjust the official statistics by adding the population of both townships and densely populated communities to the population of the towns. Thus, our evidence suggests that the urbanisation rate in Finland was higher than what previous studies show, but more research is needed to include the unchartered communities in the adjusted statistics. Densely populated communities Densely populated communities occupied the lowest tier of the municipal typology.33 They were semi-autonomous municipalities first created in 1898; their number peaked in the 1930s, when there were 39 densely populated communities.34 Their role in urban development remains controversial. Nominally, these communities were administratively separate from a rural municipality, but they remained under the juridical control of the rural municipality. Most densely populated communities were established because their population was larger compared with the surrounding countryside; moreover, the populations had different occupations, suggesting a different socio-economic structure. Thus, there were commercial as well as residential hubs often located by railway lines, enjoying good connections for ideas, goods, and people. Many of these were suburban communities, such as Leppävaara in Espoo and Pukinmäki and Tikkurila in the rural

New towns? 155 municipality of Helsinki, which had emerged around the main railway to the capital city after the 1880s. There were difficulties in establishing densely populated communities, however. In 1919, the Ministry of the Interior had urged the Ministry of Justice to draft a new legislation to ease their creation. John Uggla (1870– 1954), a member of the FTA working at the High Court, wrote in Suomen Kunnallislehti that the current legislation was a failure because the power for establishing new communities was vested in the rural municipalities. The communities themselves could not apply for separation, which partially explains why there were only four densely populated communities in 1920, compared to numerous unchartered communities. In addition, rural municipalities often considered densely populated communities as a means for securing additional income, because these communities had to pay an additional local tax, for which they often received little in return. For instance, the urbanising community of Seinäjoki, which had grown around the railway crossing in Ostrobothnia, was appointed as a densely populated community in 1921. Consequently, the residents had to pay an increased local tax of up to 20 per cent more compared to the rest of the population of the rural municipality.35 The fear that a densely populated community would apply for promotion to a township, thus becoming an autonomous municipality, had apparently postponed, if not prevented, their creation in many cases. Unsurprisingly, many densely populated communities considered their subordinate standing and their additional municipal taxation unjust and applied for promotion to a township as soon as it was possible. Many suburban communities, such as Leppävaara and Tikkurila, applied for an official recognition as densely populated communities, which required new legislation.36 New legislation enacted in 1927, which John Uggla called ‘town formation policy’, extended the application powers to local communities themselves, improving urban development.37 One of the leading advocates of this kind of urban policy was Yrjö Harvia. Given the growing number of urbanising communities, Harvia opted for a controlled development that provided each community with an official status, enabling them to practise proper municipal administration.38 Harvia’s view followed a traditional legalistic principle that emphasised the administrative perspective. Harvia promoted a municipal hierarchy, according to which a densely populated community could not be promoted directly into a town. More importantly, Harvia stressed local initiatives, arguing that the communities themselves were responsible for applying for a new administrative status, instead of the state. The new legislation notwithstanding, densely populated communities remained unpopular and short-lived. For instance, the residents of the densely populated community of Seinäjoki applied for township status

1900

< 1,000 1,001–2,999 3,000–4,999 5,000–9,999 10,000–19,999 20,000–49,999 50,000–99,999 100,000–499,999 > 500,000 Total

1930

1950

1970

1990

Town

Township

Town

Township

Town

Township

Town

Township

Town

2 16 7 4 4 3 1 – – 37

3* 1 – – – – – – – 4

2 7 10 9 3 3 3 1 – 38

2* 1 1 3 – – – – – 7

– 4 7 5 7 9 – 3 – 35

1 3 5 11 8 1 – – – 29

– 3 – 10 13 15 6 2 1 50

1 1 1 11 10 3 1 – – 28

– 1 – 27 28 25 7 6 – 94

Source: Jorma Kallenautio, Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia – Tilasto-osa. (Helsinki, Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1984), pp. 14–20; Tilastokeskus. STV 1992, pp. 41–42; STV 1996, pp. 52–53.

156  Matti O. Hannikainen

Table 7.1 The number of Finnish towns and townships according to their population, 1900–1990

New towns? 157 already in 1928. The urge of the residents of densely populated communities to form their own municipality was the reason for the growing number of townships created during the 1930s (Table  7.1). In fact, almost every township established during the interwar years had previously been a densely populated community. Again, the FTA played an important role inspecting and, if necessary, revising, the rules for new urban municipalities.39 In 1950, the densely populated community of Järvenpää applied for township status because its residents felt themselves culturally and socially different from the population of the surrounding rural municipality of Tuusula. In addition, the residents felt that despite paying additional municipal taxes, they did not benefit much from them because the rural municipality showed little interest in improving necessary infrastructure, such as the sewage system.40 More importantly, the new planning legislation enacted in 1932 empowered townships to draft local plans including private properties effectively minimising the reason for creating new densely populated communities. Consequently, their number began to fall due to the annexations and due to the urge to create townships. After 1945, many densely populated communities, such as Imatra and Järvenpää, applied for township status directly, thus contradicting the established policy that made urban growth an administrative municipal policy. Their promotion highlighted that, as a municipality, the densely populated community was considered a failure and that their era was coming to an end. In January  1956, the remaining 17 densely populated communities, including suburban centres of Leppävaara and Tikkurila, were dissolved and returned to their rural municipalities. This aroused surprisingly little concern, escaping headlines in the Suomen Kunnallislehti, for example, which suggests that most contemporaries perceived densely populated communities to be useless. Illustrating their varied past, Hannu Soikkanen has argued that only three communities succeeded in drafting and approving the required administrative directives.41 The dissolution of densely populated communities needs to be understood as part of a new urban policy that preferred townships and culminated in the creation of the new towns in 1960. Townships instead of towns Townships proliferated between 1920 and 1970; during this time, they were perhaps the most important element in Finnish urbanisation. The number of townships grew by 30 between 1920 and 1959. In the 1920s, 12 were created, whereas seven more were established in the following decade.42 Similarly, their population grew from merely 2,200 to over 263,000 between 1920 and 1960.43 A township was a Nordic peculiarity, given its role as a town-in-being gradually vested with similar legal tasks like the town.44 In 1932, for example, the new town planning legislation made

158  Matti O. Hannikainen local planning compulsory for both towns and townships, indicating similarities in their urban status. Perhaps, more importantly, for blurring the line between a town and a township, two townships served as provincial capitals: Rovaniemi had been the capital for the province of Lapland since 1938, whereas Kouvola was chosen as the capital for the post-war province of Kymenlaakso in 1955.45 Hence, many townships equalled towns in issues like the level of administration and services provided (Figure 7.3). In Finland, the first township (Ikaalinen) had been established in 1858 as a semi-autonomous municipality to boost commerce in the then-Grand Duchy of Finland.46 Given the gradual liberation of trade in Finland, the senate considered townships sufficient, instead of towns, because these were administratively part of rural municipalities and required neither land nor additional funding from the senate.47 The policy was modified in 1891, when a new kind of autonomous township (Salo) was created. The perception concerning townships amongst Finnish historians remains controversial, however. In a recent study on structural history of Finland, it was claimed that ‘townships were but industrial communities separated from the surrounding rural municipality’.48 This perception remains powerful but overlooks the reason for creating townships, not to mention their

Figure 7.3 A street view from the centre of Parkano township in the 1930s. Source: Matti Poutvaara, photographer. Parkanon Keskustaa. Collection: Kansatieteen kuvakokoelma. Finnish Heritage Agency. KK5079:2.PARK.1 ID 1106775. https://museo virasto.finna.fi/Record/museovirasto.B5FB414489136156C61441B606B00939, CC BY 4.0 (Accessed 31 October 2022)

New towns? 159 heterogeneity and subsequent role as an administratively limited version of a town.49 The perception of townships as mere by-products of industrialisation, moreover, ignores their role as towns-in-being between 1906 and 1959. The reason the Finnish government preferred townships to towns was that the state did not have to donate land for a township, whereas it had been mandatory for new towns, as discussed earlier. The case of Rovaniemi illustrates the difficulty of landownership. The densely populated community of Rovaniemi was established in 1901, marking the rise of an important commerce and transportation hub located at the confluence of two major rivers (Ounasjoki and Kemijoki). Given Rovaniemi’s increasing size and importance as the regional centre for commerce, the community applied for a town charter in 1909, which was opposed by the rural municipality of Rovaniemi and a few local landowners. Although the senate was willing to approve the application, it had to abandon the case in 1913 due to its inability to secure funding to purchase land for the proposed town.50 The creation of the township of Haaga in 1916, followed by that of Kauniainen in 1920, marked the advent of a new policy, according to which the government did not have to purchase and donate land for a township.51 Subsequently, numerous unchartered communities and densely populated communities that were dissatisfied in their submissive role applied for a promotion to an autonomous municipality. The creation of townships required new legislation once again. The legislation was drafted by the FTA, discussed in the parliament in 1924, and finally enacted in 1926.52 The first problem was the boundaries separating parishes and municipalities; that is, spiritual and secular areas. In Finnish society, municipal boundaries had to conform to parish boundaries, which meant that the creation of a new municipality necessitated the creation of a new parish. Given the number of urbanising communities, the Church had approved local parishes to operate a separate chapel parish (kappeliseurakunta). The second problem concerned the annexation of private land to towns and townships. Subsequently, new legislation allowed towns and townships to annex private properties and separated municipal and parish boundaries. More importantly, the new legislation empowered densely populated communities as well as private citizens to apply for a promotion within the municipal typology. Thus, the new legislation provided a fresh impetus within urban policy by easing the creation of new municipalities. The application process was relatively straightforward, as explained in detail in the Suomen Kunnallislehti in 1928. There were also criteria according to which the Ministry of the Interior would judge applications for a township. The most crucial criterion was finances: if the annual amount of tax revenue of the candidate community, in most cases a densely populated community, amounted to over 50,000 Finnish marks (FM), the

160  Matti O. Hannikainen application was valid for further scrutiny. Then the Ministry would ask for statements from the governor and the senior tax collector, the head of local constabulary, the registrar, and from all the municipalities that would be affected by the creation of a new township.53 There also existed certain unofficial, albeit well-known, criteria for the application. The most important was the separation of employment and economic structures of the candidate community compared with a rural municipality. For instance, the application of the densely populated community of Seinäjoki reflected the need to separate those practising the modern industries and commerce characteristic of an urban community from those farming land without further conflict. Hence, administrative change followed socio-economic change.54 In fact, the FTA instructed the Suonenjoki community in January 1938 that, when applying for a township, a municipality should demonstrate that its population had more or less common economic as well as societal interests that differed clearly from those of the surrounding rural municipality.55 Surprisingly, the population size was rarely discussed in the applications, reflecting the fact that it was not considered a valid criterion given the varied size of most communities. These criteria and this guidance from the FTA notwithstanding, some applications were rejected. In 1926, the industrial community of Enso, located by the river Vuoksi in the Karelian isthmus, applied for a township. Despite support from the local governor and the local municipalities, the application was rejected by President Lauri Kristian Relander (1883– 1942). Advised by the Ministry of the Interior, President Relander, who had served as the governor prior to his election, argued that the proposed area for the township was too small, limiting its growth, which was the main reason for the rejection. The fact that Enso was not an established densely populated community, but an unchartered community, did not matter. President Relander, however, encouraged the community to revise the application to cover a larger area, including the estates on the other side of river Vuoksi.56 In September 1933, a bank manager, Mr Siimestö, representing the unchartered community of Järvenpää, asked the FTA whether the application of the community had been approved. The FTA replied that because ‘all other parties strongly opposed the creation of a township’, the Ministry of the Interior had rejected the application.57 Underlining the point that township was not automatically granted to every community that applied, President Risto Ryti (1889–1956) rejected the application of Suonenjoki community for a township in January 1941.58 These cases again highlight the powerful role that the FTA played in guiding communities through urban development. The case of Enso highlights the other actors involved in urban development. Ultimately, it was the president who possessed the decisive power. All applications for town or township status were decided by the president

New towns? 161 instead of the government, whereas the Minister of the Interior decided whether or not to establish a densely populated community. The Ministry of the Interior was influential, however, in reviewing all applications before bringing them before the president. The case of Enso furthermore suggests that the governors (maaherra in Finnish, landshövding in Swedish) also played a prominent, if little known, role. Yet they were certainly influential, which was highlighted in 1929, for instance, when Ylivieska applied for a township. The application was rejected by the Ministry of the Interior, because the governor of Oulu Province considered the proposed township economically too weak.59 Decisions concerning municipal governance occurred outside daily politics, parties, and even the parliament.60 Hence, more research needs to be done concerning their activities and urban growth. After 1945, the situation, as well as the perception, of urban growth changed because urbanisation continued despite the outcome of the war. Between 1946 and 1959, eight new townships were created, including Imatra in 1948, Karhula and Järvenpää in 1951, and Kuusankoski in 1957. Possibly as a result of a new perception of urban development, the densely populated communities of Suonenjoki and Iisvesi contacted the FTA asking advice on whether to reapply for township status. The FTA replied that the communities should reapply, because there was a new positive mood in the Ministry of the Interior and the government.61 Reflecting a change in how urbanisation was perceived, Ylivieska reapplied for township status, arguing in its application letter in 1960 that it would be the ‘economic, cultural and administrative centre of the region’ (Figure 7.4).62 The crucial change concerning townships was that most of the new townships comprised entire rural municipalities. The new policy did not require the separation of an urbanising community from a rural municipality, despite the fact that the former often formed the most densely populated community of the latter. Instead, the entire rural municipality was promoted to a township, setting aside previous criteria about density, as well as economic and social differentiations between rural and urban environments. The new policy reflected emerging ideas of a universal municipality, given the size of the densely built-up and populated areas (taajama) in addition to the problems concerning state subsidies, as we shall discuss later. The first new kind of township was Espoo (1963), whose skyrocketing population growth drew from the growth of Helsinki, followed by Lapua (1965) in western Finland. Consequently, the perception of ‘urban’ broadened from clear rigid boundaries of a built-up town into a composite municipality that covered both densely built-up and agricultural and forested areas.63 The number of townships grew by 19 between 1960 and 1975, at which point there were 22 townships.64 However, the necessity of having a township as a separate municipality was questioned during the

162  Matti O. Hannikainen

Figure 7.4 Engineer Viljo Halonen posing with the local plan of Ylivieska (27 September 1962). Source: Collection: JOKA Journalistinen kuva-arkisto Kaleva. Finnish Heritage Agency. JOKAKAL3B:12918, ID 1131231, https://museovirasto.finna.fi/Record/museovirasto.F29 572012E78B9F1D408D6B1E7E3B2BE?sid=2971694328. CC BY 4.0 (Accessed 31 October 2022). The plan is drawn over an aerial photograph showing Ylivieska prior to its transformation into a township in 1965.

1960s, because the problems that had prevented town creation had been solved, and the discussion of municipal reform had gained more popularity. Suburban problem Annexations were an important part of urban growth in Finland. First, suburban communities were annexed by towns, a process that accelerated in the 1920s. The main reason that towns applied to annex their suburbs

New towns? 163 was to combat what was perceived as unhealthy housing conditions in the suburbs and to prevent their degeneration into slums. Suburbs were one of the crucial issues in urban development because they were located outside the boundaries of the towns and in most cases had been constructed without any planning. The main problem was that the rural municipalities had little interest in investing in the necessary infrastructure in the suburbs. First, they were not legally bound to do so; and second, they benefitted from the taxes paid by the people who lived in the suburbs but worked in the nearby towns. While some rural municipalities hoped that towns would annex their suburbs, others did not want to lose valuable income. These themes continuously surfaced in the Suomen Kunnallislehti, whereas land values were discussed only rarely, reflecting the fact that most suburbs were built on private land, whose increasing value was considered to benefit private landowners instead of the municipalities.65 The Ministry of the Interior and the FTA considered suburban development problematic. The solution was to empower the towns to annex their suburbs through new legislation enacted in 1926.66 Subsequently, all major towns including Viipuri, Turku, and Oulu, in addition to a few townships, such as Salo, began the annexation process. According to contemporaries, uncontrolled suburban development in Finland was worst in Viipuri, surpassing even that taking place in the capital region. While the town had some 30,000 inhabitants in 1920, there were almost an equal number of people living in the suburbs.67 The government approved their annexation, disregarding opposition of both the town council and that of the rural municipality, proposing a novel solution due to the size of these suburbs. The annexation was undertaken in three parts that occurred over the next decade to limit the expenditure to construct the infrastructure required for the annexed suburbs. Some towns were worried about huge expenses they knew the annexation would incur. In 1938, the mayor of Jyväskylä A. J. Haapasalo asked Yrjö Harvia whether the proposed annexation of suburbs to Jyväskylä could follow the same pattern as in Viipuri. Harvia replied that the case of Viipuri had been unsatisfactory and that it could not be recommended.68 This case again demonstrates the crucial role that the FTA played in consulting the towns over problems concerning urban growth. Moreover, the FTA often proposed suitable persons to serve as the ombudsmen for the proposed annexations, whom the Ministry would formally appoint.69 The impact of annexations on the structure of Finnish society was immense and much of the urban growth during the interwar and the immediate post-war periods resulted from annexations. The largest was the socalled grand annexation of Helsinki that took place in 1946. In addition to its scale, the process underlined the impact of the municipal typology. The plan, which Yrjö Harvia himself had drafted, was published in 1936.

164  Matti O. Hannikainen It advocated the annexation, and thus the dissolution, of four neighbouring municipalities (Haaga, Huopalahti, Kulosaari, and Oulunkylä), in addition to annexing large areas from the rural municipality of Helsinki.70 Scrutinising the plan, Erkki O. Mantere, the then-undersecretary responsible for municipal government at the Ministry of the Interior, counselled Yrjö Harvia, regarding whether a town could annex a township, referring to Haaga, and whether a special governmental decree was required. Harvia replied that there was neither precedent nor legislation concerning the case but that the role of any township was to either grow into a town by itself or be annexed by a town. According to Harvia, these cases should be ‘considered such as natural progress’ that the proposed annexation ought to be approved without a need for new legislation.71 While the plan marked a watershed moment in urban policy, given the possibility of a town to annex hierarchically lesser municipalities, the plan also contradicted the importance of municipal autonomy that was thought to form a key principle in Finnish local government. Addressing the annual assembly of mayors and township leaders in 1950, the new leader of the FTA, Aarre E. Simonen (1913–1977), claimed that the so-called first full round of annexations was not yet complete, pointing out that administrative areas of towns and townships remained relatively small.72 Some towns were preparing annexations similar to the one that Helsinki had completed. In 1947, for example, Tampere annexed the neighbouring municipality of Messukylä, and in 1954, the entire rural municipality of Pielisensuu was incorporated into Joensuu, where the population more than doubled as the result of the annexation.73 Some 107 annexations were implemented between 1919 and 1959.74 In contrast to these annexations, which concentrated on the suburbs, a new mood was emerging that proposed reconnecting entire rural municipalities into urban communities. Marking a change in the annexation policy, in 1949, the leader of Seinäjoki township H. R. Tammilehto asked the FTA whether a township could annex the surrounding rural municipality and how such an application should be drafted. He received minimal instruction, which indicates the novelty of the proposal.75 Given the continuous growth of Seinäjoki and its new position as a commercial hub of the region, the proposal to combine two municipalities that had separated in 1928 gradually gathered more support, despite the fact that there were no suburbs in the rural municipality. In the late 1950s, a new kind of policy emerged as towns began to merge rural municipalities. In 1958, the township and rural municipality of Seinäjoki were merged, which was followed by a surge of similar incorporations due to the structural transformation of the Finnish society from an agrarian to an industrial and commercial service economy almost simultaneously.76 Most of these incorporations occurred with the consent of the rural

New towns? 165 and urban municipalities involved, but the town remained dominant. This could be witnessed in the annexation of Lauritsala township and the rural municipality of Lappee into the town of Lappeenranta in 1967, which was fiercely opposed by the former two, but they could not reverse the decision of the Ministry and the president. The accelerating rate of rural municipalities becoming dissolved into towns and townships alarmed the Ministry of Agriculture, whose officials were concerned about the loss of fertile fields and contacted the Ministry of the Interior in 1966 to discuss whether there was any legislation to prevent the continuous dissolution of rural municipalities.77 More importantly, the incorporation of rural municipalities into towns and townships blurred the previously clear boundary between town and countryside in Finnish society. The Ministry of the Interior was concerned with the trend following the case of Lappeenranta and especially after the city of Helsinki began to argue for another ‘grand annexation’ in the late 1960s. The proposal covered huge areas from both the township of Espoo and the rural municipalities of Helsinki and Sipoo, but it was opposed by the three municipalities and by Aaro Hannus (1920–2020), the successor of Erkki O. Mantere at the Ministry of the Interior.78 The increasing number of incorporations underlined for some contemporaries a need for municipal reform. A change in urban policy In the late 1940s, continuous urban growth indicated the need for new towns. Admittedly, the war had its impact: three towns and two townships had been ceded to the Soviet Union. The Ministry of the Interior implied its interest in creating towns to the FTA in early 1945, and tasked the FTA with formulating a new policy concerning urban development.79 Three years later, the government set up a special committee to solve the problems preventing town formation to boost economic growth in the country. The committee was chaired by Erkki O. Mantere, and amongst the committee members were the township leaders of Imatra and Nokia, Artturi Ranta (1897–1975), and Yrjö Nykänen (1902–1974), who were prominent members in the FTA. The brief of the committee was limited, however, to investigating how townships could be turned into towns instead of solving the complex structural problems of town formation discussed earlier. The committee proposed a novel solution, according to which new towns would have similar financial and legal obligations to those that townships currently had. Unlike old towns, new towns would not have to bear custom duties, and their policing and magistrate would be funded by the state, marking a fundamental change in urban policy. Moreover, the committee stressed the fact that only townships could be elevated into towns, reinforcing the prevailing municipal typology.80 Hence, the committee created new

166  Matti O. Hannikainen towns as a new separate tier in the municipal typology. The draft report was first presented at the Urban Days at Hämeenlinna in August  1949, where it was scrutinised and revised by the FTA, once again underlining its role in formulating Finnish urban policy.81 The obvious problem with the proposed legislation was that it excluded old towns completely, suggesting that their problems would be scrutinised later.82 The committee delivered its full report to the government in March 1950.83 The turbulence in Finnish politics that included the change of government postponed its implementation. In October 1950, Aarre S. Simonen argued that urban development was considered unimportant in Finnish politics, urging the government to enact the legislation.84 Two years later, the FTA complained to the Ministry of the Interior about the slow progress of the proposed legislation, drawing on its national importance.85 Adding pressure on the government, the township leaders also expressed their disappointment over the delay.86 To clarify the situation, the Minister of Interior J. V. Sukselainen (1906–1995) explained that the government supported the legislation. Nevertheless, it considered common criteria for constituting a town necessary and the fact that there were no such criteria apart from the ancient privileges, most of which had been abolished in 1879, was causing the delay. The FTA disagreed, arguing that it would be impossible to set out any definite criteria given the diversity of towns and townships and their varied socio-economic structures.87 Consequently, the draft legislation did not include any definitions or criteria for constituting a town. The FTA welcomed the fact that it was left for each township to choose whether to apply for a town charter, instead of the government nominating the candidates.88 The new legislation was finally enacted in January 1959, and the first new towns were established a year later: Hyvinkää, Kouvola, Salo Seinäjoki, Riihimäki, and Rovaniemi. They were followed by a surge of new towns all over the country, with 22 townships promoted into towns between 1961 and 1975.89 The new legislation notwithstanding, some townships had required subtle encouragement to apply. In 1959, for example, Eino Palokari from the FTA and Erkki O. Mantere had met the township council of Rovaniemi, encouraging them to apply for promotion into a town. Erkki O. Mantere, moreover, sent a draft of Rovaniemi’s application to the townships of Hyvinkää and Riihimäki as encouragement, as well as an example.90 Those townships, which applied for town charters, had to provide a survey of their economic and service structures, as well as their regional dynamism and national outreach. These surveys showed that many townships were ‘already functioning as towns or were nearly functioning as such’.91 According to the Suomen Kunnallislehti, town status was also granted in recognition of good municipal government.92 The fact that town formation continued to follow the prevailing municipal typology,

New towns? 167 according to which only townships could be promoted into towns, was highlighted by the fact that some rural municipalities were townships for only a few years before they were seen as ready for a town charter. For instance, the rural municipality of Helsinki was promoted to a township in January 1972, despite the fact that it had initially applied for a town charter in 1967, fearing that the city of Helsinki would annex it as it was a rural municipality. After being a township for two years, the township of Vantaa became a town in January 1974 and was one of the last towns created by the president in Finland.93 New towns that were established between 1960 and 1975 were an interim solution that created a separate administrative tier between old towns and townships (Figure 7.1). They were townships given town charters: they retained the same legal rights and subsidies that the townships had, and the problems concerning the old towns remained unresolved. A municipal turn The 1960s and early 1970s witnessed growing criticism over the municipal governance and continuous discussion about municipal reform. The new urban policy aimed at extending similar legal powers to all municipalities, thus marking an end of the policy according to which urban development was linked to the tiers of municipal government. Reflecting on the work of the new town committee, Erkki O. Mantere argued that the current municipal typology should be revised.94 The most crucial issue was the number of municipalities: in 1961, there were 41 towns, 26 townships, and 481 rural municipalities.95 The editorial of Suomen Kunnallislehti argued that there were 144 municipalities, including a few towns, most notably Kaskinen, and townships that had fewer than 3,000 inhabitants, which was estimated as the minimum population for a self-sufficient municipality.96 The Kaskinen’s situation was perhaps the most controversial. It was the smallest town; nonetheless, it was obliged to maintain similar administrative operations and carry out the same legal duties as Helsinki. Unsurprisingly, Kaskinen informally asked the FTA whether it could renounce its town status and become a township instead, because that status required much less money.97 Municipal reform targeted the number of small rural municipalities in particular. An initial draft suggested that the overall number of rural municipalities would fall from 428 down to 218 in addition to which four townships and the town of Kaskinen would be dissolved.98 Whilst the urban development had been based on continuous growth, some smaller towns and townships began to experience economic problems in the 1960s, given their economic structure that often relied on a single industry. The main argument for municipal reform was the disparity of the state subsidies that were to have been allocated in accordance with the financial

168  Matti O. Hannikainen situation of a municipality instead of its administrative status.99 Again, municipal reforms in Sweden set the example for the Finnish authorities.100 The uneven allocation of state subsidies raised even more concern during the 1960s, given the harsh economic situation and the continuous merging of rural municipalities into towns. In 1964, the participants at the Urban Days at Tampere discussed the state subsidies with particular reference to the old towns.101 Consequently, the FTA managed to persuade the government to set up two special committees to investigate financial problems affecting the old towns.102 The need for different municipalities with responsibilities for specific tasks according to their administrative status was questioned in the 1960s when similar legal rights were extended to all municipalities as part of creating a welfare state.103 Reflecting this changing attitude, a 1965 editorial in the Suomen Kunnallislehti argued that in due time all municipalities would become equal from a legal perspective.104 Demonstrating this structural change, Arno Hannus wrote in 1968 that there were five intertwined major reforms divided into over 16 separate cases under scrutiny at the Ministry including municipal reform.105 One of these was the proposal for creating a regional government (maakuntaitsehallinto) that was planned as an intermediate tier of government between the municipalities and the parliament.106 In 1970, the committee for municipal reform published its report proposing universal municipality as the solution, thus discontinuing all other municipalities apart from those that could be nominally titled towns.107 The report furthermore proposed that rural municipalities could become towns directly, which was perceived as regrettable by the FTA.108 In the same year, the committee for custom duties also published its report, wherein it proposed the abolition of the ancient custom duty of the towns.109 As far as the FTA was concerned, the municipal reform was about retaining different municipalities each having similar legal rights and subsidies. The part of the municipal reform suggesting reduction of municipalities vanished quietly, but the part promoting universal municipality was actively promoted. Admittedly, it had already been adopted in Sweden, thus providing an example for Finnish authorities, and it suited the idea of creating a welfare state. In 1973, the parliament discussed new legislation. Its implementation was postponed when the parliament was dissolved in June  1975, reflecting the turbulence in Finnish politics during the early 1970s, when three caretaker governments were appointed. It was not until 1976, when the parliament managed to pass the legislation that marked a watershed in Finnish history. The new laws made universal municipality the standard administrative unit for municipal government, abolishing the township as a municipality. All but one of the existing townships resolved to nominate themselves towns according to new legislation.

New towns? 169 The exception was the township of Karhula in Kymenlaakso which was annexed into Kotka along with the rural municipality of Kymi in 1977.110 While the annexation of Lauritsala and rural municipality of Lappee into Lappeenranta in 1967 has been argued to nominate the end of a period of dominant towns over rural municipalities, the annexation of Karhula and Kymi was the last case in the 20th century. In contrast to Sweden, Finnish towns remained nominally towns despite being universal municipalities. According to the new legislation, any municipality could become a town following the decision of its council instead of the Ministry of Interior or the president. Moreover, the custom duty of towns was finally scrapped in April 1978.111 The new laws enacted in January 1977 ended the municipal policy that had been aimed at controlling urban development from an administrative perspective, defined by the dominant position of the town. An urban nation without towns? Between 1920 and 1980, Finland became an urban nation with the majority of its population living in towns. While towns were perceived as the only officially urban communities until the 1950s, urban growth concentrated on townships and densely populated communities, not to mention unchartered communities that formed the nuclei of urbanising society. The transformation of the Finnish society from rural to urban presents us with a paradox. By looking beyond the dominant concepts ‘urban’ and ‘town’, this chapter suggests that the urbanisation of Finland was more widespread than previously acknowledged and that the rate of urbanisation was higher between the 1920s and the 1960s than previous studies have recognised. Thus, Finland became urban earlier than previous studies indicate, but more research is needed to analyse the development of these less-urbanising municipalities to establish the actual urbanisation rate of the Finnish society. Similarly, we need to analyse how the municipal reforms of the 1960s and 1970s were perceived to understand the contemporary ‘urban’ policies in their true context. Finnish urbanisation was framed by the municipalisation of society. The municipal typology consisted of five municipalities in 1920. It was created as a response to the unresolved problems concerning landownership and state funding for different municipalities between 1858 and 1898. It reflected changes in societal structures, emphasising administrative requirements over urban development. Thus, the system was revised three times (in 1928, 1955, and 1960) to correspond to the societal changes accelerated by urbanisation, before it was ultimately replaced by universal municipality in 1977. Although urbanisation had been based on the separation of urban communities from rural municipalities, continuous urban development and the emergence of various kinds of urban communities across

170  Matti O. Hannikainen the country blurred the boundary between urban and rural so much so that by the 1950s urban and rural became intertwined. After 1960, the formation of new townships did not necessitate separating out urban communities, heralding the advent of a modern Finnish urban form – a rurban municipality. Previous studies have argued that there was no urban policy, or that it was implicit at best, but this chapter has demonstrated that there was an urban policy in Finland between the 1920s and the 1970s. The difference was that it was piecemeal, consisting of separate policies that each dealt with a particular problem. For instance, the government passed new legislation in the mid-1920s to ease the creation of new urban municipalities – townships and densely populated communities – and successive governments approved almost all annexations proposed by towns and townships to prevent suburbs denigrating into slums. These urban policies aimed at controlling urbanisation from an administrative perspective and remained powerful until the 1950s. In fact, the 1950s was a watershed decade in urbanisation. Urban and rural municipalities began to merge, forming new polycentric rurban municipalities. More importantly, new legislation that allowed the creation of new towns was enacted. Subsequently, the number of towns and townships grew, since urban growth could not be prevented by government policies. At the same time, though, the leading political parties, and hence successive governments, placed more emphasis on agricultural, settlement, and regional policies, each aimed at supporting rural municipalities whilst urbanisation continued. Their emphasis on these policies that implied a negative perception of urban development suggests that future research ought to analyse how urbanism was perceived in Finnish politics and broaden the scope to other Nordic countries, too. This chapter has highlighted the leading role of the FTA. Above all, the FTA was pivotal in drafting new legislation and consulting urbanising communities and towns, as well as the Ministry of the Interior, on urban issues. The FTA assisted urbanising communities in formulating their applications, often delivering these to the Ministry, and kept records of their progress, contacting the responsible officials, even the minister, if necessary. It moreover inspected almost all annexation proposals and applications for new urban municipalities. As mentioned earlier, the role the Ministry of the Interior and the presidents chairing the Council of the State was often instrumental. For instance, the Ministry and the president approved almost all applications for urban municipalities, as well as annexations and mergers that the towns and later townships applied for. There were, however, other actors in addition to the FTA and its prominent officials, most notably the governors, whose role in surveying, promoting, and possibly preventing urbanisation in their provinces remains veiled so far. More research

New towns? 171 is needed to assess their influence as the gatekeepers of urban development within the Finnish society, instead of politicians. Unlike with Swedish urban development, new towns were a Finnish urban speciality. While townships had provided the state with a cheaper version for municipal government, both the FTA and gradually the Ministry of Interior began to promote new towns after the late 1940s. The years between 1960 and 1976 were characterised by new towns forming a separate administrative tier in Finnish municipal government. Their creation, however, underlined the failure of the FTA, the Ministry of the Interior, and the government to resolve the old problems concerning landownership and state subsidies that had led to the discontinuation of town creation in 1906. For a brief period, there existed two administratively different kinds of towns until new legislation that was enacted in 1977 dissolved township and established universal municipality as the standard for municipal government, although towns remained nominally as a category. Within five decades, an agrarian country had transformed into an urban nation where there were no towns in the legal sense. An administrative perspective has been our first step in analysing how urbanisation changed everyday life in different communities across the country and how it affected the mentality of Finnish people. Notes 1 ‘Vihdoinkin uusia kaupunkeja’ (editorial), Suomen Kunnallislehti (hereafter SKL), 9 (1958), p. 247. 2 Sometimes referred to as a market town in the original sources, but I have chosen to employ the concept township instead. 3 Tilastokeskus, Suomen tilastollinen vuosikirja 2019 (Helsinki: Tilastokeskus, 2019), pp. 398, 412–16. hereafter STV. The capital region comprises four cities: the capital city of Helsinki and the cities of Espoo, Kauniainen, and Vantaa. 4 See, for example, Peter Clark, European Cities and Towns 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 5 Silja Laine, ‘Kotiseudusta isänmaahan’, in Marjo Kaartinen, Hannu Salmi & Marja Tuominen (eds.), Maamme – itsenäisen Suomen kulttuurihistoria (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2016), pp. 178–9. 6 Eino Jutikkala, ‘Urbanisoituminen’, in Päiviö Tommila (ed.), Suomen Kaupunkilaitoksen historia 3 – Itsenäisyyden aika (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1984), p. 11. 7 Kimmo Jokinen  & Kimmo Saaristo, Suomalainen yhteiskunta. (Helsinki: WSOY, 2006), pp. 82–9, 117. 8 There were other non-governmental organisations that were established for looking after municipal affairs like Maalaiskuntien Liitto (later Suomen Kunnallisliitto, Association for Finnish Rural Municipalites, 1921–1993) ja Finlands Svenska Landkommuners Förbund (Finnish Swedish Rural Municipalities Association, 1926–1993). 9 The FTA was founded in 1912 with all towns and townships as its members. The FTA advised local authorities as well as ministries on various administrative

172  Matti O. Hannikainen matters relating to municipal and urban policies. On its history, see Kalervo Hentilä, Suomen Kaupunkiliitto 1912–1962 (Helsinki: Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1962). 10 See various chapters in Pertti Haapala (ed.), Suomen rakennehistoria – näkökulmia muutokseen ja jatkuvuuteen (1400–2000) (Tampere: Vastapaino, 2018). 11 Olli Hokkanen, Suomen kaupunkipolitiikka  – sen tekijät ja tulkit (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2019); see articles in Eero Holstila  & Timo Hämäläinen (eds.), Kaupunkipolitiikan uusi aika (Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2019). 12 See, for example, ‘Hämäystä liitoskysymyksissä’ (editiorial), SKL, 6 (1950), pp. 121–2. 13 ‘Erkki O. Mantere Antaa selvityksen uusista kaupunkilaista’, SKL, 5 (1959), pp.  158–60; see also Lars Nilsson, Den Urbana Transitionen  – Tätörtena i svensk samhällsomvandling 1800–1900. Studier i stads- och kommunhistoria 5 (Stockholm: Stadshistoriska institutet, 1989), pp. 35–81. 14 Kuntaliiton arkisto (herefter KLA), Kirjeenvaihto Fa:136, 1395, Edward Muren (26 September 1958); Harvia 1919. 15 Torsten Malinen, ‘Esikaupunkikysymys nykyhetkellä’, SKL, 4 (1919), p.  75. Torsten Malinen worked in the Court of Appeals and being nominated in 1927–28 as the Minister of Justice in a caretaker government. 16 Jouni Yrjänä, Maata näkyvissä  – Helsingin maanhankinnan viisi vuosisataa (Helsinki: Helsingin kiinteistövirasto, 2013). 17 Artturi Ranta, ‘Kuntamuotojärjestelmän uudistaminen otettava selvitettäväksi’, SKL, 5–6 (1948), pp. 91–2. 18 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1939, Fa:48, 504, Tietoja kaupunkien satamatuloista v. 1938 (12 May 1939); KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1940, Fa:49, 552, Eino Waronen (23 September  1940); KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1948, Fa:69, 972, Senatoori Leo Ehnroothille (4 June 1948). 19 Hentilä 1962, pp. 319–20. 20 Ranta 1948, ‘Kuntamuotojärjestelmän uudistaminen otettava selvitettäväksi’, pp. 91–2. 21 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1964, Fa:125, L. O. Johansson (1 October  1964). Kaupunkien ja kauppaloiden ajankohtaisia kunnallispoliittisia kysymyksiä. 22 ‘Kuntamuotojärjestelmämme uudistettava’ (editorial), SKL, 6 (1956), p. 143. 23 Yrjö Harvia, ‘Valtio ja kaupunkienmuodostuminen I’, SKL, 1 (1919), pp. 2–9; see also ‘Kauppalaviranomaisten kokous’, SKL, 5–6 (1925), pp. 65–6. 24 Rieti Itkonen, ‘Kaupunkimuodostuksen esteitä’, SKL, 2 (1927), pp. 21–3. 25 Gunnar Moden, ‘Asukasluvun kehitys ja kaupunkien kunnallispolitiikka’, SKL, 6 (1933), pp. 101–4. 26 Vantaan kaupunki, Vantaan maankäytön kehitys (Vantaa: Vantaan kaupunki, 1979), p. 40. 27 Heikki Waris, Suomalaisen yhteiskunnan rakenne. 2. painos (Helsinki: Otava 1952), p. 91. Waris refers to a study conducted by geographers Smeds and Mattila. 28 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto Fa:48, 846, Valtion väestöpoliittisen komitean jaosto  – A reply by Yrjö Harvia (undated). 29 A. Tunkelo, ‘Lähes 10 % väestöstämme asuu maaseudun väestökeskuksissa’, SKL, 5 (1950), pp. 102–3, 116. 30 ‘Uusia kauppaloita tulossa’, SKL, 3 (1950), pp. 50–3. In Finnish: “tarvitsisi jo välttämättä tuekseen kaupunkien ja kauppalain lainsäädäntöä.” 31 Waris 1952, pp. 90–1, 101–2. 32 Olli Peltola, Kaupungistumisprosessi Suomessa 1960- ja 1970-luvuilla taajamoitumisen valossa. Vaasan korkeakoulun julkaisuja 114 (Vaasa: Vaasan korkeakoulu, 1986), pp. 6–8, 26–7.

New towns? 173 33 There is surprisingly little research on densely populated communities apart from the local histories of individual municipalities. One of the very few attempts is an unpublished seminar paper by Ari Höyssä, ‘Densely populated communities’, 2003, in the possession of the author. 34 Hannu Soikkanen, Kunnallinen itsehallinto kansanvallan perusta – maalaiskuntien itsehallinnon historia (Helsinki: Maalaiskuntien liitto, 1966), p. 429. 35 Annikki Kyttä & Tenho Takalo, Seinäjoen historia II – 1930–1970 (Seinäjoki: Seinäjoen kaupunki, 1977), p. 425. 36 Lainvalmistelukunta, Ehdotus laiksi taajaväkisistä maalaisyhdyskunnista perusteluineen (Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino, 1927). 37 John Uggla, ‘Taajaväkisiä yhdyskuntia koskeva uusi lainsäädäntö’, SKL, 6 (1927), pp. 102–3. 38 Yrjö Harvia, ‘Valtio ja kaupunkienmuodostuminen II’, SKL, 3 (1919), pp. 57–63. 39 See, for example, KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1933, FA:30, 932, Ikaalinen (Yrjö Harvia) (23 November 1933). 40 Sirkka-Liisa Virtamo-Paavolainen, ‘Uudet kauppalamme esittäytyvät’, SKL, 1 (1951), pp. 8–13. 41 Soikkanen 1966, p. 479. 42 Tilastollinen päätoimisto. STV 1940, Helsinki, 1941, p. 14. 43 Arvi Raivio, ‘Näin sitten kävi: urbanisaatiosta Suomessa viimeisten 50 vuoden aikana’, SKL, 7 (1962), pp. 329–31. 44 Nilsson 1989, pp. 35–81. 45 Ranta 1948, ‘Kuntamuotojärjestelmän uudistaminen otettava selvitettäväksi’, p. 92. 46 Henrik Lilius, ‘Kaupunkipolitiikka ja kaupunkirakennetta uudistava lainsäädäntö 1800-luvun jälkipuoliskolla’, in Päiviö Tommila (ed.), Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia 2. 1870-luvulta autonomian ajan loppuun (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1983), p. 128; see also Terhi Nallinmaa-Luoto, Ikaalisten Entisen Emäpitäjän Historia 4  – Ikaalinen 1853–2000: nälkämaasta kylpyläkaupungiksi (Jyväskylä: Ikaalisten kaupunki, 2007). 47 Jutikkala 1984, ‘Urbanisoituminen’, p. 11. 48 Jussi Koivuniemi, ‘Tehtaiden Suomi ja deindustrialisaatio 1900–2000’, in Pentti Haapala (ed.), Suomen rakennehistoria  – näkökulmia muutokseen ja jatkuvuuteen (1400–2000) (Tampere: Vastapaino, 2018), p.  218. In Finnish, ‘maalaiskunnasta erotettuja tehdasyhdyskuntia’. 49 Hentilä 1962, p. 103. 50 ‘Rovaniemen kauppalakysymys’, SKL, 4 (1923), p. 76. 51 Päiviö Tommila, ‘Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen kehityslinja’, in Päiviö Tommila (ed.), Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia 3  – itsenäisyyden aika (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1984), pp. 573–4. 52 Tauno Perälä, ‘Kaupunkien aluepolitiikka ja esikaupunkiliitokset’, in Päiviö Tommila (ed.), Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia 3 – itsenäisyyden aika (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1984), p. 47; see also Hentilä 1962, pp. 69–73. 53 Arvi Hällfors, ‘Kauppalain perustaminen’, SKL, 9 (1928), pp. 161–5. 54 Kyttä & Takalo 1977, pp. 14–15, 31. 55 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1938, Fa:46, 822, A  reply from Eino Waronen to Emil Huttunen (3–4 September 1938). 56 ‘Kauppalat: Enson muodostaminen kauppalaksi’, SKL, 8 (1926), pp.  157–9; Marko Tikka, ‘Maailmansodan, laman ja kasvun vuodet (1913–1936)’, in Jyrki Paaskoski & Anu Talka (eds.), Rajamaakunta – Etelä-Karjalan historia II (Helsinki: Etelä-Karjalan liitto & Edita, 2019), pp. 213–14.

174  Matti O. Hannikainen 57 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1933, Fa:30, 664–6. An enquiry by V. Siimestö to Yrjö Harvia (8 September 1933). 58 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1941; Fa:52, 609, Suomen Kunnallinen Keskustoimisto Suonenjoen kauppalatoimikunnalle (23 May 1941). 59 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1960, Fa:151, 1139–47, Ylivieskan kunnanhallituksen tiedustelu (11 November 1960); Suomen kaupunkiliiton ja Suomen maalaiskuntien liiton vastaus (17 December 1960). 60 See, for example, Uggla 1927, ‘Taajaväkisiä yhdyskuntia koskeva uusi lainsäädäntö’. 61 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1947, Fa:66, 887–8, An enquiry from and reply to Mr. Ville Kanninen (2 May 1947). 62 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1960, Fa:151, 1139–47, Ylivieskan kunnanhallituksen tiedustelu (11 November 1960); Suomen kaupunkiliiton ja Suomen maalaiskuntien liiton vastaus (17 December 1960). 63 See, for example, Artturi Ranta, ‘Suurten kuntien ongelmat’, SKL, 3 (1965), p. 177. 64 Jutikkala 1984, ‘Urbanisoituminen’, p. 14. 65 See, for example, ‘Hämäystä liitoskysymyksissä’ (editorial), SKL, 6 (1950), pp. 121–2; Aarre R. Simonen, ‘Punnintaa’ (editorial), SKL, 9 (1954), p. 261. 66 Perälä 1984, ‘Kaupunkien aluepolitiikka ja alueliitokset’, p. 47. 67 Pekka Zimmermann, ‘Viipurin esikaupunkikysymys’, SKL, 5 (1923), pp. 84–92. 68 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1938, Fa:44, 11, Mayor A. J. Haapasalo to Yrjö Harvia (undated, presumably in February 1938). 69 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1948, Fa:68, 327–8, Kirje Kalevi Järveläiselle (23 February 1948). 70 Yrjö Harvia, Helsingin esikaupunkiliitos – Mietintö 1 (päämietintö) (Helsinki: WSOY, 1936). Harvia divided his survey into three volumes published at the same time of which the first was the main including his official suggestion for the annexation. The second volume included a detailed depiction of all municipalities and areas proposed included in the proposed annexation, whereas the third volume comprised statements given by all interested parties. 71 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1943, Fa:56, Esittelijäneuvos Erkki Mantere Yrjö Harvialle (puhelikeskustelu) (31 December  1943). In Finnish, ‘pidettävä niin luonnollisena’. 72 KLA, Kaupunki- ja kauppalajohtajien kokoukset Hca, Kaupungin- ja kauppalanjohtajien kokouspöytäkirja (26 October 1950), Liite H. Suomen kaupunkiliiton johtajan Aarre R. Simosen alustus. 73 Perälä 1984, ‘Kaupunkien aluepolitiikka ja alueliitokset’, p. 68. 74 ‘Kaupunkien alueliitokset itsenäisyytemme vuosina’, SKL, 1 (1960), pp. 8–10. 75 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1949, Fa:72, 388–91, H. R. Tammilehto (10 March 1949). 76 Perälä 1984, ‘Kaupunkien aluepolitiikka ja alueliitokset’, pp. 75–6. 77 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1966, Fa:188, 1243, Sisäasiainministeriön tiedote (30 September 1966). 78 Matti O. Hannikainen, ‘Unodettu alueliitoshanke 1970–72: Mihin Helsingin toinen suuri laajenemisyritys kariutui?’, Kvartti, 3 (2019), pp. 62–71. 79 KLA, Kauppalaneuvoston kokouspöytäkirjat Cfc, Kauppalaneuvoston kokouspöytäkirja (12 February 1945), 5 §. 80 Uusien kaupunkien suunnittelukomitea, Uusien kaupunkien suunnittelukomitean mietintö (Helsinki: Uusien kaupunkien suunnittelukomitea, 1950). 81 ‘Suomen XII kaupunkipäivillä useita merkittäviä päätöksiä’, SKL, 7 (1949), pp.  128–33; KLA, Kirjeenvaihto, Fa:72, 421a, Valtioneuvostolle (15 March 1950).

New towns? 175 82 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1955, Fa:112, 259–73, Sisäasiainministeriölle (28 December 1955). 83 Uusien kaupunkien suunnittelukomitea 1950. 84 KLA, Kaupunki- ja kauppalajohtajien kokoukset Hca, Kaupungin- ja kauppalanjohtajien kokouspöytäkirja (26 October  1950), Liite H. Suomen kaupunkiliiton johtajan Aarre R. Simosen alustus. 85 KLA, Kauppalaneuvoston kokouspöytäkirjat Cfc, Kauppalaneuvoston kokouspöytäkirja (21 May 1952), 4 §. 86 KLA, Kauppalaneuvoston kokouspöytäkirjat Cfc, Suomen kaupunkiliiton hallitukselle (27 May 1952). 87 ‘Kokouksia: Kauppalanjohtajat koolla’, SKL, 6–7 (1952), pp. 189–90. 88 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1950, Fa:72, 421a, Valtioneuvostolle (15 March 1950); ‘Kokouksia: Kauppalanjohtajat koolla’ 1952, pp. 189–90. 89 Jutikkala 1984, ‘Urbanisoituminen’, p. 14. 90 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1959, Fa:143, Rovaniemen kauppalanhallitukselle (31 March  1959); Erkki O. Mantere Rovaniemen kauppalanhallitukselle (7 April 1959). 91 KLA, Kauppalaneuvoston kokouspöytäkirjat Cfc, Kauppalaneuvoston pöytäkirja (11 April  1975), 4 §, Esityksen tekeminen sisäasiainministeriölle kauppaloiden muuttamisesta kaupungeiksi, Liite 4. Lapuan kauppalanhallitukselta Kaupunkiliiton hallitukselle (3 January 1975). 92 ‘Kaupunkiliiton onnentoivotukset uusille kaupungeille’, SKL, 1 (1960), p. 5. 93 Pekka Ahtiainen & Jukka Tervonen, Vantaan historia 1946–1977 – kasvua, yhteistyötä, hyvinvointia (Vantaa: Vantaan kaupunki, 2002), pp. 77–81. 94 ‘Erkki O. Mantere antaa selvityksen uusista kaupunkilaeista’, pp. 158–60. 95 Sulo A. Typpö, ‘Pienten kuntien yhdistäminen on tämän ajankohdan kunnallinen avainkysymys’, SKL, 1 (1964), pp. 18–21. 96 ‘Kunnallinen itsehallinto valinkauhassa’, SKL, 4 (1961), p. 165. 97 ‘Kuntamuotojärjestelmämme uudistettava’ (editorial), SKL, 6 (1956), p. 143. 98 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1968, Fa:206, Yhteenveto kuntauudistuksesta (9 August 1968). The numbers refer to the number of municipalities on 1 January 1969. 99 ‘Kuntamuotojärjestelmämme uudistettava’ (editorial) 1956, p.  143; Helge Finell, ‘Pikkukaupunkien ahdinkotila – seuraus vanhentuneesta kuntamuotojärjestelmästä’, SKL, 9 (1956), pp. 246–9. 100 Paavo Pekkanen  & Eino Östermann, ‘Kunnallisen jaotuksen uudistaminen Ruotsissa’, SKL, 1 (1963), pp. 16–17. 101 See various articles in SKL 6 (1964). 102 ‘Kaksi komiteaa kaupunkien erityisrasitusten poistamiseksi’, SKL, 10 (1965), p. 709. 103 Erkki O. Mantere, ‘Läpileikkaus alueliitoksista’, SKL, 2 (1955), p. 38; Arno Hannus, ‘Suunnitteilla olevista lainsäädäntöuudistuksista yleisen kunnallishallinnon ja -talouden alalla’, SKL, 1 (1962), pp. 6–9. 104 Eino Österman, ‘Uusia kysymyksiä’, SKL, 5 (1965), p. 299. 105 Arno Hannus, ‘Kunnallishallintoa koskevat lainsäädännön uudistussuunnitelmat ja niiden toisiinsa sopeuttaminen’, SKL, 1 (1968), pp. 7–10. 106 Jouni Häkli, Maakunta, tieto ja valta. Tutkimus poliittis-hallinnollisen maakuntadiskurssin ja sen historiallisten edellytysten muotoutumisesta Suomessa. Acta Universistatis Tamperesiensis A  415 (Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, 1994). 107 Kuntauudistuksen neuvottelukunta, Ehdotus Kuntauudistuksen Toteuttamista Koskevaksi Lainsäädännöksi: Kuntauudistuksen Neuvottelukunnan Mietintö. (Helsinki: Kuntauudistuksen neuvottelukunta, 1970).

176  Matti O. Hannikainen 108 KLA, Kauppalaneuvoston kokouspöytäkirjat Cfc, Kauppalaneuvoston kokouspöytäkirja (21 April 1970), 2 §. 109 ‘Kaupunkiliiton esitys valtioneuvostolle’, SKL, 4 (1965), pp.  254–5; Kaupunkien erityisrasituskomitea, Kaupunkien erityisrasituskomitean mietintö (Helsinki: Kaupunkien erityisrasituskomitea, 1971); KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1975, Fa: 289, 787, Lausunto eduskunnalle (14 May 1975). 110 Pirkko Leino-Kaukiainen, ‘Maakunta yhtenäisyyttä etsimässä’, in Yrjö Kaukiainen (ed.), Kymenlaakson historia II – rajamaakunnasta maakunnaksi 1810-luvulta 2000-luvulle (Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura, 2012), p. 386. 111 KLA, Kirjeenvaihto 1976, Fa:321, Sisäasiainministeriö (30 December 1976); Jutikkala 1984, ‘Urbanisoituminen’, pp. 13–14.

Bibliography Ahtiainen, Pekka  & Jukka Tervonen, Vantaan historia 1946–1977  – kasvua, yhteistyötä, hyvinvointia (Vantaa: Vantaan kaupunki, 2002). Clark, Peter, European Cities and Towns 400–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Lainvalmistelukunta, Ehdotus laiksi taajaväkisistä maalaisyhdyskunnista perusteluineen (Helsinki: Valtioneuvoston kirjapaino, 1927). ‘Erkki O. Mantere antaa selvityksen uusista kaupunkilaeista’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 5 (1959). Finell, Helge, ‘Pikkukaupunkien ahdinkotila – seuraus vanhentuneesta kuntamuotojärjestelmästä’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 9 (1956). Haapala, Pertti (ed.), Suomen rakennehistoria – näkökulmia muutokseen ja jatkuvuuteen (1400–2000) (Tampere: Vastapaino, 2018). Häkli, Jouni, Maakunta, tieto ja valta: Tutkimus poliittis-hallinnollisen maakuntadiskurssin ja sen historiallisten edellytysten muotoutumisesta Suomessa (Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto, 1994). Hällfors, Arvi, ‘Kauppalain perustaminen’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 9 (1928). ‘Hämäystä liitoskysymyksissä’ (editiorial), Suomen Kunnallislehti, 6 (1950). Hannikainen, Matti O., ‘Unodettu alueliitoshanke 1970–72: Mihin Helsingin toinen suuri laajenemisyritys kariutui?’, Kvartti, 3 (2019). Hannus, Arno, ‘Suunnitteilla olevista lainsäädäntöuudistuksista yleisen kunnallishallinnon ja -talouden alalla’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 1 (1962). Hannus, Arno, ‘Kunnallishallintoa koskevat lainsäädännön uudistussuunnitelmat ja niiden toisiinsa sopeuttaminen’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 1 (1968). Harvia, Yrjö, ‘Valtio ja kaupunkienmuodostuminen I’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 1 (1919). Harvia, Yrjö, ‘Valtio ja kaupunkienmuodostuminen II’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 3 (1919). Harvia, Yrjö, Helsingin esikaupunkiliitos  – Mietintö 1 (päämietintö) (Helsinki: WSOY, 1936). Hentilä, Kalervo, Suomen Kaupunkiliitto 1912–1962 (Helsinki: Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1962). Hokkanen, Olli, Suomen kaupunkipolitiikka – sen tekijät ja tulkit (Helsinki: Helsingin yliopisto, 2019).

New towns? 177 Holstila, Eero & Timo Hämäläinen (eds.), Kaupunkipolitiikan uusi aika (Helsinki: Rakennustieto, 2019). Höyssä, Ari, ‘Densely populated communities’, 2003. In the possession of the author. Itkonen, Rieti, ‘Kaupunkimuodostuksen esteitä’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 2 (1927). Jokinen, Kimmo & Kimmo Saaristo, Suomalainen yhteiskunta (Helsinki: WSOY, 2006). Jutikkala, Eino, ‘Urbanisoituminen’, in Päiviö Tommila (ed.), Suomen Kaupunkilaitoksen historia 3 – Itsenäisyyden aika (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1984). ‘Kaksi komiteaa kaupunkien erityisrasitusten poistamiseksi’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 10 (1965). ‘Kauppalat: Enson muodostaminen kauppalaksi’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 8 (1926). ‘Kauppalaviranomaisten kokous’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 5–6 (1925). ‘Kaupunkien alueliitokset itsenäisyytemme vuosina’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 1 (1960). Kaupunkien erityisrasituskomitea, Kaupunkien erityisrasituskomitean mietintö (Helsinki: Kaupunkien erityisrasituskomitea, 1971). ‘Kaupunkiliiton esitys valtioneuvostolle’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 4 (1965). ‘Kaupunkiliiton onnentoivotukset uusille kaupungeille’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 1 (1960). Koivuniemi, Jussi, ‘Tehtaiden Suomi ja deindustrialisaatio 1900–2000’, in Pentti Haapala (ed.), Suomen rakennehistoria – näkökulmia muutokseen ja jatkuvuuteen (1400–2000) (Tampere: Vastapaino, 2018). ‘Kokouksia: kauppalanjohtajat koolla’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 6–7 (1952). ‘Kunnallinen itsehallinto valinkauhassa’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 4 (1961). ‘Kuntamuotojärjestelmämme uudistettava’ (editorial), Suomen Kunnallislehti, 6 (1956). Kuntauudistuksen neuvottelukunta, Ehdotus Kuntauudistuksen Toteuttamista Koskevaksi Lainsäädännöksi: Kuntauudistuksen Neuvottelukunnan Mietintö (Helsinki: Kuntauudistuksen neuvottelukunta, 1970). Kyttä, Annikki  & Tenho Takalo, Seinäjoen historia II  – 1930–1970 (Seinäjoki: Seinäjoen kaupunki, 1977). Laine, Silja, ‘Kotiseudusta isänmaahan’, in Marjo Kaartinen, Hannu Salmi  & Marja Tuominen (eds.), Maamme  – itsenäisen Suomen kulttuurihistoria (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2016). Leino-Kaukiainen, Pirkko, ‘Maakunta yhtenäisyyttä etsimässä’, in Yrjö Kaukiainen (ed.), Kymenlaakson historia II – rajamaakunnasta maakunnaksi 1810-luvulta 2000-luvulle (Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura, 2012). Lilius, Henrik, ‘Kaupunkipolitiikka ja kaupunkirakennetta uudistava lainsäädäntö 1800-luvun jälkipuoliskolla’, in Päiviö Tommila (ed.), Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia 2.1870-luvulta autonomian ajan loppuun (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1983). Malinen, Torsten, ‘Esikaupunkikysymys nykyhetkellä’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 4 (1919). Mantere, Erkki O., ‘Läpileikkaus alueliitoksista’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 2 (1955). Moden, Gunnar, ‘Asukasluvun kehitys ja kaupunkien kunnallispolitiikka’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 6 (1933).

178  Matti O. Hannikainen Nallinmaa-Luoto, Terhi, Ikaalisten Entisen Emäpitäjän Historia 4  – Ikaalinen 1853–2000: nälkämaasta kylpyläkaupungiksi (Jyväskylä: Ikaalisten kaupunki, 2007). Nilsson, Lars, Den Urbana Transitionen: Tätörterna i svensk samhällsomvandling 1800–1900 (Stockholm: Stadshistoriska institutet, 1989). Österman, Eino, ‘Uusia kysymyksiä’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 5 (1965). Pekkanen, Paavo & Eino Östermann, ‘Kunnallisen jaotuksen uudistaminen Ruotsissa’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 1 (1963). Peltola, Olli, Kaupungistumisprosessi Suomessa 1960- ja 1970-luvuilla taajamoitumisen valossa (Vaasa: Vaasan korkeakoulu, 1986). Perälä, Tauno, ‘Kaupunkien aluepolitiikka ja esikaupunkiliitokset’, in Päiviö Tommila (ed.), Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia 3 – itsenäisyyden aika (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1984). Raivio, Arvi, ‘Näin sitten kävi: Urbanisaatiosta Suomessa viimeisten 50 vuoden aikana’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 7 (1962). Ranta, Artturi, ‘Kuntamuotojärjestelmän uudistaminen otettava selvitettäväksi’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 5–6 (1948). Ranta, Artturi, ‘Suurten kuntien ongelmat’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 3 (1965). ‘Rovaniemen kauppalakysymys’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 4 (1923). Simonen, Aarre R., ‘Punnintaa’ (editorial), Suomen Kunnallislehti, 9 (1954). Soikkanen, Hannu, Kunnallinen itsehallinto kansanvallan perusta  – maalaiskuntien itsehallinnon historia (Helsinki: Maalaiskuntien liitto, 1966). Suomen Kunnallislehti, 6 (1964). Suomen Kuntaliiton arkistot (The Archive of the Association of Finnish Municipalities), Helsinki. ‘Suomen XII kaupunkipäivillä useita merkittäviä päätöksiä’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 7 (1949). Tikka, Marko, ‘Maailmansodan, laman ja kasvun vuodet (1913–1936)’, in Jyrki Paaskoski & Anu Talka (eds.), Rajamaakunta – Etelä-Karjalan historia II (Helsinki: Etelä-Karjalan liitto & Edita, 2019). Tilastokeskus, Suomen tilastollinen vuosikirja 2019 (Helsinki: Tilastokeskus, 2019). Tommila, Päiviö, ‘Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen kehityslinja’, in Päiviö Tommila (ed.), Suomen kaupunkilaitoksen historia 3  – itsenäisyyden aika (Helsinki: Suomen kaupunkiliitto, 1984). Tunkelo, A., ‘Lähes 10 % väestöstämme asuu maaseudun väestökeskuksissa’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 5 (1950). Typpö, Sulo A., ‘Pienten kuntien yhdistäminen on tämän ajankohdan kunnallinen avainkysymys’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 1 (1964). Uggla, John, ‘Taajaväkisiä yhdyskuntia koskeva uusi lainsäädäntö’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 6 (1927). ‘Uusia kauppaloita tulossa’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 3 (1950). Uusien kaupunkien suunnittelukomitea, Uusien kaupunkien suunnittelukomitean mietintö (Helsinki: Uusien kaupunkien suunnittelukomitea, 1950). Vantaan kaupunki, Vantaan maankäytön kehitys (Vantaa: Vantaan kaupunki, 1979).

New towns? 179 ‘Vihdoinkin uusia kaupunkeja’ (editorial), Suomen Kunnallislehti, 9 (1958). Virtamo-Paavolainen, Sirkka-Liisa, ‘Uudet kauppalamme esittäytyvät’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 1 (1951). Waris, Heikki, Suomalaisen yhteiskunnan rakenne (Helsinki: Otava, 1952). Yrjänä, Jouni, Maata näkyvissä – Helsingin maanhankinnan viisi vuosisataa. (Helsinki: Helsingin kiinteistövirasto, 2013). Zimmermann, Pekka, ‘Viipurin esikaupunkikysymys’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 5 (1923).

8 Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe Mikkel Thelle

In an essay titled ‘Can the mosquito speak?’, historical sociologist Timothy Mitchell analysed the causes and effects of the malaria epidemic in Egypt in 1942. Observing how the mosquito as an actor caused more than twice the casualties of the battle of El-Alamain fought nearby in the same year, Mitchell suggests how the war, the development of sugar cane plantations, and the building of new dams on the Nile River for irrigation all helped to spread the gambiae mosquito and, with it, malaria. In the second part of the essay, Mitchell argued that the same factors in a different combination helped eradicate the disease in the late 1940s. DDT, produced during the North African war to protect troops from malaria, was applied from 1943 to a gambiae eradication program; after the war it was applied as a pesticide in Egyptian agriculture. Pesticides, military logistics, and hydroelectricity came together in a new form of ‘techno-politics’ that underpinned Egyptian nationalism and helped pave the way for independence from Britain in 1952.1 Even though some might disagree with Mitchell’s argument, it poses a number of questions for historians, and as Simon Gunn points out in a comment to it, in balanced ways to consider the agency of other actors than ourselves as humans, which is an attention that can be seen in urban history in the last decade. To clarify, it is important, I think, to keep a discussion of the way we approach the non-human, however without eradicating human agency, and the following will be an attempt at stimulating that discussion.2 Thus, by way of probing the relations between nature, technology, and politics, it is the hope to speak into a possible Nordic urban history engaged with recent environmental research agendas.3 Also, it will be an attempt at addressing a peripheral geography or territory of the Nordic cities and the way they are situated within urban and ecological agency, if you will. The chapter is historiographical insofar as I have engaged with cases of recent Scandinavian urban history research, but it is not a complete survey.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-10

Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe 181 The transgressive water closet We can enter by looking at the discussion of water closets in Copenhagen. Located to the far east of the island of Zealand, the Danish capital had at least since the 17th century had trouble with freshwater provision due to the flat inland. Water companies had with varying success tried to provide fountains and private houses with water through wooden pipes and dispose of latrine in backyard buckets. Some centuries later, natural resources, technology, and politics came together rather closely while urban growth shifted around 1850 from the provincial towns to the capital. In 1850, Copenhagen reached 130,000 citizens, by 1906, it exceeded 420,000.4 Circulation of water in this period became a pressing issue, both in the physical pipes, but also politically in terms of general health and provision. In 1897, under a prolonged city council debate, this pressure set traces in a report on the state of the sewer system. But to get a sense of why a historical report became important for the urban governance, let us go a bit back in time first. Already in the 1850s, a comprehensive sewer system had been suggested to assemble all waste and lead it through a long tunnel under the harbor and into the Sound of Öresund east of the island of Amager.5 After the third global cholera pandemic hit the city in 1853, a new water provision system was established, as research at the time pointed to contaminated water as the source of contagion.6 In relation to this, the enterprising engineer Charles Ambt had a plan for a comprehensive sewer system, diverting latrine along with rainwater in a so-called ‘tout a l’egout’ solution.7 However, pursuing a complete sewer network was a contested project. Some council members were sceptical of a system with pipes leading water through people’s homes and taking the brown water into the ground and to the sea. Representing this position was the president of the city council, Michael Lange, who published a pamphlet of his own commenting on the issue. According to him it was ‘[unthinkable] that a property owner should accept that the neighbour’s sewer, where circumstances demand it, should run across his ground’. This is an interesting argument, proposing the acute political character of a public infrastructure in the time when laissez-faire liberalism was the dominant paradigm. It is two decades before social democrats enter the scene in urban governance, and the sole idea that water, in a public circulation and carrying the secretions of other individuals, should run through the space and property of a private apartment, was provocative. In a way, the basic circulative character of water made it a general challenge for liberal governance and the notion of private property in 19th-century Scandinavia, as Eva Jakobsson has also shown for Sweden.8 She is not using the concept of agency explicitly but empirically makes it

182  Mikkel Thelle visible that the material networking of water became an instance of what we could call material politics in a Nordic situation.9 Furthermore, Lange argued, with a sewer system, the latrine ‘is lost for the farming . . . the movement of the latrine easily can be done properly by a better organization of the system’.10 I will concentrate on the two points of Lange’s argument here. As Danish historian Jens Engberg has shown, at the national level, there was suspicion regarding a ‘doctor’s dictatorship’, pushing the notion of common hygienic good and threatening the private interest.11 This suspicion was clearly also present at the municipal level as we see. Both the prospect of water pipes running to the houses and the idea of having other people’s excrements running down through private houses, even though in pipes, were strongly challenging for certain politicians in mid-19th-century urban politics. Back to Copenhagen City council. As we saw, Lange also held as his second objection, that it was a shame that the latrine ‘is lost for the farming’ and easily could be done properly by a ‘better organization of the system’. The system, Lange refers to here, is the so-called bucket system, where faeces is brought out of the city at night in buckets to be distributed on nearby fields as fertilizer. It was used widely in Western cities during the 19th century and involved a large group of horses, carriages, and nightmen to handle it. As Sjöstrand and others have shown, the notion began in Paris early in the century, to be developed in London by Edwin Chadwick, among other places.12 The agricultural use of urban latrine thus had a story of its own, circulating nutrients and, as we shall see, to a certain degree also economy. This has been treated interestingly by Sjöstrand in her study of Stockholm’s garbage treatment, where she identifies shifting ‘garbage regimes’, one until the 1930s focusing on circulation followed by an ‘incineration regime’ abandoning the circular notion to instead pursue eradication. This is later questioned and circular imaginations reintroduced in the 1960s, according to Sjöstrand, and this is backed by Lindegaard’s study of the Copenhagen sewers. Further, as Sjöstrand notes, Sabine Barles has reached similar periodisations for Paris’s metabolism even though using different methods.13 Thus, in 1853, Lange emphasised two main themes for the functions and implications of urban water provision. On the one hand, upholding the borders between private and public in the face of a pervasive provision network. On the other, the circulation of nutrients as a biological and not least economical question for the city as a whole. And the comprehensive sewer network was put off the table. But publishing his statements in 1853, Lange’s timing was spectacular. In that year, cholera had attacked the city, several thousand had died, and the prevalent mode of envisioning disease and contagion, based on the idea of the miasma, was for the first time being questioned. Health reformers investigated the city thoroughly, looking also

Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe 183 at the soil and later at the movement of water within it.14 So in a sense, as a thorough skeptical viewpoint to sanitation and hygiene, Langes was one of the last. Or you could say that, when in 1897, 44 years later, we enter the city council again, things had changed. The waterworks built in 1853 with its 14,000 cubic meters of water per day had quickly become obsolete while the growth of the Danish capital would only accelerate throughout the last half of the century.15 In almost all aspects, growth meant pressure. In the 1880s the city’s medical officer, Christian Tryde, did early bacteriological experiments on water from Copenhagen’s canals, concluding that typhoid fever and other diseases traveled and possibly reproduced themselves in the urban flows. Even more worrying, he suspected that the non-visible life forms could survive for longer time in a ‘sleepy’ state, to suddenly attack again. In his investigations he saw Copenhagen as a large organic body, populated with microscopic as well as human inhabitants affecting each other. And in parts of the vital flow of water, as in Christianshavn, pressure was rising dangerously.16 Tryde’s work was part of a wider attention to the complex ways water was working in the growing city. The new influential group of municipal officials, in the years following 1857, when municipal independence was given to Copenhagen, became very focused on the subject. Following the results of Tryde and others, municipal engineer Charles Ambt in 1888 proposed a grand water system based on inspiration from German and Belgian cities. Large pipes should carry excrements as well as rainwater under the city, ‘tout a l’egout’, leading toward the harbor to be cut off and lead north and out in the Sound of Öresund.17 So, as things turned out from the 1850s to the 1890s, discussions had turned from the question of sewers to the following one of water closets. It is in this period that a host of Scandinavian towns and cities approached a networked urbanism or what Jonas Hallström has called a ‘pipe-bound city’.18 As water systems began to connect to sewer systems, throwing their flows more directly into private homes, the discussions became more politicized, touching social issues as much as hygienic.19 In 1890s Copenhagen, there were sewers in place but only for rainwater, and latrine were still, as we know, in the bucket system. With the grand proposition drawn up by the municipal engineers, it was also a large expense, and there were other objections. Council member Thomsen claimed that ‘behind the suggestion [of an improved sewer] must be hidden intention of installing water closets’.20 Referring back to the 40-year-old comments by Lange, Thomsen held that even though sewers might be reasonable, water closets were not what the city should wish for. And the conservative politician was not alone in his skepticism. The social democrat Jens Jensen was also against the water closet system, albeit for other reasons. With the high installation

184  Mikkel Thelle fee, Jensen claimed, the system would create an unequal hygiene system, removing the motivation to improve the existing bucket system. In short, the workers would remain dirty and sick while the affluent class would prosper in their own, exclusive universe of cleanliness and convenience. Jensen was a prominent politician to be. In 1903, he would become mayor of finances, striking a blow to the right wing of the city council. But at this moment he was member of the council and opposing the social logic that could be sewn into the urban water flows. Another arena for the discussion of water closets was the growing environment of Danish engineers, debating in the journal The Engineer and meeting at hygienic conferences. Here, scientific arguments were made for Lange’s original argument on the importance of excrements as fertilizers. In the discussion, a case was Stockholm. In 1893, the paper Politiken had mentioned a secret proposal for a new sanitary system with closed steel buckets, inspired by the Swedish capital, and leading engineers promoted the ‘Stockholm bucket’. These buckets were taken from the city to be sailed away for use in nearby fields, which for example happened almost 700,000 times in 1909. At that point, water closets were being permitted in Stockholm, and the bucket system began descending. Also, here the issue was conflictual. The permit for using water closets came in 1909, and stakeholders were in conflict. Five systems had been tried before turning to the water network as a possibility, and the economists stood opposite the circulationists, making the discussion of water closets a class discussion, as in Copenhagen. The problem for Stockholm is the large lake Mälaren and its movements, causing fear that brown water from the toilets would eventually spill back into the city, bringing in deadly cholera bacteria for example. One argument came from the municipal medical officer of Stockholm talking about the expected lifetime of ‘disease germ’ in water and recommending water closets. Thus, the two capitals and their water provision show us an example of the urban metabolisms of the 19th century and how political the movement of water was. Also, we see a transformation of paradigms, but not a clearcut one, as for example the opposed ideas of how disease spread – miasma and bacteria – was living side by side.21 Scandinavian modern urbanization Jonas Hallström has investigated for a number of cities how the establishment, and more specifically the extension, of piped water appeared as social and environmental problems in industrializing Sweden. With a focus on Norrköping and Linköping, and secondarily Malmö and Stockholm, Hallström shows how the political discussions reveal the water network as

Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe 185 a catalyst of the problems pertaining to urban growth, and his case, I think is an excellent example of what we could call material politics of water.22 The extension of networks from the city center to working class ‘shanty towns’ seemed to present so many problems that with only one exception, all Hallström’s cases results in a refusal from the city council to the request from the suburban citizens. It is argued that the marshy areas with poor draining are unfit for more water input and that the expense can’t be covered because of the low expectations for tax revenue. But an overall argument is entangled with this – the idea that with the extension of water, the city will embrace the social responsibility for the poor areas in question, a responsibility that will rise with city growth. In an interesting metaphor, the poorer groups are compared to weed that should not be watered, since it will then expand and become invasive.23 With this, Hallström concludes that the bourgeois fear of working-class influence might have played a role and that by limiting water provision, city councils separated city and suburb spatially, thereby underlining already existing environmental and spatial injustice between the two. Agency of water As mentioned in the beginning, this question is treated by Eva Jakobsson in discussing what I would call the material politics of drainage in Sweden. By identifying two main interest groups, agriculture and industry, she follows the play between them, the former promoting flow and the latter blocking for waterpower. Thus, the Drainage Act of 1879 was contested, since it established the principle that everybody who benefited from a drain or ditch should contribute to it. The system inherent in a dynamic water landscape was to be protected.24 The law makes clear that a landowner can involve his neighbor in the construction of water networks, even without consent. As in other modernizing countries, the exploitation of arable fields was first priority in Sweden in the late 1800s, meaning that access to water became a right for the citizen in a state on its way to a common, strong economy and that hydrological circulation was emphasized as the only intended way for water to exist. Swedish historian Torbjörn Nilsson has summarized the implications of the decision: ‘The protection of the individual owner’s unrestricted freedom had therewith been set aside when it was regarded as obstructing efficiency and progress’.25 This kind of legislation was also seen in Denmark, where agriculture saw an expansion in the decades following the defeat in the war of 1864 against Prussia. Efficient agriculture became a key element in the restoration of Danish economy and national identity, a critical actor being the Heath Association (Danish Land Development Service), forcefully using the reclamation of moorland in Western Jutland

186  Mikkel Thelle as both an economic and a symbolic successful operation.26 Thus, when the legislation for water use in agriculture was negotiated in parliament, the association was lobbying successfully for the efficiency policy mentioned earlier, as noted by Jens Engberg.27 Interesting, however, for urban history is that a similar development was taking place in municipalities or at least in Copenhagen. Due to the city’s booming population in the 1880s, two laws were passed requiring inhabitants (and owners) of dwellings to lead their water out into the nearest stream.28 Thus, across the urban and agricultural sectors, steps were taken in these years to promote circulation at the cost of the individual freedom so central to liberal ideas of the time. It seems here that we can suggest a shift from what we, with a term coined by historian Sara Pritchard, could term a ‘liberal hydroregime’.29 If that is the case, what is it a shift toward? The focus on rational circulation and collective responsibility could be related to the later more visible assemblage of a ‘welfare hydroregime’ while the shift, as we see here, is not simply caused by welfare politics. Security, industry, borders If we accept this idea, the material politics of urban water can be viewed also in other settings and scales. As the Heath Society was a strong actor in Denmark, industry was acutely central in Swedish water policy, so strong that, as Jakobsson shows, Swedish industry becomes dominant in state politics regarding the bordering to Norway and the so-called natural borders embodied by rivers such as the Trysil/Klar river. The function and ownership of the rivers, following Norway’s position as an independent state, was subject to complex negotiations, maybe even a whole new kind of politics that Jakobsson terms ‘hydrological diplomacy’.30 Thus, the watercourse convention that follows is related to international law with the industrial need for timber transport along the river as the dominant trait. Further north, the theme reemerges as we find hydropower has a special affinity for border regions such as the Kola peninsula, where it meant independence from fossil fuels – and the mainland supply – in the 1920s. In the western end of the peninsula, the Pasvik river is cutting through, and for a large part draw the line of the Russian-Norwegian border. Building on this tradition, in the 1950s, Russia – or the Soviet Union as it was at the time – built two Hydro Power Plants (HPP) along the river, part of the workforce being Norwegian, owing to the hydrological knowledge on that side of the border. As Felix Frey shows, due to Cold War geopolitics, this stretch of water in far northeast Norway was a critical line between East and West, and thus, in a sense, one of the most critical borders in the global North. However, over time, the HHPs afforded a process of border pervasion, along with actors such as the Norwegian left wing, Prime

Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe 187 Minister Herhardsen but also the workers’ movement.31 They created a kind of pocket, where circulation of workers opened for an intended influx of tourists to a local monastery, but also to the Boris Gleb power plant, to buy inexpensive alcohol in the plant’s cafeteria among other things. Even Chrustchew traveled to the Kola peninsula in 1962 to praise the cooperation around the HPPs. The spectacular case of a US tourist’s death in 1966 caused Norway to close the border again. When water systems became national politics, at least in Sweden and Denmark, they were carried forward by a new cluster of interests. First, the new type of farmer, having transformed from the peasant by leaving the village community spatially and infrastructurally, was more dependent on large networks of provision. Second, water systems were promoted by an urban technical elite, for whom comprehensive systems of circulation were both tool and goal for politics as such. Third, stakeholders in industry and agriculture were, at least in the decades around 1900, presumably proponents of the same hydropolitical agenda, securing circulation and drainage. As environmental historian William Cronon has shown, an urban hinterland can be a complex and far-reaching phenomenon when analysed as a metabolism. The woods of the US Midwest is as urban as the tree-paved streets of Chicago, and the steaks shipped from Union Stockyards as natural as the stock of cattle that replaced the bison on the prairie in order to deliver the meat.32 Even though these shifts were relatively sudden, they are recurring phenomena, and Fernand Braudel has shown them convincingly in the Mediterranean context and the relations they have to geography, government and technologies of urban provision.33 As we have seen examples of above, the 19th century shows us a series of breaks in established city–hinterland relations in the northern brink of Europe, where the close exchange between city and agriculture broke in different steps. We can say that the components of the urban metabolism became increasingly fragmented and heterogenous as industrialization and globalization caused shifts in and between cities. Urban metabolism The term ‘metabolism’ was coined in the early 19th century to describe chemical changes within living cells. Within 50 years, its use was widespread in biology and what would become biochemistry to characterize processes of organic breakdown and recomposition, within individual organisms (at a cellular scale) and between organisms and their environment. Ever since, metabolism has lived a dual existence in the natural sciences, referring both to processes by which bodies change and reproduce themselves and to more holistic conceptions of ecosystem relations.34

188  Mikkel Thelle David Wachsmuth traces the notion of metabolism from natural to social sciences via Marx, and points to the way in which the concept travels in three different ‘ecologies’: first The Chicago school of the interwar period, where ecology functions as an analogy for social life within the city and in opposition to the surrounding nature. Then industrial ecology, a highly functional approach to measure and compare flows of material resources from the external nature, flowing through and contributing to production and reproduction of the city. Finally, and for Wachsmuth probably the most interesting, is political ecology, assembling different theoretical perspectives in a rejection of the urban–country and nature– culture dualisms and see the city as basically produced by diverse socionatural flows. The value of the metabolic metaphor has been its emphasis on the interactions between social and biophysical systems that allow the modern city to function; yet the functionalist impetus behind much organicist thinking both now and in the past has consistently failed to grasp the way in which urban space is historically produced.35 How are we as historians to approach this? Basically, the concept is historical in the sense that it points to transformation over time and attempts to link fields of natural, social, and cultural in a set of processes where humans play a role, even if the city is not, as Robert Park proposed in 1967: [M]an’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus, indirectly, and without any clear sense of the nature of his task, in making the city man has remade himself.36 Urban metabolism could provide historians with a strong concept, both for understanding urban processes through analogy but even more as a framework for approaching more complex causal patterns that are being introduced in the intersection of environmental and cultural history. These examples, gathered from recent historical studies, point to the agency of metabolic processes and mechanisms within the city- and landscapes of the Scandinavian region. Thus, if we use this notion to ask for specifically Scandinavian or Northern characteristics, it becomes a bit more complicated. It is hard to say that for example the political agency of water circulation doesn’t play any role in European cities, not to speak of the global scale. Timber is transported on rivers and power plants being fed energy from water all over the globe. However, the perspective opens for the entangled character of technology and politics with, for example, seasons and weather change. The fluidity of water becoming rather solid in winter poses basic challenges, and solutions positing these urban areas

Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe 189 as distinct from many other Western, industrialized cities, and thus in a sense peripheral. But maybe the notion of metabolism, or of material politics, can provide another look at the peripheral and the processes that construct it. Notes 1 Timothy Mitchell, ‘Can the mosquito speak?’, in Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (London: University of California Press, 2002). 2 Simon Gunn & Tom Hulme, ‘New approaches to urban governance’, in Simon Gunn  & Tom Hulme (eds.), New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe Since 1500 (London: Routledge, 2020); Christoph Bernhardt, ‘Concepts of urban agency and the transformation of urban Hinterlands: The case of Berlin, eighteenth to twentieth centuries’, in Tim Soens et  al. (eds.), Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500, Routledge Advances in Urban History 3 (London: Routledge, 2019), pp.  50–64; Tim Soens et  al. (eds.), Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500, Routledge Advances in Urban History 3 (London: Routledge, 2019); Simon Gunn, ‘Urban agency: Debating the aims and limits of urban history’, Urban History, 44:1 (2017); Sebastian Haumann et  al. (eds.), Concepts of Urban-Environmental History (Berlin: Transcript Publishing, 2020). 3 Finn Arne Jørgensen, ‘Entangled environments: Historians and nature in the Nordic countries’, Historisk Tidskrift, 92 (2013), pp. 9–34; Peter Clark et al. (eds.), Green Landscapes in the European City, 1750–2010 (London: Routledge, 2018). See also Peter Clarke’s introduction in this anthology. 4 Søren Bitsch Christensen  & Mette Thøgersen, ‘Bysystem og urbanisme ca. 1840–2000: Historie og Historiografi’, in Søren Bitsch Christensen (ed.), Den Moderne by (Aarhus: Århus Universitetsforlag, 2006), pp.  11–120; Hans Christian Johansen, Danish Population History 1600–1939 (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2002). 5 Tim Knudsen, Storbyen Støbes: København mellem kaos og byplan 1840–1917 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1988). 6 Ludvig August Colding & Julius Thomsen, De Sandsynlige Aarsager Til Choleraens Ulige Styrke i de Forskellige Dele af Kjøbenhavn (Copenhagen, 1853). 7 Hanne Lindegaard, Ud Af Røret? Planer, Processer og Paradokser omkring det Københavnske Kloaksystem 1840–2001 (Copenhagen: Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, 2001). 8 Eva Jakobsson, ‘Ditching from a water system perspective: Draining the Swedish water landscape 1200–1900’, Water History, 5 (2013), pp.  349–67; Eva Jakobsson, ‘Introduktion av WC i Stockholm: Ett Vattensystemperspektiv på Staden’, Polhem: Tidskrift for Teknikhistoria, 17:2–4 (1999), pp. 118–39. 9 Andrew Barry, Material Politics: Disputes Along the Pipeline (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2013). 10 Lindegaard 2001, p. 96. 11 Jens Engberg, Det Heles Vel: Forureningsbekæmpelsen i Danmark fra loven om Sundhedsvedtægter i 1850’erne til Miljøloven 1974 (Copenhagen: Københavns Kommune Miljøkontrollen, 1999). 12 Ylva Sjöstrand, Stadens Sopor: Tillvaratagande, Förbränning och Tippning i Stockholm 1900–1975 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014), p. 43.

190  Mikkel Thelle 13 Ylva Sjöstrand, Hanne Lindegaard, Sabine Barles  & Laurence Lestel, ‘The nitrogen question: Urbanization, industrialization, and river quality in Paris, 1830–1939’, Journal of Urban History, 33:5 (2007), pp. 794–812. 14 Ludvig August Colding, Om Lovene for Vandets Bevægelse i Jorden (Copenhagen: Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, 1872); Jes Fabricius Møller, ‘Biologismer’, in Historisk Institut (Copenhagen: Københavns Universitet, 2002). 15 Georg Nørregaard, Københavns Vandforsynings Historie (Copenhagen: Københavns Kommunalbestyrelse, 1959). 16 Christian Tryde, Infektion Af Grundvand Og Tyfussmitte (Copenhagen: Hoffenborg og Traps Etabl., 1885); Christian Tryde, Undersøgelser Af Drikkevand (Copenhagen: I. Cohens Bogtrykkeri, 1885); Christian Tryde, Om Infektion Fra Kloakudtømmelserne i Kjøbenhavns Havn og Kanaler: Foredrag holdt i det Medicinske Selskab i Kjøbenhavn, d. 20 Nov. 1883 (Copenhagen: Det Medicinske Selskab, 1884). 17 Ulla Tofte, ‘Charles Ambt og Dansk Byplanlægning 1875–1902’, in Søren Bitsch Christensen et al. (eds.), Den Moderne by (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2006), pp. 153–73; Charles Ambt, ‘Kloakanlæggene i København Og Nogle Fremmede Hovedstæder’, Den Tekniske Forenings Tidsskrift (1880), pp. 115–38. 18 Jonas Hallström, Constructing a Pipe-Bound City: A History of Water Supply, Sewerage, and Excreta Removal in Norrköping and Linköping, Sweden, 1860– 1910 (Linköping: Linköping University, 2002); Joel Tarr  & Gabriel Dupuy, Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). 19 Jonas Hallström & Jan-Olof Drangert, ‘Den urbana renhållningen i Stockholm och Norrköping: Från svin till avfallskvarn?’, Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 44 (2002), pp. 7–24; Jonas Hallström, ‘Technology, social space and environmental justice in Swedish cities: Water distribution to suburban Norrköping and Linköping, 1860–90’, Urban History, 23:3 (2005), pp. 413–33. 20 Municipal meeting (22 March 1897), Copenhagen Municipal Archives. 21 Eva Jakobsson, ‘Stockholm’s changing waterscape: A long-term perspective on a city and its flowing water’, in Tim Soens et  al. (eds.), Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500, Routledge Advances in Urban History 3 (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 197–216. 22 Hallström 2002. 23 Hallström 2005, p. 423. 24 Jakobsson 2013. 25 Torbjörn Nilsson, Elitens svängrum: Första kammaren, staten och moderniseringen 1867–1886 (Stockholm: Almqvist  & Wiksell International, 1994), p. 181. 26 John A. Stanturf (ed.), Afforestation in Denmark (London: CRC Press, 2015). 27 Engberg 1999. 28 Bent Jensen, Træk af Miljødebatten i seks danske aviser fra 1870’erne til 1970’erne (Copenhagen: rockwool Fonden, 1996). 29 Sara B. Pritchard, Confluence: The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhône (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). 30 Eva Jakobsson, ‘Nature and diplomacy: The struggle over the Scandinavian border rivers in 1905’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 31:3–4 (2006), pp. 270–89. 31 Felix Frey, ‘A fluid iron curtain: Norwegian–soviet hydropower cooperation in the Pasvik Valley, 1955–1965’, Scandinavian Journal of History (2019), pp. 506–26.

Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe 191 32 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991). 33 Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). 34 David Wachsmuth, ‘Three ecologies: Urban metabolism and the society-nature opposition’, The Sociological Quarterly, 53 (2012), pp. 506–23. 35 Matthew Gandy, ‘Rethinking urban metabolism: Water, space and the modern city’, City, 8:3 (2004), pp. 363–79. 36 Robert Park, On Social Control and Collective Behavior (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967).

Bibliography Ambt, Charles, ‘Kloakanlæggene i København Og Nogle Fremmede Hovedstæder’, Den Tekniske Forenings Tidsskrift (1880). Barry, Andrew, Material Politics: Disputes Along the Pipeline (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2013). Bernhardt, Christoph, ‘Concepts of urban agency and the transformation of urban Hinterlands: The case of Berlin, eighteenth to twentieth centuries’, in Tim Soens et al. (eds.), Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500, Routledge Advances in Urban History 3 (London: Routledge, 2019). Braudel, Fernand, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). Christensen, Søren Bitsch & Mette Thøgersen, ‘Bysystem og urbanisme ca. 1840– 2000: Historie og Historiografi’, in Søren Bitsch Christensen (ed.), Den Moderne by (Aarhus: Århus Universitetsforlag, 2006). Clark, Peter et al. (eds.), Green Landscapes in the European City, 1750–2010 (London: Routledge, 2018). Colding, Ludvig August, Om Lovene for Vandets Bevægelse i Jorden (Copenhagen: Bianco Lunos Bogtrykkeri, 1872). Colding, Ludvig August & Julius Thomsen, De Sandsynlige Aarsager Til Choleraens Ulige Styrke i de Forskellige Dele af Kjøbenhavn (Copenhagen, 1853). Cronon, William, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: Norton, 1991). Engberg, Jens, Det Heles Vel: Forureningsbekæmpelsen i Danmark fra loven om Sundhedsvedtægter i 1850’erne til Miljøloven 1974 (Copenhagen: Københavns Kommune Miljøkontrollen, 1999). Frey, Felix, ‘A fluid iron curtain: Norwegian–Soviet hydropower cooperation in the Pasvik Valley, 1955–1965’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 45:4 (2020), pp. 506–526. Gandy, Matthew, ‘Rethinking urban metabolism: Water, space and the modern city’, City, 8:3 (2004). Gunn, Simon, ‘Urban agency: Debating the aims and limits of urban history’, Urban History, 44:1 (2017). Gunn, Simon  & Tom Hulme, ‘New approaches to urban governance’, in Simon Gunn & Tom Hulme (eds.), New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe Since 1500 (London: Routledge, 2020).

192  Mikkel Thelle Hallström, Jonas, Constructing a Pipe-Bound City: A  History of Water Supply, Sewerage, and Excreta Removal in Norrköping and Linköping, Sweden, 1860– 1910 (Linköping: Linköping University, 2002). Hallström, Jonas, ‘Technology, social space and environmental justice in Swedish cities: Water distribution to suburban Norrköping and Linköping, 1860–90’, Urban History, 23:3 (2005). Hallström, Jonas  & Jan-Olof Drangert, ‘Den urbana renhållningen i Stockholm och Norrköping: Från svin till avfallskvarn?’, Bebyggelsehistorisk tidskrift, 44 (2002). Haumann, Sebastian et al. (eds.), Concepts of Urban-Environmental History (Berlin: Transcript Publishing, 2020). Jakobsson, Eva, ‘Introduktion av WC i Stockholm: Ett Vattensystemperspektiv på Staden’, Polhem: Tidskrift for Teknikhistoria, 17:2–4 (1999). Jakobsson, Eva, ‘Nature and diplomacy: The struggle over the Scandinavian border rivers in 1905’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 31:3–4 (2006). Jakobsson, Eva, ‘Ditching from a water system perspective: Draining the Swedish water landscape 1200–1900’, Water History, 5 (2013). Jakobsson, Eva, ‘Stockholm’s changing waterscape: A long-term perspective on a city and its flowing water’, in Tim Soens et al. (eds.), Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500, Routledge Advances in Urban History 3 (London: Routledge, 2019). Jensen, Bent, Træk af Miljødebatten i seks danske aviser fra 1870’erne til 1970’erne (Copenhagen: rockwool Fonden, 1996). Johansen, Hans Christian, Danish Population History 1600–1939 (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2002). Jørgensen, Finn Arne, ‘Entangled environments: Historians and nature in the Nordic countries’, Historisk tidskrift, 92 (2013). Knudsen, Tim, Storbyen Støbes: København mellem kaos og byplan 1840–1917 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1988). Københavns Stadsarkiv (Copenhagen Municipal Archives). Lindegaard, Hanne, Ud Af Røret? Planer, Processer og Paradokser omkring det Københavnske Kloaksystem 1840–2001 (Copenhagen: Danmarks Tekniske Universitet, 2001). Mitchell, Timothy, ‘Can the mosquito speak?’, in Rule of Experts: Egypt, TechnoPolitics, Modernity (London: University of California Press, 2002). Møller, Jes Fabricius, ‘Biologismer’, in Historisk Institut (Copenhagen: Københavns Universitet, 2002). Nilsson, Torbjörn, Elitens svängrum: Första kammaren, staten och moderniseringen 1867–1886 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1994). Nørregaard, Georg, Københavns Vandforsynings Historie (Copenhagen: Københavns Kommunalbestyrelse, 1959). Park, Robert, On Social Control and Collective Behavior (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1967). Pritchard, Sara B., Confluence: The Nature of Technology and the Remaking of the Rhône (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011). Sjöstrand, Ylva, Stadens Sopor: Tillvaratagande, Förbränning och Tippning i Stockholm 1900–1975 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014).

Urban metabolism on the fringes of Europe 193 Sjöstrand, Ylva, Hanne Lindegaard, Sabine Barles & Laurence Lestel, ‘The nitrogen question: Urbanization, industrialization, and river quality in Paris, 1830–1939’, Journal of Urban History, 33:5 (2007). Soens, Tim et al. (eds.), Urbanizing Nature: Actors and Agency (Dis)Connecting Cities and Nature Since 1500, Routledge Advances in Urban History 3 (London: Routledge, 2019). Stanturf, John A. (ed.), Afforestation in Denmark (London: CRC Press, 2015). Tarr, Joel & Gabriel Dupuy, Technology and the Rise of the Networked City in Europe and America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). Tofte, Ulla, ‘Charles Ambt og Dansk Byplanlægning 1875–1902’, in Søren Bitsch Christensen et  al. (eds.), Den Moderne by (Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2006). Tryde, Christian, Om Infektion Fra Kloakudtømmelserne i Kjøbenhavns Havn og Kanaler: Foredrag holdt i det Medicinske Selskab i Kjøbenhavn, d. 20 Nov. 1883 (Copenhagen: Det Medicinske Selskab, 1884). Tryde, Christian, Infektion Af Grundvand Og Tyfussmitte (Copenhagen: Hoffenborg og Traps Etabl., 1885). Tryde, Christian, Undersøgelser Af Drikkevand (Copenhagen: I. Cohens Bogtrykkeri, 1885). Wachsmuth, David, ‘Three ecologies: Urban metabolism and the society-nature opposition’, The Sociological Quarterly, 53 (2012).

Part III

Social fabric and infrastructures

9 Skjern from within A social network analysis of religious revival and social elites in a small Western Jutland New Town, 1880–1930* Christian Ringskou Top five in a new town The following men are top five in a social network analysis of members of the local elite in the emerging small town of Skjern, 1880–1930: Jens Petersen was the son of miller P. Chr. Pedersen, who moved his windmill from the neighbouring settlement of Albæk to Skjern in 1883. Jens Petersen took over his father’s business in 1894 at the age of 31. In the years before 1900, he was chair of the revivalist organisation of Indre Mission’s (‘Inner Mission’) youth branch, and he continued to be the local kingpin of the association. After 1900, he was the manager of Skjern Bank, as well as the co-owner, and de facto promoter, of Skjern Power Station and a member of the parish council. In 1884, a 26-year-old joiner from the heathland of central Western Jutland, Andreas Jensen, established his workshop in Skjern. In the following 45 years, he was involved with Skjern Bank and Skjern Power Station, as well as being a member of the parish council and chair of the local association of artisans. He, too, was one of the mainstays of Indre Mission, where he had a place on the managing council from 1892 and was chair for decades. The bookseller Jeppe Christensen was 25 years old when he established his business in Skjern in 1884. In 1915, he sold the shop, but he maintained his activities as co-director of Skjern Bank, a member of the board of Skjern Savings Bank, and co-owner of the power station. He, however, was the chair of a different revivalist religious movement: Evangelisk Luthersk Mission (‘Evangelical Lutheran Mission’). Jens Pedersen shared his name (though spelled differently) with the mill owner and his craft with Andreas Jensen. He was a sawyer and joiner. Pedersen came to Skjern from a coastal parish at the age of 25 in 1890, and his sawmill went from wind to steam and on to electric power in the decades that followed. He was also a member of the parish council and a leading figure in the association of artisans. By religious conviction, however, DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-12

198  Christian Ringskou he was Skjern’s leading figure in yet another religious movement, Luthersk Mission (‘Lutheran Mission’), where he was chair for many years. A third Jens, whose surname, Strandbygaard, signals a family background in the Western Jutland cattle trade, came to Skjern in 1890 when he was 16 years old. He had to work his way up from poor circumstances, but in 1898 he established a printing house. He was a long-standing member of the parish council and honorary member of the association of artisans. Like Jens Petersen and Andreas Jensen, he was associated with Indre Mission. This chapter discusses the specific small-town social structure that these five men were leading members of and the possibility of understanding revivalist organisations as instrumental in establishing a social elite or elites at the turn of the 20th century. Danish urbanism and the European North Writing for a volume on the urbanity of the European North leaves the Danish historian with a difficult matter of definition. Is Denmark on the northern fringe of central Western Europe? Or is it part of an inner ring of the North? In his introduction to this book, Peter Clark offers a series of characteristic features of the North. Difficult soil, cold climate, and sparsity of population do not seem to adequately describe Denmark, even if the latter two are matters of interpretation. Thus, it is no surprise that the low level of urbanisation that Clark observes in the Middle Ages does not correspond with Denmark, where almost all market towns were founded before the Black Death. Even so, there is still a strong case for arguing for congruence with countries farther north or in closer contact with the North Atlantic. Corresponding to Clark’s urbanity of the North, Danish towns were indeed very small, they were all under the rule of the crown, and they were almost without exception situated by the sea, leaving inland areas without even modest concentrations of people, services, and economic activity into the second half of the 19th century. This situation, however, changed in the decades of Jens Petersen, Andreas Jensen, Jeppe Christensen, Jens Pedersen, and Jens Strandbygaard. Under the influence of international trade, industrialisation, and new transportation technology, the Danish urban system underwent fundamental changes. By Northern standards, Copenhagen grew to metropole status while some  – but only some – of the old market towns developed into considerable centres, and new small towns emerged in inland areas. New town, revivalist movements, and social structure In 1862, freedom of trade was introduced in Denmark. This marks the starting point of what in a deliberate contradiction in terms might be

Skjern from within 199 considered the urbanisation of the Danish countryside. Until this point, Danish agriculture produced only a marginal surplus; from the 1880s, however, production became specialised and with new bacon- and butterproducing farms came a demand for trade, craft, and service. During the same decades, the inland transport system was revolutionised. New roads were built in the 1850–1860s, and from the 1870s, an ever-denser net of railroads covered the country. By 1900, local transportation was still troublesome, but long-distance transport had become cheap and efficient. This stimulated the emergence of a dense network of very small towns across Denmark.1 This development was characteristic of all of inland Denmark, but nowhere was it as fundamental as in Western Jutland, where the old market towns were few and very small and where new agricultural technology in marling and moor cultivation resulted in rapid growth in both population and production.2 Skjern was one of the new towns of Western Jutland. It is situated where the first regional railroad had one of its stops between the market towns of Ringkøbing to the north and Varde to the south. The railroad opened for traffic in 1875, connecting the agricultural areas of the fertile meadows along the Skjern River to the new dock harbour of Esbjerg, which was thriving on the growing exports to Great Britain. Skjern grew fast, though only to a town of local importance: from 284 inhabitants in 1880, its population had grown to 1,252 in 1901 and 2,543 in 1921. Skjern is known as the ‘religious town’ or the ‘town of religious revivals’. No less than three different revivalist movements – Luthersk Mission, Evangelisk Luthersk Mission, and Indre Mission – established associations with separate meeting houses in the 1880–1890s. A  fourth, Grundtvigianerne (‘The Grundtvigians’ named after the influential priest and hymn writer N. F. S. Grundtvig), was also present, and a group of explicit nonparticipants must be acknowledged as well. Religious revivals were a trend in Scandinavia around 1900. At their outset, they were Christian countercultures with complex relationships to the preaching of the national church. However, and more importantly for this chapter, in historical research they have also been seen as social movements of secular importance during a period of new personal responsibility in economy and politics.3 In her work on another Western Jutland case, that of Grindsted, Sidsel Eriksen focused on two groups of associations, Indre Mission and Grundtvigians, and the religious and ideological conflict between them as the organising principle of the social structure of the new town.4 Eriksen rejects the common analogy of the new town as a crucible where immigrants of various social, economic, and geographic backgrounds were transformed into one hegemonic culture. On the contrary, the cultural vacuum of the new town buttressed segregation and conflict. The importance of the revivalist movements, then, was not defined by their different preaching as

200  Christian Ringskou much as by their shared but mutually oppositional ability to mobilise and organise. In a paper on new towns in Kronobergs Län in Southern Sweden, Peter Aronsson, like Eriksen, points out two competing cultural profiles: an old peasant culture characterised by extensive alcohol consumption on the one hand and a modern urban culture associated with the Swedish temperance movement on the other.5 This perspective is the opposite of Eriksen’s in Grindsted, where local peasant culture was linked to the temperance of Indre Mission, whereas the newcomers shared the (often) less strict attitudes to alcohol of the Grundtvigian movement. Eriksen and Aronsson presented their work at the same conference, and both contributed to its proceedings. The contrast, however, did not give rise to discussion, since both considered the attitudes to alcohol a proxy for a more profound conflict between old and new in a situation of rapid economic, geographical, and social change and between rural and urban in a culture of segregation. This conflict finds its shape and language, but does not have its core, in religious discrepancy. How does Skjern fit into this picture? In local historiography, one occasionally comes across the claim that social acquaintances, leisure time activity, patterns of consumption, and the local labour market were all determined by affiliation with particular revivalist movements.6 This idea is present when professional historiography touches upon Western Jutland as well.7 But on the other hand, how would four different groups, not to mention the non-participants, co-exist in a town with no more than one or two thousand inhabitants, if affiliation with different religious movements invariably led to conflict? Does Skjern correspond with the findings of Eriksen and Aronsson, or does it provide a different perspective? Methodology In this chapter, the topic is approached through a social network analysis of an elite section of Skjern’s population during 1880–1930. The members of the network are ‘appointed’ because they meet one or more of three formal, as well as a fourth less formal, criteria:8 • They were among the top 5 per cent of taxpayers in 1901 or 1921. • They were elected members of the parish council just before or just after 1880, 1901, or 1921. • Their portrait appears in the Western Jutland volumes of the books Danish Towns and their Men9 (1901) or Jutland Towns and their Men10 (1916). • . . . and some more have been added for completion. Information on contact between the 92 members of the local community that meet the criteria is sought within a variety of sources: parish register

Skjern from within 201 lists of godfathers/-mothers and best men, the local vote (public until 1908), miscellanea in the Ringkøbing Fjord Museums, and a variety of local history publications. The resulting 1,799 edges are then divided into five categories of relations ranging along a continuum from the most personal ties of family and sponsorship, voting, and involvement in associations, committees, and various initiatives; to the least personal contact of shared business interests.11 Each of these categories is then represented in a social network graph, where the nodes represent the 92 persons and the edges the connections between them. The degrees of the nodes are represented by size. The network graphs are force-directed using a FruchtermanReingold algorithm. The algorithm brings the graph to a balance where the most significant nodes are presented in the central area(s) and – more importantly – where nodes with many joint edges occur in groups.12 Finally, an important additional layer of information is added to the nodes in the form of a filling scheme for religious affiliation.13 The extent to which nodes of the same filling group together in the network graph is thus an indication of correspondence between religious groups and social structure. Bias and limitation Only tentative answers can be offered to questions like these. The fact that network graphs communicate mathematical objectivity makes it especially important to stress reservations and emphasise limitations. Some of the sources are random in character. There are differences, for example, between organisations that had their anniversary book written and those that did not and whose personal archive is stored in the local museum and whose is not.14 Either an edge between two persons exists or it does not. Family might be a much stronger relationship than shared presence on the board of an association; in the network, however, they are of the same strength – an example of the computer’s dichotomy of 1 or 0 and nothing in between.15 What is the threshold of edges? Are people who sit on the same board at different times connected? (No.) Do people who appear together in a photograph in informal settings have a relationship? (No.) Pragmatic definitions affect the results of the analysis. Anachrony is yet another problem. Some of the 92 individuals were dead when others reached adulthood, and ties between them are not logically possible. The network Figures 9.1–4 represent the central sections of the graphs of the network, showing categories of a personal nature. As would be expected in these sorts of relationships, the graphs display congruity between connection

202  Christian Ringskou

Figure 9.1 Family connections, three sections.

and religious association. Self-evidently, the family network of an emerging town has few edges. Still, a clear tendency towards family ties among Indre Mission and to some extent among Evangelisk Luthersk Mission and Grundtvigians is recognisable. The network of sponsorship and best men displays a strong preference for relations among individuals of common religious conviction. After all, in the Danish baptism ceremony, the godfathers and godmothers promise to bring up the child in the Christian faith in the case of the parents’ early death. The structure is very evident among Indre Mission, who are the most numerous, but it is also present among Evangelisk Luthersk Mission and Grundtvigians. Figures 9.5 and 9.6 display network categories midway along the continuum from the personal to the public. In the network graph on voting, there is, to some extent, a community among Indre Mission, where the not-so-large nodes group peripherally around the larger. In the graph illustrating interests,16 Indre Mission dominates, and its leading men form a very evident cluster in the graph. However, the overall impression of the two graphs is the lack of division by node filling or otherwise. This is a strong indication of limitations regarding the importance of the revivalist

Skjern from within 203

Figure 9.2 Family connections, two sections.

204  Christian Ringskou

Figure 9.3 Sponsorship and best men, central section.

movements beyond the sphere of the personal and the religious. Note, for instance, how Jens Pedersen as one of very few members of Luthersk Mission plays a central role in both graphs. A group of men and one woman whose joint venture saved Skjern Bank from imminent danger of liquidation in 1923 dominates the network of business associations in figure 9.7. The graph expresses no information about congruency between node filling and structure. It seems that religion played no detectable role in relationships where money was involved. Perspective Overall, the impression of the five network categories is that, on a continuum from the personal to the public, religious affiliation plays an everdecreasing role. This is no surprise. The matter of interest is the timing and the weight of the change along the continuum. It is noteworthy that

Skjern from within 205

Figure 9.4 Sponsorship and best men, section.

only family and sponsorship express congruence. Already in the semipersonal categories of vote and interest, the network graphs display a structure of one large community, where religion is of some, but not primary, importance. In cases of cooperation on strictly economic matters, religion seems to have played no role as structure or community. Members of the local elite of Skjern did not group in delimited communities; on the contrary, the network graphs reveal one large community of

206  Christian Ringskou

Figure 9.5 Votes for parish council, central section.

local elites dominated by members of Indre Mission, who outnumber the others in terms of both membership and activity but nevertheless work closely together with them. A table of the members of the combined networks with the highest number of edges (the highest degree centrality) that contains information about their betweenness centrality does, however, offer nuance to the general picture. Betweenness centrality measures the number of shortest paths between any two nodes that pass through the node in question. High betweenness centrality indicates the role of a broker connecting different network sections, whereas a low score indicates activity within a narrow sub-community.17 In Table 9.1, degree centrality and betweenness centrality are indexed in a third column. It is apparent how members of Indre Mission, with mill owner Jens Petersen as the only real exception, are less

Skjern from within 207

Figure 9.6 Cooperation in associations, committees, and initiatives, central section.

involved with the network in its broader sense, indicating some level of a community after all. Membership in the other revivalist movements, on the other hand, corresponds with higher betweenness centrality, indicating higher levels of contact across the network. To what extent does the role of the religious organisation depend on the newness of a new town like Skjern?18 The nearby market town of Ringkøbing offers an opportunity for comparison. Like other Danish market towns, Ringkøbing was founded in the Middle Ages. Due to the very shallow water of Ringkøbing Fjord, it did not experience the growth that many other towns underwent in the late 19th century, and when the old privileges were abandoned, Ringkøbing was a small town with economic circumstances much like Skjern’s. Here too mobility was high, and many inhabitants were newcomers. But Ringkøbing had its well-established elite of families with roots in trade and office-holding from the early 19th century. Faced with the dynamics of a new era, this elite saw competition from

208  Christian Ringskou

Figure 9.7 Business association, central section.

Table 9.1 The top 18 of the five networks combined Name

Degree

Betweenness

Index

Revival

Jens Petersen Andreas Jensen Jeppe Christensen

192 187 141

344 130 186

100 39 74

Jens Pedersen Jens Strandbygaard M. Joh. Knudsen Martin Haahr E. C. Dalgaard Jens Jespersen Andreas Jakobsen Jens Olesen Niels Jensen

134 119 112 100 92 92 92 89 87

316 81 107 63 112 166 120 27 73

132 38 53 35 68 101 73 17 47

Indre Mission Indre Mission Evangelisk Luthersk Mission Luthersk Mission Indre Mission Indre Mission Indre Mission Indre Mission Grundtvigian Grundtvigian Indre Mission Indre Mission

Skjern from within 209 Name

Degree

Betweenness

Index

Troels Christensen Jens Jessen Hans/Ingeborg Bank

84 81 79

21 39 108

14 27 76

Chr. Christensen Siersbæk Chr. Gade Hansen Chr. Fabricius Hansen

75

17

13

74 66

188 201

142 170

Revival Indre Mission Grundtvigian Evangelisk Luthersk Mission Indre Mission Non-participant Non-participant

Figure 9.8 Social network and religious affiliation in Ringkøbing, central section.

and then assimilation with a new group of businessmen and small-scale manufacturers, but it did not lose its importance. Figure 9.8 is a graph from a corresponding Social Network Analysis of the elite of Ringkøbing. The many circles without filling are men (and a few women) of no known affiliation with any revivalist organisation. It

210  Christian Ringskou is apparent that some of the religious organisations were present in the market town too, and it seems there might be some level of connection between Ringkøbing’s Grundtvigians. However, Indre Mission appears not to represent a group in the elite and – more importantly – only a minority of the members of the elite displayed their religious affiliation to a degree where it is apparent in sources accessible to historians 100 or 150 years later. The market town lacked the social vacuum of the new town and hence, even though the religious revivals were present in Ringkøbing, they did not function as an organising principle for social structure. In conclusion, the network analysis of the elite of the emerging Western Jutland small town of Skjern in 1880–1930 uncovers a social structure of only one central community, consisting primarily of members of Indre Mission. It did, however, to a considerable extent, also include members of alternative and in some respects opposing religious revivals and groups. Skjern, after all, does come across as something of a melting pot. This picture is different from Sidsel Eriksen’s results in the nearby new town of Grindsted and from Peter Aronsson’s observations of Kronobergs Län, where the new town at the turn of the 20th century appeared to be characterised by segregation and by two opposing groups of urban and rural culture. Sidsel Eriksen’s work is thorough. However, her method is to some extent based on explicit religious and ideological sources deriving from situations of conflict. The method does not consider how Grundtvigians and followers of Indre Mission might have worked together on a day-today basis or how people may not always have taken the formal conflict of their organisations as a guideline for their social interaction. It would be interesting to see if an analysis of networks and interpersonal relationships in Grindsted or the new towns of Kronobergs Län or anywhere else in the urban North might reveal a similar picture of cooperation and community beneath and beyond conflicts between religious organisations or other group identities. Notes * This chapter is based on chapter 12 of my recent PhD thesis, Christian Ringskou, The Market Town and the New Town: Ringkøbing and Skjern in Dependent and Independent Variables 1880–1930 (Århus: Aarhus Universitet, 2021). Accessible with network graphs in colour for download (in Danish) at Ringkøbing Fjord Museums’ webpage www.rfmuseer.dk. The author directs his thanks to Silke Holmqvist for valuable ideas and comments on the manuscript. 1 The historiography of the new towns of Denmark and even of Western Jutland is extensive. For a well-informed introduction in English, see Peter Dragsbo, ‘ “Station towns”: A  key to an Agrarian society in flux’, Ethnologia Scandinavica (1986), pp. 130–44.

Skjern from within 211 2 Alfred Kaae, Vestjysk landbrug 1856–1956: Træk af landbrugets udvikling på Ringkøbingegnen gennem hundrede år (Ringkøbing: Ulfborg-Hind Herreders Landboforening, 1956); Bent Iversen, ‘Vestjysk landbrug i 1800-tallet’, in Flemming Just (ed.), Arbejdsrapport om Vestjyllands udviklingshistorie ca. 1750–1914 (Esbjerg: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag 1984), pp. 53–78. 3 P. G. Lindhardt, Vækkelser og kirkelige retninger i Danmark (Copenhagen: Det Danske Forlag, 1951); H. P. Clausen, ‘Den sociale problemstilling ved udforskningen af de gudelige vækkelser’, Kirkehistoriske Samlinger, 7:1 (1966), pp. 137–67; Claus Bjørn, ‘De folkelige bevægelser i Danmark’, Fortid og nutid, 26:3 (1975), pp. 346–57; Inge Bundsgaard, ‘Grundtvigianismen og Indre Mission i lokalsamfundet: Et eksempel fra Sydøstjylland’, in Anders Gustavsson (ed.), Religiösa väckelserörelser i Norden: Aktuell forskning presenterad vid ett symposium (Lund: Centrum för Religionsetnologisk Forskning, 1985); Margaretha Balle-Petersen, ‘The imprint of religion on everyday life: Some examples from Danish revivalist settings’, in Niels-Arvid Bringéus (ed.), Religion in Everyday Life: Papers Given at a Symposium in Stockholm 1993 (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1993); Søren Byskov, Tro håb og legetøj: Landsbyfolk og industrieventyr i Billund 1920–80 (Grindsted: Overgaard Bøger, 1997). 4 Sidsel Eriksen, Stationsbyens samfund: Folk og foreninger i Grindsted 1880– 1940 (Grindsted: Overgaard Bøger, 1996); Sidsel Eriksen, ‘Stationsbyen: Smeltedigel eller segregation? Et essay over bogen: Stationsbyens samfund: Folk og foreninger i Grindsted 1880–1940’, in Peter Aronsson  & Lennart Johansson (eds.), Stationssamhällen: Nordiska perspektiv på landsbygdens modernisering (Växjö: Växjö Universitet 1999). 5 Peter Aronsson, ‘Perspektiv på stationssamhällen i nordisk forskning’, in Aronsson & Johansson (eds.) 1999, pp. 13–65. 6 Sven Hersbøll, Skjern Bank 1906–2006: Byen og dens mennesker – og deres bank (Skjern: Skjern Bank, 2006); Henning Sørensen, Luthersk Mission i Skjern (Skjern: Tarm Bogtryk A/S, 2010). 7 Henning Ringgaard Lauridsen, Folk i bevægelse: Folkelig vækkelse, politik og andelsfællesskab i Nordvestjylland (Struer: Dalhus Forlag, 1986); BallePetersen 1993. 8 Inspired by Justin Colson, ‘Reassessing power and governance in late medieval cities: Institutions and the census honorum’, in Simon Gunn  & Tom Hulme (eds.), New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe Since 1500 (New York: Routledge, 2020). 9 L. Mylius-Erichsen, Danmarks Byer og deres Mænd VII: Ringkøbing og Omegn (Skjern, Tarm og Ulfborg) (Copenhagen: Hver 8. Dags Forlag, 1901). 10 P. J. Pedersen, ‘Skjern By og Omegn’, in Jyske Byer og deres Mænd II (Copenhagen: National Forlaget, 1916). 11 For inspiration and discussion: Bonnie H. Erickson, ‘Social network and history: A review essay’, Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 30:3 (1997); Alexandra Marin & Barry Wellman, ‘Social network analysis: An introduction’, in Peter Carrington  & John Scott (eds.), The Sage handbook of social network analysis (London, New York, New Delhi & Singapore: Sage, 2011); Robert Michael Morrissey, ‘Archives of connection: “Whole network” analysis and social history’, Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 48:2 (2015). 12 Thomas M. J. Fruchterman & Edward M. Reingold, ‘Graph drawing by forcedirected placement’, Software: Practice and Experience, 21:1 (1991).

212  Christian Ringskou 13 For inspiration and discussion: Marin  & Wellman, 2011, pp.  16–18; Lothar Krempel, ‘Network visualization’, in Carrington & Scott (eds.) 2011, p. 567. 14 Discussion of this problem in Charles Wetherell, ‘Historical social network analysis’, International Review of Social History 43:supplement 6 (1998); Morrissey, 2015; Catherine Herfeld & Malte Doehne, ‘Five reasons for the use of network analysis in the history of economics’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 25:4 (2018). 15 Robert J. Morris, ‘Document to database and spreadsheet’, in Simon Gunn & Lucy Faire (eds.), Research Methods for History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011); Herfeld & Doehne, 2018. 16 This network entails an element of tautology. Joint involvement on the board of a religious revival is included in the category. 17 Robert A. Hannemann  & Mark Riddle, ‘A brief introduction to analyzing social network data’, in Carrington & Scott (eds.) 2011. 18 The following is based on chapter 13 of my PhD thesis, Ringskou 2021.

Bibliography Aronsson, Peter, ‘Perspektiv på stationssamhällen i nordisk forskning’, in Peter Aronsson & Lennart Johansson (eds.), Stationssamhällen: Nordiska perspektiv på landsbygdens modernisering (Växjö: Växjö universitet, 1999). Balle-Petersen, Margaretha, ‘The imprint of religion on everyday life: Some examples from Danish revivalist settings’, in Niels-Arvid Bringéus (ed.), Religion in Everyday Life: Papers Given at a Symposium in Stockholm 1993 (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets Historie och Antikvitets Akademien, 1993). Bjørn, Claus, ‘De folkelige bevægelser i Danmark’, Fortid og nutid, 26:3 (1975). Bundsgaard, Inge, ‘Grundtvigianismen og Indre Mission i lokalsamfundet: Et eksempel fra Sydøstjylland’, in Anders Gustavsson (ed.), Religiösa väckelserörelser i Norden: Aktuell forskning presenterad vid ett symposium (Lund: Centrum för Religionsetnologisk Forskning, 1985). Byskov, Søren, Tro håb og legetøj: Landsbyfolk og industrieventyr i Billund 1920– 80 (Grindsted: Overgaard Bøger, 1997). Clausen, H. P., ‘Den sociale problemstilling ved udforskningen af de gudelige vækkelser’, Kirkehistoriske samlinger, 7:1 (1966). Colson, Justin, ‘Reassessing power and governance in late medieval cities: Institutions and the census honorum’, in Simon Gunn  & Tom Hulme (eds.), New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe Since 1500 (New York: Routledge, 2020). Dragsbo, Peter, ‘ “Station towns”: A key to an Agrarian society in flux’, in Ethnologia Scandinavica (1986). Erickson, Bonnie H., ‘Social network and history: A review essay’, Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 30:3 (1997). Eriksen, Sidsel, Stationsbyens samfund: Folk og foreninger i Grindsted 1880–1940 (Grindsted: Overgaard Bøger, 1996). Eriksen, Sidsel, ‘Stationsbyen: Smeltedigel eller segregation? et essay over bogen: Stationsbyens samfund: Folk og foreninger i Grindsted 1880–1940’, in Peter Aronsson & Lennart Johansson (eds.), Stationssamhällen: Nordiska perspektiv på landsbygdens modernisering (Växjö: Växjö universitet, 1999).

Skjern from within 213 Fruchterman, Thomas M. J.  & Edward M. Reingold, ‘Graph drawing by forcedirected placement’, Software: Practice and Experience, 21:1 (1991). Hannemann, Robert A. & Mark Riddle, ‘A brief introduction to analyzing social network data’, in Peter Carrington & John Scott (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis (London, New York, New Delhi  & Singapore: Sage, 2011). Herfeld, Catherine & Malte Doehne, ‘Five reasons for the use of network analysis in the history of economics’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 25:4 (2018). Hersbøll, Sven, Skjern Bank 1906–2006: Byen og dens mennesker – og deres bank (Skjern: Skjern Bank, 2006). Iversen, Bent, ‘Vestjysk landbrug i 1800-tallet’, in Flemming Just (ed.), Arbejdsrapport om Vestjyllands udviklingshistorie ca. 1750–1914 (Esbjerg: Sydjysk Universitetsforlag, 1984). Kaae, Alfred, Vestjysk landbrug 1856–1956: Træk af landbrugets udvikling på Ringkøbingegnen gennem hundrede år (Ringkøbing: Ulfborg-Hind Herreders Landboforening, 1956). Krempel, Lothar, ‘Network visualization’, in Peter Carrington & John Scott (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis (London, New York, New Delhi & Singapore: Sage, 2011). Lindhardt, P. G., Vækkelser og kirkelige retninger i Danmark (Copenhagen: Det Danske Forlag, 1951). Marin, Alexandra & Barry Wellman, ‘Social network analysis: An introduction’, in Peter Carrington & John Scott (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Social Network Analysis (London, New York, New Delhi & Singapore: Sage, 2011). Morris, Robert J., ‘Document to database and spreadsheet’, in Simon Gunn  & Lucy Faire (eds.), Research Methods for History (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). Morrissey, Robert Michael, ‘Archives of connection: “Whole network” analysis and social history’, Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History, 48:2 (2015). Mylius-Erichsen, L., Danmarks Byer og deres Mænd VII: Ringkøbing og Omegn (Skjern, Tarm og Ulfborg) (Copenhagen: Hver 8. Dags Forlag, 1901). Pedersen, P. J., ‘Skjern By og Omegn’, in Jyske Byer og deres Mænd II (Copenhagen: National Forlaget, 1916). Ringgaard Lauridsen, Henning, Folk i bevægelse: Folkelig vækkelse, politik og andelsfællesskab i Nordvestjylland (Struer: Dalhus Forlag, 1986). Ringskou, Christian, The Market Town and the New Town: Ringkøbing and Skjern in Dependent and Independent Variables 1880–1930 (Århus: Aarhus Universitet, 2021). Sørensen, Henning, Luthersk Mission i Skjern (Skjern: Tarm Bogtryk A/S, 2010). Wetherell, Charles, ‘Historical social network analysis’, International Review of Social History, 43:supplement 6 (1998).

10 Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery Mass housing, resident democracy, and acts of citizenship in 1970s’ Denmark Mikkel Høghøj Introduction In the last half of the 20th century, modernist mass housing emerged globally as one of the most widespread and contested architectural forms.1 In Western Europe, the planning and construction of mass housing and new towns intertwined with the rise of welfare states.2 This development also found expression in the Nordic countries, where mass housing schemes such as Miljonprogrammet in Sweden, Ammerud in Oslo (Norway), and Gellerupplanen in Aarhus (Denmark) materialised on the urban peripheries, particularly in the 1960s and early 1970s. Built as urban totalities complete with public institutions and novel amenities for leisure, community, and consumption, these housing estates spatialised the welfare society as an urban experience and thus showcase how the Nordic model manifested as an urban project. However, as in many other countries, the societal position of modernist mass housing changed significantly in the Nordic countries from the early 1970s onwards. Identified and marginalised as urban problem zones among the wider public, mass housing suddenly implied social vulnerability, crisis, and stagnation.3 While the early history of modernist housing and architecture has received much attention from a planning and design perspective,4 scholars have only recently begun to explore the social and experimental history of urban modernism, as Christiane Reinecke has recently noted.5 In each location where they were built, mass housing estates became more than architectural schemes or the objects of negative media attention. As the homes of millions of people across the Iron Curtain, they provided the spatial framework of many types of urban communities and everyday lives in the post-war decades. As such, they open a window into various aspects of post-war urban life that allow us to better understand the shared as well as unique characteristics of urban modernism in different regional, national, and local contexts.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-13

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 215 In the case of Denmark, as I  argue in this chapter, the conflict-laden history of modernist mass housing draws attention to the active role and agency of urban communities in the shaping of Danish welfare urbanism. On multiple occasions, residents of Danish mass housing estates mobilised various forms of oppositional campaigns and rent strikes to counteract the negative media representations and economic austerity measures that repeatedly targeted their homes in the 1970s and 1980s. These protests were, to a great extent, facilitated by the structure and norms of Danish ‘resident democracy’ (beboerdemokrati). Introduced in the Danish nonprofit housing sector6 in 1970, resident democracy is unique, even in a Nordic context.7 Even today, it remains integral to the organisational structure and social life of Danish non-profit housing estates. Through democratically elected tenant boards, it provides the residents with an active role and voice in the daily management of their estate.8 Although resident democracy can be a source of internal divisions and conflict within the housing estates, in 1970s’ urban Denmark it also facilitated specific forms of urban protests that manifested in the context of cultural upheaval and economic austerity. While resident democracy emerged from specific understandings of democracy and community participation, it also provided the residents with a platform to expand and transgress this category and assert themselves as citizens in the Danish welfare society. Thus, this study addresses the relationship between urban modernism, welfare, and citizenship from the perspective of Danish mass housing residents. In recent decades, citizenship studies have developed into an interdisciplinary and well-established field of research.9 While the field has traditionally been centred around T. H. Marshall’s seminal definition of citizenship as a legal status involving certain relations between rights and responsibilities,10 considerable scholarly efforts have been made to move beyond this understanding. In particular, feminist scholars have criticised Marshall’s conception of citizenship for ignoring both the exclusionary aspects of modern citizenship and the conflicts and struggles through which marginalised groups have claimed their right to citizenship and societal inclusion.11 As part of this movement, scholars have increasingly started to approach citizenship from the perspective of social practice and bodily performativity, emphasising how access to full citizenship and inclusion has been predicated upon and negotiated through certain practices, behavioural norms, and social dynamics.12 This shift in focus has also entailed a reappraisal of the sites and scales of modern citizenship. While studies of modern citizenship have traditionally been centred around of the nation-state, this new strand of studies has drawn attention to the multiple and often intersecting scales through which citizenship has been produced, negotiated, and claimed. By analysing the residents’ protests as

216  Mikkel Høghøj ‘acts of citizenship’, I aim to contribute to this field of research with urban historical perspectives on the formation of welfare citizenship in post-war Denmark. In doing so, I also seek to answer Tom Hulme’s recent call for urban historians to ‘put the city back into citizenship’ with perspectives from urban Scandinavia.13 Empirically, I focus on a series of conflicts that played out within three Danish mass housing estates: Gellerupplanen west of Aarhus, Vollsmose in Odense, and Brøndby Strand south-west of Copenhagen.14 Constructed on the periphery of the three largest Danish cities from the late 1960s onwards, these three estates are among the largest and most comprehensive housing plans ever conceived in Denmark. Thus, they constitute exemplary cases for the investigation of both the high planning aspirations of the 1960s and the different dimensions of the rejection of urban modernism in the 1970s and 1980s. In terms of source material, I draw upon material produced by and for the residents of the three estates. This includes locally produced residential newspapers and activist material in the form of locally distributed pamphlets. The chapter consists of three sections. In the first section, I outline the historical development and characteristics of Danish resident democracy and situate it in a Nordic and European context of social housing and welfare urbanity. In the second section of the chapter, which consists of two subsections, I investigate how residents in Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand utilised resident democracy to oppose both discursive and economic challenges that they faced in 1970s’ Denmark. In the first section, I analyse how residents in Gellerupplanen and Vollsmose opposed critical media representations of their home. In the second section, I turn my focus to a collective rent boycott in Brøndby Strand, which was organised in 1977 to counteract recurrent rent increases. The last section of the chapter, which also serves as the conclusion, discusses the ‘actors’, ‘sites’, and ‘scales’ through which we typically approach and interpret the history of welfare citizenship and connect this discussion to the broader field of urban history. Resident democracy and Danish mass housing as sites of citizenship As noted earlier, the Danish model for resident democracy in rental housing is unique. In the other Nordic countries, the degree of resident influence at the estate level is limited, unless the residents formally own a share of the housing development.15 In Sweden, for instance, the almennyttige bostäder are centrally owned by the municipalities, and instead of a local democracy, tenants are mobilised and joined in a strong national tenant movement.16 As Bo Bengtsson has argued, the notable differences between

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 217 the Nordic countries’ approach to the provision, organisation, and administration of housing are rooted in the historical path dependency of the individual country.17 In this context, the realisation of Danish resident democracy was conditioned by the conflation of a decentralised housing system, in which Danish governments largely handed the initiative to local actors in the form of housing associations, the looming transnational critique of modernist design, and, as Olaf Lind and Jonas Møller have argued, the emergence of a sense of nostalgia in the late 1960s within the non-profit housing sector about its cooperative legacy.18 Thus, the Danish version of resident democracy has its roots in the cooperative structure and history of the Danish non-profit housing movement. In Denmark, non-profit housing associations have historically been selfgoverning and have enjoyed a high degree of autonomy. The first associations were not created by governmental institutions; on the contrary, they emerged in the early decades of the 20th century in opposition to the liberal state’s inability to provide healthy and affordable housing for the urban working population.19 Between the two World Wars, the relationship between such housing associations and the state became formalised legislatively. To acquire state loans and subsidies, non-profit housing associations now had to be officially approved by the Interior Ministry, which involved meeting a range of requirements proving their status as non-profit organisations.20 Since then, Danish non-profit housing associations have operated in the nexus between state, market, and civil society.21 On the one hand, they operate within a legal framework and depend on subsidies. On the other, they are collectively owned by the tenants and enjoy considerable autonomy in day-to-day management and policymaking at the organisational and the estate level. Administratively, non-profit housing associations are organised in different housing departments (boligafdelinger). Each department is economically and politically independent of the other departments, but they are legally bound together in the overall housing association. Non-profit housing can roughly be defined as the Danish version of ‘social housing’ or ‘public housing’. However, compared to social housing in many other national contexts, Danish non-profit housing has historically stood out in a number of ways. Besides a high degree of autonomy, Danish non-profit housing has historically targeted a broad part of the Danish population, and especially the mass housing estates of the 1960s were built to house the growing urban middle class. Thus, to obtain a dwelling in this part of the housing sector, one only has to become a member of a non-profit housing association.22 In this sense, Danish non-profit housing differs significantly both from the British model of municipally owned council estates and from other Nordic countries such as Iceland and Finland, where social housing is specifically reserved for socially disadvantaged households.23

218  Mikkel Høghøj This underlines the fact that even though European modernist mass housing estates from the 1950s and 1960s share many architectural characteristics, they have differed significantly in terms of ownership, organisation, administration, and social composition. Following an agreement between the national interest organisation for tenants, Lejernes Landsorganisation (LLO), and the national interest organisation for non-profit housing associations in Denmark, Fællesorganisationen af Almennyttige Danske Boligselskaber (FADB), resident democracy was introduced in the Danish non-profit housing sector in 1970. The agreement integrated resident democracy into the organisational structure of non-profit housing associations. Now, the residents in each housing department had the right to elect, and be represented in, the department board that was responsible for the daily management of the department. This included managing the department’s financial budget and developing suggestions for modernisation and new communal facilities. Such suggestions then had to be approved by the majority of the residents at regular resident meetings. In this way, the residents not only acquired an active role in the daily management of non-profit housing estates, but the Danish non-profit housing movement also became dependent on the active and political engagement of its tenants.24 Both the introduction of tenant democracy in the Danish non-profit housing sector and the planning of Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand echoed wider contemporary shifts within international planning discourse towards participatory planning and community-based planning.25 Thus, the design of all three estates was predicated upon certain notions of ‘the user’ and the idea that the residents had to play an active part in the establishment of communal facilities and strong neighbour relations on the estates.26 As Anne Vorre Hansen and Luise Li Langergaard argue, across European housing policy the interplay between residents and housing associations is based on normative ideas of how democracy ought to unfold and be enacted on a local scale.27 Accordingly, Danish resident democracy partly emerged as a tool to enhance the residents’ sense of belonging within the housing estates and hence to mobilise their identity and self-perception as residents in the non-profit housing sector.28 In this sense, resident democracy served disciplinary purposes, installing community participation as a social norm on the estates, and it was even followed by the publication of handbooks outlining guidelines for the practical implementation of resident democracy.29 Nevertheless, resident democracy also enabled the residents to transgress and expand the prevalent boundaries for citizenship. As I  will demonstrate later, it provided them with a space for agency and empowerment that allowed

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 219 them to oppose both discursive and structural changes in Danish society and thereby act as citizens in new and unforeseen ways. Acts of citizenship on the urban periphery At Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand, the structure and norms for resident democracy were integral to how these estates functioned almost from the beginning. While Brøndby Strand comprised four equally sized housing departments, Gellerupplanen consisted of three housing departments, with Gellerupparken as the largest department. On both estates, the housing departments published a single residential newspaper. In Gellerupplanen, the housing department Gellerupparken initiated the newspaper Skræppebladet in 1970, which then quickly developed into a newspaper for the entire estate. In 1973, the four housing departments in Brøndby Strand launched Strandløberen, which was modelled after Skræppebladet, as a collaborative project. In Vollsmose, the situation was a bit different. In total, the estate comprised nine different housing departments, and each department published their own residential newspaper. In this chapter, I draw upon material from two residential newspapers, Granposten and Birkebladet, which were published by the housing departments Granparken and Birkeparken from 1976 onwards. On all three estates, the residential newspapers were edited by the residents and published on a monthly basis. Thus, they open a privileged window into the social dynamics, activities, and conflicts characterising everyday life on the three estates. Besides the residential newspapers, I draw upon various articles and opinion letters from both regional and national newspapers and a series of pamphlets produced by the residents of Brøndby Strand in connection with an organised rent boycott in 1977. In analysing the relationship between resident democracy, resident protests, and citizenship, I draw upon Engin F. Isin’s concept of acts of citizenship.30 With this concept, Isin draws attention to the acts through which various individuals and groups constitute themselves as citizens in a given context or situation. In short, Isin defines acts of citizenship as those acts that transform forms (orientations, strategies, technologies) and modes (citizens, strangers, outsiders, aliens) of being political by bringing into being new actors as activist citizens (claimants of rights and responsibilities) through creating new sites and scales of struggle.’31 By focusing on acts of citizenship, it becomes possible to capture not only how citizenship can be claimed and negotiated by actors from below but also how this can involve multiple sites and scales of contestation. It entails

220  Mikkel Høghøj moving the focus away from the level of state institutions and politicians as the main providers of citizenship, and from the nation-state as the main scale of belonging, and instead emphasise the role of actors and scales which have typically been marginalised in the history of modern citizenship. Opposing the public discourse

From a planning perspective in the 1960s, the mass media predominantly depicted mass housing positively and as a mark of the great promises of the emergent Danish welfare society. Thus, in both local and national media Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand were introduced to the Danish population as the new towns of the future.32 Several media representations specifically emphasised the holistic character of the estates, pointing to the broad range of amenities and public institutions offered to the residents. However, as in the other Nordic countries, most notably Norway and Sweden, the public discourse surrounding Danish modernist mass housing changed significantly from the early 1970s onwards.33 Now, mass housing estates were increasingly labelled as ‘concrete slums’, ‘concrete deserts’, and ‘ghettoes’, thus reflecting contemporary problems of urban poverty and social crisis.34 This change in discourse did not go unnoticed by the residents of Danish mass housing estates. As I will demonstrate later, in both Gellerupplanen and Vollsmose, specific media representations triggered angry reactions from the residents who, in response, utilised the platform of resident democracy to oppose these depictions of their homes. In August 1970, the national tabloid newspaper B.T. awarded Gellerupplanen the title of ‘the prettiest city of the year’.35 Although the newspaper alluded to the looming rejection of modernist housing by mentioning the unsuccessfulness of other contemporary mass housing projects, it nevertheless depicted Gellerupplanen as the spatial proof of the great promises of the combination of technocratic planning, affluence, and social democracy. This article, however, is one of the last identified examples of positive media representations not only of Gellerupplanen but of Danish mass housing in general. Less than four years later, in January  1974, another national tabloid newspaper, Ekstra Bladet published an article depicting Gellerupplanen as anything but a place of social well-being. Titled ‘Young people are drinking to cope with life in the concrete slum’, the article argued that: Beers and concrete constitute everyday life for the young people in Gellerupplanen. It is this conglomerate of human-silos on the periphery of Aarhus that, according to a new report, was built for the building industry rather than the residents. Teenagers turn to alcohol in order to endure the monotony of living amidst concrete giants.36

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 221 As this quote illustrates, the article not only condemned Gellerupplanen as a place of social alienation and poverty, but it also identified the spatial environment of the estate – and the matter of concrete in particular – as the primary cause of the despondency. In this sense, its message was predicated on a belief in spatial or architectural determinism, ascribing some sort of agency or disciplinary potential to the spatiality of Gellerupplanen.37 The article immediately spurred angry reactions from residents of the estate. In the February version of Skræppebladet, several residents expressed their dissatisfaction with the article, and especially how it reduced the social complexity of the estate.38 According to these residents, Gellerupplanen comprised a diverse and multifaceted social environment that, with its 10,000 inhabitants, was of the size of an average Danish provincial town. Reducing the estate to a place of passivity, poverty, and social decline was therefore not only inaccurate and unrepresentative but, in their view, also highly stigmatising for people living on the estate. As Skræppebladet testifies, several residents had submitted critical responses to both Ekstra Bladet and local newspapers, yet none of these had been published. Thus, to rectify the damages caused by the article, the residents represented in the two housing departments comprising Gellerupplanen, Gellerupparken, and Toveshøj formulated an official response to the newspaper. Together and with support from Brabrand Housing Association, they filed an official complaint to the independent Danish press council, demanding an official apology from the editors of Ekstra Bladet. The complaint, which was also published in the regional newspaper Aarhus Stiftstidende, stated that ‘we feel that Ekstra Bladet has violated us, demonstrated superficiality and irresponsibility as well as poor press ethics’.39 However, as a later issue of Skræppebladet reports, the Danish press council did not decide to pursue the case further, and Ekstra Bladet never apologised for the article.40 In the case of Vollsmose, critical articles can be identified as far back as the early 1970s.41 For most of the decade, however, the residents did not publicly voice their opinions on such media representations. It was not until January 1979 that an article published in the local weekly magazine UGEavisen served as the final straw. The main point of the article was that Vollsmose served as a major supplier of neglected children to the local orphanage Bolbrohjemmet. The article argued that ‘due to their parents’ excessive drinking problems, many divorces and corporal punishments, many Vollsmose-children approach the social authorities in Odense themselves because they no longer dare to live at home’.42 The article prompted immediate responses from residents of the estate. In both Granposten and Birkebladet, they argued that the article stigmatised them as socially unstable and, most problematically, as terrible parents.43 Thus, as was also the case in Gellerupplanen, the residents of Vollsmose

222  Mikkel Høghøj especially objected to how the article portrayed the estate as a generator of problematic social relations and an unhealthy youth culture. As one resident argued, ‘no one starts drinking or hitting their children simply because they move to Vollsmose’.44 Besides voicing their discontent in various opinion pieces, the residents adopted a specific strategy for how to deal with the situation. Again, the housing departments and, in particular, the elected resident representatives played a vital role in orchestrating the opposition. They produced stickers stating ‘UGEavisen unwanted’, which were then disseminated to Vollsmose’s population through the residential newspapers on the estate. The residents were encouraged to place the sticker onto their mailboxes, thus signalling a collective rejection of the magazine. Moreover, in a joint letter signed by the board of every housing department in Vollsmose, they approached the advertisers of the magazine and emphasised the fact that Vollsmose constituted a consumer base of 12,000 persons who, unless the editors apologised, would cancel their subscriptions to the magazine.45 However, as was the case in Gellerupplanen, such efforts did not have the desired outcome. In the official response from UGEavisen, the executive editor rejected the critique and insisted that the article was decent journalism.46 Although the residents of Gellerupplanen and Vollsmose did not receive an apology in either of the cases, their efforts to counteract the prevailing media narrative and claim their right to not be stigmatised point to their ability and will to actively influence their living environments. In contemporary media representations, the residents were often depicted through the trope of ‘passivity’.47 Yet, as the examples of this analysis showcase, the residents of both Gellerupplanen and Vollsmose were not just passive bystanders. Rather, they actively tried to oppose the image of the passive and socially maladjusted residents that the media representations ascribed to the social and spatial environment of mass housing estates. According to Isin, acts of citizenship should not be misconstrued as simply acts committed by citizens; instead, it is through such acts that individuals and groups emerge as citizens.48 Through the act of collectively opposing specific media representations and demanding an official apology from the offenders, the residents of Gellerupplanen and Vollsmose claimed their right to not be stigmatised and marginalised discursively in Danish society. Protesting the rent level

In the 1970s, certain parts of the Danish non-profit housing sector  – most notably mass housing estates such as Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand – experienced severe economic difficulties. Problems with renting out the dwellings, especially the many large apartments on the estates, combined with extraordinary expenses arising from increasing

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 223 moving frequencies, left the estates in a state of significant economic deficit. Though a housing settlement reallocating the means of funding for the non-profit housing sector had been reached in the Danish parliament in 1974, and enacted from 1975, the deficit was not rectified immediately on all of the estates.49 Seeking to repair the damages, the housing associations involved recurrently adjusted the rent level, causing it to increase significantly over time. These rent adjustments prompted notable reactions from the residents in Brønby Strand. During the summer of 1977, the inhabitants of the four housing departments constituting Brøndby Strand thus organised a collective rent boycott. Due to extraordinary difficulties in terms of renting out dwellings, by the mid-1970s, Brøndby Strand had developed into one of the most economically challenged estates within the Danish nonprofit housing sector. In late 1975, the problems had become so severe that public intervention was necessary to save the estate from bankruptcy. Following much negotiation, the Ministry of Housing proposed a housing settlement in the Danish parliament in March 1977, seeking to inject new capital into the estate by reallocating the means of funding between different governmental institutions. However, since this agreement was economically unfavourable for Brøndby Municipality, they decided to vote against it. Consequently, the proposal was abandoned, leading to the announcement of a 15 per cent rent increase in Brøndby Strand from 1 October 1977.50 The announcement of the rent increase led residents in one of the four housing departments on the estate to initiate preparations for a collective rent boycott in Brøndby Strand. To convince the other residents to join the cause and to update them on various developments, they produced and published pamphlets on a weekly basis during July and August.51 The idea quickly gained widespread support on the estate, and in August alone four editions of Strandløberen, all dedicated to that subject, were published.52 The plan was that instead of paying the rent as usual, every resident would, on 1 October insert the amount into a closed account, at which point only the means to cover ordinary operational expenses on the estate would be released. To adequately execute the boycott, every housing department would elect two representatives to a centrally based coordination group that held the overall responsibility. In addition, three to five representatives had to be elected in each housing block to conduct the practical work locally on the estate.53 During the first two weeks of August, the inhabitants of the other three housing departments in Brøndby Strand voted in favour of joining the operation at local resident meetings.54 Finally, at an extraordinary general assembly for the entire estate, held on 23 August, the boycott officially became a reality, as a large majority of the present inhabitants voted in favour of the operation.55 However, in practice, the execution

224  Mikkel Høghøj of the boycott did not prove necessary. In response to its announcement, arrangements were made between the municipal authorities and the housing associations involved to reduce the rent increase from 15 per cent to 5 per cent and to postpone it until 1 November. Since the municipal authorities also guaranteed that no further increases would be announced until April 1979 and agreed to resume negotiations to find a permanent solution to the economic problems of Brøndby Strand, the residents officially called off the boycott.56 Besides organising a boycott, the residents of Brøndby Strand also addressed the recurrent rent increases in more alternative ways. In November 1977, Strandløberen noted that a cabaret with the title ‘Better late than never’ had been set up and performed by a group of residents from all four housing departments on the estate. Through ten sketches, they portrayed the recent boycott situation from different angles and specifically addressed the democratic character of the project. Commenting on this aspect of the show, Strandløberen argued that ‘the recent activities in connection with the boycott have definitely helped to break down many social barriers between the residents’.57 This suggests that besides constituting a bulwark from outside interventions, the boycott also helped to promote a sense of community internally on the estate. The practice of organising the boycott and the outcome of the whole affair demonstrate how the residents in Brøndby Strand were able to successfully influence their circumstances by taking an oppositional stand against the public authorities and housing associations administering their homes. In their view, it was unfair that they were held economically accountable for structural problems that challenged Danish society in general.58 As stated in one of the pamphlets, they argued that because they had produced the social environment and community spirit of the estate, they were morally entitled to inhabit their dwellings during an eventual boycott.59 Thus, this case reveals further aspects of how residents on a Danish non-profit housing estate could utilise the organisational structure of resident democracy. The structure of the four housing departments and resident meetings provided the residents with a platform to effectively establish and coordinate a collective boycott on an estate comprising more than 2,800 dwellings. In contrast to the residents in Gellerupplanen and Vollsmose, the residents in Brøndby Strand succeeded in reaching their goal. Nonetheless, whether it concerned discursive or economic matters, the residents on all three estates actualised themselves as citizens by actively and vocally claiming their right to full inclusion in Danish society. Moreover, the rent boycott in Brøndby Strand reveals internal conflicts within the individual housing estates. Though structural and economic difficulties challenged the four housing associations administrating Brøndby Strand, it was, in the end, their decision to raise the rent level on the estate. Whereas the

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 225 residents and housing associations were joined in their common interest to oppose critical media representations, such an alliance was not given when it came to economic issues. This suggests that the conflicts on the estates were not necessarily just struggles between internal and external actors but could take a much more complex character. Conclusion: towards an urban history of welfare citizenship In the 1970s, the residents of the three Danish mass housing estates Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand used the platform of resident democracy to transgress and expand the category of citizenship. By challenging and opposing both rent increases and mass media representations, they asserted their rights as citizen to affordable housing and to not being stigmatised in Danish society. Besides emphasising the agency of the people inhabiting Danish mass housing estates, these protests point to the alternative actors, sites, and scales through which we can investigate the urban history of welfare citizenship. According to Isin, acts of citizenship produce not only citizens but also new sites and scales of contestation.60 Accordingly, the following paragraphs seek to connect this chapter to the broader field of urban history by addressing the actors, sites, and scales which were actualised through the conflicts in Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand. First, the conflicts in Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand give voice to a specific group of actors, the residents on Danish mass housing estates, and point to their precarious position in 1970s’ Denmark. As the analyses suggest, both discursive marginalisation and economic challenges prompted this group to take action and emphasise their position as full citizens in Danish society. Through their acts of protest, they transformed themselves into what Isin categorises as ‘activist citizens’. In his terminology, Isin distinguishes between ‘active’ and ‘activist’ citizens. While active citizens follow prescribed norms and reproduce the social and political order through, for example, acts of voting and taxpaying, activist citizens emerge as citizens through acts that rupture and challenge the existing order.61 Yet such acts rupture the existing order in a way ‘that enables the actor (that the act creates) to create a scene rather than follow a script’.62 This element of creativity was, as indicated earlier, central to the residents’ protests. While the residents in Vollsmose produced and disseminated stickers to challenge the media narratives, the residents in Brøndby Strand created both a sophisticated organisational structure that allowed them to successfully disrupt the planned rent increases and a cabaret to evaluate the entire situation and celebrate the community spirit on the estate. Second, these conflicts showcase how non-profit mass housing functioned as a ‘site of citizenship’ in 1970s’ Denmark. According to Isin, ‘the

226  Mikkel Høghøj “sites” of citizenship are fields of contestation around which certain issues, interests, stakes as well as themes, concepts and objects assemble’.63 As demonstrated earlier, during the 1970s mass housing estates such as Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand developed into sites around which issues concerning discursive stigmatisation and the right to affordable housing became negotiated in Danish society. In the substantial research literature on Danish welfare history, scholars have typically concentrated on the negotiation of more traditional forms of welfare provision, including social security, healthcare, and education.64 By approaching the question of citizenship from the angle of mass housing residents, this chapter has drawn attention to alternative sites of struggle where more informal welfare rights were negotiated. The residents of Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand were not formally excluded from Danish society, and they did not risk losing their citizen rights of, for example, suffrage and marriage. Nevertheless, their protests can be seen as acts of citizenship, because they, through these protests, asserted and claimed their rights as citizens to affordable housing and to not being stigmatised in Danish society. Moreover, this approach to citizenship can broaden our understanding of the relations between housing and welfare citizenship in post-war Denmark. In the existing literature on the history of housing in the context of the Danish welfare state, scholars have mainly approached the topic from the perspective of politicians, planners, and architects.65 From this perspective, citizenship was mainly produced in the form of new housing and was disseminated to the growing urban population through new types of urban and suburban geographies. By investigating the relations between mass housing and citizenship through the residents’ practices, it becomes possible to identify how such housing estates functioned as laboratories for negotiations of citizenship in ways that transgressed the visions of politicians and planners. In other words, mass housing estates did not just materialise planned visions for welfare citizenship; they also constituted a base from which the residents could negotiate what it meant or should mean to be a welfare citizen in 1970s’ Denmark. Third, these conflicts open a window onto the multiple scales involved in the production and negotiation of welfare citizenship in 1970s’ Denmark. Whereas scholars have traditionally centred their analyses of welfare and citizenship around the nation-state, this chapter draws attention to how these issues were also negotiated and produced at the level of local communities, housing estates, and, more broadly, cities. Neither Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, nor Brøndby Strand were merely backdrops to the broader development of the Danish welfare state. Not only did these estates function as sites of citizenship, but the residents also clearly identified with their specific housing estate as a place of communal belonging. Arguably, the structure of resident democracy helped to promote a local sense

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 227 of belonging among the residents. As demonstrated earlier, the housing departments and, more broadly, the housing estates worked as the main sites of political organisation and democratic participation for the residents of the three estates. Although strong internal cohesion characterised Gellerupplanen, Vollsmose, and Brøndby Strand, trans-urban connections can also be identified between them. All of the residential newspapers regularly published news about national housing policy and covered stories about the economic struggles of other non-profit housing estates. In Gellerupplanen, for instance, the residents specifically looked to the successful boycott in Brøndby Strand for inspiration when facing similar challenges in the autumn of 1977.66 These examples allude to how the residents’ protests cannot be confined to a local scale. Rather, their acts of citizenship played out at the intersection of multiple scales and had the potential to mobilise fellow residents within the non-profit housing sector. Thus, to reappraise the actors, sites, and scales through which modern citizenship has been formed and negotiated can help us gain new perspectives on the urban history of the Nordic welfare societies. We often hear the story about the benevolent Nordic welfare state and its homogenous history characterised by universalism, collaboration, and social democracy. By emphasising the heterogenous and, in some cases, conflict-laden relations through which different actors have claimed their status, rights, and positions as citizens, we can start to question aspects of this narrative. This allows us to move beyond traditional understandings of citizenship as merely a legal status and welfare as services provided by the state and instead explore other ways in which the social orders of the Nordic welfare societies have been shaped and negotiated at the nexus of a broad range of actors, institutions, organisations, geographies, and the materiality of everyday life. More specifically, I  suggest that the field of urban history has much to offer in this regard. In recent years, a new generation of urban historians has increasingly studied cities and urban spaces to shed light on wider socio-economic and cultural processes, a development that Simon Gunn and James Greenhalgh have recently defined as ‘the new social urban history’.67 By approaching the history of welfare citizenship through the lens of modernist mass housing estates and by addressing how Danish cities worked as laboratories for the social ordering of the welfare society, this chapter aims to fall in the same category. Notes 1 For the history of mass housing in a global perspective, see Florian Urban, Tower and Slab: Histories of Global Mass Housing (London: Routledge, 2011). 2 Mark Swenarton, Tom Avermaete & Dirk Van der Heuvel, Architecture and the Welfare State (London: Routledge, 2015). On Britain, see Miles Glendinning & Stefan Muthesius, Tower Block, Modern Public Housing in England,

228  Mikkel Høghøj Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); John R. Gold, The Practice of Modernism: Modern Architects and Urban Transformation, 1954–1972 (London: Routledge, 2007); James Greenhalgh, Reconstructing Modernity: Space, Power, and Governance in Mid-Twentieth Century British Cities (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017); Matthew Hollow, ‘Governmentality on the Park Hill Estate: The rationality of public housing’, Urban History, 37 (2010), pp.  117–35. On France, see Kenny Cupers, ‘The expertise of participation: Mass housing and urban planning in post-war France’, Planning Perspectives, 26 (2011), pp. 29–53; Kenny Cupers, The Social Project: Housing Postwar France (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2014). On West Germany, see Florian Urban, ‘The Märkisches Viertel in West Berlin’, in Mark Swenarton, Tom Avermaete  & Dirk van der Heuvel (eds.), Architecture and the Welfare State (London: Routledge, 2012), pp.  177–99. On the Low Counties, see Petra Brouwer  & Tim Verlaan, ‘Symbolic gestures? Planning and replanning Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer and New Town Almere since 1965’, Informationen zur Modernen Stadtgeschichte (2013), pp.  48–59; Michael Ryckewaert, Building the Economic Backbone of the Belgian Welfare State: Infrastructure, Planning and Architecture 1975–1973 (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2011). 3 On Denmark: Sidse Martens, Gudmand-Høyer, Rune Christian Bach, Birgitte Christian Jensen, Kari Moseng, Tom Nielsen, Karen Olesen  & Inge Vestergaard, Gellerup (Aarhus: Arkitektens Forlag, 2021); Mikkel Høghøj & Silke Holmqvist, ‘Da betonen blev belastende: Den emotionelle kamp om Gellerupplanen i 1960’erne og 1970’erne’, Temp vol. 16 (2018); Mikkel Høghøj, ‘Mass housing and the emergence of the “concrete slum” in Denmark in the 1970s & 1980’, in Miles Glendinning & Svava Riesto (eds.), Mass Housing of the Scandinavian Welfare States: Exploring Histories and Design Approaches (Edinburg: Docomomo, 2020). On Sweden: Per-Markku Ristilammi, Rosengård och den svarta poesin: En studie av modern annorlundahet (Stockholm: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag, 1994); Thomas Hall & Sonja Vidn, ‘The million homes programme: A  review of the great Swedish planning project’, Planning Perspectives, 20:3 (2005). On Norway: Laura Falender, Social Housing in Post-War Oslo and Edinburgh: Modernizing, Decentralizing, and Renewing the Urban Housing Stock, c. 1945–1985 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2013); Guttorm Ruud, Sites of Crisis: Histories of the Satellite Town (Oslo: The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, 2021). 4 See, for example, Natasha Vall, ‘Two Swedish modernisms on English housing estates: Cultural transfer and visions of urban living, 1945–1969’, Contemporary European History, 24:4 (2015); Helena Mattsson  & Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010); Vibeke Andersson Møller, Dansk arkitektur i 1960’erne (Humlebæk: Rhodos, 2019); Claus Bech-Danielsen, Moderne arkitektur – Hva’ er meningen? (Aarhus: Systime, 2004). 5 Christiane Reinecke, ‘Into the cold: Neighborliness, class, and the emotional landscape of urban modernism in France and West German’, Journal of Urban History, 48 (2020), p. 142. 6 Non-profit housing is the Danish version of ‘social housing’ or ‘public housing’. A more detailed definition of the Danish model for non-profit housing will follow later. 7 For a Nordic comparative perspective, see Bo Bengtsson (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historisk ljus (Malmö: Égalité, 2013).

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 229 8 For an overview of Danish resident democracy, see Lotte Jensen, ‘Udviklingstræk ved det almennyttige beboerdemokrati i Danmark 1900–1990’, in Morten Madsen, Hans Jørgen Nielsen & Gunnar Sjöblom (eds.), Demokratiets mangfoldighed: Tendenser i dansk politik (Copenhagen: Forlaget Politiske studier, 1995); Lotte Jensen, ‘Stuck in the middle? Danish social housing associations between state, market and civil society’, Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research, 14:3 (1997); Lotte Jensen, ‘Danmark: Lokal boendedemokrati och nationell korporatism’, in Bo Bengtsson (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historisk ljus (Malmö: Égalité, 2006); Anne Vorre Hansen & Luise Li Langergaard, ‘Democracy and non-profit housing: The tensions of residents’ involvement in the Danish non-profit sector’, Housing Studies, 32:8 (2017). 9 Engin F. Isin  & Bryan S. Turner, Handbook of Citizenship Studies (London: Sage, 2002); Grete Brochmann & Per Mouritsen, ‘En plads i verden. Det moderne medborgerskab’, Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning, 56:3 (2016). 10 See Thomas H. Marshall, Citizenship and Social Class (London: Pluto, 1996). 11 See, for example, Pnina Werbner & Nira Yuval-Davis, Women, Citizenship and Difference (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1999); Barbara Hobson, Jane Lewis & Birte Siim, Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002). 12 Ruth Lister, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); Engin F. Sin & Greg M. Nielsen, Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2008); Engin F. Isin, ‘Citizenship in flux: The figure of the activist citizen’, Subjectivity, 29:1 (2009); Krista Cowman, Nina Javette Koefoed  & Åsa Karlsson Sjögren (eds.), Gender in Urban Europe: Sites of Political Activity and Citizenship, 1750–1900 (New York: Routledge, 2014); Niels Nyegaard, ‘Heteronormative foundations of modern citizenship in early-twentieth-century Denmark’, NORA  – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 25:1 (2017); Leonora Lottrup Rasmussen, De fattiges ret: Forhandlinger af socialt medborgerskab som status og praksis i stat og kommune, 1849–1892 (Aarhus: Aarhus University, 2019). 13 Tom Hulme, ‘Putting the city back into citizenship: Civics education and local government in Britain, 1918–45’, Twentieth Century British History, 26:1 (2015); Tom Hulme, After the Shock City: Urban Culture and the Making of Modern Citizenship (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2019). 14 For historical studies of the individual housing estate, see Kim Tverskov  & Henning Sørensen, Fra fiskerleje til højhus: Historien om Brøndby Strand (Brøndby: Brøndby Lokalarkiv, 2000); Andreas Skov, ‘Fremtidsbydelen Vollsmose: Idealer og visioner for en ny bydel’, in Johs Nøgaard Frandsen & Jens Toftgaard (eds.), Odense i Forvandling: Drømme og virkelighed (Odense: Odense City Museums, 2013); Sidse Gudmand-Høyer et al., Gellerup (Aarhus: Arkitektens Forlag, 2021). 15 Bo Bengtsson, ‘Fem länder, fem regimer, fem historier – en nordisk jämförelse’, in Bo Bengtsson (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historisk ljus (Malmö: Égalité, 2006), p. 332. 16 Bo Bengtsson, ‘Varför så olika? Om en nordisk gåta och hur den kan lösa’, in Bengtsson 2006, pp. 1–19. 17 Bengtsson 2006, pp. 1–14. 18 Olaf Lind & Jonas Møller, Folkebolig Boligfolk: Politik og praksis i boligbevægelsens historie (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1994), p. 178. 19 Ibid., pp. 62–8. The first housing cooperative, Arbejdernes Andels Boligforening, was formed in 1912 in Copenhagen. Before 1920, similar associations had been formed in other cities including Aarhus, Esbjerg, and Fredericia.

230  Mikkel Høghøj 20 For an overview of the organisational history of the Danish non-profit housing sector, see Jensen 1997; Olaf Lind & Jonas Møller, Folkebolig boligfolk: Politik og praksis i boligbevægelsens historie (Aarhus: Arkitektens Forlag, 1994). For a Nordic comparative study, see Bo Bengtsson (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historiskt ljus (Malmö: Égalite, 2013). 21 Jensen 1997, p. 120. 22 Jensen 2006, pp. 45–50. 23 Bengtsson 2006, pp. 1–19. 24 See Jensen 1995; Jensen 1997; Jensen 2006; Hansen & Langergaard 2017. 25 For research on ‘participatory planning’, see Stephen V. Ward, Planning the Twentieth Century City: The Advanced Capitalist World (New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2002), pp. 236–7; Sebastian Haumann, ‘Participation and the modernization process’, Planning Perspectives, 26:1 (2011); Peter Shapely, ‘Planning, housing and participation in Britain, 1968–1976’, Planning Perspectives, 26:1 (2011); Cupers 2011; Hollow 2010. 26 Mikkel Høghøj, Between Utopia and Dystopia: A  Socio-Cultural History of Modernist Mass Housing in Denmark, c. 1945–1985 (Aarhus: Aarhus University, 2019), pp. 74–128. 27 Hansen & Langergaard 2017, p. 1,085. 28 Jensen 2006, pp. 79–81. 29 In 1971, KAB published the handbook Beboerdemokrati i praksis, written by their juridical manager Børge Høilund. It became so popular that it was republished in 1975 under the title Beboerdemokrati for alle. FAdB also contributed with the pamphlets Beboerselvstyre i almennyttige boligseleskaber and Beboerdemokrati – nogle praktiske råd og retningslinjer. 30 Engin Isin, ‘Theorizing acts of citizenship’, in Engin F. Isin & Greg M. Nielsen (eds.), Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2008); Isin 2009. 31 Isin 2008, p. 39. 32 See, for example, ‘Ny by ved Odense til 20,000 indbyggerer’, Berlingske Tidende (1 November 1964); ‘Ny by ved Brøndby Strand’, Berlingske Tidende (12 April 1964); ‘Ny by til 25,0000–Boligkvarter planlagt ved Brøndby Strand’, BT (22 February 1964); ‘En ny by til 10,000 beboere planlagt’, Aarhus Stiftstidende (18 November 1962); ‘Gjellerup-planen: Ny by med 10,000 indbyggere i dejlige omgivelser – og med lejligheder med indbygget fremtid’, Brabrand og Omegns Avis (8 May 1969). 33 For studies of the public discourse on mass housing in Norway, see Falender 2013. On Sweden, see Ristilammi 1994. For studies on Denmark, see Høghøj & Holmqvist 2018; Høghøj 2020. 34 For studies of the rediscovery of urban poverty in Western Europe from the 1960s onwards, see Christiane Reinecke, ‘Localising the social: The rediscovery of urban poverty in Western European “affluent societies” ’, Contemporary European History, 24:4 (2015); Otto Saumarez Smith, ‘The inner city crisis and the end of urban modernism in 1970s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 27:4 (2016); Aaron Andrews, ‘Multiple deprivation, the inner city, and the fracturing of the welfare state: Glasgow, c. 1968–78’, Twentieth Century British History, 29:4 (2018). 35 ‘B.T. har valgt Danmarks kønneste by: Gjellerup ved Århus betonby med trivsel’, BT (14 August 1970). 36 ‘Unge drikker for at klare sig i betonslum’, Ekstra Bladet (7 January 1974). 37 For studies on architectural determinism and modernist architecture, see Simon Richards, Architect Knows Best: Environmental Determinism in Architecture

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 231 Culture from 1956 to the Present (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012); Kenny Cupers, ‘Human territoriality and the downfall of public housing’, Public Culture, 29 (2017), pp. 165–90. 38 Brabrand-Årslev Local Archives (BÅL): Skræppebladet (February 1974), pp. 6, 21–5, 30. 39 ‘Vil ikke beskyldes for at bo i slum  – 10,000 beboere i Gellerupparken opfordres til at underskrive protest til pressenævnet’, Aarhus Stiftstidende (19 January 1974). 40 BÅL: Skræppebladet (May 1974), p. 23. 41 ‘Vollsmose er andet end beton’, Fyens Stiftstidende (13 August 1972). 42 ‘De skal vokse op på børnehjem – det er en tilværelse, fortvivlede børn i dag selv beder om’, UGEavisen, 17:1 (1979). 43 Odense City Archives (OCA): Granposten (February  1979), pp.  19–21, 26, March 1979, pp. 9–10; OCA: Birkebladet (January 1979), pp. 2, 12–3. 44 OCA: Granposten (February 1979), p. 19. 45 Ibid., p. 26; March 1979, pp. 9–10. 46 ‘Med venlig hilsen UGEavisen’, UGEavisen, 14:2 (1979). 47 Høghøj & Holmqvist 2018. 48 Isin 2008, p. 37. 49 Jensen 2006, pp. 77–81; Morten Lind Larsen & Troels Riis Larsen, I medgang og modgang: Dansk byggeri og den danske velfærdsstat 1945–2007 (Copenhagen: Byggecentrum, 2007), pp. 135–69. 50 Brøndby Local Archives (BLA): Strandløberen, 1977 (8a), pp. 5–18. 51 See BLA: Aktionspjece 1 (8 July 1977); Aktionspjece 2 (15 July 1977); Aktionspjece 3 (22 July  1977); Aktionspjece 4 (29 July  1977); Aktionspjece 5 (5 August 1977); Aktionspjece 6 (12 August 1977); Aktionspjece 7 (August 1977); Aktionspjece 8 (19–23 August 1977); Aktionspjece 9 (26 August 1977). 52 See BLA: Strandløberen (August 1977), I, Aug. II, Aug. III, Aug. IV. 53 BLA: Strandløberen (August 1977), A, pp. 26–8. 54 See BLA: Aktionspjece 7 (August 1977), p. 4. 55 BLA: Aktionspjece 9 (26 August 1977). 56 BLA: Strandløberen (October 1977), p. 3. 57 See BLA: Strandløberen (November 1977), pp. 8–9. 58 See, for example, BLA: Aktionspjece 1 (8 July 1977), p. 2. 59 See BLA: Aktionspjece 9 (26 August 1977), p. 2. 60 Isin 2009, pp. 370–1. 61 Isin 2008, p. 38. 62 Isin 2009, p. 379; See also Melanie White, ‘Can an act of citizenship be creative’, in Engin F. Isin & Greg M. Nielsen (eds.), Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2008), pp. 44–57. 63 Isin 2009, p. 370. 64 See, for example, Niels Ploug, Ingrid Henriksen & Niels Kærgård (eds.), Den danske velfærdsstats historie (Copenhagen: Socialforskningsinstituttet, 2004); Jørn Henrik Petersen, Klaus Petersen, Niels Finn Christiansen, Hans Chr Johansen  & Birgitte Holten, Dansk velfærdshistorie, Bd. 3: Velfærdsstaten i støbeskeen: 1933–1956 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2012); Jørn Henrik Petersen, Klaus Petersen, Niels Finn Christiansen, Hans Chr Johansen & Birgitte Holten, Dansk velfærdshistorie. Bd. 4: Velfærdsstatens storhedstid: 1956–1973 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2012); Jørn Henrik Petersen, Klaus Petersen, Niels Finn Christiansen, Hans Chr Johansen  & Birgitte Holten, Dansk velfærdshistorie, Bd. 5: Velfærdsstatens i tidehverv:

232  Mikkel Høghøj 1973–1993 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2013); Søren Kolstrup, Den danske velfærdsmodel 1891–2011: Sporskifter, motiver, drivkræfter (Frederiksberg: Frydenlund, 2015). 65 See, for example, Henning Bro, ‘Velfærdsstaten og boligen’, in Tim Knudsen (ed.), Dansk Forvaltningshistorie II: Stat, forvaltning og samfund: Folkestyrets forvaltning fra 1901–1953 (Copenhagen: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag, 2000); Larsen & Larsen 2007; Arne Gaardmand, Plan Over Land: Dansk byplanlægning 1938–1992 (Nykøbing Sjælland: Bogværket, 2016); Andersson Møller 2019. 66 BÅL: Skræppebladet (October 1977), pp. 5, 10. 67 James Greenhalgh, ‘The new urban social history? Recent theses on urban development and governance in post-war Britain’, Urban History, 47:3 (2020); Simon Gunn, ‘Review of boom cities: Architect planners and the politics of radical urban renewal in 1960s Britain’, Reviews in History (2020). https:// reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2361 (7 August 2023).

Bibliography Andersson Møller, Vibeke, Dansk arkitektur i 1960’erne (Humlebæk: Rhodos, 2019). Claus Bech-Danielsen, Moderne arkitektur – Hva’ er meningen? (Aarhus: Systime, 2004). Andrews, Aaron, ‘Multiple deprivation, the inner city, and the fracturing of the welfare state: Glasgow, c. 1968–78’, Twentieth Century British History, 29:4 (2018). Bengtsson, Bo, ‘Fem länder, fem regimer, fem historier – en nordisk jämförelse’, in Bo Bengtsson (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historisk ljus (Malmö: Égalité, 2006). Bengtsson, Bo, ‘Varför så olika? Om en nordisk gåta och hur den kan lösa’, in Bo Bengtsson (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historisk ljus (Malmö: Égalité, 2006). Bengtsson, Bo (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historiskt ljus (Malmö: Égalite, 2013). Brabrand-Årslev Local Archives, Brabrand-Årslev. Bro, Henning, ‘Velfærdsstaten og boligen’, in Tim Knudsen (ed.), Dansk Forvaltningshistorie II: Stat, forvaltning og samfund: Folkestyrets forvaltning fra 1901– 1953 (Copenhagen: Jurist- og Økonomforbundets Forlag, 2000). Brochmann, Grete & Per Mouritsen, ‘En plads i verden. Det moderne medborgerskab’, Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning, 56:3 (2016). Brøndby Local Archives, Brøndby. Brouwer, Petra  & Tim Verlaan, ‘Symbolic gestures? Planning and replanning Amsterdam’s Bijlmermeer and new town Almere since 1965’, Informationen zur Modernen Stadtgeschichte, 1 (2013). ‘B.T. har valgt Danmarks kønneste by: Gjellerup ved Århus betonby med trivsel’, BT, 14:8 (1970). Cowman, Krista, Nina Javette Koefoed  & Åsa Karlsson Sjögren (eds.), Gender in Urban Europe: Sites of Political Activity and Citizenship, 1750–1900 (New York: Routledge, 2014).

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 233 Cupers, Kenny, ‘The expertise of participation: Mass housing and urban planning in post-war France’, Planning Perspectives, 26 (2011). Cupers, Kenny, The Social Project: Housing Postwar France (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2014). Cupers, Kenny, ‘Human territoriality and the downfall of public housing’, Public Culture, 29 (2017). ‘De skal vokse op på børnehjem – det er en tilværelse, fortvivlede børn i dag selv beder om’, UGEavisen, 17:1 (1979). ‘En ny by til 10,000 beboere planlagt’, Aarhus Stiftstidende, 18:11 (1962). Falender, Laura, Social Housing in Post-War Oslo and Edinburgh: Modernizing, Decentralizing, and Renewing the Urban Housing Stock, c. 1945–1985 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2013). Gaardmand, Arne, Plan Over Land: Dansk byplanlægning 1938–1992 (Nykøbing Sjælland: Bogværket, 2016). ‘Gjellerup-planen: Ny by med 10,000 indbyggere i dejlige omgivelser – og med lejligheder med indbygget fremtid’, Brabrand og Omegns Avis, 8:5 (1969). Glendinning, Miles & Stefan Muthesius, Tower Block, Modern Public Housing in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). Gold, John R., The Practice of Modernism: Modern Architects and Urban Transformation, 1954–1972 (London: Routledge, 2007). Greenhalgh, James, Reconstructing Modernity: Space, Power, and Governance in Mid-Twentieth Century British Cities (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017). Greenhalgh, James, ‘The new urban social history? Recent theses on urban development and governance in post-war Britain’, Urban History, 47:3 (2020). Gudmand-Høyer, Sidse et al., Gellerup (Aarhus: Arkitektens Forlag, 2021). Gunn, Simon, ‘Review of boom cities: Architect planners and the politics of radical urban renewal in 1960s Britain’, Reviews in History (2020). https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2361 (7 August 2023). Hall, Thomas & Sonja Vidn, ‘The million homes programme: A review of the great Swedish planning project’, Planning Perspectives, 20:3 (2005). Hansen, Anne Vorre & Luise Li Langergaard, ‘Democracy and non-profit housing: The tensions of residents’ involvement in the Danish non-profit sector’, Housing Studies, 32:8 (2017). Haumann, Sebastian, ‘Participation and the modernization process’, Planning Perspectives, 26:1 (2011). Hobson, Barbara, Jane Lewis  & Birte Siim, Contested Concepts in Gender and Social Politics (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002). Høghøj, Mikkel, Between Utopia and Dystopia: A Socio-Cultural History of Modernist Mass Housing in Denmark, c. 1945–1985 (Aarhus: Aarhus University, 2019). Høghøj, Mikkel, ‘Mass housing and the emergence of the “concrete slum” in Denmark in the 1970s & 1980’, in Miles Glendinning & Svava Riesto (eds.), Mass Housing of the Scandinavian Welfare States: Exploring Histories and Design Approaches (Edinburg: Docomomo, 2020). Høghøj, Mikkel & Silke Holmqvist, ‘Da betonen blev belastende: Den emotionelle kamp om Gellerupplanen i 1960’erne og 1970’erne’, Temp, 16 (2018).

234  Mikkel Høghøj Hollow, Matthew, ‘Governmentality on the Park Hill estate: The rationality of public housing’, Urban History, 37 (2010). Hulme, Tom, ‘Putting the city back into citizenship: Civics education and local government in Britain, 1918–45’, Twentieth Century British History, 26:1 (2015). Hulme, Tom, After the Shock City: Urban Culture and the Making of Modern Citizenship (Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2019). Isin, Engin F., ‘Theorizing acts of citizenship’, in Engin F. Isin & Greg M. Nielsen (eds.), Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2008). Isin, Engin F., ‘Citizenship in flux: The figure of the activist citizen’, Subjectivity, 29:1 (2009). Isin, Engin F. & Greg M. Nielsen, Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2008). Isin, Engin F. & Bryan S. Turner, Handbook of Citizenship Studies (London: Sage, 2002). Jensen, Lotte, ‘Udviklingstræk ved det almennyttige beboerdemokrati i Danmark 1900–1990’, in Morten Madsen, Hans Jørgen Nielsen & Gunnar Sjöblom (eds.), Demokratiets mangfoldighed: Tendenser i dansk politik (Copenhagen: Forlaget Politiske studier, 1995). Jensen, Lotte, ‘Stuck in the middle? Danish social housing associations between state, market and civil society’, Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research, 14:3 (1997). Jensen, Lotte, ‘Danmark: Lokal boendedemokrati och nationell korporatism’, in Bo Bengtsson (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historisk ljus (Malmö: Égalité, 2006). Kolstrup, Søren, Den danske velfærdsmodel 1891–2011: Sporskifter, motiver, drivkræfter (Frederiksberg: Frydenlund, 2015). Lind, Olaf  & Jonas Møller, Folkebolig Boligfolk: Politik og praksis i boligbevægelsens historie (Copenhagen: Arkitektens Forlag, 1994). Lind Larsen, Morten & Troels Riis Larsen, I medgang og modgang: Dansk byggeri og den danske velfærdsstat 1945–2007 (Copenhagen: Byggecentrum, 2007). Lister, Ruth, Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). Lottrup Rasmussen, Leonora, De fattiges ret: Forhandlinger af socialt medborgerskab som status og praksis i stat og kommune, 1849–1892 (Aarhus: Aarhus University, 2019). Martens, Sidse, Gudmand-Høyer, Rune Christian Bach, Birgitte Christian Jensen, Kari Moseng, Tom Nielsen, Karen Olesen & Inge Vestergaard, Gellerup (Aarhus: Arkitektens Forlag, 2021). Marshall, Thomas H., Citizenship and Social Class (London: Pluto, 1996). Mattsson, Helena  & Sven-Olov Wallenstein, Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2010). ‘Med venlig hilsen UGEavisen’, UGEavisen, 14:2 (1979). Nyegaard, Niels, ‘Heteronormative foundations of modern citizenship in earlytwentieth-century Denmark’, NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 25:1 (2017). ‘Ny by til 25,0000–Boligkvarter planlagt ved Brøndby Strand’, BT, 22:2 (1964).

Negotiating citizenship on the urban periphery 235 ‘Ny by ved Brøndby Strand’, Berlingske Tidende, 12:4 (1964). ‘Ny by ved Odense til 20,000 indbyggerer’, Berlingske Tidende, 1:11 (1964). Odense City Archives, Odense. Petersen, Jørn Henrik, Klaus Petersen, Niels Finn Christiansen, Hans Chr Johansen  & Birgitte Holten, Dansk velfærdshistorie, Bd. 3: Velfærdsstaten i støbeskeen: 1933–1956 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2012). Petersen, Jørn Henrik, Klaus Petersen, Niels Finn Christiansen, Hans Chr Johansen & Birgitte Holten, Dansk velfærdshistorie. Bd. 4: Velfærdsstatens storhedstid: 1956–1973 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2012). Petersen, Jørn Henrik, Klaus Petersen, Niels Finn Christiansen, Hans Chr Johansen  & Birgitte Holten, Dansk velfærdshistorie, Bd. 5: Velfærdsstatens i tidehverv: 1973–1993 (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2013). Ploug, Niels, Ingrid Henriksen & Niels Kærgård (eds.), Den danske velfærdsstats historie (Copenhagen: Socialforskningsinstituttet, 2004). Reinecke, Christiane, ‘Localising the social: The rediscovery of urban poverty in Western European “affluent societies” ’, Contemporary European History, 24:4 (2015). Reinecke, Christiane, ‘Into the cold: Neighborliness, class, and the emotional landscape of urban modernism in France and West German’, Journal of Urban History, 48 (2020). Richards, Simon, Architect Knows Best: Environmental Determinism in Architecture Culture from 1956 to the Present (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2012). Ristilammi, Per-Markku, Rosengård och den svarta poesin: En studie av modern annorlundahet (Stockholm: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag, 1994). Ruud, Guttorm, Sites of Crisis: Histories of the Satellite Town (Oslo: The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, 2021). Ryckewaert, Michael, Building the Economic Backbone of the Belgian Welfare State: Infrastructure, Planning and Architecture 1975–1973 (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2011). Saumarez Smith, Otto, ‘The inner city crisis and the end of urban modernism in 1970s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 27:4 (2016). Shapely, Peter, ‘Planning, housing and participation in Britain, 1968–1976’, Planning Perspectives, 26:1 (2011). Skov, Andreas, ‘Fremtidsbydelen Vollsmose: Idealer og visioner for en ny bydel’, in Johs. Nøgaard Frandsen  & Jens Toftgaard (eds.), Odense i Forvandling: Drømme og virkelighed (Odense: Odense City Museums, 2013). Swenarton, Mark, Tom Avermaete & Dirk Van der Heuvel, Architecture and the Welfare State (London: Routledge, 2015). Tverskov, Kim & Henning Sørensen, Fra fiskerleje til højhus: Historien om Brøndby Strand (Brøndby: Brøndby Lokalarkiv, 2000). ‘Unge drikker for at klare sig i betonslum’, Ekstra Bladet, 7:1 (1974). Urban, Florian, Tower and Slab: Histories of Global Mass Housing (London: Routledge, 2011). Urban, Florian, ‘The Märkisches Viertel in West Berlin’, in Mark Swenarton, Tom Avermaete  & Dirk van der Heuvel (eds.), Architecture and the Welfare State (London: Routledge, 2012).

236  Mikkel Høghøj Vall, Natasha, ‘Two Swedish modernisms on English housing estates: Cultural transfer and visions of urban living, 1945–1969’, Contemporary European History, 24:4 (2015). ‘Vil ikke beskyldes for at bo i slum – 10,000 beboere i Gellerupparken opfordres til at underskrive protest til pressenævnet’, Aarhus Stiftstidende, 19:1 (1974). ‘Vollsmose er andet end beton’, Fyens Stiftstidende, 13:8 (1972). Ward, Stephen V., Planning the Twentieth Century City: The Advanced Capitalist World (New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2002). Werbner, Pnina & Nira Yuval-Davis, Women, Citizenship and Difference (London: Zed Books Ltd., 1999). White, Melanie, ‘Can an act of citizenship be creative’, in Engin F. Isin & Greg M. Nielsen (eds.), Acts of Citizenship (London: Zed Books Ltd., 2008).

11 Care, curiosity, and government A comparative history of hospitals in the Nordic countries, 1750–2000 Rolf Hugoson

During the 20th century, hospitals held prominent places in the urban landscapes of the Nordic countries. Huge buildings sometimes formed superblocks and were workplaces for thousands, even serving patients from far away. In the shadow of recent glass constructions, we find traces of earlier, smaller hospitals. Even if much has changed, both old and new hospital buildings can be defined as ‘Residential institutions for the use of the sick’.1 This chapter focuses on hospitals for the treatment of the bodily sick rather than asylums or mental hospitals. Both of these institutions, however, have common origins in early modern efforts to gather the sick (as well as the elderly, the infirm, and the poor) who could not count upon care by their relatives, in particular places. In the Nordic countries, with their sparsely populated cities, such early modern houses for the poor and the sick were quite small. Only in principle can they be compared to more complex systems, such as the 17th-century French idea of instituting hopitaux generaux, where all kinds of individuals whom the growing cities had no place for would be imprisoned.2 The modern hospital, as an institution for medical care, was invented somewhat later, in the 18th century. It had a relatively simple architectonical form, with the ideal of supervising a limited number of patients who lay in symmetrically distributed beds and rooms.3 In the 19th century, this form was increasingly standardised and spread from larger cities to the provinces. In the 1920s, these earlier versions grew into more complex ‘central hospitals’. Invented in between the World Wars, central hospitals grew to predominate after 1945 and reinforced the status of regional capitals. Specialised science and specialist clinics subsequently made it more difficult to find an all-encompassing view of patients. Who controlled hospitals in the Nordic countries in the modern epochs? What alternatives existed? Concerning biopolitics, Michel Foucault argued that liberal ideals about government evolved as much from below – through techniques of control over bodies in prisons, asylums, and hospitals – as from above, through the development of Enlightenment discourse.4 This is DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-14

238  Rolf Hugoson not to say that a centrally instituted power would lose all of its sovereign character merely because power is differently implemented across a territory or that every ideal and scientific result can be reduced to nothing more than effects of power. The ideal of charity (caritas), for example, has certainly been used often as an instrument by the church as well as by secular rulers, but the ideal remains meaningful as part of the wider field of ‘health care’. In the same field, we can also find scientific interests and results, themselves made all the more dynamic by scholarly curiosity.5 Interpreting the documentary sources is a long and slow process; therefore, my aim here is merely to give an overview. Fortunately, much scholarly literature is available, even if national or local narratives dominate hospital sections in libraries.6 Indeed, for the purpose of comparison between the Nordic countries, it makes sense to spell out the national differences as well as the similarities. Sweden was and remains the largest Nordic country. It had a population of 2.5 million inhabitants in 1820 and could thus compete with Belgium, Greece, or central Austria (the original Habsburg lands, excluding Bohemia, Galicia, Hungary, Veneto, and Lombardy). By way of contrast, in 1820, Denmark had 1.2  million inhabitants; Finland, 1.2; and Norway, 0.8. The corresponding figures for 2020 were Sweden, 10.4 million; Denmark, 5.8; Finland, 5.5; and Norway, 5.4.7 Even as one observes that hospitals have dominated the biopolitics of welfare states for a long time, it must be noted that earlier hospitals were rather ineffective. Only in the late 19th century did they begin to be seen as places where patients regained their health. National mortality levels decreased around the same time, notably because of improved living conditions in society. People survived because they had access to better food, housing, hygienic practices, and sanitary infrastructures, such as clean water, sewage, and waste disposal.8 New medical knowledge helped combat the remaining illnesses. Innovative technologies in industry, transport, and warfare sometimes caused backward steps: accidents, air and water pollution, and damage from weapons became more dangerous even as the possibility for care increased. The poor were more exposed than the wealthy. However, such challenges also served as motives for more concentrated improvement efforts, from the medical profession as well as from rulers. The Napoleonic wars destroyed orderly policies, for example, but prompted improvements of existing hospital regimes. Indeed, epidemics worked as incentives repeatedly during the 19th century. National and urban laws were enacted while private and public insurance regimes began to guarantee the finances of hospitals, as well as medical care in general. During the 19th century, modern welfare governance developed, and modern hospitals became centrepieces of European welfare states.

Care, curiosity, and government 239 Enlightenment thinkers had also presented visions of hospitals for the purposes of caring for the sick, protecting society from diseases, and promoting medical knowledge. Already in the 18th century, investments in hospital buildings provided certain European cities with prestigious landmarks. When searching for knowledge and exemplars, the Nordic countries could thus follow in the footsteps of larger countries like France, the Austrian Empire, Prussia and Hannover, England, Scotland, Italy (notably Piedmont), and even, somewhat later, the United States. With regard to the topic of hospitals, it makes sense to speak in terms of a long 19th century (1810–1920) and a short 20th century (1920–1990). Reforms implemented at the end of the Napoleonic wars certainly had their epistemic origins in earlier decades when biology and medicine increasingly appeared as modern sciences, gaining state support from a variety of royal academies. Nevertheless, the year 1810 signalled a new beginning in the history of hospitals, especially in the Nordic countries. Finland was separated from Sweden in 1809 and retained a national identity within the Russian Empire. Norway was separated from Denmark in 1814 and retained its own national identity during the enforced union with Sweden. As for the First World War – the end of this long 19th century – it was a horrible experience (in which only Finland participated, albeit on the margins), but again one that led to the development of new ideas that were implemented after the war. The Nordic countries had by then split up into four fully sovereign states. Norway became independent already in 1905, Finland in 1917 (Iceland, in contrast, gained its independence from Denmark only in 1944). The end of the Cold War broadened the Northern European horizon, in part through EU membership (or association, in the case of Norway), in part because the three Baltic states became independent again. Consequently, this creates a short 20th century, 1920–1990. This analysis, however, must start earlier. The first modern hospitals In the medieval European city, hospitals for the diseased and the poor (hospitale infirmorum et pauperum) were typically run by monastic orders, at least at their initiation. The major inspiration was the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem.9 In the Nordic countries, governments began adopting or supporting the Reformation during the 16th century and thus began suppressing monastic orders.10 Nevertheless, the small hospitals in the Nordic countries maintained their attachment to an older infrastructure – and to older forms of charity – that had once been connected to religious orders. The hospitals were embedded in urban society and still bore an older name: ‘House of the Holy Spirit’ (helligåndshus or helgeandshus, recalling the Ordo Sanctu

240  Rolf Hugoson Spiriti). These houses were rather common in Denmark and Sweden, where there were at least a number of cities. Finland (an integral part of Sweden) had one helgeandshus in the regional capital, Åbo (Turku). In Norway, the common name was hospital or sometimes only ‘spital’.11 After the reformation, the word ‘hospital’ increasingly replaced helgeandshus in central Denmark and in Sweden, including Finland. In Danish, this word was used consistently over time, just like in English. In Sweden, the word ‘hospital’ gained a bad reputation through its connection to early modern poorhouses and asylums, which is why the meaning changed. The word ‘hospital’ survived but was retained for asylums only; that is, it referred specifically to mental hospitals. When medical care was reformed in the 18th century, new buildings were instead called sjukhus (Finnish sairaala) or lasarett, a word that was reserved for military hospitals in other languages.12 It seems that in Denmark the word ‘hospital’ was rehabilitated in the mid-18th century by being reserved for the most prestigious national hospital, Copenhagen’s Royal Frederiks Hospital. The word’s prestige was also upheld by the Royal Frederiks Hospital’s 1910 follower, Rigshospitalet. The word sygehus is also used and still dominates in the provinces, with the exception of the three universitetshospital of Aarhus, Odense, and Roskilde. The Royal Frederiks Hospital in Copenhagen opened in 1757 with 300 beds and became the first purpose-built hospital for medical care in Scandinavia.13 Even if the corresponding institution in Stockholm, Serafimerlasarett, had opened already in 1752, it was housed in an older palace and initially had only eight beds available for patients. During the remaining part of the 18th century, this lasarett had 30 or 40 beds, but only in the early 19th century did a rapid increase occur, which led to the Serafimerlasarett reaching 100 beds in 1805 and 140 beds in 1823.14 A small Norwegian hospital was founded in Akershus, near Oslo, in 1756, followed by a military hospital in 1807. Oslo (known until 1924 as Kristiania) had medieval origins, but it has been argued that the ruling Danes kept Oslo from becoming a regional capital, and it was only the separation from Denmark that gave the city the opportunity to become a modern national capital where resources could be concentrated.15 It is true that Oslo did not become a modern capital until 1814 and that Norway’s first large hospital with medical training, the Rikshospital, opened only in 1826. Norway’s first university, however, had already opened in Oslo in 1811. Much later, in 1948, a second university followed in Bergen, the country’s second city. Importantly, both universities had medical faculties. In Finland, a new lasarett opened in 1759, in Åbo (Turku), which at that time was not only Finland’s largest city but also its only university city.16 We shall return to Finland later in this section, as it is a country that remained an integral part of Sweden throughout the 18th century.

Care, curiosity, and government 241 In 1800, the Danish capital had 101,000 inhabitants and was disproportionally larger than the country’s second city, Odense, which had fewer than 6,000 inhabitants. Denmark’s urban system had clearly taken on the appearance of a primate city system.17 Thus, at that time Denmark had just one university, in Copenhagen, of course; Aarhus University would not open until 1928. Odense, Aalborg, and Roskilde followed even later. The primate system was reinforced by the autocratic character of the Danish royal regime, which ended with the constitutional reforms of 1849. Earlier, for example, for King Frederik V (1746–1766), it was easy to command the allocation of funds, and he ordered the Norwegian postal service to provide a stable income for the Royal Frederiks Hospital.18 Sweden’s urban system, with its large capital, was also hierarchical. But the situation was more complex, Stockholm being dominant in a different way than Copenhagen.19 First, Sweden was a larger country, in terms of territory as well as population. Second, in the 17th century Sweden already had two universities, both located outside the capital: one in Uppsala and the other in Lund. For science in general, and the medical professions in particular, there existed alternative offers and demands thanks to these small, but important, university towns. Third, Sweden, like Denmark, is still a monarchy today, but already in the years 1718–1772, ‘the Age of Liberty’, the country was ruled not by the king but by parties in the parliament; that is, the Riksdag of the Estates. It was they who, after repeated debates in the 1740s, agreed to finance the Serafimerlasarett. Rooms were found in a palace on Kungsholmen in Stockholm; funds would be collected from all counties on a voluntary basis. The Serafimerlasarett was small but prestigious and had the support of Sweden’s two outstanding doctors at the time, the surgeon Olof Acrel and the physician Abraham Bäck. Indeed, they had also suggested that the Serafimerlasarett should be a teaching hospital. Their arguments made a strong impression, since they had complemented their training in the early 1740s by visiting hospitals and other medical and surgical institutions in several European cities, such as Copenhagen, Göttingen, Strasbourg, Geneva, Turin, Paris, Leiden, and London.20 In 1765, the Swedish parliament decided that the funds collected in the counties could also be used for local hospitals. A  number of these were established during the last decades of the 18th century. Of course, these early länslasarett were smaller than the Serafimerlasarett. The need for places where venereal diseases could be cured informed the decision to create this regional network of hospitals. In Finland, the Åbo lasarett was soon joined by five new hospitals: Vasa in 1768, Tavastehus in 1775/1785, Uleåborg in 1792, Kuopio in 1794, and Heinola in 1795. Together, these hospitals had only 60 beds.21 Growth

242  Rolf Hugoson followed slowly but was ensured by the Russian Emperor, who in 1811 declared that Finland’s six county hospitals should be supported. In the Swedish part of the kingdom, the 1765 parliamentary decision gave most county capitals an opportunity to found a new lasarett, sometimes as extensions of earlier institutions. For example, Uppsala had two small hospitals since the early 18th century: one of these belonged to the county and the other, the Nosocomium Academicum, to the university. Soon, other cities followed: Gävle and Växjö in 1767; Lund in 1768; Nyköping and Filipstad in 1773; Karlstad in 1775; Västerås, Sundsvall, Falun, Jönköping, Kalmar, and Kristianstad in 1776; Södertälje in 1777; Norrtälje in 1779; Halmstad in 1780; Visby in1781; Gothenburg in 1784; Umeå and Örebro in 1785; Härnösand in 1788; Mariestad in 1793; Vadstena in 1795; and Eskilstuna in 1796.22 As we see, in Sweden as well as in Finland, priority was given to hospitals in the county capitals. Only later, during the latter part of the 19th century, did smaller satellite hospitals also appear in second- or third-order cities in each county. Formally, all these new, small hospitals were supervised by a new order, somewhat anachronistically called the Knights of the Royal Order of the Seraphim. The order had supervised the small Serafimerlasarett since 1753. In more concrete administrative terms, the general principle was that a hospital should be run by a surgeon or medical doctor and uphold certain medical standards. Otherwise, hospitals retained much freedom due to being locally financed. In 1817, the county governor became the official president of each county hospital. These bureaucrats of the military nobility often played a dual role, pleading for their county in Stockholm as much as governing the county on behalf of the king. An important central institution first established in each of the two older Nordic countries was the Collegium medicum. Importantly, these colleges upheld professional standards by recognising medical exams. They also enforced and supervised the education of midwives. Thus, in Sweden, a professional regulation of 1723 forced cities to employ only midwives trained in Stockholm.23 In 1767, the Swedish Collegium medicum merged with the Sundhetskommission and took on the appearance of a state authority. It merged with its surgical counterpart, the Kirurgiska societeten, in 1797, and in 1813, the name of this collective agency was changed to Sundhetskollegium. In Denmark, a similar name change had already occurred in 1803, when the Collegium medicum became Sundhedskollegiet. In imperial Finland, a similar institution was established following the separation from Sweden, which retained the name Collegium medicum until 1878. Finally, in Norway, the minister of ecclesiastical affairs was responsible for physicians and general health services from 1814. Later, responsibility was

Care, curiosity, and government 243 handed over to the ministry of interior, like in Prussia, then to the ministry of justice, like in Denmark.24 In Denmark, provincial hospitals existed early on; a systematic regime, however, came into existence only during the first half of the 19th century, when 14 hospitals were built outside of Copenhagen in regional capitals. There were also many smaller hospitals, and, by 1880, Denmark had a total of 100 hospitals. However, in 1876 the ratio of beds per 1,000 inhabitants in the provinces was only 0.8 while the corresponding figure in Copenhagen was 5.9. In the capital, Royal Frederiks Hospital had grown to 402 beds and had been accompanied by the Almindeligt Hospital, a general hospital with 160 beds, and by the Kommunehospital, which had 844 beds.25 Provincial doctors and smallpox In the 18th century, private practitioners could only make a living in large cities, which even in an urbanised Denmark meant Copenhagen above all. Later, private general practitioners became more prominent in the provinces as well, since a large part of the middle class preferred to receive a doctor in their home, rather than staying in a hospital, well into the 20th century. Sweden was somewhat less urbanised and thus fully private general practitioners were rare, except in the largest cities. The dominant form was instead a regime of provinsialläkare or district doctors. Although established early in the 18th century, by 1773 there were merely 32 district doctors in Sweden, though some cities (specifically Stockholm, Gothenburg, Falun, Gävle, Malmö, and Kalmar) also employed public doctors called stadsphysici.26 In Denmark, public offices such as stadsphysici and district doctors also existed in the 18th century, but it was only in 1820 that a more systematic employment of 67 district doctors was established. Each had a district, and these were gathered into nine regions, each supervised by a medical officer known as a physicus. The Danish system was further improved by employment of one district midwife in each parish, with a total of 650 midwives in Denmark as a whole.27 Good sources are lacking for 19th-century ratios of doctors employed publicly versus privately. Still, we know that as late as in 1925, doctors in public employment in Sweden were more than 60 per cent of the total. In Denmark, the ratio was just 40 per cent. Until 1950, there were always more doctors in Denmark than in Sweden, despite Denmark’s smaller population. In Denmark, there were four doctors per 10,000 inhabitants already in 1880, a figure that Sweden reached only in the early 1930s.28 Hirobumi Ito also suggests that the scarce number of private doctors in Sweden may be due to a late urbanisation process. According to Ito, in

244  Rolf Hugoson 1880, 28 per cent of Danes lived in cities, whereas only 15 per cent of Swedes did so at this time.29 In Sweden, the role of the landsting as a regional hospital authority was established clearly and early, in 1862 (see the last section, later). Although the system of provincial doctors expanded somewhat, county hospitals grew rapidly, and since hospital doctors were also allowed to support themselves privately, the market for fully private practitioners was limited. Indeed, a truly independent system of private general practitioners never developed in Sweden, despite rapid urbanisation after 1900. Of course, the subsequent assumption would be that there were also fewer private doctors in Norway and in Finland due to their own late urbanisation. This may have been true during much of the 19th century, but in the 20th century, private doctors seem to have prospered in Norway, perhaps following the Danish example. In Norway, the 1836 cholera epidemic led to the employment of district doctors (distriktslegere), allowing the number of practitioners to increase significantly in rural areas. It has, however, been argued that Norwegian district doctors received a smaller salary and less administrative support than was deemed necessary.30 With reference to Sweden and Norway, Berg has concluded that ‘[whereas] the towns may already have had a doctordominated health system from the late eighteenth century, this was not true in rural areas until the late nineteenth or early twentieth century’.31 We should add that in Sweden and Finland district doctors were funded for travel into the surrounding country.32 During the mid-18th century, several provincial doctors in the Nordic countries used variolation as a preventive measure against smallpox. Smallpox was highly contagious and killed thousands every year. Early innovative efforts in the history of vaccination should not be forgotten, even if later developments were more effective. Edward Jenner’s experiment in 1796, for example, demonstrated the effects of vaccination, where the effective substance was retrieved from a cow with cowpox, a similar but not identical disease. In the earlier method (that is, variolation), a substance was taken from another person carrying the same disease. When a substance such as pus was given to the healthy person, the immune system would be activated, as we now say  – using terminology and knowledge about viruses unavailable before the 20th century. Notably, in western Finland, thousands of children participated in the early variolation efforts. Payments for each farmer’s child that was inoculated were distributed to the doctors from authorities in Stockholm. Despite some success, the ethics of these highly experimental activities appear dubious in retrospect. The first Swedish inoculations were performed in 1754, in Åbo, on the children of professors. But the risks were substantial, and in 1756, the influential physician Rosén von Rosenstein tragically lost his

Care, curiosity, and government 245 daughter. However, the variolation method was used on a voluntary basis, and the poor as well as the rich participated. In 1769, four children in the Swedish royal family, including the crown prince, were successfully inoculated. The general idea was that the method was too dangerous to be performed by anyone other than medical professionals, but there were exceptions.33 Experiments were also conducted in Denmark, in 1754: first by a priest in Hjortelund, then by a doctor in Tønder, also in southern Denmark. Some years later, an institute in the capital built small houses where children under treatment could stay. In 1760, the successful inoculation of the crown prince – during a process which took 84 days – was held up as a positive example of the method. Jenner’s new vaccination method arrived at the turn of the century and was first used in Copenhagen in the summer of 1801. In the fall of the same year, cowpox pus was imported to Sweden and then brought to Finland the following winter. In Norway, the first vaccinations were completed in 1803. On the whole, it is clear that this medical innovation received almost immediate recognition in the Nordic countries and that legislation reinforced the diffusion process.34 Venereal diseases, cholera, and healthcare insurance European authorities investing in medical hospital care during the 18th and early 19th centuries gave priority to the seriously ill while ‘merely poor’ adults deemed able to work were sent to workhouses, or to houses of correction, which were called tukthus (Norwegian and Swedish), tugthus (Danish), spinnhus (Swedish), or spinnehus (Norwegian). Poor children were sent to orphanages.35 The poor were worse off in terms of food, housing, and working conditions, which is why diseases hit them harder. Especially in urban environments, epidemics spread easily; among them were cholera, smallpox, and measles, as well as ‘social diseases’ like typhoid fever, diphtheria, and acute diarrhoea. The contagious character of these diseases was not fully understood until bacteria and viruses were identified at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century. Medical knowledge was instead based upon ancient Hippocratic ideas explaining epidemics with reference to noxious meteorological conditions, notably ‘miasma’ or bad air, presumed to be characteristic of a place with a specific constitutio epidemica.36 Nevertheless, contagion was recognised in port cities, for example, when it was noted that an epidemic immediately followed the arrival of a ship with sick sailors. A  Swedish example concerns fevers spreading in the naval bases Sveaborg and Karlskrona following the capture of the Russian ship Vladimir in 1788. The

246  Rolf Hugoson epidemic was observed and analysed by Arvid Faxe, the chief naval medical officer.37 Medical understanding of venereal diseases was hampered by moral standards that placed the blame on specific individuals or classes. Nevertheless, discriminatory mandatory examinations for certain groups still helped improve medical knowledge in the long run. Awareness of the usefulness of preventive efforts increased over the centuries. In Denmark, all peasants (almuen) were offered free treatment but were also obliged to contact a doctor if symptoms of venereal disease appeared.38 In early 19th-century Sweden, provincial doctors reported having examined impressive numbers of individuals, although the quality of the examinations might have left something to be desired. For example, in 1818 Acharius, a doctor in Vadstena, had examined 5,337 people in six parishes but found only 16 cases of venereal disease.39 Individuals from all classes suffered from venereal diseases, especially syphilis, an illness whose advanced symptoms made institutional treatment attractive. In Sweden, 18th-century regional hospitals were expected to treat venereal disease. Also, Danvikens Hospital in Stockholm had been established as a poorhouse and asylum but also housed a small kurhus or house of treatment. In 1816, a separate kurhus was given the romantic name ‘Eira’, which was a reference to a Nordic goddess of healing. Smaller kurhus followed in larger cities as well, such as Gothenburg, Norrköping, Norrtälje, Strömstad, Visby, Västerås, and Växjö.40 In Norway, leprosy hospitals (radesykhus) performed similar functions as the Swedish kurhus. In the absence of an understanding of viruses, it was perhaps not always easy to tell the difference between certain diseases.41 In the 19th century, it was precisely these radeshus that were transformed into small regional hospitals or amtssykehus. In large European cities, preventive measures against venereal diseases were increasingly directed towards prostitutes. Compulsory medical examinations – often weekly – were the cornerstone of the dominant ‘regulatory’ policies in the 19th century. However, since the local police were responsible for the registers, a high degree of variation existed between cities. Legal brothels were not common in the Nordic countries, except in Copenhagen and Åbo. The ‘regulatory’ policies ended when prostitution was legally abolished, first in Norway (1888), then in Denmark (1906), and finally in Sweden (1918). In Finland, brothels were abolished only in 1894.42 As for epidemics more generally, it should be noted that all of the Nordic countries demonstrated an ability to establish provisional hospitals in times of need. In the late 19th century, permanent epidemic hospitals were built separately from ordinary hospitals. A  special form was the sanatorium, introduced in Scandinavia in the final years of the 19th century for the treatment of tuberculosis. Sanatoria were typically placed in the countryside or were at least far away from large cities.

Care, curiosity, and government 247 Only a more detailed study of early provisional hospitals would be able to reveal their importance for improved medical experiences. During the wars, surgeons learnt how to attend to wounds in provisional hospitals. The dead allowed for anatomical research. For the living, various measures to control epidemics were tested, such as nutritious diets. During Sweden’s war with Russia in 1788–1790, a provisional military hospital was placed in Tölö, close to Helsinki. It had 600 beds, an amazing number for the era. In Denmark, during the first (1848) and second Schleswig Wars (1864), provisional lazaret were established in castles, such as in Augustenborg Castle on the Als peninsula.43 Another formative experience for 19th-century medical care was the cholera epidemic, arriving in Europe mainly from Russia. Finland suffered from the epidemic already in 1831, with 700 dead. When the other Nordic countries heard rumours of the cholera epidemic, all cities were ordered to create sundhetskommittéer (Swedish) or sundhedskommissioner (Danish) which were to plan for future cholera epidemics. In Sweden, the epidemic hit in 1834, while a more serious second wave arrived in 1851. Denmark was spared during the first wave, but cholera arrived in 1848 and came back in 1853. The epidemic reached Norway in 1848: 619 died in Bergen, which had a population of 23,000. In 1853, there were 1,597 deaths in Oslo, which had 48,000 inhabitants.44 In Finland, the epidemic returned several times. Furthermore, in the years 1862–1867 crop failures caused famines among the agricultural population. In previous years, Finland’s population had usually increased by 15,000 persons annually; in the years 1865–1868, however, the total population decreased by 115,000.45 When the causes of epidemics were considered, early suspicions focused on contagion and the need to separate sewage and drinking water. In Berlin in 1883, Koch identified the cholera bacterium, and thus supported the germ theory of diseases. In principle, these discoveries made it necessary to move beyond older quarantine regulations. But, as noted by Baldwin, Sweden lagged behind: ‘While the rest of Europe was adopting the inspection system, formalized at the 1893 Dresden conference, the Swedes retained more of their traditional quarantinist defenses’.46 The Norwegian historian Schiøtz (following Gerda Bonderup in Denmark) has demonstrated that, in Norway, the cholera epidemic turned the debate over public support for healthcare: if early laissez-faire liberals argued that each person should take care of themselves, the epidemic seemed to be a clear indication of the interdependence of social activities and the collective nature of risk.47 And yet, we have seen that hospitals had also been built during earlier, rather less liberal, regimes. Clearly, hospitals were an important complement to other forms of healthcare. Provincial doctors were systematically established in Finland

248  Rolf Hugoson and Sweden in the 18th century and in Denmark even earlier, albeit not as systematically; in Norway, the provincial doctor system was implemented with delay. In the context of health policies, we also find sickness funds, or insurance, paid for by members of guilds. This was an important institution in Denmark. However, in 1849, Denmark’s autocratic monarchy was replaced by a liberal monarchy. The government ruled with support from the parliament, which was elected by an increasing number of citizens.48 In 1857, the parliament enacted liberal trade laws directed against older corporations. The guilds were assumed to hinder free competition and were suppressed in 1861. What would happen, then, with the guilds’ sickness funds? Many Danish doctors had become dependent upon payments from these funds. Doctors were obliged to serve the truly poor for free, but also needed fees from those able to pay, or from their funds. Danish doctors campaigned through the newly started Danish Medical Association and succeeded in establishing the rule that the sickness funds of the guilds could be reinstated, even if the guilds ceased to exist. New funds were started, and their membership grew, particularly in rural areas. As Ito concluded, ‘Local medical associations and sickness funds in Denmark developed hand in hand towards the enactment of the first Sickness Funds Law of 1892’.49 Local agreements between funds and medical associations ensured that most payments from the funds were delivered either directly to the doctors or to hospitals or pharmacies. The less paternalistic alternative would have been to deliver cash benefits to the patients. The 1892 law made it possible for the state to support sickness funds, thus ensuring the unusual attractiveness of the system. While it remained voluntary, by 1920 as many as 40 per cent of the total Danish population had joined. In 1972, just before the voluntary funds were suppressed and replaced by an entirely public system, membership in the funds had reached 90 per cent of the population.50 A Swedish version of the Sickness Fund Law was enacted already in 1891. In Sweden, however, the preferred form was cash benefits, and only 40 per cent of the population had been reached by 1950. The new social movements (whether liberal, labour, or religious) did not press for a voluntary system. Swedish doctors apparently cared little for sickness funds. Ito has argued that a major reason for this lack of engagement from doctors was a lack of private practitioners in Sweden.51 The so-called universal public health insurance was established in Sweden in 1955, in Norway in 1967, and in Finland in 1972. Although Denmark also made its national health insurance universal only in 1972, a thorough comparison should take into account the comprehensive nature of the earlier Danish system discussed earlier.52

Care, curiosity, and government 249 If we focus on the hospital systems in each country, we see that they all developed greatly during the latter part of the 19th century. To what extent were they also affected by different institutional surroundings? To answer this question, differences between the political regimes of the four Nordic countries must be considered. Hospital systems in two old regimes compared with two new regimes As has been made clear in earlier sections, Denmark and Sweden dominated the development of modern hospitals during the 18th century. But during the next century, Finland and Norway were given more independent roles. During the wars of 1808 and 1809, Sweden lost Finland to Russia; this was ratified in the peace treaty of 1812 between Sweden and Russia. The treaty was soon reinforced by Sweden’s joining the alliance against Napoleon. Uniquely, Finland kept most of its Swedish legal system when it became a Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire. In the long run, Finland was able to develop its own form of democratic government, only somewhat dependant on the moods of the tsars. When the Grand Alliance defeated Napoleon in 1814, Denmark found itself on the losing side. The Norwegians took the opportunity to declare themselves independent. Although they set up a parliament and agreed on a liberal constitution, Swedish military intervention – supported by international diplomacy – forced Norway into a union with Sweden. Sweden’s king would also rule Norway, in particular by enforcing Swedish foreign policy. However, the Norwegian constitution remained in force, and the Norwegian parliament instituted laws independently of the acts of the Swedish parliament. Taxation was controlled by the parliament in each country rather than by the king. As mentioned, a Norwegian university with a medical faculty was founded first in 1814; this was an important part of the development of a Norwegian medical profession. Soon, investments in district doctors were made, and in 1826, the Rikshospital was inaugurated in Oslo (then Kristiania). In Finland, hospitals followed standards and directives from the Finnish Collegium medicum, which moved from Åbo to Helsinki in 1828. Already in 1812, Tsar Alexander II had decided to move the capital of the Grand Duchy from Åbo (Turku) to Helsinki. Yet he appreciated the idea of supporting county hospitals, since 1858 called länssjukhus. The city of Viborg, occupied by Russia since 1712, was returned to Finland, and its hospital became a county hospital. The Finnish government financed hospital buildings, but other costs had to be borne locally, reducing any eagerness to build new hospitals. For

250  Rolf Hugoson example, the old wooden hospital in Vasa was replaced by a stone building only in 1842 and also gained 120 beds.53 It is generally agreed that Finnish cities prospered under Russian rule due to their international role as nodes for trade and industry. The 1840s seems to have been particularly promising, because this was a decade when old county hospitals grew while additional ‘general hospitals’ were built – a process that continued in the following decades: Godby (in the Åland archipelago) received a hospital in 1841, Tampere in 1847, Jyväskylä in 1850, Joensuu in 1863, Kajana in 1872, Björneborg in 1875, Torneå in 1878, Nurmes in 1888, Ekenäs in 1892, Lovisa in 1894, Rovaniemi in 1891, Nyslott in 1894, and Jakobstad in 1908.54 In Finland, like in Sweden, huge ministerial bureaucracies were avoided. Ministers established general rules, which were implemented by bureaucrats or professionals in central government agencies, called collegia in the 17th century, later often styrelse or boards. The Swedish sundhetskollegium, which changed its name to Medicinalstyrelsen in 1878, remains a good example. Until 1960, four of the five governors of this agency had to be doctors – the fifth needed to be a veterinarian. In Finland, the corresponding medicinalstyrelse was governed by doctors until 1991.55 In 1905, the Norwegian government and parliament declared the union with Sweden dissolved. After some negotiations, the Swedish authorities (namely the king, government, and parliament) accepted this as a fait accompli. As proposed already in 1814, Norway then founded a new royal dynasty, offering the throne to the Danish prince Carl. Norway also followed Danish tradition by adopting a more ministerial government. Indeed, there was never any Collegium medicum in Norway. It existed in Denmark but was kept under close scrutiny by the responsible minister.56 Finland became independent in 1917, after the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. The parliament and the government in the Grand Duchy of Finland proclaimed the country’s sovereignty, and this was recognised by the Soviet government on the last day of 1917. On 4 January 1918, Finland’s independence was also recognised by France and Sweden, soon to be followed by Denmark, Norway, and several other countries. Civil war broke out when Russian revolutionary ‘red’ efforts spread to Finland and were resisted by the ruling ‘white’ elite. The latter soon got the upper hand, resulting in numerous executions of ‘red’ soldiers and civilians. Thousands of prisoners were kept in camps near Helsinki, and many died from trench fever (transmitted by the human body louse) or diseases related to starvation in the summer of 1918. Yet, unlike Germany and Italy, Finland was able to return to democracy and the rule of law. Indeed, women had been given the right to vote in Finland already in 1906. After 1919, all four Nordic countries began to emerge as democratic role models, even if Fascist movements created some worries in Finland between the wars.57 The Second World War slowed down reforms, although some

Care, curiosity, and government 251 hospitals were built or enlarged during the war years. Above all, the war gave priority to planning, leading to increasingly rapid changes after 1945. The short 20th century: regional hospital regimes under pressure Historically, all four Nordic countries have given their respective local and regional governments extensive autonomy.58 They remained unitary, rather than federal, states, although they had once been joined together as a federation, back in the 14th and 15th centuries. Outside of the cities, local communities developed alongside ecclesiastical parishes. As we know, the church had an established mission: to care for the poor and sometimes by extension for the diseased. Informed by the institutions of urban government and administration, civil municipalities slowly replaced the parishes, increasingly so during the late 19th century. When the four nation-states invested in regional hospitals, they could thus collaborate not only with the capital but also with regional capitals and sometimes with universities. In France, the famous département exists as a basic administrative unit, allowing the central state to dominate its territory. Similarly, in the Nordic countries, modern forms of regional government began as central efforts to control resources and ensure order. Yet these institutions could also involve early forms of political participation from below. During the 19th century, different forms of regional democracy appeared, where larger cities in the regions often took the lead. The traditional county in Danish is the amt, a word used also in Norway but replaced in Norwegian by fylke in 1919. In Sweden, the dominant word was län. The län shares territory with the landsting, a new democratic level created in 1862 and given administrative responsibility for the hospitals. Thus, the Swedish landsting corresponds to the Norwegian Fylkeskommune. Län or lääni is used also in Finland. However, instead of creating landsting, at the time of their independence in 1917, Finland developed federations of municipalities that administrated a hospital district. Or, somewhat simplified: a ‘hospital district’ is a Finnish municipal federation. Despite changes of borders over the years, Swedish landsting and Finnish ‘hospital districts’ have proved more resilient in the face of reforms than the corresponding Danish amt and Norwegian fylkeskommun. Two important exceptions to Sweden’s regional hospital regime as of 1862 are often forgotten. First, cities with more than 25,000 inhabitants (1/15th of the national population) had to stay outside of the landsting system. In the early 1900s, this concerned five cities: Gothenburg (until 1998), Malmö (until 1998), Norrköping (until 1867), Gävle (until 1963), and Stockholm (until 1963). Helsingborg also joined this system in the

252  Rolf Hugoson early part of the 20th century, albeit with many exceptions. These cities instead financed their own hospitals, from municipal rather than regional taxes. Unlike the landsting, these large cities did not have to care for the rural population or smaller towns and villages. Thus, the landsting surrounding the large cities tended to support smaller hospitals but also made contractual arrangements with large hospitals in cities. The 1928 Hospital Law confirmed the principle that either landsting or larger cities should finance their hospitals. Second, teaching hospitals connected to university faculties of medicine could rely on additional financing from the national government rather than from the regional council. Partnership arrangements were important already in the 19th century. As mentioned, there were three older university hospitals: Serafimerlasarettet in Stockholm (later Karolinska sjukhuset), Universitetssjukhuset in Lund, and Akademiska sjukhuset in Uppsala. A  fourth was added in 1949, Sahlgrenska in Gothenburg, followed by Umeå in 1965 and Linköping in 1975. All of these served as ‘county hospitals’ (Karolinska, a ‘national hospital’ until in 1982, was an exception). Since the 1960s, the Swedish university hospitals formed the basis of an additional regional level of seven sjukvårdsregioner, responsible for more advanced forms of specialist care. But the basic unit remained the regions, each dominated by a larger ‘central hospital’. Having a university hospital reinforced the leading roles of these regional capitals. As for the instruments of government, we established in the previous section the difference between, on the one hand, the Swedish–Finnish delegation to independent central government agencies and, on the other hand, the Danish–Norwegian reliance upon ministerial interventions. This difference affected the standing of regional governments as hospital administrators during the 20th century as well. Regional governments had a central role in the health systems of all four countries. However, in the early 21st century, radical reforms were undertaken in Denmark and Norway, whereas in Sweden and Finland older regional regimes survived. Norway is the best example of the rapid establishment of a new system for healthcare governance after the Second World War. The expansion was deemed necessary, not just because the war had ended, but also because of restrictions enacted by earlier governments. These earlier governments had tried, in the 1930s, to balance their budgets during the global economic crisis, reducing the number of district doctors and postponing new hospitals. Norwegian hospitals were typically built by welfare organisations on their own or in collaboration with municipalities. A few existing fylkessykehus (known before 1919 as amtssykehus) existed but remained small.59

Care, curiosity, and government 253 In 1938, Karl Evang, president of the small but influential Socialist Association of Physicians (SLF), published a critical review of the Norwegian health policy. In the report he criticised Medisinaldirektoratet, the agency he would soon preside over. Evang then joined the government in London during the war and maintained extensive contacts with his British and American colleagues interested in public health; furthermore, he appreciated the famous Beveridge Report of 1942, which led to the British nationalised health service (NHS).60 After the war, Evang reinforced his agency and changed its name to Helsedirektoratet. With the British plans as a model, he proposed a new hospital regime with extensive state support for a series of large ‘central hospitals’ in the regions. However, this project began rather tentatively, as support of a few municipal initiatives. Only in 1969 did a law proclaim that the fylke were responsible for hospitals. For two decades they gained in remits; then they lost elderly care to the municipalities. Finally, in 2002, the central government took over and organised four ‘health authority regions’. In other words, four state enterprises (regionalt helseforetak) were established to run hospitals as well as medical training. Thus, each region now had a university that offered medical training: not just in Oslo and Bergen but also in Trondheim and in Tromsø.61 In 1970, the Danish parliament made a law declaring that all hospitals (municipal as well as voluntary) should be handed over to the amts. The purpose of this law was to reduce the number of hospital owners and the concentration of hospital ownership was augmented by cutting the number of amts from 25 to 14. Copenhagen kept its municipal hospitals, as did its small neighbour Frederiksberg, which was geographically the western part of central Copenhagen but administratively independent.62 This early regional system lasted a little longer than in Norway. In 2007, all amts were suppressed and their hospitals handed over to five new hospital regions. Importantly, the Danish regions maintained their elected boards, as opposed to the Norwegian effort to run the regions as companies. The so-called Capital region took over the hospitals of Copenhagen and Frederiksberg. Somewhat unusually, the region of Sjælland (Zealand) did not have a university hospital at first, since Roskilde University did not have a full medical faculty – the lack of medical training and research meant that Roskilde was not a university hospital until 2016. Today, hospitals in the Nordic countries appear very similar to each other and entirely different from hospitals of the past. They are not merely places where patients are kept: they are huge workplaces where patients are at best cured and sent home. Furthermore, in cities as well as in villages, hospital care is not the only option: numerous centres for primary care also exist. Finally, care at home is supported by better diagnostics, medicines,

254  Rolf Hugoson and guidelines for self-care. The medical point of view was formerly countered by superstition; now it is accompanied or challenged by the internet. During the second part of the 20th century, the scientific gaze disassembled the human body beyond organs, moving on to cells and molecules. What we now call a hospital is more than a complex apparatus; it is a whole series of registers, engaging patients, and more generally citizens. It does so on a variety of screens, not just during operations but also in public–private marketing, preventive healthcare, and biotech. In university cities, university hospitals form important scientific enclaves, with research and education not only in clinical subjects but also in the so-called life sciences and biotechnologies. Specialised companies thrive on the knowledge thus produced. Innovations are pushed forward in such ‘smart’ or ‘sustainable’ hospital cities.

Notes 1 Brian Abel-Smith, The Hospitals 1800–1948: A Study in Social Administration in England and Wales (London: Heinemann, 1964), p. ix. 2 Roger Chartier, ‘La ville acculturante’, in Georges Duby (ed.), Histoire de la France urbaine, vol. III: La ville classique (Paris: Seuil, 1980), p. 237. 3 Anders Åman,  Om den offentliga vården: Byggnader och verksamheter vid svenska vårdinstitutioner under 1800- och 1900-talen: En arkitekturhistorisk undersökning (Stockholm: Sveriges arkitekturmuseum, 1976), pp. 13–18, 70–83. 4 Cf. Thibault Bossy & François Briatte, ‘Les formes contemporaines de la biopolitique’, Revue internationale de politique comparée, 18:4 (2011), pp. 7–12. 5 On curiosity and the Enlightenment, see Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983), pp. 377–436 (part III, Chapters 9–10). 6 A rare exception (although with focus on the 20th century) is Per Haave, ‘The hospital sector: A  four-country comparison of organisational and political development’, in Finn Christiansen et al. (eds.), The Nordic Model of Welfare: A  Historical Reappraisal (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006), pp. 215–42. 7 University of Groningen, ‘Maddison project database 2020’, www.rug.nl/ggdc/ historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-project-database-2020. 8 Sølvi Sogner, ‘The demographic transition during the period 1815–1870: Mortality decline and population growth’, in E. I. Kouri  & Jens E. Olesen (eds.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, vol. 2: 1520–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). 9 Guenter Risse,  Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A  History of Hospitals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 148ff. 10 In the 16th century, a movement to transfer authority from the church to secular (urban) authorities also took place in Catholic France, see Chartier 1980, p. 223f. 11 Ludvig Faye, Hospitaler og milde Stiftelser i Norge i Middelalderen: Foredrag holdte i det Medicinske Selskab i Kristiania 1881 (Kristiania: Steenske 1882), p. 16.

Care, curiosity, and government 255 12 In the 1730 plans for Stockholm’s first lasarett, this was contrasted with the capital’s poorhouse, the Danwiks hospital. Wolfram Kock, Kungl. Serafimerlasarettet 1752–1952: En studie i svensk sjukvårdshistoria (Stockholm: Karolinska institutet, 1952), p. 24; Åman 1976, p. 25 finds reason to believe that after the year 1800, mental illness dominated among interns in the Swedish hospitaler. 13 Signild Vallgårda, ‘Who went to a general hospital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Copenhagen?’,  European Journal of Public Health, 9:2 (June 1999), p. 97. 14 Kock 1952, p. 86f. 15 Jørgen Mikkelsen,  Urbanisering og bysystemer i Europa indtil ca. 1800: En oversigt over nyere forskningsresultater (Århus: Dansk Center for Byhistorie 2012), p. 158f. 16 Bertel von Bonsdorff, Läkare och läkekonst i Finland under 300 år 1640–1940 (Ekenäs: Ekenäs tr.-AB, 1978), p. 17. 17 Mikkelsen 2012, p. 173. 18 Kongelige Rescripter, Resolutioner og Collegialbreve for Danmark og Norge, Copenhagen 1786–1890, ed. Laurids Fogtman, vol. V (Copenhagen, 1787), 23 December 1752, p. 416. 19 Mikkelsen 2012, p. 232f. 20 Wolfram Kock,  Olof af Acrel: Öfver-kirurg, general directeur öfwer lazaretterne i riket (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1967), pp. 20–34. 21 Bonsdorff 1978, p. 23. 22 Ruth  Rosenius-Högman, Helgeandshus, hospital och lasarett i Västmanland 1345–1900 (Västerås: Vestmanlands Läns Tidning, 1953), p. 272f. 23 Christina Romlid, ‘Swedish midwives and their instruments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in Hilary Marland  & Anne Marie Rafferty (eds.), Midwives, Society and Childbirth (London: Routledge 1997), p.  39; Ibid., pp.  102–33; Anne Løkke, The “Antiseptic” Transformation of Danish Midwives, 1860–1920 (London: Routledge, 1997). 24 Aina Schiøtz, Det offentlige helsevesen i Norge 1603–2003: 2, Folkets helse – landets styrke 1850–2003 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2003), p. 141. 25 Signild Vallgårda, ‘Hospitals and the poor in Denmark, 1750–1880’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 13:2–3 (1988), p. 96f. 26 Otto Hjelt,  Svenska och finska medicinalverkets historia 1663–1812, vol. II (Helsinki: Helsingfors Central-Tryckeri, 1892), p. 133. 27 Løkke 1997. 28 Hirobumi Ito, ‘Health insurance and medical services in Sweden and Denmark 1850–1950’, in Arnold J. Heidenheimer & Nils Elvander (eds.), The Shaping of the Swedish Health System (London: Croom Helm, 1980), p. 58. 29 Ibid., p. 54. 30 Schiøtz 2003, p. 151; Ole Berg, ‘The modernisation of the medical care in Sweden and Norway’, in Heidenheimer & Elvander 1980, pp. 25, 35. 31 Berg 1980, p. 23. 32 Otto E. A Hjelt, Svenska och finska medicinalverkets historia 1663–1812, vol. II (Helsinki, 1891–1893), p. 18f. 33 Ibid., pp. 393–466. 34 Julius Petersen, Kopper og koppeindpodning: Et medicinsk-historisk tilbageblik i 100-aaret efter Jenner’s første vaccination (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1896). 35 An unusual Norwegian counterexample was ‘Den kombinerede Interning’ in Stavanger, Norway’s third city. This institution aimed at integrating hospital,

256  Rolf Hugoson asylum, and workhouse into one institution, but this was apparently not a success Bjørn Saxe Utne, ‘Den kombinerede indretning - en sosialpolitisk pakkeløsning fra 1800-tallets Stavanger’, (part 1) pp 151–81, (part 2) 43–82 and (part 3) 63–92 in Årbok, vol. 90–2 (Stavanger: Stavanger museum, 1980, 1981, 1982). 36 Sten Lindroth,  Svensk lärdomshistoria, del 3, Frihetstiden (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1978), p. 454. 37 Magdalena af Hällström, En sjukdom af högst elakt släckte: Återfallsfebern på Sveaborg och i Karlskrona 1788–1790 (Helsinki: Helsinki University, 2007). 38 Ida Blom, Medicine, Morality, and Political Culture: Legislation on Venereal Disease in Five Northern European Countries, c. 1870-c.–1995 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2012), p. 41. 39 Nils Thyresson, Från fransoser till AIDS: Kapitel ur de veneriska sjukdomarnas historia i Sverige (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1991), p. 82. 40 Kock 1952, p. 78f; Thyresson 1991, p. 85. 41 Schiøtz 2003, p. 322. 42 Peter Baldwin,  Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p.  398f; Tiina Tuulasvaara-Kaleva, ‘De prostituerades rättsliga ställning i Finland från 1870-talet till 1930-talet’, Historisk tidskrift för Finland, 75:2 (1990), p. 306. 43 Bonsdorff 1978, p. 20; Tomas Gustavsson & Peter Nilsson, ‘Svenska läkare vid fronten i dansk-tyska kriget 1864’, Läkartidningen, 45:18 (2010). 44 Schiøtz 2003, p. 25. 45 Bonsdorff 1978, pp. 103f, 136f. 46 Baldwin 1999, p. 179. 47 Schiøtz 2003, pp. 28f, 46f. 48 The liberal democratic regime encountered conservative resistance and lost ground notably after the loss of the German speaking provinces Schleswig and Holstein in 1864. 49 Ito 1980, p. 51. 50 Signild Vallgårda, Sygehuse og sygehuspolitik i Danmark: Et bidrag til det specialiserede sygehusvæsens historie 1930–1987 (Copenhagen: Københavns Universitet, 1992), p. 82. 51 Ito 1980, p. 54. 52 Jan Roth Johnsen, Health Systems in Transition: Norway (Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe on Behalf of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, 2006), p.  13; Minna Harjula, ‘Health citizenship and access to health services: Finland 1900–2000’, Social History of Medicine: The Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, 29:3 (2016), pp. 573– 89, 584f. 53 Anneli Mäkelä  & Armas Luukko, Vasa stads historia III 1809–1852 (Vasa: Vasa stad 1987), p. 287. 54 The encyclopedia Finland, article ‘Sjukvårdsväsen’ (2022). 55 Otto E. A. Hjelt & Wolfram Kock (eds.), Medicinalväsendet i Sverige 1813– 1962: Utgiven med anledning av Kungl. Medicinalstyrelsens 300-årsjubileum (Stockholm: Nordiska bokh, 1963). 56 Per Lægreid, ‘Nordic administrative traditions’, in P. Nedergaard  & A. Wivel (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics (Milton Park, Abingdon & Oxon: Routledge, 2017). 57 Aapo Roselius, Oula Silvennoinen & Marko Tikka, Svart gryning: Fascismen i Finland, 1918–44 (Stockholm: Lind & Co, 2018).

Care, curiosity, and government 257 58 Länsdemokratikommittén,  Länsförvaltningarna i Danmark, Finland, Norge: Rapport från Länsdemokratikommittén (Stockholm: Liber Förlag/Allmänna förlaget, 1980); Harald Baldersheim, Kurt Houlberg, Anders Lidström, Eva-Marin Hlynsdottir  & Pekka Kettunen, Local Autonomy in the Nordic Countries: A  Report for the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (Kristiansand  & Grimstad: Universitetet i Agder, 2019); Birgitta Ericsson (ed.), Stadsadministration i Norden på 1700-talet (Oslo: Universitets forlaget, 1982). 59 Schiøtz 2003, p. 194. 60 Frank Honigsbaum, Health, Happiness, and Security: The Creation of the National Health Service (London: Routledge, 1989). 61 Schiøtz 2003, pp. 310–48. 62 Vallgårda 1992, p. 191.

Bibliography Abel-Smith, Brian, The Hospitals 1800–1948: A Study in Social Administration in England and Wales (London: Heinemann, 1964). Åman, Anders, Om den offentliga vården: Byggnader och verksamheter vid svenska vårdinstitutioner under 1800- och 1900-talen: En arkitekturhistorisk undersökning (Stockholm: Sveriges arkitekturmuseum, 1976). Baldersheim, Harald, Kurt Houlberg, Anders Lidström, Eva-Marin Hlynsdottir & Pekka Kettunen, Local Autonomy in the Nordic Countries: A Report for the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (Kristiansand & Grimstad: Universitetet i Agder, 2019). Baldwin, Peter, Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Berg, Ole, ‘The modernisation of the medical care in Sweden and Norway’, in Arnold J. Heidenheimer  & Nils Elvander (eds.), The Shaping of the Swedish Health System (London: Croom Helm, 1980). Blom, Ida, Medicine, Morality, and Political Culture: Legislation on Venereal Disease in Five Northern European Countries, c. 1870-c.–1995 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2012). Blumenberg,  Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983). Bossy, Thibault  & François  Briatte, ‘Les formes contemporaines de la biopolitique’, Revue internationale de politique comparée, 18:4 (2011). Chartier, Roger, ‘La ville acculturante’, in Georges Duby (ed.), Histoire de la France urbaine, vol. III: La ville classique (Paris: Seuil, 1980). Ericsson, Birgitta (ed.), Stadsadministration i Norden på 1700-talet (Oslo: Universitets forlaget, 1982). Faye, Ludvig, Hospitaler og milde Stiftelser i Norge i Middelalderen: Foredrag holdte i det Medicinske Selskab i Kristiania 1881 (Kristiania: Steenske, 1882). Gustavsson, Tomas  & Peter Nilsson, ‘Svenska läkare vid fronten i dansk-tyska kriget 1864’, Läkartidningen, 45:18 (2010). Haave, Per, ‘The hospital sector: A four-country comparison of organisational and political development’, in Finn Christiansen et al. (eds.), The Nordic Model of

258  Rolf Hugoson Welfare: A  Historical Reappraisal (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2006). Hällström, Magdalena af, En sjukdom af högst elakt släckte: Återfallsfebern på Sveaborg och i Karlskrona 1788–1790 (Helsinki: Helsinki University, 2007). Harjula, Minna, “Health citizenship and access to health services: Finland 1900– 2000”, Social History of Medicine: The Journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, 29:3 (2016). Hjelt, Otto E. A., Svenska och finska medicinalverkets historia 1663–1812 (Helsinki: Helsingfors Central-Tryckeri, 1892). Hjelt, Otto E. A. & Wolfram Kock (eds.), Medicinalväsendet i Sverige 1813–1962: Utgiven med anledning av Kungl. Medicinalstyrelsens 300-årsjubileum (Stockholm: Nordiska bokh, 1963). Honigsbaum, Frank, Health, Happiness, and Security: The Creation of the National Health Service (London: Routledge, 1989). Ito, Hirobumi, ‘Health insurance and medical services in Sweden and Denmark 1850–1950’, in Arnold J. Heidenheimer & Nils Elvander (eds.), The Shaping of the Swedish Health System (London: Croom Helm, 1980). Johnsen, Jan Roth, Health Systems in Transition: Norway (Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe on Behalf of the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, 2006). Kock, Wolfram, Kungl. Serafimerlasarettet 1752–1952: En studie i svensk sjukvårdshistoria (Stockholm: Karolinska institutet, 1952). Kock, Wolfram, Olof af Acrel: Öfver-kirurg, general directeur öfwer lazaretterne i riket (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1967). Kongelige Rescripter, Resolutioner og Collegialbreve for Danmark og Norge, Copenhagen 1786–1890, ed. Laurids Fogtman, vol. V (Copenhagen, 1787). Lægreid, Per, ‘Nordic administrative traditions’, in P. Nedergaard & A. Wivel (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Scandinavian Politics (Milton Park, Abingdon & Oxon: Routledge, 2017). Länsdemokratikommittén, Länsförvaltningarna i Danmark, Finland, Norge: Rapport från Länsdemokratikommittén (Stockholm: Liber Förlag/Allmänna förlaget, 1980). Lindroth, Sten, Svensk lärdomshistoria, del 3, Frihetstiden (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1978). Mäkelä, Anneli & Armas Luukko, Vasa stads historia III 1809–1852 (Vasa: Vasa stad, 1987). Mikkelsen, Jørgen, Urbanisering og bysystemer i Europa indtil ca. 1800: En oversigt over nyere forskningsresultater (Århus: Dansk Center for Byhistorie, 2012). Petersen, Julius, Kopper og koppeindpodning: Et medicinsk-historisk tilbageblik i 100-aaret efter Jenner’s første vaccination (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1896). Risse, Guenter, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Romlid, Christina, ‘Swedish midwives and their instruments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries’, in Hilary Marland  & Anne Marie Rafferty (eds.), Midwives, Society and Childbirth (London: Routledge, 1997). Roselius, Aapo, Oula Silvennoinen  & Marko  Tikka, Svart gryning: Fascismen i Finland, 1918–44 (Stockholm: Lind & Co, 2018).

Care, curiosity, and government 259 Rosenius-Högman, Ruth,  Helgeandshus, hospital och lasarett i Västmanland 1345–1900 (Västerås: Vestmanlands Läns Tidning, 1953). www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-projectdatabase-2020. Schiøtz, Aina, Det offentlige helsevesen i Norge 1603–2003: 2, Folkets helse – landets styrke 1850–2003 (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 2003). Sogner, Sølvi, ‘The demographic transition during the period 1815–1870: Mortality decline and population growth’, in E. I. Kouri & Jens E. Olesen (eds.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, vol. 2: 1520–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016). Thyresson, Nils, Från fransoser till AIDS: Kapitel ur de veneriska sjukdomarnas historia i Sverige (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1991). Tuulasvaara-Kaleva, Tiina, ‘De prostituerades rättsliga ställning i Finland från 1870-talet till 1930-talet’, Historisk tidskrift för Finland, 75:2 (1990). Vallgårda, Signild, ‘Hospitals and the poor in Denmark, 1750–1880’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 13:2–3 (1988). Vallgårda, Signild, Sygehuse og sygehuspolitik i Danmark: Et bidrag til det specialiserede sygehusvæsens historie 1930–1987 (Copenhagen: Københavns Universitet, 1992). Vallgårda, Signild, ‘Who went to a general hospital in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Copenhagen?’, European Journal of Public Health, 9:2 (June 1999). von Bonsdorff,  Bertel, Läkare och läkekonst i Finland under 300 år 1640–1940 (Ekenäs: Ekenäs tr.-AB, 1978).

Part IV

Nordic cities meeting the 21st century

12 The Øresund metropolis The history of the inter-Scandinavian urban region Henning Bro

The Øresund region has a population of over three million inhabitants and includes: on the western side of the strait, Northeast Zealand in the easternmost part of Denmark, and on the eastern side, Scania in the southernmost part of Sweden. The whole of Northeast Zealand and significant areas to the south are part of the Danish capital metropolis while the rest of Zealand includes larger or smaller towns in a rural area that extends to the west towards the Great Belt, which separates Zealand and Funen, and to the south the islands Møn, Falster, and Lolland. Along the entire west coast of Scania is an almost fused urban belt from Trelleborg in the south to Helsingborg in the north while the rest of the region east of this consists of smaller towns in a large similar rural area, which extends to the Baltic Sea. In the year 2000, the two parts of the Øresund Region were connected by a fixed road and railway connection, Øresund Bridge, whereby some of the framework conditions were provided for the Øresund Region to develop into an inter-Scandinavian urban region, an Øresund metropolis. Introduction Except for the Swedish geographer Richard Ek’s PhD thesis from 2003, the existing literature has only dealt with the integration in the Øresund Region, which took place after the inauguration of the Øresund Bridge, but has not shed further light on the urban–historical preconditions of integration and its significance in the urban–regional context.1 On this basis, the purpose of this chapter is to (1) analyse the historical preconditions for the Øresund area to emerge as a relatively homogeneous region in the 1960s; (2) analyse the regional framework conditions that have been part of the efforts since the 1960s for the Øresund Region to develop into an interscandinavian urban region by the Øresund, and since then provided up to and after the opening of the Øresund Bridge in the year 2000; (3) to analyse the actors behind these framework conditions and the underlying

DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-16

264  Henning Bro actor interests; (4) to discuss whether the Øresund metropolis has acquired the character of an urban region. By an urban region is meant the following: a political–administrative and jurisdictional framework, functionally coherent and integrated urban system/network of/with real capital, labor, goods, services, information, cultures, and ideologies, interacting with functionally diverse urban units. Regional framework conditions are understood as physical prerequisites for an urban region’s development and functionality which include spatial planning, traffic planning, public transport, regional water and energy supply, regional environmental measures, and so on. In a transnational urban region, regional framework conditions also constitute the preconditions for the free movement of goods, labor, and capital within the region.2 This chapter focuses on these framework conditions and in particular on spatial planning, traffic planning, and public transport. The analyses of the articles are theoretically based on the phase model for the Øresund Region’s development into an urban region, which one of Denmark’s leading urban geographers, now deceased Christian Wichmann Matthiessen, set up in connection with the opening of the Øresund Bridge in 2000. Wichmann Matthiessen’s model is based on the two urban regions that are already on separate sides of the Sound in 1990 and that the interaction between urban units in these urban regions binds them separately. In this connection, Wichmann Matthiessen considers it crucial that in each of the Øresund Region’s two urban regions, regional municipal bodies are established to provide regional framework conditions for the urban regions to be able to further develop as such.

Box 12.1  Phases in the formation of the Øresund metropolis Christian Wichmann Matthiesen’s phase model illuminates how the two metropolitan communities by the Øresund could merge into one. In the figures in this text box, the cell on the left represents the Danish capital metropolis, while the cell on the right constitutes the metropolitan community, which on the west coast of Scania consists of the urban belt between Trelleborg and Helsingborg. Both cells, metropolitan communities, consist of urban units, indicated by black dots which interact with each other, the lines between the dots. In the starting position, the first figure, in 1990, Wichmann Matthiesen sees a capital metropolis that, after the closure of the Capital City Council the same year, is not equipped with a regional body,

The Øresund metropolis 265 that can provide regional framework conditions for the metropolis’ further development as an urban region, and which at the same time are not integrated or interacted with the West Scanian urban belt, which, with the dissolution of Malmöhus and Kristianstads län

Four simple drawings of two different networks that in three steps merge into one bigger network containing both networks, symbolizing the merger of the Øresund Region.

Figure 12.1 Phases in the development from the Øresund Region to the Øresund metropolis

266  Henning Bro and the establishment of Skåne Län, has in turn been given such a regional body: The dotted circle. During a first development phase, the second figure, where the Scanian urban belt and the capital metropolis are still isolated cells, urban regions, the capital metropolis, similar to the western Scanian urban belt, is again administratively united by a new regional administrative superstructure: Historically concrete in the form of the Capital Development Council that operates in the period 2000–2006. In the next phase of development, the third figure, the process of interaction between the capital metropolis and the West Scanian urban belt, symbolized by lines that cross the two cells, has been initiated while metropolitan communities are still governed by their respective regional bodies. Between these, however, in the development phase, a closer collaboration has arisen with a view to providing common regional framework conditions for the Øresund Region’s function as one urban region: symbolized by the two circles being moved closer together, and having a common set in a mathematical sense. In a third and final development phase, the fourth and final figure, the interaction and integration process is completed: The Scanian urban belt and the capital metropolis are merged into one urban region: one Øresund metropolis, characterized by a complex pattern of interaction between its urban units and governed by one regional body that provides regional framework conditions for the urban region. Symbolized by the dotted oval indication outside the cell: the Øresund metropolis.3 Immediately after the opening of the Øresund Bridge, Wichmann Matthiessen outlines a new phase in the development of the Øresund Region, where the urban units across the Øresund begin to interact with each other at the same time as the two regional municipal bodies create coordinated regional framework conditions for this interaction (see Box 12.1). The transition phase to the formation of an interscandinavian urban region, where Wichmann Matthiessen imagines that the interaction between the Øresund Region’s urban units is so advanced that it has formed an Øresund metropolis, whose regional framework conditions for further development as one urban region are provided by a joint Øresund Regional municipal body.4 Thus, a total fusion of market-created economic processes across the Sound both promoted and regionally governed by the regional framework condition of a public authority. Completely in line with the Nordic mixed economy with a market economy and a welfare state that redistributes the societal values through ​​ an organized labor market, a broad-spectrum

The Øresund metropolis 267 universal welfare system, framework conditions for further production and thus economic growth and regulation of negative effects of this growth. From towns along the Sound to an Øresund Region Ever since the Viking Age, the Sound and later its surrounding medieval towns became the link between not only the western and eastern Danish provinces but also for international trade between the Baltic Sea countries and Western Europe. To such an extent that Øresund’s strong concentration of market towns, which was a very distinctive phenomenon in the Nordic region, constituted a system of highly interacting cities. In reality, an urban network similar to those in continental Europe.5 A position that from the 17th century was weakened by the direct sailing between the Baltic Sea countries and Western Europe and by the demarcation between Denmark and Sweden, which in 1660 was laid in the Øresund. The economic, social, and cultural connections between Northeast Zealand and Scania thus became smaller, and in the following 200  years, the two parts of the Sound developed in different directions. On the west side of the Øresund, the economically, politically, and administratively powerful Danish capital further consolidated its position at the same time as its catchment area became increasingly densely populated, prosperous, and commercially differentiated. Scania, on the other hand, became one of Sweden’s outermost provinces in line with Norrland and mainly functioned as a granary for the cities of the central Swedish motherland.6 As a result of the industrialization and urbanization that prevailed from the middle of the 19th century, the towns and rural areas on both sides of the Øresund underwent an increasingly uniform development in the following more than 100 years. Copenhagen developed from a pre-industrial and fortified capital, with 130,000 inhabitants in 1850, to a capital metropolis, which in the 1960s included a population of 1.7 million inhabitants, a central city, the capital Copenhagen-Frederiksberg, characterized by an intense deindustrialization and depopulation, suburban belts with large residential and industrial areas that merge with the outside ring of market towns and around these larger villages and station towns that increasingly functioned as commuter cities.7 During the same period, the separate Scanian towns by the Øresund, with a population of about 30,000 inhabitants in the middle of the 19th century, developed into an urban band of increasingly interacting towns, which in the 1960s had close to half a million inhabitants and stretched from Trelleborg in the south, over Lund in the east to Helsingborg in the north. In the western area of South Scania, agriculture underwent the same expansive development that characterized the sector in Denmark, whereas

268  Henning Bro

Figure 12.2 Øresund in about year 1600. At the top left a sign Elsinore with Kronborg, which in its inner space contained the middle age castle: Krogen. Further down is Copenhagen. Opposite the Elbogen, Malmö, and north of Landskrona. Both cities surrounded by city walls and have the castles: Malmöhus and Citadellet. Opposite Elsinore lies Helsingborg and its middle age castle: Kärnan. Source: Courtesy of Frederiksberg City Archives. Engraving by G. Braun and F. Hogenberg, reproduced after Öresundsregionen: Information om Öresundsregionen (Lund: Öresundsrådet 1969), p. 18.

the agricultural districts in the province’s eastern and northern areas were characterized by an increasingly growing emigration.8 With the very strong and almost parallel industrialization and urbanization on both sides of the Øresund, the Øresund Region had from the middle of the 19th century and up through the first seven decades of the following century increasingly achieved the same demographic, business, and building composition. With the result that the region in the 1960s appeared as two urban regions, each with its own rural area with larger or smaller cities. However, this process of transformation did not mean that the Øresund Region in the 1960s constituted an integrated and interacting urban region. Commuting across the Øresund was minimal, and the Danish and Swedish industrial and trade branches, established on opposite sides of the Øresund, were more oriented toward the markets in the rest of Denmark on the continent or in the rest of Scandinavia than in the Øresund Region itself.

The Øresund metropolis 269

Figure 12.3 The capital metropolis, 1970. (Kulturhistorisk oversigt, Københavns Amtskommune, 1999). Source: Courtesy of Frederiksberg City Archives.

270  Henning Bro Despite the Scandinavian linguistic and cultural common good, a consequence of the Øresund Region was part of each nation-state, and for this reason there were diverse taxation rules and legislation that constituted significant barriers to the movement of labor, capital, and goods. In addition, the nation-states, individually or jointly, had established the connecting infrastructure that corresponded to their interests or could be operated on a commercial basis and not for the sake of integration in the Øresund Region. The establishment of the state ferry connections between Elsinore and Helsingborg and between Copenhagen Freeport and Malmö around the turn of the century, and in particular the expansion of the former connection, was primarily aimed at freight transfers and later passenger traffic to a greater extent to more distant destinations in Scandinavia. From the Swedish side, the ferry route between Elsinore and Helsingborg in particular and the ferry connections between Trelleborg and northern Germany were also important for transit traffic to and from the continent. That the Danish and Swedish state railways jointly owned Damskibsselskabet Øresund (the steamship company Øresund), like private players, established an increasingly frequent ferry service between Copenhagen and Malmö and between Dragør and Limhamn was based on the merits that the increasingly frequent pleasure and shopping trips across the Øresund came to constitute. The same commercial motive was behind, when Damskibssleskabet Øresund established an airboat connection between Copenhagen and Malmö in the mid-1960s – a consequence of increasingly frequent business trips between Copenhagen Airport in Kastrup and the airport in Sturup in Scania and Malmö Central Station. For the marginal commuting across the Øresund, the airboats had a minimal significance, as a consequence of the very high ticket prices and the connection’s vulnerability in relation to weather.9 A regional municipal collaboration across the Øresund Although a number of more or less extensive proposals for bridge or tunnel connections across the Øresund had been made since the end of the 19th century, it was not until the establishment of a Danish–Swedish government committee in 1954 that a permanent Øresund connection became more realistic. The planners on both sides of the Øresund began to imagine that straits on two urban regions could eventually merge into one urban region, and in both the Danish and the Swedish daily press presented visions for one, which was called Ørestaden. Based on the interest in promoting the development of the capital metropolis, the Danish visions set up an Ørestad with the metropolis as the all-bearing urban unit and a Scania, which, with some growth in the West Scanian urban belt, was assigned the role of the metropolis’ recreational

The Øresund metropolis 271 catchment area. Despite the capital metropolis’ dominant position in a future Ørestad, the Swedish visions for the development in Scania were characterized by a more balanced urban growth, where both Copenhagen and Malmö would become Ørestad’s center, and the outlying urban areas would form its periphery.10 Despite the conflicts of interest embedded in the Danish and Swedish visions for an Ørestad, the realization of this urban region was dependent on a fixed Øresund connection being laid between the two urban regions’ most densely populated area and thus between Malmö and the suburbs on Amager south of central Copenhagen districts. A route that came to stand in stark contrast to the railway tunnel between Helsingborg and Elsinore, which the Danish–Swedish government committee presented in its report in 1962 and which took into account only the transit traffic between Scandinavia and the European continent. The background for the municipalities of Copenhagen and Malmö initiating a lobbying collaboration to promote a route between Malmö and Amager, when the Danish government, based on a higher priority of a fixed link across the Great Belt, rejected the committee’s proposal, at the same time when there still were strong interests in continuing the efforts

Figure 12.4 This motive from 1960 could just as well have been from one of Malmö’s suburbs but is from one of the western suburban belts in the capital metropolis (Forstadsmuseet). Source: Courtesy of Rodövre Arkiv.

272  Henning Bro to realize fixed connections across the Sound. Interests that in 1964 led to the establishment of a Danish–Swedish working committee, which, based on socio-economic studies, was given the task of drawing up proposals for the most appropriate fixed Øresund connections. But also interests that were shared by the municipalities of Copenhagen and Malmö and led to the two municipalities expanding cooperation and in this context, inspired by the regional border cooperation initiated elsewhere in Europe, established the Øresund Council in 1963.11 The council had representatives of primary and county municipal actors from the entire Øresund Region to discuss various regional framework conditions for formation of an Ørestad and in this connection make recommendations to both municipal and state authorities.12 In the following years, the Øresund Council took the lead in supplementing a permanent Elsinore–Helsingborg connection with a similar one between Amager and Copenhagen and took a number of initiatives to promote integration in the Øresund Region. Thus, a fairly comprehensive cultural exchange program and studies of risks for oil pollution of the Øresund and the municipalities’ current wastewater discharge management and discharge of wastewater into the strait. The background for the Øresund Council making proposals for prevention of the problems, which later contributed to two countries’ governments in 1971 entering into an agreement on a coordinated effort in tackling oil pollution in the Øresund and in 1974 an agreement on the strait’s protection against pollution. The latter agreement made specific demands that all discharges from municipal wastewater treatment plant to the Øresund should be subjected to both mechanical and biological treatment while the wastewater discharged to part of the strait with poor water renewal should also undergo chemical treatment. The agreement also set quantitative targets for the discharged wastewater. With the agreement, a Danish–Swedish Øresund Commission was also appointed, which was to follow the countries’ measures to fulfil the agreement, assess the need for stricter cleaning measures, supplements, and changes in the agreement objectives and measures. The Commission was also to coordinate and, if necessary, initiate research projects relevant to the protection of the Øresund.13 The vision of an Øresund metropolis With the Danish–Swedish working committee’s recommendation of fixed Øresund connections between both Copenhagen–Malmö and Elsinore– Helsingborg in 1967 and the subsequent years’ Danish–Swedish government negotiations, which increasingly pointed in the direction, that fixed connections would be implemented, this main precondition for an Ørestad, or rather an Øresund metropolis, seemed to be realistic. The Øresund

The Øresund metropolis 273 Council thus received a stronger argument for promoting the efforts for regional framework conditions for the formation of an interscandinavian urban region by the Øresund. The background for the Øresund Council in 1967 decided to focus on the Øresund Region’s latest development and its opportunity to develop into one integrated urban region.14 A focus that should attract special attention in the government offices in the two capitals and among local and regional politicians in Scania and the capital metropolis. The Council, with the assistance of the Danish School of Economics in 1968, thus presented a study of the industrial location in the Øresund Region and conducted a special conference on the region in connection with the Nordic Council’s session in Stockholm the following year.15 The conference material, together with supplementary studies, carried out by Scania Regional Planning Institute, was compiled later this year in a white paper on the Øresund Region, which alternately in Swedish and Danish, set out a vision for an Øresund metropolis in the year 2000 and explained its preconditions and barriers.16 An Øresund metropolis which, according to the Øresund Council’s vision, in the year 2000 would include the whole of Scania and the Danish capital metropolis, would contain four million inhabitants and be connected by motorways on the routes Malmö–Copenhagen and Elsinore– Helsingborg, which were also to house a single-track railway. On land, motorways and high-speed trains were to connect the urban units of the Øresund metropolis, which would not be subordinate to the center–periphery relationship that otherwise characterized Europe’s urban regions. The Øresund metropolis would thus appear as a star-shaped multi-core urban region with several centers developed on the basis of the Danish capital, its radial suburbs with their station center formations, the surrounding market town ring, and the West Scanian urban belt with future urban outcrops toward Ringsjöen in Hörby and Höör, toward Ystad in Svedala and Sturup, and towar Kristianstad in Åstrop, Klippan, Perstorp, Tyringe, and Hässleholm. With the star city form that the Øresund metropolis would appear to be, it would accommodate extensive intermediate nature and agricultural areas that would have to be included for recreational purposes for the urban region’s large population. Like any other urban region, the Øresund Council’s vision for the Øresund metropolis was that it at the turn of the millennium would be fully integrated in terms of business, labor market, cultural, and social and characterized by a strong interaction between its urban units. Due to the Øresund metropolis’ significant concentration of higher research and educational institutions and highly qualified workforce, it would be based on knowledge-intensive, innovative, and highly specialized industrial production, within for example, biochemistry, electronics, and the pharmaceutical field and business-oriented both private and public service production.

274  Henning Bro

Figure 12.5 The Øresund Council’s vision for an Øresund metropolis in 1969. (Øresundsregionen 1969, p. 10). Source: Courtesy of Frederiksberg City Archives.

With this potential and proximity to the European continent, the Øresund metropolis would become a power center that could not be formed anywhere else in the Nordic region with the same effect and achieve such a central place in the international arena that it could stand strong in relation to the continent’s urban regions. Similar to the ideas of an Orestad, dating back to the end of the 1950s, the Øresund Council considered a certain unification of rules between the two countries, major infrastructural facilities, and an extensive public regional social planning to be decisive for the realization of the Øresund metropolis. A planning that, implemented by an Øresund Regional Planning Committee, at one and the same time was intended to define the limits of urban spread, localize urban built-up types, and traffic and supply lines while also comprising the environmental area, the traffic and supply sectors, and the areas of welfare together with the culture and leisure sectors. These were decisive framework conditions for the development of the Øresund Region into an Øresund metropolis but also into a welfare metropolis which would be a regional version of the two countries’ welfare states and capable of providing both social and cultural equalization and

The Øresund metropolis 275 considerable welfare benefits for the urban region’s population and with potential for spreading economic growth to the rest of Scandinavia.17 With the presentation of the vision for a future Øresund metropolis, the Øresund Council had also outlined the regional framework conditions for such an urban region, which, after the simultaneous changes in the performance of regional tasks in both countries, should be provided by their regional municipal actors both before and after the opening of the permanent Øresund connections.18 On this basis, the Øresund Council was able to establish a planning committee in 1972, which came to include representatives of Egnsplanrådet, Skåne’s Regional Planning Institute, Sydvästra Skånes Kommunalförbund, and Nordvästra Skånes Kommunalförbund.19 According to its articles, the planning committee was to provide relevant material of regional planning significance for the entire Øresund Region and was to prepare on this basis overviews of common planning problems in connection with fixed Øresund connections and with regard to location of residential and industrial areas, road connection, public transport system routes, holiday homes, and recreational areas. The knowledge gathered by the planning committee was to be passed on to the municipal regional planning authorities on both sides of the Øresund, so that on this basis they could carry out an informal coordination of the spatial planning in the entire Øresund Region. In the following two years, the planning committee carried out a major collection of regional planning material on both sides of the Øresund and even launched two investigations. One on the effects of a possible airport on Saltholm20 and expansion of airports in Kastrup and Sturup and on the Øresund ports’ ownership, area and capacity with regard to quay facilities, water depth, storage space, warehouses, refrigeration and freezing houses, and tank facilities as well as plans for future investments and expansions.21 The challenge facing the vision The planning committee thus had a function that had clear parallels to Egnsplanrådet, which the capital metropolis’ county municipal units established in 1967 and whose regional planning authority was directly transferred to Hovedstadsrådet, the regional municipal council of the capital metropolis in 1974. If a parliamentary majority in 1975 had not stopped the Danish ratification of the Danish–Swedish government agreement on fixed Øresund connections, the committee could have developed in the same direction. Precisely when the two countries’ social democratic governments already had made major concessions in the negotiations leading up to the agreement on the fixed Øresund connections, and at the same time the first post-war period was characterized by the establishment of municipal bodies for a number of Western Europe’s urban regions

276  Henning Bro (see Box 12.2). Initially, the planning committee could thus have developed into a body where binding decisions were implemented on the coordinated provision of regional framework conditions and perhaps in the next stage to an Øresund regional body. However, as in the last post-war period no real negotiations took place between the Danish and Swedish governments on a permanent Øresund connection, any kind of notion of an Øresund metropolis became a fatamorgana in the rest of the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, preconditions for further integration in the Øresund Region faded as a result of a number of international and national circumstances. After various attempts to achieve an overall Scandinavian participation in the EC or a Nordic common market in the years around 1970, only Denmark became a member of the EC in 1973, whereby the Øresund Region was divided between Western Europe’s two market organizations, with consequent more difficult terms for bilateral Danish–Swedish government agreements on special integration measures in the region, the movement of labor, goods and capital, and the abolition of other integration-inhibiting nation-state barriers. In addition, the international economic crisis and competition broke through in the last post-war period. The intensified technological development, the relocation of industrial enterprises outside national borders, the competition from larger entities, and the industrial closures and reductions that followed the crisis, thus struck particularly hard in the Øresund Region. Despite a significant increase in employment in the service industries, industrial employment fell so much more in the capital metropolis compared to the rest of Denmark that the metropolis had a weaker employment development during the period than the rest of the country. With a significant laborintensive and competitive large-scale industry, the West Scania urban belt was hit in a similar way, just as the difficulties of the industry-dependent subcontractors, the higher unemployment, and the less rising real incomes affected both urban belt in Scania and the capital metropolis.

Box 12.2  Urban regions and municipal bodies Geographers Christian Lefèvre and Hans Thor Andersen have developed two models for how regional framework conditions in the urban regions of Western Europe were provided at the same time as local municipal solutions for the transition of large areas from country to city were found. The supra-municipal model, which, inter alia originated in Berlin in 1920, was characterized by the incorporation

The Øresund metropolis 277 of all of urban region’s municipalities into one metropolitan municipality, which with a directly elected municipal council provided the regional framework conditions for the urban region’s function and resolved local municipal imbalances due to differences in municipal economic resources. The inter-municipal model emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of the period’s violent urban sprawl and the consequent need for regional plan initiatives. The model, which was for example, implemented with the establishment of the Greater London Council, Stockholm County Council, and Hovedstadsrådet, had both a primary municipal level comprising all primary municipalities in an urban region and a secondary regional municipal superstructure to create framework conditions for the urban region’s function as such. Lefèvre and Andersen have also shown that the interregional governance models of urban regions were most often scaled down or distorted in the 1980s and 1990s and after the turn of the millennium as a result of the greater growth potential that urban regions achieved in the new geopolitical and economic world order. The secondary municipal superstructures were dissolved, for example, Greater London Council in 1986 and the Capital Council in 1990, or was decimated so that the primary municipal level could act more independently, compete with each other, and show entrepreneurship with other public and private actors in an increasingly globalized economy. The state, on the other hand, set the overall framework, but without a regional governing intermediary, which was replaced by inter-municipal, more informal collaborations with the character of networks and voluntary participation process, created more flexible structures with several actors: municipalities, other authorities, organizations, and private actors. These networks or collaborations were not decision-making but based on initiative creation and collaborative processes and characterized by light administrative structures to achieve the greatest flexibility.22 As a result of the industrial crisis and its consequences, the Øresund Region also experienced a declining population development compared to the two countries of which it was a part. During the period, the capital metropolis, as a consequence of the extensive migration and deindustrialization in the central city, Copenhagen-Frederiksberg, had to note a decrease in population of 2 per cent, while population growth in the Scanian urban belt was less than in the other Swedish urban regions and in Scania and Sweden overall.

278  Henning Bro With the stagnation and crisis that thus came to characterize the Øresund Region in the last post-war decades, its two parts gradually became more national than regional-oriented. In order to minimize labor costs, Danish industrial investments moved to a greater extent toward the province and to achieve a larger share of the national Swedish food market, capital forces invested to a greater extent in a specialization of Scanian agricultural production in both its primary and industrial processing stages. At the same time, regional and traffic planning and traffic expansion both in the capital metropolis and in Scania from central government not only were reduced in scope but also failed to dispose in respect of the urban and business growth that could result from a future permanent Øresund connection. In Scania, the plans for the motorway expansion were aimed more at connections to the rest of Sweden and the predominantly state public transport local and regional traffic had a significant backlog. In the metropolitan area, both the railway and the motorway to the Øresund coast and the Saltholm airport disappeared from the regional planning at the same time as both this planning and the expansion of the motorway network were subject to centrally set sharply reduced growth targets. State national planning dispositions, which directed the county municipal regional planning toward decentralized urbanization and a higher degree of regional equalization throughout the country, together with the capital metropolis’ crisis and stagnation weakened its role as both a growth generator in the Øresund Region and a driving force in the region’s integration.23 Altogether, the last post-war period saw the disintegration of a number of crucial premises for a future Øresund metropolis. A situation that was not exactly profoundly regretted in neither the Swedish capital nor Gothenburg, and which in 1977 prompted the liberal Stockholm newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, to ironize the fate suffered by the predominantly Social Democratic vision of an interscandinavian metropolis.24 Under the caption ‘This was the great dream about Øresund’, the newspaper featured a parodied layout drawing of an excessively built-up urban region on both sides of the Øresund, linked by a highly distorted bridge across the strait with a jumble of approach ramps that connected heavily congested motorways, cutting their way through the urban landscape. Its airspace at Saltholm airport was crowded by Concord-like aircraft while huge helicopters were hovering in the skies above the nuclear power station on the island of Hven. At the bottom of the drawing were the Scanian forests and at the top a deserted Zealand connected to Funen with a similarly oversubscribed giant bridge. The scenario is viewed to the right in the drawing by four of Scania’s driving forces behind the vision of the Øresund metropolis: Malmøhus Läns governor and a moderate and two social democratic regional politicians, whom Dagens Nyheter strongly ironically described

The Øresund metropolis 279

Figure 12.6 Øresund bridge and Peberholm immediately before the opening in the year 2000. Source: Courtesy of Frederiksberg City Archives.

as ‘the bridge builders and the last enthusiasts’. A  gallery of characters, who in another drawing in the article were portrayed as tired, abandoned, and illusion-free old men, who had to admit that the vision of an Øresund metropolis did not become a reality. An almost injury comment on the fact that Stockholm and probably also the central power had got rid of the threat, that the Øresund metropolis would have posed. From Øresund Region to Øresund metropolis? With the changed economic and political world order that came to characterize the decades around the turn of the millennium, new conditions were created for the integration of the Øresund Region and to lift both the capital metropolis and the West Scania urban belt out of the stagnation and crisis that had burdened the two parts of the region in the last postwar period. The EC became the EU, of which Sweden and later a number of Eastern European countries became members, and which generated increased European integration, in which Europe’s urban regions and other highly interacting regions gained a much stronger position. Contexts that contributed to the increased integration that came to characterize the Øresund Region during the period, and which were supported by the opening of the Øresund Bridge and its gigantic connection facility, Øresund regional dispositions among regional authorities on both sides of the Sound, included urban transformations and upgrades of public

280  Henning Bro transport both in the capital metropolis and in Scania, significant contributions from EU interreg programs and a number of other integration-promoting initiatives and decisions. Facilities, decisions, and initiatives that were crucial for the Øresund Region during the period not only to enter a more stable growth but also for it to be characterized by an unprecedented strong integration, which provided an opportunity for the region to develop into an Øresund metropolis. The last post-war period’s closure or relocation of the Øresund Region’s traditional and labor-intensive industry continued while its remaining industry was transformed into knowledge-intensive, export-oriented, and highly specialized production. At the same time, there was a significant increase in the number of employees and companies in trade, turnover, and service industries as a result of the growth in the public sector and in business-oriented private service production. A transformation process which, together with the improved economic conditions from the end of the 1990s, resulted in the Øresund Region achieving economic growth of ten per cent in the years 2000–2006, increases in the employment rate and the number of newly established companies, and a population growth that came to be over Denmark and Sweden as a whole, and which brought the region’s total population up to three million. At the same time, the interaction between the two parts of the Øresund Region was significantly expanded in the form of a significant expansion of trade between Denmark and Sweden, a sharp increase in the number of relocations across the Øresund, and especially from the capital metropolis to the Malmö area, and a consequent very violent increase in the extent of the Øresund commute and especially in the one that went from Scania towards the capital metropolis.25 But 2000s were just a short-lived momentum for the Øresund Region’s integration process. Commuting and economic transactions across the Sound never reached the same level as in the metropolitan metropolis and in the West Scanian urban belt, and with the impact of the so-called financial crisis in 2008, Øresund integration showed its vulnerability. The number of newly established companies, the employment rate, and commuting in the Øresund Region as a whole showed a declining trend and never again reached the same level as in the first years of the 2000s. A consequence of the regional framework conditions for further integration in the Øresund Region, and thus the preconditions for a Øresund metropolis, were not provided to a sufficient extent. Despite the two countries’ membership of the EU, the harmonization of tax rules and legislation, that was a prerequisite for the Øresund Region to develop into an urban region, was not implemented. Although the two nation-states provided the Øresund Bridge, its connecting facilities and regional connecting train traffic, in the form of the Øresund train, in a coordinated manner, it did not

The Øresund metropolis 281

Figure 12.7 The Øresund train on the way from Copenhagen Central Station to Karlskrona in Blekinge in Sweden. Here at one of the city tunnel’s underground stations, Triangeln, in Malmö around 2010. Source: Courtesy of Frederiksberg City Archives.

leave it to regional municipal authorities across the Øresund to provide the other regional framework conditions for the Øresund Region’s integration. As a result of the caution of nation-states to cede sovereignty to transnational public regional bodies and that the contemporary had, so to speak, run away from regional municipal bodies (see the text box above). With the consequence that the bodies that succeeded the Øresund Council, the Øresund Committee (1993–2016) and Greater Copenhagen (2016–), became even more impotent, and that regional framework conditions were left uncoordinated to the municipal regional authorities on each side of the Øresund. In Scania, admittedly only to a few actors (Region Scania and in the public transport area its transport company, Skånetrafikken), but in the capital metropolis to an ever-increasing number of regionally uncoordinated acting municipal actors. After the abolition of Hovedstadsrådet in 1990, first of the capital metropolis’ five county municipal units and from 2007, when the county municipalities were abolished, only the municipalities, which only with very overall state directives could freely dispose not only locally but also regionally. With the consequence that local interests came to be given a higher priority in relation to regional considerations. With the result that the capital metropolis’s two most resourceful municipalities, Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, through their own physical planning and in various joint urban transformation and metro companies, in which the

282  Henning Bro state also participated, carried out very extensive urban transformation of older industrial areas and remaining infrastructure facilities to modern housing and office and institutional complexes for the public and especially service-producing professions. At the same time as the central city, Copenhagen-Frederiksberg, public transport is being upgraded to a much greater extent than in the rest of the capital metropolis, resulting in an expansion of a regional municipal bus network, the establishment of a ring S-line, and an increasingly extensive metro network financed by the revenues obtained by the state and municipal company’s selling the transformed areas to private capitalist investors. A consequence is that the municipalities, from a neoliberal mindset, have to be freed for regional municipal planning and management to compete with each other under a very general state objective and achieve a better ‘product’. With the result that the capital metropolis’ central city in the decades around the turn of the millennium experienced extreme growth on the basis of the business-oriented service production oriented to this. At the same time as income, business, and population development became significantly smaller in the rest of the capital metropolis and Scania, the remaining industrial production and transport, warehousing and logistics services were mainly located here. A skewed development of the Øresund Region, which with the legislative and borderline difficulties for commuting and business location and temporary effects, as the financial crisis and restrictions on the Øresund traffic in connection with the influx of refugees in 2015 and the corona crisis in 2020–2021, thus placed significant barriers to integration in the Øresund Region and its opportunity to develop into a unified homogeneous urban region – an Øresund metropolis.26 Conclusion The Øresund Region and the notions that this could develop into an urban region had roots in the urban network that surrounded the Øresund in the Middle Ages and was intact, until the Danish–Swedish border was laid in the strait in 1660. This demarcation cut off a significant part of the interactions across the Øresund and led to the two parts of the former Danish Empire developing in different directions. Copenhagen developed as the capital of the Danish Empire into a city of European dimensions, made a decisive influence on its catchment area in Northeast Zealand, and gained a volume that distanced itself violently from the country’s other cities. Scania, on the other hand, became an outer province in Sweden as a granary for the rest of the country and its cities, even those that lay along the Øresund coast, went into a long period of stagnation. With the industrialization and the accompanying urbanization that took place from the middle of the 19th century and intensified over the following

The Øresund metropolis 283 ten decades, the business, population and settlement development on each side of the strait became parallel. To such an extent that in the 1960s a Øresund Region had emerged with two urban regions on each side of the strait, in the western part of the Sound in the form of a capital metropolis of almost 1.7  million inhabitants with Copenhagen-Frederiksberg as the central city, surrounding suburbs, which had grown together with the outer ring of the market town, around which, at the same time, commuter satellite cities had emerged. On the east side of the Øresund in the form of an increasingly fused city belt between Trelleborg in the south and Helsingborg in the north and a rural land to the east. Together with ongoing Danish–Swedish government negotiations on a future fixed Øresund connection, planners around 1960 was imagining that the Øresund Region could develop into an inter-Scandinavian urban region, an Øresund metropolis. The background for the Øresund Region’s regional municipal actors in 1963 established the Øresund Council, which was to discuss and make recommendations to state and municipal authority with regard to the regional framework conditions for the region’s development into an urban region up to and after the state had established one or more fixed links. The starting point for the Øresund Council in 1969 to present a vision for an Øresund metropolis in the year 2000, just as government negotiations at the same time pointed in the direction of extremely realistic possibilities for not just one, but two fixed Øresund connections. In the vision for the Øresund metropolis, the Øresund Council also set out the regional framework conditions that up to and after the nation-states’ ‘establishment of the fixed links, as a result of the two countries’ simultaneous municipal reforms, would fall on the Øresund Region’s regional actors. The basis for the Øresund Council in 1972 established a planning committee, which included representatives of the Øresund Region’s regional municipal bodies and provided relevant material of regional planning significant for the entire Øresund Region. A material basis with overviews of common planning problems in connection with fixed Øresund connection and with regard to the location of residential and industrial areas, road connection, the public transport system’s routes, holiday home towns and recreational areas. A knowledge that the planning committee was to pass on to the municipal regional planning authorities on both sides of the Øresund so that they on this basis could carry out an informal coordination of the physical planning in the entire Øresund Region. If a parliamentary majority in 1975 had not stopped the Danish ratification of the Danish–Swedish government agreement on the fixed Øresund connections, the committee could certainly have been given an actual decision-making mandate. Precisely when the social democratic

284  Henning Bro governments of the two countries had already made major concessions in the negotiations leading up to the agreement on the fixed Øresund connections, and that the first post-war period was characterized by the establishment of municipal bodies for a number of Western Europe’s urban regions. Initially, the planning committee could thus have developed into a body where binding decisions were implemented on the coordinated provision of regional framework conditions and perhaps in the next stage to an Øresund municipal regional body. That fixed Øresund connections were abandoned and in the remaining part of the 1970s and 1980s, the Danish–Swedish government negotiations were not conducted in this respect not only led to the vision of an Øresund metropolis becoming weaker but also became a setback for integration in the Øresund Region. A setback that was also supported by the Øresund Region’s location in each part of Western Europe’s two market communities after 1973, nation-state barriers, and a backlog in the laying of motorways and local and regional railways in relation to the urban growth that had already taken place on both sides of the Øresund. Challenges that in the last post-war period were exacerbated by recurring economic crises, stagnation, and a simultaneous political inertia in relation to the establishment of the necessary regional infrastructure. But the challenges were overcome after the turn of the millennium by the establishment of the Øresund Bridge, its gigantic connection facility, urban transformations, upgrades of public transport on both sides of the strait, and a number of other integration-promoting initiatives and decisions. Dispositions that in the first years of the 2000s were decisive for a significant expansion of trade between Denmark and Sweden, a sharp increase in the number of relocations across the strait, and a very sharp increase in the scope of the Øresund commuting. An interaction across the Øresund, which, however, did not come close to the equivalent on each side of the strait, and even in the rest of the 2000s and in the following decade was subjected to a setback. Not only as a result of temporary effects such as the financial crisis and reductions in the Øresund traffic in connection with the refugee influx in 2015 and the corona crisis in 2020–2021 but also as a consequence of regional framework conditions for the Øresund Region’s integration and further transformation into an Øresund metropolis was not provided to a sufficient extent. The consequence of continued differences in national legislation, an uncoordinated provision of regional framework conditions in the separate parts of the Øresund Region, and an increasingly unplanned regional development in the capital metropolis skewed the entire region. Despite the slowdown in the integration of the Øresund Region since the end of the 2000s, the notion of a future Øresund metropolis lived on. The vision of the interscandinavian urban region was expanded with ideas

The Øresund metropolis 285 about the effects on the interaction in the Øresund Region that would follow from the introduction of the euro as a means of payment in both Denmark and Sweden, an Øresund Region in 2030 with 4.2 million inhabitants, a settlement and population concentration in the capital metropolis and the West Scanian urban belt, a complete harmonization of the rules for taxation and income transfers, a social dimension in the integration process, a fully integrated labor market, significant reductions in bridge tariffs, and regional political–administrative autonomy in the region. As the older visions for an Øresund metropolis were also included in the new, comprehensive expansions of the traffic infrastructure in the form of proposals for new fixed connections between northern Copenhagen and Landskrona or between Helsingborg and Elsinore, an Øresund metro between the capital’s Metro and Malmö Central Station and high-speed trains, that in the long run would integrate the Øresund metropolis into a mega-region of 12 million inhabitants comprising the whole of Northern Europe from the Hamburg–Berlin line in the south to the Oslo–Stockholm line in the north.27 A mega region that will be able to attract the massive investments to Northern Europe, which would create further growth, that would be the very basic precondition for improved living conditions, and the securing and expansion of the welfare state form. But will there be political courage to provide the enormous infrastructure investments and the sweeping integration measures that will be crucial to the mega region? And, if so, for how long will the current prevailing narrow-minded neonationalism, spiced with petty fascist xenophobia, block the further political, economic, social, and cultural integration of the EU? Crucial to the greater autonomy of European mega regions vis-à-vis nation-states and the ability to create the necessary framework conditions according to local regional needs. But also so that the EU welfare state can set the overall planning models and ensure both European infrastructure facilities for traffic, supply and communication, the necessary regulations of both the development of the economy and its various forms of savagery, in terms of environmental impact and social and ethnic secretion, and minimum standards for the individual national welfare states and their providers and offerings. Notes 1 Richard Ek, Öresundsregion  – bli till! De geografiska visionernas diskursiva rytm (Lund: Institutionen för kulturgeografi och ekonomisk geografi, Lunds universitet, 2003). 2 Henning Bro, Hovedstadsmetropolen – den danske byregion. Regionale rammebetingelser for hovedstadsområdets udvikling som en byregion 1850–1990 (Copenhagen: Forlaget Frydenlund, 2022), pp. 23, 45–8.

286  Henning Bro 3 Christian Wichmann Matthiessen, ‘The Oresund region: Large scale cross boundary infrastructure as a driving force behind organisational change: Regional integration’, in Transport and Land-Use Policies: Innovation in Institutional Arrangement for Coordination (Copenhagen, 2000), p. 107. 4 Ibid. 5 Urban networks emerged during the period in several places in Europe with greater urban concentrations, for example, in Germany. The cities acted as links between two or more regions and mediated goods and services between them. Jørgen Mikkelsen, Urbanisering og bysystemer i Europa indtil ca. 1800: En oversigt over nyere forskningsresultater (Aarhus: Dansk Center for Byhistorie, 2012), pp. 42, 145–52. 6 Sten Carlsson & Jerker Rosén, Svensk historia 1 (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers förlag, 1969), pp.  176, 184, 434–5; Gunnar Wetterberg, Skånes historia 3: 1720–2016 (Stockholm: Bonniers förlag, 2017), pp.  41–95, 120–3, 130–48, 161–84, 259–78; Otto Sjögren, Sverige: Geografisk beskrivning, band 3 (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand 1932), pp. 198–9, 333, 340, 352–3; Danmarks Historie (København: Politikkens Forlag), bd. 3 (1963), pp.  301–6: bd. 4 (1963), pp. 189–201; bd. 5 (1963), pp. 467–73; bd. 7 (1964), pp. 482–525; bd. 8 (1964), pp. 191–200, 225–36, 241–3, 419–23. 7 Bro 2022, pp, 116–28, 266–91, 532–79. 8 Wetterberg 2017, pp. 283–351, 355–89, 401–3, 406–11, 422–8, 450–1, 513– 18, 547–67; Sjögren 1932, pp. 187–97, 318–79; www.ortshistoria.se. 9 Elisabeth Bloch & Henning Bro, ‘Svenskere over Øresund i mere end 300 år’, in Elisabeth Bloch, Henning Bro, Marianne Germann, Inger Kjær Hansen & Lise Skjøt-Pedersen (eds.), Over Øresund før Broen: Svenskere på Købehavnsegnen i 300 år (Copenhagen: Lokalhistoriske Arkiver i Storkøbenhavn, 2000), pp. 9–21; Tommy P. Christensen, ‘Fra Sunnerbo til Sokkelund Herred’, in Elisabeth Bloch, Henning Bro, Marianne Germann, Inger Kjær Hansen  & Lise Skjøt-Pedersen (eds.), Over Øresund før Broen: Svenskere på Købehavnsegnen i 300 år (Copenhagen: Lokalhistoriske Arkiver i Storkøbenhavn, 2000), pp.  9–21, 213–18, 261–72; Øresundsforbindelsen: Betænkning om en fastforbindelse over Øresund afgivet November  1962 af de af Sveriges og Danmarks regeringer 1954 nedsatte udvalg (Copenhagen: Ministeriet for offentlige arbejder, 1962), pp. 10, 26–44; Faste forbindelser over Øresund: Redegørelse i forsættelse af Øresundsudvalgets betænkning af 1962 afgivet oktober 1967 af den i 1964 nedsatte fælles svensk-danske arbejdsgruppe (Copenhagen: Ministeriet for offentlige arbejder, 1967), pp. 11–47; Öresundsregionen: Information om Öresundsregionen (Lund: Öresundsrådet, 1969), pp. 39–98. 10 Politiken (1 October 1959); Expressen (30 November 1959); Kvällsposten (30 November 1959). 11 In the urban border regions of Western Europe, between, for example, between France and Germany and the Netherlands and Germany, a need for their urban units to be able to interact to a greater extent across nation-state borders occurred early in the first post-war period. Conditions which led the EC, prompted by the Council of Europe to establish the common market in 1957 and to create municipal congresses. Cross-border forums, where municipal and regional politicians, with the same goals and wishes for regional development across borders, were given the opportunity to identify with each other and discuss the possibilities for transnational regional economic development. The municipal conferences later formed the basis of the EU’s regional policy, but as early as 1958, 129 municipalities, with 21 major cities, in the Dutch–German

The Øresund metropolis 287 border region formed the Euregio partnership. The goal was for the region’s cities, with catchments, to develop into a cross-border urban region. Initially, the partnership included cultural cooperation and the laying out of common cycle paths in the region but later developed into a coordinated cooperation around the provision of regional framework conditions in the form of moving nation-states to break down border barriers for interaction in the region and coordinated regional planning, public transport and water supply. 12 J.nr. 1.5., 1 (1964–1993), Øresundsrådet, Københavns Stadsarkiv. 13 J.nr. 1.5., 1 (1964–1993), Øresundsrådet, Københavns Stadsarkiv; J.nr. 246/1982 (særlig række), læg I, 1962–1965, læg II, 1965–1979, Sekretariatet, Frederiksberg Stadsarkiv, A  10; Folketingstidende 1973/74; Tillæg A, pp.  2.723–31; Folketingets forhandlinger, pp.  5,683–5; 6,437–42; Tillæg B, pp. 571–4. 14 Faste forbindelser over Øresund 1967, pp. 10–4, 123–87. 15 Thomas Henriksen, Øresundregionen og industriens lokalisering: En undersøgelse af motiverne bag til- og fraflytning af industrivirksomheder i den dansksvenske Øresundsregion (Copenhagen: Øresundsrådet, 1968). 16 J.nr. 246/1982 (særlig række), læg II, 1965–1979, Sekretariatet, Frederiksberg Stadsarkiv, A 10; J.nr. 10.2, 1969, Øresundsrådet, Københavns Stadsarkiv. 17 Information om Öresundsregionen 1969, p. 18. 18 Around the same time, around 1970, municipal reforms were implemented in Denmark and Sweden, which meant, that rural and market town municipalities were merged into larger primary municipalities at the same time, as larger county municipalities were formed through mergers. The purpose was to outsource most of the state tasks to the municipal level. The regional to county municipalities, which in addition to the previous ones had a large portfolio of tasks. In the capital metropolis and the Stockholm-region, special regional municipal bodies were formed by establishing Hovedstadsrådet, The Capital City Council, over the metropolis’ primary and county municipalities, and Stockholm County, whereby Stockholm Municipality’s county tasks were transferred to a larger Stockholm County. 19 Egnsplanrådet, Regional Planning Council: A body established in 1967 by the capital municipalities, Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, and the capital metropolis surrounding counties with a view to preparing a regional plan for the entire metropolis up to the establishment of a municipal regional body for this, Hovedstadsrådet, 1974. 20 Saltholm is an uninhabited Danish island in the Øresund between Malmö and Copenhagen. 21 J.nr. 1.5., 1, 1964–1993; J.nr. 6.1, 1966–1973; J.nr. 6.7, 1973, Øresundsrådet, Københavns Stadsarkiv. 22 Christian Lefèvre, ‘Metropolitan government and governance in Western countries: A critical review’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 22 (Paris, 1998) pp. 9–25; Hans Thor Andersen, Frank Hansen & Johan Jørgensen, ‘The fall and rise of metropolitan government in Copenhagen’, GeoJournal, 58 (2002), p. 44. 23 Bro, 2022, pp. 1092–104; Wetterberg, 2017, pp. 585–95; Ek 2003, pp. 20–2, 256–61; Regionalplanlægning i Finland, Island, Norge og Sverige (Copenhagen: Landsplanafdelingen, Miljøministeriet, Skov- og naturstyrelsen, 2003); Stadstyper och Stadsplanering i historisk perspektiv (SCB, 2001), pp. 71–93; Folketingstidende 1973/74, Folketingets forhandlinger, pp.  2,471–522; Folketingstidende 1974/75; Folketingets forhandlinger, pp.  4,094, 4,502–48,

288  Henning Bro 4,711–12, 7,032; Folketingstidende 1982/83; Folketingets forhandlinger, pp. 1,623–4; Folketingstidende 1989/90; Folketingets forhandlinger, pp. 4,307– 73; Øresundsforbindelser. Betænkning afgivet af det danske og svenske udvalg af 1975 om Øresundsforbindelserne (Copenhagen: Ministeriet for offentlige arbejder, 1975), pp. 317–21; J.nr. 246/1982 (særlig række), læg II, 1966–1979, læg III, 1980–1982; j.nr. 82–12808–1, 1983–1991, Sekretariatet, Frederiksberg Stadsarkiv, A 10. 24 Dagens Nyheter (26 March 1977), quotation translated into English. 25 Bro, 2022, pp.  1,175–91; Ek 2003, pp.  1–17, 21–41, 43–83, 98–226; Wetterberg 2017, pp.  597–660; Anders Olshov, Øresundsregionen: Københavns uudnyttede mulighed (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2013), pp.  16, 9–19, 16–70, 158–205; Folketingstidende 1990/91; Tillæg A  5,889–953: Folketingets forhandlinger, pp.  5,744–89, 7,553–724, 7,609; Folketingstidende 1991/92; Tillæg A  pp.  3,313–28; Folketingets forhandlinger, pp.  3,642–9, 7,654–5, 8,190. Øresundskomiteen, 1993–1995, Kommunaldirektør Kastbererg embedsarkiv, Frederiksberg Stadsarkiv A 58. Emneordnede sager: Øresundskomiteen, 2000–2008, Borgmesterkontoret, Frederiksberg Stadsarkiv, A 27. 26 Henning Bro, ‘Fra regional plan til regional planløshed: Hovedstadsmetropolen i årtierne omkring årtusindeskiftet’, Metropol, 2 (2021). 27 Wetterberg 2017, pp. 626–8; Olshov 2013, pp. 9–10, 16–36, 38–70, 166–7; Christian Wichmann Matthiesen, ‘Byernes roller i Bysystemet – et globalt perspektiv’, in Den faste Femern Bælt-forbindelse (Copenhagen, 2016) pp. 114–45; Øresundsmetro: København. Malmø (Malmø Stad: Københavns Kommune og EU Interreg, 2017).

Bibliography Andersen, Hans Thor, Frank Hansen & Johan Jørgensen, ‘The fall and rise of metropolitan government in Copenhagen’, GeoJournal, 58 (2002). Bloch, Elisabeth & Henning Bro, ‘Svenskere over Øresund i mere end 300 år’, in Elisabeth Bloch, Henning Bro, Marianne Germann, Inger Kjær Hansen & Lise Skjøt-Pedersen (eds.), Over Øresund før Broen: Svenskere på Købehavnsegnen i 300 år (Copenhagen: Lokalhistoriske Arkiver i Storkøbenhavn, 2000). Bro, Henning, ‘Fra regional plan til regional planløshed: Hovedstadsmetropolen i årtierne omkring årtusindeskiftet’, METROPOL, 2 (2021). Bro, Henning, Hovedstadsmetropolen – den danske byregion: Regionale rammebetingelser for det danske hovedstadsområdes udvikling som en byregion 1850– 1990, vol. 1–3 (Copenhagen: Frydenlund Academic, 2023). Carlsson, Sten & Jerker Rosén, Svensk historia 1 (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers förlag, 1969). Christensen, Tommy P., ‘Fra Sunnerbo til Sokkelund Herred’, in Elisabeth Bloch, Henning Bro, Marianne Germann, Inger Kjær Hansen  & Lise Skjøt-Pedersen (eds.), Over Øresund før Broen: Svenskere på Købehavnsegnen i 300 år (Copenhagen: Lokalhistoriske Arkiver i Storkøbenhavn, 2000). Dagens Nyheter (26 March 1977). Danmarks Historie, bd. 3 (ed. Hal Koch) (Copenhagen: Politikkens Forlag, 1963). Danmarks Historie, bd. 4 (ed. Erik Kjerrsgaard) (Copenhagen: Politikkens Forlag, 1963).

The Øresund metropolis 289 Danmarks Historie, bd. 5 (ed. Erik Kjersgard) og Joham Hvidtfeldt) (Copenhagen: Politikkens Forlag, 1963). Ek, Richard, Öresundsregion – bli till! De geografiska visionernas diskursiva rytm (Lund: Institutionen för kulturgeografi och ekonomisk geografi, Lunds universitet, 2003). Expressen (30 November 1959). Faste forbindelser over Øresund: Redegørelse i forsættelse af Øresundsudvalgets betænkning af 1962 afgivet oktober 1967 af den i 1964 nedsatte fælles svenskdanske arbejdsgruppe (Copenhagen: Ministeriet for offentlige arbejder, 1967). Frederiksberg Stadsarkiv (Fredriksberg Municipal Archives). Gunnar, Olsen, Danmarks Historie, bd. 8 (Copenhagen: Politikkens Forlag, 1964). Henriksen, Thomas, Øresundregionen og industriens lokalisering: En undersøgelse af motiverne bag til- og fraflytning af industrivirksomheder i den dansk-svenske Øresundsregion (Copenhagen: Øresundsrådet, 1968). Information om Öresundsregionen (Øresundsrådet) (Lund: Öresundsrådet, 1969). Københavns Stadsarkiv (Copenhagen Municipal Archives). Kvällsposten (30 November 1959). Lefèvre, Christian, ‘Metropolitan government and governance in Western countries: A critical review’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 22 (Paris, 1998). Mikkelsen, Jørgen, Urbanisering og bysystemer i Europa indtil ca. 1800: En oversigt over nyere forskningsresultater (Aarhus: Dansk Center for Byhistorie, 2012). Olshov, Anders, Øresundsregionen: Københavns uudnyttede mulighed (Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 2013). Øresundsforbindelsen: Betænkning om en fastforbindelse over Øresund afgivet November 1962 af de af Sveriges og Danmarks regeringer 1954 nedsatte udvalg (Copenhagen: Ministeriet for offentlige arbejder, 1962). Øresundsforbindelser: Betænkning afgivet af det danske og svenske udvalg af 1975 om Øresundsforbindelserne (Copenhagen: Ministeriet for offentlige arbejder, 1975). Øresundsmetro: København. Malmø (Malmø Stad: Københavns Kommune og EU Interreg, 2017). Öresundsregionen: Information om Öresundsregionen (Øresundrådet) (Lund: Öresundsrådet, 1969). www.ortshistoria.se. Politiken (1 October 1959). Regionalplanlægning i Finland, Island, Norge og Sverige (Copenhagen: Landsplanafdelingen, Miljøministeriet, Skov-og naturstyrelsen, 2003). Sjögren, Otto, Sverige: Geografisk beskrivning, band 3 (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1932). Stadstyper och Stadsplanering i historisk perspektiv (Statistiska centralbyrån SCB, 2001). Svend, Ellehøj, Danmarks Historie, bd. 7 (Copenhagen: Politikkens Forlag, 1964). Thavlov, Lis, ‘Dragør og “denne hersens färje” ’, in Elisabeth Bloch, Henning Bro, Marianne Germann, Inger Kjær Hansen  & Lise Skjøt-Pedersen (eds), Over Øresund før Broen: Svenskere på Købehavnsegnen i 300 år (Copenhagen: Lokalhistoriske Arkiver i Storkøbenhavn, 2000).

290  Henning Bro Wetterberg, Gunnar, Skånes historia 3: 1720–2016 (Stockholm: Bonniers förlag, 2017). Wichmann Matthiessen, Christian, ‘The Oresund region: Large scale cross boundary infrastructure as a driving force behind organisational change: Regional integration’, in Transport and Land-Use Policies: Innovation in Institutional Arrangement for Coordination (Copenhagen, 2000). Wichmann Matthiesen, Christian, ‘Byernes roller i Bysystemet – et globalt perspektiv’, in Den faste Femern Bælt-forbindelse (Copenhagen, 2016).

13 Phases of urbanisation Sweden, 1800–2020 Lars Nilsson

Background Sweden, like the other Scandinavian countries and Finland, has been an urban latecomer. Still in the mid-19th century only 10 per cent of the population lived in cities and towns. Stockholm was number one in the urban hierarchy with about 90,000 inhabitants. No less than 41 of 86 cities and towns had fewer than 2,000 residents, and 19 of them had not yet passed the 1,000 level. Urban growth was for a long time held back by unfavourable demographic conditions. The urban death rate often exceeded the urban birth rate, thus, net in-migration from the country was necessary to avoid urban depopulation. Especially Stockholm but also the other cities and towns around lake Mälaren in eastern Sweden suffered from high death rates, which caused stagnation and even population decline. Anyway, a process of industrial urbanisation had just started in the mid-19th century and continued for over a hundred years. The level of urbanisation increased from ten per cent in the early 19th century to over 80 per cent in the late 20th century (Figure 13.1). The process was not linear, on the contrary urbanisation was uneven in both time and space. Three chronological phases of industrial urbanisation can be discernible: 1. 1840s–1880s 2. 1880s–1920/1930 3. 1920/1930–c.1970 Only these three periods will be briefly discussed here. More emphasis has been laid on the years from 1970 up to 2020, when Swedish urbanisation more or less was finished and transformed into metropolisation.1

DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-17

292  Lars Nilsson Phase 1, urbanisation 1840s–1880s The urban ratio increased successively from ten per cent to over 15 per cent between 1840 and 1880 (Figure 13.1). Behind this upswing we can find important demographic changes. Sweden passed the first stage of the demographic transition with falling death rates during constant birth rates. The very high urban death rate began to decrease to such an extent that a positive and stable net birth rate was reached. In this new situation, with a surplus of urban births over deaths, urban net in-migration resulted immediately in population growth. People continued to move from the country to the urban areas, and the proportion of urban residents increased. Anyhow, migration meant more for urbanisation than the natural population growth. Thus, urbanisation was migration-led. Parallel to these demographic changes the first signs of an upcoming industrialisation could be observed. Urban manufacturing was a dynamic

Figure 13.1 Urban ratio, Sweden, 1800–2020. Note: All urban includes cities, towns, and all other urban areas. Source: Lars Nilsson, Folkmängden i administrativa tätorter 1800–1970 (1992); Lars Nilsson, Folkmängden i tätortsregioner 1900–1950 (Stockholm: Stads- och kommunhistoriska institutet 2010); Lars Nilsson, Folkmängden i tätortsregioner 1950–2005 (Stockholm: Stadsoch kommunhistoriska institutet 2011); www.scb.se/statistikdatabasen.

Phases of urbanisation 293 industry, not least textile production. New factories of various kinds, not only textiles, were established in several cities and towns.2 Phase 2, urbanisation 1880s–1920/1930 Swedish urban development entered a new phase around 1880. The urbanisation process continued as before but at a lower speed. The year-by-year changes of the urban ratio remained constant or shrank (Figure  13.2). The intense emigration to North America was an obstacle for population growth. However, a high urban net birth surplus and an influx of rural migrants to the cities compensated for the population losses due to emigration. The excess of births over deaths meant more for urbanisation than net in-migration. That situation generates automatically a lowering of the rapidity of urbanisation. The expansion of urban manufacturing went on as before, initially based on consumption industries such as textile and food. From the turn of the century they were complemented by metal, machinery, and engineering industries. A cluster of so-called genius industries developed in Stockholm and other cities and towns around lake Mälaren, for example, Västerås,

Figure 13.2 Annual average changes of the Swedish urban ratio, 1800–2020. References: see Figure 13.1. Note: time periods vary in length.

294  Lars Nilsson Eskilstuna, and Enköping. The genius industries were all based on inventions by Swedish engineers or by improvements of imported technology. One example is the phone company Ericsson, which upgraded the Bell telephone and by active marketing took over the phone market from Bell. The steadily ongoing industrialisation as well as the building of railway lines and electrification across the country meant an increasing demand for metal, machinery, and engineering industries. Urbanisation was also promoted by urban infrastructural investments in water pipelines, sewerage, streets, harbours, parks, and so on. Stockholm, the capital city, was a node and motor for these processes. The harbour was central for import and export of raw materials and industrial goods. Stockholm could offer risk capital for investors at another scale than any other Swedish city. Besides, Stockholm housed a great number of schools for higher education. Rural industries were also successful during these years. Their progress was mainly based on natural resources, especially iron ore and woods. Anyhow, urban manufacturing developed quicker than rural industries which of course strengthened the urbanisation process. Another impetus to urbanisation came from the military sector, which moved from its previous rural location and became urban regiments. Furthermore, public administration got new resources to support the market forces and give necessary services to the inhabitants. Phase 3, urbanisation 1920/1930–c. 1970 The number of urban areas amounted to almost 1,000 in the early 1930s and included not only cities and towns but also all other settlements with at least 200 inhabitants. Almost half of the total Swedish population lived in urban areas of that size. The expansion of the urban system continued and became once again migration-led as it was in the period c. 1840–1880. Thus, the pace of urbanisation successively increased year by year until it peaked in the 1960s. The economic forces behind the intensified urbanisation process encompassed both the private market and the public sector. Rising international demand for Swedish products after the Second World War resulted in an industrial boom. Metal, machinery, and engineering industries were the most dynamic branches and answered alone for 15–20 per cent of the total Swedish labour force. Other expansive industrial branches were iron ore, paper, pulp, and wood manufacturing. The building of the Swedish welfare society from the 1930s and onwards was also crucial for the urbanisation process. Reforms of education, healthcare, and social care together with an extended public administration meant increased demand for labour. Public services became more and

Phases of urbanisation 295 more centralised and concentrated in cities, towns, and other urban areas. Private services soon followed the same path. The dynamism or the urban economy meant an intensified migration from country to urban areas. The demand for labour became so high that the Swedish market was not sufficient. Workers were recruited from abroad and foremost from Finland but also from southern Europe: Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, and others. The economic expansion culminated with the ‘record years’ in the mid1960s, and a switch to a post-industrial and global economy began. Manufacturing was replaced by services as the main part of the urban economy. Forces of de-industrialisation have, together with other major changes such as globalisation, deregulations, European integration and new communication technologies, had profound effects on urbanisation and urban growth. From the 1970s and onwards, we can therefore talk of the post-industrial city and phases of post-industrial urbanisation. By then, the number of urban settlements had increased up to about 2,000. The majority of them were suburbs and included in around 600 urban regions.3 Industrial urbanisation and its forces can shortly be summarised as follows: • 1840s–1880s: Increasing urbanisation, demographic transition, growth of consumption industries • 1880s–1920/30: Decreasing urban growth, emigration and natural population growth, expansion of export industries, infrastructural investments • 1920/30–c.1970: Increasing urbanisation, rural-to-urban migration and natural population growth, public welfare investments, expansion of export industries Post-industrial urbanisation Since the industrial urbanisation came to a halt around 1970, the level of urbanisation has been rather stable, 80–85 per cent (Figure  13.1). The number of urban regions has as well been relatively constant, a bit below 600. These figures may indicate that post-industrial urbanisation has been rather un-dramatic. Nevertheless, behind the stable figures major transformations of both demography and economy have taken place. Demography

The turn to post-industrial conditions meant that Sweden entered a new demographic regime. Immigration became gradually the most important

296  Lars Nilsson Table 13.1 Number of urban net births and net migrants, 1971−2015 Period

Net births

Net immigrants

Net domestic migrants

1971–1975 1976–1980 1981–1985 1986–1990 1991–1995 1996–2000 2001–2005 2006–2010 2011–2015

80,251 6,975 –2,918 53,286 69,140 –13,063 20,404 80,893 105,221

105 56,116 19,934 101,631 94,677 46,512 106,144 206,170 225,315

–94,851 –50,671 4,599 7,504 43,521 33,647 18,548 22,641 18,191

Reference: www.scb.se/statistikdatabasen. Note: urban = local authorities that were classified as cities before 1970.

Figure 13.3 Rural growth rates in Sweden, 1950–2020. References: see Figure 13.1. Note: time periods vary in length.

factor behind urban population growth and not as before rural net inmigration combined with a surplus of births over deaths. Population development of rural areas changed as well significantly during the switch to post-industrialism (Figure 13.3). In the industrial age, the Swedish countryside lost inhabitants permanently. This drainage came now to an end.4

Phases of urbanisation 297 The post-industrial urbanisation started with a green wave. Around 1970, many people left the large and even middle-sized cities and preferred to settle down in smaller towns or in rural areas. Green surroundings were preferred instead of asphalt and concrete. Urban population growth dipped to below 0.5 per cent per year. Rural-to-urban net migration ceased more or less, and the former depopulation of the countryside stopped. The out-migration from major agglomerations can be interpreted in terms of anti-urbanism and a protest against the ongoing inner-city restructuring and against life in newly built but unattractive suburban tenements.5 The highest urban population growth rates were in the 1970s to be found among small urban regions with 1,000 to 5,000 residents. This expansion of small urban regions was not a long-lasting trend. It was soon replaced by a longing for metropolitan life. Already in the 1980s, a new pattern was emerging. Since then, migration streams mostly went from minor to major urban regions and foremost to metropolitan areas. The countryside continued to prosper, especially rural areas close to major cities. Consequently, urbanisation almost stopped and a great number of cities began to depopulate. The proportion of shrinking cities rose dramatically, from almost onethird during industrial times to more than half of all urban regions. Moreover, in the late 1990s, as many as eight out of ten urban regions shrank (Figure 13.4). Population decline became for many cities permanent and not as before only temporary.

Figure 13.4 Proportion of shrinking Swedish urban regions, 1950–2020. References: see Figure 13.1. Note: time periods vary in length.

298  Lars Nilsson Most cities, expanding as well as shrinking, had a surplus of immigrants over emigrants. However, for shrinking cities this surplus was not enough to cover for birth deficits and out-migration (Table  13.2). Nevertheless, after 40 years Sweden returned to a more ‘normal’ proportion of shrinking cities around 2010. An increasing number of immigrants, not least refugees, meant that many previously shrinking cities regained growth (Table 13.3). But for about one-third of the urban regions depopulation continued. The return to the former level of shrinking cities since 2010 is perhaps an indication that the first phase of post-industrial urbanisation is over, and a second period may have started. Anyhow, an announced, more restricted immigration policy could in the future once again result in an increasing number of shrinking cities. Post-industrialism has furthermore been characterised by a polarised growth. Major cities have expanded much quicker than minor and middlesized urban areas. The proportion of people living in metropolitan regions has therefore increased markedly. Previously, major cities grew almost at the same pace as other cities or slower (Figure 13.5). Urbanisation seems to have been followed by metropolisation in the post-industrial era.6

Table 13.2 Number of net births and net migrants for growing and shrinking cities, respectively, 2001−2015 Period

Net births

Net immigrants

Net domestic migrants

Growing 2001–2005 Growing 2006–2010 Growing 2011–2015 Shrinking 2001–2005 Shrinking 2006–2010 Shrinking 2011–2015

40,262 94,604 110,068 –19,858 –13,711 –4,847

89,599 181,217 216,997 16,545 24,953 8,318

34,242 46,794 24,887 –15,694 –84,153 –6,696

Reference: www.scb.se/statistikdatabasen. Note: cities = local authorities that were classified as cities before 1970.

Table 13.3 Number of net births and net migrants for shrinking cities (2006–2010) that started to grow, 2011−2015 Period

Net births

Net immigrants

Net domestic migrants

2006–2010 2011–2015

–8,368 (–1.24%) –6,512 (–0.98%)

20,149 (3.0%) 34,355 (5.17%)

–19,858 (–2.95%) –16,767 (–2.52%)

Reference: www.scb.se/statistikdatabasen. Note: urban = local authorities that were classified as cities before 1970.

Phases of urbanisation 299

Figure 13.5 Annual population growth rates for metropolitan areas and minor Swedish urban regions, 1950–2020. References: see Figure 13.1. Note: time periods vary in length. SGM = metropolitan areas of Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Minor = urban regions with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants.

Economy

The important manufacturing sector – including mining, construction, and utilities  – employed almost half of the Swedish labour force in the early 1960s when industrial employment peaked. Fifty years later, in the 2010s, the figure was less than 20 per cent (Table 13.4). All the same, there are still flourishing manufacturing subgroups, especially in high-tech manufacturing and capital- and knowledge-intensive production. But little of Sweden’s traditional industrial production has survived. In many cases, such production has been relocated to low-wage countries or outsourced. Anyhow, today many people hope for a manufacturing revival based on the so-called green industries mostly in northern Sweden. The restructuring of the labour market has since the 1960s included a substantial expansion of various kinds of services, both private and public. The service sector engaged almost 60 per cent of the urban workforce in 2020 which can be compared with just 20 per cent in the 1960s.

300  Lars Nilsson Table 13.4 Percentage distribution of employment by industries, Sweden, 1960–2020 Industry

1960

1990

2010

2020

Agriculture Manufacturing et al. Trade and transport Services Finance Education Healthcare et al. Producer services Total

13.8 45.1 19.2 21.9 2.9 3.4 3.7 100

3.7 28.0 18.7 49.6 8.5 6.4 10.1 100

1.8 21.4 17.6 59.2 14.5 10.5 16.2 10.9 100

2.0 19.2 16.3 62.5 15.7 10.9 16.3 12.0 100

Reference: www.scb.se/statistikdatabasen.

The deregulations of capital flows in the 1980s opened up for new financial markets. Financial services  – including banking, finance, and real estate – became the most dynamic industry in the last decades of the 20th century. Other flourishing branches were producer services, tourism, higher education and research, cultural services, and creative industries. In the early 21st century, producer services took over the lead.7 These new dynamic branches within the service sector often preferred to localise in clusters and in large cities with rich and diversified markets. Therefore, competition between cities increased to attract the most dynamic companies and industries. City branding, marketing, and formulation of slogans became tasks for the newly erected sales promotion offices of the city administration.8 Stockholm was still a motor for Sweden’s economic growth. Intensified global networking meant however that metropolitan regions stimulated each other more and gave fewer growth effects on the rest of the country. Stockholm’s role as a node for global networks seems to have become more important than its function as a central place.9 The rise of the service sector went hand in hand with metropolisation and polarised urban growth. Many former manufacturing cities got serious growth problems and started to decline. Regions like Bergslagen were subjected to heavy losses and made up Swedish rust belts. The local authorities of shrinking cities used a wide variety of measures to cope with problems of decline to regain population growth. Initially, many cities expected to be able to re-industrialise often with financial support from the state. Previously, state funding had been a classical solution for Swedish cities in crises. That kind of support was no longer possible, and instead the state urged shrinking cites to solve the problems by themselves.

Phases of urbanisation 301 Table 13.5 Percentage changes of the labour force for various branches, 2005– 2010 and 2010–2015, respectively Industry

Cities expanding 2005– 2010, and 2010–2015

Cities shrinking 2005– 2010, but expanding 2010–2015

All services Producer services Welfare services Hotels, restaurants Manufacturing

1.8 0.9 0.3 0.4 –1.2

1.4 0.2 0.9 0.3 –1.8

Reference: www.scb.se/statistikdatabasen.

Many cities therefore started to build up their own investment funds to support the local business life. The local administration got new resources to promote the development of economy and commerce. City branding and city marketing flourished. However, the effects on population growth were meagre. Later on, investments in tourism, culture, industrial heritage, sports, and urban renewal became frequent. Still, the population decline went on. In shrinking cities, ambitious local policies and programmes have had small effects on population growth in the absence of dynamic industries. Market forces have decided the localisation of expansive branches like producer services and not the public sector. The market has favoured major cities and not small towns.10 Anyhow, welfare services may have got a new role since 2010 as promoting the development of previous shrinking cities (Table 13.5). Together with the return to a more normal number of shrinking cities, the renewed growth of welfare services could be an indication of a second phase of postindustrial urbanisation. Summing up

Main urban characteristics of post-industrialism have so far been: • Marginal urbanisation • The growth of major cities combined with increasing numbers of shrinking urban areas • Population growth mainly through immigration • Urban-to-urban migration streams • New dynamic mixes of expansive branches including high-tech manufacturing, banking and finance, producer services, tourism, cultural services, and other private services as well.

302  Lars Nilsson Conclusion Urbanisation means centralisation and concentration of people and other resources to cities, towns, and other urban areas. Initially, it was relocation from rural to urban areas. In Sweden, this process began at a small scale in the mid-19th century and has continued with varying intensity in long waves with a duration of about 40 years. A breaking point appeared around 1970. Then the urban ratio passed the 80 per cent level and industrialism turned into post-industrialism. Urbanisation reached its full stretch in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The process was more or less completed. To increase productivity and an efficient use of resources still more, it was no longer enough to transfer resources from rural to urban areas. Centralisation took another form and was not any longer expressed only by the level of urbanisation. The most important changes took place within the urban system. People moved primarily from minor to major cities and not as before from the countryside to urban areas. A  process of metropolisation began. People and resources in general were concentrated to metropolitan areas and other large agglomerations. Small towns were the main losers, but even middlesized cities stagnated. Thus, urbanisation in its traditional and well-known form was over around 1970 and followed by intensified global networking and metropolisation. Post-urbanism could perhaps be another label for this new stage of urban development. The long waves that characterised industrial urbanisation have continued during post-industrialism. A possible first phase stretches from c. 1970 up to c. 2010. Then, some signals indicate that a second phase may have started. Notes 1 This chapter is based on my previous research, see Lars Nilsson, Den urbana transitionen: Tätorterna i svensk samhällsomvandling 1800–1980 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 1989); Lars Nilsson, ‘Urban Development in Sweden, 1950–2005’; ‘North and South in Western European Urban Development, 1950–2000’, and ‘Western European Urban Systems 1950– 2000’, in Lars Nilsson (ed.), The Coming of the Post-Industrial City: Changes and Responses in Western European Development since 1950 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2011); Lars Nilsson, ‘Metropolisering och krympande städer: Västeuropeisk stadsutveckling 1950–2010’, in Lars Nilsson  & Mats Berglund (reds.), Nordiska lokalsamhällen i möte med globaliseringen 1950–2010 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2015); Lars Nilsson  & Eric Båve, Krympande orter: Avesta och Söderhamn som postindustriella samhällen (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet 2016); Mats Berglund, Lars Nilsson & Per Gunnar Sidén, Svensk stadshistoria: En introduction (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2019); Lars Nilsson, ‘Can small towns survive in a global world?’, in Luda Klusakova  & Blanca Del Espino Hidalgo (eds.), Small Town Resilience and

Phases of urbanisation 303 Heritage Commodification (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2021); Lars Nilsson, ‘The rise and fall of small Swedish towns, 1800–2020’ (unpublished conference report EAUH, Antwerp, 2022). Further references to source materials and literature can be found in these books and articles. 2 See Nilsson 1989, chapters  5 and 6 for an analysis of Sweden’s industrial urbanisation. Also Berglund et al. 2019, pp. 95–130 (chapter ‘Svensk stadsutveckling och urbanisering 1830–1970’ by Lars Nilsson). 3 An urban region includes an urban core (city, town, or other urban area) with surrounding suburbs. See Nilsson 2011, p. 173. 4 Nilsson 2011, pp. 176 seq.; Berglund et al. 2019, pp. 95–130 (chapter ‘Svensk stadsutveckling och urbanisering 1830–1970’ by Lars Nilsson). See also Berglund et al. 2019, appendix, table 1. 5 Nilsson 2011, pp. 183 seq. 6 Nilsson 2015, pp. 10–23. 7 Nilsson 2011, pp. 195 seq. See also Table 13.4. 8 Nilsson 2011, pp. 214 seq.; Nilsson 2021, pp. 39 seq. 9 Nilsson & Båve 2016, pp. 95–6; Nilsson 2021, pp. 46–8. 10 Nilsson & Båve 2016.

Bibliography Berglund, Mats, Lars Nilsson & Per Gunnar Sidén, Svensk stadshistoria: En introduction (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2019). Nilsson, Lars, Den urbana transitionen: Tätorterna i svensk samhällsomvandling 1800–1980 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 1989). Nilsson, Lars, ‘North and South in Western European Urban Development, 1950– 2000’, in Lars Nilsson (ed.), The Coming of the Post-Industrial City: Changes and Responses in Western European Development Since 1950 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2011). Nilsson, Lars, ‘Urban Development in Sweden, 1950–2005’, in Lars Nilsson (ed.), The Coming of the Post-Industrial City: Changes and Responses in Western European Development Since 1950 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2011). Nilsson, Lars, ‘Western European urban systems 1950–2000’, in Lars Nilsson (ed.), The Coming of the Post-Industrial City: Changes and Responses in Western European Development Since 1950 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2011). Nilsson, Lars, ‘Metropolisering och krympande städer: Västeuropeisk stadsutveckling 1950–2010’, in Lars Nilsson  & Mats Berglund (reds.), Nordiska lokalsamhällen i möte med globaliseringen 1950–2010 (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2015). Nilsson, Lars, ‘Can small towns survive in a global world?’, in Luda Klusakova & Blanca Del Espino Hidalgo (eds.), Small Town Resilience and Heritage Commodification (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2021). Nilsson, Lars, ‘The Rise and Fall of Small Swedish Towns, 1800–2020’ (unpublished conference report EAUH Antwerp, 2022). Nilsson, Lars & Eric Båve, Krympande orter: Avesta och Söderhamn som postindustriella samhällen (Stockholm: Stads-och kommunhistoriska institutet, 2016).

14 Creative internationalism Marjatta Hietala

Introduction In this chapter, I shall analyse the methods and channels that Nordic towns and cities have used to search the latest know-how in the field of infrastructure. How much did the Nordic cities learn from each other when building their respective infrastructures? The time period of my analysis starts at the end of the 19th century and in the beginning of the 20th century and continues until the 1940s. At the end of the chapter, I shall take up some challenges for Nordic towns and cities during the past decades. The main question is, how creative and innovative our Nordic capitals were 100  years ago if the criteria for innovative centres are taken into account?1 The concept of creative cities has been promoted by such influential writers as Charles Landry, Richard Florida, and Allen Scott. The creative city was a concept developed in the 1980s by Charles Landry, who argued that ‘creativity was the life blood of cities’ and that a new method of strategic urban planning was needed to create milieus from which innovations would emerge.2 In 2002, Richard Florida emphasised the role of a new creative class of scientists, engineers, designers, and artists giving an impetus to the rise of a creative economy. Technology was important for creative growth but so too was talent and education.3 Allen Scott has argued that the mainspring of the creative economy in major innovative sites are clustered networks of small specialist firms, fluid labour markets, and de-standardisation of outputs. Many of the most dynamic firms in successful creative cities are involved in the construction of global networks.4 Cities function as nodes in the global flow of people, goods, and information. They have always been places where knowledge is generated and transferred. Mobility is among the different factors that are typical for innovative communities, milieus, and environments. According to Peter Hall, innovative environments, cities, and places provide opportunities for unexpected meetings between people and different areas of activity.5 The leading creative cities often combine many types of innovations. Urban is DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-18

Creative internationalism 305 equated with creativity, and cities seem to provide the conditions necessary for promotion of creative work, inventiveness, and innovation, for circulation of knowledge, and to interpersonal face-to-face contacts. Cities have an ability to produce new thinking.6 The wealth of nations, and of cities, depends on innovative capacity. According to Manuel Castells, the innovation is rooted in cities and particularly in large cities and metropolitan areas. The key was, and is, the networking capacity of the milieu of innovation, both internally and externally. The cities, and particularly major metropolitan areas, are the sources of innovation, and knowledge, and then network with each other to expand their innovation synergy.7 Creative cities not only need sufficient population diversity, tolerant values, and investments in scientific research, they also need sufficient infrastructural connectivity to other creative cities around the world and capital. They try to provide the greatest quantity or optimal combination of local factors such as green spaces, affordable housing, business support, quality of education for families, and the presence of headquarters.8 Networking and networks have been a central issue among both practitioners and researchers for decades now. At the national or regional level, networks can be seen as a means of concentrating on the core competencies of the area. However, one may also focus attention on improving the region’s or cities’ overall competitiveness. The second type of strategy represents a more traditional way of building networks within a region. In practice, these kinds of networks are often built to serve certain specific purposes. At the level of individual organisations, networks can be seen as focal networks, that is, as a combination of all direct and indirect relationships that an organisation perceives as having an effect on it. Within and between these organisational and regional networks are the personal and social networks, which in a way, bring all of the different levels together. An active orientation towards the building of international contacts and global networking can provide local actors with a much richer pool of ideas, contacts, and people than relying solely on local ties.9 Infrastructure and Growing Cities at the Turn of the 20th Century I shall concentrate on two fast-growing cities: Helsinki and Stockholm. In 1851, the population of Helsinki was 21,000 and that of Stockholm 91,000. Sixty years later, in 1911, the population in Helsinki was 147,000 and that of Stockholm 342,000.10 In my previous research, I have studied cities during the rapid growth of urbanisation when the infrastructure and other services had to be built. All kinds of services were needed

306  Marjatta Hietala in fast-growing cities. Cities and towns had to solve several infrastructural problems. Since the traffic was increasing because of the cars, cities had to maintain streets and roads, as well as to organise the lighting of the streets.11 They had to choose either gas or electricity for their energy needs, to organise water supply, and to improve their sewerage systems. Additionally, they had to consider how to organise healthcare, education and schools, as well as cultural services, such as libraries. There was a lot of discussion on the quality of environment and green spaces which were seen important for city planning. Decision-makers paid attention also to the waste problem. In professional journals, German engineers made calculations on how much heat energy could be received from waste/garbage.12 The spread of innovations played a decisive role in the growth of cities.13 In the latter half of the 19th century, many new professions emerged. Highly trained professional groups were increasingly needed, as well as a great variety of clerical personnel. Renewal of state administration and industrial development created a demand for various new professional categories at the national level. The same process was followed by cities as their role became stronger in the 19th century. Professionalisation included efficiency and control of others belonging to the same professional group. The professional field became more scientific, and those with special training and/or experience in a given trade controlled the admission of others to professional groups. Such supervision was to be found among doctors and lawyers, for instance. A great variety of inspectorates requiring special knowledge was created. They included inspectors of health, kindergartens, building gas and smoke, and special teachers for schools. Many new professional groups formed in the 19th century answered the urgent need, which resulted from rapid changes in the occupational structure and from the growing population in urban centres like district nurses and sanitary inspectors. The widening technical sector provided work for new highly trained professional groups like engineers and architects. The same process was followed with regard to medical specialists.14 The system of following-up and diffusing of innovations can be seen as a learning process. When we are analysing adoption and distribution of innovation we are confronted with the concept of know-how. Reserve of know-how is a relative concept. The reserve of know-how in a unit can grow either with accumulation of experience and learning from the inside (learning by doing) or by active acquisition of knowledge and knowhow, exploitation, and imitation of the experiences of others (learning by using).15 Municipal authorities applied what had been learned, but direct imitation of the solutions used elsewhere was rare. New innovations should be adapted to the Finnish and Nordic circumstances.

Creative internationalism 307 Channels for Diffusion of Innovations at the Turn of the 20th Century At the turn of the 20th century and already during the late 19th century, public authorities of the cities, such as Stockholm and Helsinki, had several challenges pertaining to how to build infrastructure, transport, and communication, how to choose between different types of energy, that is, gas or electricity, and how to purify water by mechanical or chemical filtering. It was also questioned what kinds of cultural services cities had to provide. The task of municipal authorities was to find out the latest know-how on each of the aforementioned areas. Public authorities in Helsinki and in Stockholm tried to find the latest know-how by using several channels for searching the latest information on best practices in different European towns. The increasing internationalism of the cities before the First World War has been called ‘creative internationalism’.16 Congresses and city exhibitions provided a forum for demonstrating the progress made in various sectors of municipal life and in implementing of public utilities. Such events were the products of a growing self-assurance among municipal officials and of their wish to collaborate with their counterparts in other cities. Civic pride, inter-city rivalry, and the drive of the urban question itself proved the motivation, the increasing efficient development provided the useful tools, and improving communications and travel connections provided the means.17 The key issue was to find out which cities were forerunners and the most creative cities in different fields, such as in arranging transport and communications, supporting water, and public health services, as well as education and training.18 To know about the forerunners of different services, the city officials developed an information exchange system that was built on printed documents, statistics, and personal contacts. Many officials of the municipal authorities had studied abroad, many of them at German universities. This helped later in networking. Both Helsinki and Stockholm City Councils valued information from multiple sources. It was not enough to collect a single model or one person’s observations. The greater the venture, the more comprehensive was its approach and the more thorough its preparation.19 The main channels for transfer/diffusion of the latest innovations were the following: 1. Municipal authorities analysed printed and unprinted materials, proceedings and minutes of City Councils of a certain city and materials of its different boards. 2. They took advantage of excellent databases on comparative statistics.

308  Marjatta Hietala 3. Material of professional associations and Associations of Cities and International Union for Local Authorities were also utilised. 4. Experts and municipal authorities attended conferences and fairs. 5. Municipal authorities made ‘grand tours’, the major targets being Scandinavian neighbours and German towns, as well as Dutch and English towns. An expert and the person responsible for development of a particular field were sent abroad by the city to investigate various alternatives. It was common to visit several cities and several countries and several plants, including gas or water works. Experts met each other also when touring (in fact-finding tours) in the same cities in Central Europe and in England. From the turn of the 20th century until at least to the 1950s, fact-finding tours undertaken by individual experts and municipal authorities were of considerable importance for the city officials in all Nordic towns when they wanted to develop the city´s municipal services. Almost every medium-sized town had a network of its own. What distinguished Helsinki in this respect was the very systematic approach the city adopted to maximise the efficiency of this search for relevant know-how.20 After these fact-finding tours municipal authorities, decision-makers, and experts dealing with the developments in other towns compiled reports and comparative evaluations of the situation in other cities based on written materials and personal observations during the ‘grand tours’. Threequarters of all fact-finding tours took place in the early years of the 20th century, as economic growth provided an increase in the number of the travel grants available. Apart from economic growth the political situation also had an impact on travel. During the second period of oppressive Russian policies (1908–1917) in Finland, it was difficult to make progress by means of legislation as many measures were being delayed for political reasons. That is why cities and towns prepared many reforms individually or with committees. The chairman of the Association of Finnish towns Leo Ehrnrooth stated ‘Since the state rejects all progress, municipalities on a basis of self-government must whenever possible take the place of the state in the support and advancement of material, intellectual and social development’.21 Ehrnrooth had collected plenty of examples on legislation on the status of labours in different countries and towns. According to him, the state had to organise equal conditions for workers concerning salaries and encourage collective labour agreements.22 The frame of reference was provided by the municipal authorities and city officials. For Helsinki, the frames of reference were capitals, notably London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Christiania. All these were large centres of population. During the early 20th century, the Finnish officials were driven by the need to keep pace with other

Creative internationalism 309 civilised states. To such ends, Helsinki’s municipal authorities, as well as the leaders of the Association of Finnish Cities, developed a follow-up system to their transnational activities. The follow-up system and diffusion of innovations can thus be seen as a policy learning process whereby Helsinki targeted specific cities. Public authorities knew which cities were the best in different fields and adopted ideas for their local needs.23 The channels for searching the latest know-how were: 1. The experts and city officials had to know facts based on written documents and municipal proceedings of the city councils. Since the end of the 19th century, European cities and towns had a very good system to exchange official documents between themselves. Periodicals, which were important municipal information journals for many towns, were published and exchanged. German municipal periodicals, such as Kommunale Praxis and Kommunale Rundschau, were used by municipal authorities both in Helsinki and in Stockholm. Most of these are still located at the city archives and city libraries.24 Some individual city boards had libraries of their own. 2. Comparative statistics were most helpful. From the latter half on the 19th century onwards it became easier for municipal authorities and experts to compare their own town with other towns due to the existence of data available for comparisons. The comparative Municipal Statistics published by London County Council25 cover 16 cities and towns. Statistisches Jahrbuch Deutscher Städte offered a lot of knowledge on 44 German cities, which had more than 100,000 inhabitants.26 Standards for comparisons were created in international congresses. The International Statistical Institute was founded in 1885. The cities in England, Scandinavia, and the United States produced statistics which provided comprehensive information on several sectors of the society. The Central Statistical Office of Finland was founded in 1865 and the Central Statistical Office of Sweden in 1858. Their predecessor was Tabellverket, the oldest collector of census statistics on population of Sweden and Finland, which at that time was a part of the Swedish kingdom. Comparative Statistics on the Nordic neighbour cities can be found in the Finnish Official Statistics from 1920s onwards. 3. Cooperation between cities and towns started in Great Britain in the 1870s and in Germany at regional level in the 1860s, although the first national meeting was not held until 1905. Similar meetings were organised in Denmark in 1873, in Norway in 1903, in Sweden in 1909, and in Finland in 1912. Associations of cities in each country and international associations like IULA (International Union of Local Authorities) organise contacts between municipalities, funding agencies, training

310  Marjatta Hietala institutions, corporations, NGOs, and individuals worldwide for the exchange of information and expertise and for facilitating cultural contacts. International Union for Local Authorities (IULA/UIV) was established in the Netherlands in 1913 with the intention to promote democratic local self-government, and it began with a focus on newly founded European cities. The organisation believes that close contacts between different local municipalities of the world will result in both cross-cultural exchanges and mutual benefits. It was particularly active in opening the lines of communication between the burgeoning municipalities of the early post-colonial era and the more established cities elsewhere. The role of IULA was important in creating international cooperation and transferring the latest information.27 The Municipal Central Office (Kunnallinen Keskustoimisto) was founded in 1912. After 1917, it was renamed Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, that is, the Association of Finnish Cities. This Association took the responsibility for monitoring municipal development in Finland and abroad. It started to gather information on municipal practices in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. The first secretary of the Municipal Central Office was Yrjö Harvia,28 who was extremely interested in foreign municipal administration, which he examined in Berlin in the facilities of the Zentralstelle des Städtetages and at the Akademie für Kommunale Verwaltung in Düsseldorf. Personal Contacts Personal contacts between experts in different towns made information travel faster, and information flows between cities and towns were free. This was made easier by the number and speed of innovations. Based on the information in the National Biographies, doctors, engineers, and municipal officials in Helsinki and Stockholm had very international backgrounds. Yrjö Harvia was very active in searching foreign know-how. He had personal relationships with the heads of the in the Swedish City Association (Municipal Central Bureau), doctor Yngve Larsson and his successor, Helge Lindholm, as well as with Einar li, who was the head of the Norwegian counterpart. Yngve Larsson, a political scientist, was a leading force behind the Swedish City Association’s early development and the mayor of Stockholm (1924–1946). After resigning from the post of mayor, he was elected a member of parliament. He became a political leader behind several of the Stockholm’s largest urban planning projects.29 Yngve Larsson’s urban projects and books were introduced in Finnish.30 Helge Lindholm

Creative internationalism 311 was, like Yngve Larsson, active in housing commission, later in the Committee on minimum social housing requirements.31 In several conferences, the Nordic colleagues discussed common problems in municipal housing construction. Yrjö Harvia was the first Finnish participant in the second Swedish Town Conference in 1915. In 1918, he participated in the third Swedish Town Conference, and later in the fifth in 1920 and the eighth in 1933. He was a representative at the IULA’s conference in Amsterdam in 1924 and, in 1927, a guest of the Baltic Association of Cities in Riga. In his reports on his participation in town conferences, Harvia often wrote reports on his participation in town conferences in Suomen Kunnallislehti (Municipal Journal).32 He was extremely worried about the Finnish housing policies when he compared the situation in Helsinki with other countries. He advocated the Norwegian model for municipal housing construction.33 One of the most active persons contacting with Scandinavian and other European colleagues in issues related to municipal housing, inspection of workers’ housing conditions, and social insurance was Einar Böök,34 the secretary of the municipal Board for Working Class Affairs (later known as the Board for Social Questions) in Helsinki. In 1916, he was invited to participate in the urban housing conference in Stockholm, and after it, he continued his visit to Gothenburg.35 He introduced the policies of not selling but renting plots for houses, building of municipal housing for workers, as well as regular inspection of the apartments.36 Congresses and Exhibitions Municipal authorities participated in congresses, town exhibitions, and world fairs and networked efficiently. Information on the latest exhibited innovations spread in journals and periodicals. The time lag in receiving the latest information by the Nordic countries on some inventions was short. The total number of exhibitions and fairs has increased from the 19th century onwards. The urbanisation process at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century has indeed been very rapid, and it was influenced by industrialisation. Infrastructural services, tramways, gas, water, and electricity works were the most important elements facilitating the urbanisation process during the second half of the 19th century. At town congresses and meetings, municipal officials discussed on common economic, social and cultural questions, but city exhibitions provided a forum for demonstrating the progress made in various municipal programmes and in the implementing of public utilities. It has been estimated that from 1886 to the end of the century there were a total of 853 international congresses, and between 1900 and 1914, 2,271 such conferences on various fields were held.37

312  Marjatta Hietala German cities were model cities for Nordic cities when it comes to municipal enterprises.38 One of the first town exhibitions was held in Dresden in 1903. This exhibition gathered municipal authorities from the most important cities in the United States, England, France, Holland, AustroHungary, Italy, and in Nordic countries. Stockholm sent several delegates to Dresden; Helsinki sent her municipal engineer. Nordic visitors were especially interested in everything related to sanitary provision and the infrastructure as well as policing, institutions of schooling and instruction, and public libraries and reading rooms. These matters were particularly topical because of the expansion of Nordic towns. In the municipal exhibition in Berlin in 1910 the image of cities was emphasised, and the discussion concentrated on the appeal of the city. Exhibitions on city planning and construction formed a separate grouping. City renewal was a central issue in the Düsseldorf city exhibition 1909, and the Berlin exhibition focused on construction in 1910.39 Exhibitions were particularly numerous in the fields of healthcare, technology, and industry, for example, the industrial exhibition in Turin in 1911. In 1911, an international hygiene exhibition was held in Dresden, where various means of raising the level of popular hygiene were presented. At the Dresden municipal exhibition on hygiene, it was noted that Scandinavian cities provided broader health statistics than German cities. Nordic municipal authorities were not the only ones who looked at the European, especially German, cities. American municipal reformers scoured Europe for ideas and suggestions. There seems to have been a conviction that municipal achievements could be imported, transferred, and adapted despite radical differences in local contexts or national legislative realities.40 Municipal authorities usually visited several cities and often several countries, the major targets being Scandinavian neighbours and Germany. Sweden’s popularity, but especially its capital Stockholm, obviously reflected historic cultural and linguistic links. Moreover, Stockholm was en route to the continent and a major venue for conferences, which drew interested observers from across the region. Danish cities, particularly Copenhagen, were also frequently found in Helsinki’s itineraries. In Germany, municipal authorities of Helsinki visited 63 towns in 1875–1917, of which Berlin was the most popular. However, although capital cities provided the main reference source for Helsinki, Finnish municipal experts also journeyed to smaller European cities with reputations for ‘good practice’ or ‘innovation’. Thus, Dutch, Belgian, and Swiss cities appeared alongside the other Nordic countries, Germany, Great Britain, France, and Austro-Hungary in Helsinki’s itineraries.41 The best information on journeys made by Swedish municipal authorities can be found from 36 articles in Aftonbladet. In 1912, the Swedish

Creative internationalism 313 newspaper Aftonbladet sent a special correspondent on a tour of European cities to study how the ownership of tramways was organised (public, private, concession-based) and how allotment policies and housing were organised. Berlin, Munich, Cologne, and Amsterdam provided comparative material for Stockholm in the issue of foodstuff distribution and the costs of living and Brussels and Amsterdam for the housing problem of workers. In most of the articles, municipal ownership was emphasised as positive solution and valued.42 Relationships between Nordic towns and towns in Germany, England, or the United States were not one-sided. Nordic cities and towns had something to offer: in 1904, the British Committee for the Study of Foreign Municipal Institutions made visits, the first one to Switzerland in 1904. Sixty interested persons (among them mayors and city officials) undertook a tour to Scandinavia to acquaint themselves with the situation in towns and cities there. The tour included Stockholm, Christiania, and Copenhagen. Significant observations were made of Norwegian school system, including the elementary schools where education was compulsory. The English observers were also impressed by the systems of meals in Norwegian schools which were offered free. In Gothenburg, healthcare in particular was greatly admired. In Stockholm, the gas and electricity systems of Stockholm were targets for visits and delegates who favoured municipal trading found much to support their aims.43 Question on Municipal Trading One of the long-lasting questions in all European cities was the ownership of different infrastructural services: should they be public or private? Some municipal authorities were afraid that public enterprises do not follow the latest development so quickly than needed. The question of the form of ownership was as urgent in Helsinki as in Stockholm or in any large city. The alternatives under consideration were whether to establish a municipal, private, or a mixed company. It has been said that the best mayors and public authorities were thinking more of the future of their grand-grand-children than of their own. A good example is the Mayor of Altona, later the Mayor of Frankfurt am Main, Franz Adickes. He became famous for the so-called Adickes Law, which dealt with the systematic development of the suburbs in German towns. Frankfurt purchased land, which was needed for town planning and streets. The building regulations of the city were drawn up by the City Council and not, as in many German towns by the state government. Regulations forbade the erection of unhealthy houses, and during the period of industrial expansion no cellar dwellings or back-to-back houses were allowed.44

314  Marjatta Hietala During the discussions about municipal water supplies stretching over many years, Helsinki City Council did not rely only on the observations and reports of its own officials who had visited several water plants in Europe. It invited comments from foreign experts, such as Professor Richert, who is considered the creator of the modern Swedish water system, as well as A. O. Alrutz, Director of Stockholm Waterworks. Alrutz had personal contacts with Engineer C. Hausen, Director of Helsinki Waterworks. In 1899, Hausen had an opportunity to visit 22 waterworks of European cities and towns. Part of these used ground water and some used surface water. Helsinki used mechanical filtering until complaints from the public and engineers made experts to explore the latest filtering techniques. In 1907, after hearing foreign experts, the council was able to upgrade to new filtering methods.45 Because of the positive experiences received from abroad, the municipal authorities and decision-makers in Helsinki tended to support the municipal ownership of gas and electricity enterprises. In Helsinki, Stockholm’s example was important also when building both gas and electricity systems. Stockholm’s gas works were municipalised in 1884. When Helsinki City Council started to plan gas works in 1896, it consulted with engineer Ad. Ahlsell, from municipal gas works of Stockholm.46 Ahlsell had travelled widely in European cities and towns and visited the United States once. He was a forerunner in developing the municipal gas and electricity works of Stockholm. The Helsinki city gasworks were municipalised in 1901.47 Stockholm’s example encouraged the building of municipal electric power plants in Helsinki. In Stockholm, successful experiments had been extended to electric tramways and electric lighting. In 1902, the plans for a municipal electricity works in Helsinki were ready. When completed, these would consist of a main station and several substations. References were made to the experiences of Stockholm and large cities in Germany.48 The works started in 1906, and the electric power facility was constructed in 1908–1909 on the site owned by the municipal gasworks.49 Networking Continues Helsinki’s core infrastructure had already been completed before 1914, but transnational journeys continued unabated afterwards. From 1919, the City Council of Helsinki included a general grant for city officials’ foreign study trips in its annual budget, the condition of its award being that the recipient would later write a report and remain in the city’s service for a minimum of two years. In the years that followed, the grant system became an entrenched practice: the aggregate sums increased throughout the 1920s and 1930s while representatives from each of the different

Creative internationalism 315 divisions were awarded grants in almost equal proportions, justifying their receipt in language that was couched in terms of the economic and business benefits to the city. Nordic countries and cities were increasingly Finland’s major reference group, and the trips to Nordic countries increased throughout the 1920s and 1930s as well as after the Second World War.50 Cooperation Between Nordic Cities Continues During the past years, there have been projects in which cooperation and new sustainable collaboration processes between Nordic cities have been emphasised. During 2017–2021, the project Nordic Solutions for Sustainable Cities was part of the Nordic prime minister’s initiative on Nordic solutions to global challenges and aims to combine public policy, academic analysis, and business outlook. The purpose was to promote such Nordic solutions and innovations that address some of the most pressing global issues. The prime ministers wanted to share knowledge  of projects, for example, on the themes Nordic Green, Nordic Gender Effect, and Nordic Food and Welfare. The initiative was coordinated by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Behind this was a growing global demand for solutions for the urban environment. New challenges for Nordic cities and countries are sustainability, water, energy, land, and food resources. The participating towns included Copenhagen, Helsinki, Mariehamn, Nuuk, Oslo, Reykjavik, Stockholm, and Torshavn. The Nordic region offers high-quality urban solutions based on Nordic strengths such as good governance, public–private partnerships, design tradition, environmental and social consciousness, as well as robust technological solutions. The aim of Nordic sustainable cities was to strengthen the Nordic brand, add value to existing trade promotion efforts through Nordic cooperation, and to expand the market potential for Nordic businesses. The project was carried out in close cooperation with national export organisations, clusters, and businesses to promote Nordic solutions for sustainable, liveable, and smart cities on a global level. Jointly agreed activities will help to facilitate cooperation between Nordic stakeholders and increase opportunities for export. The project will be run in close collaboration with national trade promotion agencies, clusters and businesses.51 The challenges taken up in Nordic Solutions for Sustainable Cities were the following: ‘City populations are growing and people are aspiring to an everbetter quality of life. More and more resources are being used to support this trajectory but these resources can’t keep pace with demand. Water,

316  Marjatta Hietala energy, land and food resources are not growing in absolute terms. In fact, many are depleting.’ Land is a major issue. It provides the space for all living things to inhabit and survive. As populations continue to grow, cities can minimise their land use through concentrating on people and their activities. However, the challenge remains in providing citizens with a high standard of living, in restricting resource consumption to sustainable levels, and keeping everything within a compact system, that is, preventing urban sprawl and adverse impacts on the surrounding natural environment. The report of the project presented a range of values, tools, and practices on which Nordic sustainable cities are built. As such, it showed a path that is both tangible and scalable. It asked what makes a sustainable city and lists a number of factors crucial to consider in developing, for example, the Low Carbon City, the Compact Green City, or the Circular Economy City. In their discussion, Canadian urbanist Mitchell Reardon and Hans Fridberg, senior advisor at Nordic Innovation, were looking at the model ‘Nordic city’ from a cooperative regional and global market perspective. Successes that can spread from contemporary Nordic cities are characterized by their commitment to environmental sustainability; focus on innovation; and accessibility to water and greenery. These features have supported the positive global perception of Nordic cities in recent years; however, they did not emerge out of nowhere. Long-term cooperation between national Nordic governments, intergovernmental authorities and urban regions has fostered shared values and tools that support a cohesive approach to sustainable urban development. Notably however, the story of cooperation in Nordic cities arises out of a regional context, but this does not limit its relevance to other cities beyond the Nordic region.52 The Thematic Group for Sustainable Cities and Urban Development focused on the conditions of planning and development for small- and medium-sized cities in the Nordic region. The overarching objectives were to increase knowledge concerning local urban qualities and socio-economic conditions and to help improve governance practices for sustainable development and to deepen the understanding of linkages and external relations (regional, national, global) with particular focus on urban–rural relations.53 Challenges for sustainable cities and developments continue on European level. The ongoing EU Program Horizon Europe (2021–2027) is the key funding programme for research and innovations. It tackles climate

Creative internationalism 317 change, helps achieve the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, and boosts European Union’s competitiveness and growth.54 Notes 1 Marjatta Hietala & Peter Clark, ‘Creative city’, in Oxford Handbook of Global Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 720–36. 2 Charles Landry, ‘A roadmap for the creative city’, in David Emanuel Andersson, Åke E. Andersson & Charlotta Mellander (eds.), Handbook of Creative Cities (Cheltenham & Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011), pp. 517–18. 3 Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2004), preface to 2004, pp xiii–xxi. 4 Allen J. Scott, ‘The cultural economy in cities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 21 (1997), pp. 323–60. 5 Peter Hall, Cities in Civilization (London: Weidenfeld-Nicolson 1999), pp. 279–309. 6 Charles Landry, ‘A roadmap for the creative city’, in Andersson, Andersson & Mellander (eds.) 2011, pp. 517–8. 7 Manuel Castells, ‘The informational city in a global perspective’, in Antti Kasvio & Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko (eds.), e-City: Analysing Efforts to generate Local Dynamism in the City of Tampere (Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2005), p. 45. 8 Lars Nilsson, ‘A capital floating on the waters: The development of Stockholm in a long-term perspective’, in Lars Nilsson (ed.), Capital Cities: Images and Realities in the Historical Development of European Capital Cities (Stockholm: Stads-och Kommunhistoriska Institutet, 2000), pp. 152–78, 279–309. 9 Antti Kasvio & Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko, ‘Informational cities and global restructuring’, in Kasvio & Anttiroiko (eds.) 2005, pp. 26–7. 10 At the end of 2021, there were 978,770 inhabitants in Stockholm and 656,920 in Helsinki. The metropolitan region around Stockholm had 2.2 million people and 1.4 million people in Helsinki region. 11 With my research group I have concentrated on the active information acquisition and on the ability of Helsinki to benefit from the experience of other countries and cities. At the beginning of the 20th century, the competition between European and American cities was fierce. Cities wanted to show how progressive they were and how far they had adopted technology, Marjatta Hietala, ‘Innovaatioiden ja kansainvälistymisen vuosikymmenet’ [Decades of innovations and internationalisation], in Tietoa, taitoa, asiantuntemusta: Helsinki eurooppalaisessa kehityksessä 1875–1917 [Know-How and Professionalism: Helsinki as Part of European Development], Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1992), pp. 1–66. 12 Technisches Gemeindeblatt (1898/99–1905/6); Städte Zeitung (1903/04– 1906/07). 13 In 1987, I published the book where I analysed centres of growth with examples of German, English, and Nordic cities. Marjatta Hietala, Services and Urbanization at the Turn of the Century: The Diffusion of Innovations (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1987). 14 Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880 (London & New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 14, 20–3.

318  Marjatta Hietala 15 Nathan Rosenberg, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 16 Anthony Sutcliffe, Towards the Planned City: Germany, Britain, the United States and France 1790–1914 (Oxford: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), pp. 163–6, 176. 17 Marjatta Hietala, ‘Transfer of German and Scandinavian administrative knowledge: Examples from Helsinki and the association of Finnish cities, 1870–1939’, in Nico Randeraad (ed.), Formation und Transfer städtischen Verwaltungswissens (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003), p. 117. 18 Hietala 1992, pp. 269–71. 19 Hietala 1987, pp. 203–20, 239–58. 20 Marjatta Bell & Marjatta Hietala, Helsinki: Finlands Innovative Capital (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society  & City of Helsinki, City Archives, 2017), p. 372. 21 Leo Ehrnrooth, ‘Mietintö siitä, miten kaupunkien etuja voitaisiin yhteistoimin parhaiten edistää’, in Suomen kaupunkiliiton hallituksen pöytäkirjat v. 1912, Suomen kaupunkiliiton arkisto (Helsinki: Archives of the Association of the Finnish Towns, 1912). 22 Leo Ehrnrooth had studied in Berlin. During his studies he was influenced by the ideas of professors Adolph Wagner and Gustav Schmoller, who were ‘Kathedersozialisten’, who promoted state-controlled economic policies and legislation that favoured socially underprivileged classes; Jukka Muiluvuori, ‘Leo Ehrnrooth’, in Suomen Kansallisbiografia [Finnish Nationalbiography], Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1997). 23 According to data sampled from 390 tours undertaken by Helsinki’s city officials and elected representatives from 1875 to 1917, almost one-half (187) of tours involved ascertaining other cities’ experiences in connection with elementary schools. Next came healthcare, with 115 tours, while adult education and training accounted for 31. For city planning and social services, 41 journeys were made, with a further 16 to study lighting techniques, Hietala 1992, pp. 276–9; Bell & Hietala 2017, pp. 27–129. 24 Yngve Larsson, Kommunalförvaltningens organisation och arbetssätt i Sveriges, Englands, Frankrikes, Preussens, Österrikes, Danmarks och Norges städer (Stockholm: Nordiska Bokhandel, 1909), p. 146. 25 It was published only in 1912–1913. 26 M. Neefe (ed.), Statistisches Jahrbuch deutscher Städte, Jahrgang 1–21 (Breslau: Deutscher Städtetag, 1890–1916). 27 By 1935, 32 national unions from 22 countries were affiliated members in IULA. After the Second World War, IULA reacted to such problems as unemployment and pollution. In 1962, IULA organised a congress on clean air. The focus in congresses was also on traffic, noise, and on the consumption of energy. Annamari Hirvonen, ‘Kaupunkien yhteiset ympäristöongelmat’ (unpublished master’s thesis/pro gradu-tutkielma, Tampereen yliopisto, Tampere, 2011), pp. 7–78. 28 Yrjö Harvia was also a member of Helsinki City Council during 1921–1936 and 1946–1947. He served as the chairman of the Council in 1935–1936. Tuulikki Koskinen, ‘Harvia, Yrjö’, in Suomen Kansallisbiografia [Finnish Nationalbiography], Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1997). 29 Larsson’s urban projects consisted of the metro, Bromma airfield, Västerbron, and Tranebergsbron. Yngve Larsson, Wikipedia (13 January 2022).

Creative internationalism 319 30 Larsson 1909; Leo Ehrnrooth, ‘Suomen kaupunkihallinnon järjestämiskysymys’, Suomen kunnallislehti, 1 (1916). 31 Helge Lindholm was an expert looking at finances of towns. He wrote a book Drätselförvaltningens organisation i de svenska städerna (Stockholm: Svenska Stadsförbundet, 1915). 32 Yrjö Harvia, ‘Ruotsin kolmannet kaupunkipäivät ja Ruotsin Kaupunkiliiton kymmenvuotisjuhla’ 6th and 7th 1918’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 5–6 (1918); Yrjö Harvia, ‘Katsauksia’ (Reviews from Abroad), Suomen Kunnallislehti, 7 (1933), p. 129; Yrjö Harvia, ‘Katsauksia eri tahoilta’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 7 (1933), p.  129; Yrjö Harvia, ‘Katsauksia’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 9 (1924), p. 9. 33 Hietala 2003, pp. 109–30. 34 Einar Böök studied in Germany. The teacher was economist Lujo Brentano. Mikko Uola, ‘Böök, Einar’, in Suomen Kansallisbiografia [Finnish Nationalbiography], Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1997). 35 Einar Böök, ‘Tukholman asuntokongressi 21–23.9.1916’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 8 (1916). 36 Einar Böök, ‘Nykyhetken tehtäviä kaupunkien asuntopolitiikalle’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 10–11 (1916). 37 Anthony Sutcliffe, Towards the Planned City: Germany, Britain, the United States and France 1780–1914 (London: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 163–200. 38 Ernest P. Hennock, British Social Reform and German Precedents: The Case of Social Insurance 1880–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), p. 81. 39 Weizmann, ‘Die Städtebau-Ausstellung in Düsseldorf’, Städte-Zeitung (30 September  1910), pp.  715–16; ‘Allgemeine Städtebauausstellung in Berlin’, Gemeindeverwaltungsblatt (22 February 1910). 40 Pierre-Yves Saunier, ‘Les voyages municipaux américains en Europe 1900– 1940: Une piste d‘histoire transnationale’, in Randeraad 2003, pp. 267–88. 41 Hietala 1992, pp. 249–59. 42 Hietala 1987, pp. 387–91. 43 Henry S. Lunn, Municipal Studies and International Friendship (London  & Aylesbury: Horace Marshall, 1908), pp. 1–20; Hietala 1987, pp. 361–2. 44 Henry S. Lunn, Municipal Lessons from Southern Germany (London: Horace Marshall, 1908). 45 Hietala 1987, pp. 191, 211. 46 Jaakko Pöyhönen, ‘Voimaa koneisiin, valoa kaduille ja asuntoihin’, in Kirsi Ahonen, Marjaana Niemi  & Jaakko Pöyhönen (eds.), Henkistä kasvua, teknistä taitoa, Tietoa, Taitoa, asiantuntemusta: Helsinki eurooppalaisessa kehityksessä 1875–1917, vol. 3 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1992), pp. 223–7. 47 Ad. Ahlsell, Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon (Stockholm: Biografiskt Lexikon, 1918) pp. 319–21. 48 Hietala 1987, pp. 191, 246–7. 49 Helsingin kaupunginvaltuuston pöytäkirjat, 63 (1910). 50 Bell & Hietala 2017, pp. 183–9. 51 www.nordicinnovation.org/sustainablecities (2 November 2022). 52 Mitchell Reardon, ‘Co-operation  – a hallmark of Nordic cities’, Nordregio News, 4 (2017), p. 5; https://nordregio.org (6 November 2022). 53 www.nordregio.se/AboutNordregio (6 November 2022). 54 www.catalyze-group.com/fund/horizon-europe/ (17 November 2022).

320  Marjatta Hietala Bibliography Ahlsell, Ad, Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon (Stockholm: Biografiskt Lexikon, 1918). ‘Allgemeine Städtebauausstellung in Berlin’, Gemeindeverwaltungsblatt (22 February 1910). Bell, Marjatta & Marjatta Hietala, Helsinki: Finlands Innovative Capital (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society & City of Helsinki/City Archives, 2017). Böök, Einar, ‘Nykyhetken tehtäviä kaupunkien asuntopolitiikalle’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 10–11 (1916). Böök, Einar, ‘Tukholman asuntokongressi 21–23.9.1916’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 8 (1916). Castells, Manuel, ‘The informational city in a global perspective’, in Antti Kasvio & Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko (eds.), e-City: Analysing Efforts to Generate Local Dynamism in the City of Tampere (Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2005). www.catalyze-group.com/fund/horizon-europe. Ehrnrooth, Leo, ‘Mietintö siitä, miten kaupunkien etuja voitaisiin yhteistoimin parhaiten edistää’, in Suomen kaupunkiliiton hallituksen pöytäkirjat v. 1912, Suomen kaupunkiliiton arkisto (Helsinki: Archives of the Association of the Finnish Towns, 1912). Ehrnrooth, Leo, ‘Suomen kaupunkihallinnon järjestämiskysymys’, Suomen kunnallislehti, 1 (1916). Florida, Richard, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2004). Hall, Peter, Cities in Civilization (London: Weidenfeld-Nicolson, 1999). Harvia, Yrjö, ‘Ruotsin kolmannet kaupunkipäivät ja Ruotsin Kaupunkiliiton kymmenvuotisjuhla’ 6th and 7th 1918’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 5–6 (1918). Harvia, Yrjö, ‘Katsauksia’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 9 (1924). Harvia, Yrjö, ‘Katsauksia’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 7 (1933). Harvia, Yrjö, ‘Katsauksia eri tahoilta’, Suomen Kunnallislehti, 7 (1933). Helsingin kaupunginvaltuuston pöytäkirjat, 63 (1910). Hennock, Ernest P., British Social Reform and German Precedents: The Case of Social Insurance 1880–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Hietala, Marjatta, Services and Urbanization at the Turn of the Century: The Diffusion of Innovations (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1987). Hietala, Marjatta, ‘Innovaatioiden ja kansainvälistymisen vuosikymmenet’, in Tietoa, taitoa, asiantuntemusta: Helsinki eurooppalaisessa kehityksessä 1875–1917 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1992). Hietala, Marjatta, ‘Transfer of German and Scandinavian administrative knowledge: Examples from Helsinki and the association of Finnish cities, 1870–1939’, in Nico Randeraad (ed.), Formation und Transfer städtischen Verwaltungswissens (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003). Hietala, Marjatta & Peter Clark, ‘Creative city’, in Oxford Handbook of Global Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Hirvonen, Annamari, ‘Kaupunkien yhteiset ympäristöongelmat’ (unpublished master’s thesis/pro gradu-tutkielma, Tampereen yliopisto, Tampere, 2011). Kasvio, Antti & Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko, ‘Informational cities and global restructuring’, in Antti Kasvio & Ari-Veikko Anttiroiko (eds.), e-City: Analysing Efforts to Generate Local Dynamism in the City of Tampere (Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2005).

Creative internationalism 321 Koskinen, Tuulikki, ‘Harvia, Yrjö’, in Suomen Kansallisbiografia, Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1997). Landry, Charles, ‘A roadmap for the creative city’, in David Emanuel Andersson, Åke E. Andersson & Charlotta Mellander (eds.), Handbook of Creative Cities (Cheltenham & Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011). Larsson, Yngve, Kommunalförvaltningens organisation och arbetssätt i Sveriges, Englands, Frankrikes, Preussens, Österrikes, Danmarks och Norges städer (Stockholm: Svenska stadsförbundets skriftserie, 1909). Lindholm, Helge, Drätselförvaltningens organisation i de svenska städerna (Stockholm: Svenska Stadsförbundet, 1915). Lunn, Henry S., Municipal Lessons from Southern Germany (London: Horace Marshall, 1908). Lunn, Henry S., Municipal Studies and International Friendship (London & Aylesbury: Horace Marshall, 1908). Muiluvuori, Jukka, ‘Leo Ehrnrooth’, in Suomen Kansallisbiografia, Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1997). Neefe, M. (ed.), Statistisches Jahrbuch deutscher Städte, Jahrgang 1–21 (Breslau: Deutscher Städtetag, 1890–1916). Nilsson, Lars, ‘A capital floating on the waters: The development of Stockholm in a long-term perspective’, in Lars Nilsson (ed.), Capital Cities: Images and Realities in the Historical Development of European Capital Cities (Stockholm: Stads och Kommunhistoriska Institutet, 2000). www.nordicinnovation.org/sustainablecities. https://nordregio.org. Perkin, Harold, The Rise of Professional Society: England Since 1880 (London & New York: Routledge, 1990). Pöyhönen, Jaakko, ‘Voimaa koneisiin, valoa kaduille ja asuntoihin’, in Kirsi Ahonen, Marjaana Niemi & Jaakko Pöyhönen (eds.), Henkistä kasvua, teknistä taitoa, Tietoa, Taitoa, asiantuntemusta: Helsinki eurooppalaisessa kehityksessä 1875–1917, vol. 3 (Helsinki: Finnish Historical Society, 1992). Reardon, Mitchell, ‘Co-operation – a hallmark of Nordic cities’, Nordregio News (2017), p. 4. Rosenberg, Nathan, Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Saunier, Pierre-Yves, ‘Les voyages municipaux américains en Europe 1900–1940: Une piste d‘histoire transnationale’, in Nico Randeraad (ed.), Formation und Transfer städtischen Verwaltungswissens (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2003). Scott, Allen J., ‘The cultural economy in cities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 21 (1997). Städte Zeitung 1903/04–1906/07. Sutcliffe, Anthony, Towards the Planned City: Germany, Britain, the United States and France 1780–1914 (London: Blackwell, 1981). Technisches Gemeindeblatt, 1898/99–1905/6. Uola, Mikko, ‘Böök, Einar’, Suomen Kansallisbiografia, Studia Biographica 4 (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1997). Weizmann, ‘Die Städtebau-Ausstellung in Düsseldorf’, Städte-Zeitung (30 September 1910).

Part V

Making sense of urban history

15 Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration National cities associations and municipal movement in 1903–1913 in Nordic countries Laura Kolbe Baron Erik Palmstierna, one of the founders of the Swedish Association of Cities and the Central Municipal Office, describes in his memoirs how urban cooperation was launched from scratch in September 1908: An interesting work began at the Central Municipal Office in Stockholm. The first day we sat on three packing bags and thought about what should be done first. During the summer I had traveled to England to study ‘the Association of Municipal Corporation’, but this did not give us much. It was King Edward England, post-Victorian, self-satisfied and advanced. – I decided, before anything else, to produce a register for practical matters to be done. It was not easy, as there were hundreds of matters to take care of, but a system was created, and it helped a lot our work.1 After many years of preparatory work and a foundation prepared in previous association activities, the cooperation of cities was a reality. In this chapter, I look at the primary stages of Nordic urban associations in the early 20th century. Inspired by European stimuli, city representatives began to produce urban policies that could be described as modern. The inspirational level was international and European. The development of urbanization and the need to reform municipal legislation increased everywhere in the late 19th century, and cities and municipalities soon needed to cooperate more closely. In the Nordic countries, Danske Købstadsforening was first established in 1873. Then organizational urban cooperation spread to Norway, and Norges Byforbund was founded in 1903. Five years later, representatives of Swedish cities founded Svenska Stadsförbundet (1908). When cities in Finland established the Municipal Central Office in Finland in 1912, lessons had already been learnt from the other Nordic countries, and networks with them were formed. In 1917, the Suomen Kaupunkiliitto/Finlands DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-20

326  Laura Kolbe Stadsförbund began its operations in Helsinki.2 None of these associations exist as independent organizations today, as after 1970s municipal legal reforms they were incorporated into other municipal associations, usually including both cities and local municipalities: • KL Local Government Denmark (Denmark, 1970) • KS The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (Norway, 1972) • The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (Sweden, 1968, 2007) • The Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (Finland, 1993) As early as the founding phase, the urban unions, associations, and offices operated in the local, national, and international spheres of influence. The forms of organization and activity were based on European role models, and in the Nordic countries, mainly from the German-speaking cultural area. City conferences and discussion events were organized, a separate central office established, and a series of publications and a journal set up. Legal and administrative advice for cities was the key function in a situation where municipal legislation was still underdeveloped or being shaped. In the short time before the First World War, national associations of cities were established, a joint Nordic network was created, and European urban cooperation started.3 ‘Brotherhood of cities’ and aspirations of municipal reforms In various countries of Europe and in the United States, a municipal movement arose at the end of the 19th century. Various authors discussed the role of local governance as a part of state functions.4 The idea of a transnational ‘brotherhood of cities’ was strong before 1914. In Europe, the ‘municipalization movement’ culminated in Ghent in 1913 in the first joint meeting of European cities. The First World War changed the set-ups, but belief in the relationship of cities remained strong even after the war. During the late 19th century urban contacts were linked to world fairs, and in the wake of them attempts were made to deepen the cooperation between metropoles. Two decades before the First World War major cities grew with challenges created by mass urbanization, industrialization, and change of political climate. Within the frames of municipal administration there was a need for expertise in dealing with specific urban developments (planning, infrastructure, water supply etc.) information about the latest developments in other cities. Delegates met at international conferences. Enthusiasm was sparked in the late 19th century, but the goal was finally

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 327 achieved at the first meeting of the cities in 1913 in connection with the Ghent World Fair. In the eyes of contemporaries, the conference was motivated by the ‘idea of ​​organized co-operation’, which was developed further into an ‘idea of ​​municipal cohesion’.5 At that time, most European cities had reformed (or started to reform) their administrations and political system, either under national law or voluntarily. The rise of municipal power was manifested in flamboyant town halls, symbols of a new kind of local government in a modernizing urban space.6 A similar wave of reforms progressed from Helsinki and Stockholm to Jerusalem and from Oslo and Copenhagen to Lisbon: the traditional merchant elite or the power of the bourgeoisie, the oligarch, and the elders began to be replaced by modern rule. This involved a new understanding of municipalities as part of a regional, national, and European context and of ​​the cross-border, universal power of the city brotherhood. The words ‘Europe’ and ‘internationality’ were positively charged before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. In local government, they manifested in national and cross-border cooperation that brought together currents such as utopia, belief in science, general politics, popular movements, and strengthening governance.7 In Nordic countries, the associations of cities and their prominent figures were mainly to bourgeois men, as workers (and women) were mainly excluded from municipal decision-making. Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland switched to democracy between 1906 and 1921. A national suffrage reform was implemented alongside many other reforms, including agrarian and land reforms. The municipal reform, which usually was enacted later, guaranteed universal and equal suffrage in municipal elections for all men and women. In Denmark, women were given the right to vote in municipal elections in 1908. In 1919, state control was reduced as ‘the royal-appointed mayors in cities disappeared’. In Norway, universal suffrage was introduced in the municipal election in 1913 and in 1921, a new municipal law guaranteed that the ‘municipal government’ became the decisive decision-making body. In Finland, the municipal laws of 1917– 1919 made municipal councils mandatory in all municipalities and gave universal and equal voting rights in municipal elections. In Sweden, men and women received universal suffrage in parliamentary and municipal elections in 1918–1921.8 Until these reforms, the citizen’s right to vote in municipal elections was determined by their gender (only men), the size of their income, and payment of tax. Local urban policy was mainly the concern of rather wealthy local influencers. Baron Erik Palmstierna with his urban, blue-blooded, and upper-class background was a good example of this category. Consequently, municipal matters were in the hands of aristocratic and bourgeois male elite, who were enlightened, liberal, creative, wealthy, and

328  Laura Kolbe even progressive. Many of them were formidable urban reformers. These men, whether educated or self-made, were usually employed within the new industrial and professional occupations, especially banking, construction, insurance, services, commerce, and the public sector. They formed the backbone of the new urban middle-class elite, active in many voluntary societies and clubs, in political, national, and cultural associations. Many of them were inspired by internationalist movements. Everywhere in Europe their power grew, not only in financial and commercial circles but also in urban planning, politics, and administration.9 Urban bourgeois men creating Nordic welfare The focus of this chapter is on the establishment of urban associations in the Nordic countries, the formation of an organizational culture and early Nordic and European cooperation. Although urban activity in Denmark dates from the 1870s, this chapter is limited to the first two decades of the 20th century and the activities of Swedish and Finnish city associations. The First World War cut off urban cooperation and shifted the focus of these associations to more national and domestic political influence. The key questions are the following: who formed these associations and why? How were their goals set and activities initiated? What was distinctly ‘Nordic’ about their activities compared to their counterparts in the rest of Europe? Many Nordic researchers have tried to establish a special understanding for ‘Nordic tradition of cooperation’. There is a vast literature about how the notion of ‘Norden’ or ‘being a Nordic country’ has played a key role in the national narrative of each Nordic country. As the Finnish historian Johan Strang clarifies, it is possible to distinguish two scholarly narratives of Nordic cooperation: one of failure and the other of success.10 Cities predominantly cooperated on the national level, but forms, networks, and ideas were based on a shared awareness of how societies function and how they should be reformed. By the early decades of the 20th century, there was a common understanding that Nordic associational life symbolized the bottom-up character of the societies. The leading Swedish social pioneer Alva Myrdal, writing in 1946 about ‘eternal’ Nordic friendship, underlined the importance of people’s movements and associations: ‘The Nordic people are by nature “associational individuals” (föreningsmänniska). Democratic cooperation deals with both small and big societal matters’.11 The ‘brotherhood of cities’ in the Nordic countries at the turn of the 19th century was distinctively urban and elitist and driven by strong individuals. City associations offer an interesting keyhole into analysing the change in the rhythm within the national and European politics. These changes were brought about by rapid social upheavals. The traditional structures

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 329 of political power, the parliament, city hall, and bureaucracy, driven by civil servants, did not easily bow to rapid reforms. The same was true with the political parties, whose activities were still immature in the early 20th century and whose party programmes were in the making stage. Therefore, the city associations must be seen as a part of an urban non-parliamentary reform movement, stretched across Europe to influence reforms in social legislation and policymaking. At this point, it is appropriate to use Janet R. Hornes’s term ‘parapolitical sphere’, which was positioned in the middle of traditional state and municipal government, business, and philanthropy. It was linked to a reform movement led by strong individuals.12 How the Swedish and Finnish associations of cities were organized is the focus here. Similar social, elitist background and language were the uniting elements. Swedish was (and is) Finland’s second national language. The Swedish and Finnish city associations and their influencers were networked in many ways even before 1908–1912. One could call this elite network a ‘reformist nebula’, a notion created by the sociologist Christina Toplav, demonstrating its transnational nature. Though historical analysis (based on archive research and the two case studies), this chapter explores how the transnational nebula of urban and social reformers was organized to create the national and (later) international associations. Like Erik Palmstierna, members of this reformist nebula worked as experts for many local and national organizations and played a key role as brokers between international ideas and national aspirations. The main aim was to reform society and social and municipal politics.13 Transnationalism is not a method but a perspective that helps to outline the multinational nature of the Nordic networks, ideas, and connections that underlie this phenomenon, usually perceived as national. Although Swedish and Finnish urban actors are analysed here in their national context, they are seen as part of a European, even global, movement. The beginning of the cooperation between national city associations represents the transfer of innovations in its north European context. The international debate on municipalism and the reformist spirit behind it are key arguments for using the theory of framing in this context.14 Breaking into bourgeois urban cooperation is a way of questioning the grand narrative of Nordic welfare that has framed the descriptions of Nordic national history since the 1960s. The guarantee of a Nordic democratic welfare state is seen to be formed by an alliance of the public sector and citizens’ (mainly workers) movements. The role of municipalities, cities, and an enlightened urban elite has been overshadowed by ‘welfare-state history’. Nordic countries have paid much attention to the idea of ​​civic society and its organization, which has shed light on the rise of the labour and women’s movements. These movements, as explained historically, were seen as prime motors for political changes, the emergence of modern

330  Laura Kolbe

Figure 15.1  Employees in the headquarter of Swedish Association of Cities in 1910. Sitting from the left are Helge Lindholm, Erik Palmstierna, Anna Wager Gunnarsson, and Yngve Larsson. Source: Photograph by Herman Hamnqvist, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

citizenship and innovative organizational activity. In Nordic countries, the concept of democracy had a historical, political, and even downright ideological link to belief of strong state as the (main and only) social performer.15 In contrast, research on municipal administration and policy has been marginal and limited to writing local history. Municipalities and cities have played an invisible role in Finland compared to Swedish research, where the municipal perspective and the history of self-government traditionally have been seen as a reflection of a wide range of ideas.16 Stockholm 1908, Helsinki 1912 The moment when the association of cities was funded is well documented in both Sweden and Finland. In October 1907, a group of urban politicians gathered at the Stockholm House of Nobility for Sweden’s first municipal assembly (kommunalkongress). The event was hosted by National Association of Social Work (Centralförbundet för Socialt Arbete CSA, est. 1903) and its secretary, Baron Erik Palmstierna. Palmstierna and his urban network had a strong vision of cooperation to achieve social reforms. An

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 331 organization had to be set up to do this. The three-day meeting can today be seen defining the municipal challenges that the new association had to tackle.17 The meeting was attended by hundreds of representatives from cities, towns, and municipalities, as well as a wide range of other actors with an interest in social policy. The meeting stated several goals related to municipal land policy, housing, and improving the situation of municipal workers. A year later, in October 1908, the Swedish Association of Cities and its Central Municipal Office began operations. Erik Palmstierna was elected as its first chairman and Yngve Larsson, MSc, as the secretary. The former was a bourgeois and liberal-minded reformist, the latter an active Uppsala student and member of the Social Democratic Party.18 The first Stockholm City Conference in October  1907 had also been closely followed in the Swedish-language newspapers in Finland. As early as 4 October 1907, Tammerfors Nyheter was the first to report on a ‘new kind of remarkable movement’, aimed at increasing the interaction between cities and urban communities in the field of municipal policy.19 The Swedish example showed that in a joint urban meeting one could learn from each other and solve all related problems together. The theme was ‘intermunicipal cooperation’ (interkommunala samarbete) and the article referred to models from Denmark, Germany, Norway, England, and Switzerland.20 When intermunicipal cooperation finally began in Finland, about 50 representatives attended the first joint city meeting in Helsinki City Hall in September 1912. A delegation of Finnish cities and the Central Municipal Office was established during the city conference.21 The initiative for national cooperation between the cities came from Kuopio, from the pen of Antti Kaukonen, a merchant and city councillor. He was concerned about the role of the municipalities in solving the ‘spirits question’, misuse of alcohol and the issue of prohibition. The problems caused by alcohol consumption affected every city and required a ‘common control policy’. According to Leo Ehrnrooth, a Swedish-minded civil servant, doctor of law, and one of the initiative takers in 1912, the neutral central office model was chosen as a form of organization for political reasons, based on the Swedish example. A more robust alliance-shaped organization was perceived as politically difficult by Russians, as Finland was part of the Russian Empire at this time. Ehrnrooth was elected as the first director of the Central Municipal Office, and Senator Otto Stenroth became the first chair of the delegation. The Finnish Association of Cities was established in 1917.22 Swedish and Finnish municipal movements share many features. First, a new political role opened for municipalities in the transition stages of national politics. In Sweden, the union with Norway ended in 1905, and in Finland, ‘Russification measures’ in 1908–1917 laid the groundwork for a new kind of activism and social reform. This conclusion was reached

332  Laura Kolbe by the key players, Yngve Larsson, a long-term influencer of the Swedish Association of Cities, and Yrjö Harvia, later the director of the Finnish Association of Cities. Both later analysed the early phases of the city associations. According to Larsson, ‘after the end of the Union (unionsbrottet), the demands for the reform and modernization of Swedish society increased, and the key term of the time was the association. Many major societal problems were waiting to be solved’. In Finland, Harvia emphasized the importance of the ‘Russification of Finland’ in the early 20th century. The Russification campaign, starting in 1908, evoked widespread Finnish resistance. Harvia said it shaped the soil in such a way that ‘the principles of the traditional municipal self-government of the cities sprouted from it’. Members of the Finnish urban elite, who were left aside from state activities, found new opportunities in the municipal administration, which brought to the cities ‘intellectual capital to strengthens their capacity and desire to function’.23 Second, there was plenty of demand for active participation in the parapolitical sphere of municipal politics. By the end of the 19th century, there was a widespread perception in the Nordic countries that legislation did not provide cities enough tools to face a changed reality and to modernize society.24 Urban growth and urbanization were more intensive than the city hall’s capacity to respond. Also, the tax base was not sufficient to cover the costs of increasing municipal responsibilities. Simultaneously, many of the state’s social and healthcare functions were transferred to municipalities, but the state support to the municipalities was insufficient and sporadic. There was a growing demand for fire safety, modern schools and libraries, hospitals, poor and workhouses, among many other things. In addition, as stated by the city associations, there was a lack of literature and a need for information. This created space for active civic engagement in a matter that, in principle, belonged to the public authority.25 Third, as Yngve Larsson stated, the role of civic associations cuts deep into Nordic political identity. Bourgeois and liberal-minded influencers, like Ehrnrooth, Palmstierna, Stenroth, and Larsson, pursued a policy of reforms in a peaceful and association-based manner. As Henrik Stenius, who has studied voluntary associations in Finland until the early 20th century, stated, social and ideal activism was the true counterweight to slow and bureaucratic state politics. The actions were for national and patriotic and, in Finland, for linguistic goals.26 Although the political circumstances were somewhat different in (Royal) Sweden and (the Grand Duchy of) Finland at the beginning of the 20th century, the societal platform was of the same type, due to shared governmental history until 1809. In both countries, there were hundreds of independent municipalities in all categories: cities and towns, townships (köping/ kauppala), countryside municipalities (landskommun/maalaiskunta), rural

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 333 communes (kommun/kunta), and semiurban, semi-independent municipalities (samhälle med tätbebyggelse/taajaväkinen yhdyskunta).27 In both countries, until voting reform, the urban and municipal movement was anchored in the upper strata of society. In Sweden, this was the old upper class and the rising liberals interested in social reform. In Finland, it was the members of state and city administration and the Swedish-speaking upper class. In both Sweden and Finland, the urban bourgeois elite had a negative attitude towards the mass organizations, labour movement, and political socialism.28 In his speech in 1912, Otto Stenroth, the first chair of the delegation of Finnish cities, referred to ‘the trend of various coalitions’ in ‘larger civilized countries’. Cooperation was important at a time when destruction threatens everything we have built on these rugged landscapes over the centuries. In such conditions, new tasks and new responsibilities open up for our municipalities, because when all progress is denied by the state, then municipalities, wherever possible on the basis of municipal self-government, must replace the state to support and develop intellectual, material and social progress. And in this activity, our cities must be at the forefront of setting an example. This meeting of ours . . . is like a promise to the better future, like a bright, warming ray of sunshine in the middle of gloomy clouds.29 The civic movements, municipal and social reforms The first reformist inputs in both countries came from advocates of social and municipal reforms, simultaneously. In Sweden, the CSA and in Finland the Confederation of Finnish Social Work (Yhteiskunnallinen Keskusliitto, YKL est. 1911) conducted surveys to increase knowledge and awareness of social and societal challenges. Their main aim was to provide practical proposals for actions by adding general information on critical issues.30 Transnational role models were clear. In England, from early on, the municipal wing of the labour movement worked closely with the Fabian Society and the Social Democratic Federation. The German Verein für Sozialpolitik (1873) was well known in the Nordic countries, bringing together influential citizens interested in social policy. The Verein had three series of publications between 1906 and 1912. One dealt with the administrative character of cities, the other with the economic situation of urban areas, and the third with the state of European municipal services. The Verein played a central role in German-speaking Europe as the main body dealing with municipal issues.31 The French operating model was well known in the Nordic countries. The founders of the YKL, led by Leo Ehrnrooth, were widely aware of

334  Laura Kolbe

Figure 15.2a The cover of the Swedish Svenska stadsförbundets tidskrift. Source: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration

335

Figure 15.2b The cover of the Finnish journal Suomen Kunnallislehta. Source: National Library of Finland’s Digital Collections, https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi. In Sweden and Finland, the city associations started to publish journals to reach the municipal decision-makers all over the country, first in Sweden in 1909 and then in Finland in 1916. These journals offered information and reports about the latest developments, discussed the future needs of reforms, and gave legal advice to the readers. A medieval town silhouette was a symbolic element of both associations.

336  Laura Kolbe the French social information activities, described in the YKL’s first annual report in 1911. The introduction indicates that there was a ‘confusion of the elites’ in the face of rapid social change: The more an individual discovers himself in a situation, where he finds himself in need of special social and legal information, the more it’s evident, that one must create specific tools for disseminating social information and create a spirit of stimuli.32 In Germany and France, these specific tools were known as the Musée Social and Soziales Museum. These ‘museums’ were often conglomerates established by wealthy individuals. Their aim was to create ‘practical social life’, and the task was to ‘collect data on various phenomena and share this information and bring it back as rational guidance of both public and private endeavors’. The museum activities were promoted through publishing, education, and exhibition, as well as by organizing discussion and presentation events and investing in advisory services.33 The connection of the Swedish Association of Cities to CSA was organic, and in Finland, the YKL paved the way for the cities’ cooperation. CSA and YKL were formed to gather all the associations that wanted to find solutions to the social issue. Poverty, housing shortages, alcohol misuse, and children who suffered were some of the problems that spread through the Nordic countries during industrialism and were linked to urbanization and large social gaps. In Finland, 32 diverse member organizations joined YKL in the year of its founding, ranging from women’s associations to the media and the cooperative movement. There were many problems to be investigated, including issues related to urban and municipal policy. These included the organization of municipal administration and municipal finances, the care and education of the poor, municipal healthcare, and the problems of housing in the broadest sense.34 The Swedish and Finnish city associations clearly moved in the sphere of ​​parapolitics, like many of their European role models. They were not linked to political parties. From the outset a clear distinction was drawn between social reforms and socialism. In Stockholm, the distinction was tested when Erik Palmstierna and Yngve Larsson joined the Social Democratic Party. In Finland, Leo Ehrnrooth belonged to the liberal Swedish People’s Party and was elected a Member of Parliament in the first democratic parliamentary elections in 1907. Otto Stenroth was a member of the Young Finnish Party. He had been a member of the bourgeois estate in several 19th-century estates. It is no coincidence that Ehrnrooth’s first trip was to Stockholm. Correspondence also began with associations in Oslo and Copenhagen. The purpose of Ehrnrooth’s trip to Stockholm was to get information from the Swedes about the activities of their city association.

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 337

Figure 15.3 The Tampere City Hall on the edge of the central square was built in 1890. The Neo-renaissance style suited well to the tastes of the ruling bourgeois elite. Modern town halls (and squares in front of them) became the centres for public and political life in growing cities all over Europe, especially after the municipal reforms added more power to the local level. New city or town councils, the associated departments, and their employees took over the role of old city administrative court (magistrate) and its aldermen. Source: www.finna.fi, Photo: Daniel Nyblin, 1893. Collection: Historian kuvakokoelma. Finnish Heritage Agency. CC BY 4.0.

In Stockholm, he met with its secretary Yngve Larsson and its chair Erik Palmstierna. According to Ehrnrooth, information about the establishment of a central office in Finland was ‘cordially received’ in Stockholm and rigorous cooperation and assistance was promised.35 The European understanding of municipalities and Nordic countries The Nordic countries share a widespread understanding of common societal roots in national political organization and local government. Municipal reforms were made in all these countries during the 19th century, following the German model. In Norway, the first municipal reforms were made as early as in 1837. In 1840, Copenhagen gained a new municipal

338  Laura Kolbe constitution, which was soon expanded (1849). In the political history of Sweden and Finland, one of the most important milestones has been the passing of the local government statutes in 1862/1865. These reforms placed more power in the hands of local authorities. The city councils became the city’s supreme decision-making body. Following the German example, municipalities were given the authority – and self-governance – to undertake activities which aimed to satisfy the common needs of their inhabitants.36 All in all, there were considerable transnational and unifying factors behind the establishment of the Swedish and Finnish city associations. Leading political figures were aware of their elite position, and the educated classes took the challenge posed by the rising labour movement seriously. There were other pressure factors. In Sweden, the dissolution of the Norwegian Union in 1905 created new challenges. In Finland, political pressure from Russia in 1908–1912 activated many in the capital city. Generally, most of the social issues perceived as challenges were rooted in the multifaceted soil of large cities. In Sweden, the driving force for reform was the deteriorating social situation in cities. In Finland, the alcohol misuse triggered cooperation, whereas in Germany, for example, the key issue was access to food and agricultural policy.37 In Denmark, there was a need for an urban association as a platform for cities to share their opinion of the state. In all countries, the agenda was quite similar. It included the housing and land shortage, as well as municipal economy and taxation.38 Internationally, the municipal movement activated many performers. According to Oscar Gaspar’s definition, the European and internationalist municipal movement interested activists from socialists to liberals and bourgeois reformers to philanthropists. The city administration employed representatives of new professions – like engineers, architects, doctors, and teachers – who were all interested in developing cities according to their interests. The aim was the same: to strengthen urban competences and vitality.39 The 1912, jubilee volume of Svenska Standsförbundets Tidskrft, published by the Swedish Association of Cities, shows that contemporary themes of European urban policy were well known in Stockholm. The articles in this publication, dedicated to the 50-year jubilee of Swedish municipal reform in 1862, were written by a wide range of experts, linking Sweden closely to European municipal movement.40 Germany was an interesting destination for all Nordic municipal reformers. The development of municipal self-government and urbanization in Prussia was considerable; growth had been exceptionally rapid between 1890 and 1910. It is no coincidence that the Swedish and Finnish city associations were a direct transfer of innovation from Germany. The Prussian City Days were run on the initiative of many actors at the local level. The Schlesiche Städtetag was held in 1863 and the next, the Sächsische Städtetag

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 339 as early as a year later. The Hannoversche Städteverein in 1866 was an early attempt to create a broader cooperative structure. This included a central office and a biennial congress. Nordic city activists sought stimulus from Berlin, home to the Zentralstelle des deutschen Städtetages, founded by the German cities.41 In October 1907, the Finnish newspaper Politiken analysed the idea of a​​ municipality in terms of geopolitical imagery. The newspaper talked about a ‘basic German attitude’ (den germanska grunduppfattningen), which

Figure 15.4 Leo Ehrnrooth was one of the central Helsinki-based educated upperclass men, who became engaged in the municipal movement in Finland during 1910. He made a carrier first in the service of cities, and later, after Finland’s independence, in the service of the state. Source: www.finna.fi, Photo: Studio Rembrandt, c. 1920. Collection: Historian kuvakokoelma. Finnish Heritage Agency. CC BY 4.0.

340  Laura Kolbe encompassed the autonomy of the municipal administration and active selfreliance that bound the municipalities and the nation together. The opposite to German spirit was the ‘Roman order’ (den romerska ordaningen), which was based on centralization and centralist rule of law. The Finnish newspaper saw the benefits of European urban cooperation. Municipal responsibilities had grown and started to include privately managed activities, such as sanitation, lighting, urban forestry, and land use. The goal was clear: to keep Finland at the level of ‘European cultural countries’.42 Both the CSA and the YKL had laid the groundwork for municipal themes in their programmes, but it was only in the networks of city associations that the themes could be deepened.43 As mentioned, activities were obtained from Germany. Central offices and chancelleries as well as publication series and advice activities were developed in Stockholm and Helsinki. Svenska Stadsförbundets Tidskrift (1908) began to appear in Sweden and Suomen Kunnallislehti (1916) in Finland.44 The agenda was very much of the same type. The main problems were related to • • • • •

organizing suburbs; the role of municipalities as employers and the issue of unemployment; land policy and poor housing conditions; managing and taxing municipal businesses; care for the poor and alcohol misuse.

Sweden, Finland, and the International Union of Local Authorities, 1913 The international debut of Leo Ehrnrooth, Director of the Central Municipal Office of Finland, took place at a large international city conference in Ghent in 1913. The name of the Ghent conference, Congrés internationale de l’art de construire les villes et l’organiz de la vie municipale, suggested that the initiators had a strong connection to the French-speaking municipal culture. The Nordic countries were represented by Mr  Jensen and Mr  Marstrand, Mayors of Copenhagen, Mr  Knudzen, Mayor of Christiania (Oslo), Mr  Edmond Linddahl, Mayor of Malmö, Mr  Albert Lilienberg, City Engineer of Gothenburg, and Mr  Hallman, Architect of Stockholm. Representatives of city associations from Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Finland, and Sweden were present. Ghent had 421 representatives from 23 countries and 162 municipalities.45 It is no coincidence that Belgium became the driving force behind transnational urban networking. Analysing the central role of the country, Daniel Laqua dates transnational upheaval to the early 1880s. Belgian activity was explained by early industrialization and urbanization, and soon it was

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 341 a model country for industrial development in Europe. The conference unanimously decided to start holding regular international city congresses and to set up a permanent secretariat in Brussels. In addition to Finland, the founding members of this new network included Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, and Sweden.46 Accordingly, in 1913, L’Union International des Villes/International Union of Local Authorities (UIV/IULA) began its activities. Leo Ehrnrooth was elected to the interim board of the IULA, but soon operations were nipped in the bud, as Ehrnrooth described in his memoirs, by ‘the outbreak of World War, which brutally crossed the line of cooperation that had begun [and] – could only be achieved later in the future’.47 In the words of Pierre-Yves Saunier, a French historian of urban cooperation, Ghent became a symbol for an urban internationale or awareness of the internationality of the municipal movement.48 The conference was on the development of urban planning and building protection, but it also focused extensively and thoroughly on the ‘development of municipal life’ (organization de la vie munincipale). Consideration was given to municipal self-government and the development of municipal legislation, to the influence of municipal residents, taxation, and business activities, as well as to the provision of municipal technical services. Topics related to ‘municipal hygiene’ such as water supply, meat inspection, misuse of alcohol, and the fight against communicable diseases and food shortages were also on the agenda. Ghent participants also discussed the role of municipalities as organizers of education and training, the development of municipal cultural and museum services, and the role of women in municipal activities.49 It is interesting how quickly Leo Ehrnrooth slid into the international ‘municipal movement’ in 1913. In the Finnish press, the news of this international congress of cities came to light with a delay of a couple of weeks. An article, apparently written by Ehrnrooth, was published in the main newspapers in August 1913, referring in detail to the discussions in Ghent. The author criticized the ‘rich, but fragmented conference programme’ and lamented ‘the small number of participants from the German-speaking countries’. Anyhow, Ehrnrooth expressed his joy that small countries had been invited on an equal basis.50 Later, in the meeting of city association in Helsinki, he introduced the decision to join the IULA: This outcome must be welcomed with special satisfaction by all smaller countries. For, as experience in different countries has shown, small towns in general have felt the need for organizations and have been the driving force behind the integration of cities into alliances. So does the international urban cooperation in small countries rely to a large extent on the examples created by larger countries, and they have special interests to control.51

342  Laura Kolbe

Figure 15.5 The Finnish Association of Cities celebrated its 20th anniversary in 1932 by a jubilee meeting. The association played a central role during the first two decades by offering a platform for cities’ cooperation and discussing the legal and practical solutions for different kind of ‘urban questions’. The members were also active players in European urban networks. The chair was Mayor of Helsinki, Mr  Antti Tulenheimo (at the rear end of the table), having the Secretary of the association, Mr Yrjö Harvia, next to him. Source: www.finna.fi, Photo: Studio Pietinen. Collection: Historian kuvakokoelma and Valokuvaamo Pietisen kokoelma. Finnish Heritage Agency. CC BY 4.0.

The Ghent conference and the establishment of the IULA expressed a supranational belief in the potentials of municipal movement as a promoter of peace and democracy. Ghent was a prime example of the global breakthrough of the idea of ​​municipal unification, and its message spread to all Nordic countries. Symbolically, the ‘union of cities’ in Europe could foresee a later ‘union of peoples’, according to the doctrines of the founding phase. The themes of the Ghent conference also reached Sweden and Finland, relatively quickly, as can be read in the publications of the city associations. The international municipal agenda had a strong influence on how materials were produced in Sweden and Finland. In the wake of the Ghent conference, the city associations strongly believed in the transfer of innovations and in expertise and scientific knowledge as regulators of urban change.52

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 343 From Belgium to the Nordic countries, the reformers’ enthusiasm and the mutual cooperation grew. Letters and publications, annual reports, and meeting documents began to be exchanged between the Nordic associations. The national conferences continued in the 1910s, and visits to neighbouring countries were part of the networking, first in Malmö in 1915 and then in Helsinki in 1917. The first article in Suomen Kunnallislehti (the Finnish Municipality Newspaper) in January 1916 dealt with the organization of city administration. In the words of editor-in-chief Leo Ehrnrooth, the activities of the municipality have developed in recent decades in both a scale and intensity that municipal generations could hardly have dreamed of, and this development has affected the forms of urban government. Above all, water, gas, and electricity utilities and other commercial establishments, such as trams, covered markets, slaughterhouses, etc. taking over the municipality has put the issue of organization on the agenda and has mostly led to the dismantling of traditional forms.53 Conclusion The establishment of the Swedish and Finnish associations of cities in 1908–1917 was framed by strong European municipal movement. The need for municipal integration intensified as cities grew, activities diversified, and social problems differentiated. Cooperation was especially needed at a time when the mainstream approach was to emphasize the self-government of municipalities and to regulate public power as little as possible. The cities had the freedom to organize their activities as they saw fit. The development of society, industrialization, urbanization, and modernization changed the role of cities and created more tasks of municipalities. Each of Sweden’s and Finland’s cities responded to the challenge in its own way. All shared the need to know and learn more about the practices of other cities. There were two motives for setting up a central office: to modernize municipal competences and to increase confidence in organized cooperation. This bound the city association transnationally to European partners. Among the Nordic countries, Sweden and Finland had faith in the power of local bourgeois policy. Politics had to be retinal, practical, and developmental, not ideological, or opinionated. The only idea that could be talked about, was the ‘idea of ​​municipal association’ between municipalities and learning from international role models. In Sweden and Finland, the Nordic dimension of this was the high level of trust in organizational power. The freedom of associations must be regarded as a fundamental part of the political tradition in all Nordic countries. The urban cooperation and municipal movement were promoted by

344  Laura Kolbe members of the elite, that is, men with an academic education, experience in state and municipal politics, and a profound pursuit of social affairs. Promoting international relations was an immediate part of this group’s urban self-understanding. The foremost framework was provided by other Nordic city associations. The establishment of the national associations of cities in Nordic countries must be seen as an almost direct innovation transfer, as the actors were well acquainted with the activities of European associations, especially of those in the German-speaking countries. The golden years of Nordic urban cooperation came later, in the interwar years and, after the Second World War. Notes 1 Erik Palmstierna, Ett brytningsskede. Minnen och dagboksanteckningar (Stockholm: Tiden, 1952), p. 62. 2 Some histories of the city associations have been written, but no proper comparative research is done. Their archives are placed in either national or municipal association’s archives. Little knowledge is available about the Danish case, as no written documentation exists. Otherwise, see Sixten Humble, Svenska Stadsförbundet 1908–1958 (Stockholm: Svenska Stadsförbundet, 1958); Mats Hayen, Ett sekel i självstyrelsens tjänst: Sveriges kommuner och landsting 100 år (Stockholm: Sveriges kommuner och landsting, 2008); Yrjö Harvia, Finlands Stadsförbund 1912–1937 (Helsingfors: Finlands Stadsförbundet, 1938); Kalevi Hentilä, Suomen Kaupunkiliitto 1912–1962 (Helsinki: Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1962); Andreas Hompland  & Jon Helge Lesjø  & Konstante Spenninger, KS i den norske modellen (Oslo: Kommuneforlaget, 2016). 3 Harvia 1938, pp. 140–1. 4 In all European nations, whatever may have been the previous course of their constitutional history, the persistent and rapid growth of the functions of the state, and the constant assumption of new and onerous duties and responsibilities in the last century, have rendered some attempts at decentralization and some grants of self-government absolutely necessary, if the national administrations is to be carried on with success. This quote by British historian Percy Ashley in the early years of the 19th century shows the general positive attitudes towards local governance in the leading part of the urbanized world: the English-speaking countries. Percy Ashley, Local and Central Government. A  Comparative Study of England,  France, Prussia, and the United States (London: John Murray, 1906), pp. 1–2. This increase in urban communities and urban population has meant much more than a corresponding increase in the work and importance of municipal government. . . .; it has brought about new conditions which demanded the exercise of new functions to make life in the cities even as satisfactory as life in the country. The quote indicates the scholarly interest in municipal affairs, developed among others in the works of John Archibald Fairlie, who became a key lecturer on

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 345 municipal administration at Columbia in 1900. His and Ashley’s texts were well known in Scandinavia. John A. Fairlie, Essays in Municipal Administration (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908), pp. 2–3. 5 See more on Akira Irye & Pierre-Yves Sanunies (eds.), Palgrave Dictionary on Transnational History: From the Mid-19th Century to Predent Day (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009); Margaret Keck & Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). 6 Laura Kolbe, ‘Symbols of civic pride, national history, or European tradition? City halls in Scandinavian capital cities’, Urban History, 35:3 (December 2008), pp. 382–413. 7 Anthony Sutcliffe, Towards the Planned City: Germany, Britain, the United States and France 1780–1912 (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), pp.  2–4; Helen Meller, ‘Philanthropy and public enterprise: International exhibitions and the modern town planning movement 1889–1912’, Planning Perspectives, 10 (1995), pp.  295–310; Oscar Gaspari, ‘Cities against states? Hopes, dreams, and shortcomings of the European municipal movement, 1900–1960’, Contemporary European History, 11 (2002), pp. 597–621; Patrizia Dogliani, ‘European municipalism in the first half of the 20th century’, Contemporary European History, 11 (2002), pp. 573–96. 8 Så fungerar kommunen (Helsingfors: Finlands Stadsförbund & Finlands svenska kommunförbund, 1985), pp. 23–4. 9 Anthony Sutcliffe 1981, 5–6, Peter Rietbergen, Europe, a Cultural History (London: Routledge, 2020), pp.  352–5.) A  good general survey on the new middle-class groups is Jürgen Kocka (ed.), Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987), pp. 38–41; Simon Gunn and Rachel Bell, Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl (London: Phoenix, 2002): See also Graeme Morton, Boudien de Vries & R. J. Morris, Civil Society, Associations and Urban Places: Class, Nation, and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Aldershot: Routledge, 2006), pp. 2–13. 10 Johan Strang (ed.), Nordic Cooperation: A  European Region in Transition (London: Routledge, 2015), pp.  4–8. The vast bibliography includes many elementary books dealing with Nordic cooperation, both at the state level and within civic and academic organizations. 11 Alva Myrdal, ‘Det fria organisationslivet’, in Nordisk samhörighet – en realitet (Stockholm: Föreningen Norden, 1946), pp. 91–2. 12 Janet R. Horne, A Social Laboratory for Modern France: The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 4–6. 13 Christian Topalov, ‘From the “social question” to “urban problems”: Reformers and the working class at the turn of the twentieth century’, International Social Science Journal, 125 (1990), pp. 327–8. 14 For the establishment of concepts in Sweden and Finland, see the publication years by Svenska Stadsförbunets Tidskrift 1909 and Suomen Kunnallislehti 1916, both published by the National Association of Cities. 15 The mainstream thinking of this kind of ‘power research’ was outlined in the Power in Finland research program funded by the Academy of Finland in 2007–2011. Petteri Pietikäinen, ‘Johdanto’, in Petteri Pietikäinen (ed.), Valta Suomessa (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2010), pp. 9–11. 16 The Swedish scholar Mats Andrèn’s book, Den europeiska blicken och det lokala självstyrets värden (Stockholm: Gidlunds, 2007), pp. 20–5, analysed the

346  Laura Kolbe history of the idea of local government as a part of the spread of liberalism and socialism. The ideals of ‘liberty and fraternity’ resonated well at the municipal level. 17 Svenska Dagbladet (13 October 1907 and 11 December 1907), Svenska städernas kongress (Dag ett, Dag två, Dag tre) gives a detailed description of discussions and ideas behind the meeting. 18 Hayen 2008, pp. 23–6. 19 All translations from Swedish and Finnish are the author’s own. 20 ‘Stadsförbund - ett nytt kommunalt organ’, Tammerfors Nyheter (4 October 1907). The newspaper informed readers that in England the Organization of Municipal Corporation had its first municipal assembly as early as 1873. 21 ‘Suomen ensimmäiset kaupunkipäivät’, Helsingin Sanomat (17 September 1912). 22 Leo Ehrnrooth, Från ett skiftesrikt liv (Helsingfors: Söderströms, 1947), pp. 250–3. 23 Yngve Larsson, Mitt liv i Stadshuset. Första delen. Från fåvälde till demokratisk ordning (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1977), pp. 63–4; Harvia 1938, pp. 9–11. 24 Jorma Kallenautio, ‘Kunnallishallinto vuoden 1873 asetuksen pohjalta’, in Suomen kaupunkiliiton historia III (Helsinki: Suomen Kaupunkiliitto 1984), pp. 216–19. 25 L. O. Johanson  & Veikko Tattari, ‘Kaupunkien yhteistoiminta, kaupungit ja valtiovalta, kaupunkien ulkomaiset suhteet’, in Suomen Kaupunkiliiton historia III (Helsinki: Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1984), pp. 510–11, 519. 26 Henrik Stenius, Frivilligt, jämlikt, samfällt: Föreningsväsendets utveckling i Finland fram till 1900-talets början med speciell hänsyn till massorganisationsprincipens genombrott (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet in Finland, 1987), pp. 289–91. 27 Hayen 2008, pp. 18–19. After the 1860s, when the local government was modernized in both Sweden and Finland, there were two acts, one for cities and towns and the other for rural areas. In Sweden, out of the around 2,500 municipalities, 89 had city rights and therefore could have the right to call themselves stad (city). In Finland, the number of municipalities was 519 (1910), including 38 cities and around 20 townships. The rest were rural municipalities. In both the countries, the number of townships peaked between 1959 and 1964. The municipal reforms in the 1970s permanently abolished this form of municipality in Sweden and Finland. 28 Ehrnrooth 1947, pp. 250–2. 29 ‘Suomen ensimmäiset kaupunkipäivät’, Helsingin Sanomat (18 September 1912). 30 Shamal, Kaveh, Det villkorade tillståndet: Centralförbundet för Socialt Arbete och liberal politisk rationalitet 1901–1921 (Uppsala & Stockholms: Elanders Gotab, 2006), pp. 141–53. 31 Patrizia Dogliani, ‘European municipalism in the first half of the 20th century’, Contemporary European History, 11 (2002), pp. 581–4. 32 Yhteiskunnallisen Keskusliiton toimintakertomus v:lta 1911, Yhteiskunnallisen Keskusliiton ja Keskustoimiston Julkaisuja no. 1 (Helsinki: Yhteiskunnallinen Keskusliitto, 1912), pp.  1–2. In Europe, the following organizations existed: Zentralstelle fûr Volkswohlfahrt in Berlin, Soziales Museum in Frankfurt und Bremen, Societa Umanitaria in Milan, Instituto de reformas sociales in Madrid, Centraal Bureau voor soziale Adviezen in Amsterdam, and Centralförbundet för socialt arbete in Stockholm. In Finland, the Swedish-speaking Workers’ Association in Helsinki had proposed to the Ekonomiska Samfundet to set up a similar ‘social museum’, but the project lapsed.

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 347 33 Janet Regina Hornet, A Social Laboratory for Modern France: The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 6–10. 34 Yhteiskunnallisen Keskusliiton toimintakertomus v:lta 1911, pp. 13. 35 The Archive of Association of Finnish Municipalities, minutes of the meeting of the delegation of Finnish Cities, 30 November 1912, ‘Travel report of Ehrnrooth from Stockholm’. See also Ehrnrooth 1947, pp.  252–3. Hayen 2008, pp. 23–6. Larsson 1977, 63–70. 36 Kommunalförvaltningen i Norden 2000, en rapport om kommunalförvaltning i olika nordiska länder (Helsingfors: Finlands Kommunförbund, 2000); Jan Kanstrup & Steen Ousager (eds.), Kommunal opgaveløsning 1842–1970 (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1990); C. G. Hammarskjöld, Bidrag till tolkning af K. Förordningarne den 21 mars 1862 om kommunalstyrelse på landet och i stad samt om kyrkostämma med ledning af prejudikat (Stockholm: Norsteds, 1888). 37 Harvia 1938, pp.  20–1; Otto Ziebill, Geschichte des Deutschen Städtetages. Fünfzig Jahre deutsche Kommunalpolitik (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1957), pp. 22–3; Hermann Beckstein, Städtische Interessenpolitik. Organisation und Politik der Städtetage in Bayern, Preußen und im Deutschen Reich 1896–1923 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1991). The background was the reorganization of local administration and politics after Napoleon’s wars. Baron von und zum Stein’s Städteordnung (1808) transferred power to the town councillors, who elected a mayor among themselves. The revolution of 1848 raised the need for cities to have their own policies of interest and debates in relation to the state and national and political movements. The cities’ voices became louder in several ways, and support came from history, including Hansa’s activities. 38 ‘Kommunal samverkan i utlandet’, Abo Underrättelse (10 May 1911); Ziebill 1957, pp. 27–39; Beckstein 1991, pp. 147–52. 39 Gaspari 2002, pp. 597–8. 40 Palmstierna, Erik, Minnesskrift utgiven av Svenska Stadsförbundets Tidskrift till 50 årsdagen av förordningen om kommunalstyrelse i stad utfärdad den 21 mars 1852 (Stockholm: Svenska Stadsförbundet, 1912). 41 Ziebill 1957, pp. 13–16. 42 ‘Samarbete mellan stadskommunerna’, Politiken (11 October 1907). 43 Dogliani 2002, pp. 576–7. 44 Hayen 2008, pp.  10–12. Skriftserie av Centralförbundet för socialt arbete, http://runeberg.org/kvrostratt/7/0034.html (10 November 2022). 45 The names of Larsson and Palmstierna are not mentioned in the list of names by the conference, see William Whyte (ed.), Ghent Planning Congress 1913. Proceedings of the Premier Congrès International et Exposition Comparée des Villes (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 50–82. 46 Dogliani 2002, pp. 585–6, Meller 1995, pp. 305–6, Renaud Payre & PierreYves Saunier, ‘A city in the world of cities: Lyon, France; municipal associations as political resources in the twentieth century’, in Pierre-Yves Saunier & Shane Ewen (eds.), Another Global City: Historical Explorations into the Transnational Municipal Moment, 1850–2000 (Berlin: Springer, 2008), pp. 69–72. 47 The Archive of Association of Finnish Municipalities, minutes of the meeting of the delegation of Finnish cities, 22 November 1913. The meeting dealt with a letter from Union International des Ville, Brussels, requesting membership. Attached to the meeting was the programme of the First International City Days in Ghent from July 1913. Also, Ehrnrooth 1947, pp. 255–6.

348  Laura Kolbe 48 Pierre-Yves Saunier, ‘Sketches from the urban internationale: Voluntary societies, international organizations and US foundations at the city’s bedside 1900– 1960’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25 (1999), pp. 380–403. 49 Ghent Planning Congress 1913 (2014), pp. 39–47. 50 Finnish newspapers wrote a lot on Ghent city conference. See, for example, ‘Ensimmäinen kansainvälinen kaupunkien kongresi Gentissä’, Karjalan Sanomat (19 August 1913). At the end of the article are the initials L. E., indicating his activities in this matter. 51 Hentilä 1962, pp. 58–9. 52 Gaspari 2002, pp. 603–6. Internationality marked the spirit of 1910s, with 51 international consortia formed before the Ghent Congress and IULA. 53 Suomen Kunnallislehti 1/1916, ‘Suomen kaupunginhallinnon järjestämiskysymys’.

Bibliography Andrén, Mats, Den europeiska blicken och det lokala självstyrets värden (Stockholm: Gidlunds, 2007). Ashley, Percy, Local and Central Government: A Comparative Study of England, France, Prussia, and the United States (London: John Murray, 1906). Beckstein, Hermann, Städtische Interessenpolitik. Organisation und Politik der Städtetage in Bayern, Preußen und im Deutschen Reich 1896–1923 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1991). Dogliani, Patrizia, ‘European municipalism in the first half of the 20th century’, Contemporary European History, 11 (2002). Ehrnrooth, Leo, Från ett skiftesrikt liv (Helsingfors: Söderströms, 1947). Fairlie, John A., Essays in Municipal Administration (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1908). Gaspari, Oscar, ‘Cities against states? Hopes, dreams, and shortcomings of the European municipal movement, 1900–1960’, Contemporary European History, 11 (2002). Ghent Planning Congress 1913 (2014). Gunn, Simon  & Rachel Bell, Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl (London: Phoenix, 2002). Hammarskjöld, C. G., Bidrag till tolkning af K. Förordningarne den 21 mars 1862 om kommunalstyrelse på landet och i stad samt om kyrkostämma med ledning af prejudikat (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1888). Harvia, Yrjö, Finlands Stadsförbund 1912–1937 (Helsingfors: Finlands Stadsförbundet, 1938). Hayen, Mats, Ett sekel i självstyrelsens tjänst: Sveriges kommuner och landsting 100 år (Stockholm: Sveriges kommuner och landsting, 2008). Hentilä, Kalevi, Suomen Kaupunkiliitto 1912–1962 (Helsinki: Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1962). Hompland, Andreas, Jon Helge Lesjø  & Konstante Spenninger, KS i den norske modellen (Oslo: Kommuneforlaget, 2016). Horne, Janet R., A Social Laboratory for Modern France: The Musée Social and the Rise of the Welfare State (Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2002).

Between socialist ideals and bourgeois aspiration 349 Humble, Sixten, Svenska Stadsförbundet 1908–1958 (Stockholm: Svenska Stadsförbundet, 1958). Irye, Akira  & Pierre-Yves Sanunies (eds.), Palgrave Dictionary on Transnational History: From the Mid-19th Century to Present Day (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Johanson, L. O. & Veikko Tattari, ‘Kaupunkien yhteistoiminta, kaupungit ja valtiovalta, kaupunkien ulkomaiset suhteet’, in Suomen Kaupunkiliiton historia III (Helsinki: Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1984). Kallenautio, Jorma, ‘Kunnallishallinto vuoden 1873 asetuksen pohjalta’, in Suomen kaupunkiliiton historia III (Helsinki: Suomen Kaupunkiliitto, 1984). Kanstrup, Jan  & Steen Ousager (eds.), Kommunal opgaveløsning 1842–1970 (Odense: Odense Universitetsforlag, 1990). Karjalan Sanomat (19 August 1913). Keck, Margaret  & Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). Kocka, Jürgen (ed.), Bürger und Bürgerlichkeit im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987). Kolbe, Laura, ‘Symbols of civic pride, national history, or European tradition? City halls in Scandinavian capital cities’, Urban History, 35:3 (December 2008). ‘Kommunal samverkan i utlandet’, Åbo Underrättelse (10 May 1911). Kommunalförvaltningen i Norden 2000, en rapport om kommunalförvaltning i olika nordiska länder (Helsingfors: Finlands Kommunförbund, 2000). Larsson, Yngve, Mitt liv i Stadshuset, Första delen: Från fåvälde till demokratisk ordning (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1977). Meller, Helen, ‘Philanthropy and public enterprise: International exhibitions and the modern town planning movement 1889–1912’, Planning Perspectives, 10 (1995). Morton, Graeme, Boudien de Vries & R. J. Morris, Civil Society, Associations and Urban Places: Class, Nation, and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Aldershot: Routledge, 2006). Myrdal, Alva, ‘Det fria organisationslivet’, in Nordisk samhörighet  – en realitet (Stockholm: Föreningen Norden, 1946). Palmstierna, Erik, Minnesskrift utgiven av Svenska Stadsförbundets Tidskrift till 50 årsdagen av förordningen om kommunalstyrelse i stad utfärdad den 21 mars 1852 (Stockholm: Svenska Stadsförbundet, 1912). Palmstierna, Erik, Ett brytningsskede. Minnen och dagboksanteckningar (Stockholm: Tiden, 1952). Payre, Renaud & Pierre-Yves Saunier, ‘A city in the world of cities: Lyon, France; municipal associations as political resources in the twentieth century’, in PierreYves Saunier & Shane Ewen (eds.), Another Global City: Historical Explorations into the Transnational Municipal Moment, 1850–2000 (Berlin: Springer, 2008). Pietikäinen, Petteri, ‘Johdanto’, in Petteri Pietikäinen (ed.), Valta Suomessa (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2010). Rietbergen, Peter, Europe, a Cultural History (London: Routledge, 2020). http:// runeberg.org. Så fungerar kommunen (Helsingfors: Finlands Stadsförbund & Finlands svenska kommunförbund, 1985).

350  Laura Kolbe ‘Samarbete mellan stadskommunerna’, Politiken (11 October 1907). Saunier, Pierre-Yves, ‘Sketches from the urban internationale: Voluntary societies, international organizations and US foundations at the city’s bedside 1900–1960’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25 (1999). Shamal, Kaveh, Det villkorade tillståndet: Centralförbundet för Socialt Arbete och liberal politisk rationalitet 1901–1921 (Uppsala & Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2006). ‘Stadsförbund – ett nytt kommunalt organ’, Tammerfors Nyheter (4 October 1907). Stenius, Henrik, Frivilligt, jämlikt, samfällt: Föreningsväsendets utveckling i Finland fram till 1900-talets början med speciell hänsyn till massorganisationsprincipens genombrott (Helsingfors: Svenska Litteratursällskapet in Finland, 1987). Strang, Johan (ed.), Nordic Cooperation: A European Region in Transition (London: Routledge, 2015). ‘Suomen ensimmäiset kaupunkipäivät’, Helsingin Sanomat (17 September 1912). ‘Suomen ensimmäiset kaupunkipäivät’, Helsingin Sanomat (18 September 1912). ‘Suomen kaupunginhallinnon järjestämiskysymys’, Suomen Kunnallislehti (January 1916). Suomen Kuntaliiton arkistot (The Archive of Association of Finnish Municipalities), Helsinki. Sutcliffe, Anthony, Towards the Planned City: Germany, Britain, the United States and France 1780–1912 (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1981). ‘Svenska städernas kongress (Dag ett, Dag två, Dag tre)’, Svenska Dagbladet (11 December 1907 and 13 October 1907). Topalov, Christian, ‘From the “social question” to “urban problems”: Reformers and the working class at the turn of the twentieth century’, International Social Science Journal, 125 (1990). Yhteiskunnallisen Keskusliiton toimintakertomus v:lta 1911. Yhteiskunnallisen Keskusliiton ja Keskustoimiston Julkaisuja No. 1 (Helsinki: Yhteiskunnallinen Keskusliitto, 1912). Whyte, William (ed.), Ghent Planning Congress 1913: Proceedings of the Premier Congrès International et Exposition Comparée des Villes (London: Routledge, 2014). Ziebill, Otto, Geschichte des Deutschen Städtetages: Fünfzig Jahre deutsche Kommunalpolitik (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1957).

16 Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå Questioning historical plans to inform the design of urban space Jaime Montes Bentura This chapter originated in attempts to explain to architecture students how urban space evolved in Sweden and what forces shaped it. Swedish cities offer a clear pattern of growth; that is, each new piece of town was built alongside the previous as a sequence of urban models that reflected the ideas of each historical moment. However, studying urban growth as a sequence of isolated moments, frozen in time, with characteristics that seem to remain unaltered, has inherent limitations when we try to project knowledge into the future in the form of design proposals. Cities are not just one piece of town after another, just as, in the words of Ian Morris, ‘history is not just one damn thing after another. In fact, history is . . . a single grand and relentless process of adaptations to the world that always generate new problems that call for further adaptations’.1 If the way we read and conceive cities influences the way we design them, architecture as a design discipline benefits from incorporating the perspective of history, because it can help us to (1) understand the city as an evolutionary process; (2) contextualize the forces shaping that evolution; and (3) read the city as a process of adaptation, in line with John Habraken, who considers change as the only constant in the built environment.2 This approach reminds us that our interventions will evolve and that we inevitably will face the consequences of what we build, both positive and negative. Furthermore, past decisions that today seem problematic likely made perfect sense in the time they were taken – a point we would do well to bear in mind as we design today, because what we design and implement now will need to change and be adapted to needs and circumstances that we cannot predict. Therefore, when designing cities, to again borrow from Habraken, ‘we should not try forecast what will happen, but try to make provision for what cannot be foreseen’.3 If cities cannot be disconnected from history, neither can they be disconnected from the territory and the web of cities they are part of. Comparative studies of cities in the same urban system but with different roles in that system, such as Stockholm and Umeå, can reveal common patterns DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-21

352  Jaime Montes Bentura in their formation, their meaning, their functions, and their morphology. Such studies go well beyond the analysis of historical maps to consider urban form, structure, and location. Superimposing moments in history also make us question the forces that shaped the cities and can aid our understanding of the processes of change and transformation. The aim in comparing cities is not to create a definitive list of the forces that drive urban development. Such a list would always be incomplete and never the same for any two cities. Instead, the aim is to explore and interrogate maps as a methodology to penetrate the complexity of the city and the processes that converge in it. Ultimately, our aim should be to project the lessons we learn into the design of the sustainable city. Thus, rather than provide with a universal formula or a generic solution that all designers can apply, this chapter discusses the need to redefine how we read and understand cities to be able formulate the specific questions, goals, and issues that will inform the design of each individual project. During my research on Stockholm and Umeå, I identified four moments that help explain core transformations. Because those moments coincided in time for both cities, further research should investigate whether such common trends and pivotal moments are identifiable in other towns, whether in Sweden, in other Nordic countries, or in European states beyond the Nordic region. The two cities are analysed from the perspective of their connection to a common web of Swedish towns and the role each of the two cities plays in it. The web is characterized by its physical layout and by the relations and exchanges produced in it. The physical manifestation of the web is materialized in various infrastructures throughout the territory, particularly in transport infrastructures. The trends and ideas that dominated urbanism at the time development plans were produced reflect the relations and exchanges distributed within the web. The chapter begins with an analysis of urban webs, moves to the analysis of the two cities, and concludes with a discussion of what can be learnt from reading the city as an evolutionary process. The web: transport infrastructures, flows of trends, ideas, and power relations In The Human Web, to trace a short history of humanity, historians John R. McNeill and William H. McNeill consider the construction of a global web of settlements: A web is a set of connections that link people to one another. These connections may take many forms. . . . They also communicate or transfer

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 353 items, information . . . but also viruses or armies. . . . [T]he exchange of such information, items, and inconveniences, and human responses to them, is what shapes history. The global web formed in different stages. The first loose human exchanges became regional connections around denser settlements sustained by fishing and agriculture. ‘The Old World Web, spanning most of Eurasia and North Africa, formed about 2,000 years ago by a gradual amalgamation of many smaller webs’. Around the year 1500, ‘oceanic navigation united the world’s metropolitan webs into a single cosmopolitan web’ that intensified and accelerated exchange. After 1900, ‘the cosmopolitan web became increasingly electrified, allowing more and far faster exchanges’.4 These moments in the formation of the global web concur with the moments localized in the present chapter: the first Swedish settlements were located in relation to maritime trade; a web of towns then formed as part of the formation of the Swedish bureaucratic and centralized state; finally, exchanges intensified after 1900 as the industrial city emerged and later expanded. The formation of the web follows two processes: geographical extension and intensification of exchanges. Each moment of extension is followed by a process of intensification before the next moment of expansion. The current global extension of the web, by putting virtually all people in contact with a heretofore unseen quantity and velocity of exchanges, has led to homogenization, to societies becoming more uniform and less diverse: Seen slightly differently, human history is an evolution from simple sameness to diversity toward complex sameness. . . . Interactive webs reduce cultural diversity – fewer languages and religions, fewer polities, and fewer political formats. As the webs grew and fused, complexity became the rule  – the new uniformity. Best practices spread: societies settled on a narrower range of traits, beliefs, institutions, all compatible with life inside far-ranging interactive webs. Societies that resisted were wiped-out. Diversity declined.5 The geography of the web

A town is a node in the web; it connects to other nodes, and its character is defined by the role it plays in the web. Within the web, networks of relations and distribution operate at various levels and intensities. Nodes like Stockholm also operate within global, local, and regional webs. Towns become specialized, providing certain services to the web and becoming dependent on the infrastructure network that supplies them in

354  Jaime Montes Bentura turn. Thus, the web tends to disconnect towns from their geographic territory, redefining their character, means of production, and subsistence. The spread of best practices allows towns to deal with the increasing complexity of urban systems. As knowledge and solutions are distributed through the web, however, the urban models applied do not relate to the specific local conditions, and indigenous adaptations may be abandoned. The web, that is, can induce dependency, leaving towns reliant on the web to provide them with a role, resources, and solutions. Dependency can make towns vulnerable if they are incapable of producing their own means of subsistence or their own solutions for adapting to changing circumstances. In what follows, I  differentiate between settlements that rely on their immediate territory to produce food, materials, goods, culture, and identity; and nodes, which are towns and cities that rely on the web and its capacity to distribute resources, knowledge, culture, even identity. Patrick Geddes, in Cities in Evolution, lays out a theory of the topographical, social, and historical integration of cities in the region. He describes the relation between town, territory, and lifestyle in the Valley Section . . . and its resultant occupations and corresponding types of settlements. Note the Miner, the Woodman and the Hunter on the heights; the Shepherd on the grassy slope; and the rich Peasant on the plain; finally, the Fisher (sailor, merchant, etc.) at sea-level [C]ities retain the essential character, conditioned by their environment or occupation.6 Geography shapes history and, in turn, historical development shapes the meaning of geography.7 In the global web of towns, geography still defines lifestyles, but geography is no longer that of the region; rather, it is a global geography of networked nodes. The web works as a self-referencing geography that assigns to each node roles and possibilities. For example, the character of one European capital is conditioned by its role as capital rather than by its geographical location, having, generally, characteristics that are more recognizable in any other European capital than in a neighbouring town. Infrastructures connect nodes, but the reverse also applies: nodes are shaped by the existence or absence of infrastructure. Steve Graham and Simon Marvin argue in Splintering Urbanism that urbanization, despite being isotropic and universal, despite unifying lifestyles and influencing all people, should not be read as a continuum but as a splintered landscape of interconnected towns. The networked infrastructures of the web (transport, water, electricity etc.) are not homogeneously laid over the territory; instead, they have access points and thus are subject to power and control,

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 355 which affects territorial balance. Global networks connecting people in distant nodes often bypass those who are geographically proximate but not close in other ways: ‘there is often a palpable and increasing sense of local disconnection in such places from physically close, but socially and economically distant, places and people’.8 Distance is measured in time

The web has a clear hierarchy wherein transport infrastructures are laid to connect core nodes. In the space between such destinations, intermediate nodes may emerge that depend on flows and access to the web. Historically, the distance between nodes was typically the distance that could be covered in one day. The English journey, the French journée, the Spanish jornada, and the Italian giornata all have at their root the word jour (day). The introduction of faster communication and transportation methods, however, greatly impacted territory, as the distance one could cover in one day increased as speed increased. Today, faster transport infrastructures that connect destination nodes tend to bypass intermediate nodes. If we look at the connection between Stockholm and Umeå as a territorial system, one’s relation to the geography between them changes significantly with one’s mode of travel  – whether by horse along Norrstigen that crossed towns and could be accessed at any point, by car on the E4 motorway, separated from towns and with specific access points, by a train that crosses towns and depends on regulated schedules, or by aeroplane which is the extreme case wherein the whole in-between territory is neglected. Urban form in Umeå and Stockholm: four moments in history Around 1300, Stockholm and Umeå were trading settlements tightly connected to water systems that could serve as a source of freshwater and communication. In the 17th century, the two towns were rebuilt, consciously planned as part of the construction of a bureaucratic and centralized state. They thus changed from being organic trading settlements to planned nodes in a web and were given administrative and taxation functions. Closeness to water was still important, although new road systems materialized the presence of the state in the territory. Around 1900, together with the development of rail infrastructures, the industrial city became increasingly regularized. What we now recognize as the inner city was consolidated in this period, starting a process of emptying urban cores of their productive function so that, over time, they began to focus on services, leisure, finance, and political administration. The final moment involved expansion to the suburbs facilitated by the widespread adoption of automobiles. Approximately once each decade through the 20th century

356  Jaime Montes Bentura a new piece of town was built next to an earlier piece, a growth by juxtaposition that resulted in enclaves connected to the core but disconnected to other close-by structures. Settlements: trading enclaves around 1300s Umeå: Backen9

In both cases, the first settlements were built in strategic locations that connected the trading routes of the Baltic to the inner land via a river or a lake. These settlements were organic, they did not follow a predefined plan but grew gradually in response to residents’ needs and uses. At this time, Umeå was located five kilometres upstream from its present location. It settled next to the conjunction of two water elements: Umeälven (the Ume River), an artery that crosses Sweden from west to east into the Baltic Sea, and the small Ume-ån (the Ume stream). Umeå’s evolution can be traced by following the tensions generated by two perpendicular axes (see Figure  16.1). A  west–east axis followed territorial patterns along the Ume River from Norway through Sweden and into the Baltic Sea and on to Vaasa, Finland. Today, this territorial axis can be seen in the Blåvägen (Blue Road) that runs parallel to the river and the E12 motorway that continues across the Baltic Sea to Vaasa and all the way to Helsinki. The south–north political axis articulates the Swedish state, is contained within its political borders, and follows Norrstigen (Path to the North, significantly named from the perspective of the central power located in Stockholm) that connected the capital with the cities in the region of Norrland along the Baltic coast and today corresponds to the E4 motorway. A map of the church estate of Umeå parish from 1686 offers a glimpse of the early settlement’s contours. The map, probably drawn by Jonas Persson Gedda, shows Backen’s wooden church next to the Ume stream on the north bank of the Ume River. Close to the river is Prästön (the island of the priest), the harbour, and agricultural land. The settlement included a church and was a trading point for resources (mainly wood) extracted from the forests, transported down the river, and shipped from the harbour into the Baltic Sea. Stockholm: the old city10

In the 1300s, Stockholm was not yet the capital of Sweden. It was then settling into what is today its central island, Gamla Stan (the Old City) and was a trading enclave between the Baltic Sea and Lake Mälaren, along the route into the interior of the country. The period was marked by Danish

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 357

Figure 16.1 The web of towns founded or reconstructed by the Swedish centralized state around the Baltic between 1550 and 1800. The towns mentioned in this text are highlighted. There are some towns included that were not part of Sweden, in grey. Source: Drawing by the author, based on a list of towns from Ahlberg 2017, pp. 144–9.

rulers (who exerted political and military influence) and the Baltic merchants from the Hanseatic League and the Dutch Republic (who exerted commercial and financial influence). Thomas Hall, in reconstructing what the city looked like around 1300,11 describes an organic pattern of growth wherein trading spots were

358  Jaime Montes Bentura established in accessible locations and paths were then formalized to reach them. The spots became market squares; the paths, streets. In time, both were consolidated as buildings were constructed to the side. This growth was not instantaneous but the result of a series of actions. Squares were not located at the junction of two perfectly laid streets; instead, streets were twisted to reach the squares. The architecture and toponymy of the streets today reveals what once were the main actors. Street names refer to the artisans who occupied them, to the goods traded, and to the church. The adjective tyska (German) in the names of several streets and one church illustrates the influence of the Hanseatic League. Dutch influence can be seen in the architecture of the main square. During this period, the Dutch Republic, that would become a key influence in the planning of the royal city, was beginning to build a maritime empire, trading Swedish timber and minerals as one of the pillars of its economic development. From settlement to node in the web: the royal city of 1600s In the first half of 1600s, both Umeå and Stockholm went from being organic trading settlements to planned nodes as part of a bureaucratic and centralized Swedish state. Stockholm, as the capital city, was the national administrative, economic, and political hub. Umeå was a regional hub representing the state’s presence in the north. Taxation became an important factor in the re-signification of the cities. Map of Umeå from 1643 attributed to Erik Widman12

In 1621 and 1622, Piteå, Luleå, Torneå, and Umeå received from the king town rights and were rebuilt as a sequence of regional nodes articulating the northern regions of Sweden, rich in forests and mining. Each was connected to rivers that cross Sweden from west to east and located close to the Baltic Sea. Norrstigen, the path connecting these cities, was denoted a landsväg (country road) in 1600 and reinforced to handle the displacement of horses and carriages. These nodes formed a territorial pattern, a regular sequence of towns located at the intersection of two systems, one geographical, the other political: the west–east rivers and the south–north road. A new Umeå was planned and built five kilometres from its original location, closer to the mouth of the river but still 18 kilometres from it. The city was designed by a planning commission from Stockholm, under the direction of Olof Bureus, who took charge of the plan not only of Umeå but also of other new cities in the north, such as Sundsvall, Luleå, or Piteå, each of which had similar characteristics, functions, and urban structure.13

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 359 A map attributed to land surveyor Erik Widman clearly shows a fence and Norrstigen, which runs parallel to the river and crosses the fence at two toll gates added to control the movement of goods. The fence does not strictly follow the shape of the city but is rigidly geometrical. Herva and Ylimaunu14 suggest the plan might have been drawn at an earlier date, before construction was completed, by a collaborator of Bureus. In that case, the map does not represent the built fence, which probably was irregular and closer to the actual city; instead, its shape might communicate the importance of the municipal land’s administrative border. Three longitudinal streets parallel to the river form three lanes of long, narrow blocks that generate six transversal streets. The main square was formed in a central location that has remained the core of Umeå. Closer to the river, a line of small constructions corresponds to huts for the harbour workers. These small huts are organized and regular on the map but likely were built much more irregularly. The harbour, from where the goods taxed in the city gates are shipped into the Baltic Sea, was the core of the town’s activity. Map of Stockholm from 1642 by an unknown cartographer15

By the mid-1600s, the medieval trading town built on an island had become too small and crowded. The capital of an imperial Sweden demanded more space for new institutions but also to represent royal splendour. Like Umeå, the new administrative city was not built atop the existing. Unlike Umeå, which was built at some distance from its original site, Stockholm grew alongside its original core, however, with the trading enclave and the administrative city having clearly differentiated characters and purposes. In Stockholm, the planning process was not as straightforward as in Umeå, a reflection of the complexity of the interests concentrated there.16 The result, what is today the district of Norrmalm, was a regular grid of long, straight, rectangular blocks, a pattern altered by the existence of a pronounced ridge dividing the grid in two. Around Gustav Adolf square (still surrounded by government buildings today) were located the institutions of power and decision-making needed to administrate a centralized state, as well as banks–the financial centre would not be relocated to Sergelstorg until the 20th century – and, later, an opera house representing royal splendour. The old town still hosted the harbour and the city’s commercial activity, that farther to the south the city had begun an informal expansion into the island of Södermalm. Certain streets were lengthened into roads running out of the city. Today, these are recognizable avenues, named with the suffix -väg (road), that articulate the street pattern. Also at this time the tullarna (tolls) were established around the city. The locations of some of these tolls (Skanstull, Nortull, Hornstull) are still reference points that define the perimeter

360  Jaime Montes Bentura of today’s inner city, popularly referred to as stad inom tullarna (the city inside the tolls). Vägar – staket – tullarna/roads – fences – tolls

Why did Umeå have a fence if it was not for defensive purposes? Why was the planning of Swedish cities inspired by Dutch planning? Why were similar principles adopted for both Umeå and Stockholm, despite the differences in latitude, climate, topography, context, size, and function? Both newly planned cities incorporated elements that relate to administrative and taxation functions characteristic of the bureaucratic and centralized state: roads that structure the territory, clear boundaries to control access, and gates with tolls to aid the taxation of goods. The creation of modern Sweden is dated to 1521, when, under the lead of Gustav Vasa, with the support of Dutch and German merchants, Danish rulers were expelled. Under Gustav Vasa’s rule took form the centralized and bureaucratic Swedish state, a process already underway in England with Henry VIII, in Spain with Charles V, and in France with Francis I. Under King Gustav II Adolf (1611–1632) and Queen Christina (1632– 1654) the centralized and bureaucratic state was consolidated. The military alliance with the Dutch Republic and France during the 30 Years’ War brought with it increased diplomatic, economic, cultural and intellectual exchange. The Swedish monarchy conquered new territories to form a Baltic empire, carrying an intense urbanization programme,17 forming a network of extraction of resources, trade, taxation, and military control (see Figure 16.1). The planning of the new cities was influenced by the ideal city of the Renaissance, the French boulevards, and the neoclassical town planning of the Dutch Republic. During the Dutch Golden Era, from 1581 to 1672, commerce and art flourished in the Netherlands. Badeloch Noldus18 explains the intense exchange and interdependence between the Dutch Republic and Sweden and how trade relations also brought political and cultural exchange. Noldus argues that the Dutch Republic was not a mere receiver of culture but developed its own characteristic forms of neoclassical architecture and planning that influenced Sweden. Dutch merchants settled in Swedish cities, engaged in economic and political life, and built urban palaces inspired by Dutch examples. Dutch architects moved to or visited Sweden. Swedish aristocrats, who, ‘according to the rules of their class, were not allowed to be involved in trading activities’, engaged in civil service following military and administrative careers that required an education,19 for which they travelled and studied in universities across the continent, including Leiden, which was the main reference for town planning in Europe at the time.20

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 361 The increase in exchange allowed for the dissemination of best practices and made possible the development of tools for dealing with more complex urban problematic. But widespread application of best practices also leads to a decrease in the diversity of practices and concentrates decision-making in fewer hands. This is clearly seen in the case of Umeå, which was not planned locally to meet the demands of the local climate or the needs of existing inhabitants. Instead, development was superimposed on the territory based on an idea brought from continental Europe of what a city should be. Consolidation of the inner city: the industrial city in around the 1880s Françoise Choay21 describes two main responses to the overcrowding and unhealthy conditions of industrial cities in the 19th century. First, existing structures were regularized following the plans and ideas of GeorgesEugène Haussmann in Paris and Ildefons Cerdá in Barcelona. Second, movements to escape the city emerged in England, France, and Germany as reformers sought fresh air and better living conditions for workers. The evolution of transport strengthened communication between nodes and facilitated the movement of industries and the construction of housing areas out of urban cores. Norrbyskär (1895) on the Swedish coast south of Umeå, built around a steam sawmill and well connected by steamboat routes, had precedents in worker’s towns built along the Rhine Valley some years earlier. The urban village of Gamla Enskede (1907), close to Stockholm and connected to it by a light train, was inspired in the garden cities built in London from 1900. When the railway arrived at each city, it set a virtual limit on its urban core (see Figure  16.2). Expansion of the city beyond those limits would come by hand with the development of automobile and metro transit infrastructures and exponential increases in the urban population. If the 17th century was a moment of geographical expansion of the web, a time when new nodes and roads were created to consolidate the presence of the state in the territory, the 19th and 20th centuries were a period of intensification (i.e. growth) of already existing nodes. Map of Umeå from 1899 by city engineer Wilhelm Stolpe22

Umeå’s first period of industrialization was characterized by the development of steam power and sawmills upstream on the Ume River, such as in Baggböle, built in 1813. Later, an electrified train infrastructure was built following the same territorial occupation pattern as the road system: running south to north from Stockholm, parallel to the coast but some

362  Jaime Montes Bentura Figure 16.2 Stockholm and Umeå urban extension during the four historical moments studied in the text. The railways are drawn around 1900. The names in the map correspond to areas mentioned in the text. Source: Drawing produced by the author based on information from Andersson 1979 for Stockholm, and Carolina Sandström in Forsberg 2001, pp. 18–9, for Umeå.

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 363 kilometres inland. The train did not at first go directly to Umeå but to Vännäs, about 30 kilometres upstream. A track was built running parallel to the river reaching Umeå in 1866 and later extended to the mouth of the river at Holmsund. In the 2000s, a new track from Stockholm was built next to the coast, parallel to the Norrstigen and the E4. The urban pattern was contained between the river and the train and formalized as a homogeneous and continuous urban grid. Even if its main guidelines are recognizable, the 17th-century grid is not visible because Umeå was reconstructed after a fire in 1888 following hygienist principles and new fire-protection measures, with wider avenues (but following the same direction as earlier streets) and the central square in the same location. From the station, the train tracks were extended one kilometre to the east, embraced the city perimeter in a pronounced curve, making a 180-degree turn, and paralleled the river before reaching the core of the harbour in front of city hall. From the side of the city hall that was not facing the river was built Rådhusesplanaden (the Town Hall Esplanade), a straight and wide avenue that crossed the city connecting the train station with Rådhustorg (the Town Hall Square). In 1885, a sawmill was built at the mouth of the river, in Holmsund, where will be concentrated much of Umeå’s industrial activity (the sawmill in Baggböle closed in 1897, for example). In 1922, train service was extended there and, in time, the river would lose its role as transport artery, and the harbour in the city centre eventually would lose its activity. As a consequence, Rådhustorg and Rådhusesplanaden would become the central spaces in a city that will give the back to the river for many decades. The core of activity of the city is no longer an active harbour but embellished urban spaces where the inhabitants of the city meet each other. The wide curve traced by the rail lines was finally removed in the early 1970s, but its footprint is still recognizable in the urban pattern at Järnvägsgatan (the Railway Street) and Östra Strandgatan. Nowadays, this footprint is not only physical but also the limit to what can be considered the consolidated inner city. European cities often show traces of their medieval past, a dense core, the footprint of a former defensive wall, and later expansion extramural in patterns that become less compact in each period of expansion. Umeå does not have a medieval core but does have a central urban grid contained within the limits set by the old tracks and, beyond that, extra-track growth that is less compact, defined by the automobile, zoning, and sprawl. Map of Stockholm from 1885 by A. R. Lundgren23

The Stockholm portrayed in A. R. Lundgren’s map of 1885 is the result of the so-called Delegates Plan (1876), which had emerged from a complex,

364  Jaime Montes Bentura multi-year development process involving numerous discussions and alternative versions24 (e.g. plans by A. W. Wallströms, 1863; and the Lindhagen Committee, 1866). Lundgren’s map shows how the railway reinforced growth along the roads that converge on the city. Trams helped the city expand into Södermalm, to the south and to the west. As with Cerdá’s regularization plan for Barcelona, Stockholm’s urban grid expanded until it met geographical limits (hills around Barcelona, water around Stockholm25), absorbing and integrating earlier growth. Norrmalm was consolidated as the nation’s administrative and economic centre. Initially, instead of crossing the city, all train and tram lines from north and south ended there, a manifestation of the hierarchy of the web, where nodes relate to the centre. Role in the web

Stockholm, although smaller than Paris, London, Barcelona, or Berlin, which set the trend in European urbanism, shared many of the same problems associated with growth, such as overpopulation and increased need for sanitation. Umeå, however, due to its size, density, and growth at a later period, experienced a few of the same problems and conditions. However, town planning ideas of the time were applied to both cities, a clear example of knowledge and best practices being disseminated through the geography of the web. To better understand how nodes relate to the web, we can look for parallels in the maps of two Finnish cities built during the period of Swedish rule: Oulu (Uleåborg in Swedish) and Helsinki (Helsingfors in Swedish).26 Oulu, like Umeå, was a northern trading settlement located at the mouth of a river (the Oulu) connecting inland Finland with the Baltic Sea. The city, planned during the 17th century as a regional node like Umeå, was built atop an older settlement as part of the centralized Swedish state’s web of towns. When Oulu was eventually integrated into the Finnish centralized state, its role in the Finnish web of towns remained analogous to that of Umeå within the Swedish system. Both cities hosted state institutions such as offices of regional administration, a hospital, and a university. And in both, the industrial harbour and the administrative centre developed with different characters, although the functional separation is more evident in the case of Umeå, which, being far from the mouth of the river, had to locate its port away from the city. Helsinki, also founded by Swedish rulers, would not become Finland’s capital city until the 19th century. The first plans for the city are similar to those for other nodes in the southern Baltic built during the 17th century with similar roles in trade and need of military defence, such as Gothenburg. Once Helsinki was established as the capital city, it

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 365 developed similarities with Stockholm, forming the central node in a web of towns that articulate a centralized state. Each capital is the centre of its nation’s rail and road networks. Each has an urban core that contains representative functions of the state. And each was consolidated around 1900 before expanding beyond those limits in a pattern of suburban housing. Expansion outside the limits: construction of suburbia from the 1950s onwards

During the second half of the 20th century, the growth of Stockholm and Umeå was exponential, and cities largely exceeded the limits of the compact inner city. Growth occurred not in continuity with or as a replacement for existing urban patterns but as a sequence of independent enclaves. City maps of this period no longer show a compact structure, as extensions and complexity forced an abstract representation of networks and zones that were combined with a fragmented sequence of plans revealing, at closer scale, the morphology of each area. My focus here is not on the transformations of the two cities’ centres but on their growth into suburban enclaves, representative of changes in the urban structure, its organization, and meaning. Single-function enclaves were built in relation to automobile and rail infrastructures and designated by the word område (area) and the function they incorporated. Both cities built university areas around 1965. Rather than integrate them into the urban pattern, they were conceived as independent buildings with open green extensions, influenced by university campuses in the United States. Villa areas were still designed to providing with greenery and fresh air. However, they differed in key ways from the worker communities of the first industrial period: they were less community-oriented, had fewer common facilities, and were located farther from work areas and collective transport. Buildings lost their relation to the street following the adoption of new regulations requiring greater separation of buildings from plot borders. The focus in these villa areas shifted to the car, the individual, and privacy. Workers were accommodated in multifamily housing areas that, such as Rinkeby-Tensta and Husby in Stockholm or Mariehem and Ålidhem in Umeå, concentrated services in a local centre: metro, bus, supermarket, often a library or a swimming pool. The rest of the area was dedicated to housing. The street pattern was defined by separation of the means of transportation. The classic urban block with four street facades was abandoned in favour of free-standing volumes, each seemingly questing for fresh air, optimal orientation towards the sun, and a good relation to greenery.

366  Jaime Montes Bentura In the first half of the 20th century urban planning commingled Swedish and British influences.27 In Sweden, it resulted in a romantic image of traditional towns, small-scale and organic patterns, with sprinkles of influence from Germany and Austria (e.g. the ideas of Camillo Sitte). After the Second World War, and especially from the 1950s, urban morphology was influenced by Le Corbusier and French rationalism, by the carfriendly principles applied in the development of Radburn, New Jersey, in the United States,28 and by the image of individualization and freedom represented by the car and the villa. The monotony and lack of variation found in some suburbs from the 1960s and 1970s are often attributed to the application of functionalism as an architectural doctrine characterized by monochrome, repetitive, prismatic, and volumes. But a predominant philosophy can be applied in many different ways and alone does not explain the resultant city. Some housing areas developed along functionalist lines during the 1930s and 1940s; for example, Hammarbyhöjden in Stockholm and Haga in Umeå incorporated ideas similar to those applied by Martin Wagner in the Berlin Modernism Housing Estates, including clear articulation of the architecture and the in-between spaces and the use of detail around doors, windows, and on cornices. Mass production and urban structure

The post-war period brought not only shifts in political and cultural relations but also the need for mass housing. From 1965 to 1975 as part of the Miljonprogrammet (Million Programme), around one million Swedish homes were built in new housing areas, some of which are today perceived as segregated and problematic. The same transport infrastructures that connected these suburbs with the services of the centre became physical barriers separating one community from another. In an example of what Ian Morris calls ‘the paradox of development’, where ‘social development creates the very forces that undermine it’,29 the development that made possible the provision of good-quality, affordable housing to many families moving into cities also would bring in the future undesired consequences in the form of low-energy efficient housing, undefined public spaces dominated by the car, or segregated urban enclaves. New means of production allowed housing units to be prefabricated and repeated as many times as needed. Thanks to new fabrication technologies and means of communication, developers could build on cheaper land farther from the urban core, closer to greenery and open air. Following the logic of the web, best practices spread, so once a set of optimal housing layouts was defined and an optimal orientation towards the sun ascertained, advances in fabrication made it more convenient simply to repeat a standardized unit in the

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 367 factory, resulting in prismatic volumes with little articulation or definition of the architecture and of in-between spaces. In industrialized systems that implement standardized solutions, the designer and craftsperson are less present, fewer decisions are made on site during construction, and little attention is paid to fine details. The Stockholm and Umeå of this period, as much as reflecting the ideas of the time, were the result of the mass production of housing and cars. The development of prefabricated construction systems and methods, increases in population, the rise of financial capitalism, the concentration of means of production, and rapid scientific and technological development played a major role in post-war European reconstruction. Together, these formed the so-called Great Acceleration,30 a global trend in which population, production, and fabrication – as well as their environmental impacts – grew exponentially beginning in the 1950s, generating new relations between the humans and the environment.31 The city in continuity Urban systems

Traditionally, cities were understood to have developed after agriculture, as a result of food surpluses and the division of labour. Edward Soja, following Jane Jacobs in the Economy of Cities, challenges this notion by ‘Putting Cities First’,32 arguing that social organization and exchanges within the city led to the production of knowledge needed to develop and master agriculture. For Soja, the inherent dynamics and synergies within the social system of the city are important forces of innovation and development. A moment of rupture in the 17th century has been introduced in this text when, on top of an existing pattern of trading settlements, the Swedish state imposed in the territory a web of towns with taxation and administrative functions. Even if we recognize both resultant structures as cities and that there is a physical and temporal continuity between them, the settlements that result from internal generative processes, such as those described by Soja, form different urban systems and organizational structures than cities built by external forces such as the web of towns produced by a bureaucratic, centralized state. These urban systems require different narratives about the internal and external dynamics that shape cities, how they are organized, behave, and function, and how citizens relate to them. From this, we can conclude that no single universal narrative can explain what cities are and what forces shape them; and that a city cannot be studied in isolation but in relation to the system of cities to which it belongs.

368  Jaime Montes Bentura Furthermore, a single city is not necessarily part of a single system, since many dynamics operate in the same city. Stockholm, for example, largely grew as an aggregation of towns rather than as a homogeneous entity. During the 18th and 19th centuries the city expanded north and south, in grid form but with different characters, the administrative core of a centralized, bureaucratic state based in Norrmalm expanded north into Vasastan and Kungsholem, collocating aristocratic and bourgeois classes, while the organic trading settlement based in Gamla Stan expanded south into Södermalm, first occupied by Dutch traders and harbour activities33 and, later on, by industries and working classes. These two dynamics are represented in Europe by two organizational structures: more or less politically independent clusters of cities (e.g. citystates, urban federations, commercial confederations) and webs of towns of the bureaucratic, centralized state in its various forms (empire, absolutist monarchy, nation-state). Independent clusters tend to emerge around landforms such as bodies of water, which serve as communication channels, allowing both competition and collaboration. Such cities control their immediate territory and establish commercial, political, and cultural bonds with other territories, exercising influence but not direct coercive control over them. Exchange and interaction foster innovation and the transmission of knowledge. These cities grow organically from internal generative forces close to those described by Soja. In contrast, the webs of towns formed by bureaucratic, centralized states tend to be hierarchically organized, with a central node exercising direct coercive domination over a large territory. The state, in the long run, is consolidated by defining clear geographical borders and enforcing territorial integrity. Cities incorporate administration and taxation functions. The state develops technical and organizational capacity to build new cities, roads that facilitate postal communication, and the deployment of troops (bureaucracy and warfare). Early examples include the Royal Road of the Achaemenid Empire in the fifth century bce and the Roman Empire’s extensive system of roads that, as the medieval adage notes, all led to Rome. Although the comparison is oversimplified, scholars have long pointed to Greek city-states as innovators in fields such as philosophy and the arts and to the Roman Empire, which assimilated Greek culture, as an innovator in engineering and law. The centralized state disseminated political structures, language, culture, and innovations throughout its territory while simultaneously homogenizing and systematizing them. We find a similar process of creation around generative clusters of cities in modern Europe and their later assimilation in the nation-state that will further homogenize and disseminate those innovations.

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 369 The two urban systems recognize different forms of citizenship. In ancient Athens and premodern Europe, citizenship was associated with the city. In ancient Rome and the modern nation-state, it is associated with the state. In Citizens Without Nations,34 Maarten Prak argues that in the independent cities of premodern central Europe citizenship was not exercised exclusively through legal recognition but also through civic action that included a considerable number of the inhabitants. Civic engagement promoted innovation and creativity and was supported by proximity to civic, administrative, and political institutions. This kind of civic engagement is reminiscent of the generative forces proposed by Soja. How then, and to what extent, can civic action be incorporated into urban systems where citizenship is defined towards the state, and individuals can become physically and mentally distant from the civic, administrative, and political institutions? Dissemination of trends

The evolution of political maps from medieval to modern Europe reveals that centralized states first formed in the western and eastern ends of the continent. In the middle, a zone of friction roughly following the Po and Rhine River valleys, were myriad principalities and city-states, an area dense with commercial routes, exchange, universities, competition, innovation, and economic, cultural, and scientific development, even religious reformation. The trends that shaped Swedish cities can be traced in this zone of friction dominated by different clusters of independent cities: from the Renaissance as it unfolded in northern Italian city-states in the 1400s and 1500s, via the baroque art and neoclassical architecture and town planning of the Dutch Republic (an urban federation) in the 1600s. The same vector also describes a broad history of innovations in technology, trade, and economy: from the early agrarian revolution in Lombardy and the first banks in Genoa and Venice, to the foundation in the Dutch Republic of the first stock exchange (1602), first modern central bank (1609), and the Dutch East India Company (1602). The spatial and temporal vector of economic and cultural innovation is extended in the 1700s to the Scottish cities that became important commercial nodes on the fringe of the English state. Around Glasgow and Edinburgh evolved the Scottish Enlightenment and took form both James Watt’s steam engine, a key technology of the Industrial Revolution, and Adam Smith’s theorization of capitalism, two processes that will define social and urban development in the 1800s (see Figure 16.3). The maps of the first industrialized areas of Europe around 1850 picture the Rhine and Po River valleys and southern Scotland, as well as areas of Bohemia and western England, and reveal the emergence of concentrated nodes around the capital cities of England, France, and Germany. In the

370  Jaime Montes Bentura

Figure 16.3 Transmission of trends in the web. European processes and trends that influenced Swedish planning during the modern period. The political map of Europe around 1600 shows the formation of centralized states in both ends (in grey) and a zone of friction with multiple independent cities and principalities (in white).

20th century, with the nation-states fully consolidated, influences in Swedish planning can be found in European capital cities. For example, London produced the garden cities of Letchworth (1903) and Hampstead (1907), in Paris Le Corbusier proposed the Radiant City (1922), and in Berlin the Siedlung, Modernism Housing Estates (1925). The structure we inhabit

The centralized state’s web of towns created a new geography, one that we still inhabit today. The new system was nevertheless continuous with the past, for it was superimposed on existing patterns of trade settlements around the Baltic. The first maps of Oulu and Vaasa,35 planned in this period as part of the Swedish centralized state, were drawn with simple red lines to indicate a regular block structure superimposed on older organic settlements, an apt metaphor for a new system taking over an old one.

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 371 Although the Industrial Revolution is often cited as a pivotal moment in the development of European cities, the process of growth and transformation started much earlier, in the 17th century. According to Ellen Meiksins Wood in The Origin of Capitalism, the Industrial Revolution and its subsequent evolution were consequences of capitalism and the forces of compulsive accumulation, profit maximization, and increased labour productivity it put in motion. The formation of centralized, bureaucratic states and capitalism were two ways out of feudalism that cohabited and became intertwined. In today’s parliamentary nationstates, power structures remain centralized, and political rule is separated from economic action, a core characteristic of capitalism. The paradox of capitalism is that it demands freedom of action but requires the regulation of the state to correct its excesses.36 This duality between state and capital would define urban planning in the second half of the 20th century. For Meiksins Wood, capitalism is not a mere evolution of commerce; it is a new phenomenon whose origin can be dated to the English countryside of the late 16th or early 17th century. Capitalism is rooted in a ‘specific transformation of social property relations’, including the enclosure of communal lands, and ‘the alteration of the laws and customs that maintained the community’. During the early stage of capitalism was theorized the notion of improvement understood as the productivity of the land for economical profit. Improvement played a central role in the introduction of a new way to relate to the land from the perspective of the economical benefit that can be obtained from it, rather than from the perspective of the people who is working and inhabiting it. Improvement meant something more than new or better methods and techniques of farming. Improvement meant . . . new forms and conceptions of property . . . the elimination of old customs and practices that interfered with the most productive use of land.37 This process leads to a reconfiguration of the countryside into larger properties, even whole villages disappeared, poor peasants of the type that have shaped the countryside .  .  . were replaced by . . . prosperous capitalist tenants . . . and landless labourers. The landscape was transformed from a sequence of modest peasant villages into an idyllic vision of cottages, parks and well-designed landscape gardens.38 In Sweden, the jordreform was a sequence of three land reforms in the Swedish countryside starting from around 1750 and stretching for more

372  Jaime Montes Bentura than a century. As with the English case, the jordreform concentrated land and means of production for the sake of efficiency, resulting in changes to the configuration of landscapes and social structures. Noldus describes how the Swedish countryside was also transformed from small properties of peasants grouped in villages into a sequence of large, independent estates embellished with the palaces and gardens of landowners.39 Citizens

If the agrarian phase of capitalism meant the disappearance of many villages that articulated the life of the community, and the transformation of peasants into landless labourers, a similar pattern can be seen in the cities during the industrial and financial phases of capitalism: in the sake of rationalization and efficiency, specialized mono-functional enclaves separated work from social life, they were inhabited by workers rather than by citizens, and lacked public spaces and services, and closeness to civic and political institutions. The urban expansion of the 1600s was not a response to internal dynamics but to be driven by the state. First, new towns were built and then occupied by new populations. For example, Gothenburg was populated by attracting Dutch merchants to settle there.40 In the case of Oulu, artisans and merchants were forced to move there to populate the area and boost its commercial activity. The exponential growth of those same towns in the 20th century was a reaction to an increase in urban populations. This time, growth occurred not by building new compact towns but by extending road networks and then adding suburbs dependent on the existing core. This pattern of growth may seem natural but should not be taken for granted, as it physically separates people from services, civic institutions, and associations in areas that lack ‘the role of wards, districts, neighbourhoods . . . the small entities that provided another layer of texture to urban communities’. If citizenship is a set of practices of collective action, canalized through civic organizations and institutional representation,41 then housing areas, enclaves, and developments that lack closeness, services, administrative and civic institutions are not designed as cities in the full sense of the word, because they hinder the exercise of citizenship. Maybe due to being a country of late urbanization, the Swedish language does not contain a clear equivalent to the English word neighbourhood that refers to community life. Instead, Swedish developed administrative terms like område (referring to an area or a delimitation) and stadsdel (literally, a part of the city). Europe at the beginning of the 20th century saw the design and construction of complete pieces of town in the form of workers’ towns, suburban villages, and garden cities, but also here the

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 373 sense of community or neighbourhood feel was lost as functionalism introduced zonification and housing areas that focused on a single aspect of life, and when, later on, urban developments incorporated a capitalist language related to the improvement and profitability of the land. During the egnahemsrörelsen (own home movement) in the 1930s, the Swedish state facilitated land and infrastructure development, then transferred the knowledge and means of construction to the people, who built their own homes. During the 1960s, the centralized action of the state provided housing to a more generic population: the Million Programme was an infrastructural intervention by the state where the industry was on charge for the construction. The programme was rooted in socialist ideals but responded to the forces of capitalism, fostering an economy of industries that concentrated the means of production in fewer hands. The industries that emerged from the Million Programme became a force in promoting urban development. Following capitalistic logic, they pushed for more production to increase their profit accumulation. At some point in the 1980s or 1990s, new housing areas started to be built to attract population, this time the population was not attracted through the direct exercise of the state’s coercive power but through the logic of the capitalist market. Urban growth became an investment, a marketed product, as could be read in a slogan on the webpage of Umeå Municipality: ‘Flytta till Umeå: du är välkommen, och viktig’42 (Move to Umeå: you are welcomed and important). Taxation remained a central role of the city, only now cities competed with one another in the market economy to attract taxpayers. Land, under the lenses of capitalism, is viewed in relation to the profit that can be obtained from it, whether measured in terms of agrarian or mining production or in terms of building exploitation. As a result of the separation of the political and economic spheres, municipalities lay out guidelines, plans, and infrastructures, and developers build and sell. That separation is materialized in the municipal organization of both Umeå and Stockholm by the distinction drawn between the Planning Department (in charge of the spatial and social aspects of urban planning), and the Exploitation Department, charged with making urban development economically viable and profitable. Typological approach

Both Umeå and Stockholm offer a perfect mosaic of 20th-century urban ideas, where approximately once per decade each built a new piece of town next to an older piece, based on a specific model defined by its own street pattern and building typology.43 Each new model tried to correct the mistakes of the previous and was assumed to be a solution that would remain in time. However, both the romantic garden city of individual houses laid out on curving streets and the rational, large-scale, free-standing housing

374  Jaime Montes Bentura volumes of functionalism are rooted in social concerns and a desire to provide workers with decent housing, abundant light and fresh air, and proximity to natural elements. But both are also self-contained enclaves dependant on the urban core. Mechanistic thinking and rationalism introduced the idea that nature and social relations could be understood as predictable mechanisms. If planners could predict how cities work, they could define a perfect, permanent urban model that structures and organizes the life of the people instead of letting the life of the people structure and organize the city. A deterministic belief in linear evolution and the search for truth provided continuity to urbanist approaches from the 17th century until the muchvaunted ‘End of History’ was announced at the close of the 20th century. Since the turn of the millennium, however, environmental, financial, and migratory crises have reminded us of our vulnerabilities and the need to embrace uncertainty, change, and adaptation as we move from a linear extractive system to a more circular system that takes care of human and natural life. The sustainable city should not fall into the same pattern of reacting to the city of the past from the perspective of the present. Just as ‘history is not one damn thing after the other’, the city should not be one damn typology after the other. Instead, it should be recognized as an entity that changes and adapts over time. If ‘Most Buildings Are Already There’,44 then, no matter how sustainable a piece of town we create, we will always still have pre-existing urban structures to take care of. The city should be built in continuity, overlapping with the existing, with full consideration given to how every new intervention, in addition to being sustainable by itself, should have a positive impact on the existing city. This will require an acknowledgement that ‘Planning is Choosing’45 among a set of possibilities and that no street pattern or building typology is ideal. Rather, the goal of planning should be to promote a good mix of patterns that complement the existing ones. We answer the questions we make

Whether they form part of constellations of independent cities or bureaucratic and centralized webs, we will understand cities better if we study the systems they form rather than studying them as isolated entities. François Ascher defines a city as a population cluster that is not able to produce its own means of subsistence.46 His definition works with both systems of cities because it addresses the significant impact cities have on the environment beyond their physical boundaries. This approach helps to overcome the dichotomy between urban and rural and, recalling Geddes’s regional

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 375 city, to understand urbanization as an integral system of territorial occupation that requires a greater understanding of how villages, towns, and cities are interconnected with their surrounding territory, where the spatial re-articulation of the community goes hand in hand, and is equally necessary, in cities, towns, and villages. Under this perspective, for example, sustainable local food production would be addressed through a holistic approach to villages, towns, cities, and their surrounding territory rather than limiting the focus on urban agriculture versus industrial production in the countryside. The adoption of any uniform, dominant discourse of best practices wipes out other systems of occupation of territory, reduces diversity, and increases vulnerability. Recognizing the existence of other systems – beyond the two introduced in this chapter – is an important step towards reducing that vulnerability. Meiksins Wood questions capitalism’s ‘compatibility with democracy, social justice and ecological sustainability’47 because its ultimate goal is the generation of capital through an extractive logic of profit maximization. That is, to build housing as a means of economic profit is not compatible with the construction of the city as a space for the community. And to view land through its potential monetary value is not compatible with building a city that benefits all and values the environment. Therefore, urban planning and design need to consciously define their perspective and priorities and incorporate notions of resilience and care to achieve more sustainable and inclusive cities. Changing the perspective

Cities are often explained with reference to infrastructures and typologies, but other forces should be considered, such as their relation with the web, the organization of the state, mechanistic thinking, or capitalism. However, to incorporate people as active agents of change more narratives are needed that explain urban space through people, their role in its processes of transformation, their needs, their daily routines, and their relations with one another. The same applies to the natural and rural ecosystems that, at best, are explained in terms of land use or what can be extracted from them, thus missing their functions and performance of their human and non-human inhabitants. Amid the complexity of issues and interests that converge in city planning, one can easily forget that transport is not an end by itself but a means to arrive at a place and that the goal of the built environment is not just to provide mobility, food, or energy but to provide a good quality of life, a good relationship with the earth, and why not, happiness.

376  Jaime Montes Bentura Notes 1 Ian Morris, Why the West Rules for Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future (London: Profile Books, 2011), p. 560. 2 N. John Habraken, The Structure of the Ordinary, ed. Jonathan Teiche (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). 3 N. John Habraken, Supports an Alternative to Mass Housing (London: The Architectural Press, 1972), p. 42. 4 John R. McNeill & William H. McNeill, The Human Web (New York: Norton, 2003), pp. 3–5. 5 Ibid., p. 322 (italics by Jaime Montes Bentura). 6 Patrick Geddes, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics (London: Williams & Norgate, rev. ed. 1949 [1915]), p. 166. 7 Morris 2011. 8 Stephen Graham & Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 15. 9 Lantmäteriet, Umeå socken, Geometrisk avmätning 1686, Aktbeteckning Z31–76:1, https://historiskakartor.lantmateriet.se/hk/viewer/share/Z3176:1/4c4d535f5a33312d37363a31/lms2/LMS/Ume%C3%A5%20socken%20 Kyrkobordet%20nr%201-3/Geometrisk%20avm%C3%A4tning (31 October 2022). 10 A map of Stockholm from 1547 can be found at Dissertatio historica de ecclesia teutonica et templo S:ta Gertrudis Stockholmiensi, Resp. J. A. A. Lüdeke (Upsaliae,1791), reproduced in Runeberg project, Nordisk familjebok 1917, http://runeberg.org/nfcf/0818.html (31 October 2022). 11 Thomas Hall, Stockholm, the Making of a Metropolis (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 19–29. This section references a map on page 20 that reconstructs Stockholm during the 1300s. 12 Lantmäteriet, Karta över Umeå stad 1643, Aktbeteckning Z32–1:1, https://historiskakartor.lantmateriet.se (31 October 2022). 13 Nils Ahlberg, Svensk stadsplanering: Arvet från stormaktstiden resurs i dagens stadsutveckling (Stockholm: Forskningsrådet Formas, 2012); Vesa-Pekka Herva  & Timo Ylimaunu, ‘What’s on the map? Re-assessing the first urban map of Torneå and early map-making in Sweden’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 35 (March 2010), pp. 86–107. 14 Herva & Ylimaunu 2010. 15 The National Library of Sweden, online at Stockholmkällan, Karta över hela Stockholm troligen ritad 1642, https://stockholmskallan.stockholm.se. 16 Hall 2008, pp. 32–54. 17 For a detailed relation of the cities built in Sweden in this period, their maps, and a thorough discussion on the context and how they were built, see Ahlberg 2012. 18 Badeloch Noldus, Trade in Good Taste: Relations in Architecture and Culture between the Dutch Republic and the Baltic World in the Seventeenth Century (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2004). 19 Ibid., p. 32. 20 Ahlberg 2012, p. 26. 21 Françoise Choay, The Modern City: Planning the 19th Century (New York: George Brazilier, 1969). 22 Lantmäteriet, Umeå kommun. Online at Opendata, Umeå Historiska kartor över Umeå 1899. 23 Stockholm City Archive. Online at Stockholmkällan, Karta öfver Stockholm upprättad och utgifven af A. R. Lundgren år 1885. 24 Hall 2008.

Driving forces in the evolution of Stockholm and Umeå 377 25 The growth of Umeå’s grid was confined to the area between the river and the rail line. 26 Ahlberg 2012, pp. 299, 312. 27 Hall 2008. 28 Gunnar Färjare, ‘Byggnader, miljöer och stadsdelar: 82 Ålidhem’, in Patrick Forsberg (ed.), Arkitekturguide Umeå (Umeå: Umeå Stadsbyggnadskontoret, 2001), p. 80. 29 Morris 2011, p. 560. 30 Will Steffen et al., ‘The anthropocene: From global change to planetary stewardship’, Journal of Environment and Society, 40 (2011), pp. 739–61. 31 John R. McNeill, Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2021). 32 Edward Soja, ‘Putting cities first’, in Postmetropolis (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). 33 Noldus 2004. 34 Maarten Prak, Citizens Without Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 35 Ahlberg 2012, pp. 313–15. 36 Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism, a Longer View (London: Verso, 2017), pp. 176–81. 37 Ibid., pp. 107–11. 38 Ibid., 2017, pp. 125–7. 39 Noldus 2004, p. 55. 40 Ibid., pp. 48–9. 41 Prak 2018, pp. 10–11. 42 See www.umea.se (31 October 2022). 43 For a description of the development of Umeå, see Forsberg, Arkitekturguide Umeå. For a description of the growth of Stockholm, see Magnus Andersson, Stockholm’s Annual Rings: A Glimpse into the Development of the City (Stockholm: Stockholmia förlag, 1997). 44 Örjan Svane, ‘But most buildings are already there: Basic starting points for environmental management in the housing sector’, in Edward P. Hammond & Alex D. Noyes (eds.), Housing; Socioeconomic, Availability  & Development Issues (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2009), pp. 149–59. 45 Torbjörn Einarsson, ‘Planning is choosing, or should be’, in Tigran Haas (ed.), Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future (New York: Rizzoli, 2012), pp. 91–9. 46 Francoise Ascher, Los nuevos principios del urbanismo (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2004), p. 19. 47 Meiksins Wood 2017, p. 8.

Bibliography Ahlberg, Nils, Svensk stadsplanering: Arvet från stormaktstiden resurs i dagens stadsutveckling (Stockholm: Forskningsrådet Formas, 2012). Andersson, Magnus, Stockholm’s Annual Rings: A Glimpse Into the Development of the City (Stockholm: Stockholmia förlag, 1997). Ascher, Francoise, Los nuevos principios del urbanismo (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2004 [Original: Les nouveaux principes de l’urbanisme (Paris: Éditions de l’Aube, 2001)].). Choay, Françoise, The Modern City: Planning the 19th Century (New York: George Brazilier, 1969).

378  Jaime Montes Bentura Einarsson, Torbjörn, ‘Planning is choosing, or should be’, in Tigran Haas (ed.), Sustainable Urbanism and Beyond: Rethinking Cities for the Future (New York: Rizzoli, 2012). Färjare, Gunnar, ’Byggnader, miljöer och stadsdelar: 82 Ålidhem’, in Patrick Forsberg (ed.), Arkitekturguide Umeå (Umeå: Umeå Stadsbyggnadskontoret, 2001). Geddes, Patrick, Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the Study of Civics (London: Williams  & Norgate, rev. ed. 1949 [1915]). Graham, Stephen  & Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism (London: Routledge, 2001). Habraken, N. John, Supports an Alternative to Mass Housing (London: The Architectural Press, 1972). Habraken, N. John, The Structure of the Ordinary, ed. Jonathan Teiche (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998). Hall, Thomas, Stockholm, the Making of a Metropolis (London: Routledge, 2008). Herva, Vesa-Pekka & Timo Ylimaunu, ‘What’s on the map? Re-assessing the first urban map of Torneå and early map-making in Sweden’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 35 (March 2010). https://historiskakartor.lantmateriet.se. Kungliga biblioteket (The National Library of Sweden), Stockholm. Lantmäteriet (The Swedish Mapping, Cadastral and Land Registration Authority), Umeå kommun, Umeå. McNeill, John R., Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2021). McNeill, John R. & William H. McNeill, The Human Web (New York: Norton, 2003). Meiksins Wood, Ellen, The Origin of Capitalism, a Longer View (London: Verso, 2017). Morris, Ian, Why the West Rules for Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future (London: Profile Books, 2011). Noldus, Badeloch, Trade in Good Taste: Relations in Architecture and Culture Between the Dutch Republic and the Baltic World in the Seventeenth Century (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2004). Prak, Maarten, Citizens Without Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). http://runeberg.org. Soja, Edward, ‘Putting cities first’, in Postmetropolis (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). Steffen, Will et al., ‘The anthropocene: From global change to planetary stewardship’, Journal of Environment and Society, 40 (2011). Stockholms Stadsarkiv (Stockholm City Archive). https://stockholmskallan.stock holm.se. Svane, Örjan, ‘. . . But most buildings are already there: Basic starting points for environmental management in the housing sector’, in Edward P. Hammond & Alex D. Noyes (eds.), Housing; Socioeconomic, Availability  & Development Issues (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 2009). www.umea.se.

17 Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg

Introduction In this chapter we investigate strategies for conserving and managing historic buildings and environments, in urban contexts which have been affected by structural change. We consider four urban environments in Norrbotten, a sparsely populated region in the most northerly, subarctic part of Sweden. Large-scale industrialization and urbanization began in the late 19th century, since the presence of resource-based industries has had a major influence on town planning and conceptualizations of heritage. The towns of Piteå, Svartöstaden, Malmberget, and Kiruna urban environments were selected for study as they are designated heritage sites of national interest for the purpose of conserving the cultural environment.1 The study draws on empirical evidence, including planning documents, literature, maps, and observations, to show that particular narratives, reinforced by the heritage designation, dominate how the history of these places is framed and what approaches to conservation are taken within the town planning processes. The study considers how town planning and the protection of the built environment have shaped the process of heritagization at these four sites. Heritagization is a process through which objects, places, and practices are turned into cultural heritage because they are perceived to be of cultural significance.2 That is, heritage values such as historical, cultural, symbolic, social, and aesthetic values are attached to them.3 Heritagization may occur when, for example, built environments undergo change or the protected status of buildings is contested, causing their heritage value to be reassessed. New heritage value might be ascribed to them but, equally, their already-designated heritage status may be reaffirmed, reinterpreted, or rejected.4 In Sweden, three pieces of legislation serve to protect built environments as heritage. The Environmental Code5 protects cultural heritage as a national interest, alongside other assets such as minerals, railways and roads, defence, DOI: 10.4324/9781003346456-22

380  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg and nature. National interests are designated by national agencies – in the case of cultural heritage the National Heritage Board – but are monitored and supervised at the regional level by County Administrative Boards. Local councils are responsible for showing how they will protect assets of national interest through their comprehensive plans. Through the County Administrative Boards the state also protects archaeological sites, churches and cemeteries, and buildings listed under the Heritage Conservation Act.6 Anyone can request that a building, park, or garden with significant heritage value be listed. If it is, the County Administrative Board determines the rules for how it is maintained and which aspects of it must be preserved. If the property owner wants to make alterations that fall outside of these rules, the County Administrative Board has the power to grant permission to go ahead with the changes, if there are particular reasons for doing so. The local councils are, however, key stakeholders in conservation planning, which is regulated through the Planning and Building Act.7 They have a monopoly over planning policy and guidance on the use of land and water resources, although they must promote the public interest in developing relevant plans. Their intentions are formalized in comprehensive plans which are political documents, adopted by the town council, which set long-term goals for the development of particular areas. Comprehensive plans cover entire municipalities or towns and are supported by more detailed development plans for densely built-up areas. These plans are legally binding and provide detailed guidance on matters such as how specific areas, such as a number of blocks or a single plot, can be used; the location of buildings; and permissible building heights. The local councils are able to protect historic buildings and historic environments through detailed development plans, as they enable them to regulate building materials, colours, and other details of the specified buildings. Urbanization and industrialization in northern Sweden The indigenous Sami population has been present in northern Sweden for millennia, with traces of reindeer herding and seasonal hunting and fishing going back to the Iron Age. The Tornedalians, a Meänkieli-speaking minority, have inhabited the region for centuries. The Swedish state started to manifest itself in the coastal zone from the 14th century, expanding inland from the 17th century onwards. However, urbanization took place relatively late, and there are no medieval towns in Norrbotten. The earliest cities, Luleå and Piteå, were granted town rights in 1621. Both were located by the Gulf of Bothnia and relocated as early as the 1640s and 1660s because rising land meant that harbours became too shallow to use. As the region was considered rich in resources, the state prioritized trade, commerce, and mining. However, it also controlled foreign

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 381 trade through the capital, Stockholm, limiting the possibilities for trade by Norrbotten merchants.8 During the latter part of the 19th century, northern Sweden experienced industrialization based on large-scale resource extractions of wood and ore and waterpower. These resources were fundamental to Sweden’s industrialization and contributed to the country’s development and welfare during the 20th century.9 Both Luleå and Piteå continued to expand during industrialization. At the forefront was the sawmill industry: in 1875, half of Sweden’s timber exports were shipped from northern Sweden, and the Swedish timber trade was the largest in the world. This was the rationale behind the establishment of Svartöstaden, Luleå. However, iron ore mining also grew in significance. Inland iron ore deposits had been known about for centuries, but large-scale mining was made possible only when railways connecting mining towns with shipping harbours were built. When the railway connecting Malmberget and Luleå opened in 1888, mining increased dramatically, and between 1890 and 1910, iron ore production increased from 5,000 tonnes to five million tonnes per year.10 During the industrialization period, the population of northern Sweden increased faster than the national average. In Norrbotten, it tripled between 1850 and 191011 with growth concentrated particularly in the cities affected by industrialization.12 By 1900, northern Sweden and Norrbotten in particular were characterized by worse levels of poverty, poor education, and low-quality housing than the rest of the country. As a result, modernization was more rapid in northern Sweden, compared to further south. Industrialization also saw the emergence of new communication and settlement patterns, with further social and cultural impacts.13 Industrialization had huge impact on urban development. In 1880, Norrbotten had four towns of over 500 inhabitants: Piteå, Luleå, Boden, and Haparanda. Seventy years later, in 1950, this had risen to 107.14 Forestry, mining, and waterpower were all drivers of urbanization but to differing extents and over different periods. Forestry drove urbanization most strongly in the 1920s, when larger sawmills were developed along the coast.15 Piteå’s expansion was largely due to the sawmill industry. The mining industry led to development of settlements close to iron ore deposits, drawing in incoming workers. The main mining towns such as Kiruna, Malmberget, and Koskullskulle developed around 1900, on sites where the Sami had previously been settled.16 Piteå

The town of Piteå, located by the Gulf of Bothnia, was founded in 1621. Following a fire in 1666, and due to land rise, the town was relocated to

382  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg an island six kilometres southeast of its original location. In 1667, a town plan was created, in which streets and plots followed a grid plan typical of the 17th century. The town square, with closed corners, was located at the intersection of the two main streets, Storgatan and Kyrkbrogatan, at the highest point of the island. Some of the town’s more distinguished buildings, including the town hall and school, were built around the square.17 Piteå’s built environment was already recognized in the 1920s, in a publication documenting the 300th anniversary of the town.18 In the 1930s, Piteå was included in a research project into building design, business, and trade in Swedish towns,19 and in the 1950s, the town square was highlighted by an art history study.20 The town was designated as a heritage site of national interest in 1971. The town square, town hall, school, and main street Storgatan were highlighted, along with more generically specified 18th- and 19thcentury buildings along the main street.21 The description of the heritage site of national interest was revised in 1990. The new document highlighted the square as a rare example of a 17th-century town square and other built environments characterized by containing small-scale wooden

Figure 17.1 Piteå main square and main street, with the former school and town hall built around the square on each side of the main street. Photo: Lennart Lundquist.

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 383 buildings.22 Notably, the town square remained part of the designated heritage site of national interest while the main street Storgatan was now excluded. The designated heritage site was reduced because of the transformation of the town centre and the main street in the period between the two decisions.23 Although an inventory of historic buildings was made in 1973– 197424 and led to a conservation plan being adopted by the town council in 1981,25 the comprehensive planning regime did not aim for conservation. Urbanization, the need for modernization of housing, office, and commercial buildings, and the demands of motorized traffic were rapidly transforming most Swedish towns in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and Piteå was no exception. The local council’s detailed comprehensive plan from 1978 focused on housing and traffic support and not national heritage interests or historic environments.26 The approach towards built heritage started changing in the 1980s and, in a detailed comprehensive plan adopted in 1990, the local council highlighted the historic environment of both the square and the main street.27 The town hall was protected under the Heritage Conservation Act, at the request of the town council.28 The local council also protected the buildings surrounding the town square through the detailed development plans for this area.29 Later, detailed comprehensive plans also highlighted the significance of the built heritage,30 describing it as important to the town’s identity and as a contribution to making the town centre attractive and thus valuable for business and commerce. Since the concept was first used in the 1990 description of the national heritage site, Piteå has consistently been described as a small-scale wooden town. This description has had an influence on planning and building. Although historic wooden buildings have been demolished, particularly those perceived not to be authentic due to earlier renovations, some buildings have been retrofitted to have facades which appear to be wooden. The scale of most new developments has been kept small, and some buildings have been designed to be similar to the existing wooden architecture. The idea of the wooden town has also been invoked in building projects that deviate from the original wooden town expression: in recent years, a parking garage with a wooden façade that differs from the traditional wooden materials has been built. A new high-rise hotel in concrete is also notable for its aluminium covering, which is of a shape and colour that resembles wood. Svartöstaden

Since 1933, Svartöstaden has been defined as a neighbourhood of Luleå, following its incorporation into the wider city. Svartöstaden is strategically

384  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg located on a peninsula in the Gulf of Bothnia, close to the harbour where iron ore from the inland mines is shipped. A town plan for Svartöstaden was adopted in 1900, but building had already started, on a grid plan, by 1894. To the north of the grid plan, in an area called Älvnäset, mining companies with operations in Malmberget and Kiruna built housing for their workers. The town expanded further with the erection of new housing during the 1940s, when a steel plant was established in the area. Pollution from both this plant and the iron ore waiting to be shipped from the expanding harbour caused increasing environmental problems. In the 1970s, there were plans to build another large-scale steel plant, which would have been the largest industrial investment in Sweden. These plans were cancelled, but the project highlighted a divergence between industrial interests and those of local residents.31 Controversy over the built environment in Svartöstaden evolved during the 1970s. On the one hand, people had started to move away from Svartöstaden, houses were not being maintained, and industry pushed for their activities to take priority in planning. The local council acquired properties, demolished some houses, and prohibited new housing. On the other hand, the local community pushed to sustain the neighbourhood and

Figure 17.2 The so-called Ängesbyhuset in Svartöstaden, which was determined to be demolished in the 1980s, but now it is one of the best-preserved houses in the area. Photo: Anna Elmén Berg.

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 385 develop it. A ‘Save Svartöstaden’ group was constituted, with the aim of restoring the neighbourhood and adopting a new town plan which would secure the conservation of the area. An inventory of the town plan area took place in the 1980s. Buildings of historic value were identified, and the area was described as a shanty town with unremarkable wooden houses.32 In 1986, Luleå Council proposed a new town plan which focused on conserving the grid plan but keeping open the possibility of developing the area more densely.33 The area was characterized as a small-scale wooden shanty town. The County Administrative Board of Norrbotten was hesitant to approve the town plan because of the negative environmental impacts of local industry. The steel plant SSAB and the mining company LKAB appealed against the town plan that was adopted in 1987. The National Board of Housing, Building and Planning was asked for an opinion, and they concluded that the neighbourhood should be conserved due to its significant heritage value and that additional housing must be designed with due consideration to the existing buildings. In 1989, the government made the final decision, validating the town plan.34 Svartöstaden was designated as a heritage site of national interest in 1987. It was highlighted as being a shanty town built on the outskirts of Luleå as part of its industrialization.35 When the local council decided to create a detailed development plan for Älvnäset, the area just north of the grid plan, it was unclear whether this area was included in the heritage site of national interest. The County Museum of Norrbotten was therefore commissioned to investigate the area’s heritage value, concluding that these housing areas should be included in the national interest designation.36 The neighbourhood’s popularity is now growing, and gentrification is taking place. There are still some derelict buildings, and others need renovation. There are also empty plots where buildings have been demolished, and infill development would be possible. Some building restorations have taken place, and there are examples of facades which have been renovated to include their original materials. However, as the area is attractive, being considered a nice neighbourhood located near the water, more people are moving in and wanting fancier housing. The simple building design that contributed to the town being called a shanty town is gradually changing. Home extensions, garages, and new buildings of a larger scale and different proportions are on the rise. Based on an analysis of the heritage site of national interest commissioned by the County Administrative Board,37 the national interest designation was revised in 2019. The shanty town aspect is still mentioned but is no longer the focus. Instead, industry and industrialization are emphasized, along with the protected area’s development over time.38

386  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg Malmberget

The mining town of Malmberget, in Gällivare Municipality, is located in the sparsely populated inland region above the Arctic Circle. The iron ore deposits beneath the town have been known about since the 17th century, but, although early attempts were made, mining did not become profitable until the end of the 19th century when technical developments made it possible to refine iron ore into steel efficiently, and the opening of the railway in 1888 connected inland areas with the harbours in Luleå and, later, Narvik.39 As mining activities developed rapidly, workers built houses from whatever building materials they could find, establishing a shanty town. The town of Gällivare, with its market and church, was five kilometres south of Malmberget and too far away for workers to settle, bearing in mind the limited transport options available. Ownership of the mine changed hands several times, and the mining company did not make any effort to organize housing during these early years. The first town plan was adopted in 1899, by which time the mining company had started to develop housing in a company area. However, this company area was never incorporated into the town plan which covered only areas which were under the town council’s jurisdiction. In the 1950s, mining of an iron ore deposit directly beneath the former town centre began, creating a huge open pit which divides Malmberget in two. This has had a significant effect on the town. All buildings in the former town centre were finally demolished during the 1960s, apart from the town church, which was relocated to another site within Malmberget.40 A new town centre with school, public baths, stores etc. was built on the site of the former railway area. The railway became redundant in the 1960s, when the mining company moved the iron ore processing to an industrial site outside Malmberget. In 1988, as part of the 100th anniversary of Malmberget, the main street of the shanty town was reconstructed on its original site. Based on photographs, replicas of the provisional houses built by the first settlers were created. Research and literature into the region’s history have paid considerable attention to the mining industry and the railway, reflecting a fascination with these large-scale facilities. In the 1940s, the county museum published articles about the early mining companies41 and the construction of what was referred to as the world’s northernmost railway.42 In 1968, the museum’s yearbook was dedicated to the iron ore industry and its associated infrastructure.43 In 1963, on the 75th anniversary of the opening of the railway and the start of the settlement of Malmberget, the mining company LKAB published a book about the town.44 During the 1970s, a dissertation in human geography about Malmberget was published,45 along with a book specifically addressing the Malmberget shanty town.46

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 387

Figure 17.3 Part of the reconstructed shanty town in Malmberget, built in 1988 at the 100th anniversary of Malmberget and the opening of the railway. Photo: Jennie Sjöholm.

Malmberget and the small mining town of Koskullskulle, five kilometres to the north-east, were designated as a national heritage site in 1987.47 The description was revised in 1997 to highlight the built environments of these towns as representative of their time, with a division between the company area and the service and supply town.48 The local council adopted an ambitious conservation plan already in 1985.49 However, this was never implemented through the detailed development plans, primarily because the company area was not under local council jurisdiction and did not form part of the plan.50 Proposals have been made to protect some buildings in the company area to be under the Heritage Conservation Act. The County Administrative Board investigated the company hotel and some industrial remnants, finding them significant enough to protect. However, the property owner, LKAB, opposed the idea of designating these as cultural heritage and the County Administrative Board decided not to proceed.51 In the early 2000s, the market price of iron ore increased and mining activities intensified. Today, ongoing mining is causing subsidence that continues to affect the built environment. Over the last decade a significant part of Malmberget has been demolished, and a few buildings have

388  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg been relocated. Both the local council and the mining company are planning to transform almost the entire town into an industrial area.52 This will be done in several phases. The company area has already been torn down, and the town centre is in the process of being demolished at the time of writing (2023). Housing within the town plan area will also gradually disappear. Gällivare is being developed to provide functions such as housing, schools, and sport facilities that will be displaced from Malmberget. A handful of historic buildings from the company area have been moved to a newly developed site in Gällivare, and some 30 historic buildings have been moved to Koskullskulle. Here, a new area has been created specifically for these relocated buildings, which are arranged so that the topography, street patterns, and proximity between houses resemble their old setting in Malmberget. In addition to these buildings, whose historic value is acknowledged, a few detached houses from the 1950s and 1960s have been moved. The rationale for this was economic rather than heritagerelated, but the outcome is that houses from different periods in Malmberget’s history have been conserved on the new site. Kiruna

The mining town of Kiruna is located some 120 kilometres north of Malmberget. The mining company LKAB was founded in 1890, with the intention of mining the iron ore deposits in the mountains of Luossavaara and Kiirunavaara. However, the state was reluctant to grant permission to start mining, bearing in mind the social problems and poor housing situation in the shantytown of Malmberget, which had become a national concern. To be permitted to start mining, LKAB had to guarantee they would provide housing and public amenities and avoid a similar situation arising.53 In the early years temporary huts were built, but when a town plan was adopted in 1900, these were rapidly demolished and replaced with permanent housing. LKAB employed renowned architects and planners to design the new town. Kiruna, like Malmberget, developed three distinct areas: the company area owned by LKAB, an adjacent service and supply town, and a railway area that was built by the Swedish railway company. The three areas merged in 1948, when Kiruna was granted town rights. After the Second World War iron ore prices increased, meaning that LKAB prospered and Kiruna rapidly expanded. New residential areas were developed, and the town centre was renewed.54 Many of the old, small-scale buildings were replaced with larger buildings. Renowned architects designed some residential buildings, as well as the new town hall. Kiruna has interested researchers since the 1950s, particularly those in the fields of history of art and architecture. Kiruna formed part of the research project ‘Swedish Town’ (Svensk Stad), first published in 1953,

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 389 which aimed to study the history of Swedish urban environments.55 Architectural historian Fredric Bedoire wrote a doctoral thesis about Gustaf Wickman, LKAB’s main architect who was involved in planning Kiruna.56 The year before, Bedoire also published a book about the Kiruna church, designed by Wickman.57 Research about company towns also highlighted Kiruna.58 Architectural historian Lasse Brunnström influenced town planning immensely with his doctoral thesis Kiruna – A Swedish mining city from the turn of the century.59 Many artists have also been active in Kiruna, initially invited by LKAB’s manager while the town was first developed. Art historian Brit-Marie Andrén made this history the focus of her doctoral thesis.60 Kiruna was designated as a heritage site of national interest in 1971. At that time, the focus was on the iron ore mountain, shaped by mining.61 During the 1980s, conservation planning was initiated, partly as a response to the extensive demolition that had occurred during the previous decades. The local council adopted a conservation plan in 1984.62 This plan was clearly influenced by Brunnström’s research. His dissertation provided knowledge about the oldest parts of Kiruna’s built environment and was published in two volumes, which were available in the local bookstore,

Figure 17.4 Kiruna church by architect Gustaf Wickman, built 1912, which is a strong symbol of the so-called model town. Photo: Daryoush Tahmasebi © Norrbottens museum. CC-BY-NC.

390  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg meaning that many inhabitants owned a copy of his work and were aware of the town’s history.63 The description of the national heritage site was revised in 1987. The iron ore mountain Kiirunavaara was still included, but the emphasis had shifted to the town itself which was described as a unique settlement. The three original areas  – the company area, the service and supply town, and the railway area – were specifically highlighted.64 Four buildings were also protected under the National Heritage Act: the railway station; the 1960s town hall (on the request of the local council); Hjalmar Lundbohmsgården, the residence of LKAB’s first manager; and an apartment building from the 1920s in the company area.65 Kiruna Council has also provided formal protection for historic buildings, included in the conservation plan, through detailed development plans. The last detailed development plan that formalized the protection of significant buildings came into effect in 2004. In 2004, Kiruna Council issued a press release, saying that they would move the town to enable continued mining. Due to increased prices for iron ore, it would be profitable for LKAB to continue mining the deposit that stretches beneath the town. As mining causes subsidence, the proposal was for the built-up areas to be gradually transformed into industrial sites. As of 2021, a new town centre is under construction to the north-east of the town. A new housing area is being built by the mining company to the north-west. The railway and public roads have been rerouted. Demolition of buildings started in 2015, a process that is expected to continue for at least the next decade. It will include the demolition of a large number of buildings that were previously protected in detailed development plans. The town hall and the train station had their listed building status revoked and have been demolished. Around 50 historic buildings have been, or will be, relocated. Some of the buildings from the company area, including the listed Hjalmar Lundbohmsgården, have been moved to LKAB’s new housing area while others have been placed near the new town centre. For a long time Kiruna has been conceptualized as a model town, with positive connotations.66 The ‘Swedish Town-project’ already recognized the planning ideals that shaped Kiruna’s establishment, although it also highlighted significant challenges about how these were actually implemented. Brunnström’s research further highlighted the model town approach, perhaps most elaborately in a research article commissioned by the National Heritage Board 2015.67 The ongoing urban transformation has further strengthened the notion of Kiruna as a model town, both in the media and in town planning.68 When the description of Kiruna as a heritage site of national interest was revised in 2010, it was explicitly stated that Kiruna was a model town, developed in a unique way in the underutilized mountain landscape.69

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 391 Discussion From a European perspective, these towns in Norrbotten are small scale. Sitting on the outskirts of Europe, and in many cases being dependent on a single company, they are exposed to economic shifts, and economic busts and booms drive increases and decreases in their population numbers. This is particularly obvious in Malmberget and Kiruna but was also true of Svartöstaden until the town was incorporated into Luleå. Luleå and Piteå, on the other hand, have hosted more diverse businesses and industries and are therefore less dependent on the economic fortunes of individual industries. The case studies presented here show the interaction between, on the one hand, historic knowledge about the towns and their recognition as heritage sites and, on the other, how heritage designations influence town planning. What is conceptualized as built heritage is by no means static. The heritagization processes in these four cases have depended upon the knowledge at hand at the time when the sites were designated as national heritage sites. No new inventories or other investigations were carried out before the decisions were originally made. However, research related to the sites has been influential. Most noteworthy were the pieces of research on Piteå’s 17th-century town square and the establishment of the mining town Kiruna in 1900. As more knowledge has been produced, either through research or through inventories and documentation by conservation specialists, descriptions of the heritage sites of national interest have been revised. As a result, new heritage has been added to previously recognized heritage sites. This was the case in Svartöstaden, when the heritage site expanded to include Älvnäset rather than just the grid plan, and Kiruna, where the national heritage site expanded from just the iron ore mountain to the entire town and both iron ore mountains. In the town planning process, already-designated heritage is usually reaffirmed when the following planning document is being produced. Once recognized, the same buildings and built environments tend to continue to be highlighted. Sometimes, the rationale for including something is based on reinterpretation of its historic value. All four sites illustrate that, as understanding of the towns’ history evolves over time, the rationale for designating them as national heritage sites has changed. For instance, Kiruna has increasingly been identified as a model town and Svartöstaden, first defined as a shantytown, has subsequently been valued for other aspects of its history and cultural significance. Although the four towns were designated heritage sites, this status has not been sufficient to protect them. One thing they have in common is that, even if their built environments have significant architectural value, the buildings are generally plain and unpretentious – inexpensive to demolish

392  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg and easy to replace. The urban transformations of Malmberget and Kiruna offer the most obvious examples of this, but the priority given to industry in Svartöstaden and the restructuring of the main street in Piteå also illustrate the point. So far, the national heritage sites in Malmberget and Kiruna have not been revised, although historic environments have been demolished. In Kiruna, buildings protected both by the Heritage Conservation Act and through detailed developments plans under the Planning and Building Act have been demolished following revocation of their protected status. Perhaps, most noteworthy is the ‘old’ town hall in Kiruna, a listed brick building that was torn down even though it would have been possible to reconstruct it at a new location. National and international opinions contested its demolition. This chapter also shows that these four urban environments have been described through particular narratives, which have been reinforced by the heritage designations. Whether the built heritage has been preserved or demolished, these narratives have been significant to the development of the towns and the decisions made about historic buildings. Further, historic buildings and environments that do not fit into these narratives have been more readily neglected. Piteå has been defined as a wooden town, which both determines which historic buildings are preserved and regulates new construction. Svartöstaden and Malmberget have been framed as shanty towns, although they are different in character and history. Interestingly, although written accounts of the town’s history tend to emphasize the shanty town of Malmberget, this aspect was not highlighted in the national heritage description. Further, compared to Kiruna, a more diverse selection of buildings has been preserved during urban transformation by being relocated, thus demonstrating a more diverse building history based on still-existing buildings. Kiruna has been described as a model town, particularly by contrasting it to Malmberget. The historic buildings that have been preserved by relocation are all part of the town’s oldest building stock and can be clearly related to the model town narrative; later time periods are not recognized as significant enough for respective buildings to be moved. So, although the intention of designating urban environments as national heritage sites is to protect their cultural significance, its outcomes risk diminishing their complexity and encouraging simplified narratives about their history. The study suggests that, if heritage sites of national interest are to be managed successfully in terms of their cultural significance, there must be political interest in doing so within local councils. It is crucial that officials – such as conservation specialists, planners, and architects – with knowledge about cultural heritage and the resources to make value assessments and interpret the sites are involved in the urban development that is taking place.

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 393 Notes 1 SFS 1998:808, ‘Miljöbalk’, https://svenskforfattningssamling.se/. 2 Kevin Walsh, Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the PostModern World (London: Routledge, 1992); David C. Harvey, ‘Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7:4 (2001), pp. 319–38; Rodney Harrison, Heritage: Critical Approaches (Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2013). 3 Randall Mason, ‘Assessing values in conservation planning’, in Graham J. Fairclough (ed.), The Heritage Reader (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 99–124. 4 Jennie Sjöholm, Heritagisation, Re-Heritagisation and De-Heritagisation of Built Environments: The Urban Transformation of Kiruna, Sweden (Luleå: Luleå University of Technology, 2016). 5 SFS 1998:808. ‘Miljöbalk’, https://svenskforfattningssamling.se/. 6 SFS 1988:950, ‘Kulturmiljölag’, https://svenskforfattningssamling.se/. 7 SFS 2010:900, ‘Plan- och bygglag’, https://svenskforfattningssamling.se/. 8 Curt Persson  & Roine Wiklund, Luleå: De första 400 åren, vol. 1 (Luleå: Roines skrivbyrå, 2021); Uno Westerlund, Piteås historia: Om stadens styrelse, handel, industri och kultur under 400 år (Uppsala: Firma Unoca Westerlund, 2019). 9 Jörgen Björklund, ‘Framväxten av den norrländska basindustrin’, in Lars-Erik Edlund & Lars Beckman (eds.), Botnia: En nordsvensk region (Höganäs: Bra böcker, 1994). 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Lars Elenius, Både finsk och svensk: Modernisering, nationalism och språkförändring i Tornedalen 1850–1939 (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 2001). 13 Anna Elmén Berg, Medeltidskyrkornas modernisering: Den svenska restaureringsdiskursen och kyrkliga moderniseringsprocessen ca 1925–1975 med exempel från Övre Norrland (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2017). 14 William William-Olsson, Ekonomisk-geografisk karta över Sverige (Stockholm: Nordisk Rotogravyr, 1946); Gerd Enequist, ‘Tätorternas och landsbygdens näringstyper efter befolkningens sammansättning’, in Atlas över Sverige (Stockholm: Svenska sällskapet för antropologi och geografi, 1957). 15 Anna Elmén Berg, Program för Norrbottens industriarv (Luleå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, 2000). 16 Anna Elmén Berg  & Jennie Sjöholm, ‘Trästaden Piteå: Riksintresset som (nästan) försvann’, in Morgan Stenberg (ed.), Piteå museum årsbok 2020 (Piteå: Piteå museums förlag, 2020), pp. 52–75. 17 Ibid. 18 Birger Steckzén, Minnesskrift till Piteå stads 300-årsjubileum (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1921). 19 Erik Andrén, Småstadens borgargård: Ett forskningsobjekt i Norrbotten och andra svenska städer, Norrbotten (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening, 1935). 20 Sven Hammarlund, Två klassicistiska norrbottenstorg, Norrbotten (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening, 1952). 21 Förarbeten för fysisk riksplanering: Underlagsmaterial, Nr 23, Miljöer och större områden av betydelse för kulturminnesvården: Beskrivning med kartredovisning sammanställd inom Riksantikvarieämbetet (Stockholm: Liber förlag, 1972).

394  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg 22 Förteckning över 1997 års riksintressen (Stockholm, 1997). Antikvarisk-Topografiska arkivet, Stockholm. 23 Elmén Berg & Sjöholm 2020. 24 PM Inventering i Piteå: 1973–74 (Piteå: Piteå kommun, 1973–74). 25 Bevarandeplan för Piteå stadskärna (plankarta antagen av kommunfullmäktige 23–6 1980 (Piteå: NAB Konsult, 1980). 26 Piteå generalplan: Stadsbygden, antagen av kommunfullmäktige (30 November 1978), Centralarkivet, Piteå kommun. 27 Översiktsplan för Piteå kommun, antagen av kommunfullmäktige (19 November 1990), § 276, Centralarkivet, Piteå kommun. 28 Beslut om byggnadsminnesförklaring av f d Rådhuset, kv Stadsvapnet 1, Rådhustorget, Piteå kn, Norrbotten (1994), Piteå museums arkiv, Piteå. 29 Elmén Berg & Sjöholm 2020. 30 Översiktsplan: Fördjupning för Piteå stadsbygd, antagen av kommunfullmäktige i oktober 2001 (2001), Centralarkivet, Piteå kommun; ÖP2030: Översiktsplan för Piteå: Förslag till planstrategi, samrådshandling 2015; Planeringsunderlag, samrådshandling 2015; Konsekvenser, samrådshandling 2015. Planen antogs av kommunfullmäktige (12 December  2016), Centralarkivet, Piteå kommun. 31 Anna Elmén Berg, Svartöstaden, Luleå: Kulturhistorisk analys av riksintresset (Piteå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län & Piteå museum, 2016). 32 Jan Wikström, Svartöstaden: Kulturhistoriskt värdefull bebyggelse u.å. Norrbottens museums arkiv, Luleå. 33 Svartöstaden, Luleå kommun, Norrbottens län: Förslag till ändring och utvidgning av stadsplan (1986), Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå. 34 Regeringsbeslut, Bostadsdepartementet 1989–12–21, Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå. 35 Riksintressanta miljöer i Sverige: Förteckning: Underlag för tillämpning av naturresurslagen 2 kap 6 § (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1990). 36 Maria Sträng  & Anna Elmén Berg, Älvnäset  – en del av riksintresset Svartöstaden, Luleå kommun (Luleå: Norrbottens museum, 1997); Elmén Berg 1997. 37 Elmén Berg 2016. 38 Riksintressen för kulturmiljövården – Norrbottens län (BD) (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2019). Antikvarisk-Topografiska arkivet, Stockholm. 39 Staffan Hansson, ‘Malm, räls och elektricitet: Skapandet av ett teknologiskt megasystem i Norrbotten 1880–1920’, in Pär Blomkvist & Arne Kaijser (eds.), Den konstruerade världen: Tekniska system i historiskt perspektiv (Stockholm: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1998), pp. 45–76. 40 Britt-Inger Johansson, Allhelgonakyrkan i Malmberget, Norrbotten (Luleå: Norrbottens museum, 2007), pp. 164–87. 41 Boo von Malmborg, Robert Schough och de engelska Gellivarebolagen, Norrbotten (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening, 1942). 42 Joh. Blomqvist, De första järnvägsbyggarna i Norrbotten och världens nordligaste järnvägsbygge (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening, 1947). 43 Harald Hvarfner (ed.), Norrbotten: Malmfälten (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening & Norrbottens museum, 1968). 44 Göran Littke, Malmberget 1888–1963 (Malmberget: LKAB, 1963). 45 Gösta Forsström, Malmberget (Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, 1975). 46 Gösta Forsström, ‘Kåkstaden i Malmberget: Markdisposition och bebyggelse vid ett uppväxande gruvsamhälle, Mark och människa’, Ymer (1972), pp. 89–130. 47 Riksintressanta miljöer i Sverige 1990.

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 395 48 Förteckning över 1997 års riksintressen (Stockholm, 1997). Antikvarisk-Topografiska arkivet, Stockholm. 49 Bevarandeplan för den kulturhistoriska bebyggelsen i Gällivare, Malmberget, Koskullskulle. Antagen av Gällivare kommunfullmäktige den 30 September 1985, § 175 Gällivare: Gällivare kommun, 1985. Kommunarkivet, Gällivare. 50 Jennie Sjöholm  & Kristina L. Nilsson, Malmfältens kulturmiljöprocesser (Luleå: Luleå tekniska universitet, 2011). 51 Byggnadsminnesförklaring av delar av LKAB:s gruvområde med Bolagshotellet, Gamla disponentvillan, Gruvmuseet och Kaptensspelet inom fastigheten Malmberget 8:17, Gällivare kommun (Luleå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, 2002). Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå. 52 Fördjupad översiktsplan Gällivare, Malmberget och Koskullskulle 2014–2032 (Gällivare: Gällivare kommun, 2014). Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå. 53 Lasse Brunnström, Kiruna  – ett samhällsbygge i sekelskiftets Sverige (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 1981). 54 Lasse Brunnström, ‘Det modernistiska Kiruna’, in Hans Henrik Brummer  & Lasse Brunnström (eds.), Kiruna: Staden som konstverk (Stockholm: Waldemarsudde, 1993), pp. 124–47. 55 Gregor Paulsson, Svensk stad: Del 2, Från bruksby till trädgårdsstad (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1976). 56 Fredric Bedoire, En arkitekt och hans verksamhetsfält kring sekelskiftet: Gustaf Wickmans arbeten 1884–1916 (Stockholm: Fritzes hovbokh. distr., 1974). 57 Fredric Bedoire, Lappland I:1 Kiruna kyrka (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien, 1973). 58 Mats Ahnlund & Lasse Brunnström, ‘Bolagssamhällen i Norden – från brukstid till nutid’, Bebyggelsehistorisk tidsskrift, 25 (1993), pp. 49–80. 59 Brunnström 1981. 60 Brit-Marie Andrén, Konsten i Kiruna: Patriarkalism och nationalromantik 1900–1914 (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 1989). 61 Förarbeten för fysisk riksplanering 1972. 62 Bevarandeplan Kiruna C. Antaget av kommunfullmäktige 1984–09–10, § 210. Kiruna: Kiruna kommun. Byggnadsnämndens arkiv, Kiruna. 63 Jennie Sjöholm, Vad är Kiruna värt? Kiruna – en kulturvärderingsanalys (Luleå: Norrbottens museum, 2008). 64 Riksintressanta miljöer i Sverige 1990. 65 Förklaring att Kiruna stationshus, Jukkasjärvi bandel 1:1, Kiruna kommun, övergått till byggnadsminne enligt lagen (1988:950) om kulturminnen m.m., Luleå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, 2003. Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå; Byggnadsminnesförklaring av Kiruna stadshus, Tätörten 3, Kiruna stad och kommun, Luleå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, 2001. Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå; Byggnadsminnesförklaring av Hjalmar Lundbohmsgården, Fjällrosen 1, Kiruna stad och kommun, Luleå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, 2001. Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå; Byggnadsminnesförklaring av hyresfastigheten ‘Jerusalem’, Bolaget 11:1, Kiruna stad och kommun, Luleå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, 2001. Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå. 66 Jennie Sjöholm, ‘Att flytta en mönsterstad’, Fabrik og Bolig, 1 (2015), pp. 24–43. 67 Lasse Brunnström, ‘Kiruna – LKAB:s mönstersamhälle’, in Karin J. Myhr (ed.), Boken om LKAB (Stockholm: LKAB, 2015), pp. 82–3. 68 Sjöholm 2015. 69 Beslut om ändring av värdebeskrivningen gällande område av riksintresse för kulturmiljövården Kiruna – Kirunavaara [BD 33], Dnr 331–00556–2009 (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 2010). Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå.

396  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg Bibliography Ahnlund, Mats & Lasse Brunnström, ‘Bolagssamhällen i Norden – från brukstid till nutid’, Bebyggelsehistorisk tidsskrift, 25 (1993). Andrén, Brit-Marie, Konsten i Kiruna: Patriarkalism och nationalromantik 1900– 1914 (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 1989). Andrén, Erik, Småstadens borgargård: Ett forskningsobjekt i Norrbotten och andra svenska städer, Norrbotten (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening, 1935). Antikvarisk-Topografiska arkivet, Stockholm (Swedish National Heritage Board, Library and Archive). Bedoire, Fredric, Lappland I:1 Kiruna kyrka (Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien, 1973). Bedoire, Fredric, En arkitekt och hans verksamhetsfält kring sekelskiftet: Gustaf Wickmans arbeten 1884–1916 (Stockholm: Fritzes hovbokh. distr., 1974). Bevarandeplan för Piteå stadskärna (plankarta antagen av kommunfullmäktige 23–6 1980 (Piteå: NAB Konsult, 1980). Björklund, Jörgen, ‘Framväxten av den norrländska basindustrin’, in Lars-Erik Edlund  & Lars Beckman (eds.), Botnia: En nordsvensk region (Höganäs: Bra böcker, 1994). Blomqvist, Joh, De första järnvägsbyggarna i Norrbotten och världens nordligaste järnvägsbygge (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening, 1947). Brunnström, Lasse, Kiruna – ett samhällsbygge i sekelskiftets Sverige (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 1981). Brunnström, Lasse, ‘Det modernistiska Kiruna’, in Hans Henrik Brummer & Lasse Brunnström (eds.), Kiruna: Staden som konstverk (Stockholm: Waldemarsudde, 1993). Brunnström, Lasse, ‘Kiruna  – LKAB:s mönstersamhälle’, in Karin J. Myhr (ed.), Boken om LKAB (Stockholm: LKAB, 2015). Byggnadsnämndens arkiv, Kiruna. Centralarkivet, Piteå kommun. Elenius, Lars, Både finsk och svensk: Modernisering, nationalism och språkförändring i Tornedalen 1850–1939 (Umeå: Umeå universitet, 2001). Elmén Berg, Anna, Program för Norrbottens industriarv (Luleå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län, 2000). Elmén Berg, Anna, Svartöstaden, Luleå: Kulturhistorisk analys av riksintresset (Piteå: Länsstyrelsen i Norrbottens län & Piteå museum, 2016). Elmén Berg, Anna, Medeltidskyrkornas modernisering: Den svenska restaureringsdiskursen och kyrkliga moderniseringsprocessen ca 1925–1975 med exempel från Övre Norrland (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2017). Elmén Berg, Anna & Jennie Sjöholm, ‘Trästaden Piteå: Riksintresset som (nästan) försvann’, in Morgan Stenberg (ed.), Piteå museum årsbok 2020 (Piteå: Piteå museums förlag, 2020). Enequist, Gerd, ‘Tätorternas och landsbygdens näringstyper efter befolkningens sammansättning’, in Atlas över Sverige (Stockholm: Svenska sällskapet för antropologi och geografi, 1957). https://svenskforfattningssamling.se.

Heritagization and the use of history in Swedish Arctic towns 397 Förarbeten för fysisk riksplanering: Underlagsmaterial, Nr 23, Miljöer och större områden av betydelse för kulturminnesvården: Beskrivning med kartredovisning sammanställd inom Riksantikvarieämbetet (Stockholm: Liber förlag, 1972). Forsström, Gösta, ‘Kåkstaden i Malmberget: Markdisposition och bebyggelse vid ett uppväxande gruvsamhälle, Mark och människa’, Ymer (1972), pp. 89–130. Forsström, Gösta, Malmberget (Stockholm: Stockholms universitet, 1975). Hammarlund, Sven, Två klassicistiska norrbottenstorg (Norrbotten  & Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening, 1952). Hansson, Staffan, ‘Malm, räls och elektricitet: Skapandet av ett teknologiskt megasystem i Norrbotten 1880–1920’, in Pär Blomkvist & Arne Kaijser (eds.), Den konstruerade världen: Tekniska system i historiskt perspektiv (Stockholm: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1998). Harrison, Rodney, Heritage: Critical Approaches (Abingdon & New York: Routledge, 2013). Harvey, David C., ‘Heritage pasts and heritage presents: Temporality, meaning and the scope of heritage studies’, International Journal of Heritage Studies, 7:4 (2001). Hvarfner, Harald (ed.), Norrbotten: Malmfälten (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening & Norrbottens museum, 1968). Johansson, Britt-Inger, Allhelgonakyrkan i Malmberget, Norrbotten (Luleå: Norrbottens museum, 2007). Kommunarkivet, Gällivare. Länsstyrelsens arkiv, Luleå. Littke, Göran, Malmberget 1888–1963 (Malmberget: LKAB, 1963). Mason, Randall, ‘Assessing values in conservation planning’, in Graham J. Fairclough (ed.), The Heritage Reader (London: Routledge, 2008). Norrbottens museums arkiv, Luleå. Paulsson, Gregor, Svensk stad: Del 2, Från bruksby till trädgårdsstad (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1976). Persson, Curt & Roine Wiklund, Luleå: De första 400 åren, vol. 1 (Luleå: Roines skrivbyrå, 2021). Piteå museums arkiv, Piteå. PM Inventering i Piteå: 1973–74 (Piteå: Piteå kommun, 1973–74). Riksintressanta miljöer i Sverige: Förteckning: Underlag för tillämpning av naturresurslagen 2 kap 6 § (Stockholm: Riksantikvarieämbetet, 1990). Sjöholm, Jennie, Vad är Kiruna värt? Kiruna – en kulturvärderingsanalys (Luleå: Norrbottens museum, 2008). Sjöholm, Jennie, ‘Att flytta en mönsterstad’, Fabrik og Bolig, 1 (2015). Sjöholm, Jennie, Heritagisation, Re-Heritagisation and De-Heritagisation of Built Environments: The Urban Transformation of Kiruna, Sweden (Luleå: Luleå University of Technology, 2016). Sjöholm, Jennie & Kristina L. Nilsson, Malmfältens kulturmiljöprocesser (Luleå: Luleå tekniska universitet, 2011). Steckzén, Birger, Minnesskrift till Piteå stads 300-årsjubileum (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1921).

398  Jennie Sjöholm and Anna Elmén Berg Sträng, Maria & Anna Elmén Berg, Älvnäset – en del av riksintresset Svartöstaden, Luleå kommun (Luleå: Norrbottens museum, 1997). von Malmborg, Boo, Robert Schough och de engelska Gellivarebolagen, Norrbotten (Luleå: Norrbottens läns hembygdsförening, 1942). Walsh, Kevin, Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the PostModern World (London: Routledge, 1992). Westerlund, Uno, Piteås historia: Om stadens styrelse, handel, industri och kultur under 400 år (Uppsala: Firma Unoca Westerlund, 2019). William-Olsson, William, Ekonomisk-geografisk karta över Sverige (Stockholm: Nordisk Rotogravyr, 1946).

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate a figure and page numbers in bold indicate a table on the corresponding page. Acrel, Olof 241 Adickes, Franz 313 agency 185 – 186, 218 – 219 Airola, Olli 121n12 Akershus 240 Alexander I of Russia 117 Alrutz, A. O. 314 Amager 271 Amsterdam 313 Andersen, Hans Thor 276 Anderson, Benedict 66 architecture 10, 214, 218 Aronsson, Peter 200 Artéus, Gunnar 119n1 Ashley, Percy 344n4 Ästrom, Sven-Erik 85 Austria 366 Azov 105 Bäck, Abraham 241 Baltic Sea 79 – 80 Bång, Petrus 61 – 63, 67 Barcelona 364 Barles, Sabine 182 Battle of Brunkeberg 55 Bedoire, Fredrick 389 Bengtsson, Bo 216 – 217 Bergen 8, 131 Berlin 313, 366 Blanckenhagen, Henrik 96n29 Boden 381 Bolshevik Revolution 250 borders 186 – 187 Braudel, Fernand 1, 3

Bro, Henning 4 Brockhausen, Daniel 56 – 58 Brommius, Petrus 59 brothels 246 Brunnström, Lasse 389 Brussels 313 Bruun, Carl 114 Bure, Anders 45 Bureus, Olof 358 cameralism 84 Castells, Manuel 305 Centralförbundet för Socialt Arbete (CSA) 330, 333, 336, 340 Chadwick, Edwin 182 charity 238 Charles X Gustav of Sweden 45 Charles XI of Sweden 60, 62, 64, 81, 84, 87 – 89, 98n62, 98n71 Chicago school 188 Choay, Françoise 361 cholera 182 – 183, 245 – 249 Christensen, Jeppe 197 – 198 Christiana 9, 27 Christian IV of Denmark 27, 31 – 33, 45, 47, 47 – 48n2 Christianstad 27 Christina of Denmark 44 Christina of Sweden 40 Cities in Evolution (Geddes) 354 citizenship 214 – 227 Citizens Without Nations (Prak) 369 Cold War 239 Cologne 313

400 Index Copenhagen 8 – 9, 28 – 33, 29 – 36, 45 – 47, 181 – 184, 240, 253, 267, 271 – 272, 312, 327, 337 – 338 creative cities 304 – 305 Crimean War 118 Cronon, William 187 Dahlberg, Erik 90 Delegates Plan 363 – 364 democracy 214 – 227, 329 Denmark 10, 27, 239 – 241, 243, 245 – 246, 248, 251 – 253, 267, 271, 275, 287n18, 309, 327; mass housing in 214 – 227 DeVries, Jan 2, 5 Dobin, Carl 83 doctors 243 – 245 Dorpat 89 East India Company 8 economy, industrialisation and 299 – 301 Economy of Cities (Soja and Jacobs) 367 Edinburgh 8 education 151 – 152 Ehrnrooth, Leo 308, 318n22, 332 – 333, 336 – 337, 339, 341 Ek, Richard 263 empowerment 218 – 219 Engberg, Jens 182, 186 Enlightenment 237, 239 Enskede, Gamla 361 Enso 160 – 161 Eriksen, Sidsel 210 Espoo 161 Estonia 54, 69, 79, 81 Europe: as assortment of regions 1 – 2; Northern cities in perspective of 1 – 12, 3; urban trends in 3 Evang, Karl 253 Evangelis Luthersk Mission 199 exhibitions, town 312 Fairlie, John Archibald 344n4 Fattebuur, Henricus 69 Finland 10, 217, 239 – 242, 244, 247 – 251, 308 – 309, 325, 329, 331 – 333, 338, 342 – 344; municipal typology in 149 – 150, 150; urbanisation in 147 – 171

Finnish Town Association (FTA) 148, 152, 159 – 160, 163 – 166, 168, 170 – 171 Finnish War 113, 116 fire 134 Florida, Richard 304 Foucault, Michel 237 France 251, 336, 366 Frederick I of Sweden 106 Frederiksburg 253, 267 Frederik V of Denmark 241 Frey, Felix 186 Fridberg, Hans 316 Fries, Lorenz 66 Garden City movement 10, 135, 370 Gävle 251 Geddes, Patrick 354, 374 – 375 Germanism 9 Germany 53 – 69, 308, 312 – 313, 336, 366 Gezelius the Younger, Johannes 63 Ghent 326 – 327, 341 – 342 Glasgow 8 – 9 Glückstadt 27 Gothenburg 8, 251 Gotland 108 – 109 Graham, Steve 354 Great Northern War 89, 91 – 93, 106 – 107 Greek Orthodoxy 65 Grundtvigianerne 199, 210 Gunnarsson, Anna Wager 330 Gustafsson, Sofia 70n13 Gustav II Adolph of Sweden 54, 360 Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden 28, 37, 39 – 40, 45, 47, 50n50, 78 Haaga 164 Haapasalo, A. J. 163 Hall, Peter 304 Hall, Thomas 357 – 358 Hallmann, Per Olof 136, 141 Hallström, Jonas 183 – 185 Halonen, Viljo 162 Hamina 112, 114 – 115 Hannoversche Städteverein 339 Hansen, Anne Vorre 218 Haparanda 381 Harvia, Yrjö 153, 155, 163 – 164, 174n70, 310, 318n28

Index  401 Haussmann, Eugène 361 healthcare insurance 245 – 249 Helmfeld, Simon Gründel 60 – 62 Helsinki 9 – 10, 151 – 152, 161, 164, 167, 305, 307, 309, 314, 317n11, 318n23, 327, 330 – 333, 364 – 365 Helsinki-Sveaborg 104 – 112, 116 – 117, 120n6, 122n39 heritagization 379 – 392, 382, 384, 387, 389 Hiärne, Erlandus Jonae 57 Hinnel, Gabriel 82 Hohenberg, Paul 2 Höör 273 Hörby 273 Hornes, Janet R. 329 hospitals 237 – 254 Howard, Ebenezer 10, 135, 137 Human Web, The (McNeill and McNeill) 352 – 353 Huopalahti 164 Hyvinkää 166 Iceland 217, 239 Ikaalninen 158 Imatra 157, 165 immigration 11, 82, 295, 298, 298 Indre Mission 199 industrialisation 3 – 4, 267, 295, 380 – 390 industry 186 – 187 Ingria 53 – 69, 77, 80 – 81, 84, 86 – 87, 91 Ingrian War 78 innovation 307 – 310, 316 insurance, healthcare 245 – 249 International Modernism 10 Ireland 5, 7 Isin, Engin F. 219, 225 – 226 Ito, Hiroburmi 243 – 244 Ivan V of Russia 83 Izhorians 53 Jacobs, Jane 367 Jakobsson, Eva 181, 185 Järevenpää 157, 160 – 161 Jensen, Andreas 197 – 198 Jensen, Jens 183 – 184 Jochims, Detleff 96n29 Jyväskylä 163

Kalmar War 29 Karelia 53 Karhula 161, 169 Kauppi, Ulla-Riitta 121n12 Kepsu, Kasper 64 Kirke, Holmens 28 Kiruna 136, 379, 384, 388 – 390, 389, 392 Kosciuszko Uprising 113 Koskullskulle 387 Kotka 169 Kouvola 158 Kräill, Georg Ginther 45 Kristianstad 273 Kulosaari 164 Kuusankoski-Voikkaa 154 Kyi 169 Kymenlaakso 169 Kyminlinna Fortress 113 Lado, Balthasar 82 Landry, Charles 304 Lange, Michael 181 Langergaard, Luise Li 218 Lappeenranta 165 Larsson, Yngve 310, 330, 332, 336 Lauritsala 169 Lees, Lynn 2 Lefèvre, Christian 276 Leppävaara 154 – 155, 157 Lind, Olaf 217 Lindholm, Helge 310 – 311, 330 Livonia 79 London 277, 309, 370 look-out points 137 – 138 Luleå 136, 380 – 381 Lund 9 Lundgren, A. R. 363 – 367 Lutheran Church 56 – 64, 115 Lutherans 53 – 54 Luthersk Mission 199 Magnus IV of Sweden 55 Mälaren 293 – 294 malaria 180 Malinen, Torst 150 Malm, Lars 82 Malmberget 379, 381, 384, 386 – 388, 387, 392 Malmö 251, 271 – 272, 343 Mantere, Erkki O. 151, 164 – 167

402 Index Marshall, T. H. 215 Marvin, Simon 354 Marx, Karl 188 mass housing 214 – 227 Matthiae, Salomon 59 – 60 Matthiesen, Christian Wichmann 264 McNeill, John 352 – 353 McNeill, William H. 352 – 353 Meiksins Wood, Ellen 371, 375 Meincke, Joachim 61 Messukylä 164 metaboilsm, urban 187 – 189 Mitchell, Timothy 180 Møller, Jonas 217 Morris, Ian 351, 366 Munich 313 municipalization movement 326 Murdoch, Steve 8 Myhre, Jan Eyvind 129, 133 Myklebost, Hallstein 129 Myrdal, Alva 328 Naber, Jaak 81 – 82 Napoleon 249, 347n37 Narva 54 – 55, 57, 78 – 79, 82 – 85, 89 Narvik 135 – 136 National Romantic Movement 9 – 10 Netherlands 310 Nilsson, Torbjörn 185 Nine Years’ War 83, 85 Nokia 165 Noldus, Badeloch 360, 372 non-profit housing 217 – 218 Nordic Classicism 10 Norges Byforbund 325 Norrbotten 381 Norrköping 251 Norway 4, 6 – 8, 10, 240, 244, 246, 248, 251 – 252, 309, 325, 327; town planning in 129 – 142 Novgorod 83 Nyen 54 – 64, 77 – 93, 78, 87, 92 Nykänen, Yrjö 165 Nyström, Per 79 Öhlander, Carol 60 Olonets 83 Øresund 263 – 285, 265, 268, 269, 271, 274, 279, 281 Origin of Capitalism, The (Wood) 371 Örnehuvud, Olof Hansson 40 – 41, 45

Oslo 9, 131, 131 – 132, 327 Ossian 8 – 9, 16n33 Oulunkylä 164 Outokumpu 154 Oxenstierna, Axel 40, 43 Palmstierna, Erik 325, 327, 330, 332, 336 Palokari, Eino 166 Park, Robert 188 Parkano 158 Paul I of Russia 107 Pedersen, Sverre 135 – 140, 136, 142 Perret, Jacuqes 46, 47 Peter I of Russia 83 Petersen, Jens 197 – 198 Piteå 379 – 383, 382, 392 Poland 113 Pölke, Hans 96n29 port towns 4 post-industrialisation 295 – 301 Prak, Maarten 369 Pritchard, Sara 186 prostitution 246 public housing 217 – 218 Pukinmäki 154 Ranta, Artturi 165 Reardon, Mitchell 316 Reformation 66, 239 Reinecke, Christiane 214 Relander, Lauri Kristian 160 religious revival 197 – 210, 202 – 208, 208 – 209 rents 222 – 225 Rettig, Jacob 33, 45 Reval 79, 81, 89 Riihimäki 166 Ringsjöen 273 Roald, John K. 137 Rovaniemi 158 – 159 royal charters 6 Royal Frederiks Hospital 240 Rudbeckius the Younger, Johannes 58 – 59 Ruotsinsalmi 112 – 116, 119, 120n6, 121n12 Russia 53 – 54, 78 – 79, 83, 86 – 88, 91 – 93, 105, 107, 113, 115, 117, 239, 242, 245, 247, 249 – 250, 308, 338

Index  403 Russian Orthodoxy 64, 68, 115 Russification 331 – 332 Russo-Swedish War 56, 60, 80, 87, 111 – 112 Ryti, Risto 160 Salo 151 sanatoria 246 Saunier, Pierre-Yves 341 Savo 53 Schleswig Wars 247 Schmoller, Gustav 318n22 Scholbach, Michael 58, 66 Schroderus, Georg 59 Scotland 5 – 9 Scott, Allen 304 security 186 – 187 Seinäjoki 155 – 157, 164 Sems, Johan 29 – 31, 31, 45 Sennefelt, Karin 5 Seven Years’ War 106, 109 sewer systems 181 – 184 Simonen, Aaare E. 164 Sinebrycho, Nikolai 116 – 117 Sinebrycho, Pjotr 115 – 116 Sitte, Camillo 136, 366 Skellefteå 136 Skjern 197 – 210, 202 – 208, 208 – 209 smallpox 243 – 245 social housing 217 – 218 socialism 325 – 344 Södermalm 39, 45 Soja, Edward 367 – 369 Sperling, Göran 83 – 84, 87 – 88, 91, 98n62 Splintering Urbanism (Marvin) 354 Stahl, Heinrich 56 – 58 Staraya Ladoga 83, 96n29 Stavanger 131 Stenroth, Otto 331 – 333, 336 Stevin, Simon 45 Stewen, Daniel 83 Stewen, Martin 83 Stier, Johan Fredrik 115 Stockholm 8, 37 – 45, 37 – 38, 41 – 44, 50n51, 51n58, 79, 111, 244, 246, 251 – 252, 255n12, 293, 305 – 307, 327, 330 – 333, 351 – 352, 355 – 361, 362, 363 – 367 Stockholm City Library 10 Stolpe, Wilhelm 361 – 363 St. Petersburg 107, 113, 116 – 117

Strandbygaard, Jens 198 subsidies 151 – 152 suburbs 10, 39 – 41, 133 – 135, 152 – 154, 162 – 165, 365 – 366 Sukselainen, J. V. 166 Suomen Kaupunkiliitto/Finlands Stadsförbund 325 – 326 Sutthoff, Johan 114, 123n52 Svartöstaden 379, 381, 383 – 385, 384 Svenska Stadsförbundet 325 Sweden 6, 8, 10, 37 – 45, 37 – 38, 41 – 44, 50n51, 51n58, 53 – 69, 79, 111, 168, 239 – 242, 244 – 245, 247, 249, 251 – 252, 267, 275, 278, 287n18, 312 – 313, 325, 329, 333, 338, 342 – 344, 360, 371 – 372; heritagization, Arctic towns and 379 – 392, 382, 384, 387, 389; phases of urbanisation in 291 – 302, 292 – 293, 296, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301 Swedification 81 Swedish Archipelago Fleet 106 – 107 Swedish-Finnish kingdom 4 Taganrog 105 Tammilehto, H. R. 164 Tarkiainen, Ülle 80 Taube, Jacob Johan 61 tettsted 129 – 130 Thirty Years’ War 66 Thorild, Thomas 8 – 9 Tichvin 83 Tikkurila 154 – 155, 157 Timmerman, Antoni 96n29 Toplav, Christina 329 townships, towns vs. 157 – 162 town system, in Norway 131, 131 – 133 trading, municipal 313 – 314 transnationalism 329 Treaty of Stolbovo 53 Trondheim 8, 131, 135 Trossö 105 Tryde, Christian 183 Tulenheimo, Antti 342 Turku 8, 117 Uggla, John 155 Ulrich, Herbert 60 – 61 Ulster 8

404 Index Umeå 351 – 352, 355 – 356, 358 – 361, 362, 363 – 364, 373 uncharterd communities, in Finland 152 – 154 unions 10, 310, 318n27, 341 Uppsala 9, 242 urbanisation 129 – 130; in Finland 1920s-1970s 147 – 171; phases of, in Sweden 291 – 302, 292 – 293, 296, 296, 297, 298, 299, 300, 301; Scandinavian modern 184 – 185 urban planning 133 – 140 urban systems 367 – 369 Uusimaa 108 Vasa, Gustav 360 Västerås 293 – 294 Vavulin, Gavril 116 Vavulin, Jakov 116 venereal diseases 245 – 249 Viborg 86 von Hutten, Ulrich 66 von Kochen, Christoff 86 Votes (people) 53, 65

Wachsmuth, David 188 Wagner, Adolph 318n22 Wagner, Martin 366 Wallströms, A. W. 364 Waris, Heikki 154 water, agency of 185 – 186 water closets, in Copenhagen 181 – 184 web 353 – 355, 364 – 365 welfare 225 – 227, 328 – 330 Westerbeek Dahl, Björn 27 Wickman, Gustaf 136, 389, 389 Widman, Erik 358 – 359 Winter, Jay 134 World War I 239, 307, 326 – 328 World War II 10, 142, 250 – 251, 294, 315 Wulffert, Jürgen 96n29 Yhteiskunnallinen Keskusliitto (YKL) 333, 336, 340 Ylivieska 161 Ystad 273 Zentralstelle des deutschen Städtetages 339