Clarify villages and towns

[Katie]

I sometimes am not sure how I should describe a place or residence and which is the village or the town.
Storby, Kotajärvi 16, Kemijarvi, Lapland, FI
Am I correct in viewing this as: Storby - village; Kotajärvi - farm; 16 number of the farm; Kemijarvi - town that the village of Storby is in??? and Lapland, FI are self explanatory.
Please clarify me....
Thank You
Janice

[Timo]

Your interpretation of the address is correct. Some notes which may be of interest:

• Storby is the Swedish translation of the name of the village, Isokylä. Since Swedish used to be the language of administration. sometimes scribes translated even proper nouns.
• A kylä (by in Swedish) was just a grouping of houses. As they did not form their own jurisdictions and were often quite small, “hamlet” might be a more descriptive translation.
• A more common notation is to give the number after the hamlet rather than after the farm name, as in “Isokylä 16, Kotajärvi”. When mentioning the residences of people, the number is also often left out.
• A number of a farm corresponds to a kantatalo, “stem farm”, which means the farm the land originally belonged to. As time went by, farms were divided into smaller estates (parcels?) with different owners. In the parts of the country I’m most familiar with, these estates were usually given their own names, but in the 1915 taxation list (http://digi.narc.fi/digi/view.ka?kuid=21529580) it seems that the three estates which Isokylä 16 had so far been divided into were all named Kotajärvi.

[Katie]

Thank You Timo for the clarification. When I saw Isokylä on a record and expected to see Storby I thought I was looking at another place of residence which meant more research. I now have a definitive description of the times to tell my relatives.
They are used to looking at first name, middle name, last name and that is not the historical case in Finland and I am going to open their eyes.
Thanks again for your translation. Hope you had or are having a nice weekend. Spring on the horizon.
Janice

[Kimpula]

You may think "kylä" is a group of houses near each other. That may have been true in western Finland but not in eastern Finland, where population density was 1 or 2 or 3 persons per square kilometre (really). So, if a house was here, next house was something like 5 or 10 km away (or maybe just 1 km, if it was too crowded), Anyway, these different houses could be part of the same "kylä". BUT people in these farms did not considered themselves to be part of the "kylä" authorities ("herrat") thought they were part of. For them "kylä" was "kirkonkylä" (literally "kylä" where the church is; that "kylä" probably has some shops etc).

Rippikirjat uses the same definition of "kylä" than maakirjat (land tax records): "kylä" is all the taxation units ("hemman" (Swedish) or "talo" (Finnish)) that are under the same village name.

TL;DR The common meaning of "kylä" and the legal definition of "kylä" are different. Rippikirjat and maakirjat uses the legal definition.

Confused now?

[Katie]

I am kind of confused but if I keep comparing it to today and think of 'suburbs' it may help. For instance I live in Duluth, we have suburbs called Proctor, Hermantown, Gary, Lakeside and yet if you send a letter you can still address it to Duluth or to the suburb and the letter will get there. In many ways they are separate yet if referred to as Duluth it is understood where they are. Everyone wants to live in their own little hamlet yet want to be part of the big one, I guess.

Thank you so much for the additional information, I'll have to remember that. It will explain why sometimes I'm not finding something because I'm using the wrong name of the residence.
Janice

[Kimpula]

I don't think you can call one house a 'suburb'. Finnish "kylä" (in eastern Finland at least) could be geographically very big (dozens or hundreds of suqare km) but, outside of "kirkonkylä" very sparsely populated. So the distance of one side of "kylä" to other side could be more than 100 km, but on the road - where in earlier times a "road" could be something you can only walk on, no horses and carriages - you see a house every dozen kilometres or so.

[Katie]

So that's all there would be, one house. That's a lot a land surrounding them, 100km. Country living. Thank you for adding more clarity to the distances between the residents. Puts a new light on their life style.
Have a great week and Easter.
Janice

[Kimpula]

Storby, Kotajärvi 16, Kemijarvi, Lapland, FI

It seems you are applying American method of places (county, state, country) to Finland. That does not work.

1) There is no such place as "Kemijarvi". Maybe you mean Kemijärvi.

2) "Lapland" does not make much sense. Maybe you mean Lapin lääni, but that is correct only at times when Lapin lääni existed (1938-2009).

3) "Finland" makes sense only on 6.12.1917 and afterwards. From 17.9.1809 to 5.12.1917 the country is Russia (1) and before 17.9.1809 the country is Russia or Sweden depending on where the Russian-Swedish border was at the time of the event (2).

(1) See map here: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haminan_rauha

(2) Maps: https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suomen_rajamuutokset
Note that the first group of maps at the beginning of article shows the border between "Finland" and Sweden as it was in 1809 (Tornionjoki-Muonionjoki etc).

[Katie]

There is a lot of complex history in Finland and one should live there to get the full impact of the evolution of Finland's borders. We have a little known Finnish-American responsible for the independence of America. His name was John Morton and he was the swing vote when signing the Declaration of Independence. He was a representative of one of the states that was created and little did he realize the impact his signature would have. There should be a national holiday in his honor.
Thanks for the new information.
Janice