The Åland archipelago, Finland’s westernmost province, received a strong influx of
immigrants from central Sweden in the sixth century ad and formed a part of the
Scandinavian culture area throughout the Viking Age. Both the material culture and
the graves – cremation burials in earth mounds – are totally Scandinavian in character,
but objects imported from Finland are also present. The latter consist primarily of
women’s jewellery, possibly indicating that at least some of the local men obtained
wives from Finland, if voluntarily or not remains an open question.
A notable rise in the numbers of archaeological finds during the Viking Age can
also be observed in northern Finland, in northern Ostrobothnia and Lapland. Most of
the artefacts are pieces of jewellery manufactured in western Finland, but a number
of Scandinavian artefacts have been found as well. The finds also include weapons. Most
of the archaeological finds come from the region between the Gulf of Bothnia and
the White Sea, from Kainuu, Kuusamo and Salla, which were important centres in the
Lapland trade. The White Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia were connected by several major
water routes. The archaeological finds include both single graves and a few silver hoards,
all of which have connections with the White Sea region, particularly the mouth of the
Dvina, where the land of Biarmia, mentioned in historical sources, is supposed to have
been located. It appears that traders from northern Norway originally travelled to
the White Sea coast via the Lapland river routes, but in the ninth century the trade
traffic shifted to the sea route around the North Cape, discovered and described c. 875 by
Ottar (Othere) of Halogaland. Finds from the eleventh century show that the Karelian
population also maintained trade relations with the White Sea region.
Finally, only a small portion of present-day Finland was permanently settled during
the Viking Age. The rest of the country was a vast uninhabited wilderness that offered
excellent hunting, fishing and trapping, the latter being economically the most impor-
tant of the three. It has been estimated that the population of Finland at the end of the
Viking Age amounted to around 50 , 000 people.
HOUSES, FARMS AND BURIAL CUSTOMSThe archaeological material available for the study of Viking Age society is fairly limited
in scope, and the majority of analyses focus exclusively on the grave forms and grave
goods typical of the period. The reason for this lies in the fact that archaeological
fieldwork has concentrated on graves while house remains and other settlement-related
structures have received less attention.
Another contributing factor is the fact that the remains of late Iron Age settlements
are almost invisible above ground, which makes them difficult to locate and con-
sequently rare. Our knowledge of late Iron Age house forms is scant and was limited for
many years to the results of excavations in Åland house foundations. Later research has
shown, however, that the houses were usually constructed of wall panels woven from
branches and fastened between upright posts that formed the actual load-bearing frame.
The space between the posts could also be filled in with a tight row of thin, split
saplings. Log houses came into use later, but were presumably much smaller than the
large Scandinavian halls. In all cases the walls were caulked with clay daub and the floor
was of hard-packed earth.
In both Finland Proper and Häme the dominant form of burial was in level-ground
cremation cemeteries. These had been introduced late in the seventh century and
–– Torsten Edgren––