In search of Finnish roots

In search of Finnish roots

A woman in her Sunday finest, from Ruokolahti. 1860.
Watercolor, Magnus v. Wright. 983:13. NBA.

Pirkko Sihvo, Keeper, National Board of Antiquities.
Folk Costume in Finland

Finnish folk costumes can be separated from each other into the so-called western and Karelian folk costumes. The western folk costume means costumes worn in Finland, which have, above all, developed by the influence of Western European culture and its fashion features. These influences have mainly been adopted from Sweden and then through the upper-class. The Karelian folk costume means southern Karelian folk costumes, which where used up to the end of the 19th century.

In the 18th century, the folk costume developed around the country into a varied and diverse outfit. The features of fashion, between the upper-classes and the lower-classes where adopted variably in different parts of the country. The economic boom and the emancipation of sea routes, at the end of the 18ty century, accelerated the receiving of new fashions especially in the western parts of the country and the coastal area. The peasants of Southwest Finland, the wealthy estate folk and the common country house folk of Uusimaa where quick at adopting novelties. The changes at the eastern border affected the economical development and trade connections of eastern Finland. At the borders of Savo and Karelia, the western parts of the jurisdictional district of Lappee and Etelä-Savo became a certain kind of border district. Here, the originality can be seen in the development of the folk costumes. In the beginning of the 19th century the top parts of Kaakkois-Häme and Kymijoki developed into a borderland of western Finland folk costume. It, however, maintained linguistic memories of its old connections to the south of the Gulf of Finland.

Costume and fashion, on the whole, has had a central significance as an indication of class, official rank and social status. In the class-society, dressing, the technique of making clothes, the demand and the degree of luxuriousness where in firm connection with the social status.

In the 17th and 18th century, this way of thinking was supported by numerous regulations concerning luxury. This meant that fabric and fur qualities, including colors, had rules as to which materials where forbidden from the people. Especially in parish meetings, in 1973, around the country, women were encouraged to knit their own material at home and give up expensive bought colors by using plant leaves and roots instead to dye their clothes.

The costume of a western Finnish woman was a Spanish styled outfit. It consisted of a shirt and skirt and a close-fitting bodice that was tightened at the front. The bodice was done with colorful bought fabrics. The outdoor clothes were a long sleeved fitted cardigan and in the winter either fur or a cardigan lined with fur. The normal cut for the bodices, cardigans and jackets were all similar, because professional tailors cut both the gentries and the common people’s clothes. In the 18th century, headgear changed from the lace fringed linen bonnet to a hardened lace fringed bonnet covered with silk.

Until the end of the 18th century, the fabrics of clothes were mainly of one color according to the baroque dark color scale. Far into the beginning of the 19th century, red was a color that dominated women’s homemade fabrics. Due to the emancipation of sea routes it became easier to get colorants. The stripy rhythm of purchasable foreign wool fabrics were copied in homemade clothes. In the turn of the 18th and 19th century the stripes of skirts became narrower but the baroque red and green color scale still stayed. A homemade frieze was also suitable for everyday dresses. Homemade stripy cotton fabrics went by the England’s 19th century cotton fashion. Homemade cotton and linen fabrics developed especially in the eastern parts of central Finland and Savo, where blue was adopted also for women’s clothing.

In the 18th century men’s clothes were mainly made from homemade fabrics. In the summer they wore linen trousers and a loose dress-like shirt. For more formal dress, they wore red-flecked vests with their linen shirt, as well as chamois breeches. In the 19th century long straight trousers were adopted in western Finland. The cutting of frieze and broadcloth cardigans as well as jackets, were done by professional tailors. Wearing expensive foreign broadcloth was forbidden to the common man up until the end of the 18the century. The medieval calotte-like skullcap was replaced by more fashionable flat caps and felt hats in the 19the century.

Wars and becoming part of Russia cut off the trade between Karelia and Europe until the end of the 16th century. Western European fashion did not have an influence on Karelian folk costumes. However, many very old, even prehistoric features remained. Up till the mid 19th century, features of 16th century renaissance fashion could be seen in the folk costumes of southern Karelian and Ladoga Karelian women. The colors used in women’s costumes were ecru, black and red and later on blue. The fabrics were weaved at home with narrow looms. Red woolly skirts were dyed with the roots of madder. Only crewel and the skirts broadcloth hemline were acquired from St. Petersburg. The outfit of the primitive woman consisted of a knitted cross striped so-called burlap skirt. At the beginning of the 19th century, a sarafaanimallinen wooly skirt with narrow shoulder straps became common in the eastern parts of the Karelian Isthmus. On their heads, Lutheran wives wore a veil and Greek Catholics wore a so-called sorokkopäähine, which was tied behind the neck and had red embroidery on it. As outdoor clothes, they wore a short white linen cape in the summer and a frieze cape or a fur coat in the winter. The black or blue vest and skirt of one color, represents the development of the 19th century in southern Karelia. The outdoor cape for men was a Russian-type long caftan, which was decorated with velvet bands. On their heads they wore a felt hat with a broad crown and brim.

When industrialization and mass production increased at the end of the 19th century, the folk costume eventually began to loose its originality. The places where the folk costume was used for the longest were southern Karelia and Swedish speaking southern Ostrobothnia.

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