Genius Loci - the spirit of place in historical Central Ostrobothnia

Page 9

9

LAND – hard work and skills

T

he land theme in the Genius Loci geospatial data service includes information and stories related to agriculture in Central Ostrobothnia, for example, to natural meadows, slash-burning, animal husbandry and field cultivation. The subtle manual skills that are based in one way or another on the soil also deserve attention here. In his historical work Pohjanlahden ja Suomenselän kansaa, Pentti Virrankoski states that it took decades before the region’s population rose back to the level at which it had been before the Greater Wrath in 1714. However, the population was very sparse in a region that could be principally called wilderness. In the mid-1700s, there were clearly less than 20,000 inhabitants in the Central Ostrobothnia region as defined by Virrankoski. Towards the end of the century, the population began to grow quickly, so that at the beginning of the 1800s it was clearly over 40,000. Population density was the highest in the coastal area. In the 1700s, agriculture was naturally the main source of livelihood in Central Ostrobothnia. Slash and swamps were


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