“Remoted” Day 258 (Sunday)

There was a loose plan to do online Christmas shopping today, but that went down the tubes after tumbling down a research trail based on two words in a Facebook group post.

It turns out, and I don’t even know why this came as a surprise, in addition to the general Finnish Genealogy group found a few weeks ago, there is another Finnish genealogy group. A few days ago, thanks to a mention in the first group, I learned there is a group specific to the descendants of Isokyrö, a municipality located in the province of Western Finland, and part of the Ostrobothnia region. This is where Mummu's family was from.

Even more fun than the general discovery of the Facebook group was the specific information that one of the members is the great-granddaughter of a younger brother of my own great-grandfather, and she is writing a book about her great-grandfather, that line of the family, and farm life in Finland. This woman’s name appears in records hints in Ancestry.com that seemed to overlap my tree, and now I know why. In the brief description of her book in process, she had a reference to her great-grandfather being a “cottager’s son.” Those two words gave me more information about the family in Finland than I had found anywhere else, and set the new course for my day. The new path began with skimming articles on Finnish farms.

Because I love a good detour on any research project, I also landed in an article titled “Home-thievery and the Modernization of Rural Finnish Society 1860-1900.” Home-thievery (kotivarkaus), is a “practice in which farm women secretly pilfered and sold farm products – butter, grain, meat, cheese, milk, and wool – behind the farm master’s back.  These women either sold the pilfered goods to local shopkeepers in order to obtain things that the farm master would not buy for them, or gave them as payment to lower-class women who gathered information – or spread gossip – on their behalf.” It's fascinating that the farm wives lacked personal cash and were part of the local black market.

Kahvi aika (coffee time) with an
Arabia Finland coffee cup from Mummu.

Some farm women were compelled to participate in home thievery for the specific need to buy or trade for coffee to restock the home coffee reserves before their husbands noticed the depletion resulting from her having her friends over to drink coffee. Coffee is important to Finns. Finnish workers scarce on time often drank the coffee from a saucer to save the time required to cool it. In articles on Finnish coffee consumption there was this fun fact – according to the International Coffee Association, Finns have the highest per capita coffee consumption in the world. The Finnish language has about a dozen words for specific coffee situations including morning coffee, day coffee, evening coffee, sauna coffee, farewell coffee, and even "just won a medal in a sporting event" coffee. Serious, indeed.

Other riveting articles for the day's read included “The Social Origin of the Left-Wing Radicals and 'Church Finns' among Finnish Immigrants in North America,” which, in addition to discussing political positions,  provided details to determining social class through passport records. 

Yes, this is actually my idea of a good time, which might explain how I can be content spending so much time alone. And my need for morning coffee. At least I have my own coffee money and don’t need to resort to home thievery.