Fire disasters and institutional responses: the resilience and vulnerability of peasant forest communities in seventeenth-century North Ostrobothnia, Finland

Abstract In this article, I explain how peasant communities were affected by fire disasters in North Ostrobothnia in northern Finland during the seventeenth century. Unlike previous research mainly based on dendrochronological data aimed at dating these fire disasters’ scope and occurrence, I focus on the socio-economic consequences of wildfires from both a bottom-up and a top-down perspective in order to establish different factors of resilience and vulnerability. Through the analysis of local district court protocols, tax records and Swedish legislation, the article explains how and why fires occurred and what role peasant common-pool institutions and the early modern Swedish state played in this development. The results show how peasant communities were able to bounce back from recurrent events of fire disasters thanks to close cooperation between them and Swedish officials, the reinvigorated medieval relief institution of fire support (Swe. brandstod ), and owing to the robustness of the peasants’ common-pool institutions.