The land of smoke dried grain

The impact of smoke drying wheat on crisis preparedness in Sweden in the middle of the 18th century

Authors

• Sampsa Hatakka University of Helsinki https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0571-3259

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33355/tw.84895

Keywords:

storage, agriculture, Sweden, 18th century, granaries, army

Abstract

Storage of grain is difficult because heat and humidity will, in combination with fungus, easily spoil the goods. If grain is to be safely preserved in the long term, it must be dry enough. In most parts of the early modern Europe, grain was left in the field where air and sun dried it. In the northern Europe, however, air-drying was problematic. Harvests were late and it was often rainy and wet during autumns. For this reason, in Finland, Baltic countries and Russia grain was dried artificially in riihi (in Finnish), which was a simple log building with a stone oven. Warming of riihi required skill and large amounts of firewood. In addition of climatic factors, these were probably the main reasons why riihi-drying did not expand further. It was, for example, virtually unknown technique in the area of modern Sweden.

This article investigates what kind of impact riihi-drying had on storage of grain in the Crown magazines of the Swedish Realm. These magazines functioned mainly as emergency stores which were meant for the army and general populace in case the Realm was struck by a sudden war or a harvest failure. In the focus are the reasons why riihi-dried grain was so useful that it was sought after for storage purposes. In addition, the study explores the significance of riihi-dried grain by investigating its quantities in the magazines and its proportion compared to undried grain. The time period of the research is 1743–1757 which was a period between two wars. Excluding Pomerania, the study includes the whole Swedish Realm, in other words the area of modern Sweden and Finland.

The study reveals that most of the grain in the Crown magazines was riihi-dried. This was especially true in Finland where riihi-drying was so dominant that practically all grain was dried. Consequently, the 18^th century Finns were not accustomed to use undried grain. The Finnish magazines lacked space for cleaning and airing moist grain, and the old-fashioned mills had difficulties with grinding it into flour. Durable riihi-dried grain was, however, also common in the most important Swedish magazines in Stockholm and Karlskrona. For example, in the main Crown magazine of Stockholm, undried grain was mostly avoided, and instead, the stores were filled with dried grain. Because Swedish area of the Realm did not itself produce riihi-dried grain, it had to be exported either from Finland or from the Baltic countries. Long-term stores of dried grain were vital in the northernmost parts of Europe in the age of constant warfare and harvest failures. Sweden was particularly vulnerable to these disruptions of the grain market ever since it had lost the grain-producing Baltic provinces to Russia in the Treaty of Nystad 1721.