Turku 1000
Stop 18 of 50
1681

A wooden town burns again

On a Sunday evening in 1681 two apprentices fire a home-made gun, and most of Turku burns down. In a town built of wood, every household had to keep an axe, a bucket, a ladder and a fire hook.

Baroque · Great power era
The big story

A wooden town burns again

On a Sunday evening in May 1681, two apprentices fired a home-made gun in a workshop in Turku. By the next day most of the town and its Cathedral lay in ashes. It was not the first time. Turku was built of wood, and it burned again and again.

A town of wood

  • Four quarters. In the 1600s Turku had four quarters. The Church quarter (Kirkkokortteli), the Convent quarter (Luostari) and Mätäjärvi lay on the Cathedral side of the Aura, called the great side. Aninkainen, on the other bank, was the small side Well documented.
  • Grey wooden houses. Most houses were wooden. Stone buildings stood mainly in the Church quarter and around the market squares. The state wanted towns painted with red ochre, but in Turku most houses stayed grey Well documented.
  • Fire inside every house. People cooked and kept warm with open fires and ovens. Some rooms still had no chimney at all, so the smoke found its own way out through a hole or the door Well documented.
  • How many people? The tax lists record at most 3,344 people, in 1662, but many people paid no tax and are missing. The historian Tauno Perälä estimated that between 5,300 and 6,800 people lived in Turku in the late 1600s Likely.
  • Straight streets. In 1652, on Per Brahe’s orders (stop 17), the engineer Hannu Hannunpoika drew a new town plan. Aninkainen got a strict grid, while the great side kept its old layout with a few straightened streets. Turku followed this plan until the Great Fire of 1827 (stop 27) Well documented.

Fire after fire

  • A long record. Turku had at least 21 fires before 1600, and 11 larger ones in the 1500s alone. In all, Turku is known to have had at least 31 large fires, counting only those that destroyed at least one of the four quarters Well documented.
  • Worse than most. A study of Finland’s wooden towns found that in the 1500s and 1600s a town burned on average about twice a century. Turku burned far more often Well documented.
  • 13 May 1656. A fire broke out at five or six in the morning in burgher Henrik Paturi’s house on Koulukatu (School Street). Storm winds spread it through all three quarters of the great side, and 450 houses burned. The town court called it “a violent fire sent as God’s punishment” Well documented.
  • Peas on the stove. In court, one of Paturi’s maids said she had lit the fire to boil peas, as her mistress had told her. Paturi was sentenced to death, but the Court of Appeal changed the sentence to fines. He still appears in the town’s tax rolls in later years Well documented.
  • A straighter street. After the fire, in April 1657, a new Kirkkokatu (Church Street) was laid out straight from the market square to the Cathedral Well documented.

Sunday, 29 May 1681

  • Boys with a gun. The masters were at church. In hat-maker Philip Bertilsson’s workshop on Slottsgatan (Castle Street), on the Aninkainen side, the apprentices Anders Matsson and Henrich Erichson played with a home-made gun. Henrich had bought a finger-thick metal barrel for three copper öre eight days earlier. They loaded it with stones and sand and fired it with a burning stick Well documented.
  • Smoke in the attic. The fire was noticed as the church bells rang for the end of the evening service. Anders saw smoke in the attic and flames on the workshop roof Well documented.
  • Dry and windy. After a long, dry spring, and in windy weather, the fire burned the whole northern side up to the customs gates, then burned the bridge over the Aura and swept through the great side Well documented.
  • The Cathedral falls. The Cathedral burned with its works of art. According to a Dutch letter, its towers and bells crashed to the ground, and the Court of Appeal and the town hall were destroyed. The Academy and its library survived Well documented.
  • Counting the loss. A letter written in Turku a week later estimated that 800 to 900 houses had burned and only a sixth of the town was saved. It names only two dead Likely.
  • Sentenced to death. On 23 July 1681 the town court sentenced Anders Matsson to death under the town law. A death sentence always went on to the Court of Appeal, but we do not know what happened to him, because almost all of that court’s 1600s records later burned. Henrich had fled and was never tried Well documented.
  • Rebuilding. Gifts for the Cathedral came from all over the realm, but the burghers got far less help with their own houses. The Cathedral got a new Baroque tower, which stood from 1689 until lightning destroyed it in 1738 Well documented.
How do we know?

The minutes of Turku’s town court survive and tell us about the trials, the boys and the maids. A Dutch letter written in Turku on 4 June 1681 describes the damage. It also says Turku had burned 19 times since 1310, never losing more than 200 houses at once, yet the town’s own records count 450 houses in 1656. Numbers written in a hurry, far away or centuries later can be wrong. One modern account even dates a fire to 1678 with exactly the same story as 1681, and it is probably the same fire with the wrong year Debated. One more trap: Sweden still used the old Julian calendar, so 29 May 1681 was 8 June in today’s calendar.

Click a line in the ledger to read about that fire.

YearWhereHouses burned1600–1601Town fire; the Cathedral burns?1603Luostari and Mätäjärvi quarters?1618Church quarter, Kirkkokatu?1624Mätäjärvi: 90 houses, 45 left901656Church, Luostari, Mätäjärvi4501664About 300 barns~3001678?The same story as 1681??1681Most of the town800–9001684A fire on 23 May?1711Two years before the occupation?= 20 housesuncertain= 20 barnsCathedral burned?no count in the sources
Turku’s fires from 1600 to 1711. Click a line to read about each fire.Only fires named in the sources used for this stop. House counts are the numbers people gave at the time and may be rough.
Why it matters

Fire shaped Turku. After each disaster the town was rebuilt, sometimes with straighter and wider streets, and the old town lost in the Great Fire of 1827 was itself the product of many earlier fires. The court records of these fires also let us hear people who rarely appear in history books: apprentices, maids and ordinary burghers.

On the lighter side

Buckets, hooks and fire rules

In a wooden town, one careless spark could burn down hundreds of houses. So living in Turku meant following fire rules, some of them almost 300 years old, and the town court fined people who broke them.

Rules from the Middle Ages

  • The town law. King Magnus Eriksson’s town law from about 1350 applied to all towns in the Swedish realm, Turku included. It had a whole chapter on fire. Printed in 1618, it stayed in force until the new law of 1734 Well documented.
  • Everyone helps. All residents had to fight a fire, on pain of a fine. Each house kept a barrel of water in front of it, and church bells sounded the alarm Well documented.
  • What to bring. From the quarters that were not burning, every house had to bring a fire axe, a fire hook 12 cubits long (about 7 metres), ladders of 7 cubits (about 4 metres) and a bucket. Each quarter had two leaders, chosen every year Well documented.
  • Pull it down. The fire crews could tear down the houses nearest the fire, even before they caught, to stop it spreading Well documented.
  • Bound fire. The country law, written at the same time, made a neat distinction. Fire in the cottage, the kitchen or the malt kiln was “bound”, and the farmer was not to blame if it got out. Whoever carried fire anywhere else paid for the damage. Arsonists were burned at the stake Well documented.

Turku’s own fire rules

  • Fire ordinances. Turku issued a fire ordinance in 1664, similar to the one Stockholm received in 1661. An earlier one from the 1630s is mentioned, but it has not survived Well documented.
  • Fire masters. Every year the town chose a fire master for each quarter, also called a “soot master”. He inspected every hearth and chimney, and he could break an oven or pull down a chimney he found dangerous. At night the town guard watched for fire Well documented.
  • Rules at home. Full water barrels had to stand at the gateposts and on the roofs. Buckets had to be kept in good order and chimneys swept regularly. Tenants were responsible too Well documented.
  • No borrowing fire. Fetching glowing embers from a neighbour was forbidden, because they could fall on the way Well documented.
  • Smoke kitchens. Per Brahe had a list made of all smoke kitchens, rooms with no chimney, to be rebuilt or pulled down. The town was still fighting them in the early 1700s Well documented.

Fined!

  • 1663. Professor Axel Kempe complained that two chimney inspectors had broken his new sauna stove without warning and insulted his wife Well documented.
  • 1666. The saddler Berendt Haas was fined 3 marks for not helping to put out a fire with buckets and bells Well documented.
  • 1684. Jöran Koppar, who led one of the town’s district crews, was fined 40 silver marks because he had not fetched the fire sail kept at his home during the fire of 23 May Well documented.
  • 1691. The furrier Matts Rauck was fined 3 silver marks for careless chimney sweeping Well documented.
  • 1693. A fire inspector broke the stove of Mickel Krosse’s wife. She was fined 6 marks, but let off because she was poor Well documented.
  • “Rescuers”. People who carried goods out of burning houses and then kept them also ended up in court Likely.
  • A machine at last. In 1687 Turku got the first real metal fire pump in any Finnish town. It held four barrels of water Well documented.
How do we know?

The town law survives in old manuscripts and in the printed edition of 1618. Turku’s own rules are known mostly from the town court minutes, which show how the rules worked in practice, and how often they were broken. Turku’s ordinance from the 1630s is known only because a later writer mentions it.

Click the numbered marks to inspect the yard.

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You are the fire master. Click the ten numbered marks to inspect a burgher’s yard.An imagined yard. The rules come from the town law and from Turku’s fire rules and court records of the 1600s.
Why it matters

The idea that a town may inspect your home and fine you to protect your neighbours is very old. In Finland chimneys must still be swept regularly by law, and today’s building and rescue rules continue what the fire masters of the 1600s began.

Sources and further reading

  1. Välimäki, M. (2019). Turun palo 1681 – mitä raastuvanoikeuden pöytäkirjat kertovat? University of Turku, Finnish history blog (in Finnish): the town court records of the 1681 fire.
  2. Hannula, H. (2019). Turun palo vuonna 1681 hollantilaisasiamiehen silmin. University of Helsinki blog (in Finnish): the Dutch letter from Turku of 4 June 1681.
  3. Toropainen, V. P. (2024). Pieniä ja suuria tulipaloja sekä paloherroja ja tavaroiden ”pelastajia” 1600-luvun Turussa. Kalmistopiiri (in Finnish): fires, fire masters, fire rules and court cases in 1600s Turku.
  4. Perälä, T. Turun kaupunki 1600-luvulla. Turun Historiallinen Arkisto 18, 85–155 (in Finnish): the town, its quarters, the 1652 plan and the Cathedral fires.
  5. Suikkari (2007). Paloturvallisuus ja kaupunkipalot Suomen puukaupungeissa. Licentiate thesis, University of Oulu (in Finnish): the town law’s fire rules, town fires and the first fire pumps.
  6. Kinnunen, J. (2019). Turun keskiaikaisen kaupungin kartoitus … SKAS 1/2019, 48–60 (in Finnish): at least 21 fires in Turku before 1600.
  7. Turun palo (Finnish Wikipedia): Turku has burned at least 31 times.
  8. Albinson, B. (2020). Elva tema. Värmlands Brandhistoriska Museum (in Swedish): fire rules in Magnus Eriksson’s town law.
  9. Magnus Eriksson’s country law, extracts on fire (Värmlands Brandhistoriska Klubb, in Swedish): “bound” and carried fire, arson.
  10. Stadslagen — Magnus Eriksson’s town law, in force in the towns of the Swedish realm until 1734.
  11. Turku Cathedral in the 17th century (Turku Parishes): Rothovius restores the fire-damaged church.
  12. Turku Cathedral in the 18th century (Turku Parishes): the Baroque tower of 1689 and the lightning of 1738.

Spotted a mistake? Know more?

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