Subject: Ancient Finnish borders<br/>
Date: Sep 17, 2003 @ 16:31<br/>
Author: Dallen Timothy (Dallen Timothy &lt;dtimothy@...&gt;)<br/>
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<div id="ygrps-yiv-51303286">Hi BPers,
<br/>
Even though I spent several years in Finland during my younger years, I had no idea how well preserved and how well demarcation, for that matter, Finland&#39;s ancient borders were/are! My trip a couple of weeks ago was very enlightening.
<br/>
I&#39;ve attached two photos together--sorry if the quality is not so hot, but it was cloudy and raining. This picture is of a border stone that was used to mark the border between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian entity in 1595 during what&#39;s referred to in Finnish as the Täyssinä period. It is located in central eastern Finland, and was finally marked/engraved in 1767. What&#39;s especially remarkable is that fact that a very specific borderline was actually marked so early on. As you all know, in most of Europe during that period, borders were a fairly abstract notion and rarely demarcated.
<br/>
Notice on the bottom shot the exact line of the border carved running through a crown, signifying the division of two principalities/kingdoms! West (above) of the line was Sweden/Finland and east (below) the line was the Russian polity.
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<br/>
Cheers,
<br/>
Dallen</div>