The Hunger Dress and the 1860s famine in Finland

I’m back after a little pause in video editing! This video took lots of research, and the more I dug into old history, the more interesting things I found. I hope you like this first part of this two-part series in which I sew a 1860s style dress that one of my great-great-grandmothers could have worn. I also find out how my family survived the last famine disaster in Western Europe that killed approximately 10 % of the whole population of Finland.

The hunger dress

I used the Laughing Moon Wrapper or Work Dress pattern for the bodice and the sleeves. For the skirt part, I just cut two rectangles that I gathered to fit the bodice. I added a hook-and-eye front closure but then sewed on some fabric coloured buttons for decoration. My fabric was thrifted, and when I was finished, I only had small scraps left.

I also made a simple linen apron to go over the dress. For that, I didn’t use any pattern, just pleated a rectangular piece to a waistband.

From the back:

About my family history and the famine stories

In my research, I concentrated on my father’s family as it has people from different backgrounds. Also, the family records on my mother’s side were written in Russian, which made reading the documents impossible for me! (My mother’s family has a Greek Orthodox background, which explains the Russian language.) However, I can deal with old handwriting and a little Swedish language, which I needed to decipher the records on my father’s side. I also got lots of help from myheritage.com and geni.com, which are popular genealogy websites.

I kept the names of my ancestors as they were written in old records, in their Swedish forms. In truth, the five Henriks were probably called Heikki, Anders was Antti, Carin was Kaarina, Kaisa or something similar, Brita was Riitta, and Lisa was Liisa. This tradition of translating names continued into the early 20th century.

It was harrowing to see how the number of deaths rose month after month during the first half of the year 1868. The local records keeper seems to have been shocked as well, since at some point, he had started to circle the causes of deaths marked as “hunger”. I had thought that since I was alive, my family had got through the famine fairly easily. This was not the case. My great-great-great-grandmother Stina lost her husband and all of her children to the diseases that spread with the famine. After the famine, she had to pick up the pieces, remarried and gave birth to my great-great-grandfather Anders.

I’m pretty sure that even the families that didn’t suffer deaths, lost friends and had to survive with food substitutes like pine bark bread. In the area where my family is from, up to 20 % of the population died, which is an enormous number of people. As one branch of my family tree has very long generations, one story from my family has survived. My father’s cousins in their 80s had heard from their grandparents how one day two beggars came to their door. One of the beggars was so starved that they collapsed and died on my family’s doorstep. My kindhearted family members invited the second beggar in and fed them potatoes. Luckily, the second beggar survived.

I hope you found this historical post interesting. My warmest thanks to all the lovely people at Seurasaari Open Air Museum in Helsinki, who allowed me to film freely at the museum!

In the second part of this series, I’m collecting pine bark to make pine bark bread, the most popular bread substitute during the famine. So, stay tuned as the second video will be released soon!

Katja