Discover Top Posts Tagged with #plague park

Visit Original Link

Handsome Furs ~ Snakes On The Ladder

#handsome furs #snakes on the ladder #plague park #adult world 2013

About Plague Park. You said it was an emergency grave yard during a plague. Did everyone get a proper grave or is there a mass grave as well, or several coffins sharing one single plot (like they stacked them on top of each other to save room)?

So, I actually had to do some digging as I don’t know all the details of The Plague Park (Ruttopuisto).

Originally the place had an emergency mass grave for famine victims just next to the current Plague Park. We had a horrible famine in Finland in 1696-1697 which killed 30% of the whole population. Ireland’s famous The Great Hunger, also known as potato famine, in 1847 is considered as one of the most horrific famines in European history (and worldwide) but it killed around 20% of the population compared to Finland’s 30%. So, ours was worse.

As the cemetery in Helsinki back then couldn’t take in bodies as quickly as people died (there are eyewitness testimonials of the time how people just fell down from hunger and died on that spot across streets and roads), the emergency mass grave as established in the crossroads of Frederikinkatu street and Bulevardi street in Helsinki. The Plague Park resides just next to this crossroads.

(It’s interesting that the grave was built to a crossroad as it’s one of the most magical and strongest places to bury anything in many folklores and witchcraft ways throughout the world. Burying things in crossroads is still used in modern witchcraft. What is also interesting that the street leading to the old mass grave (Bulevardi street) is one of THE Fanciest Streets in modern Helsinki. All ridiculously expensive shops and cafes, as well as some embassies, locate on that street. Talk about how the time is turning the old hellish places to fancy stuff!)

Anyway, it’s year 1710, only 13 years since the last time of people dying in great numbers, and a plague arrives to Helsinki with the war refugees from Estonia area where King of Sweden’s army was fighting against Russians - and the army had brought the plague there from north Poland. Things got bad because Helsinki didn’t really care that much when the first cases of the bubonic plague emerged and the refugees were free to come and go as they liked. Majority of the people who died were these refugees.

As the cemetery currently in use was getting full of bodies, an emergency cemetery was built near the famine victim’s mass grave. Note that while the Plague park has a church called Vanha Kirkko (Old Church), it wasn’t built until 1826 so over 116 years after the cemetery.

As people died in great number, 20-30 dead ones each day, which is a lot for such a small place as Helsinki, people were hastily just buried in the mass graves on the holy land. The priests and the church didn’t have time to think if the people had lived a life which gave them a right to be buried into a blessed cemetery - all were ditched in and prayed for the best.

The tombstones that are still intact are newer ones from late 18th and early 19th century, erected for important people, mostly to Swedish family lines (as Finland has always been either under the rule and oppression of Sweden or Russia till 1917 when we got our independence. Like in 1713, Russians burned whole Helsinki down - literally. Only one stone building and the church bell were left. Finnish were able to return to Helsinki and start rebuilt their homes in 1721. This is pretty much our history overall..).

#finland #history #meanwhile in finland #plague park #plague #ask niu #gokyacetakal