Folklore | Talvi-Erkki was like Finland’s own Robin Hood, who forged money and gave it to the poor

The first one once Sofia Kotilainen heard From Talvi-Erk already as a child in Kivijärvi. Talvi-Erkki ie Erik Turpeinen (1834–1890s) was a legend from Kivijärvi, whose actions spread throughout Finland. Talvi-Erkki was a well-known money counterfeiter, whose life had been shaped over the decades into a real villain story: in the eyes of the authorities, he was a criminal, in the eyes of the people, a benefactor.

Sofia Kotilainen has since studied to become a historian and linguist. Although he is a researcher by profession, he has researched Talvi-Erk’s stages on the side alongside his other research projects. Published last year article Talviainen’s mint: Using literacy for counterfeiting purposes in the 19th century was awarded this week with the Science Pen of the Year prize worth 25,000 euros. The article was published in the 3/22 issue of Ennen ja now: Historian Tietosanomat magazine.

The prize in the justifications, it is especially appreciated that Kotilainen has used the memory of Talvi-Erk’s contemporaries and later generations alongside official sources, which is stored in, for example, SKS’s folk poetry archive.

“There have been these stories about him in folklore for decades, because he has been a relatively well-known person locally. The stories also show the passage of time, so the more time has passed since those events, the more harmless a character he has become,” says Kotilainen.

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In 2016, the money counterfeiting mold said to have been used by Talvi-Erk was donated to the National Museum.

He had also heard these stories in his own childhood.

“When I was a child, the stories were told by people who had heard about Talvi-Erk’s stages through their parents and grandparents, so the information had already been passed down by several generations.”

Winter Erkki was an outlaw, but he was able to continue counterfeiting and stealing for a long time because he received protection from the civilian population of his home region. He is said to have helped poorer residents of Kivijärvi by giving them fake money. The flip side of charity was the looting trips that Talvi-Erkki and his troops made in different parts of the country.

In Talvi-Erk’s trial documents, there are mentions of counterfeiting tools and counterfeit money, but almost none of them have survived to this day.

But in 2016, a money counterfeiting mold said to have been used by Talvi-Erk was donated to the National Museum. It had been in the donor’s family for decades, and Talvi-Erk is said to have donated it on his deathbed to the vicar For Krank – who did not mark the year of Erki’s death on the official papers and who took care of this burial quietly “somewhere on the outskirts of the churchyard”, as Sofia Kotilainen says in her award-winning article. This is so that attention would not be drawn to the fact that Talvi-Erkki had spent time in his home region.

He was a prison escapee: for counterfeiting and robbery he was sentenced in 1863 to forced labor for life in Siberia, from which he managed to escape in the middle of the next decade. He returned home and was caught again in 1876 – but escaped again before the courtrooms could even be completed. Talvi-Erkki spent the rest of his life on the run from officialdom.

Sophia Kotilainen’s research focuses on the meaning of reading and writing skills. In the middle of the 19th century, these skills were rare in the Finnish countryside, but Erik Turpeinen, who came from a peasant background, had these skills. Otherwise, he certainly would not have been able to reproduce the letters or patterns of the Banknotes. The pen clearly remained in the hand.

Talvi-Erk’s forgery skills are even more impressive when you consider that he had to work in secret, and if he worked in the winter time, he did his high level forgeries in low light.

“Erkki was able to harness his reading and writing skills to promote his own vocation. He carried this intangible capital with him, which made it possible (with the support of suitable instruments) to manufacture money on his trips to trade and distribute counterfeit money to different parts of Finland,” Kotilainen writes in his article.