Media | At the end of October 1752, there were boats on the streets of Helsinki, says ajan some

Newspapers began to function in 18th-century Sweden-Finland as a discussion platform, which was used almost like today’s social media. This was revealed Kaisa Kyläkoski in the dissertation, which will be checked next week at the University of Jyväskylä.

In the pages of the magazines, readers continued their experiences with, for example, smallpox inoculation, i.e. early smallpox vaccinations, which were somewhat feared.

When Kyläkoski studied the texts sent by readers to magazines, he remembered his own first experiences with internet discussion boards in 1991.

“Suddenly, a channel opened up through which it was possible to reach similar but unknown people,” says Kyläkoski.

It was completely new in societies where communication had previously only flowed from top to bottom and from one acquaintance to another.

The same phenomenon was noted earlier in a Swedish study of local newspapers. Kyläkoski’s target was two national newspapers, Posttidningar and Inrikes tidningar.

According to Kyläkoski, contemporaries also spoke of newspapers as a place for gathering and discussion. In them, you could speak out about important issues and listen to others.

Leaf only a literate elite followed, of course, and an even smaller number wrote on them. However, they were all over the country.

In Posti, it was possible to send local experiences to a magazine published in Stockholm. The magazine’s readers thus got a view of the kingdom in front of them that was not available anywhere before. For example, in Gothenburg you could read about life in Anianpello, Helsinki or Tornio.

Most of them wrote about topics that had been read about in the newspaper before: local celebrations, accidents and people who lived to old age.

In November 1752, Posttidningar reported about an autumn storm that caused the streets of Helsinki to flood so that the city was moved by boats.

In addition journal writing in the 18th century was a discussion about common problems such as moldy houses or exterminating ants. At the end of the century, the newspapers began to be filled with requests for help and thanks for the help received.

Of course, the exchange of messages was slow. The magazine was published twice a week, and the mail ran between Stockholm and Turku once a week. Still, the connection worked.

When an overview of Asikkala’s Anianpello farming appeared in the magazine, an inquiry came to the magazine from another place in Sweden, wanting to know more about buckwheat farming. Questions were answered about Anianpellot.

How did we get rid of the ants then?

The first author’s methods against the ants that invaded the building were urine, hot water, lye and poisoned water. Nothing worked. In the garden, he experimented with chalk rings on tree trunks. They didn’t help either, so he asked readers for advice.

The first respondent, in a scientific spirit, referred to Linné’s knowledge that there were seven different species of ants in Sweden. So it would be good to know which species it is.

In his own home, the defendant had exterminated the ants by placing sweet wine in a teacup on the floor, which he emptied when it was full of ants. This way he got rid of the ants completely. He also stated that ants can be brought out by sprinkling powdered sugar on the floor.

The second respondent had solved the problem by folding the stems of the sedge from the garden and pushing them between the wall paneling, where the ants were the most. After he added fresh stems and leaves for two or three days, the ants disappeared.

In all Kyläkoski went through 15,000 texts. Fifteen percent of the examined texts had been sent from Finland in one magazine and ten percent in another.

Village rapids is originally a master’s degree in engineering. He was drawn to historical research by genealogy, when he began to find out what kind of world his relatives lived in. Kyläkoski says that the dissertation is his first departure from person-oriented research.

A local history from the “front edge of Taka-Töölö” is now in the works, where Kyläkoski moved to live eight years ago.