Treaty of Nöteborg
Treaty of Nöteborg was signed at Shlisselburg (Swedish: Nöteborg) on August 12 1323. It was the first settlement between Sweden and Novgorod Republic regulating their border. Three years later, Novgorod signed the Treaty of Novgorod with the Norwegians.
The treaty's original text has been lost. It has survived in partial copies in Russian, Swedish, and Latin, which are somewhat conflicting.[1] The treaty had no special name at the time, as it was just called a "permanent peace" between the parties.
The treaty was negotiated with the help of Hanseatic merchants in order to conclude the Swedish-Novgorodian Wars. As a token of good will, Prince Yuri ceded three of his Karelian parishes to Sweden; Sweden would in turn stay out of any conflict between Novgorod and Narva. Both sides would also refrain from building castles on the new border. The treaty defined the border as beginning east and north of the town Vyborg, splitting the Karelian Isthmus in half, running across Savonia, and, according to the traditional interpretations, ending in the Gulf of Bothnia near the Pyhäjoki River. Only the southern part of the border, close to Vyborg, was actually considered important and clearly defined in the treaty. Some historians have expressed the view that the border in the wilderness was not meant to be as strict as the line across the Karelian Isthmus; according to this view, the treaty would have originally given both Sweden and Novgorod joint rights to the northern Ostrobothnia and Lappland.[2]
Finnic tribes living on both sides of the border, mainly Karelians, Finns, and Tavastians, had no say in the treaty. Sweden and Novgorod had already de facto established their areas of influence in eastern Fennoscandia, with Karelians under Russian rule and other tribes in the west under Swedish rule. The treaty established international approval for that structure, but the concept of "permanent peace" did not have much effect on the long-term conflict between Novgorod and Sweden. The northern part of the border crossed wide stretches of wilderness which were uninteresting to the treaty's Hanseatic brokers, but these areas became a major reason for renewed fighting soon afterwards. Unsatisfied with the loss of northern Gulf of Bothnia, Sweden may have forged part of the treaty only a few years later,[3] and claimed that the northern border went all the way up to the Arctic Ocean. In 1328 Sweden was already organising settlers to take over northern Ostrobothnia.[4] Sweden also established castles at Oulu around 1375 and Olavinlinna in 1475, clearly on the Novgorodian side of the border.
The Swedes' Russian counterparts refused to accept the apparent forgery until 1595, when the Treaty of Teusina acknowledged the Swedish text as the correct one. However, long before that, Sweden had succeeded in permanently taking over large areas on the Novgorod side of the original border, including Ostrobothnia and Savonia.
Eventually, the territory west of the border, along with the expanse to the north, evolved into the country that is known today as Finland.
See also
References
- ^ Nöteborgsfreden och Finlands medeltida östgräns. Andra delen. Skrifter utgivna av Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland, No 427:2, VIII + s. 239-509. Helsingfors 1991. (97:1, 186-200). Detailed discussion about the conflict over the correct text of the treaty. See page 186.
- ^ See Gallén, Jarl: Nöteborgsfreden och Finlands medeltida östgräns, Helsingfors 1968. Also see Gallén, Jarl; Lind, John: Nöteborgsfreden och Finlands medeltida östgräns, vol. 2-3, Helsingfors 1991.
- ^ See Skrifter.
- ^ Vahtola, Jouko. Tornionlaakson historia I. Birkarlit, 'pirkkalaiset'. Malungs boktryckeri AB. Malung, Sweden. 1991.
External links
- Treaty's Swedish and Latin texts as maintained by the National Archives Service of Finland. Note that neither text can be said to be fully original, since both have survived as later, and possibly modified, copies.