Mantal

Mantal has been an official measure of land in Finland and in Sweden.

The mantal is a measure of the wealth of a farm, not a simple unit of area, as it depends on the productivity of the land. It is an apportionment figure. A cameral measurement instrument of the wealth of the farm. According to Sjöström (2011, page 433) the essence is that the mantal figures of farms in one village show their share of the lands of the village. A landed estate's share of the joint properties of a village (such as, water areas and undivided wasteland and some specific things) is defined by its mantal figure.

The mantal was also used as a basis for taxation. A farm had to pay a fixed annual land tax and several other taxes (so-called auxiliary taxes and tithes = tenth taxes).

Sjöström 2011 page 433 advances an explanation that one mantal meant, in perspective of late-medieval and early-modern government, originally one warrior who was provided by group of farmers. One mantal thusly represented a group of farms which provided one mounted warrior, his horse and equipment. according to Sjöström, the governments in those days viewed the country and its revenues a a means to provide armed troops, rather than viewing the country in terms of a population to be fed. Another explanation of "mantal" is that of one man cultivating a plot to feed his nuclear family ("one mantal would be a farm which supports a single family"), but Sjöström 2011 page 433 argues against that idea, citing examples of bunches of farms of about 0.05 mantal which each fed satisfactorily one household (one nuclear family or even a few more persons than merely a nuclear family).

Kiesi however reports that mantal was unit that describes how many men there was in the household - i.e, if a family cultivating a farm had two adult brothers, then the farm was 2 mantal.

• Kalevi Kiesi about 'mantal'
• Robert Plogman about 'mantal'

Sjöström 2011 page 433 reports that hectarages of estates of one mantal, were around 500-1000 hectares in some regions of Finland and was rather considered a manor, not merely one farm. According to Kiesi, a farm of one mantal was a big farm.

Kiesi reports about hectares of farms: ....was totally depending on what kind of land the farm owned. In northern Finland one mantal farms were huge compared with southern Finland's more fertile one mantal farms.

According to Sjöström 2011 page 433, the one warrior model (as opposed to one cultivator feeding his family) is more meaningful from the perspective of governments of those ages.

Mantal figures were assigned to real estate in Finland and Sweden in the early 1500s.

In the late 1600s, mantal figures were drastically adjusted throughout Finland, to so-called new mantals. It was based on production valuation. Since that, mantal figures have been fixed in Sweden and Finland. Of course, when a farm with its mantal figure was divided, its mantals also were divided so the sum of the mantals of the new farms was equal to the mantal figure of the original farm of c1720. Already in 1600s, most farms had mantal figure which was merely a fraction of one. Divisions in the 1800s and 1900s led to very small fractions.

Since about 1720, land records of Finland generally contain information as follows: every independent farm was put in the records, its jurisdictional district, parish, village, and number of the farm in village, number of households in the farm, the old mantal figure, the new mantal figure, one of three natures of land, and mention of the designation of the farm's taxes use.

In the 1900s, land natures and mantal figures were no longer relevant for everyday uses, because taxation has been changed so crown land taxes ceased to exist and the government started to draw revenue from income taxes. Today, mantal figures are used merely in connection to some rural obligations and rights, whereas usually the size of farms in Finland is nowadays reported in hectares. Since 1997 in Finland, land surveying actions no longer calculate mantal figure for new divisions of estates.

Sources

• Sjöström (2011), "Medieval landed inheritances of the Junkar and Vilken lineages of Vehkalahti, Finland", Journal of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, vol 3 issue 5 (January 2011), pp 425-461
• Kari Alofrosti's material