Making a rättänä

GARS portrays soldiers from the province of Savo (Savolax) in eastern Finland. For our “Peasant day” in 5.2.2017 we prepared several traditional savonian dishes. Here is the recipe for the dessert, a rättänä. It is basically a blueberry pie with a rye crust, and belongs to family of savonian dishes called “kukkos”. A kukko can be made from many types of ingredients -fish, meat, vegetables- but it’s always fully enclosed in rye dough and then slowly cooked in oven. The rye crust seals in the ingredients resulting in food that preserves well, an ideal food for longer journeys.

Baking rättänäs in clay oven in Pukkisaari. Photo (c) GARS 2017

Our recipe is slightly modernized, and of course we don’t have any written peasant recipes from the 17th century to start with. But the kukko is surely a centuries-old thing and the only ingredient here that wasn’t a part of 17th century savonian staple is the sugar: back then, it was mostly available for the rich, as it was imported. Instead of sugar kind of a home made sweetener called imellös would have been used. Imellös is made by soaking and simmering rye, in a process similar to malting. But it’s a bit gross so we used sugar anyway!

Kukko-type dishes can be made without any cooking vessel, into a form of a plump bread, but with rättänä it’s best to use a clay pot as the blueberry filling can be very runny when hot and may try to escape from the crust. You’ll need a oven-proof clay pot, about 2-3 liters in volume. The pot doesn’t need to be glazed.

The crust in a clay pot. Photo (c) GARS 2017

Crust:
  • 200 grams butter, plus some for the pot
  • 1 dl of sugar
  • About half a liter of rye flour
  • Some cold water
Filling:
  • Half a kilo of blueberries
  • Few tablespoons of honey or sugar (not necessary)
  • One desilitre of rolled oats (not necessary)

Making the blueberry filling. Photo (c) GARS 2017

1. Make the doug by melting the butter and mixing the sugar with it. Then add enough rye flour to make a pretty firm dough. Add a splash of water to make the dough pliable.

2. Divide the dough into two pieces, smaller and larger one. Take your clay pot and butter the inside well. Line the inside of the clay pot evenly with the larger portion of the dough. Roll the smaller piece of the dough into a circle that is slightly larger than the mouth of the pot.

3. Make the filling: mix the blueberries with sugar or honey and oats. You can use only the blueberries to fill the rättänä, but some extra sweetening adds to the taste and the oats are good for absorbing the liquid from the blueberries. Pour the filling to the pot. Cover with the dough circle and press the edges well.

4. Put into baking oven (on medium heat / 200 degrees celcius) for around 1 hour, or longer. You might want to cover the dish for the first half of the cooking time, to prevent the top from burning.

Wait a bit – the filling is hot – and then eat. If you are a flamboyant catholic, you can eat it with vanilla ice cream!

Heating the clay oven in Pukkisaari. Photo (c) GARS 2015

– Photos from the Peasant day 5.2.2017 in Pukkisaari.

Flag

During Thirty Years’ War thousands of silken flags were produced for Swedish army, but just a few of them survive: most of the surviving ones are those which enemy took in battle and brought home as trophies, to be shown in churches and palaces. Later, some of them ended up in museums. Researching flags of this period is based largely on paintings and written descriptions. We know for sure that swedish army didn’t have any single flag standard, as the flags were usually made in the regiments according to the tastes of the commanding officers and of which materials were available. Native Swedish regiments might have had slightly simpler flags than the continental mercenary regiments. There are no evidence of flag colours being systematically coordinated with the uniform colours or the provincial colours even though there might have been that kind of efforts or plans.

German monk Reginbaldus Möhner painted dozens of water-colour portraits of flags, belonging to Swedish regiments occupying and passing through Augsburg in 1634, for his chronicle. Amongst these paintings there are four flags of Kaspar Ermes’s Finnish (Savolax) infantry, which are company flags in all propability. Every one of the four flags have been reduced to mere rags hanging from a flagpole, with no hint of the pattern of the flag. Silken flags truly were not very durable in the battlefield and on the other hand new flags were often not issued until the regiment was reorganized: so in the long campaigns, many units were marching under tattered flags.

GARS uses blue and black flag with golden wreath painted on both sides and on the middle the Savolax coat of arms on the other and the king’s monogram on the other side. This is a speculative reconstruction made after Möhner’s paintings, general flag fashion of the period, other Swedish infantry flags and later period flags of Savolax infantry regiment.

Savolax infantry regiment

Savolax (Savo in modern finnish) is a province in southeastern Finland. Out of all Finnish infantry units the men of Savolax infantry regiment were most actively present in the key events of Swedish king’s German campaign. After the military reform of 1626 there was seven Finnish infantry regiments in Swedish army, all named after the province whose population they were drawn from. Not all these regiments were used in the German campaign (or at least it’s most active early phase) and many units served mostly as garrisons in Northern Germany, Prussia and Livonia. When Swedish field army marched far south to Bavaria and fought the big decisive battles, Finnish infantry was mainly represented by Savolax infantry who also are the ones being most often mentioned in contemporary sources. Men of Savolax regiment performed well especially in the battle of Rain (crossing the Lech river).

Five out of the eight companies in Savolax regiment were sent to Germany with the king. These companies were formed into a regiment under the command of colonel Klas Hastfer even though the Savolax regiment itself was still commanded by general Gustav Horn (who himself was acting as a Field Marshal of the Swedish army). Later the Hastfehr’s regiment was commanded by Lt.Col. Kaspar Ermes who was a veteran captain from Savolax regiment. Even though Swedish conscription system worked on a regional basis and every conscript regiment had a provincial identity, name and insignia, on field of war the regimets were still named after their leader: so Savolax regiment in Germany was usually called “Hastfer’s Finnish regiment” and later “Ermes’s Finnish Regiment”. Last men of Savolax reximent left Germany in 1649, after the peace treaty. Many of those who survived were then transferred to new wars against Poland and Denmark.

It is safe to assume that Savolax was equipped as other native Swedish infantry units. Savolax regiment is the only Finnish infantry unit from the period that we have a reasonably trustworthy, even though only partial, source for a flag. German monk Reginbaldus Möhner painted flags of Swedish forces occupying Augsburg in 1634 and amongst these paintings there are four flags -shown as mere rags- of Kaspar Ermes’s Finnish infantry.

Finnish infantry and 30 Years War

Thirty Years’ War was fought in Central Europe from year 1618 to 1648. Sweden joined the war properly in 1630 and Swedish forces remained in Germany to the end of the war. The whole reign of Gustavus Adolphus, from 1611, had been time of almost constant war: Sweden fought against Russia in Ingria (1611-1617), against Poland in Livonia (1617-1618 and 1621-1626) and in Prussia (1626-1629) and several times against Denmark. After the death of Gustavus Adolphus and towards the end of the German war, wars against old enemies Poland and Denmark started again. State of war was effectively the normal state of things, short periods of peace were spent getting ready for the next war.

Whole area of modern Finland belonged to the Kingdom of Sweden during the 17th century and Finnish troops were well represented in Swedish military. Finnish cavalry (“Hackapelites”) and their exploits in German War are well known especially amongst Finns, and have a somewhat mythical reputation thanks to 19th and 20th century writers. In reality, much bigger number of Finns fought in infantry. While cavalrymen were volunteers (drawn mostly among the sons and servants of welthier farmers, with tax exemption and freedom from feared conscription as motive of volunteering) native Swedish and Finnish infantry were conscripts, drawn from the peasant class.

During the early-17th century wars against Poland and Russia a very large proportion of Swedish army had been Finnish in origin, but in Thirty Years War the Swedish field army was actually mostly comprised of foreign (German, Scots, etc.) mercenaries: native Swedes and Finns were a minority. Often concripted troops were also given tasks in guarding and garrisoning the North-German towns and castles and saw less action in battlefield than mercenaries. Nevertheless, a small number of Finnish infantrymen were present in most of the famous battles of Thirty Years War, like Breitenfeld and Lützen.

GARS mainly re-enacts Finnish infantry from Savolax infantry regiment during the German campaign of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1630-1632) but our equipment can mostly be used also in a larger timeframe from the beginning of the Livonian war in 1621 to the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648.