Henrik Henrikinpoika Vanberg

Henrik Henrikinpoika was one of the peasant potentates of the 17th century. Such men succeeded in amassing considerable amounts of land and rose to become the holders of posts in local administration, some of them becoming members of the Diet's Estate of Peasants. He went further than anyone else, since he was the only Finn in the parliamentary history of Sweden-Finland to be elected speaker of the Estate of Peasants.

Henrik Henrikinpoika (Henrik's son) - later known among Finnish historians by the equivalent Finnish form Heikki Heikinpoika - was born at Vaanila ratsutila (a farm belonging to a category required to provide a rider for the national cavalry) in the parish of Lohja, where his father was a churchwarden and juror. "By cunning", he joined the village's other ratsutila to his own; and when the military tenure system was being organised, the third farm in the village was also ordered to pay taxes to these. He learned to write, a very rare skill for a peasant at the time, and evidently he also spoke Swedish, though Vaanila lies on the Finnish side of the linguistic boundary. In his attempts to adopt the manners of the gentry, he assumed the Swedish surname Vanberg - an adaptation of Vaanila - in his old age. At the end of the century, one comes across Henrik Henrikinpoika at almost every session of the Lohja district court, either as a plaintiff or a defendant. In addition to being quarrelsome, he is described as hot-tempered, violent, overfond of alcohol and arrogant towards his subordinates, and he was on one occasion suspected of perjury in court. According to professor Heikki Ylikangas, he "really seemed to exude all the kinds of wickedness and guile which that tumultuous era held within it".

Evidently it was precisely such tough-guy characteristics that prompted the people of Lohja to consider him a suitable person to promote their interests. Henrik Henrikinpoika was elected as hunting officer at a local assembly, and the provincial governor appointed him a nimismies (= sheriff in the US sense of the word). Admittedly, he was dismissed from these posts in 1701 and 1708 for abuses and arbitrary actions. Incomparably the most notable indication of trust was his repeated choice as a representative of the estate of peasants. Henrik Henrikinpoika represented the Raasepori (Raseborg) judicial district at the sessions of the national Diet in Stockholm in 1664, 1676,1678, 1680 and 1682, at that of the Duchy of Finland in Turku (Åbo) in 1676 and at the Helsinki provincial assembly in 1677. At the same time he represented the judicial district of Hattula at the Diets of 1664, 1676,1678, 1680 and 1682, and the Porvoo (Borgå) judicial district at that of 1678. At the Turku provincial assembly in 1676, he was the speaker of the Estate of Peasants, and he was appointed a member of a commission which the national Diet of 1680 established to investigate the actions of the previous regency administration.

At the Diet of 1680, Henrik Henrikinpoika was also speaker of the Estate of Peasants for part of the session. His rise to this position was perhaps accelerated by the brother of the speaker of the Estate of Nobles, Baron Herman Fleming, who owned Kirkniemi Manor at Lohja and thus evidently knew him; and the king himself was almost certainly already involved at this stage, since Henrik Henrikinpoika was regarded as his cat's paw in the Estate of Peasants. Before the next Diet, Charles XI urged the governor of Uusimaa & Häme (Nyland & Tavastland) Province to ensure that Henrik Henrikinpoika and no other be elected as the representative of Raasepori judicial district. The peasants were clearly satisfied with him as long as support for the king against the power of the nobles was at issue. But at this last parliamentary session of his, Henrik Henrikinpoika evidently transgressed the boundary of what they regarded as an appropriate degree of royalism. He was reprimanded in the Estate for "running to the king and agreeing to one thing or another without their knowledge, and also for telling the king everything that they discussed in the tavern". He was dragged out of a session of the Estate by the hair and would have even been thrown out of a window, had not other Finnish members of the Estate come to his aid. Charles XI was obliged to give him and his family a safe-conduct against those "into whose disfavour he had come at this and the previous session of the Diet or in the performance of other duties" while in the service of the king.

Even the favour of the monarch did not help Henrik Henrikinpoika to get into the next Diet, held in 1686. The peasants of the Raasepori judicial district seem to have become disappointed in him when he was unable to secure tax relief after the crop failure in 1683. Possibly the king also had misgivings about constantly supporting a person so heavily criticised in his home region; or he may have simply pushed Henrik Henrikinpoika aside after attaining - partly with the help of the peasants - the status of an autocrat.

In Pentti Renvall's opinion, Henrik Henrikinpoika's career demonstrates "how capable parliamentary politicians rose from the ranks of the Finnish peasantry, gathered the Finnish peasants behind them and knew how to take advantage of every opportunity".