Pekka Vesainen: Warlord, Leader and Guerrilla Chief

Pekka Vesainen (or Juho Vesainen as a character in a historical novel by Santeri Ivalo) was a famous 16th century Finnish peasant leader and guerrilla chief during the "long wrath" or "pitkä viha".

The long restlessness of Russo-Swedish war was worst among settlements in Northern Ostrobothnia region, which was officially then beyond the Russian border of the Treaty of Nöteborg. The long and cruel guerrilla war without any outside help created eventually need of warlords to take care of the protection of the settlers. The most famous figure of this period is Pekka Vesainen.

A raiding party of peasants from Ii, led by Vesainen, destroyed and burned Kandalaksha (Kantalahti) and a small Russian settlement in Kem in summer 1589. They took a considerable loot with them back to Ii. According to oral tradition and historical speculation from later centuries, Vesainen would have also led another raid later on same year, on which the peasants destroyed the Pechenga Monastery and killed all the monks. This raid did actually take place, but Vesainen is not known to have anything to do with it.

In the 18th century, a parchment, which has since been lost, was kept in the church of Salo, or Saloinen, in which it was said that in 1588 or 1589 the ancients made a raid to Kantalahti, from which they brought a lot of booty. According to another legend recorded in the 18th century, 90 men participated in the trip, who went up the Iijoki to Maanselä and then descended the Koutajoki to Kantalahti, which was captured by a sudden attack on the night before St. Peter's Day at the beginning of June. After that, the group had continued their journey along the coast of Vienalahti, burning villages all the way to Viena Kemi, from where they returned to Finland by going up the Viena Kemijoki and possibly passing through Kuusamojärvi back to Iijoki. The Russian chronicle of the Solovetsk monastery mentions an extermination expedition from the Swedish side, in connection with which the entire town of Kantalahti and the monastery were burned on St. Peter's Day and 450 local residents were killed. The military expedition of the Iians was also intended as a revenge and a deterrent, as the Russian side had carried out several similar extermination expeditions in the previous years to the area of Northern Finland, including to Ii. The Russians and Karelians immediately retaliated by already in August 1589 making a new extermination expedition to the Ii region.

In the stories, Pekka Vesainen was mentioned as the leader of the guerilla expedition in the summer of 1589, and he was playfully referred to as "Vesan voivotta", which comes from the Russian word for warlord, voivode. There is only one document source about Vesainen's participation in the expedition, an entry made in the account books by the voud of Ostrobothnia in 1589, according to which Pekka Vesainen and some other participants in the Russian war expedition had been taxed for the booty they received: six marten skins, two wolf skins and one bear skin. The mention of Vesainen's name in this context has been considered as reliable evidence that he really led the said expedition. According to the same inscription, part of the booty of the ancients had been a fire tax, i.e. protection money collected from the inhabitants for not burning down their houses.

Russian sources also mention another extermination expedition by the Finns in 1589, which took place at the beginning of September. During that time, no less than 700 men would have destroyed the Kantalahti area, Viena Karelia and the southwest coast of the Kola peninsula. Finnish sources do not know about this second trip, so current historical research has doubted its authenticity, especially since making a new trip to an area that was just recently destroyed would have been quite pointless. Instead, it is known that during the year 1589 another large extermination expedition was made from Ostrobothnia to the coast of the Arctic Ocean. During that time, the people of Ostrobothnia destroyed the Petsamo monastery and killed its monks, captured the city of Kola and also tried to capture the fortress of Kola. In some later stories, Pekka Vesainen has been claimed to have led this trip as well, although the claim is not supported by any source. This trip was probably carried out by the peasants of Tornio and Kemi, and the ancient Vesainen was probably not involved in it.

Historian Yrjö-Sakari Yrjö-Koskinen, who lived in the 19th century, wrongly claimed that Pekka Vesainen also led the mentioned expedition to destroy the Petsamo monastery, but he actually confused the events with the war expedition of 1591 and at the same time used Pekka Vesainen's wrong name Juho Vesainen after confusing him with another person. Santeri Ivalo used Yrjö-Koskinen's works as a source when he published the historical novel Juho Vesainen in 1894, in which Vesainen was also presented as the leader of the Petsamo and Kuola expedition. Despite its fictionality, Ivalo's book had a much later influence on the perceptions of Vesai.

Vesainen in folk tales

Folktales tell that Vesainen was "lightning-quick in his movements; strong in body strength; large and agile; and brave, clever and fearless in mind". There is a folk tale about Vesainen's childhood, according to which his mother was washing the child when the Viennese extermination forces came. Everyone ran away from the persecutors, but the child was forgotten in the washing machine. When the people returned, the oval was frozen, but the child was still alive. The child who was saved in this way grew up to be a shepherd. According to one story, the Viennese exterminators who arrived in Ii in 1589 took Vesainen's wife prisoner and killed two of her children. In 1591, the enemies struck again and killed three of his children. Only his wife, son Antti and daughter survived.

In Santeri Ivalo's work Suomalais sankareiita, a version of Vesainen's death is described: in Tornio's Lapinvoud hut, a prisoner named Ahma, brought from Viena, managed to fire a musket at his enemy. The bullet hit Vesainen badly in the chest, and he lay with a fever until the next morning, until he died.

According to an unreliable memory, in 1590 Vesainen would have met the king of Sweden and received gifts from him.

Change

The Vesainen statue sculpted by Oskari Jauhiainen in 1936 in Vesala in Ylikiiming has been erected in memory of the guerrilla leader, and Pekka Vesainen's road on Aumaharju in Vesalankylä is also named after him. In 1950, the statue of Vesainen, sculpted by Kalervo Kallio in 1940, was erected there.

The Finnish folk metal band Korpiklaani has made the song Vesainen Sota. The song is based on folk tales told in Vesaien.