Finnish Famine of 1866-1868

The Finnish famine of 1866-1868, remembered in Finland as "the great hunger years" (suuret nalkavuodet), was the last major famine to strike Finland and, together with the subsequent Swedish famine of 1867-1869, one of the last major famines in Northern Europe. An unusually rainy summer in 1866 caused widespread failure of the potato and grain harvests and left conditions unfavorable for autumn sowing; roughly 8.5 percent of Finland' s population died of hunger and related disease over the following three years, reaching as high as 20 percent in the hardest-hit regions of Satakunta, Tavastia, Ostrobothnia and North Karelia, with a total death toll of around 270,000, about 150,000 above normal mortality.