Recession or resilience? Long-range socioeconomic consequences of the 17th century volcanic eruptions in the far north

Past volcanic eruptions and their climatic impacts have been linked increasingly with co-occurring societal crises – like crop failures and famines – in recent research. Yet, as many of the volcanic cooling studies have a supra-regional or hemispheric focus, establishing pathways from climatic effects of an eruption to human repercussions has remained very challenging due to high spatial variability of socio-environmental systems. This, in turn, may render a distinction of coincidence from causation difficult. In this study, we employ micro-regionally resolved natural and written sources to study three 17th 5 century volcanic eruptions (i.e. 1600 Huaynaputina, 1640/1641 Koma-ga-take/Parker, and 1695 unidentified eruptions) to look into their climatic as well as socioeconomic impacts among rural agricultural society in Ostrobothnia (Finland) with high temporal and spatial precision. Tree-ring and grain tithe data indicate that all three eruptions would have caused significant summer season temperature cooling and poor grain harvest in the region. Yet, tax debt records reveal that the socioeconomic consequences varied considerably among the eruptions as well as in time, space, and within the society. Whether the volcanic 10 events had a strong or weak socioeconomic effect depended on various factors, such as the prevailing agro-ecosystem, resource availability, material capital, physical and immaterial networks, and institutional practices. These factors influenced societal vulnerability and resilience to cold pulses and the resulting harvest failures caused by the eruptions. This paper proposes that, besides detecting coinciding human calamities, more careful investigation at the micro-regional scale has a clear added value as it can provide deeper understanding on why and among whom the distal volcanic eruptions resulted in different 15 societal impacts. Such understanding, in turn, can contribute to interdisciplinary research, advice political decision-making, and enhance scientific outreach.


Introduction
Common understanding exists that volcanic aerosol forcing has been a considerable driver of pre-industrial summer temperature variability at interannual-to-decadal timescales (Robock and Mao, 1995;Sigl et al., 2015;Stoffel et al., 2015;Büntgen 20 et al., 2020), and the climate system reactions to volcanic aerosol forcing have been studied extensively over the recent decades  Figure 1. Study area, the approximate tree-ring data sample sites for the temperature reconstruction used in this study, and the sub-regions (northern, central, and three southern regions, see Table 1) referred in the text. Toohey and Sigl, 2017;Stoffel et al., 2021;White et al., 2021) eruptions. In fact, reconstructions based on sulfate records from Greenland and Antarctica ice-cores indicate that the three eruption events are not only comparable in terms of the estimated VSSI, but also regarding global mean aerosol optical depth and global radiative forcing (Toohey and Sigl, 2017).
By integrating tree-ring and written source materials, we investigate here the micro-regional temperature response and related 60 livelihood and socioeconomic impacts of these three 17th century volcanic events in the historical province of Ostrobothnia (present-day Finland). The objective is not limited to detecting and quantifying the societal consequences in space and time, but special emphasis is also laid on exploring the various socio-environmental factors that influenced the degree of impact. In doing so, we hope to demonstrate the potential of detailed historical research contributing to the interdisciplinary community exploring the climatic and societal impacts of past volcanic eruptions.

Temperature data
Tree-ring width (TRW), and even more so maximum latewood density (MXD) chronologies, have become the backbone of summer temperature reconstructions and to assess the climatic impact of past volcanic eruptions (D'Arrigo et al., 2013;Stoffel 105 et al., 2015). To put the cooling induced by the three 17th century volcanic eruptios into perspective, we reconstructed summer (i.e. June-August, or JJA) temperature anomalies for Fennoscandia and Ostrobothnia using multi-centennial Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) chronologies (MXD and TRW) from 4 sites located in northern Fennoscandia ( Fig. 1) (Schweingruber et al., 1988;Kirchhefer, 2001;Esper et al., 2012;Melvin et al., 2013;Schneider et al., 2015). Each chronology was standardized using the Regional Curve Standardization (RCS) method as it optimally preserves multi-decadal temperature variations in the 110 reconstruction (Helama et al., 2017). We then transferred this record into JJA temperatures through a bootstrap linear model using a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) calibrated against JJA land surface temperatures  from the E-OBS 10 min x 10 min gridded dataset (Cornes et al., 2018). For each grid point, the calibration and validation process was repeated 1000 times using a bootstrap approach. To test the robustness of the reconstruction, we employed the coefficient of determination (R 2 for the calibration and r 2 for the verification periods), RE (reduction of error) and CE (coefficient of efficiency) statistics 115 (Supplement, Fig. S1).

Grain harvest fluctuations
As the main livelihood of the majority of the study area's population came from agriculture, and specifically from crop cultivation, the possible impacts of volcanic eruptions on livelihoods are studied here with grain harvest proxy data. Grain tithe tax records are commonly used to detect annual harvest fluctuations in historical Europe (Le Roy Ladurie and Goy, 1982), and 120 tithes are shown to reflect relative harvest fluctuations rather well, particularly in early modern Sweden (Leijonhufvud, 2001).
In 17th century Ostrobothnia, each peasant holding was supposed to pay a share (c. 10 %) of their yearly harvest as a tithe tax to the authorities (Huhtamaa et al., 2020). The tithes consisted of roughly equal shares of rye and barley, but in the northern region, tithes were paid almost entirely in barley. Previously published (Huhtamaa and Helama, 2017) tithe series from Southern Ostrobothnia were extended to cover the whole study area. The tithe time-series were collected on a parish level, and then 125 transformed to indicate annual variations with respect to a pre-crisis (or pre-peak forcing) ten-year mean (the only exception are the 1640/41 eruptions, where the time-series indicates the variation from the mean of the years 1629 and 1645-50, as tithe data was not available for many provinces over the period 1630-40).
The grain tithe time-series were analysed with a superposed epoch analysis (SEA) to investigate the possible volcanic signal from the data (Robock and Mao, 1995). As the volcanic events included at least one unidentified eruption (1695), the time 130 series were superposed on the year of peak global volcanic aerosol forcing rather than on the year of the eruption. The dating of peak forcing year is based on Toohey and Sigl (2017). In addition, spatial variations and relationships between 3-year mean harvest losses were explored at the parish level. farmsteads in the 1603 land book, which also documented the numbers of adults living in the holding (second column from the right). The first holding (i) was uninhabited, whereas the second holding (ii) had still one adult living on the farmstead. c) Example of the registers from where the desertion data for this study is gathered from: the chapel of Alastaro (Vähäkyrö) held 59 mantals farmsteads (iv), of which 2.25 mantals were deserted (iii).

Results
The summer temperature, grain tithe, and desertion data show clear post-volcanic signals when aligned with the years during which volcanic stratospheric sulfur injection reached its highest values (Fig. 3, 4). Summer temperatures were reconstructed 170 temporally over Ostrobothnia and spatially over Fennoscandia. The reconstructions are robust with a CE > 0.2 over Scandinavia and Finland; they explain more than 70 % of June-August (JJA) temperature variability approximately over the Swedish province of Lapland and Norwegian county of Nordland and 50 % over Ostrobothnia (Supplement, Fig. S1).
The mean JJA temperature reconstruction containing all grid points (10 min x 10 min) of Ostrobothnia is shown Fig. 3.
For the years following the three major 17th century eruptions, the reconstruction points to substantial cooling with -2.70°C 175 in 1601 (with respect to the reference period 1961-1990; rank 4 in terms of cooling for the period 1500-2000), -2.27°C in 1641 (rank 11) and -1.82°C in 1695 (rank 38). The cooling in 1601 and 1641 falls within the 5th percentile (-1.98°C) of the coldest JJA temperatures reconstructed since 1500 CE. We also note, however, that very cold summers existed in the 17th century in the absence of volcanic forcing. By way of example, 1614 and 1633 were particularly cold with -2.98°C (rank 2) and -2.89°C (rank 3), respectively. Likewise, we do not observe substantial cooling in the study region after the 1815 Tambora 180 eruption (-0.74°C in 1816, rank 158) (Supplement, Fig. S2). The unprecedented resolution of the E-OBS dataset (10 x 10 min) also allowed comparison of the cooling reconstructed for Ostrobothnia with temperatures across the study region as well as elsewhere in Fennoscandia (Fig. 5 a, b). In order to quantify the reconstructed cooling within a context of climate variability prevailing at the time of the three volcanic eruptions, reconstructed anomalies are expressed with respect to a 31-year running   ) reconstructed for the period 1590-1700 over Ostrobothnia. Note that cold years followed the three major volcanic events but were also reconstructed for years without volcanic activity (e.g., 1614, 1633). mean. For example, in the case of the year 1641 CE, a background was calculated by averaging the window 1626-1640 CE 185 and 1642-1656 CE. The anomaly is then created by subtracting this background from the 1641 CE reconstructed temperature.
In 1601, cooling is rather homogeneous across Fennoscandia -and hence also Ostrobothnia, whereas for the other eruptions, clear differences exist in the magnitude of cooling across the area. In 1641, the strongest cooling is observed north of the Arctic circle, whereas in 1695, cooling was most pronounced in southern Scandinavia (below 60°N).
When compared to the pre-crisis (or pre-forcing) 10-year mean, the tithe data suggest grain yields being less than half of the 190 average during the year of peak volcanic forcing (Fig. 4). In 1601, grain harvest was so badly destroyed that the tithes were not collected at all. However, this year was excluded from the SEA composite as it seems unlikely that not a single grain of rye or barley was harvested -even if the contemporaries described that this was indeed the case (Ulkuniemi and Thomasson, 1975).
Whereas harvest losses were the greatest in the year of peak forcing, harvest quantities remained low over the two following years as well.

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The ratio of deserted holdings increased considerably in the years after the first harvest losses (Fig. 4 b), peaking on average in the third year (+/-1 year) following peak volcanic forcing and the first harvest failure. This is in accordance with the practice of registering holding as deserted if taxes remained unpaid for three years in a row. Yet the 15-year segments of desertion ratio indicated more pronounced spatio-temporal response variations than the grain tithe series. The highest desertion ratios are observed after the Huaynaputina and Koma-ga-take/Parker eruptions, when 20 % of the holdings, on average, were deserted 200 from two to four years after the peak forcing. The mean desertion ratio was considerably lower (7 %) in the aftermath of the 1695 unidentified volcanic event.
As the major impact on harvest took place in the year of peak volcanic forcing and the two subsequent years, and the main increase in desertion ratios in years +2 to +4 after peak forcing (Fig. 4), we plotted mean harvest loss and desertion ratios at the parish level covering these three-year periods, respectively, in order to gain further understanding on the spatio-temporal 205 variability of the impacts (Fig. 5 c, d). Interestingly, no specific locality stood out. Instead, the regions hit worst in terms of harvest losses and desertion varied among the eruptions. Furthermore, the relation between harvest loss and desertion ratio varied over the different crisis periods as well (Fig. 6). Following the 1600 eruption, both harvest losses and desertion ratios were relatively high in each parish. The tithe data indicates that harvest losses were not as severe after the 1640/41 eruptions, yet many parishes still ended up marking over 20 % of the holdings deserted. The most severe harvest losses followed the 210 1695 event, when mean harvest in 1695-97 was more than 56 % lower than the pre-crisis mean in each parish. However, the following desertion was moderate, as 17 out of the 26 parishes had less than 10 % of the holdings deserted (Fig. 6).
The socioeconomic impacts also varied within the peasant society. In the northern half of the study area, the accounts do not reveal whether a deserted holding was inhabited by a freeholder or a crown peasant until the late 17th century, whereas these details are listed throughout the century in the accounts books of the three southern regions (Fig. 1). As almost all slowly. By mid-1640s, approximately 93 % of the holdings were freeholder farms and the remaining 7 % were crown holdings.

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Despite crown peasants constituting less than one-tenth of the rural peasant population, their share of desertion markings in the account books is striking: from all deserted peasant farms, 48 % were crown peasant holdings. In fact, in 1645 as many as 146 out of the 171 crown holdings in the region had this marking indicating severe deprivation. The situation is similar during the 1690s crisis: by this time crown peasants constituted approximately one-quarter of the peasant population, but their share of occupying the deserted holdings was between c. 69 % and 99 % over the years 1697 and 1699 (Table 1). Thus, the 225 socioeconomic consequences were not equal among the rural society, but were substantially pronounced among the crown peasants.

The 17th century eruptions
The 17th century saw a series of major volcanic eruptions -according to the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) and using a 230 threshold of VEI ≥ 5, between two and seven eruptions comparable to 1601, 1641 and 1695 would have occurred in the 17th century (see, e.g. Briffa et al., 1998;Esper et al., 2013;Venzke et al., 2013). By contrast, Parker (2013) even listed as many as nine VEI ≥ 5 eruptions that would have contributed to the climatic regime of the 17th century "Global Crisis" besides the 1600, 1640-41, and 1695 events. In the most recent database, Toohey and Sigl (2017) list twelve eruptions for the 17th century, but also state that 9 of these had a limited climatic impact as their estimated Volcanic Stratospheric Sulfur Injection (VSSI) 235 was < 5 Tg [S]. Only the three eruptions in 1600, 1640/41, and 1695 released more than 15 Tg[S], and thus likely triggered substantial cooling over the study area. In addition to the absence of a linear relation between the amount of sulfur injected to the stratosphere and the resulting temperature cooling, one should also consider the prevailing background climatic conditions as well as eruption location and season (Robock, 2000;Zanchettin et al., 2013a), as they will critically determine the climatic effects of a given eruption. Many past studies solely used the VEI to link climatic or societal deterioration to volcanic forcing, 240 even if it is well established that this index does not directly indicate the climate impact potential of a volcanic eruption (Robock and Free, 1995;Gao et al., 2008). We can thus only insist that any direct attribution of societal repercussions to volcanicallyforced cooling using evidence of VEI estimates should be avoided.
Whereas the cooling induced by some of the other 17th century eruptions cannot therefore be attributed easily to volcanism alone, we evidence that the VSSI and their impact on global radiative forcing (Sigl et al., 2015;Toohey and Sigl, 2017)  The grain harvest and socioeconomic responses lasted considerably longer than the volcanic-induced cold pulses (Fig. 4).
The prolonged impact on grain harvest is likely partly explained by the lack of seed grain, and partly because of the continuing 255 unfavourable weather conditions, or the combination of both (Voipio, 1914;Muroma, 1991;Huhtamaa and Helama, 2017;Huhtamaa, 2018a). For example, the seed grain aid imports from the Baltics arrived too late for sowing in 1697 because ice clogged the Ostrobothnian harbours long into spring or as the ships were wrecked in storms (Mäntylä, 1988;Lappalainen, 2012). Also, whereas the onset of successive years of poor harvests in 1601 and 1641 coincide with the estimated peaks in global radiative forcing and SAOD (Toohey and Sigl, 2017), the temporal correspondence between the estimated SAOD and the 260 cold year 1695 reconstructed over Ostrobothnia is not evident (Fig. 3). Thus, we cannot rule out the possibility that factors other than volcanic aerosol forcing may have contributed to the degree of harvest losses in that particular year. Indeed, in addition to summer season temperature variability, pre-industrial crop cultivation in Finland was sensitive to winter severity and the related onset of the growing season (Huhtamaa et al., 2015;White et al., 2021). In years following long, cold and snow-rich winters, the onset of the new growing season was badly delayed, and the crops may not have had time to ripen before the occurrence 265 of the first autumn frosts (Huhtamaa and Ljungqvist, 2021). Noteworthy, winter temperatures in Finland are influenced partly by the intensity of westerly airflow, and the latter is linked to the modes of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) (Tuomenvirta et al., 2000). The years of negative winter NAO phases are strongly correlated with cooler winter temperatures and thicker ice and snow cover, with likely impacts over on a later onset of springs and early summers due to ice-albedo feedbacks (Helama and Holopainen, 2012). A documentary-based NAO reconstruction (Luterbacher et al., 1999(Luterbacher et al., , 2001 indicates that the winter 270 (i.e. December-February) 1694-95 NAO was among the most negative (-2.56; 1st percentile) over the period 1500-2000.
Furthermore, ice break-up dates from Torne river (65.84°N, 24.15°E) provide further evidence for an extremely cold winter and spring, as the ice broke up as late as June 5, 1695 (Kajander, 1993), i.e. at the second latest ice break-up date recorded since observations started in 1693. In the year of the latest ice break-up, 1867, extreme harvest failures and hunger were also witnessed in Ostrobothnia (Huhtamaa, 2018b). Thus, the substantial harvest losses in 1695 cannot likely be explained 275 exclusively by the cold summer, but also by the extremely cold winter 1694-95 and the resulting delayed onset of the growing season, which may have been unrelated to the volcanic aerosol forcing.
The socioeconomic consequences varied considerable over time, space, and the peasant community (Fig. 5, Table 1). The moderate socioeconomic consequences following the 1695 unidentified eruption are rather unexpected in particular, as it is well established that the demographic effects of this crisis were devastating. One of the most calamitous famines in European history 280 raged in Finland in 1696-1697, when over one quarter of its population perished (Muroma, 1991). Furthermore, although the majority of the population gained their livelihood from agriculture, the severity of harvest losses did not always dictate the socioeconomic outcomes (Fig. 6). Thus, some other factors must have influenced whether the volcanic eruptions had strong or weak societal effects over different periods and locations, or among different societal groups. In order to reveal these influencing factors, we need to investigate the socio-environmental context with high spatial and temporal precision.

The historical context
Following the 1601 peak in volcanic forcing, the parishes with greatest harvest losses had the highest share of deserted holdings ( Fig. 5 a, d). This indicates that the crop failures had a direct influence on the socioeconomic conditions. The reason for this is likely connected to the overall stability of the society. The Swedish Realm was in great distress on the turn of the century. The kingdom was on war with Russia, and Russian military raids caused destruction over northern Ostrobothnia (Luukko, 1945).

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Within the realm, King Sigismund and Duke Charles fought over the throne. These struggles materialized among the people in Ostrobothnia as well, as taxes increased and the peasants were obliged to provide maintenance and provisions for the troops passing through (Huhtamaa, 2018a). Furthermore, besides the increased fiscal burden and plundering soldiers, several crop failures emptied the grain stores in the 1590s. This political and military distress escalated as a peasant uprising in 1596-1597 in Ostrobothnia and as a civil war in 1598-1599 in Sweden proper (Katajala, 2002). The turmoil likely decreased fundamentally 295 the capacity to cope with the 1601 crop failure: institutions for providing aid were paralyzed, trade was disturbed and grain could not be shipped from less affected regions (Huhtamaa, 2018a). The society was overall in a vulnerable state, and the troublesome times decreased the resilience of individuals. These factors likely explain why the harvest losses directly influenced socioeconomic conditions during the first volcanic event.
The direct spatial correspondence between harvest losses and desertion ratios weakens over the 1641 crisis (Fig. 5 c, d).

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This implies that some other factors may have influenced the relationship between climate variability and socioeconomic consequences. The Swedish Realm entered the Thirty Years War in 1630. The material and human resources for the war were raised mostly from the peasant society by increasing taxes and by conscripting peasants as soldiers, especially from the late-1630s onward (Villstrand, 2000;Myrdal, 2007). Thus, the main reason for the recorded tax debts in 1640s may not have been linked to harvest failures, but to the raised overall tax burden. Also, likely the peasants had less grain for storing because the 305 raised taxes and other financial burdens of wartime, which may have influenced negatively the individual coping capacity. Available resources: Subsidiary livelihood options and resources, labour availability.

Institutions:
Poor relief, tax burden and reductions.

Supra-local connectivity:
Mobility, transportation and social networks.
Capital and continuity: Household capital (financial assets, grain stores), personal status within the society.
Agro-ecosystem, geography: Soil, microclimate, climate sensitivity. example regarding soil properties and microclimate, might have simply less suitable for crop cultivation than the locations of the freeholder farms (Muroma, 1991;Solantie, 2012). Furthermore, over the century subsidiary livelihood options, like sea and fresh-water fishing or tar burning, became increasingly important in Ostrobothnia. The additional financial assets from these activities may partly explain why certain areas had minor socioeconomic impacts during the 1690s crisis (Fig. 5 d). However, 345 the rights to practice these subsidiary activities were strictly controlled by the authorities, and new licences were not commonly issued (Luukko, 1945;Virrankoski, 1973). Thus, the new crown peasant settlers may not had the same entitlement for these subsidiary sources for living as the freeholders, who have hold the rights generation after generation.
Nonetheless, perhaps the most important factor explaining the differences in terms of socioeconomic consequences between the freeholders and the crown peasants is immaterial: the continuity of contacts. The peasant families who had settled their 350 holdings over multiple generations had a social status and respect within the community and beyond, which helped keeping trade and credit relations with burghers of the towns (Luukko, 1945;Piilahti, 2007). The mutual trust resulting from these continuous contacts were crucial for the peasants, for example, for gaining loans from the burghers to purchase shipped grain during the 1690s crisis. As an essential element of sustaining these contacts was keeping the holding within one family over generations (Piilahti, 2007), newly settled crown peasant farms or holdings with earlier tax debts were greatly excluded from 355 these arrangements. Continuity may thus have played a role in farm management as well, as examples from other parts of preindustrial Europe demonstrate (Sonderegger, 2020). Peasants with hereditary rights may have been more motivated to invest into the productivity of a farm, and were likely more familiar with local challenges and ways to overcome these than newly settled crown peasants.

Vulnerability and resilience
The investigation of the dynamic historical context revealed how different environmental, political, institutional, and cultural factors influenced the socioeconomic consequences of the 17th century eruptions. These components (which are indicated in italics in the previous section) determined the societal and/or individual sensitivity to the adverse cold pulses triggered by volcanic eruptions and the capacity of the local populations to respond to and recover from these events. That is, the degree of vulnerability and resilience (Fig. 7).

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The concepts of vulnerability and resilience have received critical reassessment by historians over the recent years (see, e.g. Bankoff, 2007;Haldon et al., 2020;van Bavel et al., 2020;Degroot et al., 2021). Tim Soens (2018) has noted that these two concepts are not opposing or mutually exclusive, but that a resilient societies can contain vulnerable people within. The socioeconomic consequences of the 1690s crisis demonstrates this concept: overall, the society seems to be socioeconomically resilient to the 1695 event, but closer investigation reveals one vulnerable societal group, the crown peasants, among whom 370 the societal hardships accumulated. Likewise, a livelihood system based on climate-sensitive crop cultivation, located in one of the northernmost agricultural areas of Europe, can be considered as vulnerable in general. Nevertheless, the people who had access and entitlement to imported grain or could subside their livelihood from alternative resources were more resilient than the others. Thus, vulnerability and resilience coexists within societies, and the influence of these explaining the societal impacts of volcanic eruptions depends on the scope of our investigation.

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The components which influenced the peasant society's vulnerability and resilience were neither spatially nor temporally constant. Furthermore, the effect of these components differed depending on whether, for instance, the demographic or the socioeconomic consequences are investigated. In this regard, whereas the 1601 and the 1641 events had dire socioeconomic consequences, partly due to prevailing political and military circumstances, the tax deferments during the 1690s crisis moderated the ensuing socioeconomic effects. When viewed form a socioeconomic perspective, the authorities' tax relief actions can 380 be seen as a successful institutional coping mechanism. However, when looked from a demographic perspective, the measures that were directed only to the more advantageous segment of the peasant society had catastrophic consequences. The landless population and the less advantageous crown peasants that were excluded from the relief measures faced hunger first, and related disease epidemics started to spread, reaching eventually also the wealthier freeholders -as pathogens do not select their host by a societal status (Mäntylä, 1988). Thus, although the authorities' relief actions increased socioeconomic resilience, it also 385 increased the vulnerability to epidemic disease.
The model (Fig. 7) was developed from the so-called impact-order model used to detect societal consequences of the 1815 Tambora eruption (Krämer, 2015;Luterbacher and Pfister, 2015). The identified components of vulnerability and resilience, however, are relevant to the case study presented in this paper. Likely, alternative components will be identified if similar models are created to study the distant socioeconomic consequences of large eruptions within different societies. Nevertheless,

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it is also likely that some of these components are the same regardless of time and space. For example, similar to Ostrobothnia, in Scotland, poor soil quality, lack of poor relief institutions, and socio-political distress made the society more vulnerable to the 1690s crisis (D'Arrigo et al., 2020). Consequently, further micro-regional research focusing on different eruption periods among different societies is needed, if the model should be improved towards a more universally applicable one.

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Historical examples can help to assess possible long-range societal impacts of future explosive volcanism and thus inform contingency planning (Oppenheimer, 2015;Riede, 2019 Various natural and written sources, like tree-ring data, grain tithe accounts, and tax debt records in this study, enable rigorous investigation of the climatic and societal impacts of past volcanic eruptions at a given location. By applying this micro-regional approach, we evidenced that the eruption-climate-society causalities are not as straightforward as they might appear at a first sight.

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Here, we demonstrated that the summer temperature cooling following the three major distal 17th century eruptions had significant agricultural and socioeconomic impacts on contemporary Ostrobothnia. The eruptions of Huaynaputina in 1600 and Koma-ga-take/Mount Parker in 1640/41 coincide with the coldest decades of the 17th century. Whereas we reconstruct marked cooling between 1601-1610 and 1641-1646, this cooling should not the ascribed to the volcanic eruptions alone but regarded in its climatic context with deteriorating climatic conditions of the Maunder Minimum. Thus, the societal impacts 415 observed during these periods should not be solely attributed to volcanism either. Moreover, the relationship between harvest failures and socioeconomic repercussions was not direct -despite the fact that local populations gained their main livelihood majorly from climate-sensitive agriculture. Although the volcanic cold pulses in 1601 and 1641 -and to a lesser degree in 1695 -may have acted as triggers, the answers to the questions of why, where, and among whom the situation escalated into a crisis are far more complex. We found that the varying degree of vulnerability and resilience, which were influenced by the 420 prevailing agro-ecosystem, resources, capital, physical and social networks, and institutions, determined whether the eruptionrelated cold pulses had a strong or weak effects on human life. Importantly, these components were not mutually exclusive.
For example, the same components that increased the peasant society's socioeconomic resilience to cope with harvest failures likely increased the vulnerability to hunger-related disease epidemics. Additionally, the policies on receiving grain aid helped the wealthier freeholder peasants with good social networks, whereas the same practices made the less advantaged crown