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Making marriage agreements public. In local cultures, the legitimacy of a marriage was sealed by making the union public; the community also had to know and acknowledge the status of the married couple and their future children. In the Savo-Karelian kinship culture area, the proposal and collection of the bride have taken place in public. The ancient Scandinavian giving-away of the bride or betrothal, which as a ceremony spread to western and southern Finland, took place in the presence of witnesses or in some public place, such as a fair or market (map 14). Its public nature has made the marriage socially binding, whether it was sealed by a handshake (map 11), an exchange of gifts, giving away of the bride or escorting the young couple to the wedding bed (map 20).

Both the Byzantine and Roman churches gradually took control of the confirmation of marriages; the Catholic church even declared marriage to be a sacrament decreed by God. In Finland, church weddings became established in the 1600-1700s, in addition, the Lutheran church adopted the public announcement of marriage banns. In western Finland, the celebration of the banns (map 15) and the marriage ceremony performed in the bridal home, the home wedding, transformed the elements of old kinship weddings. In con-trast, within the circle of the Orthodox church, the couple was married in church at an opportune moment before or after the wedding, and confirmation of the marriage by the church had little effect on the course of the kinship wedding.

Future of kinship groups and community. Setting up of a new marital home is also a question of the fu-ture of the kinship groups or of the house, and at the same time of the whole local community. A legal mar-riage has confirmed the rights of the marmar-riage partners and their future offspring to the social and material property of the kinship groups or families. Alongside proposal and wedding ceremonies, arrangements for the young couple’s future were also always made, property assigned and agreements drawn up, their ef-fects reaching far into future generations.

In the swidden era, when wilderness areas were still free or land ownership was collective, sons stayed to farm the swidden of their kin or moved away to become settlers, establishing collective households, ex-tended families, with their brothers. Daughters moved into the groom’s exex-tended family as daughters-in-law and were given dowries of cattle, grain and all kinds of goods the daughter-in-law and even her children were deemed to need as members of the groom’s extended family. In practice, girls were given the inherit-ance of their kin, and the negotiations at the time of the proposal concerned above all the girl’s dowry (maps 11, 13); the bride’s relatives took part in the preparation of wedding presents when the antilas went around collecting bridal aid (map 12). At Savo-Karelian weddings, and also in the area of agrarianized kinship wed-dings, aiding of the young couple focused on drinking the wedding toasts (map 21). They were accompan-ied by gifts to the bride of cash and other property mainly by relatives; the families equipped the bride for her future married life.

In agrarian cultures, social responsibility was transferred from the kinship group to the village. The local community created many kinds of assistance networks, and at weddings, too, villagers combined forces to help young couples in weaker positions to set up home. In western and southern Finland, the wedding be-came an occasion where it was acceptable to collect money or goods (map 21). The collecting of bridal presents changed from collecting gifts from relatives to the provision of collective aid from the village com-munity for the young couple. The most impecunious young people might hold so-called cash weddings or banns dances, where the bride sold liquor and danced with guests for a fee. In western Finland, where it be-came customary for cultivated land to be passed on as inheritance, gradually also to daughters, negoti-ations were no longer just about the bride’s dowry but about land, the house, the fundamental resources of society. It was mainly through marriages that the social and cultural categories of the village community were established.

Symbolism of rites for the future. In local communities, marriage meant a fundamental turning point in terms of the young couple's future, as there were hardly any other opportunities for choices affecting the course of their whole lives. The young marriage was also the object of the expectations of the parents and the whole kinship group; in effect of all the hopes set on a good marriage and family life by man living in the cultural environment of each era. With the transition to agrarian economy, wedding rites have constantly in-creased in number, perhaps most in the Catholic Middle Ages, when marriage was predestined as a per-manent, lifelong union, and divorces were no longer acceptable. In farming communities, ever greater ex-pectations focused on the marriage partner. The wife had to cope with the role of daughter-in-law and later mistress of the house, to bring prosperity into the house. She was expected to bear many children, signify-ing added labor resources and security for their parents’ old age.

Wedding rites have been preserved especially in the sorcerer culture area of Savo-Karelia. The securing of girls’ future began from so-called love spells, and fertility rites continued at all the stages of entering mar-riage (maps 18-20). From the proposal journey on, the groom’s family had a sorcerer with them (map 11), and particularly in Dvina and Olonets, the role of the wedding sorcerer with his whip became more and more prominent, which evidently was a contributory factor to the disappearance of wedding songs in the old meter performed by women.

Reaffirming of community spirit. Weddings were among the most important of all the social dramas that helped to reinforce the importance of the kinship group or village and its continuity. In peasant villages, mar-riage celebrations were a part of redistributing ceremonial exchange. In their course, wealth accumulated by houses was distributed among the community, and the livelihoods of often impecunious spokesmen, bridal dressers, fiddlers, caterers and other wedding functionaries secured. The village weddings of the landed peasantry class were a display of the wealth of the bride’s and groom’s homes, and at the same time a demonstration of the householders’ hard work and social responsibility towards their servants, tenants, and other members of the village community.

In the era of kinship communities, the wedding meal was shared with relatives, in agrarian communities the shared meal strengthened the sense of belonging to the village, and hospitality customs were intro-duced in all the stages where the young couple or the wedding house was in contact with the village com-munity. Hospitality was provided at young people’s leaving parties, betrothal and banns celebrations (maps 13-15), even at the head-covering occasion (map 20) or when the wedding procession passed the onlook-ers (map 18). The provision of food and hospitality ceremonies served to constantly reproduce neighborli-ness, a sense of community, and reciprocity between houses.

At weddings, villagers had an opportunity to show off socially, and they may have felt that they were elev-ated above their everyday lives. At feasts, the respectable peasant was permitted to drink spirits and dance.

In western Finland, various forms of interaction were adopted, program items that brought enjoyment to the company. Wedding feasts introduced to Finland an entirely new culinary culture and a tradition of entertain-ment and social intercourse. The rite songs in the old meter were replaced by singing dances in the new meter and fiddler music. Good food, alcohol and dancing made the atmosphere of peasant weddings quite different from kinship weddings with their ritual songs and laments. The new customs spread to western and southern Finland mainly from the village cultures of Lutheran Europe, to southeastern areas also via the Baltic countries from central and eastern Europe. In western tradition, the customs of social intercourse be-came solemn gentry culture (maps 17-19), while in the southeast, comic plays or teasing between villages became common, in the same way as at Estonian weddings.