Time cycles of homicide in the early modern Nordic area

ABSTRACT

An extensive body of criminological research has shown that criminal and violent behaviour manifests time patterns in terms of daily, weekly and annual cycles. This is consistent with criminological routine activities theory. Can we generalize these patterns to historical periods? In this article, we draw on a recently created unique dataset, covering the years 1608–1699 in three Nordic regions, to explore time cycles of offending in the early modern period. Examining daily, weekly and annual cycles, we find that lethal violence manifested strong time patterns in the early modern period. The role of public holidays was central especially in the period lasting from Christmas to Midsummer. Probing the role of key routines, we disaggregated the composition of homicide cycles by alcohol use and place of occurrence. The findings indicated that early modern homicide time cycles were associated with alcohol use and activities in private places. We conclude by discussing the strengths and limitations of our data and by suggesting further research in the promising frontier of standardized long duration homicide research.

KEYWORDS:

• Homicide
• criminology
• history
• time cycles
• Nordic countries

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology. We thank all the members and partners of the Nordic Homicide from Past to Present research project. Thanks also to research assistants Maiju Tanskanen, Minna Mannila, Anna Raeste and Joona Mäkelä as well as Ian R. Dobson for language inspection. Professor Petri Karonen and Adjunct Professor Anu Koskivirta have given valuable comments and feedback on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Regarding the legal and political context of the early modern period in the Nordic area, see Netterstrøm (2017) and Pihlajamäki (2018).

2. Data sampling and coding was conducted by Jeppe Büchert Netterstrøm (Denmark), Mona Rautelin (Finland) and Dag Lindström (Sweden). Icelandic data from the years 1900–1989 is not included in this article.

3. This excludes claims of causing death through supernatural means such as sorcery, curses, spells, etc.

4. Infanticide is usually studied separately from other homicide types, partly because general criminological theories on homicide are difficult to adapt to the practice of homicidal or selective lethal neglect of infants shortly after birth. Especially in neonaticides, factors related to pregnancy and childbirth such as the mother’s mental problems during pregnancy, play an important role. An added reason is the low and variable detection rate of infanticide especially in historical periods (Ellonen et al., 2015; Jackson, 2006; Porter & Gavin, 2010; Rautelin, 2009, 2015).

5. In the relevant period, the Julian calendar was still applied in the Nordic region. The Gregorian calendar replaced it in Denmark in 1700 and in Finland and Sweden in 1753. Since date transformations algorithms in statistical software can overlook local and national differences in the calendar transition, we made extensive checks from edited historical calendars.

6. Significance in Table 1 and other analyses refers to chisq test.

7. In Denmark and Sweden, Sunday, in Finland, Saturday. Interestingly, there appears to be a secondary peak in Wednesday, reflecting Danish and Finnish cycles.

8. The weekly low on Fridays in both Denmark and Sweden remains an unsolved issue at this point.

9. Here we ignore the differential duration of months.

10. N = 340, ns.

11. N = 337, p <.01.

12. Private homes refer to buildings used for living in farms or villages, in predominantly rural settings. In the early modern period, the ‘home’ was not as private area as it is today.

13. We checked if missing timing data were more prevalent in sub-groups defined by victim gender, location of offence, offender alcohol use, and familial vs. other homicide. Generally, the likelihood of data loss was not biased in these dimensions. However, we observed that the weekday variable had more missing data in crimes against females, and in familial/kin homicide. The time of day variable had more missing data in incidents taking place in public locations. Cases with offenders under the influence of alcohol had less missing timing data than other cases, possibly because drunkenness was often linked to specific public holidays. The data may thus exaggerate the drunkenness-public holiday link.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Scandinavian Research Council for Criminology under Grant Number [20180044].