The practice of peatland burning in Finland is first mentioned in court protocols around 1640, but it might have been practiced in Finland as early as the fourteenth century. Peatland burning was most common in the peat-rich region of Ostrobothnia in Western Finland and during the 1820s and 1830s, over half of the yield of some grains came from peatland cultivation. Research shows that burning cultivation of peatlands was by far the greatest source of carbon dioxide emissions in Finland during the entire nineteenth century through the beginning of the twentieth century.
