The Great Famine of 1695–97, or simply the Great Famine, was a catastrophic famine that affected present Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway and Sweden: at the time, all of these areas belonged to the Swedish Empire with the exception of Norway, which was a Danish province. The areas which were worst affected were the Swedish province of Finland and Norrland in Sweden proper.
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Finland
In the Swedish province of Finland, the Great Famine of 1695–97 was also referred to as "The Years of Many Deaths" by some Finnish historians, because it killed about a third of the Finnish population in only two years, or about 150,000. It was Finland's worst demographic catastrophe.
Sweden
From 1688 onward, Sweden had been affected by early frost and bad harvests. This culminated in the winter of 1695, which was described as the coldest since 1658 and the rye did not flower before July. Because of this, the Great Famine of 1695 is also referred to as Det stora svartåret ("The Great Black Year"). The harvest of 1696, furthermore, was reportedly so bad that each farm produced only one loaf of rye bread.
Outside of Finland, the northernmost provinces of Sweden were the most severely affected. Desperate famine victims from the countryside left for the cities in search for food, especially to the capital of Stockholm, where in the spring of 1697 the streets were reportedly strewn with corpses and people dying of starvation.
Israel Kolmodin wrote the psalm Den blomstertid nu kommer in 1695 in connection to the famine, intended as a prayer to God that the next summer would bring food.