The Kurki family or Kurck, also known as the family of Laukko, is a medievally-originated Finnish noble family that produced several historically prominent persons. It is documented in the late 14th century. The family is usually divided in several lineages as it continued through female succession.
Please observe that no one surnamed Kurki who lived in Finland after the 17th century is descended from this family through documentarily proven agnatic lineage. The surname is common in Finland, and has been used by several other former or current unrelated families.
The medieval Kurki family held the manor of Laukko at least since the 14th century, until the beginning of the 19th century.
A seal of a member of this family is known already from the early 15th century. It depicts a common crane, which is kurki in Finnish. However, the coat of arms of the family since the 15th century depicts a sword with three stars (lady Elin's coat of arms, and later confirmed in the 1st baron's coat of arms at the Swedish House of Nobility when the baronial rank was obtained in 1652).
In 1797, Arvid Fredrik Kurck (1735–1810) was created a Swedish count, but his branch became extinct.
Original Kurki family of Tavastia
According to folklore, an ancestor of the family Kurki was Matthew Kurki, a legendary chieftain of Pirkka men of the 13th century. Legendary material assign him as the first owner of Laukko. However, before the confiscation of ecclesiastical properties in the 16th century, kings and government did not have lands to grant to speak of, and therefore this idea, having received it from king as reward, in the folklore derives from more modern era. In Middle Ages, people owned usually just inherited lands and lands conquered or assarted by the clan. Landed properties were highly family-committed.
Laukko seems not to have been an immense landholding until made gradually such by the second Kurki family in the 15th century.
The location of the Matthew (Matti) Kurki folklore as itself matches, because Laukko is located in Vesilahti, the historical Pirkkala area, where those folk legends are strongest.
There is a gap of a century between Matti Kurki and the first documented Kurki, deputy lawspeaker Jakob Kurki (Jeppe, Jesper, Jaakko, Jacob) of the late 14th century, whose seat was the manor of Niemenpää in southern Tavastia.
Medieval Kurki family
The heiress of the old Kurki family of Niemenpää married sometime in the late 14th century a nobleman named Herman, of either Swedish or German extraction and using the nickname Svärd, "sword", in accordance with his coat of arms. Of their sons, Nicholas used the nickname Kurki, whereas another son, Peter, seems to have been known as "sword" ("..old lord Peder Swärdh.."). From Peter, owner of Niemenpää, the continuous line holding the lordship of Harviala descends. Nicholas is surmised to have been childless. This however is proven false by an entry in the Diplomataricum Fennicum that clearly mentions a daughter. Several genealogies name him and his wife Cecilia Filipsdotter as the parents of one to three children, among them Jeppe Kurki. Other theories include the descent of Jeppe from a younger kinsman of his (some researchers have estimated that as nephew, be it nephew through a brother or, more probably, a sister). This Jeppe Kurki (Jacob, Jaakko, Jesper) married Karin Klasdotter, daughter of Klas Lydekesson, an important heiress.
The last male of their line was a grandson, Arvid Kurk (1463–1522), who was the last catholic bishop of Turku. Bishop Arvid Klasson Kurk had a sister, Elin Kurk, who was married with Knut Eriksson (Canute Ericsson), lawspeaker of Northern Finland. Elin's son Jöns Knutsson (1503-c 1577) inherited his uncle the bishop Arvid and was the next owner of Laukko and the Kurki patrimony.
This epoch also includes (at least in folklore): Klas Kurk, of the 15th century. He was a nobleman who in the folk ballad Death of Elin burned his (first) wife Elin, whom he believed to have been unfaithful and given birth to a son of another man. The poem however is either fictive or possibly persons are mixed.
Noble, ultimately baronial family Kurki, in Sweden known as Kurck
Elin Klasdotter, sister of bishop Arvid Kurk, and heiress of the medieval Kurki family, is the ancestress of the next male-line family that used the surname Kurki. The Swedish formulation of the name – Kurck – was manifested as the family was registered under that name in 1625 at the Swedish House of Nobility when that institution was established.