The daughter of a vicar, she became the perhaps most well known victim of the abuse suffered by the civilian population in Finland during the Russian occupation known as the Greater Wrath.
In midsummer 1710, Svahn was abducted naked from her sauna by a group of Russian soldiers and brought as a slave to Saint Petersburg.
A large number of women accompanied the armies of that time, serving as soldiers' wives, laundresses, cooks and prostitutes.
She also mentions two dragoon women who gave birth to a child in winter quarters in Mikkeli.
From this, it has been inferred that the names of the military branches could have been embellished expressions for the real roles of forcibly taken women.