iter scandinavicum - utflykten.se · period are provided by carl grimberg, svenska folkets...

Travel accounts were among the most popular reading ofthe eighteenth century, and it was a genre to which Scandina-vians contributed in no small measure. One thinks, in Sweden,

of Carl von Linné’s celebrated notebooks, such as his Iter Lapponicumand Iter Dalecarlicum, or the accounts of his disciples from widelyseparated parts of the globe, like those of Pehr Kalm from NorthAmerica, Carl Thunberg from Japan, or Daniel Solander, who sailedwith Captain James Cook to the South Seas. In the neighboring king-dom, Bishop Erik Pontoppidan produced his magisterial descriptionsof Norway and of the other Danish domains, stimulating a Xora of localtopographical works, largely by learned Norwegian pastors. Amongthe literary Scandinavians who wrote of their travels in Europe—rarelyincluding other parts of the North—are such Wgures as Ludvig Holberg,Jens Baggesen, Frans Mikael Franzén, Henrik SteVens, AdamOehlenschläger, and Erik Gustaf Geijer.

A number of foreigners likewise visited and left accounts ofScandinavia, even if relatively few compared to those who followed thewell-trodden highroads of the classic Grand Tour. To many, the North-ern kingdoms seemed a Hyperborean wilderness and to journey therean exotic adventure. “It may possibly excite curiosity to know,” GiuseppeAcerbi notes in the preface to his account, “why a native of Italy, acountry abounding in all the beauties of nature, and the Wnest produc-tions of art, would voluntarily undergo the danger and fatigue ofvisiting the regions of the Arctic Circle.” But, he added, “there is nopeople so advanced in civilization, or so highly cultivated, who may not

Iter ScandinavicumForeign Travelers’Views of the Late

Eighteenth-Century North

H. Arnold BartonSouthern Illinois University

This article is based upon research for a forthcoming book, tentatively titled NorthernArcadia: Foreign Travelers’ Views of Scandinavia, 1760–1815.

2 Scandinavian Studies

be able to derive some advantage from being acquainted with arts andsciences of other nations, even of such as are the most barbarous.”“Journeys in the North,” he cautioned, “will be undertaken by thoseonly who have a just and masculine taste for nature, under every as-pect.”…

Nevertheless, foreigners did visit Scandinavia and in increasing num-bers, especially toward the end of the century. The representative groupto be considered here includes in particular the peripatetic WilliamCoxe, later archdeacon of Wiltshire, and the future Spanish-Americanrevolutionary leader Francisco de Miranda in the 1780s; the diligentFrench émigrés Alphonse Fortia de Piles and Louis Boisgelin de Kerdu,their countryman Jacques Louis de Bourgrenet de La Tocnaye, thepioneer English champion of women’s rights Mary Wollstonecraft, hercompatriots Thomas Malthus, the demographic theorist, and the eru-dite and widely traveled Cambridge don, Edward Daniel Clarke, theItalian artist and later diplomat Giuseppe Acerbi, and the Saxon savantCarl Gottlob Küttner in the 1790s; as well as the Prussian geologistLeopold von Buch in 1806, and the English artists Robert Ker Porter in1808 and John Thomas James, who ended his career as the Anglicanbishop of Calcutta, in 1813. The travelers’ accounts vary widely innature and origins. Most were deliberately conceived and written for

… Joseph Acerbi, Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland to the North Cape in theYears 1798 and 1799, 2 vols. (London, 1802), I: vii, x. On Acerbi, cf. Henrik Sandblad,“Edward D. Clarke och Giuseppe Acerbi, upptäcktsresande i Norden 1798–1800,” Lychnos(1979–80), 155–205. The most useful bibliography for this subject is S. E. Bring, ItinerariaSvecana. BibliograWsk förteckning över resor i Sverige fram till 1950 (Stockholm, 1954), whichis arranged chronologically. Hjalmar Pettersen, Utlændingers Reiser i Norge, Universitets-Bibliothekets Aarbog for 1895 (Christiania, 1897) and Eiler H. Schiøtz, Utenlendingersreiser i Norge. En bibliograW, 2 vols. (Oslo, 1970, 1986), while also important are arrangedalphabetically and thus rather more diYcult to use for present purposes. There are nosimilar bibliographies for the other Nordic countries, but Bring’s, Pettersen’s, andSchiøtz’s compilations are useful for them as well. For general background on Scandinaviain this period, see H. Arnold Barton’s Scandinavia in the Revolutionary Era, 1760–1815(Minneapolis, 1986). Brief discussions of some foreign travelers’ observations in Sweden and Norway in thisperiod are provided by Carl Grimberg, Svenska folkets underbara öden, rev. ed., 10 vols.(Stockholm, 1959–63, Wrst publ. 1913–24), VIII:253–69, 473–9; Arvid Julius, Sverige medfrämlingsögon. Utdrag ur främmande resenärers skildringar före 1800 (Stockholm, 1930);Carl Huitfeldt, Norge i andres øine: Utdrag av utenlandske reisebeskrivelser gjennem 2000 år(Oslo, 1932); and Gustaf Utterström, Jordbrukets arbetare: Levnadsvillkor och arbetsliv pålandsbygden från frihetstiden till mitten av 1800–talet, 2 vols. (Stockholm, 1957), I:81–96.

Iter Scandivavicum 3

publication, in a genre which grew in popularity toward the end of theperiod. Such works were generally well prepared and gracefully writtenand contain extensive factual information above and beyond what theauthor actually saw and experienced. Mary Wollstonecraft’s letters,although ostensibly private, were also surely written with publicationin mind. The exception within this group was Miranda, whose privatediary can never have been intended for the public eye. As a result, it isall the more intriguing.À

All these accounts, and a multitude of others, make fascinatingreading and have much to tell us, even if many of the observations seemsuperWcial or downright wrongheaded and reveal personal quirks, preju-dices, and preconceptions. They also frequently contradict eachother—William Coxe, for instance, regarded the Swedish province ofVärmland as “a most delightful country,” whereas, Acerbi assured hisreaders, “on the contrary, it is a dreary and unpleasant tract.”Ã Theoutsiders’ impressions were nonetheless fresh, immediate, and vivid.They were struck by things to which the native Scandinavians scarcelygave a thought, and saw them in wider, or at least, diVerent, contexts.They drew parallels and comparisons based on experience of all ofEurope, and even the New World. Not least, they made constantcomparisons between the Nordic lands themselves.

The overall impression of the foreign visitors was that the Scandina-vian kingdoms were poor, underdeveloped, sparsely populated, andwild, relative to most of western and central Europe. Yet even withinthe last three decades of the eighteenth century, they show considerablediVerences in interests and attitudes, depending upon their nationality,their previous travels, the routes they followed, and not least the yearsin which they wrote.

For example, the Saxon Johann Georg Canzler and the EnglishmanJohn Williams writing in the mid-1770s and William Coxe, who Wrstvisited the North in 1779, reXected the preoccupations of the Enlighten-ment with government, institutions, the arts and sciences. Their view

À There is a sizable literature on 18th-century travel and travelers. See esp. GeoVrey Treece,The Grand Tour (London, 1967); Christopher Hibbert, The Grand Tour (London, 1987);Barbara M. StaVord, Voyage into Substance: Art, Science, and the Illustrated Travel Account,1760–1840 (Cambridge, Mass, 1984); and particularly Charles M. Batten, PleasurableInstruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature (Berkeley, 1978).Ã Acerbi, I:4.


of the North is comparative and pedagogic, based on the assumption ofthe underlying similarity of human nature and societies.Õ

Only a few years later, however, Francisco de Miranda, while alsodiligent in visiting progressive and humanitarian institutions, shows aneye for the picturesque and unique in landscape and folk life that createsa far livelier sense of time and place, and that reveals the rise of a pre-Romantic sensibility more evident still among the travelers of the1790s. “Mr. Coxe,” wrote Carl Gottlob Küttner in 1798, “indeed camefrom Norway [through Sweden] by the same road as we; but hisattention is so entirely occupied with mines, canals, and statisticaldetails, that he takes very little notice of the beauties which naturepresents.”Œ The travelers of the 1790s were especially taken by the scenicgrandeur of the Nordic lands as the taste of an ever-growing readingpublic created a well-nigh insatiable demand for the literary voyagepittoresque.

That solid factual compendia in the style of Canzler, Williams, orCoxe did not meanwhile disappear by the 1790s is shown above all bythe Frenchmen Fortia and Boisgelin, who surely surpassed them all inthe wealth of speciWc—including statistical—detail they provide, alongwith much useful advice to prospective visitors.œ

Scandinavia occupies a vast region, within which our travelers foundgreat regional diVerences. Taken in a comparative context, these pro-

Õ William Coxe, Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden and Denmark, 4 vols. (London, 1787),Vols. III–IV. The Wrst, unaugmented version of this widely translated work appeared inLondon and Dublin in two volumes in 1784. See also Johann Georg Canzler, Mémoirespour servir à la conoissance des aVaires politiques et économiques du Royaume de Suède, 2 vols.(London, 1776); J[ohn] Williams, The Rise, Progress and Present State of the NorthernGovernments; viz. the United Provinces, Denmark, Sweden, Russia and Poland, 2 vols.(London, 1777), I.Œ Miranda i Sverige och Norge 1787: General Francisco de Mirandas dagbok från hans resaseptember–december 1787, ed. and trans. Stig Rydén et al. (Stockholm,1950) and Miranda iDanmark: Francisco de Miranda’s danske rejsedagbog 1787–1788, ed. Haavard Rostrup(Copenhagen, 1987); Charles Gottlob Küttner, Travels through Denmark, Sweden, Aus-tria, and Part of Italy in 1798 and 1799, translated from the German (London, 1805), 67.œ Alphonse Fortia de Piles, Voyage de deux français en Allemagne, Danemark, Suède, Russieet Pologne, fait en 1790–1792, 5 vols. (Paris, 1796), I, II; partial English trans., M. Fortia,“Travels in Sweden,” in John Pinkerton, [ed.,] A General Collection of the Best and MostInteresting Voyages and Travels in All Parts of the World, VI (London, 1809), 373–569; Louisde Boisgelin [de Kerdu], Travels through Denmark and Sweden, 2 vols. (London, 1810).These two accounts are in most respects identical, and the circumstances of theirpublication make it diYcult to determine who might have cribbed from whom. (SeeFortia, “Travels,” 373; Boisgelin, I:2.) Although I prefer to cite Boisgelin, he may be takento speak for them both.


vide some of the most useful insights they have left to posterity. Severalof them, including Fortia and Boisgelin, Malthus, Clarke, and Küttner,entered by way of the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which, allagreed, were an exceptionally attractive and well-favored domain of theDanish crown. They commented on the region’s prosperous farms,neat towns, and healthy, lively, and industrious inhabitants, althoughMalthus, at least, in 1799 was aware that he had not seen those parts ofHolstein where “slavery”—that is, serfdom (Leibeigenschaft)—still ex-isted.–

Upon entering southern Jutland, the picture changed for the worse.There were extensive uncultivated wastes, the peasants were poorer,shabbier, miserably housed, and seemed dull and apathetic comparedwith those in the Duchies. Farming methods seemed backward. Malthusnoted, for instance, fewer enclosures than in Holstein and Schleswig.Towns were few, small, and drab. Nor did impressions greatly improveon Fyn or on Sjælland, at least before reaching the environs ofCopenhagen. Küttner, an acute observer in economic matters, gave themost detailed description, and it is a dreary one. He claimed that helater saw, in the interior of Sweden, “extensive districts, which were farmore fertile and better cultivated” than even on Fyn, which was deemedto be Denmark’s richest agricultural area.—

The Danish capital, however, could not fail to impress, and Küttnerowned that it was “certainly one of the Wnest capitals in Europe,” addingthat the “New Town,” or Amalienborg quarter, “would not make adespicable Wgure either in London or Paris, Rome or Turin.”…»

After crossing the Sound at Helsingør, these same travelers madetheir way up the Swedish west coast, which they found, if anything, lessappealing even than the Danish countryside. The sand drifts of Hallandand bare granite of Bohuslän generally presented a picture of desola-tion, farming seemed primitive and neglected, and the impoverishedinhabitants lived in miserable huts, although the port of Gothenburgand its immediate environs made a rather better impression. To com-plete the picture of Sweden south of Lakes Vänern and Vättern,Boisgelin’s, Miranda’s, and Küttner’s sketchier remarks suggest similarbackwardness and poverty in thinly populated Småland and especially

– [Thomas Malthus,] The Travel Diaries of Thomas Robert Malthus, ed. Patricia James(Cambridge, 1966), 45. Serfdom was abolished in the duchies in 1805.— Boisgelin, I:5; Malthus, 49–52 passim; Küttner, 12.…» Küttner, 18–9.


on the Xatlands of Skåne. James, who visited Skåne in 1813, meanwhilenoted there a “more thriving agriculture, whose general appearancewas so much better than what we had met with before, that we lookedupon it as the face of a new country,” which must reXect the rapidprogress of land reallocation (enskifte) and related agricultural improve-ments there, especially after the turn of the century.……

Crossing Svinesund into Norway, Wollstonecraft, Malthus, andKüttner were entranced, like Miranda before them, not only by thesublime grandeur of the landscape, but with a markedly more devel-oped and prosperous region than they had encountered since crossingthe Eider; indeed altogether, late eighteenth-century travelers give thestrong impression that Christiania and its environs in Østlandet was themost thriving region in the North. They were astonished at the wealthand luxury they found among its merchant oligarchy. Clarke, more-over, who visited Rørås and Trondheim before proceeding on toChristiania, found similar activity and aZuence in the Trøndelag, whilevon Buch, who continued up the Norwegian coast to the North Cape,found pockets of prosperity even far up in Nordlandet and Finnmarken.

Vestlandet and Sørlandet, meanwhile, left few traces in the travelliterature. Indeed, many of the Norwegians the travelers encounteredwere likewise little familiar with those remote parts. A leading citizen ofChristiania told Clarke, “Bergen is less known to the inhabitants of thisplace than London or Paris: in fact, we hardly consider it as forming apart of our country; or as inhabited by Norwegians.” La Tocnaye, whovisited Bergen, then indeed Norway’s largest city, meanwhile found itfrequented by persons from all parts of Europe, who arrived and de-parted by sea. He noted, too, a striking contrast between the wealth andurbanity of its patrician class and its wild and barren surroundings,whose inhabitants were “certainly the poorest and least civilized race inthe entire country.”… None of the travelers considered here left anyaccount of Stavanger or Christiansand.

…… Boisgelin, II:6; Miranda i Sverige och Norge, 269, 273; Küttner, 103–4, 109; J. T. James,Esq., Journal of a Tour in Germany, Sweden, Russia, Poland during the Years 1813 and 1814(London, 1816), 16–7. On agrarian reform in Sweden, esp. Skåne, cf. my Scandinavia inthe Revolutionary Era, 205, 256–7.… Edward Daniel Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, 6 vols.(London, 1810–23), VI:2; Jacques Louis de Bourgrenet de La Tocnaye, Promenade d’unfrançais en Suède et en Norvège, 2 vols. (Brunswick, 1801), II:185–207, esp. 191–5. On Clarke,see Sandblad.


Traveling eastward from Christiania toward Stockholm, both Clarkeand Küttner found, nearby in heavily forested Värmland, better cultiva-tion and more industrious inhabitants, living in greater comfort andcleanliness, than on the Swedish west coast. Impressions improvednotably in the rich agricultural regions of the Mälar provinces: Närke,Västmanland, Södermanland, and Uppland. Küttner, who ventured nofarther north than Falun, considered them the “richest, most fertile,and best cultivated of any in Sweden.” He was likewise greatly im-pressed with southern Dalarna.…À

Those foreigners who visited Stockholm were much taken with thebeauty of its natural setting; Miranda, for instance, who arrived frompoints east, felt it could be compared only with Constantinople!

Uniting every beauty of wild nature, with the charms attendant upon thescenes of more active life; [ James wrote,] echoing the clamour of the bustlingpopulace amidst rocks, that have not ceased to ring with the woodsman’s axe;rivalling at once. . . the boasted cliVs of Edinburgh, the broad lake of Geneva,and the streets and shipping of Venice: its view presents a romantic vision,that not even the highest powers of the art of description could ever attempt todelineate.

Impressions of Stockholm as a city, however, varied. Robert Ker Porter,who in 1808 came from St. Petersburg, found Stockholm drab in com-parison. Küttner was struck by contrasts within the city itself: “I neverbeheld from one point of view any thing so beautiful, so magniWcent,and so sublime, nor yet anything so mean, so rude, and so wild, withinthe circumference of a metropolis.”…Ã

Most of our travelers did not continue far beyond Stockholm, withthree notable exceptions. E. D. Clarke journeyed around the Swedishand Finnish Bothnian coast as far as Vasa—with a side trip well up intoLapland—crossed to Umeå, then went on through Hälsingland andHärjedalen to Trondheim, as noted, later crossing southern Finland onhis way to St. Petersburg. He drew a sharp distinction between theSwedish domains on either side of the 59th parallel of latitude—a bitsouth of Stockholm—noting greater “honesty, cleanliness, industry,”

…À Küttner, 70–1, 99.…Ã Miranda i Sverige och Norge, 94; Boisgelin, II:47–8; Leopold von Buch, Travels throughNorway and Lapland during the Years 1806, 1807, and 1808 (London, 1813), 403; Robert KerPorter, Travelling Sketches in Russia and Sweden during the Years 1805, 1806, 1807, 1808, 2 vols.(London, 1809), II:118; Küttner, 81; James, 112.


Engraving (22.5 x 17 cm.) by Robert Pollard (1755–1838) after E[dward]D[aniel] Clarke (1769–1822).


The original frontispiece and title page. All reproductions from Clarke’sTravels courtesy of the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.


View of the great mine of copper at fahlun in dalecarllla,

from a drawing by martin of stockholm.

Engraving (20.8 x 15.2 cm.) by Letitia Byrne (1779–1849). Frontispiece tovolume 6.


tromsebridge and cataract between elstad and losnes, in norway.

Engraving (20.4 x 15.5 cm.) by Letitia Byrne (1779–1849) after E[dward]D[aniel] Clarke (1769–1822). Page 729 of volume 5.


and other virtues north of this line.…Õ He was pleased with Uppland,delighted with Gästrikland, and his enthusiasm grew as he travelednorthward. He was especially taken with Hälsingland and Ånger-manland, and their sturdy inhabitants. Österbotten, around Nykarleby(Uusikaarlepyy), he judged to be the most fertile and best-cultivateddistrict in the entire Swedish kingdom. He was later much taken withsouthern Finland as well. Giuseppe Acerbi sailed from Stockholm toÅbo (Turku), then made his way north through Finland to Uleåborg(Oulu), where he wintered before continuing through Lapland to theNorth Cape, much impressed with the country and its inhabitants.Leopold von Buch traveled to the Cape up the coast of Norway, beforeturning southward through Swedish Lapland and down Sweden’sBothnian coast.

In what Clarke called the “Frigid Zone” these three intrepid travelersentered a strange and alien environment, awesome in its remote andsilent majesty.

What are then the objects, it may be asked, which would induce any literarytraveler to venture upon a journey into Lapland? Many! [Clarke declared.]That of beholding the face of Nature undisguised; of traversing a strangeand almost untrodden territory; of pursuing inquiries which relate to theconnexion and the origin of nations; of viewing man as he existed in aprimaeval state; of gratifying a taste for Natural History … to sum up all,the delight which travelling itself aVords, independently of any deWniteobject.……Œ

The travelers’ observations regarding nature and landscape corrobo-rate well with those regarding the health and stature of the people.Clarke found the inhabitants of the poor Swedish west coast less “stout”than the Danes. Near Trollhättan he described a “close and Wlthy room”in a peasant hut, “crowded with pale, swarthy, wretched looking chil-dren, sprawling upon a dirty Xoor, in the midst of the most powerfulstench,” and considered it remarkable that Swedish peasants couldreach a “healthy maturity. . . characterized by a sturdiness of form andthe most athletic stature.” Mary Wollstonecraft, too, commented onunhealthy conditions in this part of Sweden, especially for small chil-dren. In Norrland, meanwhile, Clarke found a veritable race of giants,

…Õ Clarke, V:169–70. Cf. James, 107–8.…Œ Clarke, V:308, 452.


especially in Ångermanland, with whom no other Scandinavians couldquite compare.…œ

Acerbi, Clarke, and especially von Buch were greatly impressed bythe healthy and industrious Finnish colonists who since the early eigh-teenth century were steadily settling Swedish Lapland and NorwegianFinnmark, in contrast to the nomadic Lapps (Saami), whom—evenwhen they sometimes sympathized with their lot—they generally con-demned for “stupidity, laziness, and beastliness,” in Acerbi’s words.…–

Scandinavia’s remote western outpost was Iceland, visited duringthese years by a few hardy adventurers, largely attracted thence byawakening pre-Romantic fascination with the medieval Icelandic sagaliterature. Here, the Englishman Henry Holland wrote in 1811, “thespectacles presented … are probably as magniWcent as any on the sur-face of the globe.” As for the inhabitants, he noted a “singular disparitybetween their physical & moral condition; such as probably is found inno other community.” Despite their poverty and deprivation, he foundthem of “good temper & cheerfulness of mind,” possessed of a “highsense of moral rectitude,” as well as an astonishing level of literacy andlearning. “I have heard Latin spoken with Ciceronian elegance,” Hol-land wrote, “and have known poetry composed on the purest modelsby men who earn a part of their subsistence Wshing upon the stormy seawhich surrounds their native island.”…—

…œ Clarke, V:90–1, 109–10, 213–4; Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written during a ShortResidence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, ed. C. Poston (Lincoln, Nebr., 1976), 33–4.Cf. James, 7–8.…– Acerbi, II:47, 53–6, 59, 64; Clarke, V:314, 351–3, 379–83, 390, 400–5, 435; von Buch,246, 295–7, 332.…— Much has been written concerning 18th-century interest in Nordic antiquity. See esp.Anton Blanck, Den nordiska renässansen i sjuttonhundratalets litteratur (Stockholm, 1911);Frank E. Farley, The Scandinavian InXuence in the English Romantic Movement (Cam-bridge, Mass., 1903); Pierre van Tieghem, Le Préromantisme, 3 vols. (Paris, 1929–48), I;Thor J. Beck, Nordic Antiquities in French Learning and Literature (1755–1855), 2 vols.(New York, 1934); Susie I. Tucker, “Scandinavica for the Eighteenth-Century Reader,”Saga-Book of the Viking Society 16 (1962–65): 233–47; Margaret Omberg, ScandinavianThemes in English Poetry, 1760–1800 (Uppsala, 1976); Andrew Wawn, “John ThomasStanley and Iceland: The Sense and Sensibility of an Eighteenth-Century Explorer,”Scandinavian Studies 53 (1981): 52–76; The Icelandic Journal of Henry Holland, 1810, ed.Andrew Wawn, Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, 2nd. ser., 168 (London, 1987), 32.G. S. Mackenzie’s Travels in the Island of Iceland during the Summer of the Year 1810(Edinburgh, 1811) is the best-known foreign account of the island in this period; the moreinteresting parts regarding history, culture, and folklife were, meanwhile, written byHolland.


All the literary visitors were greatly impressed by the honesty andhospitality they encountered, in particular among the Swedish peas-antry, who Boisgelin considered morally superior—except for theirunfortunate weakness for drink—to those of their class anywhere else inEurope. Most of the travelers likewise remarked upon the beauty of thewomen, none more enthusiastically than the Latin American, Miranda,whose travel diary shows him to have been a womanizer of note.Clarke, who was much given to making comparisons among the Nor-dic peoples, found the Norwegian women the most attractive of all. »

The overall sparseness of population in the Northern kingdomsrelated to the general backwardness not only of agriculture but of othersides of the economy. A single English manufactory for cutlery, Mr.Walker’s in Rotheram, produced twice as much as all the craftsmen ofEskilstuna, which, in Küttner’s view in 1798, gave a “tolerably correctidea of the state of Swedish manufactures.” He found it hard to conceivethat the entire Danish monarchy had a population not greatly exceed-ing that of his native Saxony and that, despite good government and along peace, its economic life lagged so far behind the “southern states ofEurope,” which had enjoyed neither. This he could only attribute to“want of energy” in the inhabitants and the “high northern latitude.”The Swedish kingdom, while it possessed great resources, suVered,according to Küttner, from a “want of suYcient skill, and of a properdivision of labor; a want of industry and invention; and lastly a want ofcapital.” In 1813, James nonetheless found a new, optimistic spirit ofenterprise in Sweden. The visitors, most notably Acerbi and James,were meanwhile deeply impressed by the wide diVusion of populareducation and literacy, particularly in Sweden. …

The attitudes of the travelers toward the culture of the Northernlands varied markedly in relation to the time of their travels. WilliamCoxe and Francisco de Miranda, who visited Scandinavia in the late1770s and 1780s, were men comfortable with their times and they leftpositive, indeed enthusiastic, descriptions of the world of fashion,taste, and learning. Miranda’s diary in particular gives an unforgettablepicture of the Stockholm of Gustav III—and of Bellman—at its height,as well as of contemporary Copenhagen, with true Boswellian joie devivre.

» Cf. Boisgelin, II:v, 3, 166–7; Clarke, V:706, 708, 713, VI:68. … Boisgelin, II:183–5; Küttner, 12–3, 75, 86; James, 5, 105, 110–1, 128; Acerbi, I:136, 138.


Acerbi, in the later 1790s, seems caught between two cultural epochs.He complained of a total lack of decent inns between Helsingborg andStockholm, and was generally unimpressed with polite society, ameni-ties, and the arts in the Swedish capital, yet on the whole he was fond ofthe Swedish people. In Finland, he was enchanted by a small forestvillage, “Yervenkyle” (Järvenkylä). A blind, white-bearded Wddler nearMamola recalled to him the bards of the ancient North, and Acerbibecame much absorbed with traditional Finnish folk music and verse.Clarke, who crossed paths with him in Uleåborg (Oulu), recounts thatAcerbi there played for him on the harpsichord “one of his own compo-sitions in the Finnish style.” This provides an apt vignette of theItalian-born cosmopolite, who enjoyed himself mightily in the littlenorth Finnish seaport for three winter months, playing “quartettos”with his companions to a delighted local audience.

The other travelers around the turn of the century were more un-abashedly Romantic in their viewpoints, displaying even greater coolnesstoward the social and cultural pretensions of the capitals; the theater,opera, libraries, and art collections; the academies, universities, andsalons. “The poverty of this little kingdom,” sighed Robert Ker Porter inSweden in 1808, “is the apology for these gothicisms.” Certainly thecontrast between the Stockholm of Gustav III’s “golden age,” whichCoxe and Miranda had described, and of Gustav IV Adolf ’s “iron age”by the turn of the century, must have been sobering enough in reality,as many old Gustavians well knew. Yet—like Acerbi—Fortia andBoisgelin, Wollstonecraft, Clarke, Küttner, Porter and James show atthe same time an enthusiasm for Nordic folk life and culture whichstands in striking contrast to their views on Scandinavian urban highsociety and culture. La Tocnaye and Holland were also learned ama-teurs of Nordic antiquity and the old Icelandic literature.

There is a deeper explanation for this. Travelers’ accounts of foreignparts proverbially tell as much about the travelers themselves and theirattitudes toward their own homelands—and about life in general—asabout the lands they visit. Those who journeyed to Scandinavia at theclose of the eighteenth century were no longer persons at home in theirown time. Like the Hellenistic Greeks, who dreamed of pastoral Arcadia,or Tacitus, who in imperial Rome described the rude and simple virtuesof the barbaric Germans, our travelers were seeking what they envi-

Acerbi, esp. I:6, 218–9, 226, 268, 281; Clarke, V:503.


sioned to be Europe’s last unspoiled idyll—the successor to the lostparadise of Rousseau’s Switzerland, with which they often fondly com-pared Norway and Sweden. Coming from lands torn by revolution andwar, and eroded, in their view, by dry rationalism and vain materialism,their ideal North was the projection of their mal de siècle.

Sturdy peasants living amid sublime scenery and the legends of aheroic past conWrmed their search. “If any one wishes to see whatEnglish farmers once were, and how they fared,” Clarke wrote wistfully,“he should visit Norway.” Petits maîtres, mincing courtiers, self-impor-tant bureaucrats, pretentious hostesses, obsequious Xunkies, nymphsof easy virtue, Xinty merchants, and crabbed pedants, meanwhile, didnot Wt in, as symptoms of an alien corruption disturbing to the ideal.The Swedish middle classes showed “apish good breeding and preju-dices,” wrote Mary Wollstonecraft with obvious distaste, while thepeasantry revealed a “simple gracefulness of deportment.” Descriptionsof unspoiled peasant life in the mountain fastness of Norway’s inte-rior—which she regretted not having been able to visit—carried her inimagination “back to the fables of the golden age.” In sylvan Järvenkylä,Giuseppe Acerbi ruminated on the “excessive luxury of the great inEurope.” À

Many of the travelers commented at length on political matters inthe Scandinavian lands, but their observations are generally of second-ary interest, since they simply reXect the views of those upper-classpersons with whom they were able to communicate. But while theythus show little originality in such matters, their accounts are valuableas corroborating sources for views apparently widely expressed at thetime by politically informed and concerned Scandinavians.

Nonetheless, political developments came to cast their shadow overthe bright vision of a Northern Arcadia that had Xourished during the1790s, once the Scandinavian kingdoms themselves were drawn intothe Maelstrom of the Napoleonic wars, beginning with the Britishnaval attack on Copenhagen in 1801. Even before then, Fortia andBoisgelin, at least, were sobered by the spread of pernicious foreigninXuences in Sweden. “The universal corruption of the times has creptinto the large towns,” the latter wrote, “and the change is felt particu-larly in those parts of the kingdom most frequented by travelers.” LaTocnaye noted in 1798 that in Bergen “everything is for commerce.”

À Clarke, V:620; Wollstonecraft, 35, 128; Acerbi, I:226; James, 141–2.


Clarke was disturbed the following year by the growing encroachmentof a crass, alien spirit of commercialism, threatening to old traditionalvalues, above all in Norway. Following Sweden’s defeat by Russia andrevolution in 1809, Clarke would write dejectedly, “He must indeed besanguine who can hope to see Sweden regenerated and her glory re-stored.” Ã

The hardheaded Prussian, von Buch, meanwhile welcomed in 1806what the Romantics had deplored. Inspired by the indomitable utili-tarianism of the Enlightenment, he hailed the retreat of ignorance andprovincialism in the North before the advance toward civilization,looking forward to the fullest exploitation of available resources tosupport the largest possible populations. He thus anticipated the re-placement of primitive Lapps and even of shiftless northern NorwegianWsherfolk by sober and industrious Finnish settlers, whom he likened toAmerican pioneers. Õ The enchantment was over. By now, EuropeanRomantics were looking ever more to the past—or beyond the seas—for the home of their dreams.

Still, Romantic stereotypes had been well established that wouldcontinue to dominate a voluminous travel literature about the Norththroughout the nineteenth century and beyond.

“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us/To see oursels as others see us!”wrote Robert Burns in 1786. Œ To study outsiders’ views is to be madeaware of how diVerently from insiders they may perceive a given situa-tion. For Scandinavians and for others, like myself, who have studiedthe later eighteenth century in the North from an inside perspective, itwas a time of dynamic, exciting, and often surprisingly rapid develop-ment in virtually all areas of life. œ To outsiders, especially in the 1790s,this seems hardly to have been evident, viewed against a turbulentEuropean background and in the light of their particular concerns.

Their accounts oVer, too, not so few surprises to the insider, incontrast to generally established presuppositions today. It seems hardto imagine that the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein were so muchmore prosperous and progressive than Denmark proper, even afterseveral years of vigorous social and economic reform in the Kingdom;

Ã Boisgelin, II:v, 50, 166–7; La Tocnaye, II:193, 195–7; Clarke, V:617, VI:31–5, 88, 240–1,293–4. Cf. James, 10, 95, 142–5. Õ Von Buch, 31–3, 80–1, 118, 161–2, 246–7, 264–5, 300–1, 332. Œ Robert Burns, “To a Louse.” œ Cf. my Scandinavia in the Revolutionary Era.


that the southern provinces of Sweden, now its agricultural and indus-trial heartland, long remained poor and unproductive, in contrast notonly to the Mälar provinces but especially to Norrland and FinnishÖsterbotten; that Norway should seem so much better oV economi-cally than Denmark or Sweden; that Scandinavian economic develop-ment as a whole should seem so far behind not only that of GreatBritain, the usual yardstick, but that of much of Continental Europe aswell. Yet despite diVerences in detail, this is essentially the compositepicture the foreign travelers give at the end of the eighteenth century.

In sum, foreign observers raise questions which might not occur toeven the most astute insider today, working only with inside materials,but which must be faced in seeking to arrive at a more balanced under-standing of the past.

portrait of a wild lapland woman and child.

Engraving (8.6 x 11.5 cm.) by Robert Pollard (1755–1838) after [Elias (1739–1818) or Johan Fredrik (1755–1816)?] Martin, Stockholm. Page 263 of volume 5.

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