Roundtable: The Arctic as Environment: Conceiving the Arctic Landscape from the late Nineteenth Century to the Present

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1 Paradise Lost, Found, and Constructed: Conceptualizing and Transforming Landscapes through History. American Society for Environmental History 2009 Annual Conference Tallahassee, Florida February 25 to March 1, 2009 Roundtable: The Arctic as Environment: Conceiving the Arctic Landscape from the late Nineteenth Century to the Present Karin Granqvist, Ph.D. Introduction My research focuses on how Sámi were represented in text and images in four natural scientists travel and scientific journals and letter correspondence during the nineteenth century. The scientists are Göran Wahlenberg ( ), Lars Levi Læstadius ( ), Sven Lovén ( ) and Axel Hamberg ( ). They were all based in Sweden, but made field studies and field research trips in the north of Finland, the north of Norway, the north of Sweden and Spitsbergen. Lovén and Læstadius, in particular, maintained that Sámi had knowledge that derived from their contact and intercourse with nature. That knowledge was, in some respect, also seen as inherited. Lovén wrote for instance that Sámi had a great sense of locality that had come from an ongoing, direct intercourse with nature. The Sámi were also suited to live in Sámi dwellings such as the kåta (Sw.), a type of tent, according to him 1. The scholars also maintained that the Sámi were suited for their life as semi-nomads, or nomads as reindeer herders or hunters. Læstadius even expressed the idea that Sámi were slaves to their lives as reindeer herders, and that they did not or did not want to do anything else, they were not even suited to do anything else. They shifted outcome only if they were forced to because of poverty caused by a reduction in number of reindeers in their herds. 2 This idea, that the indigenous people of the north of Sweden were slaves to reindeer herding and not at all keen to do anything else, was extended to a notion that this ability was part of their national character. They were a people that lived out of and close to nature. Læstadius also 1 Lovén, Handlingar rörande manuskript F1:6. Berättelse över en resa till Finnmarken och Spitsbergen 2, no page numbers. 2 Læstadius, Om möjligheten och fördelen af allmänna uppodlingar i Lappmarken, 1824: 77.

2 promoted a theory that national character could be confirmed with measurements of the head skulls of the Sámi. 3 They also saw the regions in the north as desolate, but that character was scarcely used when they described the natural landscape as female though it nevertheless was an often-used characterization of the northern landscape. Perceptions of Nature by Læstadius and Lovén Since Lovén and Læstadius thought that Sámi life and culture derived from a close contact and intimate relation with the nature in the north the terrain itself and the animals in it it raises the question how did Lovén and Læstadius perceive nature, then? The answer to that is that they both described the natural landscape as a woman or a girl. In their works, they gave nature female attributes by using literary markers that indicated that nature was a female. Lovén s perception of Nature An example of this is Lovén s description of the ski-trip he did in It was done from Vardö and Vadsö in northern Norway towards Karesuando in the north of Sweden. Lovén wrote that he made the trip over the desolation of the north. But the nature was not only seen as desolate, it was seen as a female instead. On that same journey, on the 14th of January, did the sun returned after it had been below the horizon during the polar nights. That return was described by Lovén in words such as the rays of the sun being eyes filled with promises. He also designated the sun as she, describing how she blushed. It is obvious that he made the sun into a female. He continued to describe the sun as his love that had been gone for so long, and also as the one lover that he had been looking forward to see at her return. And finally he behold her. He described it as: Det var något så oändligt kärleksfullt i den blick den kastade, jag nästan blef svartsjuk att hon såg på andra än mig [It was something so profoundly loving in its gaze, I was almost jealous that she looked at others than me]. 4 This description has a very erotical, if not sexual, framing as it is formulated as a lovers relation. He described a desire, a lust, for the sun, and that became 3 Ibid: Hjalmar Théel, Lefnadsbeskrivningar över Kungl. Svenska vetenskapsakademiens ledamöter, 1869:

3 an erotic symbol for his intimate relation with the natural landscape of the north, a relation that was between him and the sun; and the sun was his lover. Læstadius perception of Nature Læstadius described in a book on the cultivation of Swedish Lapland from 1824, the nature in the month of May with metaphors of the female body: Och blomster-gudinuan, ännu skymd under vinterns kalla täckelse, börjar äfven smycka sina gyllene låckar med den gullgula honingsdaggen, salices, för att å nyo, på denna vårens friska morgon, med isig barm och rosenkind, möta den åter i sitt värdiga majestät framträdande, lefvande naturen (1824: 44). Here he described a spring scene where flowers were getting ready to bloom and the nature was designated as a female body. In the description are there also two types of depictions of nature as female. One is of a woman or girl the flower goddess that adorned herself by putting salice in her golden locks, maybe for a feast or just to please a lover. This female character was also described having rose (bud) cheeks. The other designation of nature as a female is a nurturing mother. That can clearly be detected in his use of words such as bosom which indicates that he thought of the flower goddess as a breast feeding, nurturing mother. The word icy in icy bosom was most certain there to signal to readers that the soil in Lapland was frozen during winter, and was still frozen at the beginning of the spring. Læstadius, as well as Lovén, also labelled the sun as a she. When he described the northern regions in June mentioning the midnight sun he wrote as follows: Allestädes inom polcirkeln, der icke höga berg äro i vägen, ser man då solen hela natten såsom ett glögadt klot. Nu kan man se henne skarpt i synen, utan att besväras af hennes strålar (1824: 47). So in June one could see into the sun without being bothered by her rays. Descriptions of Nature in the 19 th century Designations of a female: class, gender and dominion This specific manner to describe nature in the nineteenth century was common. The most important issue in that context is that descriptions of nature, as the ones presented here, were made to deliver a sense of (a) self. The nature could also primarily be addressed to men when the nature was identified with a woman. This was made in order to exercise hegemony. Many

4 researchers argued that the experience of nature was due to class: the way in which the process of looking at, for example, the countryside reinforced the identity of the metropolitan bourgeoisie and especially men. That experience was locked into social power and experience. Nature was fed into metropolitan class relations, and it was at the same time equally implicated in the production of gendered identities. I also would like to add that the identification of nature as a woman was also connected to, for the men well-known, relation with women even if that relationship were too locked into elements such as gender as well as class and dominion. But the Swedish natural scientists, such as Lovén and Læstadius, could at least never identify nature with Sámi since they were too estranged, too foreign and sometimes too exotic, as well as too much part of their own anthropological and ethnographical ideas about evolution. Sámi were close to nature, but they could never be Nature since it already was a Woman. Designations of the empty North : colonization purposes Describing an area as desolate, as both Lovén and Læstadius did, was common for colonial discourses on a larger scale, for instance when colonizing or prospecting Africa during the second half of the nineteenth century. The conquering of Africa could be done since the continent was the ultimate mental image of no man s land. Since it was a terra nullius was there nothing that could be in the way, nothing to be devastated and no one had to go. 5 In the context of Lovén s and Læstadius descriptions of the area as desolate, we can see a Nordic parallel: the area in the northern regions of the Nordic countries could be scientifically investigated as well as cultivated by settlers since it was empty. 6 Conclusions The descriptions of nature in the North as female at the same time sexual and nurturing as well as empty and desolate formed a platform in the nineteenth century natural scientific works. These two types of descriptions were never in conflict with each other. Instead they pointed in one and the same direction: the northern regions were (seen as) completely desolate, and therefore suited for scientific investigations as well as settlement with 5 Mikela Lundhal, Vad är en neger?, 2005: Cf. Karin Granqvist, Between the Arctic Other and Subject, in Encountering Foreign Worlds, 2007: 83-84

5 cultivation. The latter issue was sustained by the images of the nature as a nurturing female; she was, despite the area s harshness, a subject to cultivation. These descriptions formed one and the same discourse on the topic colonization: the area could continue to be colonized by scientific research, and also colonized by agriculture.