descrierea regiunii arctice

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VOL 37, O. (DECEMBER 1984 P. 552-561ARCTIC

Cartographical Representation of the Scandinavian Arctic RegionsULLAEHRENSVARD*

Today he erm Scandinavia describes the geographicalarea comprising Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Varioussmall states had grouped together to form these three king-doms by about the year 820. Their mutual frontiers weredrawn up two centuries later and inally stablished atKungahalla n1101 by the three kings concerned. LaterSweden undertook the conquest of Finland which she sub-jugated completely during the thirteenth century. In 1323 thefrontier between Sweden and Russia was fixed cross the Fin-nish peninsula. In the meantime Denmark had established anempire on the shores of the Baltic, from which she dominatedthis sea. In 1361 the Danes took over the strategically placed

island of Gotland, until then a practically independent peasantstate.

In the fourteenth century the Hanseatic League flourishedand the Teutonic Knights reached the peak of their power.This German hegemony grew to such an extent that it becamea menace to Denmark and Sweden. The three Nordic king-doms, fearing a conflict which would leave he Germansmaster of he peninsula, therefore decided in 1389 to uniteunder one single Crown at the Union of Kalmar, after whichNorway remained united with Denmark until 1814.

Sweden extended her habitations more and more o the northand east, and encroached further and further into the most dis-

tant regions of what were at the time Lapland and Finland untilthey fell under her control. The link between Sweden and Fin-land remained from then until 1809.

Thus during the period outlined here, from the fifteenth tothe eighteenth centuries, the four Nordic countries formedat least in principle single kingdom from 1389 to 1523,which ater ivided ntowo groups, the neDanish-Norwegian and the other Swedish-Finnish.

The contours of the Scandinavian peninsula began to appearon maps of southern Europe in the fourteenth century, but itwas only in the following century that cartography, properlyspeaking, took shape. According to tradition, the head of theUnion, Erik of Pomerania, who was in Venice in 1424,charged Claudius Clavus (b. 1388) o draw a geographicalmap of tota Dania (Storm, 1889:129-146, 1891:13-37;Bjornbo and Petersen, 1909); that is to say, of all the Nordiccountries. No further mention will be made ere of the work ofClavus, dating rom 1427 onwards, which became incor-porated in Ptolemys different editions. Eriks successors,Christopher of Bavaria, Christian I, and particularly Hans andChristian 11, were actively associated with projects for arcticexpeditions, without, however, achieving much success n therealization of their ambitions.

They were spurred on to mount these expeditions for severalreasons, among which was the spell cast by Sir John Mande-villes 1357 account of voyage. These stories, first written inFrench, were quickly translated into Latin. The Danish trans-lation of the Latin text appeared about 444 and its author tookthe liberty of radically modifying parts of the story. For exam-ple, he introduced a long passage about Ogier the Dane(Holger Danske), one of Charlemagnes great paladins, whohad conquered India and converted the inhabitants to Chris-tianity. His mission accomplished and on the point f returningto France, he named as his successor the son of a King ofFriesland, Presbyter John, so nicknamed because hewas

always going to church. In the story, this John was associatedwith the legendary king Prester John, whom a great number oftravellers had tried to find in medieval times. Notable amongthe seekers was Henry the Navigator, who tried to find him inthe 1440s.

In the middle of the 144Os a Danish nobleman called Val-larte arrived at the Portuguese ourt bearing letters of credencefrom Christopher of Bavaria, the King of the Union, to the ef-fect that Vallarte was entrusted with the mission of findingPresbyter John and of exploring India, founded by Ogier theDane, he hero of legend. Vallarte joined an expedition in1448 but was imprisoned in Guinea. Ten years later a new

Danish emissary called Laaland arrived in Portugal for hesame purpose but he had no better luck and was dragged intothe war against the Moors. These events were the origin of thelongstanding contacts between Denmark and Portugal.

Christian I and Alphonse V were the next kings eager tosend an expedition o the northern regions. About 1473-76Christian I sent a group under the German orsair commandersDietrich Pining and Hans Pothorst, with the Norwegian-DaneJean Scolvus as ilot, to discover a northwest passage to ndia.(Scolvus is also mentioned in the account of the navigatorswho discovered the Anian-Bering strait.) It was Alphonse Vwho took this initiative, as he wanted to make the most of theDanes knowledge of the northern maritime routes. A noble-man, Joao Vaz Cortereal, accompanied them as royal observer(Larsen, 1919, 1925). Later historians are not certain how farthe expedition went but consider that t probably eachedLabrador.

This venture would have sunk into oblivion if the accountsof the voyage of Columbus had not revived Danish ambitionsto find unknown islands in the Atlantic, thus inspiring Chris-tian I1 to send explorers to he arctic regions in 1514- 15(Svensson, 1960).

On10 December 1520, Christian I1 ordered his admiral


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THE SCANDINAVIAN ARCTIC

Soren Norby to prepare ships for an expedition to Greenlandand, among other things, to look for islands on the other sideof the Arctic Sea. When he addressed these orders to his ad-miral the King alluded to the instructions previously given toDietrich Pining by Christian I. Norby replied hat he wasprepared to leave for Greenland and to set sail in whateverdirection as pleased His Royal Highness as soon as his shipswere ready to weigh anchor. Christian was particularly wor-ried that the Spanish conquerors (hispagnoles) were anx-ious to obtain a foothold in the northern regions, and took itupon himself to watch over Scandinavian nterests in the NorthAtlantic. If possible, Norby was to establish a base to serve asa springboard for further exploration.

The King wanted o know whether Danish immigrantshad established themselves in unknown lands, amongst whomhe counted not only the Emperor Aurelius, who was said tohave been born at Ribe and to have reached Palmyra duringthe course of his military campaigns, but also Ogier the Dane

and Prester John who, according to Mandeville, had Danishancestors.

However, Christian I1 had given up his arctic projects be-cause he had other immediate worries: Gustavus Vasa had un-leashed a revolt in Sweden. With the latters election to thethrone in 1523 the Union was finally broken up. Later, Gus-tavus Vasa indulged in plans similar to those of Christian 11with he difference that his expedition was destined for henortheast. A French heologian and diplomat called HubertLanguet, who was n Sweden n 1555 and 1557, told hePrince Elector Augustus of Saxony n a letter that the King hadasked him to equip two ships for such an expedition. Languet

had old he King hat he preferred journeys in inhabitedcountries to those in unknown and wild regions (Langueti,1699:1:171).

Apart from these royal reams, however, there were expedi-ions which helped to draw much more precise geographicalmaps than those which were being contributed up until I530 toPtolemys Geogruphib. One advantage of Christian 11s linkswith Portugal was that the Portuguese maritime charts gaveood details of the Scandinavian coastline. On one of theseharts of Western Europe, made about 1523 and attributed to

Pero Fernandes, the outline of the peninsula is reasonably ac-urately marked from Tromso to Stockholm, which, however,

s ncorrectly marked with a Russian lag (Winter, 1939:188-189).* This Portolano map was in the Sachsische Landes-ibliothek in Dresden but was destroyed in the Second World

War.It is scarcely conceivable that tlie German geographer Jacob

Ziegler 147 1-1549) and he Swede Olaus Magnus 1490-1557) were unaware of the existence of the Portolano chartswhen they brought out, in 1532 and 1539 respectively, the firstrinted maps which put Scandinavia in its correct position. Asoon as these maps were published, they gave a tremendousoost to the science of cartography. Zieglers map was printedt Strasbourg appended to the book Quae intus continenturnd the Carta marina was printed n Venice in the form of

wall map of nine woodcut sheets.Ziegler had obtained most of his information from Olaus

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Magnuss rother John, the astwedish archbishop.Although Olaus had been appointed Johns successo neveroccupied the post, as he had to go into exile when h iu \ VIISVasa introduced Protestantism into Sweden. He lived n exileat Danzig (Gdansk) from 1526 to 1537 and employed hi timethere gathering information on the navigable channelsjof theBaltic and questioning the seafarers. In choosing the iitle forhis map, he intended to raw attention to the fact that the mostprecise information related to the coasts and anchorages, aswell as the navigable channels of the interior. Olaus Magnuswas born at Linkoping but was educated n Germany. In May15 18 the Pope sent im to northern Sweden to sell indulgenceswith the aim of stopping he progress of the Reformation.After leaving Uppsala, he travelled along the coastal region toHalsingland, where he turned off his route to o to Jamtland, aprovince administered y Norway but under the administrativejurisdiction of the Archbishop of Uppsala. He spent the winterat Trondheim, where he met the most important man in Nor-way after the King, Archbishop Erik Valkendorf, who gavehim further information. In Rome Ziegler also profited fromtheArchbishops etailed nowledge of Greenland, forValkendorf had pushed his exploration o he northernmostreaches of his diocese and his information as useful, not onlyto Olaus Magnus, but fterwards to BarentS the Dutchman andto Hudson the Englishman, because copies of his notes weredistributed far and wide.

After his stay in Trondheim, Olaus resumed his no r tb ardjourney and in the summer of 1519, he followed the coast fromMedelpad to Overtornei and reached the village of ello, near-ly 67 N (according to him it was 86N) before retracing his

steps that autumn. Even if his religious mission was unsuc-cessful, his voyage was of mmense value o geographicalresearch and contributed knowledge o the. history of localcivilizations.

The Carta marina recalls medieval cartography becauseOlaus decorated he districts where hedidnotknow thetopography with figurative scenes. Nevertheless, the map indi-cated correctly both the northkouth orientation of Scandinavia(which until then had more often been shown in an east/westsense), and the position of the Kioelen range as the dividingline between the rivers flowing nto he Atlantic and hoseflowing towards the Gulf of Bothnia. In 1572 this map was

reproduced in a small format by the Roman map editor andengraver Antonio Lafreri, which helped to widen its distribu-tion. It was also used in 1555 to illustrate the first edition ofOlaus Magnuss historical work on the nordic regions, whichwas followed by numerous other editions. Towards the end ofthe sixteenth century, foreign cartographers such as GeraldMercator corrected the lines of latitude which Olaus Magnushad put too far north, but in other respects this map served s amodel for all maps of Scandinavia until 1626 (Richter, 1967;Ahlqvist, 1875:237-240, 248-249, 261-2@, 269-271).

During the reign of Gustavus Vasa, the frontiers of Swedenreached right up o the Arctic Ocean. The Norwegians and theRussians, however, were keen to drive the Swedes away fromthe coast. The Lapps of Vestersjo who ived in these partswere actively protected by Gustavus Vasa, while he Nor-


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wegian administrators tried o prevent them from fishing in thewestern seas. Frontier conflicts with the Russians took on amore menacing tone and the dispute over the Enare marshes,begun by the Swedes, was one of the origins of the frontierwar between 1554 and 1557.

From the time that Gustavus Vasa had founded the town of

Helsingfors (Helsinki) on the Gulf of Finland, he hoped thathis countrymen would benefit from the prolific Russian trade.For this eason, he ews hat heEnglishman RichardChancellor had made a voyage from the Arctic Sea to Moscowwas not likely to have pleasedhim. This discovery of a newroute for Russian trade thwarted his ambition, which was theprinciple reason for his wanting to send an expedition to theArctic under Hubert Languet. However, the death of the Kingput an end to this project.

Hostilities on the Russian frontier intensified after 1589. Atthe peace of Teusina in 1595, Sweden and Russia agreed thatthe frontier on the Arctic Ocean should e indicated by an old

landmark 30 km east of Varanga, but opposition to this byNorway and Denmark led to the war of 161 1-1613. At thepeace meeting at Knared in 16 13, Sweden was obliged there-after to give up all her rights over Finnmark.

Towards the middle of the sixteenth century, what one mightcall an embryonic school of cartography was formed in Den-mark. Since 1550, Marcus ordan 1521-1595) had eenteaching mathematics andgeography at he University ofCopenhagen. His eputation as a cartographer had spreadbeyond the frontiers of his country and his work was highlypraised by such map publishers as Abraham Ortelius andGerard Mercator.

Even more celebrated was hiscompatriot Tycho Brahe1546- 1601), even though he had published only one small

map of the island of Ven. In the 580s Brahe had the intentionof mapping the whole of Denmark. With this end in view, as-sisted by his pupils, he fixed the degree of latitude of manylocations. But the bad relationship between King Frederic I1and Brahe ruined the undertaking.

It was mostly his qualities s a teacher that made Brahe wellknown. Among his pupils was he Dutchman Willem JanszBlaeu. It was thus through the mediation of Jordan and Brahethat good relations were established between the Danes and themost distinguished Dutch cartographers of he period. TheDanes sought to turn this to their advantage in their frontierdisputes over Finnmark on the Arctic Ocean coasts.

Inview of he peace negotiations in the 1590s and early16OOs, the Swedish-Finnish state tried to make maps of thishighly sensitive region n the extreme north (Grotenfelt, 1892;Sverges traktater),3 but hese ttempts were udged ooelementary to serve as a basis for political agreement. When,during a discussion on frontiers n February 1601, the Swedesproduced a map drawn ut not to scale y the Lapp of-ficials Arent Josting and Ambjorn Jacobi, the opposing partyrefused to accept it. The Danes had the same experience innegotiating with the Russians the following year. The Russiansfelt the map submitted to them was imprecise: in their viewLappland could not have so many sizable rivers. The map inquestion was probably one that the Danes had ordered from

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the Dutchman Simon van Salingen, now in the National Ar-chives of Sweden.

These primitive examples of cartography re not as valuableas the geographical notes nd written ccounts ofheirjourneys by travellers, of which a fairly large number has eenpreserved. The growing interest of the central authorities in

the northern areas gave rise n the sixteenth century to a writ-ten summary of he oral raditions of he Lapp merchants(known as Birkarlar), handed down over he centuries. OnSwedish royal and ecclesiastical nstigation, several expedi-tions were organized in the Norrland, of which the most im-portant, rom he cientific point ofview, were hose of1600-01 and 1601-02, when attempts were made to measurethe position of the Pole. These exploratory forays, given theperiod in which they were undertaken, had nothing in commonwith the pleasure trips of today. For example, King Charles Xdirected a minister from Stockholm to join the expedition ofArent Josting and Ambjorn Jacobi, which was going to exam-ine the Lapp frontiers, s a penance for the evil he ad done(Enewald, 1920:148; Johnsen, 1923: 115, 136-137; Lonborg,1903:9; Danmark-Norges Traktater, 1916: 199-215).

Men learned in mathematics and astronomy, such as Johan-nes Bureus, took part in the 1600-01 exploration, and DanielTheodori Hjort took part in that of 1601-02. Both men wereclosely connected with Andreas Bureus, who, in 61 1, had en-graved a map of Lapponia of which two variations exist,that in the library of the University of Uppsala and thatdated n the Royal Library at Stockholm (Fig. 1). AndreasBureus was the younger cousin of Johannes, o whom he owedhis cartographical knowledge. Johannes, educated at Heidel-berg, had introduced his cousin to polar and depth measure-ments and taught him how o draw and engrave maps. He adalso made some astronomical nstruments or him. DanielHjort was an official in the Royal Chancellery in Stockholm,as was Andreas Bureus. Even though the latter was a native othe south of Norrland, he appears never to have been as farnorth as Lappland. His map was based principally on heobservations of others, including those of his cousin Johannesand of Daniel Hjort (Lonborg, 1901). Unfortunately, there islittle information on the origins of the Lapponia map. We onknow of a sole work s preparation, that of Titis of Varanger,whose map of the coast of Finnmark ow preserved in theNational Archives at The Hague was sent by Charles IX tothe Dutch States General in December 1610 (Wiese, 1903).The shore regions and the archipelago are no better portrayedthan on the map of Lapponia, and later Bureus made severalimprovements.

In 1603, the King ordered Andreas Bureus to make a generalmap of all the northern regions. The only preparatory aids hehad available were two maps, one a map of Lapponia nd theother a small map of Lake Malar engraved about 1613, ofwhich there is only one known copy, now in the Royal Libraryat Stockholm. This map of the north, engraved by ValentinTrautman, together with a descriptive text, was published inStockholm n 1626. The map ofLapponia was reproducedwithout any important modifications except for a few correc-tions drawn on the North Atlantic coast. Allowing himself a


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HE SCA NDINAVIAN ARCTIC 555

IG. . Engraved copy of Andreas Bureuss 161i .Lapponia Royai Library, Stockholm).

ertain artistic license, Bureus placed scenes of local colour nppropriate- areas of Lappland, such as a shaman beating arum, reindeer, Lapp sleighs, and skiers. This map of the

North was soon copied by foreign cartographic publishingouses, both in its large wall-map form of six sheets and alson its reduced form which could be put into an atlas. (Richter,1936) .

The least satisfactory aspect of Bureuss portrayal of the.Lapp reaches was that he placed the line of fjalls (mountains)rom Titisfjord (Tysfjord) onthe borders of Norway, directlyouth, instead of orienting it southwest. From ev.idence pro-

vided by the Lapps and the Birkarlar (peasants with the exclu-ive right to trade with the Lapps), the geographical siting ofhis. range was relatively well known, but since he regionouth ofTitis did not arouse such passionate and burning

ssues for- political dispute as the Finnish frontiers, theirestimony had never been systematically tested by the claimsf an opposition party.

Following the victory of Christian V, King of Denmark andNorway in 1613, the Swedes became less nd less interested nthe Lapp regions, Although both parties concerned were aware

of the fact that there was no clear demarcation 1ine.between hetwo countries, the .discovery of the Nasa silver mine in 1635near the Norwegian border encouraged the Swedes o set theirmapmakers to work again immediately.

In 1628, Andreas Bureus, then Head of the Swedish SurveyDe~ar tment ,~ romoted Olof Tresk, a native of Halsingland,to the position f geometer and surveyor and gave him the taskof mapping (as quickly s possible) Nasa and its surroundings,together with the region bordered in the north by the chain ofmountains (Fig. 2).. It was-of immediate importance o delimitthe Swedish-Norwegian frontier, and particularly hat arearather cursorily mapped by Bureus.

From 1635-1643 Tresk frequently roved through the northof Sweden and Finland; by autumn of 1635 he was ready tomake a map of Nasa M o ~ nt a i n . ~ e then continued to mark


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FIG. 2. Haaddraw n riginal of Olof Tresks 1642 TorneLappmark(Military Arcliives, Stockholm).

out the. frontier -along the mountain ridge .which was acceptedFor the first ime as the demarcation ine between he wokingdoms. The Danish-Norwegian administration had con-sidered his ridge as their frontier for a ong ime, but theSwedes firmly maintained that the -Lapps, who wandered free-ly both across the:mountains in the .direction of Vesterhavet(West Fjord) and .across the. marshes of Enare to .Varanger-fjord, paid their taxes to the King of Sweden ence the ter -

ritory was clearly Swedish In 1642-43 Tresk put forward tothe Council of War two fair. copies f maps of the Lapp fron-tiers of Kemi and.Torne.j These maps were partly drawnbyTresk himself, but it is afer-to consider the whole s a joint ef-fort based.on his rough drafts. s with Bureus, the greatest.at-tention was paid o the river basins and the habitations border-ing them. The fjalls (KioeEen mountains) are only. sketchilydrawn in. Tresks map work had..the result of improving com-munications, which in turn led. o increased construction ofchurches in the Lapp frontier regions: After his death in 645,the mapping of southern Lappland was continued by JonasGiadda, who put the finishing ouches o his map in 1671(Qvigstad and Wiklund, 1909).7

The maps drawn up by Tresk and Giadda could have im-proved contemporary understanding of he Lapp regions, but

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their secrets were jealously guarded by the military and landregistry authorities. Tresks work was nevertheless put to in-direct use by Johannes Schefferus 1680), who used Tresksnotes to write his book entitled apponia while keeping to thedetails of Bureuss map. This book was first published n Latinin Frankfurt-am-Main and then rapidly translated into English,

German, French, and Dutch. Schefferus, an eminent Germanprofessor at he University of Uppsala from 1648 until hisdeath n 1679, never actually went to Lappland himself; hewas, however, a passionate collector.of any material nclud-ing written and oral accounts and local objects hat he couldlay his.hands on. For instance, a pastor called Samuel Rheenhad published in 167 1 a description of the section of Lapplandcrossed by the river Lule (Wiklund, 1897).8 Schefferus hadRheens illustrations engraved, together with some woodcutsinspired mainly by the work of D;K. .Ehrenstrahl, which wereto influence the .European concept of life n Lappland for morethan a century.

Parallel to this Swedish-Finnish ov.erland cartographic activ-ity in the seventeenth century, Danish-Norwegian marine ex-peditions produced a. number of maps of the arctic regions,particularly in the northwest. One example is the Stockholmchart (Fig. 3), which was inserted into a collected account ofjourneys along the west coasts of Norway to Iceland, Green-land, and Newfoundland Gosch, 1897).9 The Stockholmchart is thought to be a copy, made in Copenhagen by Cap-tainJames Hill, of an original dating from 605-07, which waslater put to use by the Dutch cartographer Hesse1 Gerritsz. Itexemplifies a feature characteristic of he ime, in hat heScandinavians rarely pubIished the ir. new maps themselves,

with the notable exception of the polar explorer Jens Munk,who in 1609-10 discovered apassage hrough he ArcticOcean to Arkhangelsk. In 1.619-20 he followed in the wake ofHenry Hudson o search for aNorthwest Passage, duringwhich voyage he discovered the .Churchill River and probablyChesterfield and Rankin inlets. He published.an engraved mapof this region with his account of his voyage avigatio septen-trionalis 1624). o But the majority of the maps made by the.Scandinavians disappeared into the archives. Thus a detailedmap of Nordfjord n Norway, dating from 1594, .remainedhidden in the papers of Tycho Brahe for 00 years. Today thismap s n he Austrian National Library in Vienna (Nissen,1952: 12).This is why the maps themselves did ot lead to anyimprovement in the cartography of he northern regions ofScandinavia (Fig. 4).

However, one cannot escape the feeling that foreign carto-graphers sometimes refused to make the most of the materialsavailable. For example, in 1688 the head of the Swedish Sur-vey Office, Carl Gripenhielm, had made a general map ofSweden-Finland and the Baltic provinces, which was consid-ered a great improvement on the work of Bureus, but whichwas not allowed to be published in Sweden. In 1704 it wasfound that this and several other maps had disappeared fromthe map archives. They were found ater, havi.ng -in he mean-time been copied by the French cartographer Guillaume De-lisle who in 1706 published a Carte des Courones du Wordin two sheets dedicated to Charles XII, King of Sweden. De-


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THE SCANDINA VIAN ARCTIC 557

FIG. 3. The Stockholm chart, 1605-1607; MS in the Royal Library, Stockholm.

isle, however, only reproduced the corrections that Gripen- dam, but by this time he could barely recognize his own work,

hielm had made i n the southern regions; for the north he kept. as in the interval he had considerably enlarged his knowledgeessentiallyoureussersion.fiberianopography. In 172-22 he hadeen allowed to.

The practice of taking possession of maps, copying them, join the expedition of the German savant G. Messerschmidt toand then publishing them under the copyists name was com- the Ob region and beyond to Krasnoyarsk. In 1730, back inmon at his ime. Among others, Philipp Johan von Strahlen- Sweden once more, he published his great map of Siberia.berg, the captain of a Swedish vessel; had first-hand exper- Primarily he corrected the topography of the region betweenence of this. Imprisonedby the RussianS.in 1709, he spent 13 Ob and Lake Baykal, but he alsa added corrections to the

years in captivity:.from 171 1 he was held in Tobolsk, the cen- coastlines and the alignment of the mountains in the north andre for all information about Siberia. In 1715 the first map he east; as well as to the outline of Kamchatka. Strahlenbergs

drew of the Russian Empire was spirited away. Three years mapmaking activities were so.much appreciated by the Rus-ater when he had.finished a new map, it was confiscated by sians that in 1722 they offered him the post of.Head of hehe Russian governor of Tobolsk: However, he had managed Survey Office, a newly created section. of the. Academy of

o get a copy to another. Swedish prisoner of war in Moscow, Sciences at St. Petersburg, a post .later held by the younger.where aGerman merchant aid hands on t. In 1726 Strahlen- brother -of Guillaume Delisle, Joseph Nicholas (Bagrow,berg earned hat his 1718 map had been printed n Amster- 1975:116-120; Novljanskaja, 1966).


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FIG. . Nordtjord, Norway, from 1594 (Austrian National Library, Vienna).

Yet other Scandinavians made their careers in the Russianadministration-. There was, for example, the Norwegian NielsOlsen, originally from Stavanger, who had aken he nameCornelis Cruys during his apprenticeship in the Netherlands.IR 1697 he began to map the region of the Don and in 1703 ,hepublished an atlas of the river basin which was published inAmsterdam (Bagrow, 197598-102). There, he engaged heservices of the Danish navigator Vitus Bering, then aged 22,who had just come back.from the Indies. It was probably er-

ings knowledge of the area ,which made it worth placing himat the head of an expedition to,decide how far Asia extendedeastwards. From 17251730 Bering and his 33 colleagues,among whom was the .Dane Morten Spangberg, explored theRussian Empire to the borders of Kamcharka. Two hand-drawn maps (Fig. 5 of this expedition are preserved in the

Royal Library and two other versions in theMilitary .Archivesin Stockholm Bagrow, 975:157-163: Bjorkbom, 941:128-132; Efimov, 1964:PF.65). Swedish nterest in Siberiawas a centuries-old tradition. The first Russian map f Siberiadrawn by Piotr 1. Godounov in 1667 was quickly copied by theSwedes Fritz Croneman and Claes J . Prytz. and when G o -dounov corrected his map in 1672. the first thing the S.wedishAmbassador, Eric Palmquist. did was rush o copy it (Bagrow.

Two months after his return to St. Petersburg in 730, Vitus,Bering revealed he plans for a new expedition to make acartographical survey of the whole north coast of Siberia froOb to the Lena, thenorthwest coast of America, the region fAmur, and Japan. During this Great Northern Expeditionas twascalled 1733-1743), Bering entrusted he carto-

1975:26-30).


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THE SCANDINA VIAN ARCTIC 559

graphical work o several Scandinavians, among whomapart from Spangberg were the Dane Peter Lassenius andthe Swede Sven Waxell.

Scientific collaboration between Scahdinavia andRussiawas always excellent, even when their countries were at war.Thanks to this cooperation, particularly with the Russian V.N.TatiHEev, Emanuel Swedenborg was able to make a map of theSiberian mines, published n his work Regnum subterraneumsive minerale de ferro 1734).

Over a long period the mining industry was the pride ofSweden. Many people came from other European countries tohelp exploit the mineral veins. One of them was the DutchmanAbraham Momma, ennobled under the name of Reenstiema,who, in 1652, founded an ironworks at Kengis and a copper-works at Svappavaara in the River Tome area of Lappland.(The portrait of him copied by J . Schefferus, which depictshim sitting in a Lapp sledge pulled by a reindeer, has madehim the pictorial archetype ofaLapp). The discovery of

minerals certainly aroused the interest of the public authoritiesbut not until 1736 were the metalliferous areas mapped sys-tematically. At this ime, Tornedalen (the valley of Torne)claimed the attention of the international scientific communityfor quite another reason: n 1736-37 a French expedition underP.L.M. de Maupertuis made a rip in Lappland to measure thelength of a degree of the meridian. For a century the real shapeof the Earth had been discussed in Europe, and the measure-ments made in 1736-37 confirmed that the terrestrial globe isflattened at the poles. Jonas Meldercreutz, a Swede who tookpart in this expedition, directed the mapping (Fig. 6) of themetalliferous grounds n Lappland, which, however, remained

at the hand-drawn stage.12During he eighteenth century he most mportant carto-

graphic work undertaken in northern Scandinavia esultedfrom the need to establish the frontier between Norway andSweden. In July 1738 the work of marking out the boundarieswas started from Dalsland he iimit reached by the 1661demarcation nder engineers chosen together by the twokingdoms and under the guidance of an ad hoc commission.The work was only finished in 1767. During the preliminaryinvestigations, he wo sides asked he ocal populations owhich of the two countries they thought they belonged. It so

happened in Finnmark that the inhabitants felt they were as

much part of Norway as of Sweden. The most tricky differ-ences were on he ine of he rontier between Halti andVarangerfjord. For he Swedes, Finnmark had onlybeenmapped by land from the south, and the Norwegians had onlybeen able to take over the coastal regions fro,m the direction ofthe sea. The mapping of northern Norway by the Norwegianshad not got beyond the unsatisfactory hand-drawn stage: Mel-chior Ramus had tossed off some elementary maps between1689- 1693 and from 17 14 on Isaac Olsen had made rudimen-tary maps of Finnmark and the Kola peninsula. From 740 on-wards, wo oresters ofGerman origin, Johan Georg andFrantz Philip von Langen, drew maps of some parts of north-em Norway. These were used by the Danish cartographerChristian ochum Pontoppidan Nissen, 1938, 1939, 1943,1957/58, 1963/64),13 ut before he engraved his map f north-em Norway (Fig. 7) in 1795 and printed a descriptive com-

mentary in Copenhagen, he studied the copious documentationon the Swedish-Norwegian frontier which had been compiledbetween 1752 and 1766 by professional Danish, Norwegian,and Swedish cartographers.14 The determination of the fron-tiermeant hatSweden gave up to Norway airly argestretches of Finnmark, but the Swedes comforted themselveswith he hought hat an opportunity would one day occurwhich would enable them to take it back again. Nevertheless,since 1767, the northern border of Finland has always fol-lowed the line of the river Tana to the southwest, thereaftergoing northwest up to Halti. Disputes over the pasturing ofLapp reindeer on one side of the frontier r the other persist tothis day.

Nils Marelius, a Swede who ad participated in the work offrontier delimitation, also hoped to be able to profit from thematerial produced by he Commission. He published ade-scription of the frontier region, with some latitudinal observa-


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560 u. E H R E N S V ~ D

FIG. 7. Pontoppidan map of northern Norwa y, 1795.

tions, in the papers of the Royal Swedish Academy of cience.However, no Swedish maps of Norway ever existed to com-pare with those made by Pontoppidan. It was Samuel GustafHermelin, a Counsellor for Mines, who, from 1796 to 1818,published the first atlas of Sweden-Finland in 33 sheets (Lon-borg, 1903: 167-168, 175ff).

Hermelin had originally intended to make a statistical andeconomic nventory covering he whole kingdom, completewith maps. Since he had thrown himself into the reation of alasting iron industry based on the mineral sources of Lapp-land, it was entirely in his interest to have a map made of theLapp regions and f western Bothnia. From 1795-1796, AntonSwab, the chief mining engineer, and Clas Wallman, the min-ing cartographer, made a map of these rich mineral areaswhich became the irst sheet of Hermelins tlas. This, n turn,was corrected from 180 1 onwards by an official of the MiningCouncil, Carl M. Robsahm, who had been given the task ofcolonizing northern Bothnia. It was therefore to his advantage

that the mining areas of Gallivare and Kiruna were correctlydrawn on the map.

Eight years later, in 1809, Sweden lost Finland and a new

frontier had to be created. This time there were no great dif-ficulties because the beds of the rivers Konkiimaeno, Muinio-joki, and Torniojoki were quickly accepted as the demarcationline. Since the town f Tornei thus became part of Finnish er-ritory, the Swedes were obliged to found a new ownHaparanda n the opposite bank of the river Torne.

The work of Pontoppidan and Hermelin laid the basis or of-ficial map-making in the region above the Arctic Circle, workwhich the state was to continue throughout the nineteenth ndtwentieth centuries, the golden age of Scandinavian carto-graphy when A.E. Nordenskiold, Roald Amundsen, and Frid-tjof Nansen were actively exploring.

NOTES

From a paper by Cardinal Marcus of Senigaglia, representative of ChristianII to the Roman Curia. Dated 17 June 1514, this document was published inGronlandrhistoriskeMindesmaerker Copenhagen, 1845, 3: 92-193. Aplenary indulgence was granted o the navigantibus ultra mare lacia le ad in-sulas concedentis.*Winter (193 9), reproduced n CortesgoandDaMota (1960) pl. 43. Theeditor, CortesXo, s tre sses that this map should be the subject of more in-depthstudy.


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THE SCANDINAVIAN ARCTIC

For example, in the National Archives of Sweden there re three maps thatgive an idea of the general aspect of these three documents: a political mapsketch of the coastal hypsography of the arctic regions and the Kola Peninsula,clearly defining the Swedo-Norwegian fjal chains the Kioelen Mountains)and the Finnish summit line; a map f the Kemi River basin and its countlessamifications; and a voyage map of the region, extending from the upper

part of he Gulf of Bothnia o he northern ands. See Grotenfelt (1892);

Sverges trsktater (1903).4While official cartography began in Finland s early as 1633, a similar cadas-ral survey was not begun in Denmark until 1757 and in Norway until 1773.Both Denmark and Norway, however, had already been mapped by civiliansas well as by he military, usually under royal order. But their maps werenever engraved, having been declared secret documents. hus the making ofmaps of the Arctic long remained the privilege of the Swedes.SPreserved n he Danish National Archives n Copenhagen, t bears hecritical inscription: Svenske Landtmeters afriss, som icke r sonderlig justa rather poor drawing by the Swedish geometer).

6Thehypsographical mapof he fjalls done by Tresk s preserved in heNational Archives of Stockholm. A more detailed copy of the map of TomeLappmark can be found in the Military Archives of Sweden in Stockholm, scan three maps one a copy) of the Kemi Lappmark. Olof Tresk, artor dverKemi ome Lappmarker I64 och 1643 With an historical introduction yNils Ahnlund, Stockholm, 1928.)The map of Jonas Giadda is preserved in the National Archives of Sweden.See Qvigstad and Wiklund, 1909.)

*Wiklund (1897). Schefferus worked from the MS S 164 in the UniversityLibrary of Uppsala, while Wiklund based his edition of the text on MSS D 5and of the Royal Library of Stockholm.9Cod. @o h . K29.-Gosch (1897:139-163). In an Appendix to the first partThe Danish Expeditions to Greenland in 1605, 1 6 0 6 and 1607, to which is

added Captain James Halls Voyage to Greenland in 1612), Gosch puts for-wardhis heories concerning Hallscopyworkand heuseofHesselGerritszs map.Wosch (1897:146-184) The second part The Expedition of Captain JensMunk to Hudsons Bay in search of a North-West Passage in 1619-20) con-tainsGoschs comments on hemap.Acommemorative expedition waslaunched in 1964 Hansen and Seeberg, 1965).Bagrow (1975:26-30).The reproduction drawn by Fritz Croneman in 1669and the one by Eric Palmquist in 1672 are preserved in the National Archivesof Sweden in Stockholm; the one by C.J. Prytz 1669), in the Royal Library ofStockholm; and ananonymous eproduction of he 1672 version, in heUniversity Library of Uppsala.These maps are preserved in the Military Archives of Sweden in Stockholmand in the collections of the Royal Library accompanying the accounts of heProvincial Governor, Gabriel Gyllengrijp, on Western Bothnia, published n1736 Cod. Holm. M 138).Nissen (1938, 1939, 1943, 195 768 , 1 3/64).On he subject of he vonLangen brothers, cf. No. 2 (1939), and on the subject f Melchior Ramus cf.No. 3 (1943).I4The boundary maps drawn between 752 and 1766, during the demarcationof the common boundary between Norway, Sweden, and Finland as well asthose of the boundary between Sweden and Finland, established n 1810).preserved in the National Archives of Sweden, have been reproduced by C.

Hallendorf as an nnex o Sverges tmktater med frlimmande magterStockholm, 1917). The original maps, drawn between 1752 and 1766 underthe supervision of the Boundary Commission, can be found in the MilitaryArchives of Sweden in Stockholm and in the Natiofial Archives of Norwayand Denmark.

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