Translating Swedish Colonialism: Johannes Schefferus’s Lapponia in Britain c. 1674-1800

Abstract

Scandinavian Studies, 91(1-2): 134-162 https://doi.org/10.5406/scanstud.91.1-2.0134 Access to the published version may require subscription. N.B. When citing this work, cite the original published paper. Permanent link to this version: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-82050 1 (25) Please note that this is a Preprint Copy. The article will be published in Scandinavian Studies vol. 91 (2019) Translating Swedish colonialism: Johannes Schefferus's Lapponia in Britain c. 1674-1800.The first anthropological work by Oxford University Press was published in 1674. 1 The book, The History of Lapland, was the English translation of Johannes Schefferus's Lapponia published in Frankfurt the previous year. Although there had been scattered references to 'Lapland' in classical and medieval sources, Schefferus's text was the first attempt at compiling a comprehensive account of Sápmi and its inhabitants, the indigenous Sámi people. 2 Through its endorsement by influential brokers including the Royal Society and Oxford University, The History of Lapland was widely studied in the British Isles with references to it cropping up in numerous sources including poems, songs, newspapers, geography books and philosophical tracts. The book fueled interest in the Sámi, who frequently appeared in non-Scandinavian works on religion, historical progress, and early racial studies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and often featured in these discussions alongside other colonized and Indigenous peoples. Despite the curiosity in Britain about the Sámi prompted by Schefferus's text, the history of the Sámi and their epistemological representation in the early modern period has tended to be studied almost exclusively in relation to the Scandinavian countries and to a lesser degree Russia, with the exception being works charting how Sápmi was constructed in foreign travelogues. 3 Adopting a wider transnational perspective, I will in this article analyze howLapponia was part of an emerging pan-European interest in anthropology and a new scientific drive to map and construct both places and peoples. These processes were, as this article will show, permeated by colonial agendas. As several contributors to this special issue argue, the

Lapponia

“…517 Para a relação cronológica das publicações de Lapponia, ver anexo 2. verdade, é na Lapônia e "não na América que foi descoberto um Novo Mundo" 518 . Aqui, podemos identificar uma das intenções para a escrita da obra: responder às ambições e curiosidades 519 e seu crescente mercadoem um período de experimentação, coleção e teorização sobre o continente americano. A partir disso, o exótico foi deslocado para o velho mundo, tornando-se "próximo" em comparação a uma América mais "distante".…”