British Travellers Visiting Finland: from ‘Enlightened’ Expectations to ‘Romantic’ Fulfilment

Eilittä, Leena

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-51246-4_3

British Travellers Visiting Finland: from ‘Enlightened’ Expectations to ‘Romantic’ Fulfilment

Leena Eilittä²

Chapter
First Online: 01 April 2017

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Abstract

Leena Eilittä examines the changing representation of Finland in a selection of British eighteenth-century and romantic-period travel writing. British travel writing often tells us less about the historical Finland than about the shifting contours of British imaginings of ‘the North’. But Eilittä argues that it was exactly the emergence of a more ‘romantic’ way of seeing Finland which stimulated the various forms of cultural exchange which developed between Britain and Finland later in the nineteenth century, and which played a key role in the development of the modern Finnish nation.

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Notes

1.
Alfred Opitz, Reiseschreiber (Trier: WVT, 1997), p. 10.
2.
Ibid., p. 19.
3.
H. Arnold Barton, Northern Arcadia: Foreign Travellers in Scandinavia, 1765–1815 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), p. 2.
4.
James Buzzard, ‘The Grand Tour and After (1660–1840)’, in Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 37–52 (41).
5.
Barton, Northern Arcadia, p. 3.
6.
Barton, Northern Arcadia, p. 2.
7.
Hulme and Youngs (eds.), Travel Writing, p. 2.
8.
Ibid., p. 3.
9.
Ibid., p. 4.
10.
Ibid.
11.
Barton, Northern Arcadia, p. 14.
12.
Ibid., p. 13.
13.
Ibid., p. 14.
14.
Wraxall’s Remarks was included, in 1797, in a compendium Historical Account of the Most Celebrated Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries, edited by William Mavor.
15.
Coxe’s Travels was later included in John Pinkerton’s General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels in all Parts of the World (1808–1814).
16.
For ease of reference, where possible all quotations from British travellers to Finland are from the texts published by Tony Lurcock in his anthology ‘Not so Barren or Uncultivated’: British Travellers in Finland 1760–1830 (Exeter: CB Editions, 2010).
17.
Wraxall, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 34.
18.
Wraxall, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 36.
19.
Wraxall, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 36.
20.
Ibid.
21.
Wraxall, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 41.
22.
Ibid.
23.
Coxe, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp. 45–6.
24.
Coxe, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 47.
25.
Coxe, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 50.
26.
Coxe, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 51.
27.
Coxe, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 48.
28.
Coxe, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 49.
29.
Wraxall, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 37.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Ibid.
32.
Wraxall, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 38.
33.
Wraxall, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 39.
34.
Ibid.
35.
Wraxall, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 40.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Consett, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 56.
38.
Ibid.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Consett, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 57.
41.
Consett, quoted in Lurcock (ed.), p. 58.
42.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 64.
43.
Ibid.
44.
Ibid.
45.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 66.
46.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 69.
47.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 70.
48.
Ibid.
49.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 73.
50.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 75.
51.
For a comparison of Clarke’s experience of Lapland with that of the Italian traveller Giuseppe Acerbi, whose Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, to the North Cape, in the Years 1798 and 1799 was published in 1802, see Anka Ryall, ‘A humbling place: tests of masculinity in early nineteenth-century travel narratives about Lapland’, in Karen Klitgaard Povlsen (ed.), Northbound: Travels, Encounters, and Constructions, 1700–1830 (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2007), pp. 265–84.
52.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 77.
53.
Ibid.
54.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 78.
55.
Ibid.
56.
Ibid.
57.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp. 81–2.
58.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 87.
59.
Ibid.
60.
Ibid.
61.
Ibid.
62.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 91.
63.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 92.
64.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 93.
65.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 95.
66.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 94.
67.
Ibid.
68.
For a study of these works by Hunt and Hayley, and their relationship with Carr’s Northern Summer, see Cian Duffy, ‘“The story of this retired spot”: Dronninggård, John Carr, and forgotten works by William Hayley and Leigh Hunt’, on eRomantik 1 (2015), at: www.romantikstudier.dk/media/44673/Cian‚%20combined.pdf (last accessed 8 March 2017).
69.
Carr, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp. 98–9.
70.
Carr, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp. 100–101.
71.
Carr, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 102.
72.
Carr, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 104.
73.
Porter, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp. 106–7.
74.
Porter, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 106.
75.
Porter, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp. 112–13.
76.
James, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 119.
77.
James, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp.118–19.
78.
James, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 117.
79.
James, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 121.
80.
Pinkerton, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp. 127–8.
81.
Pinkerton, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 128.
82.
Pinkerton, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 129.
83.
Ibid.
84.
Ibid.
85.
Peterson, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), pp. 140, 137.
86.
Peterson, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 141.
87.
Clarke, quoted from Lurcock (ed.), p. 86.

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Comparative Literature, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
Leena Eilittä

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Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Cian Duffy

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Eilittä, L. (2017). British Travellers Visiting Finland: from ‘Enlightened’ Expectations to ‘Romantic’ Fulfilment. In: Duffy, C. (eds) Romantic Norths. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51246-4_3

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51246-4_3
Published: 01 April 2017
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51245-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51246-4
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