Conclusions

Abstract

This book has presented a new approach toward Romantic geographies, scrutinizing the mystification to which Romanticism and northern indigenous cultures are often subjected and recovering the role of the sciences. The period covered, c. 1790–1830, not only saw rapid acceleration in European and British accumulation of knowledge on northern regions, but was also one in which northern indigenous peoples and traditional cultures were subject to a form of ethnographic study that was simultaneously scientific and antiquarian in character. This polymathic approach to the northern landscape and the peoples inhabiting it not only produced greatly detailed scientific travelogues, but also facilitated and encouraged attempts at gathering indigenous knowledge. The ways of knowing the north traced throughout this book reveal the multifaceted nature of the Romantic sciences, breaking down imagined divisions between Enlightenment and Romantic thought. Indeed, the geographical concept of the north itself is broadened and revealed to have consisted of more than latitude. Geographical concepts of the north were multifaceted, reflecting the broad reach of the geographical sciences themselves in the period; what constituted the north was contingent upon a range of cultural, environmental, and historical factors. Observers then drew these threads together across various northern locations and cultures to highlight similarities they found between the English and Norwegians, the Saami and Inuit. These comparisons both reinforced preexisting intra-European cultural hierarchies and contributed to British imperial identity formation.

This Night dreamed in the Chepawyan Language—the first time and I appeared to have a more extensive command of words when asleep than when awake—being so long and not hearing any thing else spoken, but the Jepewyan—custom is second nature.

—Peter Fidler, 1792