The Discovery of Norway Abroad, 1760-1905

THE NORDIC LANDS were long almost terra incognita in the European consciousness, where they were vaguely pictured as a cold, Hyperborean wilderness. Occasional diplomats, soldiers, and merchants might have reason to visit Copenhagen or Stockholm, but few found their way to Norway before the later eighteenth century. (1) Interest in the Nordic lands grew markedly during the eighteenth century. For this there were several reasons. Sweden's imperial Era of Greatness during the preceding century, and not least the exploits of Carl XII, had made a powerful impression. Northern commodities, including Norwegian timber and Swedish iron became increasingly important on the European market. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, especially Voltaire and Montesquieu, looked to Scandinavia for edifying examples in their writings. It was moreover during the eighteenth century that Scandinavia itself began to contribute significantly to cosmopolitan European culture. Both cultural and political developments in Europe during the later eighteenth century directed attention toward the North. Travel accounts became an increasingly popular literary genre, and those who wrote them were ever seeking out new and exciting destinations for the armchair traveler. In the past there had been few to far destinations without practical business to conduct. Some had written accounts of their experiences, but these were essentially ancillary. By the later eighteenth century, however, a growing number traveled for the sake of travel itself, and--not least--to gather material for published accounts. Charles L. Batten has aptly described the ideal of travel writing during that period as pleasurable instruction. The pre-romantic vogue meanwhile glorified wild, untamed nature in all its grandeur and idealized the sturdy virtues of the simple peasantry in reaction against the overrefinement and corruption of the cities and luxury-loving elite. Romantic souls, following Jean-Jacques Rousseau, at first found their new unspoiled Arcadia in the mountains of Switzerland. After 1789, revolution and war closed off much of Europe to peaceful travelers. Switzerland was overrun and reorganized as a French satellite republic. Scandinavia became the last haven of peace--the new Switzerland, the new Arcadia--at least until it, too, was drawn into the maelstrom of the Napoleonic Wars after 1805. The number of and of travel accounts from the region first peaked by the later 1790s. According to Peter Fjagesund and Ruth A. Symes in their excellent recent study of British perceptions of Norway during the nineteenth century, romanticism underwent a broad shift from south to north (33). Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen bluhn? (Wilhelm Miesters Lehrjahre in Goethe 7:145) [Knowest thou the land where the lemon trees blossom (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship)], wrote Goethe--yet he too was fascinated by the mythical North, the antithesis of the the classical Mediterranean world. Following the general peace in 1815, foreign travel resumed on a growing scale. While patrician travelers of the older type long continued to make their own arrangements and had the means to do so, there now began to emerge a new type, the middle-class tourist as entrepreneurs, particularly in Britain, undertook to handle the practical details. In 1851 Thomas Bennett opened his agency in Christiania. Tourism was meanwhile promoted, particularly in Norway, by the growing use of steam vessels in coastal traffic from the 1830s, and in the North Sea traffic from the 1850s, on. For European tourists, Norway was an exciting destination--and it was close at hand. The visitors to the North were of varying nationality. The British clearly predominated. Throughout the nineteenth century nearly two hundred travel accounts of Norway were published in Britain alone, considerably more than on the other Nordic lands. There also came sizable numbers of Germans, French, and others. …