ISBN 9 780956 107398
CB Editions 25 November 2010
http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/book/9780956107398/
This is from the back cover:
Finland in the eighteenth century was not a destination for the faint-hearted... (...) Part anthology, part history, "Not So Barren or Uncultivated" gives a picture of Finland at a time when it was little known to the outside world. It also presents the familiar figure of the Englishman Abroad in very unfamiliar terms.
Me:
This book is a gem: entertaining, fascinating, astonishing. I'm loving it. The author has brought together the writings of 20 Brits who travelled through Finland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The travellers came from very different backgrounds: some were scientists, anthropologists, poets, writers, army officers, academics... One had even travelled to Finland to win a bet. Some write in a factual, academic style and others are more literary but all are informative and entertaining (though this may not have been their intention at the time of writing). The descriptions of Finnish landscapes, the travelling conditions (riding a horse and carriage across the ice through the archipelago from Sweden to Finland in the middle of winter) and even the hospitality and communications with the natives reveal what an awfully big adventure it was for those intrepid travellers.
Tony Lurcock's clever collage of these snippets from the past adds to the enjoyment. At times I suspected Mr Lurcock of purposefully omitting all the nasty bits as if he were conspiring (along with his chosen authors) to portray Finland as a lost paradise (William Coxe):
(...) the snow cast a strong light; and our sledges made a very picturesque appearance as they winded around the whitened hills , pierced into the thick forests, or extended in a straight line along the frozen surface of the lakes. During our course , the still silence of the night was relieved by the carols of our drivers, who frequently sang the most simple and pleasing airs. In this progress I beguiled the length of the journey, either by listening to their songs echoed by the surrounding forests, by admiring the unusual cast of the nocturnal scenery, or by slumbering in my travelling couch as comfortably as in a bed...
and then a few pages further on (this time from Edward Daniel Clarke)
He (the author) had not long been in the bed, where the mosquitos proved sufficiently troublesome, when he saw a dark moving spot upon the white curtain, which proved to be the most enormous species of bug (...) soon after he saw three more of a size hardly to be credited; when starting up, what words can express his astonishment and disgust, in beholding myriads, moving in all directions over his bed and body. Heaps of them adhered together, like bees about to swarm: and mingled with these nauseous insects, there were other vermin, of a description so filthy and abominable as to be nameless in every civilised society...
(...)
The manners of the people were so revolting, that one hesitates in giving the description of anything so disgusting
Although most of the tales come from travels along the Great Coastal Road (the Kings Road) there are also excursion further afield and notably into Lapland.
I've learned a lot about Finland 250 years ago and quite a bit about travelling Brits. Indeed, Lurcock quotes one of the authors who said "they were as curious about us, as we were of them". We laugh at Brits who whine about not being able to find sliced white bread and Marmite.... nothing (apparently) has changed much.
Lovely book, Clarke's account is especially colourful and interesting.
