Page - 205 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

205The North Beckons while staying there—still lay ahead of them. There are two conspicuous ob- jects of attention in this part of Sajnovics’s diary. First, the indigenous Sámi, who appear in the accounts after the company leaves Tromsø—their transhu- mant lifestyle between the coast and the mountains; the huge herds of rein- deer (“their only fortune”) and the trade in fish that they cultivate with the transiting merchants; their attachment to Christianity; and “their apparel, which resembles that of Hungarian peasants.”103 The other central topic, natu- rally, is the weather: now the standstills, and then the roaring winds, both of which had an adverse effect on their progress toward their destination. They reached Vardø in the midst of a storm on October 11, 1768.104 An eyewitness from Skjervøy west of the North Cape characterized the very idea of traveling to Vardø by boat at that time of year as “a desperate voyage by desperate persons.”105 Conditions remained inimical virtually on all fronts. Sajnovics’s diary re- ports on recurrent, frightful storms that prevented the Viennese Jesuits even from keeping the routine of socializing with the local “elite”—the commander of the fortress and the pastor (who, as they discovered to their dismay, hated each other). Morning temperatures in their sleeping quarters were barely over freezing point, and even in May Sajnovics recorded heavy snowfall on several occasions. They felt compelled to rebel against the food regime: as early as No- vember 2, they decided to require the cook to submit for inspection the menu for the day each morning, “since the cook nearly killed us with his dry, Norwe- gian dishes.”106 Such daily tribulations notwithstanding, the Jesuits calmly continued to produce “immutable mobiles”107—drawings, maps, charts— whereby the objects and phenomena fixed in their native habitat became 103 Sajnovics, travel diary, draft version (wus), quotation on September 28, 1768. 104 Sajnovics, travel diary, draft version (wus); Hell to Pilgram in Vienna, dated Vardø, No- vember 12, 1768 (draft, wus. Transcript in Pinzger, Hell Miksa, 1:7–20). 105 Pastor Cornelius Duns (1724–70) in Skjervøy to Bishop Johann Ernst Gunnerus in Trond- heim, dated September 13, 1768. Cited in Ove Dahl, Biskop Gunnerus’s virksomhed fornem- melig som botaniker, tilligemed en oversigt over botanikens tilstand i Danmark og Norge indtil hans død (series of offprints from Det Kgl. Norske Videnskabers Selskabs Skrifter) (Trondheim: Aktietrykkeriet, 1899), 4:109: “Father Hell is in Maursund with the rest of the company, he intends to go to Vardø in this time of year: a desperate voyage by desperate persons!” 106 Sajnovics, travel diary, draft version (wus), on November 2, 1768. 107 This term was introduced by Bruno Latour and refers not only to the actual vehicles of transmission but also to the material conditions of their production (e.g., instruments). Cf. Bruno Latour, “Drawing Things Together,” in Representations in Scientific Practice, ed. Michael E. Lynch and Steve Woolgar (Cambridge, MA: mit Press, 1990), 19–68. Artists were hired to accompany many eighteenth-century expeditions, but naturalists were of- ten themselves trained in practices of visual representation. While mathematics and