Page - 209 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

© PER PIPPIN ASPAAS AND LÁSZLÓ KONTLER, ����  |  doi:10.1163/9789004416833_007 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. Chapter 5 He Came, He Saw, He Conquered?: The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum In these northern regions, so rarely visited and so little explored, everything is of interest, and Father Hell studied everything. jérôme de lalande1 ∵ To commission a high-quality, internationally respected astronomical observa- tion and thus restore Denmark’s dwindling fame as a “nation of astronomy” was no doubt the chief ambition of Hell’s sponsors. In the very first letter from Foreign Minister Bernstorff to his Viennese envoy, the only explicit aim of the expedition is observation of the transit of Venus from Vardø.2 Although the expedition’s timeframe expanded significantly, with the departure from Vien- na finally set more than a year ahead of the astronomical event, there is no evi- dence in the ensuing diplomatic correspondence between Vienna and Copen- hagen to suggest that Denmark–Norway was preparing to support a wholescale encyclopedic expedition entailing years of exploration and voluminous publi- cations.3 Such plans, however, soon took form in Hell’s mind. Besides bending to God’s will, Hell must have been all too aware that to the Republic of Letters the region in question was still virtually a terra incognita. It was exotic and “liminal,” with the aurora borealis, polar night, and midnight sun, along with extreme weather and natural dangers such as the maelstrom of Moskenes, and above all the indigenous Sámi (Saami, Sami) population—known in those days as “Lapps”—forming intriguing objects of study with a broad popular ap- peal.4 The Lapland voyages of Linnaeus and Maupertuis in the 1730s had 1 Jérôme de Lalande, Bibliographie astronomique avec l’histoire de l’astronomie depuis 1781 jusqu’à 1802 (Paris: Imprimerie de la République, 1803), 721. 2 Letter from Bernstorff to Bachoff in Vienna, dated Copenhagen, August 18, 1767 (RA). 3 Letters from Bernstorff to Bachoff in Vienna, dated Copenhagen, October 3, 1767 and Febru- ary 20, 1768 (RA); letters from Bachoff to Bernstorff in Copenhagen, dated Vienna, September 7, 1767 and October 29, 1767 (RA). 4 Sven Widmalm, Mellan kartan och verkligheten: Geodesi och kartläggning, 1695–1860, Institu- tionen för idé- och lärdomshistoria, Uppsala universitet, Skrifter 10 (Uppsala: Institutionen