Page - 225 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

225The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum In his letter to the bishop, he promised to submit an article on his findings to the proceedings of the Trondheim Society,51 but this came to nothing. Gun- nerus, however, who cultivated frequent correspondence with von Linné in Uppsala, told the Swedish natural historian about Hell’s findings and even made sure to have Hell send some specimens to Uppsala for inspection.52 The same happened to several botanical specimens: Hell brought dried plants with him to Denmark, from where they were carried farther to Uppsala.53 Thus, al- though his planned publications in the domain of natural history never saw the light of day, Hell’s expedition program produced yields that contributed to the research of some of the most respected scholars in this domain. Nothing of the sixth part, on the exploitation of natural resources, ever ma- terialized. According to the call for subscriptions, it would present remarks on the migrations of the Sámi, including “observations concerning how to bring the migratory Lapps to lead a civilized life with stable dwellings.” Temporary settlements and migrations across borders of the kind described in Sajnovics’s notes from Tromsø, quoted above, were clearly recognized by the Viennese Je- suits as a central issue that exercised the minds of European “scientific travel- ers” across the world as well as the scholars who molded their accounts into comprehensive ethnographic works (whether under the label of global geogra- phy, global history, or otherwise). It is unfortunate that the findings of the Hell expedition did not find their way into this literature. Another problem that Hell promised to discuss was “the cause of the declining fishery in eastern parts of Finnmark,” where the supply of salpa (cod, Gadus morhua) during the 1760s had been so limited that it caused widespread poverty and even periodic star- vation among the local population.54 With the benefit of hindsight, we can characterize this as fluctuations, whereas Hell and his informant appear to have interpreted the development as steady decline. The fourth and fifth parts of the Tomus physicus, on the aurora borealis and on meteorological observations from Vardø, were in fact published, in the 1777 51 Draft of letter from Hell to Gunnerus in Trondheim, dated Vardø, January 15, 1769 (wus). The promise is repeated in the Venus transit report: Hell, Observatio transitus […] 1769, 2–3. 52 Gunnerus to von Linné in Uppsala, dated Trondheim, September 2, 12, and [date not spec- ified], 1769; von Linné to Gunnerus in Trondheim, dated Uppsala, October 5, 1769. Printed in Gunnerus and von Linné, Brevveksling 1761–1772, 101–6. 53 Gunnerus and von Linné, Brevveksling 1761–1772, 101–6. 54 Hell, call for subscriptions, in Aspaas, “Maximilianus Hell,” 376–77. That there were mea- ger quantities of cod caught in Vardø throughout the 1760s is confirmed by the priest Henning Junghans Kaurin (1736–97), in his Jord Beskrivelse over Wardøe Præstegield, og dets Tilstand fra 1764 til 1770. Manuscript kept at ntnu Trondheim, University Library, Gunnerus xa Qv. 281.