Page - 234 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

Chapter 5234 As Sajnovics’s travel diary testifies, already at the stations of the northward journey he was paying attention to the lifestyle and the customs of the locals of the region, and the topic was also discussed (together with the observations of the flora and fauna and collecting of natural specimens) in the reports pub- lished in the Viennese press during the team’s sojourn in Vardø.77 Using local priests and missionaries as intermediaries, during these nine months Sajno- vics had ample opportunities to pursue linguistic fieldwork among the Sámi. He summarized the results in three lectures to the Copenhagen academy at the beginning of 1770, and published them in the same year while still in the Dan- ish capital as the Demonstratio Idioma Ungarorum et Lapponum idem esse (Demonstration that the language of the Hungarians and the Lapps is the same). A revised edition, leaving the original text virtually unchanged but sup- plementing it with important elements, appeared in Trnava in the following year. Already in the 1770s and 1780s, the Demonstratio attracted considerable 77 See, e.g., WD, May 6, 1769, 10–12. Figure 11 Sámi community Drawing clearly commissioned by Hell, with annotations in his hand. The annotations translate as “bad,” “all this will not do,” and “this entire drawing is worthless.” Digitized by the Department of Astrophysics, University of Vienna