Page - 237 - in Maximilian Hell (1720–92) - And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe

237The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum together the list of questions to be asked during the interviews with the natives,83 and he even took the initiative personally: while engaged in a long conversation about the Sámi with a missionary named Daas, a “Karelian” fish- erman entered the house, and it was upon Hell’s explicit instruction that he was requested to recite the Pater noster in his mother tongue.84 The idea of listening to spoken “Karelian” (related as it is to both Finnish and Sámi) and thus recognizing similarities in phonological structures may well have been Hell’s. However, the story of Hell’s planning the investigation and framing the methodology is hard to reconcile with other pieces of evidence. The above-mentioned Nomenclator as well as a Grammatica, or Lappish gram- mar, by professor of the Sámi language Knud Leem was given to the company by von Storm in Christiania during their northbound trip, “as a token of great friendship, without us asking for this at all,” Sajnovics explains.85 A couple of weeks later, Hell and Sajnovics landed in Trondheim, where they spent three weeks preparing the continuation of their expedition. Trondheim was the place where Leem lived and worked, as professor of the Seminarium Lapponi- cum, or special seminary giving language instruction to Norwegians preparing for a career as missionaries in the northernmost parts of the kingdom.86 It is here that the narrative of a “planned discovery” of the linguistic link between Sámi and Hungarian, and thereby also between “Lapps” and “Magyars,” fal- ters.87 Assuming that this kind of research was at the top of Hell’s priorities, it 83 Sajnovics, Demonstratio (1771), 24. 84 Sajnovics, Demonstratio (1771), 22–23; an account of this incident is found in the first edi- tion as well, but without mention of any role played by Hell, Demonstratio (1770), 14–15. “Karelian” is one of several ethnonyms formerly used for the group now commonly known as Kven, i.e., people that migrated from Finnish-speaking parts of modern Finland and northern Sweden to settle along the coast of northernmost Norway during the early mod- ern period. The form of Finnish spoken by Kvens deviates slightly from the official lan- guage in Finland, and since 2005 Kven has been formally recognized a minority language in Norway. 85 Sajnovics, Demonstratio (1770), 15; Demonstratio (1771), 23; travel diary, proofread version (wus), on July 16, 1768. 86 Dedicated missionary work in Dano-Norwegian Lapland began early in the eighteenth century, motivated not only by pietistic ideals associated with the saving of souls but also by a perceived need of transforming the migratory Sámi into loyal subjects of the Dano- Norwegian state. Cf. Jan Ragnar Hagland and Steinar Supphellen, eds., Knud Leem og det samiske, Det kongelige norske videnskabers selskabs Skrifter (Trondheim: Tapir aka- demisk, 2003). 87 It has already been suggested that the investigation of the Sámi language and its affinity with Hungarian, with all the implications to Hungarian prehistory, was an improvisation of the expeditionists while already en route to Vardø in Lajos Bartha, “Sajnovics János, Hell Miksa és a ‘magyar őstörténet,’” Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 85 (1983): 297–304.