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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.
Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Titel
- Maximilian Hell (1720–92)
- Untertitel
- And the Ends of Jesuit Science in Enlightenment Europe
- Autoren
- Per Pippin Aspaas
- László Kontler
- Verlag
- Brill
- Ort
- Leiden
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 978-90-04-41683-3
- Abmessungen
- 15.5 x 24.1 cm
- Seiten
- 492
- Kategorien
- Naturwissenschaften Physik
Inhaltsverzeichnis
- Acknowledgments VII
- List of Illustrations IX
- Bibliographic Abbreviations X
- Introduction 1
- 1 Shafts and Stars, Crafts and Sciences: The Making of a Jesuit Astronomer in the Habsburg Provinces 37
- 2 Metropolitan Lures: Enlightened and Jesuit Networks, and a New Node of Science 91
- 3 A New Node of Science in Action: The 1761 Transit of Venus and Hell’s Transition to Fame 134
- 4 The North Beckons: “A desperate voyage by desperate persons” 172
- 5 He Came, He Saw, He Conquered? The Expeditio litteraria ad Polum Arcticum 209
- 6 “Tahiti and Vardø will be the two columns […]”: Observing Venus andDebating the Parallax 258
- 7 Disruption of Old Structures 305
- 8 Coping with Enlightenments 344
- Appendix 1 Map of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus (with Glossary of Geographic Names) 394
- Appendix 2 Instruction for the Imperial and Royal Astronomer Maximilian Hell, S.J 398
- Bibliography 400
- Index 459