View source for Lapponia (a book)

{{Artikkeli
|sivun nimi=Lapponia (a book)
|kieli=englanti
|id=1722
|artikkeliteksti=<P align="justify"> Lapponia, the title of a book about Saami culture by Johannes Schefferus. Published in 1673, it is the founding work of Lappology. </P>
<P align="justify"> The German scholar Johannes Schefferus (1621-79) was appointed Professor of Rhetoric and Political Science at the University of Uppsala. He was assigned by Magnus de la Gardie, the State Chancellor of Sweden, the task of producing a description of the Saami intended for the people of the rest of Europe. Ultimately, the aim was to demonstrate that the sorcery of the Saami was not what lay behind the military success of the Swedes; a rumour to this effect had had been spread in leaflets distributed to enemy troops on the front. The work was published in Frankfurt am Main, and it became a best seller of its time, being translated at least in part into all of the major world languages within ten years of its original publication. The information contained in Lapponia was mostly obtained from clergymen working in the Saami region of Sweden-Finland. Schefferus most important informants were Samuel Rheen, Olaus Graan, Nicolaus Lundius, Olaus Petri Niurenius and Johannes [[Tornaeus, Johannes|Tornaeus]], and for Kemi Lapland Gabriel [[Tuderus, Gabriel|Tuderus]]. Otherwise Schefferus based his facts on information from ancient and mediaeval historians like Procopius and Adam of Bremen and on the Norse sagas. On the other hand, he regarded the information offered by Olaus Magnus with distrust. Although Schefferus himself never actually visited Lapland, he was a scholar who adopted what for his age was a keen critical attitude to his sources, and thus Lapponia in the end remained for a long time a basic work providing fairly reliable information about Lapland.</P>
<P align="justify"> Lapponia was fundamentally important in disseminating information about the Saami, but it also engendered a romantic view of them as great pacifists who complaisantly gave way to their conquerors. This emphasis, which was in keeping with the book s commission and later with a Rousseauesque concept of a primitive people, has endured independently of the book in the minds of Europeans over the centuries. Contrary to its purpose, the book in fact reinforced the reputation of the Saami as a people of sorcerers, for it was the chapters dealing with this subject that were most frequently translated into other languages. Perhaps the most serious of the problems connected with Schefferus book was that through it the western Saami way of life became the accepted model for Saami culture; the reason for this lay in the book s source material, which was derived solely from the Swedish Saami regions. This distortion subsequently became a central feature of {{Artikkelilinkki|1721|Lappology}}.</P>
|kirjoittaja=Risto Pulkkinen
|luokat=Reseach, research history, institutions and museums
}}