Discovering the North: Francesco Negri’s and Giuseppe Acerbi’s journeys to Norway in the 17^th and 18^th centuries

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to present the journeys of two Italian travellers, Francesco Negri and Giuseppe Acerbi, who visited Norway in 1663 and the late 1700s, respectively. Despite being the first Italians to explore Norway, their stories and the Norwegian itinerary remain largely unknown. This article exclusively focuses on analysing their Norwegian itinerary, setting aside the exploration of the rest of Scandinavia, which has been covered by other authors. Their narratives provide valuable insights into the cultural and societal landscape of the North during their time, illuminating a region largely undiscovered by other European travellers. By documenting their experiences and observations, Negri and Acerbi contribute to a broader understanding of Northern Europe, challenging prevailing narratives. Through their travelogues, they offer a unique perspective that enhances our knowledge of the North and its inhabitants before the advent of romanticized depictions.

KEYWORDS:

• Francesco Negri
• Giuseppe Acerbi
• Norway

For centuries, the northern countries had been perceived as lands of barbarism, darkness, and even hell, which led fewer travellers to choose to visit these regions compared with the southern European countries that were renowned for their rich artistic heritage. In the late 18th century, the trend changed, and not only did those who decided to undertake a journey to the North become more numerous, but the purposes and the destinations of these trips also changed.¹ The cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment kindled an enthusiastic interest in the more exotic and unusual parts of the world, including Northern Europe.² Enlightenment authors such as Montesquieu played an important role in strengthening the myth of the Nordic countries. In his work The Spirit of the Laws of 1748, he described the North as the so-called home of European freedom. Similarly, Jean-Jacques Rousseau theorized that those who lived in close contact with nature were better able to preserve their virtuousness in the face of the moral corruption that emerged from the falseness and artificiality of civilization.³ The Nordic countries became the ultimate travel destination, one which was full of mystery due to the fantastic tales about them. The revolutions and wars that Europe was fighting also contributed to popularizing the trip towards the North, representing a journey into peacetime far from the revolutionary turmoil that blighted 18^th and 19^th century Europe.⁴ The increasing interest in Scandinavia was ‘a nostalgic search for an unspoiled haven of peace, simplicity and innocence’ and one which spread throughout Europe.⁵ Although the travel literature of the time was dominated by the accounts of British authors, some Italians were also seduced by the charms of the North. The playwriter Goldoni, the essayist Nicolò Tommaseo, and the poet Metastasio decided to go to Paris, whilst others such as the dramatist Vittorio Alfieri crossed almost the whole of Europe to reach Sweden, Russia and Finland. Alfieri was enthusiastic about the atmosphere of freedom that was beginning to breathe new life into the Scandinavian countries, as well as the associated new ideals that were starting to circulate in Europe.⁶

This article focuses on two other Italian travellers, Francesco Negri and Giuseppe Acerbi, and their journeys to Norway: the former departed in 1663 and the latter at the end of the 1700s. Despite the differences that distinguish the choices made by the two travellers, both were surprisingly modern. They were among the first to challenge the prejudices about Norwegians before it became a popular destination and the romantic idea of the north spread. This helped to overturn negative stereotypes and to build a myth that would become stronger during the Romantic Movement and beyond, making northern travel more popular than ever.⁷ Although Negri and Acerbi were the first Italians to travel to Norway, their stories and their Norwegian itineraries remain very much unknown. In the case of Acerbi, one explanation may be the fact that his Norwegian journey was not published in a single piece of work, but rather across various travel notes which have not been made public until recently. The present article will focus exclusively on the analysis of their Norwegian itinerary, leaving aside the rest of Scandinavia which has, however, been studied by other authors.⁸ The article has two principal aims: the first is to present the journeys of these two Italians to Norway which remain little known; and the second is to show an alternative perspective on the current historiography of 18^th century European travel which was dominated by the British travelogue.

The travelogues of Negri and Acerbi present a distinct portrayal compared to earlier narratives, and they stand in contrast to those that follow, particularly the British travelogues. While the latter depict the Northern countries as havens of tranquillity, their primary aim was to bolster the superiority of their own nation.⁹ Negri and Acerbi were not the first authors to have travelled in the North, but they were the first Italians to bring a new vision of the Nordic peoples, endowing them with a respect they had not enjoyed until then.¹⁰ Negri and Acerbi deserve credit for having ensured that the North was better known in Italy at a time when there was very little common knowledge of Norway.

Travel literature on Norway

Over the past few decades, the study of travel literature about the Arctic zone, Northern Europe and Scandinavia has drawn attention to the representation of what had been a blank space in literary criticism.¹¹ Despite this increasing interest, Kathryn Walchester points out that travel writing on Scandinavia from the 19^th century was still in its early stages.¹² Furthermore, the travel narratives of Italians were even less known and the Italian texts have garnered relatively limited attention, both within and beyond Italy. One principal reason – as highlighted by Nathalie Hester- for the marginality of travel writing in Italy is that historically it has occupied non-literary categories.¹³ Sergio Zatti has also drawn attention to the fact that travel literature had a low status in modern Italian literary criticism.¹⁴ ‘Prompted by newly established steamship routes to transport emigrating Scandinavians to America’, according to Fjågesund and Symes, Norway and the other Scandinavian countries only became popular destinations for British travellers from around 1820.¹⁵ Nonetheless, some travellers made their journey to the North even earlier than this. P. M. La Martinière, a French traveller and physician, embarked on his journey only a few years after Negri, in 1670.¹⁶ Although his journey is one of the earliest accounts of the North, he also does not refrain from negative judgements about the indigenous populations

both men and women are small in stature, yet strong and capable. (…) Their eyes resemble those of pigs, and almost all of them have a surly look. They are stupid, brutal, and lustful. The women prostitute themselves with anyone foreign, as long as they can do it without their husbands finding out.¹⁷

Negri never mentions De La Martinière in his text, while the Frenchman writes that he is aware that an Italian had been in the same areas he visited 15 years earlier. Even Otto Sperling, a physician and botanist, undertook his journey as early as 1622. Unlike Negri, Sperling also found employment in Norway.¹⁸

Negri arrived in 1663 and Acerbi in 1796, visiting Sweden initially and then the North Cape and Finland. Then in 1800, he visited Norway; more details of his journey will be presented later. It was not just the simplified process of travelling which pushed voyagers to the North. Travel literature was also becoming a key source in discussions about how European ideas were constructed and, as Kassis points out, travel often served to demonstrate the supremacy of their own nation, something which was connected to nascent ethnicity and nationalism, particularly throughout the 19^th century.¹⁹ The idea of the North, as Barton explains, was based on ‘well-established political concepts that underlay interest in the Nordic or “Gothic” past, especially in Great Britain, as to it was attributed the origins of human freedom’.²⁰ The origins of the ‘Gothic nations’ were obviously of greater interest in countries such as Germany, Britain and France whose national identities were formed through the lens of a Gothic heritage, in contrast to southern European countries.²¹ These travellers saw Norway and the other Scandinavians countries as places free from the burdensome conflicts, both past and present, which thus represented a perfect destination. ‘With nothing but an endless supply of untouched nature, made naively pure and innocent by Romantic philosophy’ the Nordic countries appeared to be ‘an uncomplicated utopia which easily lent itself to both sympathy and admiration’.²² For Barbara Korte, the increasing attention on the North was also due to the fact that, after the discovery of Australia, ‘there were no more continents to be found’ and, as a result, explorers directed their interest to the unexplored parts of Europe such as Norway.²³ Although the Scandinavian countries were gradually being depicted, in both travelogues and fiction, as places of untouched beauty and independent inhabitants, there were other factors at work. Kassis argues that ‘some writers are strongly influenced by the embedded ideals and values of the British Empire given their failure to comprehend the peculiarities of Scandinavian nature: they tend to distort the image of the North and they either idealise or reproach every new cultural trait they regard as alien to their own idiosyncrasy and value system, thus leading to misconceptions about the land that they initially endeavoured to approach with an open mind’. ²⁴Furthermore, Fjågesund and Symes also suggest that ‘Britons were mostly focused on showing the contrasts between what is presented as the excessive civilization of Britain and the corresponding primitive nature of the foreign destination’.²⁵ ‘As a result of this and in spite of the geographical proximity of the two countries’, ‘British travelogues from Norway constantly remind a modern reader of texts about other and far more distant places, such as the interior of Africa’.²⁶ A series of contradictory arguments about Scandinavian culture emerge from these representations. They substituted the long-standing projection of the Nordic countries as a dystopian or savage world, and instead presented them as ‘as unspoiled places’, a ‘Northern Utopia’, and a pastoral home, free from the increasing problems that their imperial neighbour, Great Britain, faced at the peak of its industrialization.²⁷

At the same time, however, if the utmost respect was reserved for nature, Norway or the other Scandinavian countries were heavily criticized for their poor cultural heritage, low morals, disorganization, and the reserved character of their people, thus highlighting through such contrasts the virtues of the idealized socio-political system in Britain.²⁸ Britons, in particular, displayed a mixed sense of moral and cultural superiority, tending to view Scandinavia from an imperialist perspective.²⁹ ‘There is no doubt that the travellers’ consciousness of themselves as Britons contributed strongly to the way in which they viewed Norway and the Norwegians’.³⁰ In her book entitled ‘Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, C.1690–1820’, Rosemary Sweet points out how often ‘visitors’ comments frequently display a significant degree of homogeneity: the travellers visited the same sites, went on the same excursions, read the same books and made the same observations in their journals and correspondences. (…) Moreover, what travellers observed and recorded was always heavily determined by conventions within the genre of travel writings, therefore, cannot be taken as statements of the simple immediacy of experience’.³¹ Sweet discusses those travelling to Italy, but can this homogeneity be observed in those who journeyed to Norway? Fjågesunt and Symes state that, ‘In Norway, the traveler encountered hardly anything that they categorized as manifestations of culture and civilization’..³² Thus, Norwegians were perceived as living in an almost timeless natural state.³³ Almost all travelogues feature the same representations and truly distinct stories are few and far between. Can we argue that this literary style prevented them from seeing the diversity in a country that was undergoing industrialization? Perhaps conventions stemming from the literary genre impeded them from seeing the true reality of things. Some Norwegian economic historians have shown that Norway, precisely when British travellers made their journeys, was in a phase of full economic expansion and at the beginning of the process of industrialization.³⁴ Very little of this emerges from the British travelogues, which therefore raises a lot of important questions in particular in relation to this type of source as one that provides useful information about the past. Leerseen questions ‘to what extent did the convention and commonplaces inherited from a pre-existing textual tradition (…) overshadow the experience of reality?’³⁵

The Italian situation was different, and for this reason, Negri and Acerbi’s accounts of Norway are distinct. Unlike Britain, Italy was not a nation with well-defined borders, nor did it have a strong identity like France and England, and this makes the nationality of the travellers significant in the context of travel narratives. As Nathalie Hester points out ‘National character was defined by a system of comparison and stereotyping, a recurring phenomenon in travel writing of the time’.³⁶ The concept of a nation, defined as a territory that could be traversed and perceived as having some form of unity, posed a challenging hurdle in Italy. The nation was divided and under foreign rule and therefore lacked a central governing authority. The idea of proto-nationhood, which would link cultural identity with internationally significant, relatively large and cohesive territories, had no parallel in the Italian context. Indeed, the politically and linguistically fragmented Italian peninsula could not offer an actual point of reference for Italian travellers.³⁷ A typical though not required element in travel writing involved generalizations about different ‘national’ groups in implied contrast to the narrator’s (superior) country of origin. Whereas in contrast, the two Italian travellers analysed in this article did not make such characteristic comparisons, mainly because they did not have a nation to compare their experiences to. Therefore, presenting Negri’s and Acerbi’s travelogues, given that they travelled to Norway prior to the 19^th century, is a means of providing an alternative view to the other classical travelogues.

The idea of the North

Knowledge of the Northern countries at the time Francesco Negri undertook his journey there was vague and at times grotesque, precisely because of the distance and limited contacts. The North thus became, as Peter Marshall writes, not only a geographical space, but a place of or for imagination.³⁸ For a long time, representations of the peoples of the North survived in the collective imagination, linked to descriptions found in classical sources and particularly Latin ones, where the inhabitants were described as monstrous, feral, and exceedingly diabolical.⁸ Northern populations were considered barbaric when compared with the Latin peoples, who were seen as civilized. These ideas reappear in Christian culture, which further consolidated prejudices against the people of the North, thereby reinforcing the dichotomy that placed the supremacy of Christian values in opposition to those considered to be barbaric.

De Anna wrote about how the Viking raids on monasteries, plundering them of everything they contained, left indelible traces in people’s memories, which strengthened the ‘myth of the North in a totally negative way, thus acquiring new elements of prejudice’. From this came the exclamation: ‘A furore Normannorum libera nos Domine’.³⁹ The descriptions of the peoples of the North and therefore of Norway did not seem to improve in medieval documents. Nordic populations were believed to be particularly susceptible to the influence of the devil, superstition, magical practices, and witchcraft.⁴⁰ Other elements – the cold and the dark – were added to these prejudices, as a result of the mini-ice age of the 1300s, that made the already terrible image presented by classical authors even worse. This was the period in which Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in Italy, in which he imagined the icy, cold Cocytus River in the deepest part of hell, where he thought that Lucifer had to be immersed. Therefore, cold in Dante’s imagination must have had demonic origins and was indeed caused by the flapping of Lucifer’s six enormous bat-like wings. Ice was also perceived to be an extreme punishment.⁴¹ During this period, the belief took root that cold climates only generated and nourished cruel and ferocious humans, and the image of monstrous creatures associated with the devil or superstition was reinforced.⁴² The Black Death that struck Europe in 1347–1351, and especially the Northern countries, further widened the gap between North and South. In summary, for centuries, what we could define as ‘reverse prejudices’ survived, namely those of a barbaric, uncivilized, and inhospitable North, which was contrasted with a South that was the cradle of civilization, culture, and an example to follow, an unparalleled model. Religious contrasts created a sort of solidarity among the populations of the North, widening the ideological gap from the South and Catholicism. During the Lutheran Reformation, the scant connections between Norway and Italy were entirely cut off. When Negri set out on his journey to Scandinavia, the region had not yet gained popularity as a desirable destination for travellers. Very few Italians had reached the North solely for the pleasure of travelling. The phenomenon of the Grand Tour was spreading in Europe, but in the 1600s, it was still uncommon and was initially limited to the British aristocracy. However, Grand Tourists were mainly interested in classical culture, and France and Italy were their preferred destinations; the North was not yet an attractive destination for them. In the 1620s, the first detailed instructions were published for British Grand Tourists, outlining the ‘things to be seen and observed’.⁴³ We do not know if Francesco Negri was aware of them or was influenced by them; we can speculate that he was not because the text advised the writer to avoid personal narratives while Negri used the first person.⁴⁴ It was only much later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that the Grand Tour expanded beyond the upper classes and lead to a greater variety of destinations and countries. Alongside the phenomenon of the Grand Tour, the Enlightenment also increased curiosity for unexplored destinations, which would significantly influence foreign travellers, particularly the French. Negri was not a Grand Tourist, although he shared with them a love of classical works. Negri was a traveller who, as he wrote himself, paraphrasing a phrase from Pliny, travelled ‘for the love of science and not for gain’.⁴⁵ As we will see in more detail later on, Francesco Negri was thus a scientist, and his was a scientific tour. He had embarked on the journey to the North with the aim of providing a scientific description that was realistic as possible. As highlighted by Hulme and Youngs, in the historical period when Negri and Acerbi undertook their travels, the boundaries between the genres were more fluid, and often a traveller or travelogue could exhibit characteristics that belonged to multiple genres.⁴⁶ This is indeed the case with Acerbi, who was more of a combination of an explorer, a scientist, and a bourgeois and who was consequently much more worldly than Negri.

When Acerbi embarked on his journey, the circumstances had changed, with travel to the North having become more popular. He likely recognized this trend, yet, similar to Negri, he aimed to be a trailblazer which may explain his eagerness to publish his work promptly. The region saw an influx of visitors, particularly French, and the trend of travelling to the North was also catching on among British travellers. Acerbi even encountered some of them along the way.

Francesco Negri’s Grand Tour “against the tide”

Despite the fact that Norway was not a very attractive destination for travellers in this period, a middle-aged priest from Ravenna, Francesco Negri, decided to depart for the North at the end of the 1600s. More than one hundred years later, another Italian, Giuseppe Acerbi, went on to make a very similar journey. Although both Francesco Negri and Giuseppe Acerbi were the first Italians to travel to Norway, their stories remain almost completely overlooked.⁴⁷ Despite the two travellers’ different choices, both had remarkably modern views. They not only focused on the beauty of nature there but also improved the perceptions of the character of the populations they encountered. They also focused on society, and Acerbi also described the cities there; these were elements that were almost entirely absent in the British travelogues that were to follow.⁴⁸

Negri embarked on a tour as part of a longer journey that would also include the rest of Scandinavia. He was a member of an aristocratic family from Ravenna, and he took his clerical vows at a young age. When he planned his journey, the Nordic countries did not seem to have any particular charm and Negri reached Norway on foot alone. He started his travel to the North in 1663, at the age of 40, leaving from Gdansk and travelling on to Stockholm. On 3 October 1665, Negri sailed from Helsingør to Bergen where he stayed for a week, and then went on to Trondheim. From there, he continued to the North Cape which he reached alone in 1666. After three years in Scandinavia, he returned to Ravenna. Negri wrote a travelogue called Northern Voyage (Viaggio Settentrionale) about his trip, which was published posthumously in 1700.⁴⁹ Negri spent over 30 years drafting the work, which is divided into eight letters. It took such a long time because Negri felt the need to verify every detail included in his book. Negri sought confirmation of the topics he covered either through conversations with other Scandinavians or through other reading on the same topics. He remained deeply impressed by Nordic culture and sought to return to Scandinavia several years after his return to Ravenna; his requests to the Duke of Tuscany, to whom his work is dedicated, were unsuccessful, and he had to give up all thoughts of another journey.⁵⁰ These attempts to return to the North were all made when Negri was already over sixty years old, which shows his great passion for these countries. Upon his return from Scandinavia, where he experienced the temperance of the Protestant church, he attempted to moralize to the Catholic church. He wrote a speech in which he advocated for austerity and generosity within the ranks of the clergy.

Negri had excellent relations with both aristocrats and diplomats in Sweden and Norway who helped him on his journey and often offered him places to stay, as well as other useful contacts. In Trondheim he stayed with an important Norwegian noble family, that of Ove Bjelke who was introduced to him by a Swedish diplomat. Bjelke was a highly educated Norwegian who had studied in Padua and could therefore likely speak with Negri in Latin. This undoubtedly helped the priest who did not know the Scandinavian languages. In addition to engaging in many discussions with people he met, he was also given the addresses of trusted people with whom he could stay during his journey to the North Cape. We can speculate that Negri also had to travel with a pass obtained from a notable individual or from Chancellor Bjelke himself, while it was quite common for travellers at that time to receive free hospitality from priests.⁵¹ As Magni states, some scholars considered Negri to be the first ‘tourist’ to have explored the Nordic countries up to the North Cape.⁵² It appears that the definition of tourist in Negri’s case is too simplistic; for Negri, the journey was meant to have an itinerary focused on knowledge and exploration. His journey was inspired by the culture of his time, namely Baconian, which was imbued with experimental philosophy, heir to 17^th century science and, in particular, English empiricism. For Negri, knowledge necessarily had to be verified through objectively seeing the evidence.⁵³ His rigorous scientific spirit is clearly demonstrated by his writing; every phenomenon he observed was rationally analysed. This is why he cannot be defined as a simple tourist.⁵⁴ Unlike tourists, a traveller represents an impersonal observer of the world because it was through the experience of nature, as Blumenberg writes, that they communicated their own reality through writing.⁵⁵ Negri, therefore, not only wanted to go on a ‘voyage of discovery’, but he also desired to give a new scientific foundation to the discoveries and explorations he made during his unprecedented adventure.

So I went there, and made the whole journey, overlooking potential torment and dangers, to see that rarity with my own eyes, which I discovered as I went along, many of which were very far off the beaten track, not content with hearing about them from the locals.⁵⁶

Francesco Negri’s travelogue covers a wide range of topics including flora, fauna, climatic conditions, ocean currents, celestial bodies, and meteorological phenomena like ice formation. He delves into the discussion of the stars, their composition, comets, and even endeavours to offer a scientific explanation for the yet-to-be-understood phenomenon of the aurora borealis. ‘Not content with displaying its prodigious effects on land and sea, Norway also wanted to show them to me in the skies’.⁵⁷ ‘I saw another typical phenomenon of this icy region, which I have never seen, heard of in Italy, and which is visible here at night in winter, in several forms’. The phenomenon is described with scientific accuracy:

once, I saw a long cloud that began about three degrees above the horizon and, as it rose towards the zenith or a vertical point, ended on the other side, almost the same length. It was so clear and transparent that it gave little light to the earth.⁵⁸

He attempts to explain what he thought might be the reason for the Northern Lights. ‘I also believe that this intense cold is the cause of those strange movements, almost convulsions, which effect is experienced here in other bodies on land in full view of everyone’.⁵⁹ For every observed phenomenon, Francesco Negri often demonstrates a keen grasp of renowned scientists’ modern theories, delving into the nature of stars, referencing the theories of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. He even tries to explain the so-called ‘great whirlpool of Norway’.

I believe, therefore, that such effect is caused by the swelling of the sea, which enters this strait from two sides, namely from the north and from the south, and as one part runs against the other, the two waters clash in the middle, causing them to rise and fight together.⁶⁰

In the seventh letter, he even advocates for some modifications to the geographical maps: ‘It seems to me that it would be universally useful if the geographical maps were corrected in these two parts’.⁶¹

For Negri, it was very important to emphasize the fact that he had actually been in these lands, had traversed them far and wide for a full three years in contrast to Olaus Magnus or even Johannes Schefferus who had only imagined and studied Norway within the pages of books. Some scholars, however, have expressed doubts as to whether Negri’s journeys really were the result of a thirst for knowledge, or whether there were other factors in play. Negri made his journey to the North in 1663, around 100 years after Norway became Lutheran. According to Aresti-Nigrisoli Wärnhjelm’s theory, the journey may also have had a religious-missionary purpose, potentially verifying the penetration of the Lutheran creed in Scandinavian society.⁶² Whilst according to Nathalie Hester, Negri’s trip was intended to place Italy back at the centre of Europe.⁶³ Negri knew he was the first traveller to have embarked on such a journey to a land that he himself had described as remote, where, ‘as per the testimonies of the writers, no fruit can survive due to the extreme cold, and yet mankind is living there’.⁶⁴ His awareness of his status as the first Italian to write about these distant people was the driving force that motivated him to depart. ‘Induced by these reasons’, Negri writes, and adds another, ‘namely the fact that, as far as I know, there was no author who wrote about Scandinavia as an eyewitness, after having observed all of it, and especially its most boreal parts’.⁶⁵ Negri was likely aware of the stories about Scandinavia that were circulating in Italy and in ecclesiastical circles, since he notes: ‘I find that not a few alleged falsehoods have been divulged from those parts by some authors, who have given many people the opportunity to make mistakes, who in good faith wrote after them: however, I thought it good to notify them by making the opposite statement, that is, the truth’.⁶⁶ Negri does not mention who they are but, in wanting to tell the truth, he observes that the rest of the stories are pure inventions. He was aware that, before him, the humanist, geographer and Catholic archbishop, Olaus Magnus and later Johannes Schefferus had written about Norway. Olaus Magnus was indeed the first to write a text that gave Italians an image of the North, which was virtually unknown up to this point. Olaus Magnus played a particular role in the work of Negri, but his text was, according to Negri himself, irrelevant for a series of reasons that he wrote in the title page dedicated to him: Annotations above the work of Olaus Magnus

I am much obliged to a few gentlemen who, speaking to me about my report on Scandinavia, told me that Olaus Magnus has written extensively about it, [a place] of which he is a native. […] I replied to these gentlemen by showing them what faith you can have in that author, and I gave them proof, of which they were satisfied.⁶⁷

With an abundance of detail and examples, Negri did his utmost to invalidate the work Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555) of his predecessor, Olaus Magnus and thus declared himself to be the first scientist to have successfully reached and described the North. Negri writes, in contrast to the common beliefs of the period, that reindeer has two horns rather than three and he dismantled the scientific theories of Magnus point-by-point with a whole series of arguments, including on how skis or skier, as he refers to them, worked.⁶⁸ ‘That is, pieces of wood placed under the feet to travel over the snow, which, if they were such as he describes them, would prevent the traveller so much that he could not advance a step’. For Negri, Olaus Magnus was not worthy of much attention, having made statements about ‘fantastical things’, but ‘nevertheless it seems to me that he could either keep them secret, or make sure to ascertain the truth’.⁶⁹ Negri came to the conclusion that there were so many false stories ‘that this author wrote’, ‘or such extravagant tales of Scandinavia that I do not want to continue to narrate them, believing that this part is enough to give an idea of the rest’.⁷⁰ Although Negri distanced himself from Magnus and his work, the influence of the Swedish prelate remained, so much so that it influenced Negri’s work in terms of both its content and presentation. Like Magnus, Negri used illustrations to demonstrate certain concepts or descriptions. It is true that illustrations often accompanied medieval writings and, therefore, these were not necessarily inspired by Magnus, but the way in which he supplemented his work with drawings must have had a significant impact on Negri, who seemed to want to imitate him. According to Andreas Klein, Negri was certainly aware that Johannes Schefferus had also written a very comprehensive scientific text on Lapland, which was published in 1673, initially in Latin, and was later translated into German, English, and French. Despite this, and even though Schefferus and Negri had exchanged letters, the priest from Ravenna never mentions him. Even though Schefferus’s text was extensive and exhaustive, Negri likely preferred not to mention it. The most plausible explanation is that Negri aspired to be the first that he had actually been there physically, and this prompted him to omit Scheffer’s work, since he may have considered it unworthy given that Schefferus had never actually been there. ⁷¹ It is very likely, although Negri does not mention it, that he drew indirect inspiration from it.

Negri’s enthusiasm for Norway

From the very beginning of Negri’s work on Norway, his enthusiasm is clear. ‘There is no other inhabited land, as far as we know, of its parallel, and the Arctic glacial zone is totally unknown’, writes the priest. Above all, he speaks of an ‘extraordinary country, with qualities not common to others, but singular, therefore it will be the most curious part of the world to observe’ and one worthy of visiting.⁷² For Negri, it was the remoteness of the land which represented something that was both positive and attractive, as opposed to viewing this as an obstacle or a deterrent. He talks of the natural phenomena, meteorology, and the cleanliness of the air, as well as touching on some of the common diseases that afflict the population. He highlights how ‘infirmities are very rare here, particularly fevers’,⁷³ and he even notes that the number of diseases known in Italy was unknown in Norway. Negri then turns his attention to the description of cities, economy, customs, people, and eating habits with the same enthusiasm with which he speaks of stars and comets. He makes no mention, however, of dates, periods, distances and itineraries.⁷⁴

Negri was able to interpret and grasp the diversity of the populations of the North, creating a different image from that which had existed up to that point. The priest from Ravenna described everything he saw with great enthusiasm, and it is for this that he is particularly valuable because his descriptions altered the negative views about the Northern peoples. He contributed to the spread of a more benevolent attitude, if not one full of admiration, towards these countries at a time when information about Norway was lacking. Negri was aware that he was among the first to have reached the north and underlined: ‘They had never seen an Italian, indeed perhaps never even heard the word […] So they treated me very well, in their own fashion, with fish cooked in fresh water as usual’.⁷⁵ It was perhaps in this period that the Nordic myth began to take shape, so much so that it lead Negri to write: ‘It seems, in a certain way, that this nation enjoys the qualities of the golden age, though has little or no knowledge of gold’.⁷⁶ In addition to the scientific descriptions, Negri reported meticulously on the food and drink which he always presented positively as abundant. Even in his stories about daily life and relationships, he includes details with great enthusiasm: ‘These people live for a long time; they are gentle at heart and great warriors’.⁷⁷ In his travel diary he notes that the Norwegian populations ‘do not compare to any other country in the kindness of genius and in courtesy to strangers so I declare myself much obliged to all’. On the hospitality received in Trondheim, at Ove Bjelke’s house, he writes that he had ‘received and held him with such obligatory and courteous terms that I could not express them so sufficiently’.⁷⁸ Even their own attitudes seemed to confirm to Negri the goodness of the people he had met for the first time, as ‘They still use the other commonly used affectionate terms, calling each other sweet lamb […]. Those who are married are usually called mit ierte, my heart’.⁷⁹ He described his journey from one house to the next to take refuge from the extreme cold and, having arrived, he notes, ‘They receive me with love “in the stove”, that is, in the house. […] They make a great fire, and prepare food and drink, and they sleep; [hospitality] which I accept, but not from everyone, because I want to continue my journey’.⁸⁰ Negri enthusiastically describes not only the food but the country in general, stating ‘Norway corresponds so well to my expectations, that every day,ndeed at every hour, it offers me some new and rare curiosities, and particularly various and prodigious effects of nature’.⁸¹ He was so overwhelmed that he wonders: ‘If the ancients had heard of this, they would have applied the proverb to it, rather than to Africa, saying: quid novi fert Norway’.⁸²

It is true that this Scandinavia cannot compare to many other regions in the opulence of goods and delicate fruit; it also surpasses them, putting aside the rest, with its variety of very curious effects from both nature and produce, which nourish the intellect of man with more respectable and more grateful flavour, than even the most delicate fruits of other countries do.⁸³

Negri loved to focus on the details of a meal and always discusses the quality and the hospitality received in great depth. He states,

one evening I arrived at the home of a priest, who, politely, as usual in the nation, welcomed me without any personal benefit and began to toast me with a glass of aquavit. […] We then had dinner, which was rich in meat and fish, according to custom; and, between one meal and another, a lot of time passes, while drinking good beer. […] After dinner, which lasted two or three hours, we were still talking a good bit, while still raising our glasses, to better articulate the word; then I was accompanied to bed by the same good priest who, to say good night, made me a toast like this in bed with a bowl full of aquavit. […] Now to finish this story, the following morning […] the same reverend came to wake me up, and so, between wakefulness and sleep I heard the first words, which were: Domine Itale, bibo tibi; so it was agreed, unsure whether I opened my mouth before my eyes, that I would drink the aquavit there as I lay.⁸⁴

Despite his positive cultural observations, Negri also made the same mistake as those who had visited before him, giving a somewhat stereotyped image of the North with his description of sea monsters. These references were never to the people he met, to their physical traits or to an alleged moral monstrosity; indeed, people were always given the utmost respect. In his accounts of the mythical creatures, Negri most likely hoped to contradict the knowledge and descriptions made by Olaus Magnus.⁸⁵ It is true that the legends about the kraken were widespread among the populations of the North and so mentioning them was perhaps inevitable, with Negri describing the sea monsters as

a kind of snake of prodigious size is seen in this sea: it has the figure of the others on earth, only more so it has a double collar around its neck, hanging down both sides; it moves in spirals or turns, and with great speed it pursues the boats housing just a few men, making no attempt against the great ships. […] I really confess that, having heard what I did about this great this snake, I was overwhelmed.⁸⁶

Negri did not encounter any such monsters, but his desire to mention them is another demonstration of his knowledge of the myths and stories about the Northern peoples.

Journeys in this period were not without risks, especially for those who chose the north of Europe like Negri and Acerbi. The representation of the dangers of the trips served to amplify the scope and authenticity of the journey.⁸⁷ The discourse about these difficulties is part of the narrative of other future travelogues on Scandinavia. In Negri’s case, considering that he was travelling alone, there is no doubt about the difficulties he was bound to encounter. Indeed, the courage of this middle-aged priest is surprising, especially if we take into account that, at that time in Norway, connections were difficult, even for the local population. Negri’s greatest difficulty was certainly the great cold,

so, for me who, at present feels this great cold, can truthfully say that the greatest suffering that I have experienced in my life is the pain that the cold brings to me, particularly in my feet which are half-frozen: it has even been the case that travellers are overwhelmed by the cold and die.⁸⁸

Most of his efforts on this journey were aimed at protecting himself from this great Nordic cold ‘which is the fiercest in the inhabited world’, through four different solutions, ‘two internal and two external’, which he describes as follows,

the first is eating and drinking generously; the second is drinking a good portion of aquavit, especially in the morning, when it is available; the third is to go well-covered, but in woollen cloths, with doubled-up gloves or mittens, and with the addition of the lined squirrel-fur hat, with which I cover my whole face and neck, leaving gaps only to be able to see and breathe; and, lastly, I exercise or move animatedly, since travelling in a boat, which is the ordinary mode of transport, I take the oar from the other’s hands, and by rowing I try to chase away the cold. If I travel over ground in a sleigh, I dismount, and I travel for a while on foot.⁸⁹

Negri then returned home ‘with a thousand difficulties’ as he writes, before going to bed. He said goodnight to the masters of the house in Norwegian with the few words he had learned to communicate. Losing his shoe, even if for a few minutes, had made his feet and hands freeze and the pain was increasing, so much so that he describes it ‘in such a way that I have never felt such a thing before’.⁹⁰ The difficulties encountered along the way, including the cold, must have caused him a great deal of discomfort, as a consequence he defined his journey as ‘harsh’. Therefore, he sought some consolation in the form of an internal monologue, wondering about the real reasons for the trip, stating ‘You suffer a lot, Francesco, don’t you? But tell me, who made you come to these parts? Nobody. You came here off your own back to see the curiosities. So who are you complaining about?’ Negri tried to convince himself that the suffering would soon end and his jubilation would prevail, ‘of having seen what you have seen there, which will stay with you for the rest of your life; and it is those things that you will see on other days. You know how to create beautiful documents to give to others, just like those which you have read from great authors; now it’s your turn: Avida est periculi virtus, et quo tendat, non quid passura sit’.⁹¹

Giuseppe Acerbi’s journey to Norway

Almost 100 years after Negri, Giuseppe Acerbi decided to embark on what has been called the ‘Grand Tour against the tide’.⁹² Like Negri, Acerbi travelled to the remote North, bringing this part of the world to public knowledge and arousing the curiosity of many about the countries of the North, which were of increasing interest for travel and exploration.⁹³

When Acerbi set out on his journey nearly 100 years after Negri, travel had already increased significantly and involved various other types of travellers. Moreover, the Grand Tour had become accessible to the bourgeoisie.⁹⁴ During this period, British travellers became more and more numerous compared to the past.

The Scotsman Andrew Swinton had visited the region around the same time, but we do not know if Acerbi had read his piece ⁹⁵Neither do we know if Acerbi had read or been influenced by reading Negri’s Northern Journey. According to De Anna, it is very unlikely that Acerbi knew of Francesco Negri, considering that he never mentions him. Acerbi claims, as Negri had before him, to be the first Italian to have reached the North Cape. However, he could have deliberately ignored the testimony of his predecessor precisely to claim to have been the first. Acerbi had certainly read Coxe’s travelogue and met other travellers during his stay in Norway.⁹⁶ He was, therefore, more influenced by these journeys than by Negri’s. Unlike Negri, Acerbi travelled to Norway when trips to the North had become not only more popular, but even a desirable destination. Acerbi, being younger than Negri, had made less preparation for his journey compared to the priest from Ravenna, and unlike Negri, he was more eager to publish his work as soon as possible.

Acerbi, hailing from the prominent Lombardy bourgeoisie, embarked on his journey in 1796, finally reaching Norway four years later in 1799. When he reached Norway, he was just 23: young, full of life and strength. This was not the case with Negri, who was already 40 years old when he set off. Acerbi was one of the very few non-Scandinavian travellers to reach the North Cape predominantly over land, and he arrived there between 9 June and 11 August 1799 through Sweden.⁹⁷ Later, he re-entered Norway through Frederikstad, proceeded to Moss, and then journeyed on to Christiania, where he stayed for a few weeks. He reached Trondheim on 6 April 1800 and remained there for a few months. From Trondheim, he went to Stiklestad, and then headed to Bergen, where he arrived on 2 August 1800. From there, he moved on to Stavanger and then Kristiansand, leaving Norway indefinitely. After his return to Italy, Acerbi struggled to defend his publications and travel illustrations for a long time from those who claimed ownership of them. His work Voyage au Cap-Nord was, in fact, long-attributed to a certain M. de Saint-Morys, who may have published it under the pseudonym of Acerbi. This gives us further proof of how, precisely because of the danger involved, the exoticism that surrounded them, and the preparation that was required, trips to the remote North were considered worthier than ever of consideration and respect and, therefore, were even at risk of plagiarism.⁹⁸ These factors likely influenced Acerbi’s decision not to reference other authors and to publish his book promptly following his journey in Scandinavia. Upon returning to Italy, Acerbi organized his trip notes and had them published in London in 1802 under the title ‘Travels through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, to the North Cape in the Years 1798 and 1799’. The publication garnered significant success and the book was subsequently translated into German, French, Dutch, and, later, Italian.⁹⁹ Acerbi played a pivotal role in promoting and popularizing travel in Scandinavia among Italian and international audiences.

The book granted him access to high society salons and introduced him to illustrious figures such as Goethe, Madame de Staël, Malthus, and others. Acerbi’s productions and publications were extensive compared to Negri’s, who only published ‘The Northern Journey’, and even that was posthumous. Unlike Negri’s work, the trip to Norway was not recorded in one single piece, but in many different notes. Acerbi’s travel reports on Norway appear only minimally in his main work, the Travels published in 1802. Most importantly, the trips to the most important Norwegian cities, namely Christiania, Bergen and Trondheim, are not included in the book, and so his journey to Norway itself is almost unknown.

Why did Acerbi not include the journey to Norway in his main work? It is evident, as De Anna states in the preface to the Journey to Sweden and Norway, that Acerbi intended to publish a separate account of the expedition to Norway, but ultimately that text never saw the light of day.¹⁰⁰ Only recently did the trip to Norway come to public knowledge thanks to the research and data-collection work by three scholars from the University of Turku in Finland, which gave rise to the publication of his travel diaries and Norwegian itinerary.¹⁰¹ What were the reasons that led Acerbi to embark on such a long adventure? In the Travels through Sweden, Finland and Lapland, Acerbi describes such a journey to ‘be undertaken only by those who have a specific taste for nature, in every aspect, and are motivated by a desire to expand their own information, and to teach others’.¹⁰² It cannot be ruled out that, possibly in addition to his curiosity, Acerbi was driven by the desire to follow the fashion for these educational trips, and he also appears to have wanted to leave Italy and the revolutionary turmoil of that era behind him. Acerbi was a man who lived during the Enlightenment and the Romantic eras, and this is also evident from his reports. Unlike Negri who undertook the journey more than 100 years earlier and was travelling alone, Acerbi approached the journey with greater ease since he was accompanied by other people. He had a travelling companion, Bernardo Bellotto, who was the son of a Brescia banker, and a servant. Later in the expedition, and on the Swedish and Finnish routes, others joined them including a certain A. F. Skjöldebrand in Stockholm, the botanist and meteorologist Johan Julin in Oulu, the doctor Henric Deutsch and, finally, another botanist for a different section of the journey. Acerbi travelled with what he described as a traineau, or a closed sled, in which it was possible to shelter from the cold and snow.

This sled also gave us an advantage, - writes Acerbi – it was our quest for additional convenience that suggested to them the idea of our wealth, and this gave us a particular respect, with their eagerness to serve us.¹⁰³

Acerbi’s journey seemed to be comparable to a real scientific expedition and, in the eyes of the Norwegians who met him, he must have appeared to be a real explorer. The differences in the types of accommodation between Acerbi and Negri are also noteworthy: Acerbi mostly stayed in hotels, inns and taverns that he found along the way, but also in the homes of wealthy acquaintances who hosted him; Negri, on the other hand, seems to have benefitted exclusively from local hospitality. They both used letters of introduction which greatly facilitated their travels and recommended him to the most important Norwegian personalities,

it was Mr. P. Anker who helped to facilitate our journey, who not only gave us a list of all the stations to change horses, but also provided a circular to all the villagers, as general superintendent of the area, to provide us with all possible comforts and facilities, sealing it with his name.¹⁰⁴

Acerbi, who spoke fluent German and French, had no difficulty in communicating, especially with the bourgeois citizens he met in the main cities. In Negri’s case, however, the limits imposed by the language represented considerable obstacles for him and Latin was the only language he had in common with the few priests he happened to meet. Acerbi seems to like the Norwegians, who are always described in a very positive way, but the same cannot be said for his attitude towards the Swedes. He seemed pleased that his feelings about the Swedes were not unlike those of the Norwegians, who ‘esteem the Swedes as the Northern French or think they are ceremonious, false and not to be trusted’.¹⁰⁵ Acerbi often tells anecdotes: for example, he reports that when a Swede meets a Norwegian villager, he told him ‘Mika tiennera’, that is, ‘Your honoured servant’. The Norwegian replied: ‘Good dag foh’, or ‘Good morning, pope’.¹⁰⁶ Hence, as with the Norwegians and in identification with his oppressed people, Acerbi felt a certain solidarity with them.¹⁰⁷ In Sweden, Acerbi’s book was not very successful, and this partly overshadowed his journey to Norway. His book was severely judged by its Swedish readership and De Anna says that after becoming a Napoleonic diplomat in Paris, he ran into serious trouble because of his criticism and satire of the Swedish monarchy. Acerbi’s enthusiasm for Norway is very distinctive and therefore merits examination due to his different description of the country. A study of his Norwegian itinerary has never been conducted before.

Acerbi’s tales of joviality

Acerbi often focused on the hospitality, warmth and welcome he received from the Norwegian people which appears to have come as a surprise. Acerbi was also astonished by the cities of Christiania, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger and his low expectations of Norway are clear as he writes,

I was truly amazed at the luxury I found in this city [Christiania], and at the thoughtfulness I observed in the clothing, the traits and the manners of the women; just as in the splendour of their parties and invites, nothing was spared, and everything was conducted in the best possible manner. Indeed, everything seemed to be secretly assembled and combined to prove to us that Norway would never come second to any other country in splendid hospitality and pleasures.¹⁰⁸

In most British traveller accounts, there is no hint of the slightest luxury but, as stated by Flågesund and Symes in Norway, ‘more so even than in Sweden and Denmark, travellers found a robust peasantry living close to nature and apparently exhibiting the virtues associated with the primitive state’..¹⁰⁹ British travelogues’ descriptions of Norway often associated Norwegians with the idea of the ‘noble savage’. Therefore, ‘the impression of the Norwegian as a creature of nature’ emerged as a result of the people who were actually being studied: the travel literature is full of tales of peasant girls, fishermen and farmers, whilst shopkeepers, administrative officials and clerks are largely ignored.¹¹⁰ Fjågesund and R. A. Symes underline this, as

in most British travels accounts intimations of ‘progress’ are carefully omitted in the service of the greater myth that time in Norway has stood still and that the Norwegians are a trenchantly primitive people with no aspirations to join the modern industrial world.¹¹¹

Arthur de Capell Brooke, for instance, who visited Christiania in 1820 was very disappointed with his accommodation ‘at the hotel where I lodged, the only one, the accommodation was of the very worst description’.¹¹² In the Chapter ‘English Travellers to Norway – progress of Discovery’, Thomas Forester mentioned the ‘unsophisticated inhabitants of various parts of Norway’ and found it incredible that an Englishman would travel for anything other than utilitarian reasons.¹¹³ For Fjågesund and Symes ‘there is a real lack of contemporary contextualization in British travelogue and of the description of the self-sufficient primitive economy in Norway’.¹¹⁴ Since Acerbi was not influenced by the ‘Northern Utopia’ of the British travelogue, and nor were his narratives tied to a defined concept of nation to compare itself with unlike travellers from other nations, his narrative is filled with descriptions of the magnificence of the country and life in the cities. Acerbi’s accounts seem more realistic since Norway – especially in the period when British travellers were visiting the country – was going through a process of great transformation.¹¹⁵ Furthermore, there were significant crossovers between Norway and England at that time which Acerbi notices in his descriptions. Acerbi was positively surprised by the manners he found in the upper bourgeoisie he met as evidenced by this description:

Norwegians are perfectly organized for music. (…) Here there were two bridesmaids who played the piano with an uncommon perfection, and what seemed even more remarkable to me was only the taste and expression in their method, but their taste in the choice of music having taken for favourite models Haydn, Mozart and Clementi. The proximity and trade with England make it easy to have music and instruments from there, and indeed the manners, fashions and many of the customs resent this proximity.¹¹⁶

Acerbi was impressed by his visit to Peder Anker’s villa; he not only had paintings by prestigious Italian artists, but ‘had an excellent gardener and botanist … he had vines, figs and peaches and all the fruits of Italy, he had a good quantity of oranges and cedars, lemons with which he wanted to make us a punch after lunch and our table was served with asparagus, peas, carrots, salads picked from the plant that same day for us’.¹¹⁷ What struck Acerbi was the unexpected luxury that he witnessed through foreign dishes and all kinds of fine wines. In all the different places he visited he described the dinners and parties, referring specifically to the names of the attendees, and stating ‘The party ended with a splendid dinner’. He talks about the food and drink, always surprised at the luxury and delights, ‘There is no shortage of liqueurs, confitures, or excellent wines’.¹¹⁸ Sometimes Acerbi himself seemed to realize that he had focused a little too much on the feasts and dinners and, therefore, he declared: ‘I will not further describe all the feasts, dinners, lunches and invitations to dances and conversations here’.¹¹⁹

He often made comparisons with Italy, which Francesco Negri did not do. Acerbi scrutinized Norwegian society through the gaze of a bourgeois man from good society. As a man of his time, Acerbi paid attention to the Norwegian character by outlining an idea of a nation that simply does not emerge in the same way from Negri’s writing. Although he did not find the usual habits from his own world, he noticed an unexpected ‘magnificence’, which made him feel a sort of complicity with and sympathy for the country that hosted him, for the welcome and warmth that were offered to him and for the ways of living and eating.¹²⁰

There is the custom here that, after dinners and lunches, during the dessert, one of the young ladies is asked to sing aloud, with all guests asked to join in as a chorus. This custom, once common in France, is now considered ignoble and of low society.¹²¹

Despite the apparent harshness of his statements about frequent singing, those same songs in Norwegian society went on to become the very reason for affection for and solidarity with an oppressed people. ‘But I confess that, in Norway, it made a very pleasant impression on me, especially when the songs contain national verses that awaken the pure love for the homeland’.¹²² Here, Acerbi displays both awareness of and a form of anxiety about Italian identity and fate. More worldly and bourgeois than his predecessor Negri, Acerbi loved to surround himself with the pleasures that the Norway could offer at the end of the 18^th century. Leaving Christiania for the city of Trondheim was not easy, despite the appropriate letters of introduction and permits from the local authorities. The frozen, impervious roads on a horse-drawn sleigh made the journey extremely difficult. Acerbi often dwelt on the difficulties of the journey, highlighting how many of those roads had not previously been travelled by any foreigner, precisely because they were so dangerous. The hospitality and zeal with which they were welcomed by the villagers comforted Acerbi and his companions in their difficulties.¹²³ Here the description of his experience in the small town of Eidsvoll,

he returned and welcomed us with the same zeal and dignity, submission and veneration, as two princes would receive at a state visit. Our professor’s expressions and manners were so obliging and so kind that they gave all the nearby villagers awaiting our arrival such a high idea of us as people that, without even opening our mouths, everything was immediately seen to for us (…) Our surprise was delightful when, after dismounting our sleigh, we entered our good Professor’s Hall and found there, in addition to a good fire, a table set for eight or ten people.¹²⁴

Once they entered the dining room, they met the professor’s wife, ‘a very good woman without ceremony or manners, but an excellent family woman’, writing,

our luggage was taken to our bedrooms, bedrooms which were ready and prepared and where everything breathed sharpness and delight and where the soft, yielding and delicate beds for the sheets, the blankets, marked the delicacy and good taste of our lovely professor. (…) The dinner was excellent, and the professor had the best of wine and liqueurs brought out of both his cell.¹²⁵

Another day en route for Trondheim and after a long journey, having not found shelter for the night, they were welcomed into the humble abode of a blacksmith, who made straw mattresses for the unexpected guests.¹²⁶ It was urban life, as opposed to rural, that drew some of the most enthusiastic comments from Acerbi. He preferred to spend time with bourgeois people like him, to talk about politics and business, and he describes trade, prices, imports and exports in all the cities he visits: Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger or Kristiansund. Along the route that led him from Christiania to Trondheim, Acerbi was impressed by the countryside and the villagers’ accommodation and noted, ‘Very good hotel and nice people’,¹²⁷ ‘excellent accommodation, wealthy villagers’ (Moshuus)”, ‘Excellent place, very rich villagers who prepared us a very good dinner’.¹²⁸ ‘Tofte excellent place. Rich villagers where contentment and well-being makes everyone happy. Even better than Formoe’. At other times, however, Acerbi focusses his notes on uninhabitable places, impervious frozen roads, the countless difficulties associated with travel and, often, people’s inhospitality. In Trondheim, where Acerbi stayed for three months, he talks about economics, customs, and rights, and he cites the titles of books found in libraries. He also describes commerce, stating that there were 100 families of merchants or various knotters in 1800. When travelling up to Stiklestad, Acerbi notes the ‘description of this walk in an open, well-cultivated and very rich country. Hosted by a villager, cleanliness, friendliness, their ease’.¹²⁹ Acerbi records people’s first and last names, always making positive comments about the excellent accommodation and rich villagers. He does not reserve much space for nature, unlike the romantic travellers who followed in his footsteps, instead he often observes Norwegian nature from the perspective of a businessman. Acerbi was always interested in many aspects of the life of the nations that he visited. He described how Norway was organized and administered, analysed imports and exports, meticulously recording the list of products arriving at Kristiansund Customs, as well as Bergen’s fish production.

Much more than Negri, Acerbi was a man of his time, a modern bourgeois society member who observed the reality that surrounded him, from sociological to economic and political perspectives. He was also interested in natural history, wandering around the country in his fruitless search for someone who could help him with the names of fish and other animal species. He paused to describe the mountains in almost the same detail with which he described the food. On most evenings in Bergen, Acerbi participated in sumptuous parties and dinners with songs and stories of anecdotes about the country and the people. The impression one gets of Bergen from Acerbi’s description is of a more cosmopolitan town than the rest of Norway. Unlike Negri, who never heard talk of Italians, Acerbi actually met some, ‘In Bergen, for example, I had the honour of meeting all the most important personalities of the town, including another Italian, a certain Foberti from Messina who, due to bizarre fate – says Acerbi – got married and made his fortune with a Norwegian woman’.¹³⁰

Conclusions

Negri and Acerbi contributed to the travel literature by providing accounts that deviate from the English travel literature that was to follow. The representations of Norway that emerged in both of the travelogues are probably less influenced by the literary genre and more by their own experiences and the desire to be the first Italians to provide information about these unknown lands. Francesco Negri and Giuseppe Acerbi were indeed among the first Italians to travel to Norway, both of whom travelled before journeys to the North had become popular among British travellers. For these reasons, the journeys of Negri and Acerbi differ from the other travelogues, providing different emphases concerning society, cities and people, with details that are often omitted from the British travelogues that tend to highlight the wildness of the country and its natural landscape. Britons very often focus on the Norwegian Viking and past heritage or on the natural world. Acerbi’s and Negri’s shared principal aim was, however, a desire to contribute to the travel literature and collect information concerning a far and almost unknown country for Italians. Negri undertook the journey with the intention of informing the Italian cultural and religious authorities about these distant regions in a period in which information was scarce.

For both authors, therefore, the trip to Norway represented a journey to a distant and undiscovered land and they both returned to newfound success. They provided a new image of Norway, its society, and the people they met in a period when knowledge of the North was limited. The two accounts also both give vital information about the difficulties and vicissitudes faced by the travellers, particularly that of the solitary Francesco Negri, since Norway was not only a faraway country, but also one which was perceived to be cold and mysterious. Despite the many similarities between the two accounts, they also feature many differences. A century after Francesco Negri’s northern journey, Acerbi’s travel report seems to have a different tenor. While sharing the notion of a journey of reflection, slow pilgrimage and wandering, juxtapositions and contrasts with different climates and ways of life, the two experiences seem to differ significantly. Negri’s journey was undertaken with the most absolute simplicity, whilst Acerbi’s often reflected a different ambitions, times, and styles that often expressed themselves in a greater splendour, sometimes bordering on luxury; a conviviality that had no equal in the experience of the priest of Ravenna. Negri’s journey was more focused on nature and exploration, while Acerbi was more interested in the human experience. Nonetheless, both experiences, with the authors’ evident surprise at the unknown and the unexpected, contribute to a broader novel approach to the incomparable representations made of the people, hospitality, food, and general environment. This was a different, or rather unknown, vision that seemed to overturn the image of Norway, or rather give new connotations which then found confirmation and were reinforced during the 19^th century, thus overturning the North – South image that had prevailed up until that point. Both Negri and Acerbi were the first to provide and spread information on the North in a period in which were there was very little information available and they went on to construct a more benevolent attitude towards the area and, indeed, to inspire new journeys.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Monica Miscali

Monica Miscali is Associate Professor of Modern History in the Department of Historical and Classical Studies at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She completed her PhD in history at the European University Institute in Florence in 2001 and she was a postdoctoral researcher in economic history at the University of Genève. Prior to joining the faculty at NTNU in 2017, she has worked as associate professor in the Department of Literature, Areas studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo and as a teaching fellow at the University of Bath (UK). Monica Miscali has conducted research in the fields of social history, labour history, gender history, migration history and diplomatic history. Her Research interest are: Twentieth Century Italian and European history, Italian/Norwegian Diplomatic History, Italian Migration history, Gender history, Social history.

Notes

1. Brewer, Whose Grand Tour?; Bohls and Duncan, Travel Writing; Sweet, Verhoeven, and Goldsmith, Beyond the Grand Tour.

2. Barton, Northern Arcadia; Murphy, Romantics North.

3. Barton, Northern Arcadia, 149.

4. Fjågesund and Symes, The Dream of the North; Barton, Northern Arcadia.

5. Barton, Northern Arcadia, 98.

6. Alfieri, Mémoires.

7. Ryall et al., Arctic Discourses; David, The Arctic in the British Imagination; Wawn’s, The Vikings and the Victorians; Walchester, Gamle Norge.

8. de Anna, Conoscenza e imagine della Finlandia; Giuseppe Acerbi, Il viaggio in Svezia e in Norvegia; Orlandini Carcreff, Il Capo Nord; De Caprio, Un genere letterario instabile; Arato, Tra età dei lumi e restaurazione.

9. Hulme and Youngs, The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, 41.

10. Magni, Il viaggio Settentrionale.

11. Ryall, Artic discourses; Hill, White Horizon; David, The Artic in the British Imagination; Wawn’s, The Vikings and the Victorians; Walchester, Gamle Norge.

12. Ibid.

13. Quoted by Hester, Literature and Identity in Italian Baroque, 11.

14. Pineider, Preface, Cosi immensa pellegrinazione, 5.

15. Fjågesund and Symes, The Dream of the North.

16. de La Martnière, Em oppdagelsesreise mot Nord, 34.

17. Ibid.

18. On Sperling’s journey and other travellers, see Carl Huitfeldt, Norge i andres øyne.

19. Kassis, Representation of the North, 4.

20. Barton, Northern Arcadia, 3.

21. Kidd, British Identities; Wolf, Inventing Eastern Europe.

22. Fjågesund and Symes, The Dream of the North, 42.

23. Korte, English Travel Writing, 87.

24. Kassis, Representation of the North, 5.

25. Fjågesund and Symes, The Dream of the North, 15.

26. Ibid.

27. Barton, Northern Arcadia, 15.

28. Kassis, Representations of the North, 5.

29. Ibid., 4.

30. Fjågesund and Symes, The Dream of the North, 17.

31. Sweet, Beyond the Grand Tour, 4.

32. Fjågesunt and Symes, The Northern Utopia, 41.

33. Ibid.

34. Thonstad Sandvik, Nasjonens velstand, 8.

35. Leerseen, National Stereotypes, 49.

36. Hester, Geographies of Belonging, 16.

37. Hester, Literature and Identity in Italian Baroque, 16.

38. Marshall, The reformation and the idea of the North, 5.

39. de Anna, Conoscenza e immagine della Finlandia, 111.

40. Hagen, Images, Representations.

41. Alighieri, La Divina Commedia, XXXII e XXXIII.

42. de Anna, Conoscenza e immagine della Finlandia, 350.

43. Bohls, Duncan, Travel Writing 1700–1830, xxiii.

44. Ibid.

45. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 34.

46. Hagen, Images, Representations.

47. Schiötz, Itineraria Norvegica, 334–7, 9–15; Raimondi, Scienziati e viaggiatori; Caravita, Il prete ravennate che ha scoperto gli sci; Nigrisoli Wärnjelm, “Francesco Negri e le edizioni della sua opera”; Grillo Orlandini, “Le premier Italien au cap Nord”; Hester, “Geographies of Belonging”.

48. Barton, Northern Arcadia

49. A short version and in French was published already in 1686 in Toulouse with the title: Voyage du celebre Francisco Negri en la Laponie, païs tres-extraordinaire pour sa sitüation, climat, la figure des peuples, leur religion, leurs moeurs, leurs habitations, nourriture et vêtemens. The complete version was only published in 1700 in Padua (Viaggio settentrionale fatto, e descritto dal molto rev.do sig.r d. Francesco Negri da Ravenna. Opera postuma)

50. Grillo Orlandini, Le premier Italien au cap Nord.

51. Rogan, Det gamle skysstellet, 28–29, 213.

52. Magni, “Il viaggio settentrionale di Francesco Negri”.

53. Brilli, Quando viaggiare era un’arte, 16.

54. Buzard, The beaten track.

55. Blumenberg, La leggibilità del mondo, 107–16.

56. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 12.

57. ibid., 337.

58. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 376.

59. Ibid.

60. Ibid.

61. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 371.

62. Aresti and Nigrisoli Wärnhjelm, “Sul Viaggio Settentrionale,” 47.

63. Hester, Geographies of Belonging, 2.

64. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 12.

65. Ibid.

66. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 14.

67. Ibid.

68. Albertus Magnus writing in the thirteenth century identified an animal called rangyfer that lived in the Arctic of Norway and Sweden and was similar to a deer but was faster, more powerful, and had longer horns. Albertus’s rangyfer was clearly a reindeer, even though his version had three horns. In his text, Olaus Magnus also mentions three horns.

In the period in which Negri was travelling, it was commonly believed that the reindeer had three horns. Francesco Negri, upon observing them firsthand, was able to refute this belief, in Jørgensen and Lagum, ed., Beastly Belonging in the Premodern North and Albertus Magnus, Deanimalibus, ii; Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 21

69. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 15.

70. Ibid.

71. Andreas Klein, Early Modern Knowledge about the Sámi, 82.

In contrast to Negri, when Schefferus writes about Lapland, despite doing so with a rigorous scientific method prejudices and superstitions remain alive in a way that somehow stains or marks the image of it. Whereas Negri praises the generosity of the Sámi people who welcomed him and never indulges in negative comments, even about their physical appearance: ‘The Lapps are superstitious, cowardly, and fearful […] The Lapps are very hot-tempered and very brutish. […] They cannot be appeased when provoked. […] The women especially become excessively angry. […] The Lapps deceive and lie. […] The Lapps like to amass wealth. […] They do not even want to take care of their herds. […] This laziness is the reason for the little charity they have for their elderly or sick relatives’. Jean Scheffer, Histoire de la Laponie, 16–17.

72. Ibid., 8.

73. Ibid., 152.

74. Ibid., 155.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid., 162.

77. Ibid., 151.

78. Ibid., 173.

79. Ibid., 151.

80. Ibid., 176.

81. Ibid., 162.

82. Ibid., 162.

83. Ibid., 200.

84. Ibid., 179.

85. Magnus, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus.

86. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 160.

87. Goldsmith, Dogs, Servants and Masculinities, 3–21.

88. Negri, Viaggio Settentrionale, 200.

89. Ibid., 204.

90. Ibid.

91. Ibid. English translation: The virtue is eager for danger, and to what end, not what it may endure.

92. de Caprio, Un genere letterario instabile; Arato, Tra età dei lumi e Restaurazione.

93. Sillanpää, The Scandinavian Sporting Tour.

94. Bohls and Duncan, Travel Writing, xx.

95. Swinton, Travels into Norway, Denmark and Russia in the years 1788, 1789 and 1791.

96. Barton, Northern Arcadia, 16.

97. Acerbi, Il viaggio in Svezia e Norvegia, 7.

98. Acerbi, Correspondance.

99. Acerbi, Viaggio al Capo Nord fatto l’anno 1799, compendiato e per la prima volta pubblicato in Italia da Giuseppe Belloni antico militare italiano; Acerbi, Voyage au Cap Nord par la Suède, la Finlande et la Laponie, Paris, Levrault et Schoell, 1804, 4 vol; The German translation is: Reise durch Schweden und Finnland, bis an die äußersten Gränzen von Lappland, in den Jahren 1798 und 1799; Reizen door Zweeden en Finland, tot aan de uiterste grenzen van Lapland. In de jaaren 1798 en 1799.

100. de Anna, Giuseppe Acerbi, 44–8.

101. Acerbi, Il viaggio in Svezia e Norvegia.

102. Acerbi, Travels through Sweden.

103. Acerbi, Il viaggio in Svezia e Norvegia, 102

104. Ibid., 111.

105. Acerbi, Travels through Sweden, 85.

106. Ibid., 85.

107. Ibid.

108. Ibid., 103.

109. Fjågesund and Symes, The Northern Utopia, 162.

110. Ibid., 62.

111. Ibid., 167.

112. de Capell Brooke, Travels Through Sweden, 95.

113. Forester, Norway and Its Glaciers, 2–3.

114. Fjågesund and Symes, The Dream of the North, 166.

115. Ibid., 166.

116. Acerbi, Travels through Sweden, 105.

117. Ibid., 107.

118. Ibid., 109.

119. Ibid., 111.

120. Ibid.

121. Ibid.

122. Ibid.

123. Ibid., 110.

124. Ibid., 114.

125. Ibid., 116.

126. Ibid., 138.

127. Ibid., 119.

128. Ibid., 119.

129. Ibid., 124.

130. Ibid.