“Lapland’s Roadway”: German Photography and Experience of the European Far North in the Second World War

Abstract

This article examines photographs illustrating the German war effort in Finnish Lapland during the Second World War. We will analyze the German photographic representation of Lapland from the perspective of how the Germans portrayed and experienced this northern land, with a focus on Fahrbahn Lappland (Lapland’s Roadway), a coffee-table book by the German photojournalist Mabre (Max Martin Brehm). It affords interesting insights into German perceptions of and engagements with the Far North of the European world. The photographs in Fahrbahn reflect a sense of dislocation on the one hand and an attempt to neutralize the physically and mentally threatening northern wilderness on the other. In addition to capturing the “spirit” of the German experience of Lapland through his photographs, Mabre’s work resonates with a dystopian tradition of representing the North of Europe dating back to the early modern period and beyond. It presents Lapland as a “blank slate” by distancing the locals from the view and showing the region as a virtually unoccupied periphery on the fringe of the modern world. This can perhaps be understood as making “mental groundwork” for the anticipated Nazi German rule in the North of Europe after the war.

Keywords:

• photography
• phenomenology
• Second World War
• Nazi Germany
• Finland
• Lapland

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Vladimir Kekez, Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, Mika Kunnari, and the anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts. As always, any errors or misunderstandings are our own.

Notes

Oula Seitsonen is an archaeologist and geographer at the Universities of Helsinki and Oulu, Finland, with a wide range of interests from prehistoric pastoralism to contemporary archaeology. He is currently working on the heritage of Hitler’s Arctic war, and the origins of Sámi reindeer herding.

Vesa-Pekka Herva is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oulu, Finland. His research interests span from prehistoric to contemporary archaeology and heritage studies in north-eastern Europe. He is Principal Investigator of the “Lapland’s Dark Heritage” project.

Tuuli Koponen is a PhD candidate in archaeology at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her research focuses on the representation and commemoration of WW2 in Finland, with a particular interest in wartime photography.

Notes

1 A low angle has been interpreted as a way to illustrate the subject as powerful or admirable and the high angle would then be an illustration of the photographer’s power or superiority over the photographed subject (Jewitt and Oyama 2001, 135–136).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland (grant number 275497) and the Finnish Cultural Foundation (grant number 00160458).