Treasures from the London Library: Knud Leem: an accidental ethnologist in Lapland

The missionary and linguist Knud Leem was born in 1697 in Haram, eastern Norway. He studied theology at the University of Copenhagen between 1713 and 1715 and after completing his examinations he began to study the language of the indigenous people of Lapland. The Sami people, formerly known as Finns and Lapps, inhabit a region of northern Scandinavia that includes territories in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia. Norway has always had the greatest Sami population, concentrated in the northern region of Finnmark (‘Sami country’).

The eighteen-year-old Leem was very interested in the Sami people and hoped to work as missionary in Finnmark. Realising he was too young, however, he began his professional life working as a tutor and assistant to senior clergymen in the town of Møre in Western Norway. He first applied to the Missionary Board for a post in Finnmark in 1723, but had to wait another two years before a position became vacant. Finally, in 1725 Thomas von Westen, the ‘apostle to the Lapps’, who was in charge of the mission to the Sami, sent Leem to Porsanger, in Finnmark.

Leem spent the next ten years among the Sami people of Finnmark. In 1728, he left Porsanger to become a pastor in Alta-Talvik where he expanded his knowledge of their language, beliefs and way of life. When, in 1735, he left Finnmark to become a pastor in Avaldsnes, southern Norway, his quest to educate Norwegian missionaries in Sami culture and to improve the spiritual and material life of the Sami had just begun.

His En lappisk grammatica efter den Dialect, fom bruges af Field-Lapperne udi Porsanger-Fiorden was published in Copenhagen in 1748. It was a grammar of the Karasjok dialect: the language spoken by the mountain Sami in the Porsanger Fjord. The work was completely original, based on Leem’s own observations and not relying on earlier grammars published in Sweden. The book was aimed at fellow missionaries and in writing it Leem fulfilled one of the classic roles of the Christian missionary: to break down language barriers in order to facilitate religious conversion. Although considered by some to be inferior to the earlier Swedish Sami grammars, it remains the first surviving scientific work on the Sami language written by a Norwegian: earlier works produced in the Trondheim seminary under the auspices of Thomas von Westen were destroyed in a fire in Copenhagen in 1795.

Having completed his grammar, Leem lived in Copenhagen for a year and began work on his magnum opus, the Lexicon Lapponicum Bipartitum. The first part of this great Sami encyclopedia was published in Trondheim in 1768, while the second was published posthumously in Copenhagen in 1781.

Flying the flag for the Norwegian Sami people was not an easy task. The Kalmar Union of 1397 had brought Norway, Denmark and Sweden together under a single head of state. In practice, this meant that while foreign policy was dictated by the monarch, each country retained a great degree of legal and administrative autonomy, which inevitably led to tension and conflict. In 1523, Sweden left the union and, in 1536, the Kalmar Union was formally ended when Denmark took over control of Norway. The Danish domination continued until 1814, when, after the defeat at the Battle of Copenhagen, Denmark was forced to sign the Treaty of Kiel and effectively hand over control of Norway to the victorious Sweden. As professor Gutorm Gjessing of the Universitetes Etnografiske Museum of Oslo wrote in 1947 'the historical development of the country has provided too good a soil for cultural isolationism and national self-communion.' In other words, a nation struggling with the daily reality of being ruled by a foreign power will have little sympathy for, or interest in, a 'primitive' ethnic minority that inhabits a remote corner of the country.

In the 18th century, the Danish-Norwegian government was immersed in boundary controversies with the Swedish government. Sweden was showing an interest in the Sami people who lived in disputed lands. The Danish-Norwegian mission to Finnmark was therefore both a political and religious enterprise with the dual goal of making the Sami Christian and Danish. Whichever country could claim the Sami would have a much stronger claim to the land they occupied. However, different bishops had very different views on how best to achieve this aim. Peder Krog, bishop of Nidaros from 1689 to 1731 and his successor, Eiler Hagerup, both believed that the answer to the problem was to teach them Danish so their conversion to Christianity could be carried out in the national language.

Others, however, were opposed to this approach. Thomas von Westen defied Krog when, in 1717, he opened a seminary in Trondheim where missionaries destined for Finnmark were taught the language of the Sami by the schoolmaster and translator Isaac Olsen, who was also Knud Leem’s teacher. Von Westen managed to keep the seminary going despite Episcopal disapproval, but the school was closed the moment its founder died. Hagerup’s successor, Ludvig Harboe, who became Bishop of Nidaros in 1743, understood the need for priests and missionaries who could speak, read and write in Sami, and so did Frederik Nannestad, who succeeded him 1748.

In 1750, Nannestad approved a request from the Missionary Board to set up a new seminary, led by Knud Leem, where Sami could be taught. On Leem’s advice the location of the proposed new school changed from Alta to Trondheim and in March 1751 the Seminarium Lapponicum Fredericianum opened its doors. The need for Sami-speaking missionaries became even greater when the border dispute with Sweden was finally settled that same year with the signing of the Strömstrad Treaty. The treaty gave the Sami people the right to roam freely across the agreed new border, making it easier for the Norwegian Sami to go to Sweden in search of Sami-speaking priests.

Leem devoted the rest of his life to running the seminary and its associated Latin grammar school. Much of his time was invested in trying to resolve the tensions caused by the fact that he admitted Sami students to be taught alongside Norwegian and Danish students. Nevertheless, with the support of Bishop Nannestad and his successor, the theologian and botanist Johan Ernst Gunnerus, Leem was able to keep the seminary and the school going. He even found the time to continue to publish books on the Sami language and culture: in 1756, he published a Danish-Sami dictionary and, in 1767, the work he is most remembered for, Beskrivelse over Finmarkens Lapper.

This comprehensive ethnological study of the Sami of Finnmark includes some notes on ornithology written by Gunnerus. The large volume, held at the London Library, contains over 600 pages of parallel Danish and Latin text and 101 leaves of beautiful illustrations depicting every aspect of the life of the Sami: their dwellings, costume, reindeer herding and fishing techniques. Because of this book, the man who had set out to bring a remote group of people closer to Christ is now remembered as one of Norway’s first ethnologists of the Finnmark Sami.

History repeated itself when Leem’s seminary closed its doors soon after his death, in 1774. For the next 200 years, Norwegian attitudes towards the Sami worsened. Writing in 1953 Professor Gjessing cited a number of factors that contributed to the anti-Sami prejudice from the mid-19th century onwards: evolutionism used to support the notion of inferior races; growing nationalism and 'Norwegianization' of school education as reaction to Swedish domination; the industrial revolution which created the notion that culture was synonymous with industry; and legislation that prevented non-Norwegian speakers from owning land in Finnmark. The situation did not improve when Norway finally obtained its independence in 1905: the Sami faced a more immediate problem when the profitable Pomor trade with Russia began to decline at the beginning of the 20th century and then disappeared completely after the Russian revolution.

Norwegian attitudes changed, however, after the Sami joined the Resistance during the German occupation of Norway, which began in 1940. In 1959, a change in the law allowed Sami children to be taught in their native tongue and the Sami are now recognised as the indigenous people of Norway. The Sami Parliament was opened in 1989 and in 2005 the Finnmark Act transferred property rights to land and water to the Sami people.

Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros is Head of Bibliographic Services at the London Library.