Virtue and vice in the north. the scandinavian writings of samuel laing

Scandinavian Journal of History

Volumn 23, Issue 3-4, 1998, Pages 153-172

  Porter, Bernard ^a  

^a NEWCASTLE UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950672589     PISSN: 03468755     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/03468759850115936     Document Type: Review

References (77)

1. S. Laing, Journal of a Residence in Norway, during The Years 1834, 1835, and 1836; made with a View to Inquire into the Moral and Political Economy of that Country, and the Condition of its Inhabitants (1836) (hereafter Norway); A Tour in Sweden in 1838; comprising Observations on the Moral, Political and Economical State of the Swedish Nation (1839) (hereafter Sweden). All works cited here were published in London, unless otherwise indicated.
2. So far as British accounts are concerned, the closest to Laing's are Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters from Denmark, Norway and Sweden (1794), and The Travel Diaries of Thomas Robert Malthus, unpublished at the time, but brought out in an edition by Patricia James in the present century (Cambridge, 1966). Both of these incorporated serious social and economic analyses. Other travel writers touched occasionally on such things: for example W. Coxe, Travels in Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark (1784);
3. M. Consett, A Tour through Sweden, Swedish-Lapland, Finland and Denmark (1789);
4. J. MacDonald, Travels through Denmark and Part of Sweden, during the Winter and Spring of the Present Year 1809, 2 vols. (1809);
5. Thomas Th., Travels in Sweden during the Autumn of 1812 (1813);
6. J. T. James, Journal of a Tour in Germany, Sweden, Russia, Poland, during the Years 1813 and 1814 (1817);
7. E. D. Clarke, Travels in Various Countries of Europe Asia and Africa, Part 3, Scandinavia (1819) (Clarke was Malthus's companion for part of his journey);
8. and D. Conway, A Personal Narrative of a Journey through Norway, Parts of Sweden, and the Islands and States of Denmark (Edinburgh, 1829).
9. The large majority of travellers in the North went for its "sublime" landscape. B. A. Butensdwn, Travellers Discovering Norway in the Last Century (Oslo, 1968), is a useful anthology of this genre.
10. Two comprehensive listings of Scandinavian travel books are E. G. Cox, A Reference Guide to the Literature of Travel (Seattle, 1935), vol. 1 ch. 6, which, however, stops in 1800;
11. and E. H. Schiötz, Itineraria Norvegica. A bibliography on foreigners' travels in Norway until 1900 (Oslo, 1970).
12. I was researching into what is generally regarded as 19th century English "xenophobia", for what it tells us about contemporary Britain itself. See B. J. Porter, "'Bureau and Barrack'": Early Victorian Attitudes Towards the Continent", in Victorian Studies, vol. 27 no. 4 (1984), pp. 407-433.
13. The main facts of Laing's life and career can be gleaned from his Dictionary of National Biography entry (original edition, 1909), vol. XI, pp. 404-406)
14. and from an article in The Orcadian, 30 November 1967, p. 4. In this paragraph this has been filled out from material in the Orkney Archive, especially the Balfour of Balfour and Trenabie, Watt of Brockness and Skaill, Sutherland-Graeme, Omond, Dundas, Traill-Dennison, Halcro-Johnston, William Spence, E. W. Marwick, Orkney Record and Antiquarian Society papers, Peace's Almanac for 1906, Tiends Miscellaneous 1724-1833, Registers of Seisins, Orkney and Shetland, vol. 2, and Pamphlets 324YZ and 338 YZ; and - most importantly - from a recently discovered memoir-cum-diary kept by Laing in his later years for the benefit of his children, a typescript copy of which, running to 99 pages, has now been deposited by Mr Alastair Laing, a lateral descendant, in the Orkney Archive (hereafter "Memoir").
15. S. Laing, "Memoir", p. 92.
16. His wife had died many years before. Afterwards he was looked after by her sister Mary, who served as housekeeper. She fell out with him over the marriage of his daughter Elizabeth, which took Elizabeth off his hands and caused Mary to pack her bags and leave early in 1834. His son, Samuel Jr., was already beginning a moderately successful academic and political career in England. Three years later Elizabeth became widowed, but prosperous as a result, enabling her to look after her father from the end of his travelling period to his death. Laing, "Memoir", pp. 90-99.
17. See D. Porter, Haunted Journeys. Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing (Princeton, 1991), p. 12.
18. He reckoned that in Trondheim he was effectively nearer to his children, who lived in Edinburgh and Cambridge, than he would have been if he had stayed in Orkney, "such is the change steam navigation has provided in Norway, Sweden or Germany, than in Orkney": "Memoir", p. 90. But the same must have applied to many other European venues.
19. Laing, Norway, p. iii.
20. Laing, Sweden, pp. iii-iv.
21. P. James (ed.), The Travel Diaries of Thomas Robert Malthus (1966) pp. 274-275.
22. See S. Bagge, "The Middle Ages", in W. H. Hubbard et al, eds. Making a Historical Culture. Historiography in Norway (Oslo, 1995), p. 113.
23. Laing's translation appeared in 1844. It is still respected by Norse scholars today: see, for example, D. Whaley, Heimskringla. An Introduction (1991), pp. 49-50;
24. Snorre Sturlason, The Heimskringla, translated by S. Laing; 2nd edn. (1889), "Preliminary Dissertation", p. 4.
25. On the general image of the "Viking" in British literature and politics, see F. E. Farley, Scandinavian Inflences in the English Romantic Movement (Boston, Mass., 1903);
26. C. H. Herford, Norse Myth in English Poetry (Manchester, 1919);
27. E. V. Gordon, An Introduction to Old Norse (1927, revised edn. 1957), pp. lxviii-lxxvii;
28. W. Craigie, The Northern Element in English Literature (Toronto, 1933);
29. E. Seaton, Literary Relations of England and Scandinavia in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1935);
30. K. Ltzenberg, The Victorians and the Vikings: A Bibliographical Essay (Michigan, 1947);
31. S. Kliger, The Goths in England. A Study in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Thought (Cambrdge, Mass., 1952);
32. S. I. Tucker, "Scandinavica for the Eighteenth-century Common Reader", in Saga-Book of the Viking Society, vol. 16 (1962-1965), pp. 233-47;
33. M. Omberg, Scandinavian Themes in English Poetry, 1760-1800 (Uppsala, 1976);
34. J. L. Greenway, The Golden Horns. Mythic Imagination and the Nordic Past (Athens, Georgia, 1977);
35. and A. Wawn, "The Spirit of 1892: Sagas, Saga-steads and Victorian Philology", in Saga-Book of the Viking Society, vol. 23 pt. 4 (1992), pp. 213-252.
36. Heimskringla, "Preliminary Dissertation", chs. 1 and 3, edited by S. Laing.
37. B. Steckzén, Svenskt och Brittiskt (Stockholm, 1959), pp. 249-250, infers this, reasonably enough, but without citing any evidence. Laing mentions meeting a number of Norwegians (and others) while in Norway, but never by name. Most of them seem to have been innkeepers and "proprietors" (for example, Norway, pp. 61, 91, 108, 169). Unlike most British travel writers he does not boast of meeting gentry and intelligentsia, and so presumably did not do so. He also refers to some English sportsmen and a Scottish immigrant he came across: "One may learn more of Norway in an hour, from such a man, than by travelling a hundred miles", he writes, revealingly (p. 81). All but a few days of his stay were spent in profoundly rural areas. Presumably this is where he garnered most of his intelligence.
38. and even of Margaret Thatcher's attitude to her own government's National Curriculum in History, spelled out in The Downing Street Years (1993), pp. 595-596.
39. Anon., On the Moral State and Political Union of Sweden and Norway, in answer to Mr. Laing's Statement (London, 1840). Copies survive in the British Library and the National Library of Scotland.
40. S. Laing, "Sweden and Norway. Mr. Laing's Reply to a Pamphlet", in Monthly Chronicle, vol. 6 (1840), p. 394.
41. S. Laing, "Sweden and Norway", pp. 391-394. Italics added.
42. Laing, "Sweden and Norway", p. 394.
43. See B. Porter, '"Monstrous Vandalism': Capitalism and Philistinism in the Works of Samuel Laing (1780-1868)", in Albion, vol. 23 no. 2 (1991). The key passages for this in Laing's work appear in his Notes of a Traveller, on the Social and Political State of France, Prussia, Switzerland, Italy, and other parts of Europe, during the Present Century (1842), pp. 12-14, 384-386;
44. and Observations on the Social and Political State of the European People in 1848 and 1849 (1850), pp. 119-204 and chs. X and XIV.
45. British and Foreign Review, vol. 5 (July 1837), pp. 2-3.
46. Wellesley's Index of Victorian Periodicals attributes this article to Fitzstephen French. Other favourable reviews appeared in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 65 (April 1837), pp. 39-61;
47. TheLondon and Westminster Review, vol. 27 (April 1837), pp. 164-195;
48. and the Dublin University Magazine, vol. 9 (April 1837), pp. 443-452.
49. This is Fitzstephen French (again) in British and Foreign Review, vol. 10 (January 1840), pp. 1-24.
50. See also Ch. Johnstone in Tail's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 6 (new series) (May 1839), pp. 307-327.
51. Edinburgh Review, vol. 69 (July 1839), p. 358 (by H. S. Tremenheere).
52. Anon., "Laing's Dangerous Fallacies in statistical science", in Polytechnic Journal, vol. I (1839), pp. 96-102. Laing's illegitimacy figures are mainly vulnerable on the ground that he took no account of differing marriage customs.
53. For modern discussions of "bastardy" in history, which includes chapters on Sweden, see P. Laslett et al, eds. Bastardy and its Comparative History (Cambridge, Mass., 1980)
54. and R. F. Thomasson, "Premarital Sexual Permissiveness and Illegitimacy in the Nordic Countries", in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 18 (1976), especially the table on p. 253. The Polytechnic Journal also suggested that a reason for the slightly higher illegitimacy rate in Stockholm was the Swedish government's very success in suppressing prostitution, one result of which was that men now had to "seek the gratification of their passions" with more vulnerably fertile women (p. 100).
55. For example, the Edinburgh Review, vol. 69, p. 349;
56. Polytechnic Review, vol. 1, p. 101.
57. Most of these excuses are rehearsed in Steckzén, Svenskt och Brittiskt, p. 250.
58. See above, fn. 49. If he was influenced by the existing literature on Norway he gives no sign of it. The only travel books he cites, in all cases critically, are those by Edwin Clarke, Derwent Conway (above, fn. 2), and Leopold von Buch's Travels through Norway and Lapland (English translation published 1813). He also mentions some "antiquarians", including Gerard Schoning and "Professor Holmboe", but not Rudolf Keyser, who might have given him his idea about Norway's lucky escape from "feudalism": see S. Bagge, "The Middle Ages", pp. 112-113, and fn. 42 above.
59. These were: Notes of a Traveller (1842);
60. Observations on the Social and Political State of the European People (1850): see above, fn. 82;
61. Ch. B. Elliott, Letters from the North of Europe; or a Journal of Travels in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Prussia, and Saxony (1832), p. 153.
62. See, for example, Laing's Notes of a Traveller, pp. 12-14, where he inveighs against the "lisping amateur hopping about the saloons of the great", prattling of "taste" and "refined feeling", and so on; contrasting him with the down-to-earth Glasgow manufacturer, who, he claims, has done more for humanity than all the artists of the age put together. That sounds like the literati.
63. G. Forster, Introduction to Andrew Sparrman, Voyage to the Cape of Good Hope (1785). I am indebted to Professor Anthony Pagden for this reference.
64. For the use of travel literature in this way, see also T. M. Curley, Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel (Athens, Georgia, 1976).
65. J. S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848), book II chapter 6 § 3, 6th edn. (1873) pp. 159-161.
66. See also D. Martin, John Stuart Mill and the Land Question (Hull, 1981), pp. 18-20.
67. F. E. Mineka, ed., The Earlier Letters of John Stuart Mill 1812-1848 (Toronto, 1963), p. 622.
68. Mill, Principles, (1873), p. 181, fn.: "Mr Laing, in his latest publication, 'Observations on the Social and Political State of the European People in 1848 and 1849', a book devoted to the glorification of England, and the disparagement of everything elsewhere which others, or even he himself in former works, had thought worthy of praise, argues that.", etc. "If these statements were correct, they would invalidate all which Mr. Laing affirmed so positively in other writings. But he is entirely mistaken as to the matter of fact." The passage to which Mill objects is on pp. 97-99 of Observations.
69. British and Foreign Review, vol. 10, p. 3.
70. Laing, Notes of a Traveller, pp. iv-vi.
71. E.g. Svensk Upplagsbok (1950), p. 647;
72. Nordisk Familjebok (1962), vol. 13 p. 298.
73. He also has an honoured place in Saga historiography: see, for example, J. Kennedy, "The English Language Translations of Heimskringla: from 1844 to 1996", in Sagas and the Norwegian Experience (Trondheim, 1997), pp. 347-351.
74. See, for example, J. Buzard, The Beaten Track. European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918 (Oxford, 1993).
75. See, for example, D. Porter, Haunted Journeys; and on individual writers, Ch. Norton Coe, Wordsworth and the Literature of Travel (1953);
76. and Th. M. Curley, Samuel Johnson and the Age of Travel. In addition to these there is a substantial literature on the literature of European exploration outside Europe; and a rapidly growing one on women travellers.
77. Agood example is the artist Robert Kerr Porter, formerly in the employ of the Russian court, and a thorough courtier, who spent most of his time in Stockholm fawning over the royal family and angling for invitations to its palaces. See his Travelling Sketches in Russia and Sweden, during the years 1805, 1806, 1807, 1808, vol. II (1809).