Churches at Sodankylä

View of two churches – the disused Saami wooden church (left) and the newer Lutheran stone church (right) – at Sodankylä.

Photographer: Arthur John Evans
Date of photograph: 23 August 1873
Continent: Europe
Geographical area: Northern Europe
Country: Finland
Region/Place: Lapland; Sodankylä
Cultural group: European Saami | European Finnish
Format: Black and white print (mounted on card)
Size: 74 x 100 mm; 173 x 245 mm (with mount)
Acquisition: Joan Evans. Donated August 1941

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Primary documentation: ‘[p.588] Dr. JOAN EVANS, from the property of the late SIR ARTHUR EVANS, Youlbury, Boars Hill, Oxford. [List of items follows]’; ‘[p.590] 13 photographs mounted on cards. Types & scenery in Lappland. Finland, Sweden. Taken on journey in 1873’: Pitt Rivers Museum accession records (Donations X, 1937–1941), pp.588, 590. Annotations on mount: ‘On the left hand. Wooden Lapp church: now unused./ On the right. Newer & Finnish church/ SODANKYLA,/ Kemi Lappmark -/ Finland’ (written on mount in brown ink).

Research notes: It has been established by Philip Grover that this photograph was taken by Arthur Evans on 23 August 1873, when his travelling party was at Sodankylä. Evans wrote in his journal of the voyage to Finnish Lapland: ‘The whole country about here is occupied exclusively by Finns to the exclusion even of Swedes - but the Lapps have left one very curious relic - an ancient wooden church - standing by the newer one of stone, which itself is 50 years old’ (entry dated 22 August 1873): Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans Archive, B/2/1, Box 1, Notebook 1, pp.108–109. For more information on Arthur Evans’ voyage to Finnish Lapland in 1873, see Joan Evans, Time and Chance: The Story of Arthur Evans and His Forebears (London, 1943), pp.172–176; Ann Brown, Before Knossos...: Arthur Evans’s Travels in the Balkans and Crete (Oxford, 1993), pp.14–16, 90; and Tony Lurcock, No Particular Hurry: British Travellers in Finland, 1830-1917 (London, 2013), pp.123–134, 250.