Drawing of the interior of a church

Drawing in pencil by Arthur Evans of the interior of a disused Saami church at Sodankylä, with a bier covered by a pall in the foreground, a pulpit on the left, and wooden arches overhead.

Artist: Arthur John Evans
Date of drawing: 23 August 1873
Continent: Europe
Geographical area: Northern Europe
Country: Finland
Region/Place: Lapland; Sodankylä
Cultural group: European Saami
Format: Drawing (mounted on card)
Size: 74 x 106 mm; 173 x 245 mm (with mount)
Acquisition: Joan Evans. Donated August 1941

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Exhibition label: ‘Interior of a disused church at Sodankylä, described by Arthur Evans in his diary: “The Lapp church is a fit representative of a departed people. The picturesque, weather-stained timber can hardly hold together much longer, & the carved wooden pinnacles which surmount the roof look as if they must topple over [...] In the middle stands a bier, covered by a pall, and which from its look has been wasting away there for years. The pulpit is neatly carved, & there are all kinds of quaint wooden arches about – but one is glad to get back into the open air.” Elsewhere he recorded that the Saami people had left Sodankylä thirty or forty years earlier, replaced by a Finnish majority, which in 1859 built a new church made of stone. Drawing by Arthur Evans. August 1873.’ Source: ‘Travels in Finland and Bosnia-Herzegovina: An Ethnographic Collection of Sir Arthur Evans’, exhibition curated by Philip Grover, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 29 April to 1 September 2013.

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] 15 original pencil sketches of types & scenery, chiefly round ENARE, LAPPMARK, FINLAND. Made on journey in 1873. Mounted’: Pitt Rivers Museum accession records (Donations X, 1937–1941), pp.588, 590. Annotations on drawing: ‘Old Lapp Church/ Sodankyla’ (written in pencil below drawing). Annotations on mount: ‘Old Lapp church, now dis-used./ SODANKYLA -/ Kemi Lappmark - Finland’ (written on mount in brown ink).

Research notes: It has been established by Philip Grover that this drawing was made 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: ‘Went over to see the churches on the other side of the river more closely - the Lapp church is a fit representation of a departed people, the picturesque, weather stained timber, can hardly hold together much longer, & the carved wooden pinnacles which surmount the roof look as if they must topple over - inside it is still more depressing - the whole in is mouldy, the wooden flooring is half rotten & creaks as you walk in, as if you would fall through[.] In the middle stands a bier, covered by a pall, clingy & funereal even for a pall! & which from its look has been wasting away there for years, the pulpit is neatly carved, & there are all kinds of quaint wooden arches about - but one is glad to get back into the open air’ (entry dated 23 August 1873): Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans Archive, B/2/1, Box 1, Notebook 1, pp.113–114. 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.