Boat on the Kitinen river

Commentary

Boat on the Kitinen river
Accession number: 
1941.8.66
Collection: 
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

View of a boat in which Arthur Evans’ party travelled on the Kitinen river.

Photographer: Arthur John Evans
Date of photograph: 24 to 26 August 1873
Continent: Europe
Geographical area: Northern Europe
Country: Finland
Region/Place: Lapland; Kitinen river [Kittininjoki]
Named person(s): Francis Maitland Balfour; F. W. Flower
Format: Black and white print (mounted on card)
Size: 74 x 95 mm; 174 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: ‘Our boat on the Kittininjoki/ Lat: 68 [degrees]./ Kemi Lappmark’ (written on mount in brown ink).

Research notes: It has been established by Philip Grover that this photograph was taken by Arthur Evans between 24 and 26 August 1873, when his party was travelling along the Kitinen river. Evans wrote in his journal of the voyage to Finnish Lapland: ‘The shores of the Kittininjoki [Kitinen river] are curious being often as pure sand as a sea beach & this sandy nature of the shore enables the river to mould it as it will [...] The river was very pleasing though the banks are not lofty enough to make it grand. The shores lined with primeval forest - & as evening drew on when the whole surface shone like silver, the contrast between the water & the shadowy firs, & golden sunset, was glorious’ (entry dated 24 August 1873): Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans Archive, B/2/1, Box 1, Notebook 2, pp.2–3. 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.