‘Finnish homestead’

Commentary
‘Finnish homestead’
Accession number: 
1941.8.69
Collection: 
Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford

View of buildings at Sodankylä, captioned ‘Finnish homestead’, showing a storehouse for fuel and loft containing winter clothing, etc.

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 Finnish
Format: Black and white print (mounted on card)
Size: 75 x 100 mm; 173 x 245 mm (with mount)
Acquisition: Joan Evans. Donated August 1941

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Exhibition label: ‘“One of the peculiarities of Sodankylä is that, though it is a small village collectively, to see it all you have have to do as much walking as in a large town, for some of the houses are over a mile distance from any of the others. The town boasts one shop or store, where you can get anything from bread to boots & from Finnish spelling books to English knives.” Photograph by Arthur Evans. Sodankylä, Finland. 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] 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: ‘FINNISH HOMESTEAD/ Shewing Storehouse for fuel & loft containing winter clothing & c./ Stone house for fish - & steps & ladder of dwellinghouse/ at SODANKYLA’ (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: ‘One of the peculiarities of Sodankyla [Sodankylä] is that though it is a small village collectively - to see it all, you have to do as much walking as in a large town for some of the houses [...] are over a mile distance from any of the others - The town boasts one shop or store, where you can get anything from bread to boots & from Finnish spelling books to English knives [...] Another feature of Sodankyla [Sodankylä] especially is the picturesque wooden balconies & steps outside some of the sheds - there is one of these in our inn “square” on one of the most richly weatherstained barns I have seen out here - the brown quite recalling those of Alpine chalets’ (entry dated 23 August 1873): Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans Archive, B/2/1, Box 1, Notebook 1, pp.116, 117. 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.