‘Finnish household’

Group portrait of men, women and children, captioned ‘Finnish household’, pictured in front of a wooden building.

Photographer: Arthur John Evans
Date of photograph: 17 August 1873
Continent: Europe
Geographical area: Northern Europe
Country: Finland
Region/Place: Lapland; Rungam
Cultural group: European Finnish
Format: Black and white print (mounted on card)
Size: 77 x 97 mm; 173 x 244 mm (with mount)
Acquisition: Joan Evans. Donated August 1941

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Exhibition label: ‘In his diary Evans described photographing such a group: “At Rungam, where we once more crossed the river Kemi, I tried taking a photograph of a large group of Finns, & actually succeeded in getting them to sit, but when the process had begun, the little ones began to move about, & the elders to arrange their caps & hair, so the attempt has failed.” Photograph 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] 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 household’ (written on mount in brown ink).

Research notes: It has been established by Philip Grover that this photograph was very likely taken by Arthur Evans on 17 August 1873, when his travelling party was at Rungam. Evans wrote in his journal of the voyage to Finnish Lapland: ‘At Rungam where we once more crossed the river Kemi, I tried taking a photograph of a large group of Finns, & actually succeeded in getting them to sit, but when the process had begun, the little ones began to move about, & the elders to arrange their caps & hair, so the attempt has failed’ (entry dated 17 August 1873): Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans Archive, B/2/1, Box 1, Notebook 1, pp.72–73. 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.