Resandets gränser : svenska resenärers skildringar av Ryssland under 1700-talet

Maria Nyman
The Borders of travelling. Russia in Swedish travel accounts during the 18th century.
The primary objective of this study concerns how culturally created images of the Same and the Other, is
expressed in descriptions of a journey, a sojourn someplace else. More specifically, the dissertation investigates
how a number of Swedes, travelling during the eighteenth- and early nineteenth centuries, described their
experiences in and of, Russia. The analysis focus on how the journey is described, the person writing, and the
discursive formation of borders which inform the text. The first part of the study centre on the “scientific”
creation of Russia and its borderlands. Here, the travel writers make clear Russia’s key position as a borderland
between Europe and Asia, as well as the centrality of mapping the unknown for knowledge to underpin both
the Russian and the European self-image. The consequent knowledge of the Other, the people of north-east
Siberia in particular, could then be disseminated throughout Europe’s universities and Academies of Science.
Here, Russia is seen as a sort of”stage” were travelers, natural historians and mapmakers fought for positions in
this transmission of knowledge. Many of the travelers lingered on themes common in several accounts from
the time. The question; are they civilized? Echoes in the accounts. I have shown how traveler’s descriptions of
the religious practices of the Russians, of gender relations, and in particular, descriptions of women, were
frequently commented upon. Most notably, it was the encounter with the Russian orthodox religion that created
the clearest divide between a Swedish protestant ”Us” and a Russian ”Them”, but also, this divide decreased
when travelers encountered people and religious practices outside the Russian orthodox sphere. How
”othering” is a practice carried out on a floating scale, becomes evident here. Two concepts, or phenomena,
create boundaries in many of these accounts and in travel accounts in general, these are the concepts
representation/image and encounter. In the two last chapters, the Swedish/Finnish traveler and prisoner of war,
Adelaide von Hauswolff’s and the student Eric Gustaf Ehrström’s, travel diaries are studied. Here, the question
of why some travelers seem to describe encounters, and seemingly, comes close to the country and its
inhabitants, when others do not, is in focus. The traveler’s position within the texts is studied and categories
such as gender, class, and ethnicity are seen as categories directing the positions taken by the travel writer.
These categories influenced the texts to a great extent, but not always at the same time. Encounters were being
described, positions altered, discourses challenged, but also withheld. Travelers wrote on different subjects,
with different strategies, from different places and for different reasons. And still, centuries-old images and a
discursively constructed knowledge of Russia, put its strong mark on these 18th centuries’ texts.
Keywords:Travel, travel accounts, encounters, representations, colonial, discourse, gender, class/status,
Protestant, Russian-orthodox, religions, Siberia, Russia, Europe, Sweden,18th century.

Swedish With an English summary

ISSN 1652-7399 ISSN 1650-755X ISBN 978-91-7473-571-0 (tryck)
978-91-7473-572-7 (digital)
Södertörns högskola, SE-141 89 Huddinge, [email protected]
Organization Document name
LUND UNIVERSITY DOCTORAL DISSERTATION

Department of History
Box 2074
S-220 02 Lund
Sweden
June 2013