History of cartography of the Nordic countries II

Abstract

This issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography is the second special issue of the journal on the history of cartography of the Nordic countries. The first was published in Volume 74(4), September 2020. Further articles will be published in a later issue of the journal. These special issues take up a topic that characterized the journal from the 1930s to the 1960s, during which period several articles on the history of cartography in Norway were published. Prominent among these was Kristian Nissen’s series of five articles titled ‘Bidrag til Norges karthistorie’ (‘Contributions to Norway’s map history’) (K. Nissen 1938; 1939; 1943; 1957; 1963a). The current special issues of the journal can be regarded as a reawakening of Kristian Nissen’s legacy. Kristian Nissen (1879–1968), a polymath, was reindeer inspector, historian, ethnographer, geographer, and became Norway’s leading historian of cartography. He was the son of Major General Per Schjelderup Nissen (1844–1930), who worked at the Geographical Survey of Norway and served as director 1900–1906. Kristian accompanied his father during the 1896–1897 inspection and marking of Norway’s boundary with Russia and Finland, which might have inspired his interests in mapping and Saami reindeer-herders (Jones & Olsen 2017). In an assessment of Per Schjelderup Nissen’s work as a cartographer and geographer, Erling Bjørstad (1945a) considered Per Nissen’s most important contribution was his pioneering economic-geographical atlas of Norway (P. Nissen 1921). Both Per Nissen and Kristian Nissen were active in the Norwegian Geographical Society (Det Norske Geografiske Selskab). Per Nissen was the society’s chairman in the momentous years 1905–1906, during which period the union between Norway and Sweden was dissolved in 1905, and again in the years 1914–1921, during World War I and its aftermath. Kristian Nissen served on the society’s board. In 1954 he was awarded honorary membership in recognition of his contributions to the history of Norwegian cartography, communicated through lectures and articles. From 1951, he lived at and was custodian of Polhøgda, the former home of Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), which had been taken over by the Norwegian Geographical Society in 1947; there, Nissen was engaged to continue Nansen’s cartographical-historical studies of northern and Arctic regions (Nystad 2012, 170, 173). Among Kristian Nissen’s early cartographical contributions was a pioneering map of reindeer herding, published in 1916 in the society’s yearbook, the predecessor of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift (K. Nissen 1916). A few years later, his ethnographic map of Northern Norway, based on the results of the 1910 population census, was published (K. Nissen 1920). In his ‘Contributions to Norway’s map history’, Nissen presented the cartographical work of individual mapmakers: navigator Andreas Heitman and the Norlandia map of 1744–1745 (K. Nissen 1938); the brothers Johan Georg and Franz Philipp von Langen and their forest resource maps of southern Norway from 1737– 1747 (K. Nissen 1939); theologian Melchor Ramus’s map of Norway from the 1690s (K. Nissen 1943); the Carta Marina of 1539 by the Swedish bishop Olaus Magnus (1490–1557), marking the 400th anniversary of his death (K. Nissen 1957); and further maps by Melchior Ramus (K. Nissen 1963a). Kristian Nissen initiated the publication of the 1742– 1745 border examination records of Major Peter Schnitler (1690–1751) (Nissen & Kvamen 1962). This publication includes an extensive commentary by Nissen, presenting the history of border negotiations between Norway and Sweden prior to the Boundary Treaty of 1751, and providing a detailed analysis of Schnitler’s maps and other unpublished cartographical sources (Nissen 1962a). Nissen wrote many other articles on cartographical history (e.g. K. Nissen 1937; 1937–1938; 1948; 1949; 1952; 1953; 1958; 1960a; 1960b; 1961a; 1961b; 1962b; 1963b). However, his incomplete draft