Contested Boundaries: Visual Representations of Travel to Colonial Regions within Europe, 1860–1900

Abstract:

This article examines the ethnographic portrayal of the Sámi in the nineteenth-century European illustrated press, focusing on travel reports about Sápmi (Norway) from 1860 to 1900. It analyses how touristic depictions of Indigenous peoples reflected popular interest and prevalent racial discourses of the time. Often disguised as objective narratives of scientific observation and exploration, these representations, produced and circulated by esteemed explorers, photographers, and publishers, served to reinforce Western colonial structures and imperialist ideologies. Inviting a turn inwards, this essay draws attention to the existence of domestic colonies within Europe and underlines how the same rhetoric was redeployed to justify these internal colonies.