The Description of Finnmark

The letter was found in the Vatican archives around the year 1900.1 The letter was discovered in the Vatican archives by the Swedish historian Karl Henrik Karlsson in the years 1899–1900. He published it in collaboration with his Norwegian colleague Gustav Storm with Storm’s Norwegian translation in 1901, and since then Valkendorf’s brief description of Finnmark has been regarded as Norway’s earliest historical-topographical text. See E. Valkendorf, Breuis et summaria descriptio Nidrosiensis diocesis et specialiter cuiusdam ipsius partis, que Findmarkia dicitur, extrema aquilonaris christianitatis plaga, eds K. H. Karlsson and G. Storm, Det Norske Geografiske Selskabs Aarbog (Christiania, 1901), pp. 1–24. Its existence had been known all along, however, since it is mentioned in the Swedish historian Olaus Magnus’s (1490–1557) famous description of Scandinavia, the Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, first published in Rome in 1555. Among many other strange phenomena in Northern Scandinavia, Olaus Magnus devotes a chapter to the ‘terrible monsters’ (horribilia monstra) found in the North Atlantic Ocean, and it is in this context he refers to Valkendorf’s letter to the pope. One such monster can overthrow several big ships, he declares, and goes on:

According to Olaus Magnus, Valkendorf’s letter to the pope was clarissima. Although we cannot determine whether the semantic weight is on quality (‘very excellent’) or fame (‘very renowned’), there is reason to interpret it in the latter sense. It appears to have attracted interest in its day.

As Olaus Magnus here tells us, the letter was sent together with a salted head of a large sea animal – and that head apparently caught people’s attention. In Strasbourg, probably on its way to Rome, it was even depicted by an unknown artist and given a (somewhat fanciful) walrus body, and this picture was exhibited in the town hall. Next to it one could read a long poem in German – placed into the mouth of the walrus. Here it presents itself, its name and its special weapon, the long teeth, and finally its sad fate. The bishop of Trondheim, i.e. Valkendorf, it sighs, had me impaled and sent my head to Pope Leo in Rome, where many people have seen me, and also here in Strasbourg did I cause a stir, Christmas 1519 – my strong teeth did not save me. It is the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner (1516–65) who quotes this poem in his zoological work Historia animalium (1551–8).5 ‘Von Nidrosia der Bischoff hat / Mich stechen lassen an dem gstad. / Papst Leo meinen Kopff geschicht / Gen Rom da mich manch Mensch anblickt. / Zu Strassburg hat man den auch gesehen / Tausent fünff hundert ists geschehen. / Und neunzehen Jahr umb Weinacht zeit / Ein starck gebiss hat mich geholffen nicht.’ These are the final lines of the poem quoted by Gessner in his chapter on the sea animal rosmarus (walrus), Historia animalium libri IV (1st ed. 1551–8), here quoted from the second edition, vol. IV (1604), p. 211. Olaus Magnus’ and Gessner’s information on the walrus is discussed by E. Sandmo in ‘Circulation and Monstrosity. The Sea-Pig and the Walrus as Objects of Knowledge in the Sixteenth Century’, in J. Östling et al. (eds), Circulation of Knowledge: Explorations in the History of Know­ledge (Lund, 2018), pp. 175–96.

The subject of Valkendorf’s letter to the pope is the nature and inhabitants of Finnmark. The first part is about its geographical situation and the climate (midnight sun, polar rain), with an emphasis on the good fishing opportunities and the local stockfish as an important export product to other Christian nations. Next, various large creatures of the sea are in focus, among them the enormous ‘troll whale’, a crowd of which would once have killed me, says Valkendorf, ‘had not God and S. Olaf saved me’.6 ‘Sed Deus omnipotens et sancti Olaui regis merita me de tanto periculo eripuerunt, admirantibus non immerito cunctis rem audientibus tantum salutis discrimen me euasisse’ (Valkendorf, Breuis et summaria descriptio Nidrosiensis diocesis et specialiter cuiusdam ipsius partis, que Findmarkia dicitur, pp. 8–11). As to the human inhabitants of Finnmark Valkendorf underlines their primitive and heathen ways of life but also informs us that those Finns who live between Russia and Finnmark have recently been christened: ‘I’, says Valkendorf, ‘have taught them to believe in God, I have married them in Church’.7 This is a paraphrase of a longer Latin passage: ‘Finnones […] modo christiani sunt, quorum tamen multos, qui hactenus demoniis sacrificabant, in vnum Deum credendum esse docuimus et qui coniugale fedus respuebant, matrimonialiter in facie ecclesie copulaui et copulari feci’ (Valkendorf, Breuis et summaria descriptio Nidrosiensis diocesis et specialiter cuiusdam ipsius partis, que Findmarkia dicitur, pp. 12–14). Throughout the small account runs the distant, strange and dangerous as a recurrent motif – as do Valkendorf’s own tireless efforts to overcome the dangers and work for the expansion of the true religion among the strange peoples in the distant northern regions.

Leo X was known for the interest he took in exotic animals from distant places – a famous instance is the elephant Hanno, which he received from the Portuguese king in 1514.8 B. W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing. Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago, 2006), p. 36 with further references. It seems reasonable to regard Valkendorf’s walrus head as a parallel, sent to the pope to present him face to face with the exotic and marvellous creatures found in the north. Furthermore, as the accompanying letter shows, Valkendorf’s intention was to point out that the distant regions where this strange animal was found were part of Christendom, or rather were about to become part of Christendom thanks to the archbishop’s assiduous efforts.

Northernmost Europe was still an unknown region in this period but subject to growing interest, not least for commercial reasons with walrus products having distinct commercial potential.9 Ogilvie, The Science of Describing. Natural History in Renaissance Europe, pp. 231ff. It is no wonder that the walrus head attracted attention in Rome and Strasbourg. Interestingly, according to Olaus Magnus, Valkendorf’s accompanying letter was also widely read although it remained unprinted. It is worth noting how Valkendorf’s information about the unknown territory in the far north, whether transmitted orally or in writing, reached not only Olaus Magnus, but also Jacobus Ziegler, who refers to his conversations with Valkendorf in Rome, and Conrad Gessner whose source we do not know. It is from the latter we learn about the exhibition of the walrus in Strasbourg.

Indirectly, through these three writers, who all wrote in the common European language Latin, Valkendorf’s information about the nature of the northernmost parts of Europe came to influence the learned, trans­national – and eventually also transconfessional – Latin-writing republic of letters. Valkendorf’s plans to launch an expedition to Greenland also had an afterlife, albeit just within Denmark–Norway, where his Danish notes about Greenland were studied in the following centuries, for instance in connection with voyages to Greenland organised by Christian IV in the first decade of the seventeenth century.

It is a paradox, then, that both Valkendorf’s letter about Finnmark together with the salted walrus head and his similarly unpublished notes about Greenland seem to have had greater impact among the following generations than the ambitious and expensive printed books, the Breviarium Nidrosiense and Missale Nidrosiense. These books formed part of an international effort to establish and control liturgical standards by means of the relatively young printing medium. However, their range was only Norwegian, and so they lost their practical function when the Lutheran Reformation was introduced in Denmark–Norway in 1536–7.

It is also worth noting that posterity’s interest in Valkendorf’s exploration of the north, both in Denmark–Norway and in the European learned republic, had to do with the commercial and exotic aspects. Even though Valkendorf himself clearly appreciated these aspects, his concern was primarily the expansion of Christianity, the strengthening of the archbishopric as part of the transnational church under its papal leadership.