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

Sammanfattning: 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