The History of Lapland

In 1673, from his study in Uppsala, the Alsatian scholar Johannes Scheffer published in Latin a book that would open to Europe an unprecedented window onto one of the continent's least known peoples: the Sámi of the Far North.

He had never seen Lapland. He reconstructs it from the letters sent to him by pastors posted on the icy edges of Sweden, which he cross-checks against the ancient authors and his own learning. From this patient inquiry comes the first great European description of a world of snow, reindeer and tents.

We follow the origins of a nation come out of the cold, the faith of its ancient gods, the cross advancing northward, the shaman's drum questioning the spirits, the laws and the tribute, the silent trade, the language, weddings, hunting, the reindeer that sustains a whole people. At the heart of the story, a man, Petrus Paejwiae, burns the sacred stone of his fathers: a world tips over.

Three and a half centuries later, this book remains the most precise window ever opened onto a people long withdrawn into the silence of the North.

A complete rewrite in modern English of the description "Lapponia, id est, Regionis Lapponum et gentis nova et verissima descriptio" by Johannes Scheffer, 1673, including maps and illustrations.