Journal of the History of Collections Advance Access originally published online on September 29, 2006
Journal of the History of Collections 2006 18(2):249-256; doi:10.1093/jhc/fhl027
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
‘The tedious & expensive journey’
Augustus Wollaston Franks's travels through Finland in 1874
Described as ‘the second founder of the British Museum’, Augustus Wollaston Franks, Keeper of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography, methodically extended the British Museum's collections into parts of the world previously little considered. A private and public collector, he was, unusually, very much a European. He made numerous journeys to the Continent, collecting, advising and meeting Continental scholars. In August and September 1874, he made a journey from Stockholm to St Petersburg and back through southern Finland. This is described, quite briefly, in the British Museum's official reports. Supplementing these from local sources, this paper not only illuminates one antiquarian's journey but also, importantly, reveals its impact on contemporary Finnish cultural circles. The medieval Turku Cathedral attracted Franks's interest, and he made several sketches of its treasures. He also studied various museum collections and made an excursion to the medieval church of Nousiainen, where he studied St Henry's sarcophagus. In his investigations in Finland, Franks pursued his own scholarly aims as well as those of the British Museum, but his visit also, perhaps inadvertently, provided an opportunity to further the aims of the nineteenth-century Finnish National Movement or ‘Fennophilia’.
1 A. W. Franks, Report submitted to a Trustees’ meeting on 14 November 1874, Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities, British Museum.
2 D. M. Wilson, ‘Augustus Wollaston Franks–towards a portrait’, in M. Caygill and J. Cherry (eds.), A. W. Franks: Nineteenth-Century Collecting and the British Museum (London, 1997), pp. 1–5.
3 A. W. Franks, Notebook no. 13, Department of Prehistory and Europe, British Museum; M. Caygill, ‘Notebooks in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities’, in Caygill and Cherry, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 351–4.
4 F. Davis, Victorian Patrons of the Arts: Twelve Famous Collections and their Owners (London, 1963), pp. 58–9.
5 Wilson, op. cit. (note 2), p. 1.
6 D. M. Wilson, The Forgotten Collector: Augustus Wollaston Franks of the British Museum (London, 1985).
7 M. Caygill, ‘Franks and the British Museum–the cuckoo in the nest’, in Caygill and Cherry, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 51–114.
8 Caygill, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 78 and 80–1.
9 J. Mack, ‘Antiquities and the public: the expanding Museum, 1851–96’, in Caygill and Cherry, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 34–50.
10 Wilson, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 3–5.
11 J. Cherry, ‘Franks and the medieval collections’, in Caygill and Cherry, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 184–99.
12 Cherry, op. cit. (note 11), p. 185.
13 A. W. Franks, ‘Sur la composition des instruments en metal trouvés dans l’Île de Chypre, et sur d’autres trouvailles d’instruments en cuivre’, in Congrès international d‘anthropologie et d’archéologie préhistoriques: Compte rendu de la 7e session, Stockholm, 1874: Tome i (Stockholm, 1876), pp. 346–51; Caygill, op. cit. (note 7), pp. 86–7.
14 Åbo Posten, 15 August 1874; 20 August 1874.
15 Åbo Posten, 1 August 1874; 4 August 1874.
16 E. Nervander, ‘Sanct Henriks sarkofag i Nousis kyrka’, Finska Fornminnesföreningens Tidskrift 1 (1874), pp. 73–84.
17 Morgonbladet, 28 August 1874; Åbo Underrättelser, 31 August 1874.
18 E. Hawkins, Medallic illustrations of the History of Great Britain and Ireland to the Death of George ii (ed). A. W. Franks and H. A. Grueber (London, 1885).
19 Morgonbladet, 28 August 1874, 19 August 1874; Hufvudstadsbladet, 29 August 1874, 31 August 1874; Åbo Posten, 1 September 1874; Åbo Underrättelser, 31 August 1874.
20 P. Varjola, ‘Suomen kansallismuseon yleisetnografinen kokoelma’, Suomen Museo 88 (1981), pp. 51–86; P. Varjola, The Etholén Collection: The Ethnographic Alaskan Collection of Adolf Etholén and his Contemporaries in the National Museum of Finland (Helsinki, 1990).
21 Åbo Underrättelser, 31 August 1874.
22 K. Kääpä, ‘Diligenssivaunuista telttaturistiin: Matkailuhistoriaa kahden vuosisadan ajalta’, in A. Talka (ed.), Imatran kirja (Imatra, 1997), pp. 142–59.
23 Morgonbladet, 12 September 1874.
24 Åbo Posten, 19 September 1874.
25 K. Drake, Menneisyys, nykyisyys, tulevaisuus: Turun kaupungin historiallinen museo–Turun maakuntamuseo 188–1981 (Turku, 1995), pp. 12–3.
26 Åbo Posten, 19 September 1874.
27 Wilson, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 3–5.
28 Morgonbladet, 15 September 1874; Åbo Posten, 1 September 1874.
29 E. Nervender, ‘Engelskt utlåtande om S:t Henriks kenotaf i Nousis’, Suomen Museo Finskt Museum 10 (1903), pp. 67–70.
30 Åbo Posten, 19 September 1874; Åbo Underrättelser, 19 September 1874.
31 M. Hirn, ‘St Henriks kenotafium i Nousis kyrka: Vad man under äldre tider vetat om detta monument och hur man tagit vård om det’, Finskt Museum 59 (1952), pp. 41–79; H. Edgren, ‘Pyhä Henrik’, in H. Edgren and K. Melanko (eds.), Pyhän Henrikin sarkofagi (Helsinki, 1996), pp. 38–48; M. Hiekkanen, Suomen kivikirkot keskiajalla (Helsinki, 2003), p. 193.
32 Åbo Posten, 19 September 1874; Morgonbladet, 22 September 1874; Hufvudstadsbladet, 23 September 1874, 24 September 1874.
33 M. R. James, ‘The sepulchral brass of St Henry of Finland’, Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 10 (1903), pp. 215–22.
34 M. Hirn, ‘Hur man under 1800-talet tagit vård om S. Henriks kenotafium i Nousis’, in E. Kivikoski (ed.), Corolla archaeologica in honorem C. A. Nordman (Helsinki, 1952), pp. 249–66.
35 Caygill, op. cit. (note 7), p. 80.
36 Morgonbladet, 28 September 1874.
37 Hirn, op. cit. (note 34), pp. 252–3.
38 Franks was not the only British antiquary to visit Finland in the 1870s. The young Arthur [later Sir Arthur] Evans (1852–1941) had visited Finnish Lapland in 1873 as a part of his extensive journey in Fennoscandia. Evans was specifically interested in the Sámi, and he collected a large photographic archive of their culture on this trip. Franks had also studied some Sámi artefacts in Stockholm, making sketches and brief notes on some of them, but no notes on Sámi artefacts from Finland appear in his notebook; C. A. Nordman, ‘Silfverringen från Ukonsaari i Enare’, Finskt Museum 29 (1923), pp. 1–10; P. J. Ucko, ‘"Heritage" and "Indigenous Peoples" in the 21st century’, Public Archaeology 1, no. 4 (2001), pp. 227–38. Another foreign scholar visited Finland after the prehistoric Congress in Stockholm: the Hungarian professor Flóris Rómer, Keeper of the Department of Archaeology and Numismatics at the National Museum in Buda. Like Franks, Rómer seems to have been particularly interested in the zoomorphic stone axes deposited in the Historical and Ethnographical Museum of the University in Helsinki; Morgonbladet, 12 September 1874.
39 J. Mylly, Kansallinen projekti: Historiankirjoitus ja politiikka autonomisessa Suomessa (Turku, 2002); D. Fewster, Visions of Past Glory: Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish History (Helsinki, 2006).
Address for correspondence Visa Immonen, Department of Archaeology/School of Cultural Research, Henrikinkatu 2, University of Turku, FI-20014 Turku, Finland. vialim{at}utu.fi