Historical Characters, Including Frederick the Great, Discussion Post 39

[cahn]

Last post, along with the usual 18th-century suspects, included the Ottonians; changing ideas of conception and women's sexual pleasure; Isabella of Parma (the one who fell in love, and vice versa, with her husband's sister); Henry IV and Bertha (and Henry's second wife divorcing him for "unspeakable sexual acts"). (Okay, Isabella of Parma was 18th century.)

Comments

Re: Broglies

[luzula]

Ah! Well, here's more info about them. Apparently there were three Frenchmen who wrote in Jukkasjärvi church: Gallia nos genuit, Africam penetravimus omnen, et gangem hausimus, nobis hic defuit orbis. No idea who they were.

Frenchmen in Lapland

[mildred_of_midgard]

Found them! Jean-Francois Regnard and 2 friends, 1681. His travel book was published in 1731, so just before Linnaeus' expedition! (Btw, I later saw that you completely told me his 1732 date upthread, but much like with Selena's note about Catt, I was functionally illiterate yesterday. When a coworker asked me to review something, I was like, "Okay, but at your own peril, because my sleep-deprived self has been missing things all day!")

Regnard records his first meeting with the Laplanders, describing them as having large heads and small bodies and flat faces, “a people not created like any other,” and more like monkeys than humans.

Sigh.

Ooh, Wikipedia says they supposedly engraved this in rock at the top of a mountain, but that inscription has never been found, just the wooden plaque at the church.

Re: Frenchmen in Lapland

[luzula]

Oh, that's cool that you found those French travellers!

Regnard records his first meeting with the Laplanders, describing them as having large heads and small bodies and flat faces, “a people not created like any other,” and more like monkeys than humans.

Sigh indeed. You pretty much can't tell by looking at someone's physical appearance if they're a Sami or not.

Re: Frenchmen in Lapland

[mildred_of_midgard]

Okay, so my wife and I were discussing the question of their appearance this morning! (I told her about the high heels, and one thing led to another, much like in salon.) I was reading Wikipedia aloud on the subject of genetic studies, which found haplogroups going back to Siberia.

She said, "They just look like northern Europeans, not central Asians, though, right?" and I said, "I'm not sure. The Wikipedia article just shows this picture. I don't know if it's representative. If it were, it would explain a lot of discrimination, but then Wikipedia says there have been archaeological studies based on their 'assumed' physical and cultural differences. Which makes make it sound like those physical differences aren't actually all that obvious. And of course the article on the genetic studies doesn't mention phenotype at all, not even a little bit."

So I can tell her that (at least these days) they look like Northern Europeans?

Re: Frenchmen in Lapland

[luzula]

All the Sami I have met looked like northern Europeans, at least! Here are some photos from an image search (though most Sami don't wear traditional costumes in everyday life, nor do most of them work with reindeer today).

Re: Frenchmen in Lapland

[mildred_of_midgard]

Lol, I think your search hits may be localized to your region (and language?), because after deciding that Sami looked remarkably Middle Eastern, I looked more closely at the captions and saw that I was almost exclusively getting men with the Arabic name "Samer"!

I will take your word for it. :)

Re: Frenchmen in Lapland

[luzula]

Ha ha, okay! Yes, the search was localized to Sweden, and I thought it would be preserved in the link...anyway, here is a random photograph from the search.

Re: Frenchmen in Lapland

[mildred_of_midgard]

Ah, yes, thank you! That looks much more like I how think of Swedes looking and much less like I think of Syrians. ;)

I will pass this information on at the next opportunity.