Nordensjöld (left), Hedin (centre) and Andersen (right). Source: omnia.ie, wikipedia.org & digitaltmuseum.se
Guide:
From the frozen polar region and the mysterious ancient city of Loulan to Zhoukoudian and Yangshao Village during the Republic of China, this article traces the adventures of three Swedish scientists, telling their memorable scientific contributions and historical stories.
Fan Ming | Writing
Huang Junru | edit
Following the great discoveries of European geography in the 15th and 17th centuries, with the first industrial revolution in Europe more than 200 years ago, a wave of exploration and exploration fever arose all over the world. Much of the expeditionary work of this period was carried out in a true scientific spirit. Heroes who have returned from expeditions (or whose ambitions have not been rewarded) are respected by society as scientists who have made great discoveries, including Swedes. It's fun to look for their footprints inside and outside the museum. The author is very fond of several thematic museums in Stockholm and Uppsala and other places, small and exquisite, rich in collections, integrating history, knowledge, science and professionalism, so the collection of recent years of excursions and discoveries is summarized here, mainly telling the story of three famous Swedish scientists and explorers.
Nordensjöld's polar expedition
The second half of the 19th century is often referred to as the heroic age of polar exploration: an era in which the unknown and danger greatly inspired people's fantasies. Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (1832–1901) was a Finnish-born Swedish geologist, mineralogist, and Arctic explorer whose greatest achievement was the first successful voyage from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and the Suez Canal from the north coast of Eurasia aboard the Vega expedition ship between 1878 and 1880, opening the Northeast Passage from west to east. He developed a scientific approach to polar exploration, published numerous geographical and geological expeditions, and is regarded as a national hero and one of the greatest explorers in Finland and Sweden. In 1930, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his triumphal voyage, a Vega monument was erected on the side of the Swedish National Museum of Nature (NRM), engraved on three sides with a statue of Nordensjöld, his Arctic voyage record, and a list of members of the Vega expedition.
Vega monument next to the Swedish National Museum of Natural History (NRM).
The Vega was a three-masted schooner with a 70 horsepower steam engine, built in 1862 in Bremerhaven, Germany. Captain Louis Palander was a Swedish naval officer and an experienced sailor who had made several voyages to the Arctic. The expedition consisted of 21 members and sailors on board, including seven doctors, hydrographers, meteorologists, botanists and zoologists. On June 22, 1878, the Vega and three other ships left the southern Swedish port of Karlshamn and headed north along the west coast of Norway, then east along the north coast of Siberia to Tjeljuskin, the northernmost point of Eurasia, on August 19. The expedition spent ten months in the Russian Far East overwintering in ice and established friendly relations with the isolated indigenous people of Chuktjerna. Nordensjöld and other experts conducted in-depth geographical, gelogical, botanical, zoological and ethnological investigations and studies in the local area.
In July 1879, the Vega continued its voyage into the Pacific Ocean. It reached the Bering Strait on 18 July and continued its voyage towards Alaska and Japan, returning to Sweden via the Suez Canal. After a voyage of 22,189 nautical miles, they arrived in Stockholm at 22 o'clock on April 24, 1880, completing the historic feat of circumnavigating Eurasia. The day is named "Vega Day". When the Vega returned to Stockholm on its mission to open the Northeast Passage, everyone in the crew – from Nordensjöld to the youngest sailor – was greeted heroically. While the Vega's expedition showed that the Northeast Passage was not suitable for commercial shipping, it was highly effective for scientific research in the Arctic. In 1903, the Vega was wrecked off the coast of northwestern Greenland and is still lying quietly on the bottom of the sea. One of the surviving steamboats on the Vega was later used by Nordensjöld on the Stockholm archipelago for many years and is now housed in the Stockholm Maritime Museum (Sjöhistoriska museet).
The second half of the 19th century was a time of rapid industrial development and rapid social change in Sweden. King Oscar II of the Swedish-Norwegian monarchy, in the midst of this transition between the old and the new, was a gifted and knowledgeable monarch. He enjoys sailing, music, and writing, and is very interested in new technologies. Oscar II was a keen polar explorer and funded some of Sweden's and Norway's earliest expeditions, including the Vega voyage to Nordensjöld and the Greenland expedition, as well as the Arctic balloon expedition by Swedish explorer Salomon Andrée and the Arctic voyage by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. When the Vega expedition ship triumphed, Oscar II personally greeted him at the palace docks, and not only awarded Nordensjöld, Paland, and all the crew members with gold or silver Vega medals, but also promoted Nordenskild to baron and awarded the title of Palander nobility in recognition of their extraordinary achievements.
Before embarking on the Vega expedition, Nordensjöld had already accumulated a wealth of experience in polar exploration and scientific expeditions. Between 1858 and 1883 he took part in ten such expeditions to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and the Siberian Yenisej River, and personally led eight of them, reaching as far north as 81 degrees 42 minutes north latitude. In 1870, when Nordensjöld led an expedition to the west coast of Greenland, 15 pieces of nickel-bearing iron ore were discovered, the largest weighing 22 tons, which is now on display next to the Swedish National Museum of Natural History. The other two iron ores, weighing 6.5 tonnes and 4 tonnes, were stored at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Helsinki, respectively. Nordensjöld also has a collection of about 5,000 historical atlases, including a rich history of early cartography, a printed Ptolemaic Atlas, a maritime atlas and an ancient atlas, all of which are in the collection of the University of Helsinki Library and inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Heritage List in 1997. In 1861 he was elected a member of the Swedish Academy of Letters, and in 1893 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Top left: The Vega monument at the Old Planetarium in Stockholm; Top right: Items of the indigenous people of the Arctic region. Bottom left: Iron ore found in Greenland; Bottom right: The Vega Expedition Memorial on Ship Island in Stockholm.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Nordensjöld family also saw the emergence of archaeologists and scientific explorers. Nordensjöld's eldest son, Gustaf Nordenskiöld, took part in an expedition to Svalbard in 1890 with friends. In 1891, Gustav traveled to Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado and became the first person to conduct a scientific expedition to a Paleo-Indian site. His expeditions introduced future generations to the culture of the Anasazi people, and his research materials are now preserved in the National Museum of Finland. Nordensjöld's nephew, Otto Nordenskjöld, is a geologist and polar scientist whose last name differs by only one letter. Between 1901 and 1904, Otto led a Swedish expedition aboard the Antarctic expedition and collected valuable samples of Antarctic geography and marine life, after which many sites on the Antarctic continent are named. He later traveled to Greenland, Peru and Patagonia for research.
Heading towards Heding in the Western Regions
Sven Hedin (1865-1952) was a renowned Swedish geographer, explorer, photographer and travel writer. As a teenager, his ambition to become an explorer was sparked by the triumphant voyage of Nordensjölder from an expedition to the Arctic. In the spring of 1886, Heding made a trip through Persia and was fascinated by the vast hinterland of Asia. He then studied for a doctorate with Ferdinand von Richthofen, a German geographer and expert on China and the originator of the name "Silk Road". During his four expeditions to Central Asia between 1890 and 1909, Heding set foot in vast areas of western China's Xinjiang and Tibet, and discovered that the Himalayas were the source of the Brahmaputra River, the Indus River, and the Xiangquan River. He also discovered the remains of the beacon tower of the ancient city of Loulan in the desert of Lop Nur and the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang, thus proving that the Great Wall once extended to Xinjiang, and that the reappearance of the mysterious ancient city of Loulan is one of the greatest archaeological achievements of the 20th century.
Influenced by his teacher Richthofen, Hedin was one of the first scholars to agree with the "Silk Road" theory, and he is also known as the "father of exploration in the Western Regions". Hedin was the first European scientific explorer to hire local scientists and research assistants during his expeditions, and was the first to excavate the ruins of ancient Buddhism in Central Asia. The Atlas of Central Asia, published after his death, is the culmination of his life's work. In 1905, when the Swedish-Norwegian monarchy collapsed, the society was in turmoil, and a large number of residents immigrated to North America. He was the most internationally renowned Swede of the first half of the 20th century, having been on a par with Nobel. In 1902, he was awarded the title of last uncrowned nobleman by Oscar II. Hedin never married and had no children, and was buried in the family cemetery in the Adolf Fredrik Church Cemetery in central Stockholm.
Hedin's noble coat of arms, epitaphs and tombstones
In the winter of 1926, in the precious interval of peace between the two world wars, Heding, who was more than a year old, led a scientific expedition to the Northwest of China and foreign countries that brought together scholars from China, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany, and came to China for the fifth time. The first Chinese delegation was headed by Xu Bingchang, then provost of Peking University, and the Chinese delegation members were all famous scholars in the field of geology and archaeology in China at that time, such as Yuan Fuli, Huang Wenbi, Ding Daoheng and others. This is the largest Sino-foreign joint scientific expedition in modern times, and it has made achievements that have attracted the attention of the world in many aspects. The delegation went to Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Xinjiang, Ningxia and other places for eight years to conduct a comprehensive investigation, involving astronomy, geography, cultural relics, historic sites, terroir, folk conditions and other fields, and wrote a 55-volume "Sino-Swiss Investigation Report". According to the agreement between the two countries, the scientists brought the artifacts back to Sweden for study and returned them afterwards. This is the first time that China has fought for the ownership of cultural relics, and Sweden has also become the first country to return Chinese cultural relics.
During this expedition to the northwest, Folke Bergman, a Swedish member of the delegation, first excavated more than 10,000 wooden tablets of the Han Dynasty at the site of Fengsui in Juyancheng. Among them, the number of unearthed ones is: 4422 pieces of broken city, 2383 pieces of Diwan, and 1334 pieces of Dawan. According to the Chinese simplified Chinese characters, Chinese scholars determined that Pochengzi was the location of the "Jiaqu Marquis" belonging to Juyan Duwei of Zhangye County in the Han Dynasty, thus establishing its status as a key excavation area. Juyan Han Jian is the most important Han Dynasty Biansai Tunshu document found after Dunhuang Han Jian, which preserves important documents from the middle of the Western Han Dynasty to the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and has high historical value for the study of the documents, archives and political system of the Han Dynasty. These Han Janes are mainly made of wood, including pine fir, poplar, water willow, red willow, etc. Together with the archives of the Cabinet of the Forbidden City in Beijing, the oracle bone archives in Anyang, Henan, and the archives of the scriptures in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, Juyan Hanjian is also known as the "four great discoveries" that caused a sensation in the world in the Chinese archives in the 20th century. During the Anti-Japanese War, these Han Jians traveled to various places, and now exist in the Institute of History and Philology of the "Academia Sinica" in Taipei.
The collection of the Institute of History and Language: 77 of the most well-preserved Chinese scripts have been excavated, as well as edicts, peach charms and fragments
After the expedition to the northwest, Hedin wrote as he passed through Siberia on his way home: "When I close my eyes, I can still see the fascinating scenes on the stage of the earth - I saw a team of weather-beaten Mongols, dressed in heavy fur coats and fur hats, they rode spiritual ponies and dark brown camels, their cattle fluttered with white tassels in the wind, and I saw the undulating sand dunes in all directions, like a frozen wave pointing to the distant horizon, and the golden afterglow covered the whole field. As night faded and everything fell silent, the sound of camel bells could still be heard faintly in the distance...... "As one of the first European scholars to focus on Central Asia, Hedin differed from his successors in that his investigation and research included both the natural sciences and the humanities. Hedin set a precedent where, at the end of each expedition, he would write two types of works, a scientific expedition report and a popular expedition travelogue.
During his five long journeys to Central Asia, Hedin rediscovered the treasures scattered in the desert sands, bringing to life an ancient civilization that had been forgotten again. During the expedition, he also engaged in mapping, collecting rock and plant samples, conducting astronomical observations, meteorological surveys and altitude measurements, as well as learning about the local history, geography, products, commerce, roads, etc. Heding used photography and sketching to record the landforms, temples, races, and folk customs along the way, leaving behind a considerable number of investigation reports, expedition records, notes, as well as more than 5,000 documentary paintings, more than 1,000 photographs and other extremely important image materials. When Hedin died in 1952 at the age of 87, he donated the copyright of his works and a large private estate to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in his will, and made all his materials available for posterity, most of which are housed in the Stockholm Museum of Ethnology (Etnografiska museet), which is also the headquarters of the Hedin Foundation.
Collection of the Museum of Ethnology: Statue of Heding, his expedition supplies and collection of Buddhist items, and writings on Heding
Hedin wrote "The Silk Road", "Xinjiang Desert Travel", "Eight Years of Exploration in the Asian Hinterland" and other works, his exploration works are as important as the exploration activities themselves, and his memoir "My Exploration Career" is known as the scientist's version of "Journey to the West" by the Chinese people. In 1905, Hedin was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and in 1913 he was elected a member of the Swedish Academy of Letters, and was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1938, Hedin and three other American writers won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Pearl S. Buck. Pearl Race is the fourth woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and the second American laureate for her epic account of life in China and her masterpiece of biography. Hedin also nominated Hu Shi in 1939 and Lin Yutang in 1940 as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature with Pearl Sai – the only two Chinese nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in the first half of the 20th century.
Love China Guna
Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874-1960), known as "Andersen" in Chinese, was a famous Swedish geologist, paleontologist and archaeologist. At the beginning of the 20th century, he accompanied Otto Nordensjld on two expeditions to Antarctica, both of whom received PhDs in geology from Uppsala University. After returning from the expedition, they co-authored the book "Antarctica". Following Heding's discovery of the ruins of the ancient city of Loulan, many geologists, paleontologists, adventurers, and later field archaeologists from various European countries flocked to the Far East, especially Chinese mainland, like gold diggers. Since Sweden was considered "one of the few countries in the West without imperial ambitions", in 1914, at the invitation of the Beiyang government, Andersen came to China to serve as an adviser to the Department of Mines of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, to assist in the search for new minerals, and to participate in the teaching of the newly established Central Geological Survey and the preparation of the geological exhibition hall. His first contribution was the discovery of Longyan Iron Ore, for which he was awarded the Golden Harvest Medal of the Third Class by President Li Yuanhong.
Li Yuanhong presented the third-class Jiahe Medal certificate to Andersen
Together with Ding Wenjiang, a geologist studying in the UK, Andersen organized geological surveys and trained the first batch of geologists in China. During this period, he completed two survey reports, "China's Iron Ore and Iron Ore Industry" and "North China's Malan Plateau". As a geologist, Andersen took advantage of the Beiyang government to conduct geological investigations along the Yellow River basin and collected many fossils of paleontology, especially vertebrates. Between 1922 and 1923, Andersen and Tan Xichou of the Geological Survey excavated one of China's earliest dinosaur fossils in Mengyin, Shandong Province. His assistant, Otto Zdansky, a young paleontologist at Uppsala University, identified it as a sauropod long-necked dinosaur that had never been found before, and the only dinosaur fossil ever unearthed in the area. This dinosaur was later named after Shidansky as "Shi's Panpodsaurus" (). The world's only complete skeleton of a Platosaurus is now in the Evolutionsmusee Museum at Uppsala University.
At the beginning of the 20th century, paleontologists from all over the world were searching for the origin of human beings, and one of the ideas was the "Central Asian origin theory". In 1921, Andersen discovered quartz from elsewhere in Zhoukoudian Keel Mountain. Acutely aware of the possible remains of prehistoric human activity, he arranged for Dansky to go to Zhoukoudian to work on excavations under the guidance of the famous American paleontologist Walter W. Granger, who published a preliminary report on the excavations in 1923. In 1926, on the occasion of a visit to China by Crown Prince Gustav Adolf (later King Gustav XVI Adolf), Andersen caused a sensation when he announced the discovery of two fossilized human teeth. On December 2, 1929, Chinese archaeologist Pei Wenzhong unearthed the first complete fossil of the skull of Peking Man, an ancient human fossil later named "Peking Man" ().
Uppsala University's Museum of Evolution Collection: Fossils of the skeleton of the Shi's Panposaurus, the restored Peking Man skull and teeth, the richest collection of ancient Chinese vertebrate fossils outside of China.
In the autumn of 1918, Anderson discovered a batch of paleontological fossils in Yangshao Village, Mianchi County, Henan Province. After obtaining permission from the Chinese government, from October to December 1921, Anderson and Chinese geologist Yuan Fuli and others carried out systematic archaeological excavations in Yangshao, Henan Province, and unearthed a large number of pottery, stone tools and other prehistoric cultural relics, thus opening the prelude to China's field archaeological work. This is the earliest Neolithic cultural relics discovered in China, breaking the theory of "Chinese Stone Age" that was popular in Western archaeology at that time, and opening up a new field of Chinese prehistoric culture research. Yuan Fuli later joined the Sino-Swiss Northwest Scientific Expedition initiated by Heding, and served as the head of the Chinese delegation for three years. In 1923, Andersen published the book "Ancient Chinese Culture", which first put forward the concept of "Yangshao culture", and was therefore called "the father of Yangshao culture". Later, together with Chinese scholars, Andersen successively discovered Neolithic cultural relics such as the Qijia culture in Gansu and the Machang culture in Qinghai.
According to the Sino-Swiss agreement, Andersen brought back to Sweden about 30,000 pieces of unrestored pottery and pottery shards excavated in Yangshao for study, and returned half of them to China in seven installments by 1936, but most of them were lost due to war and other reasons. In order to store these Yangshao pottery, Andersen returned to Sweden in 1926 and established the Oriental Museum (Östasiatiska museet) in Stockholm. There are still more than 400 pieces of these cultural relics collected here, and there are also some unearthed cultural relics from Longshan, Majiayao, Banshan and other sites, all of which are national treasures and are also treasured here. Andersen has been working in China for 12 years, and in Sweden he is known as "Kina Gunnar of China". Throughout his life, he regarded two things as his greatest achievements: an expedition to the Antarctica and a work in China. Especially in the complicated situation in the early years of the Republic of China, Andersen, together with Ding Wenjiang and others, opened up a new situation in the study of geology, paleontology and archaeology in China.
Neolithic Chinese pottery from the Oriental Museum's collection
Crown Prince Gustav Adolf is a well-known amateur archaeologist with a keen artistic appreciation and a special love for Chinese antiquities. Like his grandfather, Oscar II, he fully supported and sponsored the expeditions and excavations of Swedish archaeologists, which played a great role in the development of cultural exchanges and friendly exchanges between Sweden and East Asia, especially China. In 1919, Andersen wrote to Gustav Adolf for his "Natural History Investigation and Collecting Program" in China, seeking financial support and with his help he established the "China Foundation". The foundation has provided financial support for the archaeological work of Andersen, Shi Dansky and others in China for ten years. Between 1926 and 1927, the crown prince embarked on his round-the-world tour, visiting China accompanied by Andersen. The Oriental Museum in Stockholm is now one of the largest museums of East Asian history in Europe, and about 1,600 Chinese artifacts from Gustav XVI Adolf's private collection were donated to the Oriental Museum.
The "Kejsartidens Kina" exhibition hall of the Oriental Museum
Whether it was Nordensjöld, Hedin, or Andersen, their expeditions were accompanied by hunger, cold, wind, loneliness, fear, and even the threat of death. They are driven by a yearning for exploration and expeditions, a strong curiosity about the unknown, and a passion that borders on obsession. As descendants of Vikings, perhaps they were born with the blood of adventurers in their bones. These explorers left behind a rich academic legacy and a name for themselves. As Hedin wrote, "Boundless thoughts carry me through the night sky." The stars shimmer like diamonds, and they shine on us and on the planet we live on. It roams relentlessly towards unknown destinations, towards the depths of the mysterious, eternal universe. ”
Unless otherwise specified, the pictures in this article are taken by the author.
April 25, 2024 in Stockholm
Source: Mr. Sai
编辑:ArtistET