CHAPTER III 
LAPLAND JOURNEY (1732) 
The subject of conversations which they had held 
during Linnaeus’s stay with Rudbeck and now renewed 
with pleasure, was the latter’s recollection of his own 
journey in 1695 to Tornea Lapland. Rudbeck 
showed the plants he found there depicted in lively 
colours, and often talked about the rare phenomena 
and objects he saw on that journey, so that in Linnaeus 
there arose an incredible longing for the Lapland 
fells. As Rudbeck’s collections were destroyed in 
the Uppsala fire of 1702, before they had been fully 
worked up, Lapland, from a natural history point of 
view, continued almost entirely an unknown land, 
this fact assuring Linnaeus of an extensive and grate¬ 
ful field of work and inciting him to illustrate Lapland 
in the three kingdoms of nature. Presumably it was 
through Rudbeck that the Secretary of the Royal 
Society of Science, Professor Anders Celsius, became 
aware that Linnaeus harboured an irrepressible interest 
in Lapland. The recently ratified royal ordinances 
for the said scientific society embraced a provision 
for the investigation of the fatherland in all respects, 
and for the society’s members to travel round the 
country, so as to take due account, and to engage 
suitable men in Sweden to enter on such tasks, Celsius 
promising that the necessary funds from the society 
should be forthcoming. 
A journey, such as this, was then attended with 
troubles and dangers so great that one in our time 
finds it difficult to realize them. It was regarded as 
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