Translating a Nordic Journey: Léonie d’Aunet in Norway

• Main Author: Kaasa, Janicke S.
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: Novus forlag 2021
• Subjects: Travel writing; Travelogues; Translations; Spitsbergen; Scandinavia; Arctic; Léonie; Norway; Hammerfest; Northern Norway; Spitzberg
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2988201; https://novus.no/products/lothe-jakob-ed-nordic-travels

In the spring and summer of 1839, the young Frenchwoman Léonie d’Aunet (1820–79) made her way from Paris through the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, before finally joining the corvette of the La Recherche expedition on its route from Hammerfest in northern Norway to the wild, remote island of Spitsbergen in the High Arctic. In her later account of this journey, entitled Voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg (1854), she writes: “L’intérêt de mon récit croitra à mesure que je m’avancerai sous les latitudes élevées de notre vielle Europe; arrivée là, j’aurai, à défaut d’autre, le mérite de l’originalité, étant la seule femme qui ait jamais entrepris un semblable voyage”. Indeed, d’Aunet’s account is considered among the very first descriptions of northern Scandinavia and Spitsbergen written by a woman, and d’Aunet’s exceptionality is echoed in both the French and Norwegian reception of the text. In what follows, I present some important aspects of Voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg before I go on to discuss the circumstances of, and changes in, the Norwegian translation of d’Aunet’s text and their effects on the portrayal of the Nordic region. acceptedVersion