In Travels Through Norway and Lapland, Leopold von Buch (1774 1853), a German geologist and palaeontologist, recounts his expedition to Scandinavia in 1806 1808. This book, originally published in Berlin in 1810, and in this English translation in 1813, describes these large, sparsely populated regions at the turn of the nineteenth century. The translator's preface provides an important geo-political backdrop the possibility of war in Norway and the machinations of Sweden, Russia and Great Britain over the future of this territory. Von Buch's observations, however, are firmly engaged with the...