Ivalo valley

View of the river in the Ivalo valley.

Photographer: Arthur John Evans
Date of photograph: 28 to 30 August 1873
Continent: Europe
Geographical area: Northern Europe
Country: Finland
Region/Place: Lapland; Ivalo valley; Kultala
Format: Black and white print (mounted on card)
Size: 74 x 100 mm; 173 x 245 mm (with mount)
Acquisition: Joan Evans. Donated August 1941

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Primary documentation: ‘[p.588] Dr. JOAN EVANS, from the property of the late SIR ARTHUR EVANS, Youlbury, Boars Hill, Oxford. [List of items follows]’; ‘[p.590] 13 photographs mounted on cards. Types & scenery in Lappland. Finland, Sweden. Taken on journey in 1873’: Pitt Rivers Museum accession records (Donations X, 1937–1941), pp.588, 590. Annotations on mount: ‘Valley of the Ivalo near the Goldwashings of Kultala/ Enare Lappmark/ Finland’ (written on mount in brown ink).

Research notes: It has been established by Philip Grover that this photograph was taken by Arthur Evans between 28 and 30 August 1873, when his travelling party was at Kultala in the Ivalo valley. Evans wrote in his journal of the voyage to Finnish Lapland: ‘We are going to take it easy for a day, as this is really a beautiful valley & we want to see the diggings & c. [where gold-washing took place], well. Our little hut is on one side of the gorge overlooking the river which here rushes down rapids - the sides of the valley are mostly covered with trees, but in some parts they are only rocks & lichen & the pale glaucous green of the reindeer moss bringing out the abrupt boulders of dark slate coloured gneiss with the most striking effect’ (entry dated 29 August 1873): Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, Sir Arthur Evans Archive, B/2/1, Box 1, Notebook 2, pp.32–33. For more information on Arthur Evans’ voyage to Finnish Lapland in 1873, see Joan Evans, Time and Chance: The Story of Arthur Evans and His Forebears (London, 1943), pp.172–176; Ann Brown, Before Knossos...: Arthur Evans’s Travels in the Balkans and Crete (Oxford, 1993), pp.14–16, 90; and Tony Lurcock, No Particular Hurry: British Travellers in Finland, 1830-1917 (London, 2013), pp.123–134, 250.