The first air balloon launch in the Arctic took place at Enontekiö, Finland, in July 1799. It came about with the meeting of two travelling Englishmen and a local pastor.
Edward Daniel Clarke, later first professor of mineralogy at Cambridge University, was then employed as tutor to a young travelling gentleman, John Marten Cripps. The pair travelled together for three and a half years, through Scandinavia, Russia, the Levant, Turkey, Greece and Egypt. Clarke’s Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia and Africa (6 vols, 1810–23) is filled with observations on the curiosities and cultures they encountered but, for me, one of the most interesting incidents is this balloon launch.
The local pastor, Eric Grape, helped Clarke to organise the balloon launch. Grape was probably curious to see the spectacle, but he did have an additional motive. The launch was to take place on a Sunday, preceded by a church service. Notices were circulated among the nomadic Saami people in the hope that they would be drawn by “a double motive of devotion and curiosity” to attend both the launch and the church service (p. 468). It was late July, when reindeer herds transition from grazing on higher ground to the green fodder of forest and marshland, so the Saami were dispersed around the highlands.
As for Clarke, he wrote to a Cambridge colleague that he intended to launch a balloon “that all may come to see the Englishman, and his wonder of wonders!!” He wrote to another correspondent that it was “with a view to bringing together the dispersed families of the wild Laplanders, who are so rarely seen collected in any number.”[1]
It was a windy day, and Clarke wrote that he “foresaw that we should inevitably fail.” However, the notices had had their desired effect and a crowd of people had assembled. Clarke did not dare disappoint them (pp. 491–2). While the balloon was inflating, it was torn by the high winds and the clamour of the excited crowd. When the wind subsided that evening, repairs were made and another launch was attempted. This time the crowd were skeptical, and Clarke feared that they thought he “intended to make dupes of them.”
The second attempt was a success. Clarke’s account describes the terror of the assembled Saami people as they and their reindeer scattered in all directions. The scene was depicted in a colour engraving by Robert Pollard in 1819, published in Clarke’s travel account.
“For reasons we could not explain,” Clarke noted that the balloon launch caused “rather uneasiness, than pleasure, to the Laplanders.” A large kite, originally intended as a gift for Grape’s children, was swiftly produced. This was greeted much more favourably by the crowd, and afterwards Clarke claimed that the people were “willing to grant us any favour” and that the rest of the night was passed “in mirth and rejoicing” (p. 495). Grape kept the kite to use “as a signal for calling the Lapps together, when he might wish to bring them to his house” (pp. 493–4).
The balloon launch did not elicit the response that Clarke had hoped for. Unwilling to admit this, he glossed over his disappointment in a letter to his mother, writing simply, “Yesterday I launched a balloon, eighteen feet in height, which I had made to attract the natives. You may guess their astonishment, when they saw it rise from the earth.”[2]
Clarke had a prior record with balloons. His university career was undistinguished, until he spent a whole term building an air balloon. It was launched publicly in Cambridge, manned by a kitten. On a visit to the Scottish island of St Kilda, a local pastor discovered that Clarke possessed the materials necessary to construct a small balloon. The locals were said to have “expressed a vast desire to see the balloon; saying at the same time, what a fine contrivance it would be to take their birds from the rocks.”[3] Although this balloon does not seem to have materialised, it is striking that both Pastor Grape at Enontekiö and the Scottish islanders quickly found a practical use for something that Clarke assumed they would consider solely an object of wonder.
England had been gripped by excitement following the first human balloon flight in 1784. The craze for ballooning “extended from science to show-business.”[4] People were excited by the possibilities this new technology presented. However, by 1799, there was no longer anything new in ballooning in England; Clarke himself admitted that it was “unnecessary to detail the means of making a toy now so well known” (p. 471). The significance of Clarke’s 1799 display lay in its northern location.
The story of Clarke’s Arctic air balloon lived on for some time. Extracts from his multi-volume Travels in Various Countries were published in periodicals and magazines, and his interaction with the Saami was considered the “principal novelty of the work.” Reviewers recommended the scene in which Cripps and Clarke “united in frightening the Lapps with a fire balloon, and astonishing their host, the clergyman of the district with a paper kite […] whoever reads this volume for amusement or for science, will not be disappointed.”[5] A collection of children’s stories published in 1859 featured one Little Arthur, who responded to the story: “What fun! […] how I should have liked to have been there!” His aunt reprimanded him, “What, to see the fright of the Laplanders! […] they would not be much indebted to you.”[6]
Little Arthur’s aunt was not alone in her views. The Italian traveller and naturalist, Giuseppe Acerbi arrived in Enontekiö the day after Clarke’s departure and disapproved of the balloon launch:
“They determined to exhibit a show, which they conceived would draw the Laplanders from all quarters to this place, and which seemed calculated to make on the minds of this simple people a great impression. This was, to mount an air balloon. I know not what effect this object might produce on the natives, but I have reason to suppose that the concourse was not great. At their departure they wrote down in the register their names, with the following apostrophe: – ‘Stranger, whoever thou art, that visitest these remote regions of the North, return to thy native country, and acknowledge that philanthropy is taught amidst civilized nations, but practiced where theories of science never come.’”[7]
Overall, Clarke and Grape mutually profited from the balloon and kite launches. Clarke drew upon Grape’s local authority and Grape drew upon the assumed prestige and power of Clarke’s metropolitan science. They had a reciprocal exchange: Clarke gave his kite to Grape, and Grape gave Clarke a rare manuscript statistical account of Torneå. Clarke donated the manuscript, described as “A thin paper-book in […] neat German handwriting” to Cambridge University Library.[8]
For more detail on this event, see Chapter 7 of my book, Geographies of the Romantic North (Palgrave, 2013).
References:
Within the post, all page numbers in parentheses refer to E.D. Clarke. Travels in Various Countries of Scandinavia, 4th ed., 3 vols. Cadell and Davies, 1838, vol. i.
[1] E.D. Clarke to Reverend R. Tyrwhit, 9 July 1799, and E.D. Clarke to R. Malthus, 9 July 1799, in E.D. Clarke, The Life and Remains of the Rev. Edward Daniel Clarke. Edited by W. Otter. Cowie and Co., 1824, pp. 352, 355; Clarke, Travels in Various Countries, vol. i, p. 468.
[2] E.D. Clarke to his mother, 29 July 1799, in Clarke, The Life and Remains, p. 356.
[3] “Extracts from his Journal” in Clarke, The Life and Remains, pp. 281–2.
[4] Paul Keen. “The ‘Balloonomania’: Science and Spectacle in 1780s England.” Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 39, 2006, pp. 507–8.
[5] Anon. Review of Travels in Various Countries of Scandinavia by E.D. Clarke. The Antijacobin Review, and Protestant Advocate, July 1819, pp. 250–5.
[6] Anon. The Parents’ Cabinet of Amusement and Instruction. Smith, Elder and Co., 1859, pp. 191–3.
[7] J. Acerbi. Travels Through Sweden, Finland, and Lapland, to the North Cape, in 1798 and 1799, Mawman, 1802, vol. ii, pp. 124–5; Clarke, Travels in Various Countries, vol. i, p. 524.
[8] Eric J. Grape. “Enontekis Sokns Beskrifning. Aug. 1799.” MS. Cambridge University Library, Ee.v.37; A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge UP, 1857, p. 252.