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| Giacomo Bove (1852-1887) ploughed the "mythical" North-East Passage aboard the Vega, with Nordenskjöld (1878-1880) |
[Paper read on the 15 May 1997 at the
International Workshop held at Ny Ålesund (Spitsbergen Island, Svalbard),
during the Official Opening of the Italian Arctic Base of the CNR
"Dirigibile Italia"]
The Contribution that Italy could bring to
Arctic Knowledge
Italy has been called to carry out a first-rate rôle in the Arctic.
Till now mostly non-existent, excluded some rare, often out-dated, exception. Sometimes, however, of very high importance.
A rôle that should be "invented", therefore. But this only, not the human resources, that we know are numerous.
Italy doesn't possess neither background, nor the know how of the Nordic states. Among which, furthermore, the great powers of the world or, anyhow, the more developed-ones are included. Not even of those countries, like Great Britain, that owe to their old overseas colonies continuity and "thickness" in their Arctic studies.
What after a first consideration it could look like as a sort of our serious handicap, in comparison with other IASC member countries, in reality clears the field from ancient fogs, swamps, obstacles, routes, schools or, however, preset itineraries.
Consequently, we should not try to servilely imitate works already made by others, or to be attracted by thematics already examined thoroughly by others.
Our "Polar stars" should be formed by those people who, however, preceded us in the Arctic regions.
I remind Cristoforo Negri, the founder of the Italian Geographical Society in the half of the XIX century, who has been an irresistible supporter of Polar expeditions.
All the more the
Society financed three foreign expeditions, as well. But those were other
times, evidently...
The Italians and the Arctic
The personages to whom we can refer to, somehow, if we were going to make a short history of Italian explorations and researches in the Arctic, aren't so numerous.
As regards the "classical" explorations, in which it moved a never drowsy anxiety of knowledge, always dense of expectations, I want to remember the activities of some Navy Officers: Parent, who attended the Nordenskjöld expedition (1872), or the famous Bove, who ploughed the "mythical" North-East Passage aboard the Vega, always of Nordenskjöld (1878-1880), or De Rensis on the Djimphna (1884), blocked by ices in the Kara Sea.
Besides the maritime expeditions of the last quarter of the century to the North Pole, that would be carried on, at the very beginning of the II Millennium, with the Duca degli Abruzzi expedition (1900), and to the "Passage," the Italians had known how to conquer a certain scientific leadership towards another Arctic region: Lapland. Francesco Negro in a voyage carried out between 1663-1666 reached North Cape.
But relations with Lapland of Italian travellers and researchers, also ethno anthropologists, went on in the eight hundred century, thanks to botanist Filippo Parlatore, with his 1851's journey, and to Sommier and Mantegazza, who went to Scandinavia and Lapland in 1879.
Sommier wanted to know "quel piccolo popolo che abita nell'estremo nord di Europa, in regioni desolate, ove per il rigore del clima e la sterilità del suolo, non potrebbe vivere nessun altro popolo europeo".
He was among the first to make observations on the Kvens, the Finns emigrated in northern Norway.
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| Stefano Sommier: Un' estate in Siberia fra Ostiacchi, Samoiedi, Siriéni, Tatári, Kirghĭsi e Baskĭri. Ermanno Loescher, 1885 |
At the end of the XIX century Count Zileri went with Enrico, Prince of Borbone and Parma, in a first exploration to Svalbard and New Zemlja (1891).
How don't remind, naturally, the scientific results originated from the two Nobile flights?
Or the one, that became a forced reconnaissance of the great North-East Island of the Svalbard, searching for the red tent survivors?
Made by Engenieer Albertini (1928) who, still in 1929, explored Spitsbergen, Franz Josef Land and New Zemlja. And by the alpine Captain Sora, the discoverer of the Isola degli Alpini.
And what about the fine Italian alpine-scientific exploits: from Svalbard to Greenland, to Baffin.
Up to the recent Messner crossing of the Greenlandic ilandsis already experienced, at the end of the XIX century, on a shorter route, by the great Nansen.
Finally let me have the pleasure to mention a colleague, the late Zavatti. In the '60 he carried out five missions among the Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit and Lapps.
He founded a Polar Museum and the magazine Il Polo.
Lastly, I should remind my own experiences of Arctic researches. In 1983 I carried out an anthropological survey in a sample of six Inuit communities in the Canadian Arctic.
In 1994 I worked, instead, to a project concerning both the national components (Norwegian and Russian) that are present in the Svalbard: in the fields of ethnicity, development and man-environment relationship.
My intention for the future is to go on with the research.
Besides to carry on with the job, started long ago within the frame
of my "Program on Northern Atlantic Maritime Communities,"
with a research in a "sample" community of Iceland.
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| E-Book e versione cartacea di grande formato - 16,99 x 24,41 - a colori e in bianco e nero (241 pp., 232 immagini, di cui 106 a colori, 204 note), I ediz. (versione in bianco e nero: https://www.amazon.it/dp/152075048X ) |
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