At a time when women were not allowed
on French naval vessels, a 19-year-old
Parisienne named Léonie d’Aunet used all
her charm and cunning to secure a place
on an extraordinary adventure. On the con-
dition that her partner, the artist François
Biard, would accompany her, d’Aunet was
allowed to join a research expedition on
La Recherche to Svalbard, one of the most
remote and exotic destinations of the time.
The year was 1838, and Paris was the cen-
tre of the world. There was a great deal of con-
sternationwhend’Aunet announcedher plans
in the finer circles to which she belonged. A
woman could never manage such an arduous
and dangerous journey! Since she was not
officially allowed to be on board, she and her
partner travelled by road most of the way up
to Hammerfest. D’Aunet not only survived,
she also wrote a very entertaining travelogue
about her trip through the Nordic countries.
“She’s an interesting lady and coquettishly
confident in her writing style,” laughs Nils
Magne Knutsen, a professor of Scandinavian
literature at UiT. Knutsen has written a book
about the French expedition.
“In contrast to other travelogues of the
time, she has a very feminine outlook, and
describes with great enthusiasm her culinary
experiences along the way, Scandinavian
women’s (lack of) fashion sense and Norway’s
culture and architecture,” he says.
Critical Views
The 19-year-old had a sharp pen and did
not pull her punches in her meetings with
other cultures. The Sami get blasted with
both barrels and she doesn’t spare her words
in her description of Scandinavian women.
They were indeed tall and fair with nice skin,
but the Swedes struggled with bad teeth and
“big, ugly feet”. Norwegian women were also
ashamed of their bad teeth and their “big
ears”. D’Aunet considered the natural environ-
ment in Lofoten to be the devil’s work, but she
was also occasionally wildly enthusiastic about
some of the things she saw. She could hardly
find words to describe her amazement for the
Northern Lights.
“D’Aunet had a taste for the dramatic and
really overdid it in some cases. For example,
she wrote that the main street in Tromsø
‘begins at sea and ends at the foot of an
enormous blue-green glacier’,” Knutsen says.
Despite a good deal of complaining, the
19-year-old was clearly one tough lady. On the
wayhomeshe rodeside-saddlemore than200
kilometres across the Finnmark plateau from
Kåfjorddalen via Kautokeino to Karesuando in
Sweden, through mosquito-infested marshes
and over mountains.
One person however, was less than
impressed. Pastor Lars Levi Læstadius was a
botanist and religious revivalist who founded
Laestadianism, a conservative Lutheran
revival movement, especially popular among
the Sami people. D’Aunet’s party was reluct
antly allowed to spend the night at the par-
sonage when they arrived at Karesuando, and
d’Aunet describes the famous preacher as a
condescending, stingy jerk.
A scandalous affair
Back home in France, d’Aunet’s artist
beau garnered much praise for his dramatic
paintings from the far-flung corners of the
world (including a painting in which Læstadius
is shown preaching to some Sami from a
two-metre high snowdrift), and the two lovers
married the following year. D’Aunet, however,
was not satisfied with a mere artist as a hus-
band and was soon the mistress of France’s
then-greatest living celebrity, Victor Hugo. The
result was a mega scandal, and d’Aunet even
landed in prison for a fewmonths for adultery,
after her husband caught d’Aunet and Hugo
in flagrante delicto
. Fifteen years after her
adventurous journey, and very well-known
after the scandal, she wrote her travelogue,
which became very popular. She followed this
with novels and plays andmade her living as a
writer until her death in 1879.
“We may not know if she was actually the
first woman to visit Svalbard, but it was some
timebeforeNorthernNorwaywouldbe visited
by a tourist like her again,” says Knutsen.
Read more?
Leonie d’Aunet (1968).
A Parisienne’s journey
through Norway to Spitsbergen anno 1838
(in
Norwegian)
Nils M. Knutsen and Per Posti (2002).
La Recherche: An expedition to the north
(in
Norwegian)
A travelogue pioneer
She claimed to be the first woman in Svalbard. And whether or not that is true, she cer-
tainly wrote an exceptional and unique travelogue from Northern Norway in the 1800s.
Text: Linn Sollied Madsen
12
labyrint
•
research magazine
from
u
i
t
the
arctic
university
of
norway
Leonie d’ Aunet, here painted by her husband
François Biard, was one of the first “tourists” to
visit Northern Norway and Svalbard. Her trave-
logue is an entertaining and arrogant description
of a world that is very different from her beloved
Paris. Photo: RMN -Grand Palais (Château de
Versailles) / Daniel Arnaudet
