page_title: Carl Linnaeus
section_title: Expedition to Lapland
hierarchical_section_title: Carl Linnaeus / Expedition to Lapland
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Schilderij van Martin Hoffman toont Linnaeus in zijn Lapse kostuum, met het Linnaeusklokje in de hand. De tekst CAROLUS LINNAEUS e Lapponia Redux Aetat. 30 anno 1737 op de trommel in het origineel in Museum Boerhaave ontbreekt hier.English: Painting showing Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) in his Lapland costume. In his hand is the plant that Jan Frederik Gronovius named after him: Linnaea borealis. The text CAROLUS LINNAEUS e Lapponia Redux Aetat. 30 anno 1737 on the drum on the original in the Museum Boerhaave is missing here.
context_page_description: Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus.
  Linnaeus was born in the countryside of Småland in southern Sweden. He received most of his higher education at Uppsala University and began giving lectures in botany there in 1730. He lived abroad between 1735 and 1738, where he studied and also published the first edition of his Systema Naturae in the Netherlands. He then returned to Sweden where he became professor of medicine and botany at Uppsala. In the 1740s, he was sent on several journeys through Sweden to find and classify plants and animals. In the 1750s and 1760s, he continued to collect and classify animals, plants, and minerals, while publishing several volumes. He was one of the most acclaimed scientists in Europe at the time of his death.
  Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau sent him the message: "Tell him I know no greater man on earth."
context_section_description: During a visit with his parents, Linnaeus told them about his plan to travel to Lapland; Rudbeck had made the journey in 1695, but the detailed results of his exploration were lost in a fire seven years afterwards. Linnaeus's hope was to find new plants, animals and possibly valuable minerals. He was also curious about the customs of the native Sami people, reindeer-herding nomads who wandered Scandinavia's vast tundras. In April 1732, Linnaeus was awarded a grant from the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala for his journey.
  Linnaeus began his expedition from Uppsala on 12 May 1732, just before he turned 25. He travelled on foot and horse, bringing with him his journal, botanical and ornithological manuscripts and sheets of paper for pressing plants. Near Gävle he found great quantities of Campanula serpyllifolia, later known as Linnaea borealis, the twinflower that would become his favourite. He sometimes dismounted on the way to examine a flower or rock and was particularly interested in mosses and lichens, the latter a main part of the diet of the reindeer, a common and economically important animal in Lapland.
  Linnaeus travelled clockwise around the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, making major inland incursions from Umeå, Luleå and Tornio. He returned from his six-month-long, over 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) expedition in October, having gathered and observed many plants, birds and rocks. Although Lapland was a region with limited biodiversity, Linnaeus described about 100 previously unidentified plants. These became the basis of his book Flora Lapponica. However, on the expedition to Lapland, Linnaeus used Latin names to describe organisms because he had not yet developed the binomial system.
  In Flora Lapponica Linnaeus's ideas about nomenclature and classification were first used in a practical way, making this the first proto-modern Flora. The account covered 534 species, used the Linnaean classification system and included, for the described species, geographical distribution and taxonomic notes. It was Augustin Pyramus de Candolle who attributed Linnaeus with Flora Lapponica as the first example in the botanical genre of Flora writing. Botanical historian E. L. Greene described Flora Lapponica as "the most classic and delightful" of Linnaeus's works.
  It was also during this expedition that Linnaeus had a flash of insight regarding the classification of mammals. Upon observing the lower jawbone of a horse at the side of a road he was travelling, Linnaeus remarked: "If I only knew how many teeth and of what kind every animal had, how many teats and where they were placed, I should perhaps be able to work out a perfectly natural system for the arrangement of all quadrupeds."
  In 1734, Linnaeus led a small group of students to Dalarna. Funded by the Governor of Dalarna, the expedition was to catalogue known natural resources and discover new ones, but also to gather intelligence on Norwegian mining activities at Røros.
caption: Wearing the traditional dress of the Sami people of Lapland, holding the twinflower, later known as Linnaea borealis, that became his personal emblem. Martin Hoffman, 1737.
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