ABSTRACT
When middle-aged priest Francesco Negri left his hometown of Ravenna in 1663 and undertook a three-year voyage in Scandinavia, he became the first continental European to make an extensive journey through these northern regions. A mostly self-funded and certainly self-styled scientist-investigator who dedicated most of his life to tending his parish, Negri eschewed the better-known itineraries of European and world travel for a less beaten path.1 Not only was his choice of destination unusual, but so too, as is evident in his Viaggio settentrionale [Northern Travels, 1700], was his presence abroad as an independent Italian traveler. Negri faced the growing reputation of Italians, especially after the mid-1600s, as less fervent adventurers. For example, at the court of King Frederick III in Copenhagen before returning home, he notes the monarch’s surprise at seeing an Italian in the far north: “soggiunse che la maggior curiosità … era che un italiano, nato in un clima de’ più dolci del mondo, avesse avuto tanto ardire e forza d’intraprendere e compire un viaggio de’ più aspri e pericolosi che siano, e in tale stagione” [The king added that the most curious thing was that an Italian, born in one of the mildest climates in the world, had had such desire and determination to undertake and complete a
1 Francesco Negri (1624-98) may have been to England and Poland on diplomatic church missions, but there are few documents attesting to other travels abroad besides those to Scandinavia. See, for example, Gregorio Caravita, Francesco Negri: il prete ravennate che ha scoperto gli sci (Ravenna: Tipolitografia Artestampa, 2004). Negri’s Italian precursors include Venetian merchant Pietro Quirino or Querini, who was shipwrecked on the islands of Lofoden off the Norwegian coast and whose account is part of Ramusio’s anthology, Navigationi e viaggi, 5 vols (Venice: Giunti, 1550-59). A manuscript by Giovanni Giustiniani entitled Viaggio in Isvezia and dated 1583 was probably not circulated in Negri’s time. See Francesco Negri, Viaggio settentrionale, ed. Enrico Falqui (Turin: Edizioni Alpes, 1929), pp. 9-12. All quotes of Negri’s text come from this edition. When Negri left for Scandinavia, the most authoritative source of information was Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (1555), written by Swedish scholar Olaf Manson (1490-1557). See Virgilio Ricci, “Sci e alpinismo nel Seicento. Francesco Negri, l’ardito romagnolo che ubbidì al grande richiamo delle nevi scandinave,” Le Alpi, 61 (Jan.–Feb. 1924): 79-90.
