ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two of the earliest and most popular depictions of California for Scandinavian audiences: the travelogue letters by botanist N.J. Andersson and the cyclorama (moving panorama) by the Lehmann brothers. Andersson and the Lehmanns had high aesthetic and financial ambitions for their cultural portrayals of California, and they reached thousands of readers and spectators across Scandinavia in the 1850s. Although both the travelogue and the cyclorama have largely faded from public memory, they played a fundamental role in shaping popular Scandinavian perceptions of California and of “America”.
