A British mountaineer's notebooks

These notebooks, now on display at the Norsk fjellmuseum in Lom, belonged to Slingsby, a prominent British mountaineer. They include sketches and notes from his numerous trips to Norway from 1872 until the early years of the twentieth century. What can they tell us about how British travellers saw Norway at the time?

As well as containing sketches and descriptions of Norwegian landscapes, the notebooks also contain information such as Slingsby’s notes on the similarities between Norwegian and the regional dialects of northern England, demonstrating his cultural interest in the country beyond the mountains.

Known as the “father of Norwegian mountaineering” (Readman 2014, 1102), Slingsby is now best known for making the first ascent of Store Skagastølstind in the West of Norway in 1876. Slingsby was unusual amongst British mountaineers of the time for choosing to spend so much time climbing in Norway, rather than in the Alps or the mountains of Britain. However, this did mean he built up significant connections to the country and to Norwegian mountaineers. Slingsby used Norwegian guides when climbing in Norway and individuals like Knut Lykken (1831–1911), Ola Berge (1853–1928) and Thorgeir Sulheim (1840–1925) supported and aided his ascents. These local men often provided accommodation to travellers as well, particularly as Jotunheimen became increasingly popular with tourists eager to explore the mountains. Berge, for example, opened the Turtagrø hotel in 1888 and it soon became a centre of mountaineering in the region.

Slingsby also climbed with middle-class Norwegian mountaineers like Emanuel Mohn (1842–1891). A school teacher from Bergen, Mohn was a significant figure in Den Norske Turistforening (DNT) [The Norwegian Trekking Association] and Slingsby referred to him as his “fjell-kammerat” [mountain comrade] (Slingsby 1904, 124). Slingsby also climbed with the pioneering female mountaineer Therese Bertheau (1861–1936), another DNT member, and corresponded with other significant Norwegians of the time such as composer Edvard Grieg (1843–1907).

Slingsby’s connections to DNT ran deeper than friendship with individuals. The organisation was founded in 1868 to encourage and aid travel to rural areas of the country and Slingsby mentions it numerous times in his 1904 book, Norway. The Northern Playground. He was particularly complimentary about the new cabins and huts constructed by DNT and how much they supported mountaineering expeditions. As another British traveller, Alfred Mockler-Ferryman (1856–1930), wrote in 1896, DNT made life “smoother for the adventurer” (1896, 217). Slingsby also made frequent contributions to DNT’s yearbook and when the recently-founded Norsk Tindeklub [Norwegian Mountaineering Club] published their first handbook in 1914, Slingsby was invited to contribute a chapter entitled “The History and Development of Norsk [sic] Mountaineering”.

Slingsby’s involvement with the institutions of Norwegian mountaineering and outdoor activities can be seen as an example of the transnational co-construction of Norwegian landscapes and space. This was not simply a case of British travellers “discovering” Norway. Norwegians played an active part in how these landscapes were accessed and interpreted by tourists. However, we can also see the influence of British – and other foreign – travellers on Norwegian institutions like DNT and Norwegian understandings of national landscapes. Slingsby’s connections across borders allow us to consider how places are constructed as destinations.

A Norwegian museum seems a suitable place for Slingsby’s notebooks to remain. Whilst they are far from his Yorkshire home, he is a significant figure in the history of Norwegian mountaineering and reflected himself on the relationship between Norway and Britain. However, we should be mindful of the way in which Slingsby used supposedly shared pasts, as well as Norwegian landscapes and Norwegians themselves, to construct discourses of imperial power and superiority. Slingsby’s collection of Norwegian vocabulary in his notebooks was just part of a wider interest in often largely imagined Norse histories, where the supposedly common ancestry of Norwegians and people from the north of England explained certain shared character traits. Slingsby also saw this Viking heritage as an explanation of the power and influence of the British Empire, something he wrote of approvingly. Given Slingsby’s visions of empire in the Norwegian landscape, thinking critically about his construction of the North is vital. He remains a prominent figure in the history of mountaineering in Norway, but his legacy goes beyond first ascents to how the mountains are seen and understood.