In the middle of the 1700s the Academy of Turku sent one of its own across the Atlantic. Pehr Kalm, a pupil of the great botanist Carl Linnaeus, spent more than two years travelling through the British colonies and French Canada. His diary became one of the best descriptions of eighteenth-century North America ever written.
A pupil of Linnaeus
- From Sweden to Turku. Kalm was born on 6 March 1716 in Ångermanland in northern Sweden, but his family was from Finland and he grew up there. In 1735 he began to study at the Academy of Turku Well documented.
- Uppsala. In 1740 he moved to Uppsala to study under Carl Linnaeus, the man who gave plants and animals the two-part Latin names still used today. Linnaeus sent his best students all over the world to collect, and called them his “apostles” Well documented.
- A young professor. After several research journeys Kalm became a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1745. In 1747, aged 31, he was made professor of economics at the Academy of Turku, a subject that then meant mainly farming, gardening and natural resources Well documented.
Why America?
- Plants instead of imports. Sweden’s rulers wanted the country to make what it needed instead of buying it abroad (stop 21). If useful trees, dye plants and crops from a land with a similar climate could be grown at home, money would stay in the realm Well documented.
- A climate like ours. North America, and Canada above all, was thought to have winters like those of Sweden and Finland. Linnaeus and the Academy of Sciences chose Kalm for the journey and told him to spend as much time in Canada as he could Well documented.
- Paying his own way. The money from Sweden was not enough. According to the translator of his diary, Kalm spent about £130 of his own on the journey Likely.
- A long way round. Kalm left Uppsala on 16 October 1747. He spent several months in England, visiting gardens and farms, before sailing on. He finally reached Philadelphia in September 1748 Well documented.
Two years in the New World
- The old Swedes. Kalm spent his first winter at Raccoon in New Jersey, among the descendants of the colony of New Sweden, founded in 1638 and lost to the Dutch in 1655. They kept Christmas by the old calendar and still remembered Swedish ways, although many had already taken up English ones Well documented.
- Everything was news. He wrote down everything: how the colonists built fences and stables, how they treated illness, the price of food, the weather, the birds and the insects. In March 1749 the woods filled with passenger pigeons “in numbers beyond conception”. A century and a half later the species was extinct Well documented.
- Into New France. In the summer of 1749 Kalm travelled up the Hudson River to French Canada. France and Britain were rivals, but the French government had ordered that his costs be paid. In Quebec the governor, the Marquis de La Galissonière, himself a keen naturalist, welcomed him Well documented.
- Meeting the First Nations. On the way Kalm met Indigenous people of several nations. He was curious and often respectful, but he also repeated the prejudices of his time. His notes on their food, medicine and farming are still used by historians Likely.
- A wedding. In February 1750, in Philadelphia, Kalm married Anna Margaretha Sjöman, the widow of the Swedish pastor of Raccoon. She came back with him to Turku Well documented.
- The way home. In the summer of 1750 he finally reached Niagara (topic 2). In February 1751 he sailed for Europe with his seeds and specimens, and late that year he was back in Turku Well documented.
How do we know?
Kalm kept a detailed diary and published it in Swedish as En resa til Norra America in three volumes (1753–1761). It was soon translated into German, Dutch and, in 1770–1771, English. Letters survive too, such as the one he wrote to Benjamin Franklin about Niagara. But Kalm polished his text for readers back home, and the printed diary does not cover every part of the journey. Where he describes Indigenous peoples, he often repeats what colonists told him, so historians read those parts with care.
Back in Turku
- A garden of America. Kalm planted his seeds in his own garden in Turku, at a farm called Sipsalo on the island of Hirvensalo, and from 1757 in a botanical garden of the Academy on today’s Piispankatu Well documented.
- Living hedges. He planted hawthorn hedges instead of fences. Hawthorn and Virginia creeper still grow at the vicarage of Maaria, where Kalm was also the vicar. An oak in Turku is said to have been planted by him around 1760 Legend.
- Science, not money. Most of the American plants did not do well enough to be useful to farmers. But they were a treasure for science. In his great book of 1753, Species Plantarum, Linnaeus credits Kalm with about 90 species, 60 of them new Well documented.
- Kalmia. Linnaeus named a genus of shrubs Kalmia after him. Mountain laurel, one of them, is today the state flower of Pennsylvania and Connecticut Well documented.
- A teacher. Kalm taught in Turku for more than thirty years. One of his students was Anders Chydenius, who became famous for arguing for free trade and freedom of the press. Kalm died in Turku on 16 November 1779 Well documented.
- Remembered. In 2012 an artwork called Pehr Kalm Revival recreated part of his lost garden, with Kalmia and other American plants Well documented.