History and forest trails
Follow in the footsteps of Maupertuis’ degree-measuring expedition to the measuring points of the chain of survey triangulations in the Torne Valley.
Background
A stage for the history of science
Almost 300 years ago, a group of natural scientists walked the hills of the Torne Valley. They were measuring the true shape of the Earth. Today, this chain of survey triangulations created by the expedition is a destination where history and hiking intersect.
history
Life in the Torne Valley in the 1730s
In Midsummer 1736, a French expedition arrived in Tornio, the northernmost town in Europe. The Torne was the main route to Lapland and the lifeblood of settlements in the area. The Torne Valley of 1736–1737 has been preserved for the later generations in the travel books of Maupertuis and Outhier.
Members of the degree-measuring expedition
The French Académie des sciences, Royal Academy of Sciences, sent an expedition to the Arctic Circle. The eight-man expedition was led by the ambitious mathematician Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis.
The expedition on the map
Réginald Outhier has written a detailed description of the expedition’s journey from Paris to Tornio and back. The journey took two months each way and was made by boat and wagon. On the way back, the expedition was in a shipwreck in the Bay of Bothnia.
HOW ARE THE TRAILS?
Downloadable materials
The drawings and old maps from Réginald Outhier’s journal, the excursion maps to the measurement points and the photographs are freely available for your use. (At the moment the page is only in Finnish.)