In the spring of 1879, the anthropologist Paolo Mantegazza and the botanist and naturalist Eugène Sommier travelled from Italy to Sápmi to conduct field research among Sámi communities. Their interests included material culture, anthropometric measurements and photography. Their journey was shaped by the scientific practices and colonial attitudes of the period, as well as by the unequal power relations between the researchers and the people they encountered.

Their first encounters with Sámi communities took place in South Sápmi. From there, Mantegazza and Sommier travelled northwards to present-day Northern Norway, where they continued their research. After leaving Christiania, and with the help of letters of recommendation and a network of wealthy and well-connected Norwegians, they were able to meet a Sámi family living on the shores of Lake Øyungen. During this encounter, Mantegazza acquired several objects belonging to the household. The meeting involved clear asymmetries of power, but also instances of agency on the part of the family members.

Mantegazza and Sommier then travelled to Tromsø, where they stayed while continuing their research. Mantegazza later returned to Florence, while Sommier continued northwards to present-day Alta. He stayed in the settlements of Bossekop and Elvebakken, where he carried out anthropometric research and took numerous photographs. From Alta, he continued his journey to Máze.

One of the researchers later provided a detailed account of the encounter at Lake Øyungen in a travelogue published in 1881. Drawing on this and other texts produced during the expedition, as well as on the objects and photographs preserved in the Ethnography and Anthropology Section of the University Museum of Florence, this project examines the encounters, movements and practices that shaped the expedition.

The project retraces Mantegazza and Sommier’s journey through Sápmi, visiting the communities and places connected to their research. It brings their writings, photographs, anthropometric records and collected objects into conversation with people from the communities of origin. By revisiting and discussing the researchers’ production together with local communities, the project seeks to explore how these historical materials are understood, interpreted and potentially recontextualised today.

In this way, the project examines the ideological premises underlying Mantegazza and Sommier’s interest in Sámi cultures, their desire to meet particular Sámi families, and their attempts to acquire objects and produce anthropometric and photographic records. At the same time, it pays attention to the responses, perspectives and forms of agency of the Sámi people with whom they came into contact, both in the historical encounters and in contemporary engagements with the researchers’ legacy.