Bird songs in a Travelogue

In 1816, Swedish archaeologist and zoologist Sven Nilsson (1787–1883) travelled from Southern Sweden to Northern Norway to study birds. The journey leads north from Lund to Bodø, and in the diary Nilsson describes in detail the places he visits, the people he meets and the many birds he shoots and collects.

Many of the ornithological discoveries Nilsson made during his career are presented in the compilation Scandinavian Fauna (1820-1853), which was published in several volumes. This includes what is considered Sweden’s first handbook in ornithology, Swedish Ornithology or a Description of Sweden’s Birds (1824). Nilsson’s Diary Entries During a Journey From Southern Sweden to Nordland in Norway in 1816 (1879) provides an interesting insight into how he went about collecting various bird species and making the ornithological discoveries for which he would later be recognised.

Nilsson’s work was not just about collecting birds so as to study the anatomy of various species. The diary also shows how he went about collecting the various songs of the different bird species he observed during his journey to Northern Norway. Without the possibility of audio recording, Nilsson records and collects these bird songs by imitating them through writing and using onomatopoeic words in the diary.

For example, he describes the redwing’s song and the ptarmigan’s call as follows:

"An unknown bird song was heard, it was without melody; the repeated and monotonous song tri, tri, tri, tri, followed by a low twitter tivitivili, so different from the previous sound, that at first I thought it belonged to another bird. The bird was shot and found to be the redwing (Turdus iliacus), which I caught hundreds of but had never heard sing, the reason being that it is never found in Scania during the spring and summer seasons." (Nilsson 1879, 61).

"And then the male began to make a sound: i-ah! i-ah! i-ah!, slightly cheeping through its beak. This imitation of the female’s call was soon answered from the small trees with arrrrrack-ka-ka-ka-kah! Ka-ka-ka-kah! Accompanied by a duller kawāu-kawāu!" (Nilsson 1879, 110).

Nilsson's reproduction of these bird songs in writing shows the possibilities - and limitations - one had in terms of collecting, recording and conveying sound before it was possible to make audio recordings. Diary Entries is also an example of how immaterial objects from the Nordic regions, such as bird song, were collected and made available through material objects, such as a travel diary.

Do you have questions or comments to the text? Contact Janicke S. Kaasa