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A richly detailed map of the northernmost regions of Sweden and adjacent parts of Norway, Finland, and Russia, issued in the fifth or sixth volume of Chatelain’s monumental Atlas Historique. The map encompasses the traditional provinces of Swedish Lapland, including Lapponie, Västerbotten, and Ångermanland, extending east to the Gulf of Bothnia and west into the Norwegian highlands. The cartography incorporates both geographical and political features: rivers, lakes, forests, and mountain ranges are carefully engraved.
Henri Abraham Chatelain (1684-1743) was a Huguenot pastor of Parisian origins. Chatelain proved a successful businessman, creating lucrative networks in London, The Hague, and then Amsterdam. He is most well known for the Atlas Historique, published in seven volumes between 1705 and 1720. This encyclopedic work was devoted to the history and genealogy of the continents, discussing such topics as geography, cosmography, topography, heraldry, and ethnography. Published thanks to a partnership between Henri, his father, Zacharie, and his younger brother, also Zacharie, the text was contributed to by Nicolas Gueudeville, a French geographer. The maps were by Henri, largely after the work of Guillaume Delisle, and they offered the general reader a window into the emerging world of the eighteenth century.
