Abstract EN:

This thesis presents in its first part 42 French travellers coming from different social spheres, endowed with various educating levels, who travelled in the Scandinavian countries during the 17th and 18th centuries. They have left printed traces of their travels that were done for different purposes such as diplomacy, business, religion, tourism and, particularly in the 18th century, sciences. Influenced by the spirit of the great discovery travels, minded-educated and motivated by the growing teaching of geography, even practised at the highest levels of the kingdom, these travellers describe their itinerary, their way of living, the people they met, the diplomatic circles, the landscapes, the climate, the languages they spoke, the culture and leisure life, the importance of the Sund strait, and also the typically exotic matter of the time, Lapland that some travellers visited. The travellers came back home, feeling themselves like "citizens of the world". The thesis describes also how these relations were written, then printed, quotes which works were translated and how many editions they got, and brings an undeniable contribution to the history of travel literature. The second part gives for each traveller some biographical data, the list of his works and the different French and foreign bibliographical comments that the publication brought about. Finally more than a thousand archives and bibliographical data and 15 attached documents complete and finish off the thesis.