Under the Rays of the Aurora Borealis: In the Land of the Lapps and Kvæns. Ed. Carl Siewers.

First US edition. 8vo. 2 vols. pp. xv, 288, [2] & x, 306; coloured frontis. to each, numerous illusts. to text, one folding map; previous owner's inscription at front of each, else very good in the original pictorial cloth, a very good set. Tromholt (1851-1896) was a Danish astrophysicist who taught in Bergen, Norway. During the first International Polar Year of 1882-3 he set up an observatory at Kautokeino in Finnmark (northern Norway) to study the northern lights. He attempted to capture the lights on a camera, but the difficult conditions meant that he gave this up and instead took photographs of the northern peoples he found there - Norwegians, Kven and Sami. In 1885 he published an account of his experience in Copenhagen, and the work was translated into English and published in Britain and North America in the present edition.