TY - JOUR AU - Buttimer, Anne PY - 2010/11/11 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - Humboldt, Granö and Geo-poetics of the Altai JF - Fennia - International Journal of Geography JA - Fennia VL - 188 IS - 1 SE - Review Articles DO - UR - https://fennia.journal.fi/article/view/2838 SP - 11-36 AB - <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone> <w:PunctuationKerning /> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas /> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables /> <w:SnapToGridInCell /> <w:WrapTextWithPunct /> <w:UseAsianBreakRules /> <w:DontGrowAutofit /> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> The Altai region of Siberia has held magnetic appeal for explorers and scientists down the centuries. Two of these explorers, Alexander von Humboldt (1769&minus;1859) and Johannes Gabriel Gran&ouml; (1882&minus;1956), were especially gifted in yielding both geo-scientific and geo-poetic accounts of their surveys, Gran&ouml; especially evoking a &ldquo;geo-poetics&rdquo; of the Altai, possibly inspired by Humboldt&rsquo;s American journeys. Though their career trajectories spanned very different periods and circumstances, these two scholars have bequeathed legacies of enduring value &minus; conceptually and substantively &minus; in bridging the worlds of science and humanities and revealing innovative insight into interactions of society and environment. As Humboldt eventually based the principles of his Cosmos on travels made earlier in life, so too Gran&ouml; would later build on the experiences in Altai to develop his major theoretical work, Reine Geographie (1929). This paper describes the journeys through Altai of Humboldt and Gran&ouml;, and some discursive strategies used by both writers in yielding dynamic pictures of mountain landscapes and ways of life.<span style="letter-spacing: -0.15pt;" lang="EN-US"> </span> ER -