The history of the Finnish botanical exploration of Russian Lapland in 1861 and 1863

The early Finnish expeditions to the Kola Peninsula were organised by the Societas pro Fauna et Flora Fennica. The first expedition, in 1861, was made by two separate teams. Petter Adolf Karsten and Nils Isak Fellman headed to the western part, and Gustaf Selin studied the southwestern coast and then also proceeded to the western part; Karl Emil Inberg, an entomologist, collected insects separately along the track from Kandalaksha to Kola. The second expedition, in 1863, with participation of Fellman, Mårten Magnus Wilhelm Brenner and Nils Johan Laurin, studied the coasts of the White and Barents Seas around the whole Peninsula. The historical background of these expeditions and their circumstances are described in detail and discussed. Literature sources and herbarium specimens are traced in order to produce precise maps and gazetteers of the expeditions. All these expeditions brought extensive collections of herbarium specimens of vascular plants, lichens and fungi, which laid the basis for the first systematic botanical inventory of the Kola Peninsula; algae, bryophytes and zoological specimens were also collected to some extent but not treated separately by the members of the expeditions