Rejsedagbog 1846

This is a page from Johan Thomas Lundbye’s travel journal, undated, held at the Statens Museum for Kunst. Here, the written word itself becomes a symbol, a motif recurring across time and cultures, bearing the weight of history. Consider the act of journaling. It echoes the ancient practice of recording observations, a tradition found in the illuminated manuscripts of the medieval period. But where those manuscripts sought to capture religious truths, Lundbye uses his journal to record his personal experiences. Note how the handwritten script, with its unique flourishes and imperfections, mirrors the individual’s attempt to capture fleeting moments and ideas. This reflects a broader human impulse to document and preserve, to impose order on the chaos of experience. This impulse connects us to our ancestors, who sought to make sense of their worlds through cave paintings or hieroglyphs. We see this psychological need to capture the world around us across history. In this simple journal page, Lundbye invites us to reflect on the non-linear journey of knowledge, the cyclical return to fundamental human desires to observe, record, and understand.