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Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 23 (2016)

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 23

(2016)– [tijdschrift] Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Alex Alsemgeest
Dutch connections in Swedish collections

In an earlier volume of the Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis the late Piet Verkruijsse stated that ‘there is a considerable amount of Dutch printed material in the City Library of Linköping and nobody knows how it ended up there’.1 Verkruijsse used Linköping as a random example to point out the lacunas in the national bibliography of the Netherlands. He added ‘that it might take a while before a team of bibliographers reaches Linköping’.

I first reached Linköping as a bibliographer in the summer of 2011 and needed little time to confirm that indeed the library holds thousands of books from the seventeenth and eighteenth century that were printed in the Dutch Republic. Additional research in other Swedish libraries led to similar results. Over the past five years I have identified and disclosed a couple of hundred Dutch books in Swedish libraries that were previously unaccounted for in the Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands, that is the retrospective national bibliography of the Netherlands.2 Useful as these additions may be for specific types of research, it seems trivial once you realise that this is less than one percent of the total number of Dutch books in Swedish collections.

The Dutch Republic has been eloquently described as ‘the bookshop of the world’3 and it is not surprising that Dutch books can be found in Swedish libraries. However, both the large quantities and the fact that we find so many titles that do not seem to be around in Dutch libraries, ask for explanation. Books do not end up in specific collections by chance. There is often a historical contingency that explains why we find certain books in one library and not in another. If these books can be understood as ‘agents of cultural exchange’,4 then certainly the various collections that hold these books are

silent witnesses of cultural networks. Mapping these collections and interpreting their build-up and development over time can teach us a lot about the spreading of culture and ideas.

But where do we start? So far we do not have a comprehensive overview of Dutch books in Swedish collections.5 The Swedish union catalogue Libris provides only limited insight on this matter and the Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands has only included fractions of the available material. In this paper I will give an overview of some collections in Sweden that are most interesting for further research from a Dutch perspective.

Dutch connections: an overview

The National Library of Sweden holds the oldest surviving Dutch newspaper, a copy of Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt, &c. issued 14 June 1618 in Amsterdam.6 It is part of a large collection of seventeenth-century Dutch newspapers that was rediscovered in a pile of archivalia in the 1930s. The discovery was celebrated in the Dutch press and it generated enthusiasm among historians.7 A facsimile edition of the oldest ones was made at the request of the National Library of the Netherlands.8 The question connected to the discovery is how these Dutch newspapers ended up in the National Library of Sweden. Marginal annotations suggest that the collection was at some point transferred from the National Archives in Stockholm, where they were part of the vast correspondence of Swedish agents and ambassadors.9

Sweden and the Dutch Republic opened mutual embassies in 1614 at a time when both nations were on the verge of their respective Golden Ages. Sweden would arise from the Thirty Years' War as the dominant power in the Baltic and was eager to import expertise, information and luxuries from the Dutch Republic. Trade relations between both countries had existed for centuries, yet the establishment of persistent political relations triggered affairs in a wide cultural and social field. Swedish ambassadors, residents and merchants such as Michel le Blon (1587-1656) and Harald Appelboom (1612-1674) gathered information in the Dutch Republic and sent newspapers, pamphlets, state publications, maps and catalogues, to Sweden.10 Not only did these agents operate as Swedish diplomats and intelligence officers, they had a valuable knowledge of the market of luxury goods.11 Notable Swedish statesmen as Axel Oxenstierna (1583-1654),

Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (1622-1686) and Carl Gustaf Wrangel (1613-1676) made ample use of this knowledge to bring luxuries such as paintings, tapestries and books into Sweden. In the case of Wrangel, we can tell from his correspondence that he actively studied booksellers' advertisements in Dutch newspapers to learn about their latest publications.12

Considering that Dutch books were in demand it is understandable that Dutch booksellers tried to get a foothold in Scandinavia. From the 1620s onwards we see an increasing number of Dutch booksellers that were active in the North. The Elzeviers initiated activities in Denmark as early as 1622 and were requested to supply Uppsala university library with books on several occasions during the seventeenth century.13 The Leiden-based Jacob Marcus published a Swedish Bible in 1633 and visited the St. Mikaels book fair in Stockholm in 1636.14 In the 1670s, the bookseller Henricus Betkius was active in Riga for some time and brought a whole range of mystic and pietistic works to the Baltic.15 Johannes Janssonius opened shops in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Uppsala and gained special privileges to establish a press in Stockholm.16 Archival sources to underpin the activities of Dutch booksellers in Scandinavia are limited, but if the number of Dutch booksellers' and auction catalogues is taken into account that circulated in Scandinavia during the seventeenth century, it is plausible that there must have been many others that can be directly or indirectly linked to the Dutch-Scandinavian book trade.17

The distribution of books via known booksellers and their agents is complex enough, but the dissemination of printed books through other networks is largely unknown. There is a seemingly endless stream of merchants, sailors, architects, scholars, shipbuilders, students, ministers, mystics, engravers and theatre groups that travelled back and forth between Sweden and the Dutch Republic.18 Many of these people cannot be traced in the archives, yet they did leave traces in books and probably even more in ephemeral printed material that they brought along on their travels. Material aspects present us with a glimpse of the history of these books and their owners. The

question is however, whether these unique traces can be used to illustrate larger cultural and social networks. To what extent, for example, does a navigation guide that has been annotated by a Dutch sailor on his way to Stockholm tell us something about the on-board use of these guides in general? How does an advertisement brochure of an eighteenth-century florist from Hillegom in the collection of a Swedish naturalist shed light on the spread of Linnaean taxonomy? And what can we learn from a Dutch pamphlet on a theological debate in Hamburg that ended up in the collection of a Swedish minister?19



illustratie
Figure 1. Title-page of Meditations Chrestiennes sur trois pseaumes du prophete David. Norrköpings Stadsbibliotek, Finspongs-samlingen, 2002


Clearly it would be helpful to understand the context in which these books were produced, disseminated and collected. Material aspects of individual copies sometimes provide us with useful clues on a history that goes beyond that particular copy. In most cases, however, we need to consider the context of the collections that these copies have ended up in, in order to understand how they found their way to Sweden.

Finspong collection

Arguably the most important man in the early history of Swedish-Dutch relations is the Walloon merchant, industrialist and arms trader Louis De Geer (1587-1652). De Geer was already a successful industrialist when he moved to Amsterdam in 1615. In the next decade he would make a fortune in the Thirty Years' War with the cannons that he produced for various armies. Sweden rapidly became dependent on the deliveries and the investments of De Geer. Following a delivery to the Swedish King Gustav Adolf in 1618 De Geer was allowed to lease estates near Finspång, where he set up an iron industry with improved blast furnaces and trip hammers. Subsequently he received a monopoly on the trade of copper and iron. De Geer eventually moved to Sweden, was ennobled and played a leading role in the establishment of the Swedish West India Company.20

The Finspong library21 as we know it today was established a century later by a great-grandchild of Louis de Geer, who went by the same name as his forefather. Louis De Geer iii (1705-1758) organised the library and compiled a catalogue in 1747.22 In the preface of the catalogue De Geer explains that his great-grandfather brought his book collection from the Netherlands to Sweden. After the death of Louis De Geer the elder, the books had been dispersed among his children. One of Louis De Geer iii's uncles, also named Louis De Geer (1651-1691), had started to rebuild the collection with books that he bought during his travels in Europe. The library slowly regained its former glory through inheritance and purchase. However, Louis De Geer iii stated in 1747 that the collection was good, but not as complete as it had been.23

When De Geer completed his catalogue in 1747, the collection comprised 6567 works in approximately 8000 volumes. In the following century, the collection was further enlarged, first by other members of the De Geer family, later by new owners of the Finspong estates Count Gustaf af Wetterstedt (1776-1837) and Carl Edvard Ekman (1826-1903). By the end of the nineteenth century the collection comprised 25,000 works in 36,000 volumes.24 In 1905 the entire collection was bought by the city of Norrköping and eight years later relocated from the Finspång castle to the city library, where it still is today.

The Finspong collection is extremely layered. Different owners of the estates constantly added new books to the library, while notable parts of the collection were detached from the library in the nineteenth century.25 The original collection of 8000

volumes as it was described by Louis De Geer iii in 1747 is largely preserved and all books are marked with an oval library stamp that reads ‘Bibliotheca Finspongensis’.26 It is in this part of the collection that we can still recognise the intellectual concerns and interests of successive generations of the De Geer family.

The Finspong collection contains large sections on science, technology and mathematics, as might be expected in the library of a family of industrialists. However, Lundstedt's catalogue from 1883 clearly shows that many titles in these sections were later additions to the library. The oldest parts of the library comprise large sections on Calvinist theology and education, unmistakeably with the influence of Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670).27 The Czech theologian and pedagogue Comenius was a guest of the De Geer family, both in Finspång, where Louis De Geer introduced him to Lord High Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna, and in Amsterdam. Apart from a number of rare editions of the works of Comenius, the Finspong library holds various other unique works on education.

It is remarkable that unique titles in the Finspong collection are not limited to one or two sections of the library. All over the collection we can identify books that were long thought to be lost, books that had been out of sight for centuries, or whose sheer existence has been put into question by generations of scholars. An example is the only surviving copy of Rutger Wessel van den Boetzelaer's Méditations chrestiennes sur trois pseaumes du prophete Dauid. The work was frequently swept aside as an unpublished mystification,28 until a copy was identified in the Finspong collection in the summer of 2011. With the same ease we can point out unique copies in other genres, such as an almanac from the mid-sixteenth century, cheerful poetry and even an edition of Pieter Nuyts' famous praise of the elephant that is earlier than the well-known one of 1670.29

Skokloster castle

Finspong always retained a strong Dutch-Swedish connection through the affairs of the De Geer family. Long after Louis De Geer had left his Amsterdam canal house for the Finspong estate, his descendants were still affiliated with business and politics in the Dutch Republic. A somewhat different story arises when we shift our attention to members of the Swedish nobility and their book collections. All over Sweden we find early modern book collections in castle libraries.30 Most of them are not publically accessible,

some have recently been auctioned,31 but fortunately the best preserved collection of them all is open for research.



illustratie
Figure 2. Title-page of: Christ-bescheidenes Send-schreiben eines evangelischen Lehrers an seinen Freund N.N. in Hamburg [...]. Västerås, Stadsbibliotek: Teologi ix Polemik, dogmatik, m.m.


At the edge of Lake Mälaren between Uppsala and Stockholm stands the baroque castle of Skokloster. It was built between 1654 and 1676 by the statesman and military commander Count Carl Gustaf Wrangel. After Wrangel's death, the castle was inherited by his eldest daughter Margareta Juliana Wrangel and through marriage came into the hands of the Brahe family. For over two centuries Skokloster would remain family property, governed by a trust committee, until the castle and all collections were sold to the Swedish government in 1967.

Skokloster is known for its rich collections, brought together by Carl Gustaf Wrangel and augmented by his successors. The castle is packed with approximately fifty thousand objects from all over the world. There are books and maps, but also paintings, tapestries, furniture, statues, silverware and weapons. Wrangel collected all of this in an attempt to confirm and express his own power and reflect the great aristocratic collec-

tions elsewhere in Europe.32 The castle and the collections form a coherent story and the material context is indispensable in understanding them. Wrangel was not just engaged in building a library, he was constructing and furnishing a castle. The imported black tiles that covered the roof of the library were just as important to his project as the books on the shelves. It is telling that the books on construction that were brought in by Wrangel in the seventeenth century are today consulted for all renovation works executed at Skokloster.33



illustratie
Figure 3. Interior of the library of Skokloster at the top floor of the castle


The library occupies the top floor of the castle's eastern wing. The books are placed in nineteenth century cabinets and arranged according to their provenance. The collection consists of five sections marked with Roman numerals. They are:

i:The collection of Carl Gustaf Wrangel.
ii:The older parts of the collection of the Brahe family, consisting of the books of Nils Brahe, and the books of his uncle Per Brahe that were brought in from Visingborg.
iii:The collections of Count Carl Gustav Bielke.
iv:The collections of Ulrik Scheffer.
v:Later parts of the collection of the Brahe family.34

Wrangel first placed his book collection in Skokloster in 1665, when he was already in his fifties. He had travelled Europe, visited Amsterdam on a number of occasions and had a vast network of agents that provided him with information and luxuries that he desired. In the Dutch Republic he kept close connections with the Swedish diplomat Harald Appelboom, while Michel le Blon, Peter Trotzig and Gerhard De Geer were also part of his network.35 The correspondence of Wrangel, preserved in the national archives in Stockholm, contains just over 900 letters from Appelboom. Many letters were enriched with printed material that Appelboom had gathered in The Dutch Republic, newspapers, pamphlets, catalogues and prints, to create some sort of clipboard with information around certain subjects.36 The correspondence has been studied thoroughly by Losman, but no full overview of the ephemeral printed material is available.

When Carl Gustaf Wrangel died in 1676, his book collection consisted of some 2400 works. Unfortunately the collection was divided among his family and only one quarter of the original collection is still in Skokloster today. The remaining part, in combination with the vast correspondence, nevertheless provides us with some insight in his collection strategy. Wrangel conscientiously studied booksellers' advertisements in Dutch newspapers and ordered his agent Trotzig to buy among other things François Caron's description of Japan, Blaeu's ‘Atlas China’ and even the works of Jacob Cats ‘in folio, on the best paper in a French binding’.37 The correspondence between Wrangel and Trotzig teaches us a lot about practices in book trade, binding, shipping and collecting. Not all books in the collection came to Sweden through mediation of agents. Several books in Skokloster seem to have been brought in as war booty.38 Other books might have found their way to Sweden through other channels. A copy of Blaeu's Zeespiegel of 1627 for example carries an inscription that the book belongs to a certain Claes Vos ‘on the North Sea, to sail to Stockholm’, dated 20 September 1637.39

The dominant genres in Wrangel's collection were atlases, navigation guides, travel accounts, military history, fortification and construction. This is obviously different from the theology and literature that make up large parts of the Finspong collection of Louis De Geer. Wrangel was a statesman and a military commander and this is reflected in the books that he collected. In 1671 and 1672, Wrangel repeatedly requested his agent Gerhard De Geer to send him a copy of Nicolaas Witsen's Aeloude en hedendaegsche scheeps-bouw en bestier.40 When the book finally arrived in May 1672, Wrangel was outraged once he read Witsen's account on the Battle of the Sound in 1658. Wrangel had led the Swedish fleet that day and had a very different view on the events of the battle. Wit-

sen acknowledged Wrangel's objections, sent him his apologies and cancelled the leaf with the description of the battle in all unsold copies.41

Wrangel's collection makes up just a small part of the Skokloster library. In total, the collections comprise close to twenty thousand works of which one third is thought to be Dutch. So far, the collection of Wrangel has been studied most thoroughly, but this does not mean that other parts of the library are less important. The books of Count Carl Gustaf Bielke (1683-1754) were transferred to Skokloster when he decided to give his collection of 8000 volumes to his nephew Erik Brahe. Bielke had no personal affiliations with the Dutch Republic and bought most of his books at auctions in Stockholm and Uppsala. He carefully annotated various books that he bought with the date and place of the auction and the price that he had paid. This opens up a whole new approach to our study of the Dutch book in Sweden, that is, how they were traded by later generations. In the collection of Bielke, a number of booksellers' catalogues can be found that were already a century old when he acquired them.42 It appears as if these catalogues got a second life as documentary information in remote foreign collections. This might explain why so many of these catalogues survived in foreign collections rather than in Dutch libraries.

Västerås Diocesan Library

The collections of Finspong and Skokloster were always destined to attract the attention of Dutch scholars because of their clear-cut provenances. From a Dutch perspective it is less obvious however to find equally interesting collections in the diocesan libraries of Linköping, Skara, Strängnäs, Västerås and Växjö.43 The history of these five collections differs in a number of important aspects, but what binds them is that they were all once connected to a diocese. The diocesan collections generally consist of the books from the cathedral, the town's grammar school and donations by the local clergy. The people who built these collections in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were not concerned with buying ‘Dutch’ books. It is unlikely that they had a network similar to that of Carl Gustaf Wrangel. Furthermore, they did not necessarily travel to the Dutch Republic themselves. So where did the Dutch books come from? How did they end up in - from a Dutch point of view - remote places in the middle of Sweden?

Of the libraries in the cities mentioned above, the ‘Roggebibliotek’ in Strängnäs is considered the best preserved example of a diocesan library in its original setting.44

Skara and Växjö are largely unexplored by Dutch scholars, but there, too, connections with the book market in the Dutch Republic are found. The collections in Linköping are probably the largest and hold the most Dutch books, and it is fortunate that they are still there after the entire library burned down in 1996.45 A discussion of all of these collections would be most welcome, but I will restrict myself to Dutch books in the collections in Västerås.

Today, the diocesan library of Västerås or ‘Stiftbiblioteket’ is a section of the public library of the city. The origin of the oldest parts of the collection can be traced back to the medieval cathedral library. After the first Swedish grammar school was founded in Västerås in 1623, the collections steadily grew. Bishop Johannes Rudbeckius (1581-1646) and his successors provided the school with some valuable manuscripts and all the books needed for the education of the clergy. Later donations include collections from the Swedish diplomat and philologist Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeld (1655-1727), the Swedish author and musicologist Abraham Abrahamsson Hülphers (1734-1798) and bishop Lars Benzelstierna (1719-1800).

Arguably the most important collection that was incorporated by the diocesan library of Västerås was that of Carl Fredrik Muhrbeck (1737-1796). Muhrbeck became a magister in Greifswald in 1757, preacher to the admiralty in Karlskrona in 1775, and eventually obtained the degree of Doctor Theologiae in 1795. He was appointed bishop of the diocese of Visby in the same year but died in Västerås before he was formally installed.46 His book collection was meant to be auctioned in Lund in 1799, but the auction never took place. Instead, the entire collection was bequeathed to the Västerås grammar school and consequently ended up in the diocesan library. The auction catalogue contains 3218 entries, for the greatest part books on theology.47

Neither Muhrbeck nor any of the other donors had a distinct relation with anyone in the Dutch Republic. Nevertheless, the diocesan library holds thousands of Dutch books and at least a couple of hundred of them are not known in any collection in the Netherlands.48 At a first glance, the unique titles seem to represent a random array of theological literature, yet there are some common features that stand out. It is, for example, remarkable to see a large number of German language books, printed in Amsterdam, in the Muhrbeck collection. The appearance of these books in terms of typography is German, they often deal with radical Lutheran theology and it is not easy to think of a local Dutch audience for these books. We can think of other audiences for these publications though. Immigrants from Lutheran areas made up a considerable part of the population of Amsterdam49 and the universities of Franeker and Leiden attracted hundreds of students from northern Europe. It is conceivable that these groups

made up a specific part of the market, and brought home books that were in demand in northern Europe but could only be produced in the Netherlands. The pocket-sized Swedish Bibles of Jacob Marcus for example,50 or scientific works with engraved plates.51 Moreover, several printers and booksellers actively engaged in publishing and distributing radical theology for the Lutheran market.52 These books, dealing with local issues and theological debates in cities like Hamburg, Rostock, Stralsund or Stockholm were not meant for a Dutch audience and probably never circulated on the Dutch market.

In Muhrbeck's collection there are several examples of books that at a first glance appear to be German, both in terms of typography and topic, but on closer inspection might well have been printed in the Dutch Republic. For example, there is a convolute with about twenty pamphlets on a debate that concerned the publication of the booklet Die Klugheit der Gerechten issued under the auspices of Heinrich Horb in 1693.53 Horb received the book on New Year's Eve 1692 and had it published with a small introduction the next year. The distribution of the pamphlet created uproar in Hamburg because of its radical pietistic content and lead to numerous polemical writings from both orthodox Lutheran theologians and adherents of radical pietism. The whole debate seemed to be a local affair, and in a way it was. Nonetheless, the debate around Die Klugheit der Gerechten fitted right into a larger context. Horb was not aware that the booklet that he published was in fact a German translation of a text written by Peter Poiret, a follower of the mystic Antoinette Bourignon.

In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, Amsterdam was the centre for a wide range of pietists, mystics and their followers. Several radical authors that could not publish their books in their own region called in the help of Dutch printers.54 Furthermore, successful titles that had been published in French or Dutch, such as the works of Antoinette Bourignon, were published in German editions to serve markets in the German and Baltic areas.55 Against this background it is understandable that several pamphlets published in the Hamburg debate around Heinrich Horb carried false or mysti-

fied Amsterdam imprints.56



illustratie
Figure 4. Sales catalogue of the florist Jacobus Gans. Stockholm, Universitetsbibliothek: h.ix:2.2.n.2


Moreover, it has been demonstrated that one of the pamphlets written in response to Horb, which according to the title-page was printed by Christian Reymers in Altona, was in fact published by Henricus Betkius in Amsterdam.57 In terms of bibliography, this presents us with a problem. There are thousands of small theological booklets that were printed anonymously and probably just as many

with false imprints. It is plausible that Dutch printers such as Henricus Betkius, Christoffel Cunradus, Pieter Arendts, and many other nameless printers played a much larger role in the production and dissemination of radical Lutheran theology than existing bibliographies suggest.

The question that remains is how these books ended up in the possession of Carl Fredrik Muhrbeck. Most Dutch books in his collection were published and disseminated in the seventeenth century, whereas Muhrbeck compiled his book collection in the second half of the eighteenth century. Muhrbeck spent most of his collecting years in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia and provenance data indicates that the books in his collection circulated there at some point. He acquired several hundreds of books from the collection of Georg Friedrich Niehenck (1678-1752). Niehenck was a minister in Rostock, later served the German community in Göteborg and was known as a ‘light amidst the enemies of pietism’.58 His collection was auctioned in Göteborg a year after his death. A copy of the auction catalogue in Västerås Stiftsbibloteket is heavily annotated and it seems as if all the underlined entries ended up in the collection of Muhrbeck.59

Earlier provenances in these books show that neither Muhrbeck, nor Niehenck acquired their books directly in the Dutch Republic. On the contrary, we come across a range of very different examples of ways how books were disseminated. One copy of a book with sermons by Calvinist minister Jacob Beugholt (1638?-1677) has a contemporary handwritten annotation by Göteborg burgomaster Gerard Braunjohan on the titlepage.60 It reads ‘durchgelesen 1679’, which is interesting since Braunjohan later became ‘justitieborgmästare’ in Göteborg, meaning that he was in charge of the administration of justice and had something to say about censorship in the city. Another curious example concerns a publication by Janssonius with a contemporary annotation ‘Hafniae 1653’ on the title-page.61 It is tempting to conclude from this that the book was actually bought at Janssonius' shop in Copenhagen, but at least it shows that the book circulated in Scandinavia in the middle of the seventeenth century. Other examples include copies that once belonged to members of the noble families Dohna and Rosenhane, to Swedish minister Johan Possieth (1667-1728), to Professor Andreas Nordenhielm (1633-1694) and numerous others, with as yet unresolved provenances such as Rosenkrantz, Melander, Wallström and Liljequist. Although names can be misleading it is a reasonable assumption that these particular copies never circulated in the Dutch Republic.

Leufsta library

All collections that I have discussed so far contain mostly books that were printed in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, yet large parts of these collections were compiled in the eighteenth century. Dutch books circulated in northern Germany and the Baltic area for up to a century before they were incorporated in the collection of a minister, bishop, aristocrat or military commander. It is significant that the share of eighteenth century Dutch books on theology, literature and history in these collections is rather marginal. Dutch publishers did not necessarily stop producing those books, but they simply did not end up on the German or Baltic market anymore. There is however one area where Dutch books were still very much in demand in the eighteenth century: natural history.

Sweden has a rich tradition in this matter, mostly thanks to Carl Linnaeus and his apostles, and there are several well-preserved collections wherein this tradition is reflected. Probably the best-known of them all is Leufsta library of Swedish entomologist Baron Charles De Geer (1720-1778). De Geer was a descendant of Louis De Geer. He grew up in the Dutch Republic in the family castle ‘Rijnhuizen’ close to the river Vecht, where he learned to play the cello and harpsichord and was privately tutored by the likes of Pieter van Musschenbroek and Christian Heinrich Trotz.62 When De Geer was considered old enough to lead the family's ironworks in Sweden he was sent up north and settled at an estate near Leufsta. This is where he built a scientific library that could rival any private collection in his time.63 The Leufsta collection is clearly the library of a naturalist and holds all the famous works of the eighteenth century: Maria Sibylla Merian, Albertus Seba, Louis Renard and of course Carl Linnaeus. Other genres are well-represented in the collection, ranging from theology to literature. In the world of music, Leufsta is known for their baroque organ and a unique collection of printed sheet music from Amsterdam.64

There is a lot of information available about the history of the collection. The account books that were kept by De Geer's father at Rijnhuizen have been preserved in the national archives in Stockholm.65 Not only do these accounts give valuable insight in the types of books that De Geer collected in his early days, but even more so about the origin of the books. Bookseller Broedelet seemed to supply a lot of books, watchmaker Denijs Audebert constructed a couple of globes and a certain musician named Visscher supplied music books. Once in Sweden, De Geer relied heavily on his Dutch network to further enhance his scientific library. In the preserved sales records of the Luchtmans publishers, which are now kept at the University of Amsterdam, he appears as one of

their best customers, ordering roughly 1500 books between 1746 and 1778.66 De Geer also had subscriptions to more than a hundred periodicals and newspapers. Luchtmans supplied most of these titles and De Geer used them to keep track of forthcoming publications, which in its turn were ordered at Luchtmans again.

Bergius collection

Equally interesting but far less known in the Netherlands is the Bergius collection at Stockholm University Library. The collection was set up by medical doctor and botanist Peter Jonas Bergius (1730-1790) together with his brother, historian and banker Bengt Bergius (1723-1784). Both were respected members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien). Peter Jonas had studied medicine and botany in Uppsala with Carl Linnaeus and Nils Rosén. In 1759 the brothers acquired an estate at the outskirts of Stockholm that became known as ‘Bergielund’. Peter Jonas took care of the garden and herbarium, while Bengt set up the library. After the brothers' death Bergielund, the herbaria and the book collection were bequeathed to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on the condition that it would be further developed into a place of learning. Bergielund would evolve into the botanical gardens of Stockholm, or Bergianska trädgården. The gardens were relocated in 1885 to their current location in the Frescati area, where they still are today under the auspices of the Academy of Sciences. The brothers' will specified that no book could be given on loan, sold or in other ways removed from the collection.67 This instruction was strictly obeyed for almost two centuries, resulting in a beautifully preserved, albeit somewhat inaccessible collection. The best way to explore the collection is still a manuscript catalogue that was compiled by Anders Johan Ståhl in the early nineteenth century.68 The catalogue offers an extensive overview of the collection, but it is not complete. As usual, ephemeral printed material has been largely ignored.69

The Bergius collection arguably surpasses the Leufsta collection both in depth and number. The emphasis is on natural history, including botany, zoology and medicine, but related subjects such as geography and travel accounts are also well-represented. It is apparent that the collection was assembled by naturalists who had a tendency towards bibliophilia. Most works are in an excellent condition, their bindings are beautiful and the colouring is generally professional. One of the finest examples is a copy of Merian's ‘Raupenbuch’ or Erucarum ortus, alimentum et paradoxa metamorphosis with counter-proof plates and a skilfully decorated red moroccan binding.70 Several other

copies have interesting provenances of Swedish naturalists that remind us of the central position that the Bergius brothers had in the scientific life of their day. The beautiful bindings and books with coloured plates by all the great naturalists give the collection allure but the scientific importance is largely connected to a number of rare publications that survive in very few copies. Take for example a unique sales catalogue from the Dutch florist Jacobus Gans.71 The title-page suggests that he targeted a European audience, by stating that the ‘trees and shrubs’ that he had to offer would flourish ‘anywhere in Europe’. In an advertisement in the Oprechte Haerlemsche Courant he claimed to have brought them in himself from London.72 Interestingly he had arranged his catalogue according to the system of Linnaeus. At a time when Linnaean taxonomy was still hotly debated among naturalists across the continent, a florist had already embraced and implemented the new system. The decision to adhere to Linnaean taxonomy will undoubtedly have been welcomed in a country like Sweden, home of nature's bookkeeper Linnaeus and his apostles. The question is whether the Bergius brothers added the catalogue to the collection solely because of its taxonomic value, or whether they were in business with Gans and bought trees and shrubs for their Begielund estates. The answer might well be found in the vast archives of the Swedish Academy of Sciences, but we would never have asked the question if we had not found this catalogue in the Bergius library.

 

The Bergius brothers evidently benefited from their position in the sciences and acquired some of their best works through connections at the Academy. Mark Catesby's The natural history of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands (1731-1743) was donated by Petronella Psilanderhielm (1729-1802), who was married to the academy member, surgeon and court physician Herman Schützercrantz (1713-1802). Another name that appears regularly in the Bergius collection is that of the admiral and scientist Theodor Ankarcrona (1687-1750), and also royal physician Abraham Bäck (1713-1795) sent several books to Bergielund.73 These are just examples, but it is telling that they were all members of the Academy of Sciences. Additionally, the correspondence of Bengt Bergius shows that he relied on former classmates such as Gustaf Sommelius, who was a lecturer in Lund, Jönas Lind, stationed in Uppsala and Daniel Annerstedt from Växjö to send him academic publications.74

Compared to their seventeenth century Swedish counterparts the Bergius brothers could obtain the latest scientific publications with relative ease, although not every publication they desired was available in Scandinavia. Unlike Charles De Geer, the Bergius brothers had no mail-order relation with a renowned bookseller like Lucht-

mans. The correspondence of the brothers shows that they largely depended on an international scientific network for the acquisition of rare foreign publications. Their main connection in the Dutch Republic was the physician and anatomist Eduard Sandifort (1742-1814).75 Sandifort was fluent in Swedish and translated Nils Rosén von Rosenstein's Underrättelser om barn-sjukdomar och deras botemedel into Dutch.76 One year earlier, he had introduced himself to Per Jonas Bergius in a letter, explaining that he had started to collect natural history and medical books some years ago. He requested Bergius to send him dissertations and other books and asked what Bergius would like to receive in return.77 Bergius seemed eager to accept the invitation to exchange publications and asked Sandifort what he specifically needed, the journal of the Academy, a new edition of Linnaeus' Systema naturae, or some works by Wallerius?78 Sandifort was mostly interested in contemporary Swedish publications that were hard to find in the Dutch Republic. In a letter dated 18 September 1767 he lists fourteen Swedish works published between 1754 and 1765, among them Rosén von Rosenstein's work that he would translate into Dutch the following year, with the kind request to send it to Holland as quickly as possible.79

In his turn, Bergius did not necessarily ask for new publications. True, he was happy to request Job Baster's Opuscula subseciva, published in 6 instalments between 1759 and 1765, but among other things he requested Paulus Hermannus' Paradisus Batavus, a work that was originally published in 1698 and reissued in 1705, and François Kiggelaer's Horti Beaumontiani exoticarum plantarum catalogus from 1690.80 Sandifort is likewise responsible for the beautiful copy of Merian's Erucarum ortus in the Bergius library, and after he had been installed as a professor in Leiden, he also sent numerous Leiden dissertations to Stockholm. It is remarkable that Bergius not only requested books that were printed in the Dutch Republic, but also a title like Richard Bradley's The history of succulent plants.81 This work was printed in London between 1716 and 1727, and the fact that Bergius asks for it through one of his Dutch associates, suggests that the Dutch book market in the second half of the eighteenth century was still a good place to turn to for British books that were hard to obtain on the continent.

The correspondence between the Bergius brothers and Sandifort lasted at least eleven years. During this time hundreds of books must have been exchanged in what clearly was a two-way trade. It is significant in the build-up of the Bergius collection that the traditional networks of the book trade are largely left aside. Booksellers are not

mentioned in the correspondence and shipping took place with the help of intermediaries. Bergius at first offered to send the Swedish books to the pharmacist Adrian Gottlob Schultz at the Rokin in Amsterdam. In a later letter Sandifort suggests to send them to Hendrik Willem Nolthenius, bookkeeper of the Dutch East-India Company.82 Bergius requested Sandifort to send his packages to Stockholm with the instruction that they contained books or dried herbs and should be delivered to the warehouse of inspector Hans Ekebom in Stockholm.83

The coherence with Bergielund, the botanical gardens and the herbaria is crucial in understanding the Bergius collection. Dried specimens, living plants and garden architecture were arguably as important as the books. Consequently the catalogue of florist Jacobus Gans that we identified earlier is not merely a curiosity; it is a valuable link in connecting books, science, specimens and gardens. Moreover, it is still in its original context. The Bergius library, the Stockholm botanical gardens and the archives of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences are all located at the Frescati area on the northern outskirts of Stockholm.

Conclusion

Dutch books in Sweden can almost literally be found from the bottom of the Öresund Bridge to the Arctic Circle. Nordkalottens bibliotek in Övertorneå holds three books on Lapland that would qualify for entry in the Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands. The description of the collections in this article is explorative and illustrative, but in no way extensive. There are vast and largely unexplored collections of Dutch books in Lund, Göteborg, Uppsala and other places, that should definitely be taken into account in any full-scale history of the Dutch book in Northern Europe. The same applies to the massive collections of the National Library of Sweden. I have briefly discussed newspapers and booksellers' catalogues, but could just as easily have mentioned the twelve different states of the Swedish ‘Amsterdam Bible’,84 the Elzevier collection that comprises 2500 volumes, or the largely unexplored sections with occasional poetry in the same library. Moreover, one only has to look at the name of Isaac Vossius in the list of head librarians to wonder how much evidence of his presence can still be found in the collections.

The history of the National Library has of course been recorded in great detail; still it can be challenging to say anything conclusive about the provenance of a single book in large aggregated collections. The ‘pile of archivalia’ in which the Dutch newspapers were found in the 1930s is illustrative: we assume that they were part of the correspon-

dence that the Swedish ambassadors sent from the Dutch Republic, but since none of them wrote their name in the margins, we can never be sure. That is unfortunate, because it is in the historical contingency of collections that we recognise larger social and cultural networks. A copy of a newspaper that was brought to Stockholm by a sailor tells a different story from a copy that was sent home by the ambassador.

I have focussed my research on a number of smaller collections that were assembled contemporarily and remained more or less intact: private collections, castle libraries, diocesan libraries and scientific collections. Due to highly specific historical conditions that apply to the build-up of these collections, we find very specific and often unique material in the most remote and unexpected places. The question ‘what happened to the literary culture of the thousands of Scandinavian immigrants who lived in Amsterdam during the second half of the seventeenth century?’ acquires a whole new perspective once you walk into a Swedish diocesan library and almost effortlessly find a few dozen previously unrecorded Lutheran pamphlets that were printed in Amsterdam.

Over the years we have seen some remarkable discoveries of Dutch books in Swedish libraries and Piet Verkruijsse was not alone in his wonder about the large amounts of Dutch printed material in a remote Swedish library. However, only rarely do researchers look beyond their serendipitous discoveries and come up with a proper explanation of the larger framework in which these books travelled up north. It would be highly beneficial to investigate the possibility to record the unique Dutch books in foreign collections in a more structured and sustainable way.

The Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands is the obvious platform for reliable bibliographical description. Moreover, the bibliographical context of half a million copies in over two hundred thousand records provides the perfect background to understand in what way Dutch books in Swedish collections stand out from their counterparts in collections in the Netherlands. In combination with structured data from a Swedish platform like ProBok,85 a rich database on provenances and book bindings, new and far more complex questions on the dissemination and collecting practices of Dutch books in Scandinavia could be asked. It requires a joint effort from libraries and book scientists both in the Netherlands and Scandinavia to make that happen, but only then will we be able to surpass the amazement of yet another serendipitous discovery of a Dutch book in a remote collection.


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