Topic: Archives
In the Bienemann catalogue of the archive of the Livonian Governor General there is a curious item: "XIX:1 1644-1686 Papiere des Stockholmschen Bürgermeisters Daniel Caméen. 1 vol. 141 Stücke".
This volume still exists, but now only consists of 99 leaves. How can 141 items have turned into just 99 leaves? The answer is quite astonishing. During the Soviet era quite a few volumes were "restored", in this particular case apparently by adding items with absolutely no connection to Cameen. According to the modern finding aid the first 28 leaves may possibly have something to do with Cameen and the last three clearly has it, but everything in-between is dated 1637-38 and apparently just common letters to the Governor General. So what has happened to the "141 items"? Well, a good guess seems to be that they were taken by Ernst Malmberg in 1909-1910, because in his collection in Uppsala University Library there are two fairly thick bundles of Caméen papers.
This habit of "restoring" volumes by adding loose material with no obvious connection to the existing items seems to have been quite popular. I don't know if the idea was to make them look right from the outside (correct size) in the hope that no one who could actually read the content would turn up, but it seems possible. Otherwise the Soviet era archivist could just have created entirely new volumes and called them "miscellaneous".
In regard to my indexes (see previous post) I have finished LVVA, fond 7349, op. 1, vol 272 (the old Bienemann XX-3) and moved on to vol. 275 (the old XX-6). This is also a curious case. According to Bienemann's catalogue it contains letters from the Swedish naval officers Henck, Fontin, Boy, Lindskiöld, Palmgreen, Preen, Rahl, Siöstierna "and others". Some of these names have been seriously distorted. "Fontin" is "Pontin" and "Rahl" is "Raab". Others weren't naval officers (Boy, Lindskiöld), so the reasoning behind the creation of this volume seems to have been that everybody who writes a letter while on a ship must be a naval officer. Some mistakes are understandable given the few tools at their disposal, but Bienemann & co should have reacted when they saw the name "Lindskiöld" as the first bearer of the name was a prominent advisor to Charles XI.
