Topic: Archives
I have just spent a few days in Uppsala, studying some of the manuscripts in the University Library. Many of their catalogues have been scanned and are now available online. The most important as far as the GNW is concerned are:
1. The collection organized by subject
2. The Palmskiöld collection
3. The Nordin collection
The Nordin collection houses the only known manuscript of General Lewenhaupt's memoirs (N 913), which also contain the Poltava accounts by Major Generals Creutz and Roos as well as those of the captains Tisensten and Öller. Also worth noting is a volume of incoming letters to Vice Admiral Gustaf Wattrang during the naval campaign of 1710 (N 208).
I spent considerable part of my time on trying to understand how much of Lewenhaupt's papers that ended up in famous Cederhielm collection at Bjärka-Säby (many catalogues of it are preserved in Uppsala). My previous impression (that it was very little) was confirmed. Despite the close family relations (one of the General's daughters married into the Cederhielm family) very few items could clearly be linked directly to Lewenhaupt: An order book from 1705 (today in Krigsarkivet) and some documents from his time as prisoner of war in Moscow. So it would seem that most of what came over to Sweden (most likely with his wife in 1709) ended up at Charlottenborg castle and later came to Ryd manor, owned by Lwenhaupt's son in law Carl Gustaf Boije - publisher of the General's memoirs in 1757. In 1951 Hans Villius came to the conclusion that Boije hadn't used N 913 but an earlier version, so a couple of questions remain:
1. What happened to the manuscript used by Boije?
2. If N 913 didn't originate in the Cederhielm collection - from whom did Nordin acquire it in 1799?
When Samuel Bring in the late 1940's prepared the first full publication of N 913 he was convinced that Nordin had obtained the volume from the Cederhielm family, but to me this seems very unlikely. Certain findings I made in another Nordin volume points in an entirely different direction, but it remains to be seen if my hunch can be proved conclusively. Estate inventories from this period often do not list books and manuscripts by title and many potentially interesting collections of letters have been lost.
