Material Artefacts in Oral Tradition: Notes and Family Lore on the Owners of the Sandvik Manor Magic Art Manuscripts

Abstract

This article aims to provide an overview of the owners of (and other persons who have handled) three eighteenth century magic manuscripts over the course of nearly three hundred years. The presumed writer, a learned vicar with a library founded by his father, kept secret the magic part of his studies and writings in the forests of southwest Sweden. His son, however, the local doctor, became known as “a great sorcerer”. During the periods of the succeeding owners, the manuscripts were kept secret, forgotten, lent out to be copied, hidden away, and reappeared. The manuscripts are from Sandvik Manor in the joint parish of Burseryd-Sandvik in the forest of southwest Sweden. The original of one of these manuscripts, the so-called Black Book, BB, is in the University Library of Lund, the original of another, the so-called Red Book, RB, is in the Cultural History Museum in Lund, while a copy of the third, the Sandvik Notebook, SN, is in the Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet (Department of Dialectology and Folklore Research), Uppsala.