Swedish National Archives Research Articles

Russian-Swedish Diplomatic Communication in the Petrine Era: The Chronicle of Language Choice

The languages of Russian-Swedish negotiations, congresses, and peace treaties of the reign of Peter I have rarely been mentioned in the works covering the history of Russian-Swedish relations or foreign policy, and they have never become the subject of special research. Based on a vast set of sources deposited in the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire (AVPRI), and the Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet), the article provides an overview of major diplomatic events of the Russian-Swedish relations of 1718–1724, paying close attention to the language of negotiations, peace treaties, ratifications, and correspondence. At the time, when both sides used their national language, the traditional bilingualism of the Russian-Swedish diplomatic documents coexisted with the active use of the German language as a neutral one. More particularly, this was due to the lack of Swedish translators in Russia and the fact that both Russian and Swedish diplomats were of German descent or spoke German. However, the author argues that the use of German was not obvious and had limits, as languages of diplomacy retained their symbolic meaning. Traditionally, the formation of the Petrine diplomatic system is described as a departure from tradition, the inclusion of Russia into the eighteenth-century state system, and its adaptation to the diplomatic customs of European diplomacy. A review of the Russian-Swedish diplomatic language practices shows that each side employed its language, and Swedish diplomats refused outright to communicate with Russian authorities in German. The author assumes that studying early modern European diplomacy requires a micro-perspective and regional focus. This approach could be more productive for understanding the formation and functioning of early modern diplomacy than the traditional framework of Russian integration into the uniform European diplomatic system.

A closer look at the Azzolino collection.

The state of preservation of documents from the historically significant Azzolino collection at the Swedish National Archives has been investigated and analyses carried out of the iron gall inks. The collection shows varied levels of iron gall ink corrosion. An initial visual condition survey was followed by characterisation of the writing ink with XRF spectrometry on a selection of documents. The aim was to investigate whether ink composition could be related to author or geography, and in turn to level of ink corrosion, which could then serve as a basis for decisions on treatment options. Results indicate a relative purity of the inks in this collection in terms of high iron content and low levels of other elements, entailing that elemental analysis is not a good tool to predict potential deterioration of ink in single documents from this historical context. XRF-mapping showed a possibility for discerning authors by ink composition, contributing meaningful information to questions of attribution and historical context for these documents. A tendency for the ink of Queen Christina to contain more copper than inks from the other authors, and the indication that some inks contain calcium, may be of note for further study.

Historical Settlement Units as Linked Open Data

TORA is a historical geographic register provided by the Swedish National Archives. It is built around the concept Historical settlement unit, referring to villages, hamlets and farms in the medieval and early modern rural society. Currently, approximately fifty percent of all such units in Sweden are covered, which are mentioned in written sources and maps before c. 1800. This article discusses and presents the definition and the method of the core concept. Using linked data technologies, the goal is to increase, simplify and improve the use of historical sources in research and applications.

SDHK meets NER

Mass digitization of historical text sources opens new avenues for research in the humanities and social sciences, but also presents a host of new methodological challenges. Historical text collections become more accessible, but new research tools must also be put in place in order to fully exploit the new research possibilities emerging from having access to vast document collections in digital format. This paper highlights some of the conditions to consider when place names in an older source material, in this case medieval charters, are to be matched to geographical data. The Swedish National Archives make some 43,000 medieval letters available in digital form through an online search facility. The volume of the material is such that manual markup of names will not be feasible. In this paper, we present the material, discuss the promises for research of linking, e.g., place names to other digital databases, and report on an experiment where an off-the-shelf named-entity recognition system for modern Swedish is applied to this material.

Examining the use of core terms in a records appraisal context – two Swedish examples

Records appraisal in the digital environment becomes a multi-professional enterprise, undertaken in the line of business, in which non-archivists play a vital role, but appraisal practices are not adjusted to this electronic reality. One aspect of this problem is the use and understanding of terminology. This paper presents a study on the usage of records-related terms in steering documents that affect records appraisal in Sweden. It uses a structured model for the analysis of steering documents. Used data sources are authoritative term databases and terminology report and steering documents from the three levels of regulations, i.e. Legislation and Regulations, Policy decisions and Instructions and Retention decisions steering documents from the Swedish National Archives and Stockholm City Archives, both archival authorities within their jurisdictions. The steering documents represents levels of hierarchical impact and are the foundations upon which appraisal is done and effectuated. Analysis of term frequency show change in vocabulary at level of hierarchy as well as development in time. Analysis of focus, characteristics and common features in definitions of terms show a variety of possible interpretations of the included terms, a result that affects appraisal and underpins a need for common corporate understanding in areas with multi-professional influences. The paper concludes that legal terms have impact on term use at regulation level, which lessens at lower levels, where vocabulary broadens. Difference is found between the two archival institutions studied, especially at decision level. Analysis of focus, characteristics and common features in definitions of terms show a variety of possible interpretations of the included terms, a result that affects appraisal and underpins a need for common corporate understanding in areas with multi-professional influences. An action suggested to mitigate risk is to form Communities of Practice for the task of records appraisal. One part of the task for these communities should be to agree upon shared concepts on used terminology that support electronic records appraisal. This would be a step where everyone involved develop a solid ground for the setting of the scope of appraisal. The idea of introducing Communities of Practice for the records and archives appraisal task is wider than the subject of this article, and should be further developed.

Sweden’s Russian Lands, Ingria and Kexholm Province, 1617 – ca. 1670: The Interaction of the Crown with Its New Subjects

The Swedish policy of religious conversion, harsh taxation and competition for labour and taxpayers were the key issues in the political and social history of Ingria and Kexholm Province during the seventeenth century. During the war of 1656-1658, the Russian tsar got and finally retained tens of thousands of new taxpayers and settlers from these Swedish dependencies as a substitute for the fact that Russia had not been able to reconquer the territories it had lost to Sweden forty years earlier. The article explores the interaction between the Swedish Crown and its Ingrian subjects and pays due attention to the fact that this interaction materialized in conditions which were more unfavourable to the Crown than the ones prevailing in the core area of the Swedish kingdom. The religious policy of the Swedish Government towards the Orthodox failed almost completely. The strivings and identity of the Orthodox were in a too sharp contrast to the religious objectives of the Government. Time also worked against the Government’s policy. It did not have enough time to show whether positive results could be reached. Economic reasons also played a role in alienating the Orthodox in Ingria and in Kexholm Province from Sweden. The fiscal needs dictated by the great-power policy were colossal, and no part of the Kingdom of Sweden could opt for a free ride. Until the 1656-1658 war, Orthodox peasants simply preferred to desert to Russia rather than oppose these policies. In the early days of the war, some of them rebelled, many voluntarily joined the withdrawing Russian troops and others were forcibly abducted; as a consequence, Sweden lost a great number of taxpayers permanently. The crop failures related to the Little Ice Age as well as the tax increases and conscriptions ordered by King Gustav II Adolf and the ensuing regency regime, together with the attraction of the swidden lands in the east, on the other hand, drove thousands of Lutheran Finns in Viborg Karelia and Savo to migrate to Ingria and Kexholm Province. The Crown was neither able to prevent the Finnish peasants, farm hands and deserters from moving to the newly conquered eastern territories, freed from conscription, nor could it contain the migration of the Orthodox population from those same territories. After the war of 1656-1658, the population there consisted of Lutheran Finns everywhere, except in the Western parts of Ingria and the North-eastern fringe of Kexholm Province. The article is based mainly on the correspondence between the Swedish Government and Ingrian governor-generals (the so-called Riksregistratur and the Livonian Collection in the Swedish National Archives) as well as Finnish, Swedish and Russian research literature.

Implementation of appraisal regulations including the selection of sample archives. A case study on the Swedish country district police

Appraisal has often been combined with some form of sampling. The purpose of this study was to shed light on the implementation and consequences of the method of selecting sample archives: while records from a few agencies of a certain type are almost totally preserved, in other archives all or nearly all records are discarded. A case study was carried out on an appraisal decision, including the selection of sample archives, issued in 1969 by the Swedish National Archives. The decision concerned the country district police force (1918–1964), and was to be implemented by the autonomous regional archives. The study first explored proposals and opinions preceding the decision. The next step was a quantitative examination of the country police archives, followed by a discussion of how the implementation of the decision affected research potentials. The results revealed that the regional archives followed the rules only to a certain extent and with large variations. As a consequence, the amount of preserved records is much larger than the decision-makers intended. Organizational inertia, and concepts related to this, may partly explain these divergences.

Odmienne sylwetki przybyłych do Szwecji więźniów pochodzenia żydowskiego i nieżydowskiego, ocalałych z obozów koncentracyjnych na ziemiach polskich

Survivors from Nazi concentration camps, who were brought to Sweden as refugees during the last month of the Second World War and during the summer that followed, were often required to supply information about personal details to the authorities. Much of the information was later stored in written form in the Swedish National Archives. Antisemitism among the refugees and enmity between the Jewish and non-Jewish Polish refugees caused the authorities to include their ethnic or religious affiliation in many records and documents. Using mainly two collections from the Swedish National Archives it is shown that substantial differences existed between Jewish and non-Jewish Polish refugees with respect to their age, education and the length of their war experiences. These differences, in addition to the existing socio-geographic, demographic, cultural and ethnic differences led to inevitable clashes between the two groups. The Swedish authorities who first regarded all refugees of Polish citizenship as one national group had to revise this attitude gradually during the administration of the refugees

German film distribution in Scandinavia during World War II

This article analyses Nazi Germany's film export policy towards Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) during World War II. The German film industry (Ufa, Tobis and others), steered by the German ministry of propaganda, took advantage of the military successes achieved by the Wehrmacht and tried to become a dominant supplier of films, hoping to take over the leading position of the American film industry. However, each film market presented its own series of problems, created by the local industry, by local political organizations or by other German organizations (occupation authorities) with agendas of their own. One of the side effects of Germany's aggressive film policy was, ironically, increased domestic production, enthusiastically embraced by film-goers eager to avoid German films. This article is by and large based on archival documents, consulted in the German Federal Archives, the Danish National Archives, the Danish Film Institute, the National Archives of Norway, the Swedish Film Institute and the Swedish National Archives. The article does not aspire to provide a definitive, in-depth analysis of German-Scandinavian film relations during the war, but rather sketches an international framework that leaves room for amendments, corrections and future scholarship.

Social disability: Roma and refugees in Swedish welfare

PurposeThe aim of this paper is to discuss the importance of the disability category in Swedish welfare policies. The paper seeks to focus on two cases that illustrate how the social dimension in the understanding of disability permitted the inclusion of individuals, previously considered as “unwanted strangers”, in the Swedish welfare context. The first case is that of refugees classified as unfit for work after the Second World War. The second deals with the Roma groups who obtained the right of formal Swedish citizenship during the same period.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on data collected during two research projects. The first concerning the Roma policy of the Swedish Government from 1880 to 1970, primarily based on the analysis of public documents collected in the Swedish National Archives, including government reports and accompanying background material. The second research project deals with the development of an institutionalised reception of refugees by the Swedish welfare services after the Second World War. This research mainly uses documents produced during the international negotiations dealing with refugees interned in different camps in Europe and related documents in the Swedish National Archives related to the history of the organised reception of refugees in Sweden. In the case of refugees, the analysis focuses on the construction of disability in the classification system of the international refugee camps and in the organised reception of these refugees in Sweden. In the case of Swedish Roma, the analysis focuses upon the construction of social disability both in the arguments elaborated by Swedish authorities for the inclusion of Roma and in the practical organisation of their inclusion in the Swedish welfare system.FindingsThe paper provides insights about the crucial importance on the disability category in the organisation of Swedish social welfare after the Second World War. The policies developed raise important questions about basic requisites to obtain citizenship and also call into question the unequal conditions of citizenship. The case of Swedish Roma and the refugees interned in international camps illustrated how changing perceptions of poverty and deviance were strongly influenced by medical representations of disease and disability. Disability, previously perceived as a principally medical category with social consequences, now acquired a social dimension that enabled new refugees and Roma groups to be considered as members of the nation state.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper is primarily descriptive. Further research is needed in order to develop a better understanding of how the social dimension of disability is constructed and how this social dimension was used to include new groups. The contents focus on the emergence of new social policies in Sweden after the Second World War; further research should focus on how these policies and processes still have a considerable influence on present policies and representations on migrants and Roma groups.Practical implicationsThe paper provides important insights on taken for granted representations in Swedish welfare authorities' work with refugees and Roma groups. The institutionalised representation of Roma and refugee groups as disabled probably is an obstacle in the social incorporation of these groups.Originality/valueBased on two cases the paper discusses how the concept of social disability, with its origins in medical sciences, was adopted by the Swedish welfare authorities and applied to groups considered deviants. In later policies the authorities widened social disability to include culture and ethnicity. Refugees and Roma groups classified as disabled were treated according to established practises created for people classified as unable to be incorporated into a “normal” social life.

A Newly Discovered Fragment of a Visitatio Sepulchri in Stockholm

Until recently, only six examples of the Visitatio Sepulchri from Scandinavia were known. These were described by Toni Schmid in an article in 1952 and were recently published by Audrey Ekdahl Davidson in Holy Week and Easter Ceremonies and Dramas from Medieval Sweden (1990).1 Subsequently, I described and published yet another Visitatio Sepulchri found in the Rigsarkivet in Copenhagen.2 The current article will describe one more Swedish Visitatio that has recently been found in the Riksarkivet, the Swedish national archives in Stockholm. The newly discovered item, which contains the famous Easter dialogue Quern quaeritis in sepulchro, is present in a manuscript fragment from a breviary and exhibits some interesting although by no means unique features in the rubrics.3

Lulendo: The recovery of a Kongo nkisi

Lulendo was a kind of chiefship intended to control markets. It was developed during the 1880s by BaKongo in the area near modern Luozi in Lower Zaire, in an attempt to resist increasing European pressure on local trade. The central act of Lulendo was the ritualised execution of a criminal in the marketplace. KiKongo texts in the Swedish National Archives enable us to reconstruct and interpret the ritual, and also cast light on the occupation of the area by the forces of the Congo Free State.

The Microfilmed Collections of Russian Archival Materials in the Danish and Swedish National Archives

The national archives of Denmark and Sweden have engaged Soviet archives in extensive and probably unique exchanges of copied materials. These two archives consequently hold substantial quantities of Soviet archival records, records sometimes of extraordinary value, which in some cases are scarcely accessible in any other part of the world, including the Soviet Union. Approximately 40 percent of the holdings of Soviet documents in the Danish National Archive come from the Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossii. The fact that it is very difficult to gain access to this institution considerably enhances their importance. The Swedish holdings are similar.The Russian documents in both archives were acquired in two phases, and phase one was common to both. In 1928, archivists and historians from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden formed a joint Scandinavian committee for the exploration of the Russian state archives (Den Nordiske Faelleskomite for Udforskning af de russiske Statsarkiver).