Keywords

For a long time, histories of the rise of the modern encyclopedia were mainly histories of publications: chronologies of large-scale, alphabetically organized reference works, successfully completed in one country after another, from the late 1600s onward.Footnote 1 When looking at such chronologies today, they easily convey the idea of a center-to-periphery diffusion. The modern encyclopedia seems to have taken form in prominent publishing centers in Western Europe—in France, England, and the German states—and then slowly spread outward to more peripheral regions of the continent. The first Swedish and Danish general encyclopedias, for example, were not completed until around the mid-nineteenth century, more than a hundred years after their French, English, and German predecessors.Footnote 2

Yet the geographical expansion and implementation of a new literary practice and the history of its most successful, printed outcomes do not necessarily share the same milestones. Every publication is proceeded by practical work—but not all practical work results in publication. In fact, it may take a long time before it does. This, however, is a matter that has rarely been systematically explored. The multiplication of printed dictionaries in eighteenth-century Europe may be a well-known phenomenon,Footnote 3 but we still lack knowledge about how the practice of making them was established and refined in various regions. In order to gain insights into this development, we cannot rely (solely) on printed works.

The present study is an experimental attempt to explore the early formation of alphabetical encyclopedic practice in Sweden, far from the prominent publishing centers on the European continent. When and why did literate actors in the Swedish kingdom start to make—or talk about making—factual dictionaries? How did their activities relate to discourses and practices on the continent? In order to answer these questions, this chapter will explore a number of stranded encyclopedic projects, detected partly through the contemporary periodical press, partly through archival research. By examining the motivations and circumstances underpinning their initiation and abandonment, the study aspires to produce new insights into the early formation of alphabetical encyclopedism in eighteenth-century Sweden.

Previous Research and Analytical Terminology

In the 1990s, the historian of ideas Jakob Christensson argued that “enlightened encyclopedism reached remotely located Sweden in the 1770s” when the publisher Carl Christoffer Gjörwell began making a translation of the French Encyclopédie in Stockholm.Footnote 4 The enterprise was left stranded after a decade, but its brief existence nonetheless demonstrated that modern encyclopedic practice had “reached” the Swedish realm long before there were any fully realized publications. In this respect, Christensson's study was pioneering. With the abandonment of Gjörwell’s project, however, Christensson concluded that Swedish encyclopedism died and remained “stone dead” until the 1820s—when the first Swedish general encyclopedia appeared in print.Footnote 5 He would not be the last researcher to draw such a conclusion.Footnote 6

Christensson never explicitly defined the term encyclopedism, but the way he used it suggests that he thought of it as making a work imitating the Encyclopédie—or at least, an alphabetically organized general reference work. In other words, the definition excluded the making of specialized factual dictionaries. By the mid-1990s, this was not a controversial exclusion. Throughout the twentieth century—and even today—the idea of generality has been a dominant trend in histories of encyclopedias and encyclopedism. For researchers, the idea has functioned as a glue for linking textual compendia throughout the centuries, turning them into milestones in the human pursuit of “complete knowledge.”Footnote 7 From an eighteenth-century perspective, however, this story did not yet exist, at least not in its present shape. As my study will show, contemporaries rather perceived factual dictionaries as an essentially “new” phenomenon, typical of their own age.Footnote 8 Moreover, general and specialized factual dictionaries were not considered to belong to fundamentally different categories. In terms of practice, the only difference between compiling a specialized dictionary and a more general one was the workload. In this respect, if we want to understand the rise and geographical expansion of “modern” encyclopedism—i.e., alphabetical encyclopedism—we cannot just consider the making of general reference works.

The present study uses the analytical notion of encyclopedism to denote the practice of compiling information in alphabetically ordered articles, in vernacular factual dictionaries, whether they treat one, several, or all fields of knowledge. The French Encyclopédie was a product of this practice, but not its origin. Encyclopedism is thus short for alphabetical encyclopedism, and encyclopedia synonymous with factual dictionary. Finally, by stranded encyclopedic projects, I refer to all kinds of incomplete efforts to make a factual dictionary, regardless of when the work was interrupted. Consequently, when exploring the rise of alphabetical encyclopedism in eighteenth-century Sweden, I will pay as much attention to unrealized visions and ideas about factual dictionaries as to almost complete manuscripts.

Methods, Sources, and the Structure of the Study

In terms of method and sources, this study can be described as rather experimental and eclectic. Stranded encyclopedias are not easy to find. There is no convenient catalog of literary enterprises once projected but eventually abandoned throughout the centuries. Consequently, most stranded enterprises are discovered by chance. For those who actively seek stranded projects in the early modern period, however, there are two categories of sources that can be especially helpful: the periodical reports of institutions (e.g., academies, learned societies, monastic congregations, governmental departments, etc.) and the “literary news” sections of journals. Both categories often include notifications of works in progress. When comparing such information to databases of publications, stranded enterprises can be detected. If lucky, archival research leads to the discovery of preserved manuscripts.Footnote 9 Another strategy is to first make inventories of manuscripts in archival records, and then proceed to contextualize whatever material is found.

In this study, I have used both methods and types of sources. Yet what follows is not simply an investigation of stranded encyclopedias. In order to historicize and analyze the rise of alphabetical encyclopedism in eighteenth-century Sweden, I have also considered printed works, as well as the emergence of a contemporary discourse about factual dictionaries—about their novelty, nature, proper character, and utility.

The first part of the study takes its place in the world of publishing. Here, I have used the Swedish periodical press for locating early encyclopedic projects, but also to get an idea of how printed factual dictionaries were perceived and discussed as a new genre. At the center of the investigation is the learned journal Lärda tidningar (“Learned News”), printed in Stockholm from 1745 to 1773 by the bookseller Lars Salvius. Going through its 2,700 issues, I have analyzed all accounts relating to factual dictionaries in general, and all notices about domestic factual dictionaries in particular. The first category allowed me to detect changing ideas about the factual dictionary over 28 years. The second category allowed me to identify three stranded encyclopedic projects, whose histories of production I have pursued through additional sources.

The second part of my study leaves the world of publishing for another environment of knowledge production and circulation: the Bureau of Mines—the ministry that controlled the Swedish mining industry and metal processing. Based on extensive archival research, I will here reconstruct the encyclopedic efforts of two mining officials who worked on a dictionary of mining and metallurgy for almost forty years (c. 1743–1787), a period largely coinciding with the publication of Lärda tidningar.

By considering all these activities side by side, I hope to provide new insights into the formation of alphabetical encyclopedism in eighteenth-century Sweden. Obviously, mine is not a complete inventory, neither of stranded encyclopedic projects nor of discussions about factual dictionaries. Rather it should be read as a pilot study, examining what can be gained from combining sources on early encyclopedic practices and discourses.

To Begin with: An Overview of Early Modern Sweden

Prior to the eighteenth century, there is little trace of alphabetical encyclopedic practice in Sweden. Among scholarly works printed in the seventeenth century, the alphabet is rarely used to organize factual content. Besides a few specialized linguistic lexica,Footnote 10 there are a small number of alphabetized catalogs of flora, fauna, and toponyms.Footnote 11 The records of the National Library and National Archives show no signs of seventeenth-century manuscripts resembling factual dictionaries. Thus, even if many unpublished manuscripts written in the period have been lost, it seems that few (if any) scholars used alphabetical order to structure larger collections of information. Large-scale compilations with universal educational purposes, such as Adelig öfning (“Noble Practice”) by the baron Åke Claesson Rålamb (1651–1718), typically had a thematic structure.Footnote 12 However, this trend would change in the eighteenth century. In order to understand why, it is necessary to know a few things about the societal transformations that Sweden underwent in this period.

In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Swedish empire took control over a large territory around the Baltic Sea, which made it one of the most powerful states in northern Europe. As the inhabitants of the empire spoke Swedish, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, German, Russian, and Latvian (as well as a number of other minor languages and dialects), Latin and French commonly served as the lingua franca of scholars and state officials. When Sweden lost its Baltic provinces during the Great Northern War (1700–1721), the linguistic heterogeneity of the kingdom decreased radically. In the succeeding decades of recovery, stabilizing and promoting the Swedish language turned into a matter of national pride, alongside efforts to advance the domestic economy, arts, sciences, and manufacturing. After the death of Charles XII (1682–1718), Sweden was ruled by a National Assembly with representatives from the four estates (the Nobility, the Clergy, the Burghers, and the Peasantry). In this period, known as the Age of Liberty (1718–1772), the national and international book trade expanded.Footnote 13

Compared to France, England, and the German states, book production in Sweden developed at a slower rate. The first printing shop in Sweden was founded in Stockholm in 1484, fourteen years after the first establishment in Paris, and only four years after the first in London. By the early 1740s, however, the French and English capitals had close to fifty printing shops, while Stockholm still only had eight. Most were run by uneducated artisans who primarily printed religious literature. Until the 1740s, it was also quite complicated to procure books in Sweden. There was no general bookshop that offered titles from multiple printers, so each book had to be bought from the person printing it. Those who wanted foreign literature either had to engage a traveling acquaintance to bring books back home, or procure it from a university, a book auction, or one of the German merchants in Stockholm who were authorized to sell foreign literature.Footnote 14 In this regard, even though there were certainly well-educated, affluent individuals in Sweden who had the means to procure some of the first great factual dictionaries of the late seventeenth century—such as the works of Moréri, Bayle, Furetière, or Corneille—they were not easily accessible to a wider literate audience.

A man who would play a central role in transforming the Swedish book market was Lars Salvius (1706–1773). Not only would he start the first general bookshop and lending library in Stockholm and Sweden as a whole, providing books and journals from multiple domestic and foreign printers, but he also launched one of the first Swedish learned journals.Footnote 15 In this capacity, he would become an important mediator for factual dictionaries published on the continent; partly by importing, selling, and lending them, partly by writing about their utility. This makes his business a valid starting point for the investigation at hand.

Born into a well-educated family, Salvius studied at the universities of Åbo and Uppsala in the 1730s and then pursued a law career at the Board of Trade (Kommerskollegium). In 1739, he became the first (unpaid) notary of the newly-founded Swedish Academy of Sciences, a position that he left after only a year.Footnote 16 In 1742, his life took a new turn when he married the widow of a book printer. Despite not belonging to the printer’s guild, he managed to take over the business. As a well-connected and well-educated outsider, he would soon enforce several reforms on the book trade, which eventually made his business the biggest in the country.Footnote 17

In 1745, Salvius launched the journal Lärda tidningar, modeled after continental predecessors such as the Journal des savants, although in a more modest format. Over 28 years, it appeared in roughly 2,700 issues of four pages each, in which literary news were arranged according to the city of origin. The content was either provided by Salvius’ personal correspondents, submitted by readers and authors, or translated and modified from accounts in foreign learned journals by Salvius himself. In this regard, Lärda tidningar became part of a European communication channel.Footnote 18

In the mid-1740s, Lärda tidningar was not the only Swedish periodical to communicate learned content, but it was the first to focus exclusively on literary news and to combine a national and international outlook.Footnote 19 Due to these characteristics, this is where one finds some of the first sustained attempts to describe literary trends abroad, while simultaneously relating them to domestic conditions. Therefore, Lärda tidningar can provide valuable insights into how—and when—news about the multiplication of factual dictionaries on the European continent reached a wider Swedish audience, how this phenomenon was interpreted, and how it could be made into a national concern. Thus, before examining the first reports about Swedish encyclopedic projects in the making, we shall take a look at emerging discourse about factual dictionaries in general.

Dictionary Discourse in Lärda Tidningar (1745–1773)

In 28 years, Lärda tidningar reviewed close to fifty printed factual dictionaries.Footnote 20 Most were foreign, and most were French. Besides these reviews, comments on the dictionary genre occurred in advertisements (for new works arriving to Salvius’ bookstore), notifications of forthcoming publications, international calls for subscribers, and letters to the editor. Together, these accounts form a discursive landscape, whose characteristic undergoes certain changes over time.

Comments about the overall multiplication of dictionaries in eighteenth-century Europe are present throughout the whole period, from the early 1750 s onward. In the earlier years, however, no terminological distinction is yet made between linguistic and factual dictionaries. They are all called lexica (in Swedish, lexica or ordböcker). This can be seen in one of the first elaborate accounts of the dictionary genre, appearing in 1751:

The last hundred years, which have made such remarkable progress in the arts and sciences, have had great help and benefit from the many lexica [my italics] that have been issued on all sciences in general, and on individual arts and sciences in particular. Entire learned societies as well as individual writers have worked on them, and with great diligence and drudgery collected the best from multiple authors, and then inserted it into a work in alphabetical order. This has greatly relieved the pressure on those who study certain arts and sciences, […] since they find summarized in one work, everything they would have retrieved from [many] others. The French in particular have compiled and published such lexica. Footnote 21

Even though the described works are simply called lexica, the surrounding descriptions make it clear that the writer means dictionaries with factual content, gathering and summarizing the most essential parts of the “best” books. In this respect, the factual dictionary is portrayed as a shortcut to learning. By emphasizing the dominance of French works, the lack of similar Swedish ones becomes apparent.

In 1759, a review employs for the first time a specific term for distinguishing factual dictionaries from linguistic dictionaries: real-lexicon. At this point, the anonymous writer (probably Salvius) strongly emphasizes the novelty of the genre. While linguistic lexica had been around for centuries, the real-lexicon was characteristic of the present age:

In our fathers’ time, we knew little or nothing of other lexica than those serving to instruct in certain languages. But since the end of the last century, so many real-lexica [my italics] have been published that almost every science has its own, if not several.Footnote 22

In the 1760s, the French term dictionnaire emerges as synonym for real-lexicon, sometimes Swedified as dictionair (singular) or dictionairer (plural). From this decade onward, reviews of foreign factual dictionaries increasingly show that readers had begun to expect certain things from these books. Reviewers declare that works of this kind should “unite conciseness and thoroughness,”Footnote 23 “enlighten reason and refine the heart,” “examine the full body of a subject, not overstep its boundaries, and describe all things treated with philosophical care.”Footnote 24 When a work ignored these fundamental principles, it could be dismissed as a mere “collection of remarks in alphabetical order, [rather] than a Dictionnaire.”Footnote 25

Normative statements like these, concerned with the constitution and production of a “proper” factual dictionary, can be described analytically as a discourse about alphabetical encyclopedism. Interestingly enough, in Lärda tidningar, this discourse fundamentally takes shape around specialized dictionaries rather than general ones. A clear majority of the dictionaries that are reviewed treat one or a few areas of knowledge. Somewhat surprisingly, but illustratively, there is not one word about the Parisian Encyclopédie in the entire 1750s. The first notice occurs in October 1762, shortly after the volumes of plates began appearing in Paris. Nevertheless, the way the anonymous writer describes the Encyclopédie at this point reveals that he was well-familiar with “the Dictionary [Dictionnairen] whose continuation is so much desired by all learned Europe,” and which would “bestow eternal glory upon its makers.”Footnote 26 On most other occasions, however, general factual dictionaries are more likely to be criticized for their plumped-up content and for making knowledge less accessible rather than the opposite.Footnote 27 Moreover, in 1766, Salvius explicitly argued that specialized dictionaries were more useful to society since more people could afford them.Footnote 28

From the late 1740s onward, two Swedish works that could be described as factual dictionaries were actually printed. The first appeared in 1748, three years after the launch of Lärda tidningar. It was a mythical-historical lexicon with descriptions of gods, creatures, rites, and kingdoms in ancient literature.Footnote 29 The compiler, Wilhelm Anders Wennerdahl (1709–1753), was a teacher at the gymnasium in Linköping. Footnote 30 The same year he published it, Lärda tidningar announced its appearance but offered no characterization beyond its title. At this early point, there was no recognition that Wennerdahl’s work could be seen as part of a new genre emerging in Europe.Footnote 31

Eight years later, a second dictionary appeared. It was a lexicon of householding and farming, compiled by Carl Carleson (1703–1761), a high official of the Chancery Board (Kanslikollegium) and member of the Academy of Science.Footnote 32 Lärda tidningar waited two years to notify its readers about the new publication, but this time, the notification echoed sentiments expressed in reviews of foreign dictionaries in the preceding years. The author was thus praised for gathering information from the best books and for arranging it in alphabetical order, making it easily retrievable for readers. The journal described the preface as “beautiful” and called the lexicon the most comprehensive work of its kind.Footnote 33

Not long afterward, Lärda tidningar began reporting on similar projects in progress.

Glimpses of Stranded Projects

In the 1750s, Lärda tidningar started to include notifications about forthcoming publications. On three occasions, such notifications concern factual dictionaries. In the end, none of them were published. It is uncertain when and why they were abandoned. Besides the reports in Lärda tidningar, few if any related materials have been preserved. Still, these glimpses of stranded projects through the lens of Lärda tidningar are informative. They indicate what kind of actors took an interest, early on, in making factual dictionaries, what settings they were initiated in, how they were motivated, and what audiences they targeted.

A Rural Lexicon in Åbo

The first report comes from the Royal Academy of Åbo, in Finland (at the time part of the Swedish kingdom). Founded in 1640, it counted as one of the Swedish universities and played an important role in educating priests, state officials, medical doctors, and military officers. Since the end of the Great Northern War, the educational activities at the Academy had been dominated by interest in economic and scientific progress. By the mid-1750s, under the presidency of professor Pehr Kalm (1716–1779), students were encouraged to make inventories of natural resources in the surrounding regions and present suggestions for how to put them to the most efficient use.Footnote 34

During the autumn of 1757, Lärda tidningar reported on several such suggestions discussed at the Academy of Åbo.Footnote 35 Earlier the same year, a vicar named Abraham Indrenius had presented a dissertation under the supervision of professor Kalm. The dissertation argued that priests could and should play a crucial role in the advancement of the Swedish economy. Inventories in the surrounding regions suggested that the rural population did not understand that aggressive deforestation and discharges from manufacturing damaged the environment. Moreover, distrustful of outsiders, they refrained from alerting the proper authorities when they came across mineralogical deposits on their lands. Ignorant of botany, zoology, and entomology, they had no idea how to handle infestations of crops. All of these situations, and others like them, affected the rural economy in a negative way. According to Indrenius, the best way to change the behavior of the peasants was to go through priests—the only authorities they trusted. He suggested that priests could educate their congregations at weddings, funerals, baptisms, and other gatherings. However, since priests had little time to undertake studies in mineralogy, agriculture, botany, medicine, or mathematics, they themselves needed some kind of educational tool.Footnote 36

A few months later, another priest in the Indrenius family—Eric Indrenius—presented a proposal for such a tool. In a Latin dissertation, again supervised by professor Kalm, he argued that it was necessary to compile a rural economical lexicon (lexicon oeconomicum rusticum). He even presented a detailed plan for its execution. The lexicon would be written for priests, but adapted to the educational needs of peasants. A work of this kind could potentially treat everything from agriculture, mineralogy, and metallurgy, to medicine, economy, and mathematics. To start with, he suggested a limited focus on natural history and civil architecture.Footnote 37

Analytically speaking, what Eric Indrenius proposed was a factual dictionary, a real-lexicon. It was supposed to summarize useful knowledge in order to educate and change behavior and practices, not just correct the way the rural population talked. As an inspiration, he explicitly mentioned Jacques Savary des Bruslons’ Dictionnaire universel de commerce (first printed in 1723), a work that had already served as a source for several encyclopedic projects in France.Footnote 38

When Lärda tidningar reported on Eric Indrenius’ dissertation in early 1758, the rural lexicon was portrayed as already being in progress. The work was to include information on all tasks related to life and work on the countryside, especially information on plants and animals that could be of use or harm. It would also treat civil architecture in order to “teach countrymen how to best and most efficiently build fine houses while sparing the woods as much as possible.” Yet, this was just the beginning. According to Lärda tidningar, Indrenius promised that he would treat “the rest” another time.Footnote 39

No rural lexicon ever appeared in Indrenius’ (or Kalm’s) name. There are no known manuscripts that fit the profile. How far the work progressed before it was stranded is unknown. Still, the fact that a project of this magnitude was proposed at all shows that the idea of the factual dictionary as a powerful educational tool—a shortcut to learning—had taken root. After all, Indrenius was targeting an illiterate, rural population, through priests.

A Factual Dictionary of Seamanship in Karlskrona

The next report about a burgeoning encyclopedic project derives from the town of Karlskrona, the seat of the Royal Swedish navy in the south of Sweden. In 1765, lieutenant Johan Fredrik Dalman (1726–1809)—a sailor and teacher at the local navy cadet school—published a “Draft for a Sea Lexicon”: Utkast till ett sjö-lexicon.Footnote 40 When Lärda tidningar reviewed the work in 1766, Salvius praised it as the first Swedish dictionary devoted to technical “art-words” (konst-ord), a genre that the French had been perfecting for almost a century. Salvius was therefore delighted to finally see a Swedish work devoted to the same cause, especially since “we do not even have a complete register of general words yet, and of art-words close to nothing.”Footnote 41 Clearly, Salvius did not count Carleson’s householding lexicon (1756) as part of this category.

Dalman had collected words employed at the Admiralty in Karlskrona and at sea. The definitions were concise. In the preface, however, the author emphasized that it would be more useful with more comprehensive descriptions and illustrations, all of which “should appear in a more comprehensive sea lexicon shortly.” By starting with a draft, he wanted to encourage others to come forth with “useful criticism and suggestions for improvements.”Footnote 42 This strategy had been used previously by other dictionary compilers on the continent. For example, Antoine Furetière and Pierre Bayle both published small-scale drafts of their dictionaries a few years before their main works appeared.Footnote 43 Dalman thus suggested that a bigger enterprise—an illustrated factual dictionary—was in the pipeline, and he called for his peers to get involved. Lärda tidningar repeated his words and emphasized that the author was “saving material” for a more comprehensive work.Footnote 44

As a well-educated, well-traveled, and well-connected man with artistic skill, Dalman was certainly a promising candidate for compiling an illustrated dictionary of seamanship. Born into a family of naval officers, he had originally pursued a career within the Admiralty in Karlskrona. In 1747 he was elected a junior fellow of the Academy of Science.Footnote 45 The following year, he accompanied the Swedish East India Company to Canton, serving as the Academy’s diarist. During the trip, he made detailed maps of coastlines, cities, and buildings.Footnote 46 He also collected and brought back exotic plants and animals to the botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), for which the latter long remained grateful.Footnote 47 In 1763, Dalman was recruited to the newly founded cadet school in Karlskrona, where he worked as a teacher until 1777.Footnote 48 Consequently, it was during this period—at the cadet school—that Dalman compiled his Draft, probably with the needs of his students in mind. Accordingly, this would also have been the place where he continued his encyclopedic work—if he ever did.

Dalman never published a factual dictionary of seamanship. There are no dictionary manuscripts preserved in his name, nor any other sources that mention the project. Yet, interestingly enough, the archives of the Royal Society of Naval Sciences in Karlskrona have preserved a partial manuscript of a Swedish dictionary of seamanship, written by an anonymous compiler. Large parts seem to have been translated from French, but the draft draws on several sources and thereby counts as a work of its own.Footnote 49 Whether Dalman had something to do with it is unclear, but someone at the Admiralty in Karlskrona must have. The manuscript is not dated, but the paper, ink, and handwriting all suggest that it was compiled in the eighteenth century.Footnote 50 Here again, we get just a glimpse of encyclopedic activity, this time manifesting itself in the navy.

An Economical “Dictionnaire” in Stockholm

The third and last report in Lärda tidningar about a domestic encyclopedic project derives directly from Lars Salvius himself. In 1768, the journal officially announced the forthcoming publication of “a new Dictionaire oeconomique, or a new and complete economical lexicon” by Salvius’ publishing house.Footnote 51 In a three-page announcement, the journal proudly promised that the dictionary would present “facts, inventions, information, observations, [and] guidance and instructions” regarding an impressive range of practical endeavors: agriculture, silviculture, husbandry, fishing, hunting, gardening, bee-keeping, natural history, popular medicine, surveying, engineering, carpentry, mining, metal making, and several other arts and crafts. Furthermore, the dictionary promised to provide descriptions of the climate and natural resources of all regions in Sweden. It would even transcribe all legal documents regulating the rural economy, thereby making them available to all.Footnote 52 In short, it was a massive enterprise.

According to the announcement, Salvius planned to edit the work himself. Lärda tidningar promised that the dictionary would be based on the best writings by domestic and foreign authors, but also contain the fruits of “confirmed experience.” By this, Salvius meant knowledge and skill in the possession of common people but not yet made public. He therefore invited everyone with useful information to contact him, preferably by sending a letter to his bookstore. Those who did would be listed as contributors in the dictionary’s preface and thus “with due recognition […] be remembered.” Footnote 53

By 1768, such a call for collective engagement was surely an effect of the growing international reputation of the French Encyclopédie. As Lärda tidningar had concluded six years earlier that “eternal glory” would be bestowed upon the contributors to the Encyclopédie for their achievements, it is possible that Salvius hoped to inspire Swedish readers with similar thinking. Contribute—and be famous! In this regard, a lot had changed in ten years. Compared with the householding lexicon published by Carleson in 1756, Salvius was now visualizing a dictionary that contained more than just summaries of authoritative texts and the experience of one man. Like the lexicon projected in Åbo in 1757, Salvius’ enterprise reflected a wider effort to take stock of Swedish resources and skill. But while the priests in Åbo had pointed out the ignorance of the rural population as a problem, Salvius made no such statement. On the contrary, he stressed that the dictionary would treat subjects of interest to all estates and invited everyone to contribute. Even though Salvius obviously expected to be contacted by people who could read and write, his call for contributions did not explicitly exclude anyone.

Lärda tidningar promised that the enterprise was well-advanced and that the public would be informed as soon as it was ready for printing. Until then, samples of the work-in-progress could be consulted in Salvius’ bookshop.Footnote 54 However, by the time of Salvius’ death in 1773, no economical dictionary had been issued by his publishing house. In the obituary, his publishing assistant Samuel Loenboem mentioned that his employer had left behind a number of manuscripts, including a “comprehensive collection of […] descriptions of the regions of Sweden.”Footnote 55 Since none of Salvius’ manuscripts have been preserved, we do not know if they included material for the dictionary.Footnote 56 Faced with a lack of sources, one can only speculate about what happened to the project. Regardless, as the main editor of a journal appearing twice a week—and one of the most active publishers of scientific literature in Sweden—Salvius would not have been the last person failing to realize an encyclopedic ambition because of an overwhelming workload.

In the subsequent decades, readers of other Swedish journals and magazines would have been able to observe the rise and decline of several similar projects. In 1777, the bookseller Johan Christopher Holmberg (1743–1810) announced the forthcoming publication of yet another “economical Dictionnaire, or a general, complete householding lexicon.”Footnote 57 This time, four volumes were actually published between 1779 and 1792, but the work did not make it past the letter C before the author, Johan Fischerström (1735–1796), died. Footnote 58

Thus, when, in 1776, the publisher Carl Christoffer Gjörwell (1731–1811) announced the forthcoming publication of the Encyclopedie, eller fransyskt-svenskt real- och nominal-lexicon (“Encyclopedia, or French-Swedish Real- and Nominal-Lexicon”) and encouraged readers to subscribe, the literate public in Sweden was no stranger to the concept of factual dictionaries.Footnote 59 Through Lärda tidningar and its successors, journal readers had not only been served news about foreign dictionaries for decades, but also read about countrymen working on Swedish real-lexica for the betterment of the nation. Even though these projects had all been left stranded—some, perhaps, barely started—they still demonstrate how the idea and practice of alphabetical encyclopedism was slowly gaining ground in various parts of the Swedish kingdom from the mid-eighteenth century onward.

Encyclopedic Activities in the Bureau of Mines

Thus far, this study has pinpointed stranded encyclopedias by means of Salvius’ Lärda tidningar. Naturally, similar works may have been announced in other Swedish journals as well. But not all encyclopedic projects initiated in the eighteenth century were mentioned in the periodical press. Not all compilers collaborated with a publisher (the figure who commonly informed journal editors of works-in-progress), and not all projects were initiated with a wider audience in mind. Even though the dictionary genre became increasingly commercialized in the latter half of the century, many compilers seem to have been primarily driven by personal motives of knowledge- and data-collection, and only decided to publish their materials at a late stage.Footnote 60 The last encyclopedic project I will deal with is a case in point.

A Factual Dictionary of Mining and Metallurgy

We will now leave the world of publishing and enter the Bureau of Mines (Bergskollegium), where two mining officials worked on a factual dictionary for almost forty years: c. 1743–1787. Their work was initiated and executed in parallel with the expansion of the Swedish book trade, the publication of Lärda tidningar, and the encyclopedic projects reported therein, which opens up the possibility of interesting comparisons. By following the trail of sources, however, we will approach this case backward, starting at the end rather than the beginning.

In 1788, the acclaimed metallurgist Sven Rinman (1720–1792) published an illustrated dictionary of the arts and sciences of mining, entitled Bergwerks lexicon.Footnote 61 It was the first, fully realized factual dictionary in Swedish since the works of Wennerdahl and Carleson in the 1750s, and the first to explain and visualize theoretical aspects of metallurgy, chemistry, and mineralogy, as well as technical know-how relating to forges, blast furnaces, and mine installations.Footnote 62 A contemporary journal praised it as a work that “did not just explain art-words, but concisely treated the science itself.”Footnote 63 In this respect, it was exactly the kind of specialized, technical factual dictionary that Salvius had called for when praising Dalman’s sea lexicon in 1766. Even foreign journalists were positive. The British Analytical Review claimed to be “astonished” that Rinman had “completed, in so short a time, so copious and extensive a work.”Footnote 64

In the preface, Rinman briefly explained the background of the project. In the beginning of the 1780s, the executive board of the Bureau of Mines had approached him with a request. They had received the manuscript of a mining lexicon, compiled by the late Anders Robert Bellander (1726–1772)—the former mining inspector of the Sala silver mine. The board wanted Rinman to prepare the manuscript for publication. He accepted the task but quickly realized that the manuscript was too outdated and disordered to be printed. Assisted by his two sons, he revised the whole work over the course of three years.Footnote 65

Still, the preface to the Bergwerks lexicon only told half the story. Archival sources reveal another side. When the board contacted Rinman in 1784, he answered them with a long letter in which he explained that he and Bellander had known each other since their days as young auscultators (“apprentices”) at the Bureau of Mines.Footnote 66 It was during these foundational years that the whole idea of making a mining dictionary began.

Before continuing down this path, it is necessary to know a few things about the Bureau of Mines. As one of the eight Swedish collegia or governmental departments, the Bureau of Mines had been in charge of mining and metal processing in Sweden since the mid-seventeenth century. Over time, it had developed an effective, hierarchical structure. At the top, there was an executive board with a president, two councilors, and five assessors. The board controlled a central administration in Stockholm, with some twenty officials and several technical departments. The next level was that of local administrations in twelve mining districts, where mining inspectors (bergmästare) directed practical work in mines and metal-works. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the young apprentices, the so-called auscultators. By sitting in on board meetings, transcribing archival documents, visiting mining districts, and accompanying mining inspectors, they were effectively trained to become the next generation of mining officials.Footnote 67

According to Rinman, sometime in the early 1740s, the executive board of the Bureau had sent out a circular that urged mining inspectors to collect and report back all the technical words that workers used in their establishments. At this point, Rinman and Bellander were just auscultators, but inspired by the circular, they started working on such a collection together, at first mainly for the sake of their own learning.Footnote 68 After three years, their apprenticeships having ended and their career paths diverging, they parted ways.Footnote 69 In the succeeding decades, they continued their encyclopedic activities under rather contrasting circumstances: Rinman constantly on the move; Bellander stationary.

In 1746, Rinman departed for a study tour abroad. During the trip, he visited several metal manufacturing sites in the Netherlands, Germany, and France, and met with influential metallurgists and chemists in Paris.Footnote 70 Upon his return to Sweden, he was appointed superintendent of blast furnaces (övermasmästare). The assignment kept him on his feet, undertaking endless travels across the country. In 1753, he was elected a fellow of the Academy of Sciences. Six years later, he became the national director of coarse iron and steel manufacturing, a position which involved even more traveling.Footnote 71 Yet during all this time, he kept on collecting “art-words.”

In 1765, after some twenty years of work, Rinman delivered the draft of an illustrated “Ironworks Lexicon” to the board of the Bureau. In the accompanying letter, he stressed that he had been working on the manuscript in his spare time since his years of auscultating. He believed that a dictionary of all the arts and sciences of mining would be of great use to apprentices entering the profession, but he possessed “neither the time nor the capacity” to elaborate such a comprehensive manuscript himself. He hoped, nevertheless, that his draft—focused on ironworks—would constitute a well-needed beginning. He did not specify the size of the draft in his letter, but it appears to have been nearly finished and practically ready for print.Footnote 72 However, Rinman’s lexicon was never published. In fact, it seems to have been completely destroyed. In 1766, a fire broke out in Uppsala, where Rinman and his family lived. The entire house—including the library, mineral collections, and the dictionary manuscript—was burnt to the ground.Footnote 73 After this devastating setback, Rinman seems to have given up on the lexicon. For the next decade, he was deeply involved in experimental steel-testing and technical improvements at several establishments across the country, while he also published books on metal making and the history of iron.Footnote 74

In contrast, Bellander came to lead a much more stationary life. After completing his training, he settled down at the Sala silver mine, the oldest and once most prestigious mining district in the country. There he occupied various positions before eventually reaching the top of the hierarchy in 1761, when he became the local mining inspector.Footnote 75 Unlike Rinman, he never published any scholarly works, nor was he admitted to an academy. Still, for his entire adult life, he kept working on a dictionary of mining and metallurgy—until he suddenly passed away in 1772, only 46 years old.Footnote 76 A few years later, his family handed over the manuscript to the Bureau. Eventually, it found its way to Rinman.

What makes this history all the more interesting is that Bellander’s dictionary manuscript has actually been preserved at the National Archives in Stockholm. Until recently, this ten-volume collection was believed to be (and is still cataloged as) Rinman’s work (see Fig. 4.1).Footnote 77 Upon closer inspection, the handwriting shows that Bellander compiled the main articles, while the margins contain multiple comments and additions from a later date, inserted by Rinman and his two sons (see Fig. 4.2).Footnote 78 Together this unique set of sources—Bellander’s manuscript, Rinman’s later annotations, and the printed Bergwerks lexicon—offers a rare opportunity to examine the evolution of the dictionary: how Rinman revised Bellander’s manuscript, and consequently, how the two mining officials proceeded in their long-independent encyclopedic activities.

Fig. 4.1
figure 1

(Photo: Linn Holmberg)

Bellander’s ten-volume dictionary manuscript, preserved under the name of Sven Rinman. National Archives of Sweden, Stockholm. Bergskollegiums huvudarkiv, D8:1–10, “Rinmans Bergwerks lexicon.”

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Fig. 4.2
figure 2

(Photo: Linn Holmberg)

Two pages from Bellander’s dictionary manuscript, showing the articles “Knä” and “Kobolt.” On the left page, Rinman has written an addition in black ink, just below Bellander’s handwriting. On the right page, Rinman has noted “revised” (omskrifvit) in the margin. National Archives of Sweden, Stockholm. Bergskollegiums huvudarkiv, D8:6

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While Rinman never had the time to prepare a full dictionary of mining and metallurgy, Bellander clearly had more time at hand. His ten-volume manuscript demonstrates an impressive breadth and depth, although the size of the articles varies considerably. Some are little more than a line, while others occupy fifty pages and include illustrations. At first sight, Bellander’s manuscript appears to be rather “complete”: the ten volumes cover the entire alphabet.Footnote 79 The neat handwriting further suggests that most articles were rewritten at least once (but probably many more times in view of how long he worked on it). Yet none of the volumes exhibit complete alphabetization.Footnote 80 Many sheets contain large blank spaces, which suggests that Bellander was still leaving room for additional keywords at the time of his death. These details reveal that the manuscript was far from being ready for print. Moreover, several articles contain long transcriptions from French and Latin books, without translation. These sections have been neatly rewritten too, as if the compiler was satisfied to leave them that way—at least temporarily.

There is no indication that Bellander was ever in contact with a publisher, nor that he submitted a preliminary draft to his superiors, as Rinman did.Footnote 81 It is thus possible that Bellander’s manuscript was not compiled primarily in order to be printed. Rather, it seems that he revised and rewrote sections of his dictionary as part of a learning process—as a way of remembering. When Rinman evaluated the manuscript in 1784, he reached the same conclusion. Just as they both had in their younger days, Bellander had kept collecting “whatever he found interesting when reading books,” and thus compiled a dictionary mainly for his own learning’s sake.Footnote 82

Naturally, one cannot exclude the possibility that publishing crossed Bellander’s mind. The manuscript shows that he was a meticulous reader of Lärda tidningar, from which he often transcribed reviews of foreign publications from the 1760 s onward.Footnote 83 As a result, he was surely no stranger to evolving discourse about the utility of the factual dictionary, as it took shape in the journal. As he died prematurely, Bellander might not have reached the point of actively working toward publication. When Rinman inherited the manuscript, he was explicitly tasked with producing a publication—and he proceeded accordingly.

In his first letter about Bellander’s manuscript, addressed to the board of the Bureau in January 1784, Rinman stressed the necessity of defining the proper boundaries for a mining lexicon in order for it to be useful. Bellander had been too inclusive, he thought. Rinman recommended the exclusion of alchemical terminology, medicinal mineralogy, and natural historical accounts without any clear relationship to metal making, such as articles on fossils.Footnote 84

In early 1785, after one year of work, Rinman told the board that he was spending all his waking hours revising the manuscript. The project had turned out to be more demanding than he first thought. He needed to replace outdated sources with more recent ones, move articles to their proper places within the alphabet, and cut—and add—many more accounts than initially expected.Footnote 85 Another year later, in 1786, he still claimed that the collection needed to be “entirely rewritten, fairly greatly expanded, and explained with many more illustrations.” Footnote 86 Luckily, he was now receiving intensive help from his two sons, who by then had become mining officials in their own right. Indeed, throughout Bellander’s manuscript, the margins are filled with comments like “revised” (omskrifvit), “completely revised” (totalt omskrifvit), or “cut” (går ut).Footnote 87 On several occasions, sections or whole articles have been crossed out, and new information added in different handwritings. All these changes are clearly carried over in Rinman’s printed lexicon.

Despite the fact that the two main compilers were men of practice, they compiled quite differently. Bellander based his accounts predominantly on other texts, while Rinman also included observations from his professional experience.Footnote 88 Moreover, in a mining report dated February 1787, Rinman even described how he had instructed his two sons to go on field trips to mining and smelting sites around the country, in order to collect technical words and information about practical procedures currently in use, all of which was to be included in the lexicon.Footnote 89 These differences in procedure further reinforce the impression that Bellander was using alphabetical encyclopedism primarily as tool for managing information in books. For Rinman, it was also a tool for documenting not-yet recorded practical knowledge, as well as for establishing firmer boundaries around the science of mining, and communicating these boundaries to others. To use the terminology of Lärda tidningar: if Bellander compiled “a collection of remarks in alphabetical order,” then Rinman turned it into a proper Dictionnaire.Footnote 90

However, one should not discount the importance of Bellander’s work. In his manuscript, there is a fourteen-page bibliography, which reveals that practically all of his sources were memoirs, treatises, and periodical journals.Footnote 91 In fact, there is only one dictionary in the entire list: Elie Bertrand’s Dictionnaire universel des fossiles (1763), which was favorably reviewed by Lärda tidningar in 1764.Footnote 92 Consequently, over three decades, Bellander completed a formidable task simply in deciding on an appropriate collection of headwords, not to mention in laying the factual foundation for thousands of articles drawn from the literature at hand. In comparison, by the mid-eighteenth century, most French compilers—including contributors to the French Encyclopédie—had access to a great number of factual dictionaries in their own language, from which they could relatively quickly construct a catalog of keywords, and then transcribe, revise, and add factual content.Footnote 93

Thanks to Bellander’s manuscript, Rinman did not start from nothing, despite the fact that his own dictionary manuscript had been incinerated eighteen years earlier. He could freely choose what to keep, throw away, revise, and add. Given that the printed preface downplayed the quality of Bellander’s work, the Analytical Review could hardly help but be “astonished” that Rinman had “completed, in so short a time, so copious and extensive a work.”Footnote 94 In reality, the Bergwerks lexicon was only made possible because another mining official had spent thirty years laying the groundwork.

Perhaps this is where we find one of the answers to the question why so many other encyclopedic projects were left stranded in eighteenth-century Sweden. Compiling a vernacular factual dictionary from scratch took time—lots of time. Visions, materials, and physical manuscripts needed to pass through several heads and hands before eventually reaching the printing press.

Summary and Conclusions

This chapter has examined a number of stranded encyclopedic projects in eighteenth-century Sweden, initiated—or at least imagined—from the late 1740s onward. To judge by the absence of factual dictionaries in print and manuscript prior to this decade, it seems likely that alphabetical encyclopedism began to be practiced concurrently with the expanding book trade and with the increasing bureaucratization of Swedish governmental bodies in the decades of recovery following the end of the Great Northern War. The actors involved—teachers, priests, state officials, publishers, sailors, and mining inspectors—moved in and between environments of education, government, commerce, and technical manual work. Their projects for dictionaries either responded to or called for inventories of local knowledge and skills. Bellander and Rinman began collecting technical words after a general call by the board of the Bureau of Mines. Some forty years later, Rinman sent his sons to collect terminology from mining and smelting establishments around the country. Indrenius’ rural lexicon was a response to an ongoing mustering of resources and needs in the Finish regions surrounding Åbo. Dalman collected technical words within the Admiralty in Karlskrona and begged his peers to come up with suggestions for improvement. Salvius invited everyone who possessed some kind of useful knowledge to contribute to his economical dictionary. Proceeding and paralleling these attempts, Lärda tidningar—the first Swedish journal of its kind—regularly reviewed foreign factual dictionaries, praised them as shortcuts to learning, and called for similar projects to be initiated in Sweden. Even though it cannot be proven in this study, it is possible that Lärda tidningar’s comments on the utility and proper nature of the factual dictionary helped shape attitudes and practices among its readers; that they inspired individuals in various knowledge environments to handle information in new ways, to divide them into keyword-based articles, and arrange them in alphabetical order. Either way, “enlightenment encyclopedism” neither started nor ended with Gjörwell’s attempt to make a Swedish Encyclopédie. Before and after, it flared up and died several times, in many places and many minds, and executed by multiple hands.

Two main conclusions can thus be drawn from this study. First, the long perceived “lag” between European centers and peripheries in eighteenth-century encyclopedia production diminishes when we look at stranded projects and not just completed publications. In countries like Sweden, where the book market was underdeveloped compared to continental publishing hubs, bringing vernacular factual dictionaries to completion and publication was difficult. The literate audience was smaller, demand was weaker, and there were fewer vernacular publications for compilers to draw on. Consequently, information had to be either translated or obtained directly from professional environments of interests—and then alphabetized. It was hard, unprofitable work that required a great deal of time and engagement. Still, this did not stop people from trying.

Second, it is clear that many of the early encyclopedic enterprises in Sweden were in fact indigenous projects—influenced by the successful structure of (mostly) French factual dictionaries, certainly, but based on local materials and needs. These are interesting findings, since previous research on the rise of modern encyclopedism in Sweden—focusing on the first general encyclopedias completed in the nineteenth century—has tended to describe the Scandinavian tradition as an heir to German conversational dictionaries (Konversationslexika), and notably the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie.Footnote 95 When we open up our perspective and consider stranded encyclopedic projects in the eighteenth century, this image changes significantly. Above all, my research here suggests that we should not think about encyclopedias as a genre that was “invented” in one place and then “exported” to others, but rather view alphabetical encyclopedism as a practice gradually taking shape across a vast geographical area, interconnected by the book trade and learned periodicals, which commented on—and thus possibly further stimulated—ongoing literary trends.Footnote 96