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Papers holding the world together - A conference on the written heritage of Carl Linnaeus and the Linneans, May 11, 2021

Works by, and about Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and the Linneans form an important subset of the Hagströmer library collections. Linnaeus was by profession a medical doctor and this was also true for many of his close friends, collaborators, and students. As time passed a great number of documents and books with Linnean provenance ended up in the two major medical libraries of Stockholm, the library of Karolinska Institutet, and the library of the Swedish Society of Medicine.  It is these two libraries that form the core of the Hagströmer. Despite of their importance, these collections are largely unknown to most historians of natural history and medicine. They are, indeed, even rarely accessed by scholars of Linnaeus.

On May 11, 2021 a zoom conference was hosted by the Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library of Karolinska Institutet,. Organized by Hjalmar Fors and Eva B. Nyström, the conference invited a group of prominent scholars to discuss Linnean manuscripts and printed works extant in the Hagströmer collections.

 

Programme

1300-1315 Hjalmar Fors, Introduction: The Linnaean written heritage and the collections of the Hagströmer Library.

1315-1335 Linda Andersson Burnett, The letters between Daniel Solander and Carl Linnaeus in global and colonial context. Commentators: Hjalmar Fors and Eva B. Nyström.

1335-1355 Emma Hagström-Molin, Provenance and Validity in the Hagströmer Library. Commentators: Linda Andersson-Burnett and Annika Windahl-Pontén.

1355-1410 Pause

1410-1430 Eva C. Nyström, Johann Bartsch. Co-worker, proofreader and friend to Linnaeus during his stay in the Netherlands. Commentators: Nils Uddenberg and Eva B. Nyström.

1430-1450 Anna Svensson, A sketch of Johan Salberg through his bibliographical collections and practices. Commentators: Nils Uddenberg and Eva B. Nyström.

1450-1505 Pause

1515-1535 Staffan Müller-Wille, From travel diary to species catalogue: How Linnaeus came to see Lapland.  Commentators: Hjalmar Fors och Eva B. Nyström.

1525-1545 Annika Windahl-Pontén, Custom is a second nature: A theme in lecture notes on Linnaeus’s dietetics. Commentators: Linda Andersson-Burnett and Eva C. Nyström.

1545-1600 Pause

1600-1620 Hanna Hodacs, Surrogate tea versus plant transfer: negotiating taste, nature and medicine in the 1740s. Commentators: Anna Svensson and Emma Hagström-Molin.

1620-1640 Eva B. Nyström, Linnaeus´ Systema naturae in manuscript and print. Commentators: Emma Hagström-Molin, Anna Svensson and Staffan Muller-Wille.

1640-1730 General discussion. Chair: Hjalmar Fors


Photo: Letter from Carl Linnaeus to Abraham Bäck, 13 November 1761 (KIB MS 27:119).