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- The A. E. Nordenskiöld Collection
The A. E. Nordenskiöld Collection
Year of induction: 1997
Custodian: The National Library,
The A. E. Nordenskiöld Collection is a collection of historical maps, geographical literature, travel accounts and book rarities collected by the Finnish-born researcher and explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld (1832–1901) at the end of the 19 th century. It contains about 4,000 books and more than 24,000 maps printed before 1800, depicting all continents of the world. A. E. Nordenskiöld made 10 expeditions to the Arctic and became known as the first explorer to sail through the Northeast Passage in 1878–1879. He was also a pioneer in the research of the history of cartography and published two definitive works in the field: Facsimile atlas till kartografiens äldsta historia: innehållande afbildningar af de viktigaste kartor, tryckta före år 1600 (Stockholm 1889) and Periplus: utkast till sjökortens och sjöböckernas äldsta historia med talrika afbildningar af sjökort och kartor (Stockholm 1897), in which the materials of his own collection play a major role.
The A. E. Nordenskiöld Collection makes it possible to outline the development of Western geographic knowledge from antiquity to the 19 th century. The collection includes an almost complete set of printed Geography works by Claudius Ptolemy, a classic in geography and cartography. There are about 500 atlases and nearly 150 incunabula. The collection also contains catalogues and archive material related to the acquisition of the works. Nordenskiöld’s collection is an exceptionally systematically collected coherent entity and a significant resource for the research of the history of knowledge and science.
The collection was acquired for the Imperial Alexander University’s library, now the National Library of Finland, shortly after Nordenskiöld’s death in 1902. The collection’s printed maps published before 1800 have been catalogued. About three fourths of the books can be found in the National Library’s search service. Of the materials in the collection, Ptolemy’s Geographies have been fully digitised. Other material has been digitised in samples.