After 265 years: Linnaeus' Fauna Suecica translated into English
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Title pages from Fauna Suecica
Carl Linnaeus' groundbreaking work Fauna Suecica is now available in English for the first time. The translation is published by Uppsala University's Acta series and Uppsala University Publications, opening the work up to a global readership.
Jens Eriksson with Fauna Suecica from 2026 and Börje Dahrén with the 1761 edition.
265 years ago (1761), the second edition of Carl Linnaeus' influential book Fauna Suecica, a study of Swedish wildlife, was published. The book laid the foundation for systematic zoology and had a major impact around the world. Despite its historical significance, the book has not been translated from Latin into a modern language and has therefore been inaccessible to many.
Now, for the first time, the book is being published in English translation by Ann-Mari Jönsson and Ingemar Struwe through the university's Acta series, with distribution and design by Uppsala University Publications (UUP) at Uppsala University Library.
– It feels fantastic to be able to organise the publication of this extensive, important and beautiful work, says Börje Dahrén, who, together with his colleague Jens Eriksson at Uppsala University Library, coordinates the university's publications through UUP.
Fauna Suecica 1761 on the left and 2026 on the right.
Book release celebrates publication
To celebrate the publication, Uppsala University Library host a book release where Ann-Mari Jönsson and Ingemar Struwe will talk about the book in conversation with Carl Frängsmyr, historian of science and chair of the Swedish Linnaeus Society.
– The book will delight readers of both the printed and digital version, which will be available to a global readership. For a little over a year, UUP has been running a publishing platform (books.uu.se) specifically for academic books, which makes it possible for us to disseminate the results of Ann-Mari and Ingemar's great work much more efficiently than before, concludes Jens Eriksson.
