Unique collection of Asian materials donated to Uppsala University Library

The collection, which contains items from the 16th century onwards, has been donated by Professor Emeritus Staffan Rosén and consists of several hundred volumes and other items: manuscripts, original prints, handbooks of various kinds, grammars, annotated text editions, lexicons and more. The languages cover a wide range: Japanese, Chinese, Korean – including Sino-Korean and medieval Korean – Manchu, Mongolian, Tibetan, Church Slavonic and Russian.

– This is a distinguished researcher and knowledgeable collector who is donating his treasures to the research community and future generations. We are very grateful for the donation, not to mention the help we have received from Staffan in cataloguing the collection. In terms of its scope and breadth, the collection can almost be considered a library in itself and is on a par with similar collections in Europe, says Emil Lundin, librarian at the Special Collections Division at Uppsala University Library.

Befriend booksellers – a successful strategy for building collections

Staffan Rosén's interest in Asia, its languages, literature and culture began when he studied Slavic and East Asian languages. This led him to the University of (then) Leningrad in the late 1960s, which, according to Rosén, has one of the world's finest collections of Oriental manuscripts and books.

– Gaining access to these fantastic collections ignited my inner fire, and my interest really took off.

His studies led him to South Korea, where he lived for three years in the 1970s. His collection began to grow rapidly. He became good friends with booksellers who had their bookshops in old sheds, and it was easy to buy books; few people at that time were interested in what was on sale.

An example of the scope of the donation is the Korean works Chosôn wangjo sillok, Kojong Sunjong sillok and Sûngjôngwôn ilgi. They contain chronicles and daily notes from Korea's last dynasty (1392–1910), including correspondence from the reign of King Kojong (1852–1907). The first title alone comprises 49 volumes measuring 2.4 shelf metres.

Unique Mongolian cultural heritage

During the 1980s, the collection continued, now in Mongolia and Tibet. It was difficult to obtain books during the Soviet era, but previous experience of searching for material in sheds, book boxes and flea markets proved successful.

Uppsala University Library already had a collection of Mongolian manuscripts and 1,400 photographs by Joel Eriksson (1890–1987), who was a missionary in Inner Mongolia in the early 1900s, where he translated the New Testament into Mongolian and ran the Swedish Mongolian Mission's printing press. Through Rosén, the collection from Joel Eriksson's work has been expanded with more manuscripts and now also includes an almost complete collection of printed matter from the Swedish Mongolian Mission's printing press. Rosén became a close friend of Joel Eriksson during his final years.

– I helped him go through his extensive material. Towards the end, he was blind, but had a crystal-clear memory. If I described a detail in a photograph, he knew exactly which picture I meant. As a medically trained missionary, he was a person to whom many turned. If they could not pay in money, he was paid in the form of a manuscript.

In the footsteps of Sven Hedin

The journeys continued in the 1990s along the northern and southern Silk Roads in China, following in the footsteps of explorer Sven Hedin (1865–1952). The journeys were made together with colleague Håkan Wahlquist and in collaboration with Chinese archaeologists who were searching for ancient cities and settlements in the Taklamakan Desert. Books and other materials were purchased during visits to small towns and villages. Rosén recalls how they transported the materials:

– We loaded our car with books, but some of the materials had to be carried in the saddlebags of camels.

Unique findings at book markets in Japan

In the 2000s, Rosén was a visiting professor at Kyoto University in Japan. He visited some of the country's most fascinating book markets in Osaka and Tokyo, where he was able to add rarities to his collection.
Among the rare works is Nihon Shoki – the Chronicle of Japan in an imperial sanctioned edition in 15 volumes from 1610, which forms the basis for today's modern Japanese editions.

The collection attracts international attention

The Library has on several occasions shown parts of the collection to Mongolian ministers, parliamentarians and ambassadors, the Korean Ministry of Education and representatives from various universities, the Japanese ambassador and representatives from Japanese universities. It draws attention, brings joy and admiration that a collection of this magnitude, with its unique content, is available at Uppsala University Library.

The collection has been donated to the University Library in 14 instalments over the past few years, and a couple more final instalments will be added to the collection in the near future.

– I have donated my collection to Uppsala University Library because I believe that it fills a gap. In particular, there is no other Korean collection of similar size in Sweden. My hope is that it will prove useful now that it is available for research and for anyone who is interested, concludes Staffan Rosén.