Bilberg, Johan
Refractio solis inoccidui, in septemtrionalibus oris
Estimate: £800 - £1,200
Auction: 18 June 2025 from 10:00 BST
Description
jussu serenissimi ac potentissimi principis Caroli undecimi … circa solstitium estivum MDXCV aliquot observationibus astronomicis detecta. [Swedish title on facing page:] Midnats solens rätta och synlige rum uti Norrlanden åtskilde igenom nå gre astronomiske observationer, hållne wid sommar solståndet år 1695. Stockholm: N. Wankijff, 1695. First edition, 4to (18.7 x 15cm), [24] 103 [1] pp., contemporary vellum-backed boards, Latin and Swedish text (including title-pages) on facing pages, 5 woodcut plates, various ownership inscriptions to recto of Latin title-page including ‘Joh. Hernodius filius’ (i.e. Johan Hernodius the younger, likely to be the author of the Uppsala doctoral dissertation De Cyclo Lunari, 1711) marginalia to pp. 23 (relating to hot air balloons), 31, and 33
Footnote
First and only edition of the first published account of the 1695 Swedish expedition to Lapland, undertaken at the command of Karl XI, and an early instance of scientific exploration in the region, which paved the way for Linnaeus's tour of 1732-5, ‘the great adventure in [his] life’ (Broberg, The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus, ch. 4, unpaginated). Johan Bilberg (1646-1717) was a long-serving professor of mathematics at Uppsala. In 1701 Olof Rudbeck the Younger, another scientist on the expedition, published his own account titled Nora-Samolad, but the destruction of Rudbeck's papers in the great fire of Uppsala the following year means that there are otherwise few surviving records of it.