The Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina of Samuel Älf
The project wants to give digital access to the great collection of Latin poetry by early modern Swedish authors assembled by Samuel Älf (1727-1799). Thereby it digitally completes and finishes an enterprise started more than 250 years ago. Samuel Älf gathered Latin poems and biographica on authors during several decades, both as manuscripts and prints, but also made apographs himself. The collection is kept in the diocese library of Linköping, and comprises 38 volumes in the folio format and 8 volumes in the quarto. Prints and manuscripts have been inserted into the volumes together, according to authorship. This entire material will be digitized and stored in Alvin, in images in high resolution. A great effort will be spent on organizing and structuring the material, and completing it with metadata. The material, being a conglomerate of prints and manuscripts by many authors, call for a new type of digital organization. The prints are cataloged in LIBRIS and imported into Alvin. The manuscripts are registered directly in Alvin. The metadata is then arranged according to the texts in the archive. Thereby, groundbreaking information and data, including much statistics, on a neglected part of the Swedish literary heritage will be unveiled. Digitized prints are ocr-scanned and added as pure text, and can be corrected and uploaded again. Transcriptions of manuscripts can easily be uploaded. Thus the foundation of a full text corpus of Swedish Neolatin poetry is laid.
Final report
The project "The Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina of Samuel Älf" had the aim of making digitally accessible the archive of Latin poetry written by Swedes during the early modern period, which has been kept at the Diocese Library of Linköping (Linköping City Library) since the 1790s. Samuel Älf (1727–1799) collected Swedish Latin poetry in both print and manuscript for several decades with the intention of publishing collections of the best texts (deliciae), following an established model from the continent. After several publication attempts, the project failed. Only the poems of Petrus Lagerlöf (1648–1699) were published. For more than fifty years now, the collection has been consulted extensively as Neo-Latin research began and grew from the 1970s and onwards.
In the project, all pages in the 46 physical volumes, 38 of which are in folio format and 8 in quarto, have been photographed and uploaded to the digital repository Alvin, according to a structure developed in advance. There they are now available for free and can be accessed by users all over the world. Any user who wishes so can browse the volumes page by page. The main entry in Alvin, which is also the actual entrance to the collection and the hierarchical structure, can be found at the address: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-445542. However, each user can search directly in Alvin and get direct hits on all included material. Hits can also be obtained via searches in Google. The inclusion of the material in Alvin guarantees long-term digital preservation and updating.
In addition, all printed materials in the archive have been catalogued in the national union catalogue Libris. More than 2,200 copies belonging to 1,712 different editions have been added there. Approximately 1,200 of these editions had not been previously registered in Libris. From the holdings record there, next to the shelf mark, there is a link to the digital version in Alvin.
In Alvin, all prints have been made available partly as tiff images and partly as pdf files. The latter are searchable after scanning with the ABBYY-Finereader software. The prints have also been scanned with the Rescribe software, whereby the content has been made available as plain text. The metadata from Libris has been imported into Alvin, describing authors and addressees as well as place of printing, year of printing, scope and bibliographic format. Once there, each text included in the print has been processed separately, sometimes in larger groups, depending on the structure of the print, and processed in its own record. It is easily accessed in a hierarchical structure, which is intended to reflect how the physical volumes are structured. Each text has been provided (in addition to the metadata about author, addressee, year of publication, etc.) with information about the number of lines, meter, text type(s) and transcription of the first line. All meter and text types in the collection have been listed on the home page for the entire collection.
Particularly worth highlighting are the text types: this kind of metadata is an innovative feature compared to other digital collections of Neo-Latin texts in Europe. Like meter metadata, they not only create a basis for statistical studies of the material, but also, where relatively rare types are concerned, give the user a quick overview of the entire material.
Although Älf's collection was in principle only aimed at Latin poetry, it also contains hundreds of poems in other languages, primarily Swedish and Greek, but also German, French, Italian and Hebrew. In many cases, these are autographs or valuable copies. The non-Latin poems have been treated in the project in more or less the same way as the Latin ones, with their own entries and the metadata described above.
All handwritten texts in the archive, which originate from a significant number of different hands and copyists, have been provided with the same metadata as in the prints (except for that which concerns the printing aspects themselves, of course). These texts are not searchable in full text.
In total, over 12,000 records have been created in Alvin within the project for texts and poems in Latin by Swedes from the early modern period. The project has thus contributed to the national bibliography, by cataloguing previously unlisted editions, and by making Swedish prints digitally accessible.
Thanks to the OCR transcriptions of the prints, which are of quite high quality, especially for texts from the 18th century, the project has created the conditions for a curated digital text corpus of Swedish Neo-Latin poetry. At the same time, the very fact that Älf's collection has become available online is important for the publication and exploration of individual authors, and the article collection Den nylatinska poesin och Samuel Älf, prepared in the course of the project, gives first examples thereof.
During the project period, the work has been presented on several occasions, both nationally and internationally:
• ”Johan Iser och värmlänningarna”, Linköpings stiftsbiblioteks vänner, 13 November 2025.
• ”Vad kan man inte hitta? Sällsynta texttyper och versmått i Älfs samling”, Linköpings stiftsbiblioteks vänner, 13 November 2025.
• “Lapidary Style in Samuel Älf’s Carmina Poetarum Suecorum Latina”, at International Congress for Neo-Latin Studies (IANLS). Aix-en-Provence (France), 14–19 July 2025.
• ”The Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina of Samuel Älf – A Project at the Final Stages”, at the Institut für Klassiche Philologie und Neulateinische Studien, Innsbruck University, 21 May 2025.
• ”Samuel Älfs Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina – ett havererat antologiprojekt över svensk latindiktning”, Klassiska föreningen (Uppsala), 31 March 2025.
• “Samuel Älfs samling med latindikter av svenskar – nu i Alvin”, Temadag för specialsamlingar, Linköping City Library, 22 November 2024.
• “Important or Not? Swedish or Not? On Samuel Älf's Selection of Poets for His Collection”, Colloquium Balticum Rigense: Naturalia et artificialia, Riga 17–19 October 2024.
• “Samuel Älf and his Network of Collectors”, 6th Conference of the Nordic Network for Renaissance Studies, 25–27 September 2024, Aarhus (Denmark).
• “Foreign-born Neo-Latin poets in Sweden”, 6th Conference of the Nordic Network for Renaissance Studies, 25–27 September 2024, Aarhus (Denmark).
• “Samuel Älf and his Network of Collectors”, Frühneuzeittag WissensWelten. 15. Arbeitstagung der AG Frühe Neuzeit, 19–21 September 2024, Gotha (Germany).
• ”The Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina of Samuel Älf – a Current Project”, virtual seminar at the Instytut Filologii Klasycznej of the University of Warsaw, 12 June 2024.
• ”Samuel Älfs antologi över svensk latindiktning”, Bellmansällskapet, Uppsala, 11 November 2023.
• “Samuel Älf’s Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina: a digital access to 46 volumes of Swedish Neo-Latin Poetry”, at the workshop State of Digital Manuscript Studies & Textual Scholarship in the Øresund Area, Copenhagen, 8 May 2023.
• “Swedish latinists before modern philology: Samuel Älf and his Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina”, Colloquium Balticum XIX: Philologia magistra vitae, Tartu, 12–15 oktober 2022.
• ”Samuel Älfs Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina – Tillgängliggörande av 46 volymer nylatinsk poesi”, Elfte svenska filologkongressen, Stockholm, 19–20 May 2022.
• “Samuel Älf’s Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina – Swedish Neo-Latin Poetry in Alvin”, at Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries, Uppsala, 15–18 March 2022.
In the project, all pages in the 46 physical volumes, 38 of which are in folio format and 8 in quarto, have been photographed and uploaded to the digital repository Alvin, according to a structure developed in advance. There they are now available for free and can be accessed by users all over the world. Any user who wishes so can browse the volumes page by page. The main entry in Alvin, which is also the actual entrance to the collection and the hierarchical structure, can be found at the address: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:alvin:portal:record-445542. However, each user can search directly in Alvin and get direct hits on all included material. Hits can also be obtained via searches in Google. The inclusion of the material in Alvin guarantees long-term digital preservation and updating.
In addition, all printed materials in the archive have been catalogued in the national union catalogue Libris. More than 2,200 copies belonging to 1,712 different editions have been added there. Approximately 1,200 of these editions had not been previously registered in Libris. From the holdings record there, next to the shelf mark, there is a link to the digital version in Alvin.
In Alvin, all prints have been made available partly as tiff images and partly as pdf files. The latter are searchable after scanning with the ABBYY-Finereader software. The prints have also been scanned with the Rescribe software, whereby the content has been made available as plain text. The metadata from Libris has been imported into Alvin, describing authors and addressees as well as place of printing, year of printing, scope and bibliographic format. Once there, each text included in the print has been processed separately, sometimes in larger groups, depending on the structure of the print, and processed in its own record. It is easily accessed in a hierarchical structure, which is intended to reflect how the physical volumes are structured. Each text has been provided (in addition to the metadata about author, addressee, year of publication, etc.) with information about the number of lines, meter, text type(s) and transcription of the first line. All meter and text types in the collection have been listed on the home page for the entire collection.
Particularly worth highlighting are the text types: this kind of metadata is an innovative feature compared to other digital collections of Neo-Latin texts in Europe. Like meter metadata, they not only create a basis for statistical studies of the material, but also, where relatively rare types are concerned, give the user a quick overview of the entire material.
Although Älf's collection was in principle only aimed at Latin poetry, it also contains hundreds of poems in other languages, primarily Swedish and Greek, but also German, French, Italian and Hebrew. In many cases, these are autographs or valuable copies. The non-Latin poems have been treated in the project in more or less the same way as the Latin ones, with their own entries and the metadata described above.
All handwritten texts in the archive, which originate from a significant number of different hands and copyists, have been provided with the same metadata as in the prints (except for that which concerns the printing aspects themselves, of course). These texts are not searchable in full text.
In total, over 12,000 records have been created in Alvin within the project for texts and poems in Latin by Swedes from the early modern period. The project has thus contributed to the national bibliography, by cataloguing previously unlisted editions, and by making Swedish prints digitally accessible.
Thanks to the OCR transcriptions of the prints, which are of quite high quality, especially for texts from the 18th century, the project has created the conditions for a curated digital text corpus of Swedish Neo-Latin poetry. At the same time, the very fact that Älf's collection has become available online is important for the publication and exploration of individual authors, and the article collection Den nylatinska poesin och Samuel Älf, prepared in the course of the project, gives first examples thereof.
During the project period, the work has been presented on several occasions, both nationally and internationally:
• ”Johan Iser och värmlänningarna”, Linköpings stiftsbiblioteks vänner, 13 November 2025.
• ”Vad kan man inte hitta? Sällsynta texttyper och versmått i Älfs samling”, Linköpings stiftsbiblioteks vänner, 13 November 2025.
• “Lapidary Style in Samuel Älf’s Carmina Poetarum Suecorum Latina”, at International Congress for Neo-Latin Studies (IANLS). Aix-en-Provence (France), 14–19 July 2025.
• ”The Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina of Samuel Älf – A Project at the Final Stages”, at the Institut für Klassiche Philologie und Neulateinische Studien, Innsbruck University, 21 May 2025.
• ”Samuel Älfs Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina – ett havererat antologiprojekt över svensk latindiktning”, Klassiska föreningen (Uppsala), 31 March 2025.
• “Samuel Älfs samling med latindikter av svenskar – nu i Alvin”, Temadag för specialsamlingar, Linköping City Library, 22 November 2024.
• “Important or Not? Swedish or Not? On Samuel Älf's Selection of Poets for His Collection”, Colloquium Balticum Rigense: Naturalia et artificialia, Riga 17–19 October 2024.
• “Samuel Älf and his Network of Collectors”, 6th Conference of the Nordic Network for Renaissance Studies, 25–27 September 2024, Aarhus (Denmark).
• “Foreign-born Neo-Latin poets in Sweden”, 6th Conference of the Nordic Network for Renaissance Studies, 25–27 September 2024, Aarhus (Denmark).
• “Samuel Älf and his Network of Collectors”, Frühneuzeittag WissensWelten. 15. Arbeitstagung der AG Frühe Neuzeit, 19–21 September 2024, Gotha (Germany).
• ”The Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina of Samuel Älf – a Current Project”, virtual seminar at the Instytut Filologii Klasycznej of the University of Warsaw, 12 June 2024.
• ”Samuel Älfs antologi över svensk latindiktning”, Bellmansällskapet, Uppsala, 11 November 2023.
• “Samuel Älf’s Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina: a digital access to 46 volumes of Swedish Neo-Latin Poetry”, at the workshop State of Digital Manuscript Studies & Textual Scholarship in the Øresund Area, Copenhagen, 8 May 2023.
• “Swedish latinists before modern philology: Samuel Älf and his Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina”, Colloquium Balticum XIX: Philologia magistra vitae, Tartu, 12–15 oktober 2022.
• ”Samuel Älfs Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina – Tillgängliggörande av 46 volymer nylatinsk poesi”, Elfte svenska filologkongressen, Stockholm, 19–20 May 2022.
• “Samuel Älf’s Carmina Suecorum Poetarum Latina – Swedish Neo-Latin Poetry in Alvin”, at Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries, Uppsala, 15–18 March 2022.