The Journal of Olof Eriksson Willman Signature of Olof Eriksson Willman. Photo Kurt Eriksson, Riksarkivet, Stockholm The Journal of Olof Eriksson Willman From His Voyage to the Dutch East Indies and Japan 1648–1654 Translated, Annotated and with an Introduction by Catharina Blomberg LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 Cover illustration front: Original seal of Olof Eriksson Willman. Photo Kurt Eriksson, Riksarkivet, Stockholm. Cover illustration back: The chalice and paten donated by Olof Eriksson Willman to Västervåla Church. Photo Catharina Blomberg. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Willman, Olof Eriksson. The journal of Olof Eriksson Willman : from his voyage to the Dutch East Indies and Japan, 1648–1654 / translated, annotated and with an introduction by Catharina Blomberg. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-26126-6 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-90-04-26127-3 (ebook) 1. Willman, Olof Eriksson--Travel--Japan. 2. Japan--Description and travel--Early works to 1800. 3. Willman, Olof Eriksson--Travel--Indonesia. 4. Indonesia--Description and travel--Early works to 1800. 5. Willman, Olof Eriksson--Diaries. I. Blomberg, Catharina. II. Title. DS808.W55 2013 910.4’5--dc23 2013033801 This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface. ISBN 978-90-04-26126-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-26127-3 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. 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This book is printed on acid-free paper. <UN> <UN> CONTENTS Introduction by Catharina Blomberg 1 Part One The Journal of Olof Eriksson Willman 19 Part Two Notes to the Text 79 Bibliography 133 Index 137 <UN> <UN> INTRODUCTION Catharina Blomberg The annals of the Dutch East India Company, VOC, as well as the very limited number of journals and travel accounts written by its employees, provide valuable source material for the history of the European presence in Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Scholarly works from this period written specifically about Asian countries, their peoples and customs by those who had had an opportunity to make first-hand obser- vations are extremely rare, forming an entirely different genre. The following work, in two parts, written by a Swedish employee of the VOC in the mid-seventeenth century, presents an uncommon, not to say unique, view of life before the mast. Olof Eriksson Willman had enlisted in the Company as a soldier bound for the garrison in Batavia, headquar- ters of the Dutch trading empire in Asia. His main objective was to travel as far as possible from Europe and see the world, and he carefully recorded everything that he considered worthy of note during his years in Asia, and especially in Japan. Having had the benefit of a university education, albeit prematurely interrupted, he was able to note down his impressions and observations with some precision. There are few examples of detailed personal accounts of the actual sea voyage to and from Asia, and the same can be said about daily life in the Dutch factory at Deshima in the harbour of Nagasaki as well as during the long journey to Edo, present-day Tokyo, and the stay there. Ships’ log- books and the daily journals, known as Daghregisters, of the VOC factories tended to record events in a formal and businesslike manner, border- ing on the laconic. Willman, however, presents us with a succession of glimpses from the lives of ordinary people, whose curiosity, often mixed with a wish for social preferment or indeed sheer avarice, made them set out for countries and conditions largely unknown to them. Some of the more adventurous led extraordinary, often brief, lives in the proximity of local princes and potentates, only to be cut down in their prime by dis- ease, shipwreck or violent death by other causes. Willman, whose time in Asia was spent in hard work but comparative safety, lived to tell his tale. Olof Eriksson Willman was probably born in the early 1620s, the son of Ericus Magni (Erik Månsson) Björkstadensis, the rector of Västervåla, a <UN> <UN> 2 catharina blomberg parish in the diocese of Västerås in central Sweden. His father, who hailed from the parish of Björksta in the same diocese, hence his Latinized sur- name, had taken up office in 1614, according to the register containing the biographies of the diocesan clergy, known in Swedish as ‘Herdaminne’, i.e. ‘Memorial of Shepherds’. He is on record as ‘a careless and useless cler- gyman, who neglected his work because of his concern for victuals and hard agricultural labour, so that the people forgot the catechism, of which he himself also had scant knowledge. However, he remained for so long in his position that he had to be removed from it in 1654 because of old age and infirmity’, and already in 1628 he had been required to keep a curate.1 He was succeeded by his son-in-law, Petrus Johannis Svedviensis (Peter Johansson from Svedvi, also in the diocese) born in 1602, who had been his curate for twenty years and had married his daughter Kerstin (Christina Wallenia), an older sister of Willman, in 1634. It was customary, and indeed often a prerequisite for obtaining the position, among Swedish clergy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to ‘conserve the widow’ of their predecessor in the office by marrying her. Willman’s father had married Margareta Andersdotter, widow of his predecessor Christophorus Olai (Christoffer Olsson) in 1614. There were five children, two sons and three daughters, and the fact that their births went unrecorded seems to bear out the criticism of Ericus Magni as neglectful of his duties. His wife died in 1627, and he married again in 1631. Ericus Magni died in 1667, his second wife, Barbro, having predeceased him in 1658. Of the other two daughters, Sara married Per Kart, a burgher in Västerås, and Elisabeth married Lars Jacobsson ‘of the parish’, who farmed the vic- arage land. Of his two sons, the older, Anders, was born in 1615 according to his own diocesan record, and later, together with his sister Kerstin, adopted the family name of Wallenius, calling himself Andreas Erici Wallenius after his ordination as a clergyman in 1644. According to the diocesan records his younger brother, Olof Eriksson Willman, adopted his own family name ‘because of his vita erratica’. The Swedish verb ‘villa’ means ‘to err, to go astray, to lose one’s bearings’, and because of his trav- els, which took him to all the continents of the known world at the time, he must have found this name apposite. The older brother Anders was admitted to the Latin school in Västerås, considered one of the best in Sweden, in 1625, and was matriculated in Upsala University in 1638. After returning to Västerås he was a prebendary of various parishes in the 1 Muncktell, Joh. Fr.,Westerås Stifts Herdaminne, Tredje Delen, Upsala, 1846, p.200. <UN> <UN> introduction 3 diocese while also teaching Hebrew in the Latin school in Västerås. He died in 1663, having spent his last years as a vicar in Mora in the adjacent county of Dalarna (Dalecarlia). Olof Eriksson Willman was admitted to the Latin school in Västerås in 1632, and if we assume that he began his formal schooling at the same age as his brother the year of his birth would have been 1622 or 1623.2 He was matriculated in Upsala University in 1641, the entry for 11 February of that year mentioning an ‘Olaus Erici Vesmannus’, i.e. Olof Eriksson from the county of Västmanland, but returned to the Latin school in 1643. He ‘aban- doned his Studies’, as he himself put it, in 1644 in order to join the army, which was engaged in one of Sweden’s frequent wars with Denmark. When the peace treaty had been concluded at Brömsebro in the summer of 1645 Willman remained in the south of Sweden, spending the next two years ‘in Service’ in the town of Halmstad on the coast of Halland, one of the counties just ceded by Denmark. Halmstad had a fortified castle, and further fortifications were being planned. Most probably Willman was still employed by the Swedish army, presumably for a fixed term. He obtained his discharge in the autumn of 1647, and was at last able to indulge the strong desire to travel abroad which had made him give up his studies. He lost no time in travelling across to Kronborg in Denmark, i.e. the town of Helsingør, where he made the acquaintance of the captain of a Dutch ship which was homeward bound. Once he arrived in Amsterdam he joined the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, commonly abbreviated VOC, i.e. the Dutch East India Company, on a five-year contract. From the time when the ship to which he had been assigned set sail in the New Year of 1648, to his return to Stockholm in July 1654, practically every single day, or at least month, of Willman’s life is accounted for.