Table Of ContentThe 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
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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
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
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.
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. His
journeys to and from Asia, as well as his stay in Batavia and his year in
Japan, are in fact the best documented part of his life.
Details concerning his subsequent career in Sweden are sketchy,
although it seems clear that he must have joined the Royal Swedish Navy
almost immediately upon his return, since he was promoted to the rank
of Captain in 1655. Royal Swedish Navy records show that in 1658 he
commanded the Admiral’s ship Kronan (The Crown) in the war between
Sweden and Denmark which concluded with the peace treaty at Roskilde
the same year, but which soon flared up again. In October-November 1659
Willman commanded the ship Solen (The Sun) in a flotilla of four ships
2 Ekström, Gunnar, Västerås Stifts Herdaminne, II:I, 1600-talet, Västerås, 1971, pp. 78–80;
p. 268.
4 catharina blomberg
sailing in Danish waters from Korsør in Sealand to Stubbekøbing in Falster
and preying on merchant vessels from Lübeck. Three letters reporting on
this expedition and addressed to the King, Carl X Gustaf, are still extant,
dated 24 and 28 October and 7 November. At least two merchant vessels
from Lübeck, one of them bound for Copenhagen with a valuable cargo,
had been captured, and the last of the three letters contains bitter com-
plaints by Willman and his second-in-command, Anders Jacobsson, that
although the ships had been brought to Stubbekøbing ‘untouched, fully
laden up under all the hatches so that one couldn’t put one’s foot inside’
they had been completely emptied by the ‘Commissary’, presumably the
official in charge of making an inventory of the cargoes. Willman and
Jacobsson declared their total innocence in the strongest terms, signing
themselves ‘Humble and Faithful Servants as long as we live.’ The first let-
ter, of 24 October, is particularly interesting, not because of its contents,
which deal with the effects of a severe storm and the insubordination of a
captain, but because it was written on a double sheet of paper. One half of
the sheet was left blank, and when the letter was folded it was this side
which was used for the address of the intended recipient, i.e. the King,
using all his titles. Of the two black seals, one is still completely intact,
bearing Willman’s initials in the form of a capital W with a capital O
superinscribed. The seal is about one square centimetre in size, in the
shape of a square with truncated corners, i.e. a non-equilateral octagon.
A gold signet ring is mentioned in the inventory for the probate of his will,
and judging by the seal this was a tasteful and elegant object.
In 1663, Willman is on record as the commanding officer of a company
known as the ‘the winter guard’ in Stockholm. In 1664 he commanded a
frigate, Höken (The Hawk), which was conveying the Moldavian Prince
Stefan Georg from Pärnu (Pernau) in Livonia to Stralsund, both Swedish
possessions at the time. This unfortunate personage, who had been driven
from his country by the Turks in 1658, spent the last decade of his life trav-
elling between friendly courts in search of shelter and pecuniary assis-
tance. He had been an ally of the late King Carl X Gustaf, and in 1665 he
was awarded a state pension by the guardians of the ten year old King
Carl XI before moving to Brandenburg, where he died destitute in 1668.
Willman appears to have commanded the ship Göteborg (Gothenburg)
in 1665, and Örnen (The Eagle) the following year. In 1667 he was to have
commanded the man-of-war Danska Fenix (The Danish Phoenix) on a
cancelled piratical expedition to the Barbary Coast.
From 1668 to 1669, he was master of a merchantman, travelling to
London, Amsterdam and Portugal. In 1673, Willman wrote a petition
