ARCHIVES FOR UFO RESEARCH

AFU

      Recent visitors to AFU 

August 11-14, 2009. Since a few years back, Erik Östling is a returning researcher-visitor at our archives. He has now renewed his researches and therefore spent four full days (and evenings) using our resources: clipping files, book and media library, picture library & magazine storage. He used our scanner and new photo copier to save information for his continued work, which includes an article commissioned by James R. Lewis, well known author and researcher on new religious movements. He met Lewis when he lectured on scientology at the Stockholm University in May.
At AFU, Erik found much material on George Adamski, the Raelian movement, Heaven's Gate and early 1947 clippings on the development of the early UFO myth from the Barry Greenwood collection. He kindly copied and donated his 2+ Gb files of digitized articles in scientific journals to our USB memory for us to use at the library and to share with future researchers. Erik also took the opportunity to acquire some twenty UFO-related books from our sales department. Some of this arrived here just a few weeks ago, as part of another collection, and was not needed by the AFU library. Recirculation of information!!
May 9-10, 2009. Spread out on our floor are the printed media articles (not showing a number of radio, television and web exposures) that resulted from the AFU 'public opening days' in connection with the UFO-Sweden annual national conference in Norrkoping, just a kilometer away from the archives.

The annual conference attracted no fewer than 175 people and the public opening of the archives drew some 70 people during two days. Media all over Sweden noticed the first major public opening of the AFU archives. 

Nov 7, 2008.  Seven researchers and students from the Södertörn and Gothenburg universities (Science of religion) arrived late in the evening, headed by Jessica Moberg, who has written a thesis that we have in the library. Håkan Blomqvist and Anders Liljegren informed the group on AFU's work and future projects. We will no doubt have future visits by university students since the group was very impressed by our work.
Nov 3-7, 2008. After many years waiting, we finally saw our Norwegian friend and donator Ole Jonny Braenne at the archives. He came from the annual UFO-Sweden field investigator course (Nov 1-2) and made a one night's stop with Clas Svahn in Stockholm. Ole Jonny spent four nights in Norrköping earning time by working also in the nights! He scanned many hundreds of clippings and documents from Norwegian newspapers and sources for the Norwegian database of scans he is building. Mostly materials from the ghost rocket wave, the 1950s and the 1960s.
Nov 3, 2008. We were visited by journalist Lars Berge and photographer Dan Hansson who collected impressions for an article on UFO-Sweden and AFU to be published in the cultural pages of Svenska Dagbladet, one of the Stockholm morning papers. Oct 29, 2008. We had a five hour visit by artist and researcher Alexander Nilsson from Umeå, who photographed clippings & documents and digitized a few interview tapes from our tape library as a starting point for a project he has, related to documenting north-Swedish cases.
Sept 15 and 21, 2008. Per, Eric and Tim, a three-headed team from the Linköping University (KSM P4) spent many hours at the archives making a documentary on Anders Liljegren's interest and work with AFU.
March 13, 2008. Johan Kärnfelt who is associate professor with the Gothenburg university visited us and was guided around the AFU archives. He is planning a thesis in the field of Ideas & Science which - if he gets the grant he is seeking - will most likely involve AFU and our prominent collections on UFOs and science fiction. You can find a bibliography of his previous works on popular science, astronomy and science fiction here.
Jan 8, 2008.  Clas Svahn and Carl-Anton Mattsson brought another car-load of "archival goodies" from Swedish and international donors. We were also honored, this day, by a visit by UFO-Sweden's previous chairman (late 1970's) Bevan Berthelsen, who brought several boxes of clippings & correspondence files, books, old magazines, and other things to AFU.  More on this on our Recent donations page!

In the picture, from left to right: Håkan Blomqvist (AFU), Carl-Anton Mattsson, Bevan Berthelsen and Clas Svahn.

Oct 3, 2007. Another recent journalist visitor - among many others this season - was Arvid Hallberg - who traveled from the south of Sweden to spend a few hours with Anders, Richard and Sven-Olov at the AFU archives. The result was an excellent article "UFO - a high-technology folk belief" - published in Aluma, a Malmö-based quality magazine sold on the streets of south-Swedish towns by the homeless (who earn 15 Swedish kronor for each sold copy).

You can find a web version of the article here. We are thrilled when someone understands our "mission" so well... :-)

 
On Sunday June 10, 2007 the archives had visits by journalist Per-Erik Tell and also by a six- member team from UFO-Sweden.

Tell (on the right) is writing a story on AFU for the September issue of Kupé,    which is the promotional magazine available for free on all Swedish Railroad trains. So all train passengers throughout Sweden will eventually learn about us.

The UFO-Sweden team, headed by chairman Clas Svahn, searched our files of documents and investigations for leads on previous UFO reports from an area of southern Sweden where a group of seventeen UFO-Sweden field investigators will spend a week this summer,

 We had prepared for their work by printing lists from ScanCat, our report database for the area surrounding the lake Mien , where there has been a wealth of reports (including a well known contact/humanoid case). The UFO-Sweden team will use report materials and maps from AFU while they knock on doors throughout the area and interview people who have been, or might have been , observers of UFO phenomena.

A similar project was carried out in the west-Swedish province of Värmland (on the Swedish-Norwegian border), in 2002 and 2004.

(On the right, Gunnar Karlsson and   Mats Nilsson, two of the UFO-Sweden team  searching through AFU records).

On Saturday  April 21, 2007, seven members of the Stockholm UFO Society visited the AFU archives during several hours, with pauses for coffee and pizza, combined with nice discussions on recent UFO developments

In the picture, the Stockholm group admires the new archive with rolling shelves where we have now moved in about half of our magazine collection (the surplus copies store) and are now soon moving in the magazine "master" collection from our main archives (where renovation will start in September 2007).

On the right, Stockholm members digging into the rich library where almost 10.000 book and document volumes are kept.

In the front, Inga-Lill Wallin who was the UFO-Sweden project co-ordinator for the  Martebo 'ghost light' investigations   on the island of Gotland, in the mid-1990s. Wallin has written many articles and a book on that phenomenon.

Wallin now brought with her, to AFU, most of her private Martebo investigative archive, which includes documents, reports, dozens of audio & video tapes and hundreds of press cuttings. This collection has been ordered as six full volumes. A detailed inventory can be found on our Files from UFO groups and 'ufologists: Sweden page.

 
On November 5  Anders Liljegren, AFU chairman, was invited by the local Norrköping chapter of the Swedish Health and Sport Association ("Frisksportarna") to present the work of the AFU foundation.

"Frisksportarna" and AFU have been close neighbors, in the same basement, for more than 25 years without really getting to know each other. The club's city venue - neighboring to one of our archives - has recently been very nicely outfitted and redecorated to produce a very cozy environment (see picture on the right).

With some ten members of the club we walked between the four AFU archives. The out-doors enthusiasts of the club were given a perspective of our archival and preservation work, which is basically rather unknown, locally. In fact, the AFU foundation attempts to keep "a rather low profile" and avoid most local publicity, since we prefer to concentrate on our preservation work. The evening ended back at "Frisksportarna"´;s club house with coffee, cake and sandwiches.
August 1, 2006

 Valentin Manoliu, is a Romanian investigator of UFOs, and researcher into free energy system, who presently is a guest in Sweden. I had the great pleasure of talking to Mr. Manoliu for a few hours in our library, although communication was hampered by our mutual language barriers.

Valentin Manoliu donated his autographed book (on the left), published "with great difficulty" in Romania in the year 2000, to the AFU reference library. We were also given the opportunity to copy two informational films on Mr. Manoliu's theories and inventions related to free energy. If I understood it all correctly, a new form of nuclear energy.

I was given a few leads to a web site with information on Valentin Manoliu's theories but I have not managed to get the link to work for me. I will try to come back with more info here.

Follow-up:   Mr, Manolius kindly came by the AFU archives some weeks ago with prints from his Romanian web site: see it here. If you are interested in possible nuclear UFO technology this could be something for you!        Anders Liljegren  
June 2, 2006
On rare occasions AFU has had visits by international  UFO  researchers.

Among previous signers of our guestbook are Timothy Good, Hilary Evans and Maurizio Verga.

This time Dr. David Clarke, well known British UFO researcher (most recently for his archival discovery of the Project Condign report)

was brought here from Stockholm by Clas Svahn. David and his wife took the chance to spend a few days in Stockholm in connection with an international folklore conference they attended in Copenhagen. David was absolutely impressed with the scope and quality of our collections and the workforce we have here - probably unparalleled nowhere in the world.
November 19, 2005 Clas Svahn, Håkan Ekstrand, Andreas Ohlsson, Gunnar Karlsson and Mikael Sjöberg from the UFO-Sweden board visited AFU, bringing with them a car load of materials for the archives. More details of that on our Recent donations page. We also used two hours for the long overdue 2003 and 2004 annual general meetings with the AFU board. Clas and company then continued for a UFO-Sweden planning conference in the south-east of Sweden. On the way back to Stockholm, the following Sunday, the company brought with them 4-5 meters of books not relevant to the AFU library which we intend to sell, as a lot, to an antiquarian book shop, thus making way for new acquisitions on our shelves.
April 6, 2005 The archive & library was visited by three journalist students from Gothenburg: Maria Hedberg, Erik Gustafsson and Jens Fransson. They are writing a series of articles on aerial phenomena as part of their education program at the Faculty of Journalism. They followed up on local Swedish west-coast cases by research in the UFO-Sweden/AFU report archives and they also interviewed Anders Liljegren on the background of the archives.
March 30, 2005
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Clas Svahn came from Stockholm with yet another carload of materials collected for the archives. Some principal things in this delivery:

1) Almost 200 book copies donated by Swedish UFO book collector Sven Andersson to the archives (see some of the more unique books pictured on the Recent donations page);   2) Three file folders of news clippings copied by Clas Svahn from the Dagens Nyheter 's  press archives, the collection covers the period 1917-1991 and includes cuttings filed at the newspaper under many different (more or less) UFO-related headings; 3) Five folders of prints of the UFO Round-Up   internet newsletter, editor: Joseph Trainor; 4) A number of new (to our archives) issues of American newsletters and magazines received by Svahn from Bill Jones; 5) A copy of the recently published skeptical book Vetenskap och villfarelse   donated by the publisher (also credited under Recent new books); 6) Digital backup copies on CD:s and Zip discs of all material (texts and illustrations) published in UFO-Sweden's magazine UFO-Aktuellt    since 1991 - more than 150 discs (picture to the left): 7) Correspondence files from UFO-Sweden. Et cetera.

March 12, 2005 Long time since we last noted any of our guests! Not because there hasn't been any, but because we have not found the time - or sometimes just forgot to bring the camera to the archives!

A motor cycle club from Nyköping is one of the most recent groups of visitors, headed by Torsten Johansson, who, a few years ago, was chairman of a local UFO club. We spent a couple of hours discussing UFO phenomena and taking a tour through the localities and collection.

 
August 26, 2004 Clas Svahn is a regular visitor to the archives. Every 2nd or 3rd month he packs a car with new materials he has collected and stored for the archives during his tours for UFO-Sweden, and in his work as a journalist with Dagens Nyheter. 

Clas is slowly moving parts of his own collections (correspondence files, interview tapes, video collection, special documents collections) to AFU. This time he brought, among other things, dozens of interview tapes and his collected working files on Roswell and, MJ-12. 
February 19, 2004 Clas Svahn brought Swedish Radio journalist Antonio de la Cruz to the archives where he interviewed Clas, Anders and Sven-Olov for a planned serious documentary on UFO research to be aired on Channel 1 of the Swedish Radio. Antonio will follow the work of UFO-Sweden, for instance the annual field investigator training.  (Below:  Antonio de la Cruz with Anders Liljegren 'up against the shelves'). 
November 22, 2003 The board of UFO-Sweden had one of their board meetings at the  AFU archives, with people coming from all parts of Sweden, a few of them being visitors for the very first time. In the evening two other meetings were held: a board & annual meeting with the AFU board and a discussion about how to publish AFU/UFO-Sweden's UFO report database ScanCat on the internet. 
October 6, 2003 Three students from a study group at the University of Norrköping paid a visit to the archives, interviewing Anders Liljegren on the connection between UFOs and science fiction, about which they are doing a project at the High School level. 
June 16, 2003 Eight UFO-interested people, directly and indirectly connected to a local Reiki therapy society, visited the archives. It all ended with four of the therapists putting their hands on the aching shoulders of Anders Liljegren, as a thank you for showing them around and telling about the archive's daily work. 
May 10. 2003 Five members of the Tinnitus Society of Nyköping-Oxelösund visited the archives under the direction of Torsten Johansson who, in the 1990's, was the chairman of a UFO-Sweden chapter in Björkvik. As a contribution to the archives, the impressed visitors donated 500 SEK, which will be used for buying books for our reference and research library. 
February 12, 2003

Janne Berglund from the local cable channel "Nollettan" interviewed Anders Liljegren at the archives. The interview and pictures from the archives will air on February 21 and 26 on the cable nets in Norrkoping, Linkoping and Motala, in a series of reports from local archives & historical projects. 
February 11, 2003

Pia Andersson is a doctorate student at the Department of Archaeology at Stockholm university where she specializes in Archeology and History of Religion, with a focus on new religiosity and its relationship to science and with the discipline of archaeology as an illustrating example for this relationship.

Pia has drawn material from the AFU reference library: 

 

 
Pia has written four thesis's (1995, 1997, 1998 and 2000) on flying saucers as a religion, the ancient astronaut hypothesis and other alternative ideas of our prehistoric past. 

She has contributed articles to anthologies published in Sweden and the United States, including "UFOs and Popular Culture: An Encyclopedia of Contemporary Myth", edited by James R. Lewis (2000). To the left, the Swedish anthology "Gudars och gudinnors återkomst" ("The return of Gods and Goddesses"), where she is a contributor and which she donated to the AFU collection. 

This autumn her first Swedish book on "alternative archeology" will be published by the National Swedish Heritage Board. She is also contributing the article "Ancient space brothers, ancient terrestrial remains" to another anthology, "Alien Gods: Religious Dimensions of the UFO Phenomenon", edited by James R. Lewis.  
January 28, 2003
Karin Sandberg, who works as a professional archivist and historian visited us for a few hours to take part of our archives and work. Karin works with ÖLFA, a regional society of archives in east-Sweden, where she has been involved with archival inventories. 
November 18, 2002

Martin Gustafsson, Mikael Andåker and Elizabeth Jonsson visited us to present a copy of their 20 page essay "The fan culture surrounding the UFO phenomenon. Different perspectives - a study of UFO-Sweden and the Raëlian Religion". 
The group bases their essay on interviews with Anders Liljegren (AFU) and Kenny Stolpe (leader of the Swedish Raëlians) and a study of the literature on new religions. The essay was a part of their studies on the KSM program (Culture - Society - Media) with the University of Linkoping, Campus Norrkoping.
November 1, 2002

Christina Gustavsson brought her London-based friend James Abbott to a visit at one of the world's most amazing UFO archives. They were greeted by AFU's very own LGM.

Photo by Anders Liljegren

 
"It's amazing that an open mind is kept about all information, and I am grateful that beliefs are allowed to be formed by individuals. I wish you all the best on developing and cataloguing this brilliant resource."  (Entry by James Abbott in the AFU guest book) 
October 27, 2002

Eight members of Enköping-Sala UFO-förening, one of the oldest subsidiaries of UFO-Sweden,  spent four hours at the archives in Norrköping. 

From left to right: Mats Nilsson, chairman, Pernilla Andersson, AFU's Anders Liljegren and Arnold Idebring, the lively 81 years old alderman of the society. 

Photo by Gunnar Karlsson
Home