When you run a page of handwritten text through an HTR-recognition program such as Transcribus, you are not instantaneously provided with a prefect transcription of said text. There will be a few hiccups here and there which all have to be manually corrected, something that can often be accomplished without any greater difficulty, and when you do run into something that seems to be impossible a simple text message or email to Mikael Alm or Johan Sjöberg will show that it was anything but.

However, I ran into a scribble of a word that I could not get my head around. It was one of Gustav’s notes from a council meeting where the state commission was discussing count Fredrik Posse’s application about renting lodgings. This word seemed to begin with some type of symbol rather than a letter, an odd combination of an @ an e and a g. I had been going back to this page and this word for days, asking historians and fellow students at the institution for help, trying to make out what it said.

Salvation came from an unsuspected place. A fellow student, Oscar Kelly, an Irishman who doesn’t speak Swedish. Due to his lack of language proficiency,
he started tracing this strange scribble of a letter by hand to make out it’s ‘composition’ beneath what seemed to be a correction by Gustav himself.

This finally allowed us to make out the word. Gustav had simply misspelled agremanger!

Now, the text reads: “2/ Stats Commission ängånde Gref Fr: Posses ansökning om hushyre. 3/ Gref Horn angånde de agremaner son Gref Fr: Posse skal nuite.”
Which translates to: States Commission regarding Count Fr: Posse’s application about renting lodgings. Count Horn regarding the amenities that Count Fr: Posse shall enjoy.