August Nordenskiöld or Nordenskjöld (6 February 1754 in

Sipoo Sipoo (; sv, Sibbo) is a municipality of Finland. It is part of the Helsinki metropolitan area. The municipality has a population of () and covers an area of of which is water. The population density is . The administrative center of the munic ...

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

– 10 December 1792 in

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

) was a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

alchemist and Swedenborgian critic of slavery. Nordenskiöld was the son of and Märta Nordenskiöld, born Ramsay, and brother of Swedish Admiral (1747–1842). He was educated at

Turku Turku ( ; ; sv, Åbo, ) is a city and former capital on the southwest coast of Finland at the mouth of the Aura River, in the region of Finland Proper (''Varsinais-Suomi'') and the former Turku and Pori Province (''Turun ja Porin lääni''; ...

before moving to Stockholm where he was influenced by Swedenborgianism.''The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought'', ed.

Mark Goldie Mark Goldie is an English historian and Professor of Intellectual History at Churchill College, Cambridge. He has written on the English political theorist John Locke and is a member of the Early Modern History and Political Thought and Intellec ...

and

Robert Wokler Robert Lucien Wokler (6 December 1942 – 30 July 2006) was a British historian who was a leading scholar of the political thought of the Enlightenment. References * https://www.jstor.org/stable/26222117 * https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/rob ...

, Cambridge University Press, 2006, p. 764 He was supported by the king of Sweden,

Gustav III Gustav III (29 March 1792), also called ''Gustavus III'', was King of Sweden from 1771 until his assassination in 1792. He was the eldest son of Adolf Frederick of Sweden and Queen Louisa Ulrika of Prussia. Gustav was a vocal opponent of what ...

, in his efforts to find the

Philosopher's Stone The philosopher's stone or more properly philosophers' stone (Arabic: حجر الفلاسفة, , la, lapis philosophorum), is a mythic alchemical substance capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold (, from the Greek , "gold", ...

, in order to create gold. In 1782 he led Sweden's mining operations in

. He was also involved in an attempt, supported by Gustav III, to found an anti-slavery colony on the west coast of Africa. Nordenskiöld died in a violent clash between locals in Sierra Leone, where he had moved.

Works

* ''Försök til en chemisk och metallurgisk afhandling'',

1772 * ''Oneiromantien; eller konsten at tyda drömar''. Förra delen, Stockholm 1783 * ''Oneiromantien; eller konsten at tyda drömar''. Andra delen, Stockholm 1783 * ''An ADDRESS to the True MEMBERS of the NEW JERUSALEM CHURCH'',

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

1789 * ''Församlings formen uti det Nya Jerusalem, af August Nordenskjöld Jesu Christi ringaste tiänare'', Kjöpenhamn 1790 * (with Carl Bernhard Wadström and others) ''Plan for a Free Community at Sierra Leone'', 1792

References

External links

Hermeetikko e-books
1754 births 1792 deaths 18th-century Finnish nobility Finnish alchemists Finnish expatriates in Sierra Leone Finnish people murdered abroad 18th-century occultists 18th-century alchemists {{chemist-stub