Jacob Jonas Björnståhl: Resa til Frankrike, Italien, Sweitz, Tyskland, … Turkiet, och Grekeland.Stockholm 1780-1784 First edition, in the original Swedish,in 8vo,complete in six volumes,contemporary green leather over boards, corners slightly bumped,spines richly gilt, text clean and bright, overall in very good condition, a very nice set. Bjornstahl, a brilliant Swedish orientalist and traveler died in Greece, his letters and diaries were edited and released by his close friend, the royal librarian Carl Gjörwell. Björnståhl was not a typical tourist; he was a scholar of Greek language. His account is highly valued as he visited libraries and monasteries (notably Meteora) to search for ancient manuscripts. He provided some of the earliest Western academic descriptions of these remote monastic communities. Unlike many contemporaries who only cared about Ancient Greece, Björnståhl was deeply interested in the modern Greek language and the contemporary life of Greeks under Ottoman rule. He learned modern Greek during his three-year stay in Constantinople.Björnståhl never saw his work published. He fell ill and died in Thessaloniki in 1779, just as he was completing his Greek travels. His burial in Thessaloniki became a point of interest for later Swedish travelers. Bjornstahl was an ardent Philhellene. As he died on the field, the work containing his Greek journals have a poignant, almost legendary status in travel bibliography.One milestone book for the birth of Philhellenism in north Europe.