Already in 1969 my old
friend and AFU colleague Anders Liljegren began taking an active interest in
ufology, placing an ad in the local paper, looking for UFO-interested people. A
small informal group was formed, When the national organization UFO-Sweden
was founded in 1970 the group joined UFO-Sweden and was renamed Norrköpings
UFO-förening (Norrköping UFO Society). They rented a small habitat not far
from the present AFU premises.
Anders Liljegren, October 1971 at the premises of Norrköpings UFO-förening
As a young teenager I
had read all the UFO books found in my parents library and when I introduced my
friend and schoolmate Kjell Jonsson to these books he immediately became
intensely fascinated by the subject and entered a subscription to Flying Saucer
Review. In November 1970 we contacted the newly formed UFO-Sweden, which
resulted in our founding a local group, UFO-Södertälje, later Södertälje
UFO-Center. I met Anders Liljegren for
the first time in January 1971, when entering senior high school studies at
Norrköping. We had both of us founded local UFO-Sweden groups and soon became
good friends. Already from the beginning Anders was the down-to-earth practical
realist in UFO matters and when I now and then went too far out on a limb in
the UFO and paranormal world, Anders pulled me back with his critical common
sense.
Kjell Jonsson, August 29, 1971. Notice the UFO button
During the first years
of the 1970s the UFO-Sweden ideology was heavily influenced by a combination of
Donald Keyhoe ETI theory and new age philosophy. One of the objectives was to
achieve an ”official recognition of the extraterrestrial origin of the flying
saucers”. On the positive side, UFO-Sweden began the first organized field
investigations of UFO incidents and many serious research oriented ufologists
became active members. Anders, Kjell and I participated in the UFO-Sweden convention
1971. A problem was the often rather absurd statements in media by the first
chairman Carl-Axel Jonzon. In 1968 and 1970 there had been two presumed landing
cases in different parts of Sweden. By a funny coincidence both places were
called Anten och both of the observers were named Johansson. When Carl-Axel
Jonzon was interviewed on TV during the 1971 UFO-Sweden convention he claimed
the organization was expecting a third landing at another Enebacken and that
the UFO witness would probably again be called Johansson. Statements like these
were detrimental to the public image of Swedish ufology.
In the middle from left Kjell Jonsson, Håkan Blomqvist, Anders Liljegren together at the 1971 UFO-Sweden annual meeting
In spite of these
problems Anders, Kjell and I continued our active work within UFO-Sweden. In
August 1972 Anders started publishing a small newsletter Ufologen (The
Ufologist) concentrating on UFO reports. But in the Autumn of 1972 we became
more and more discontented with the ideology and public image of UFO-Sweden.
The organization was at this time very much information, or ET missionary,
oriented with the idea to build a large public organization lobbying the
authorities to start UFO research. In an effort to create a more serious national
organization Anders and I formulated a ”Suggestion for a Democratic
re-organization of UFO-Sweden”, which emphasized more and better research. But this
idea was more or less rejected.
Beginning in February
1973 Anders, Kjell and I started to seriously consider the possibility of
leaving UFO-Sweden and creating a new research oriented group. Not an easy
decision as Anders headed the reporting center in UFO-Sweden and I information
and PR. We had by this time been very much influenced by the writings of
Jacques Vallee, John Keel and Allen Hynek. On March 2, 1973 Anders phoned me
and after some discussion we decided to officially leave UFO-Sweden on the
coming planning conference March 17, 1973.
Our public defection
during the conference on March 17 naturally resulted in much confusion and speculation.
We wanted to be entirely honest and open to all members regarding the reasons
for our decision and distributed a letter to all groups: ”Why we leave the
UFO-Sweden work”. In this paper we tried to explain our research ideology: ”It
is a paradox that we try to inform (i.e. convince) the public about the
existence of a phenomenon whos nature we hardly try to investigate in depth”. In
this paper wee also published a quote from Jacques Vallee´s Passport To
Magonia.
March 17, 1973 became
the official founding day for what we decided to call Arbetsgruppen för ufologi
– AFU, (The Working Team for Ufology). It was an informal group consisting of
three members, Håkan Blomqvist, Anders Liljegren and Kjell Jonsson. The
newsletter Ufologen now became our official AFU publication. All three of us
were very bookish and avid readers. Especially Kjell Jonsson who already in
1972 started collecting UFO books and creating a lending library as
a service to the UFO-Sweden field investigators. This library, in 1973, became instead
a AFU project.
During 1973-1974 we
were rather indecisive regarding what should be our main focus and what direction
AFU should take. Our aim was building a foundation for serious UFO research in
Sweden but in 1974 both Anders Liljegren and I were occupied with personal and
practical problems. I suffered from a severe depression during the Spring and
Summer 1974. Our magazine Ufologen was folded in the Spring of 1974 and in the
Autumn I moved to Stockholm and began my studies at Stockholms University. Both
Anders Liljegren and I had now become rather passive members of AFU.
The AFU gang 1975
In the Spring of 1974
Lennart Johansson, Stockholms UFO-Center, donated his entire collection, around
200 UFO books, to AFU. The collection became an important part of the AFU
library. In an interview I did with Kjell Jonsson in 1977 he said that this
donation further inspired him to continue building a UFO library. As he planned
to become a librarian he felt that it was in this way he could benefit ufology.
The library was housed in his very small, one room apartment and it only
consisted of two bookshelves.
The practical work of
keeping AFU alive now rested on the shoulders of Kjell Jonsson. In a letter
written September 30, 1974 to a Swedish ufologist he tried to explain the
situation: "I am now the only active AFU representative. AFU has closed
down all former activities, our magazine Ufologen and field investigations.
Instead I am presently engaged in planning a lending library of books and
magazines and will also serve ufologists with copies of magazine
articles." This was the beginning of what later became the large archive
and library. So the credit for the library and archive idea should go to Kjell
Jonsson who kept AFU going during the first years.
In the beginning of
1975 my social and personal life had stabilized and the UFO interest and
activity returned. In March 1975 I started publishing AFU Nyhetsblad (AFU
Newsletter), a venture that Anders Liljegren continued from 1976 until 2008,
all in all 52 issues. From a very humble beginning the library continued to
grow but between 1974-1980 it was mainly
a one man enterprice handled by Kjell Jonsson. With his gallant idealism he
spent a lot of time and his own money to run AFU.
Kjell Jonsson and the two book shelves, August 1977
By 1980, as several
ufologists began donating books and magazines to our library, the international
contacts increased and because of our new name – Archives for UFO Research - we realized that we couldn´t just function as
an informal group. So in January 1980 AFU was registred as a formal foundation
with a governing board and bylaws. But our greatest problem was lack of space
as the entire library was housed in Kjell Jonson´s small one room apartment in
Södertälje. Anders Liljegren succeeded in finding a 38 square meters basement
facility in Norrköping and on November 15, 1980 the AFU library was transported
to our new premises. Norrköping was chosen as our new headquarters for
practical reasons. Anders had a steady job and the rent for the facility was
reasonable. With our new premises AFU entered an era of continued expansion.
