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Archives For the Unexplained (AFU)

Archives For the Unexplained (AFU), formerly the Archives for UFO Research was founded in Sweden in 1973 and today is one of the most complete repositories for UFO data and UFO folklore in the world. The collection has more than 5000 books, 15,000 case reports, 35,000 news clippings and thousands of photos, audio cassettes and videos¹.

The organization’s objective is “to document and preserve the history of UFO research and ufology, particularly the Swedish and Scandinavian part of that history. It is financed not by membership fees but by the engaged and supporting sponsors.”

History

AFU started as an idea in 1973¹ and was named simply as ‘Arbetsgruppen för ufologi’, Swedish for “The study group for ufology”. Three people, Håkan Blomqvist, Kjell Jonsson and Anders Liljegren, broke out of a larger group discontented with the ideology and public image of that group. Specifically, after three years of work for UFO-Sweden, the three felt that research, which was their main interest, was of secondary importance in the UFO-Sweden scheme and thus broke off into their own organization.

In the 2000s, the collection began growing beyond UFOs to all unexplained phenomena. In April 2013, the AFU board voted to keep the acronym but change the name from Archives for UFO Research to Archives For the Unexplained.

References

  1. AFU History