The Bakweri people of Mount Cameroon, an active volcano on the coast of West Africa a few degrees north of the equator, have had a varied and at times exciting history which has brought them into contact, not only with other West African peoples, but with merchants, missionaries, soldiers and administrators from Portugal, Holland, England, Jamaica, Sweden, Germany and more recently France.

In the 1880s two Swedes were living on the upper slopes of the Cameroon Mountain. One of them, Knutson, wrote a long memoir of his time in Cameroon (1883-1895). It gives fascinating insights into everyday life in pre-colonial Cameroon.