Finding Atlantis: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World

Notes

Frequently cited works in the notes have been identified by the following abbreviations:

Atl.

Olof Rudbeck.

Olf Rudbecks Atland eller Manheim … Olaus Rudbecks Atlantica, svenska originaltexten.

Vols. I–IV. Uppsala, 1937–1950.

Bref

Claes Annerstedt, ed.

Bref af Olof Rudbeck d.ä. rörande Uppsalas universitet.

Vols. I–IV. Uppsala, 1893–1905.

Gylf.

Snorri Sturluson.

Edda Gylfaginning.

KB

Kungliga biblioteket.

KVHAA

Henrik Schück.

Kgl. Vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien. Dess förhistoria och historia.

Vols. I–IV. Stockholm, 1932–1935.

LUB

Lunds universitetsbibliotek.

RA

Riksarkivet.

RS

Royal Society.

ULA

Uppsala landsarkiv.

UUÅ

Uppsala universitets årskrift.

UUB

Uppsala universitetsbibliotek.

UUH

Claes Annerstedt.

Uppsala universitets historia.

Vols. I–III. Uppsala, 1877–1914.

For readers wanting to know more about Olof Rudbeck’s life, Gunnar Eriksson has written an excellent scholarly biography, Rudbeck 1630–1702: Liv, lärdom, dröm i barockens Sverige (2002). Its balanced analysis and rigorous treatment make the book a landmark study, and I only wish it had been available for me during the first seven years of my work. Eriksson’s Atlantic Vision (1994) is also of great importance; special thanks to Eriksson for giving me a copy back in 1995, when I first started to be fascinated with this subject. Claes Annerstedt’s Bref is a gold mine of information, both for its collection of primary documents and for Annerstedt’s insightful commentaries. Annerstedt’s history of Uppsala University, UUH, was also helpful, as was P. D. A. Atterbom’s overview of Rudbeck’s achievements, Minne af professoren i medicinen vid Uppsala universitet Olof Rudbeck den äldre (1850–51). Henrik Schück’s history of Swedish antiquities, KVHAA, and Sten Lindroth’s Svensk lärdomshistoria. Stormaktstiden (1975) were likewise as indispensable to my work as they were inspiring in their scholarly expertise.

Among the many other secondary sources that have helped me understand Olof Rudbeck are Nordström’s De yverbornes ö. Bidrag till Atlanticans förhistoria (1930), Strindberg’s Bondenöd och stormaktsdröm. Studier över skedet 1630–1718 (1937), Nelson’s commentaries to the latest edition of the Atlantica (1937–50), Johannes Rudbeckius’s Bibliotheca Rudbeckiana (1918), and Per Dahl’s dissertation, Svensk ingenjörskonst under stormaktstiden: Olof Rudbecks tekniska undervisning och praktiskaverksamhet (1995). Michael Roberts, David Kirby, John Greenway, Eli Heckscher, Ingvar Andersson, Kurt Johannesson, Peter Englund, and Gunnar Broberg are also outstanding. It was John Greenway’s provocative discussion of seventeenth-century Sweden that first caught my interest in Olof Rudbeck’s search: Golden Horns: Mythic Imagination and the Nordic Past (1977), 71–82.

In addition to Atlantica I–IV and its accompanying Atlas volume, the present work draws on a number of primary sources housed in Scandinavian archives. The National Library (also known as the Royal Library) in Stockholm has Rudbeck’s own handwritten notes about the early history of Sweden, as well as a copy of his maps with notes in his own writing (Atland tabulae med anteckningar av O Rudbecks hand F.m.73). Some of Rudbeck’s other miscellaneous notes, including library loans, are found in Olaus Rudbecks autografsamlingen and Olof Rudbeck den äldre collectanea (F.e.16). The Swedish Riksarkivet (National Archives) has many of Rudbeck’s letters in the De la Gardie collection, especially the material relating to Uppsala University (Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet Arkiv E.11:5–E. 11:8). The Swedish National Archives also has Rudbeck’s letters to King Charles XI (Karl XI) and the Regency Government (6459.52, vol. 14; 1133.10, vol. 32), as well as his letters to other prominent Swedes.

Uppsala University has a wonderful survival of Rudbeck’s quest—one of his own notebooks, found in Olof Rudbecks collectanea (R 13)—and material, too, on various aspects of Rudbeck’s life: Olof Rudbeck d.ä. (X 240), Rudbecks biografi (X 208), as well as Bibliographia Sveo-Gothica XV Palmsköld samlingen 344, Virorum illustrium Suec. litterae No. XVI litterae Palmsk. samlingen 370 (W 848). Rudbeck’s handwritten notes on many other matters, ranging from old runes (R 551) to astronomy, including observations of comets (A 312), are also here. Claes Annerstedt donated his notes about the history of Uppsala University (for Rudbeck, see especially U40:4, U40:5, U40:6, and U40:63). Lund University also had a sizable collection of Rudbeck’s original letters to Chancellor de la Gardie in the De la Gardiska släktarkiven: Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (93:1). Some of Rudbeck’s other letters, particularly from later in his life, are found at Uppsala länds arkiv (Länsstyrelsen i Uppsala län. Landskansliet biographica I. D.IV.A, 63 and 64, as well as Landskansliet skrivelser från akademiska konsistoriet och rektorsämbetet D III 1). The Royal Society in London has preserved copies of its letters to Rudbeck (LBC 3.253, LBC 4.386, LBC 4.49), his letters to them (LBC. 8.273), and the actual copy of Atlantica sent to the society in the autumn of 1681.

A note on Swedish spelling: I have not changed or modernized Rudbeck’s words. Also, some words appearing in his etymologies no longer exist in modern Swedish.

INTRODUCTION

The Uppsala fire is described in many sources, particularly Eenberg’s En utförlig relation om den grufweliga eldzwåda och skada, som sig tildrog med Uppsala stad den 16 Maii, åhr 1702 (1703), published when the city was still in ruins. Eenberg reports the especially dry spring that year (6–7), the chaos prevailing as the fire erupted (16–17), the damage to the cathedral (27ff.), and the devastation afterwards. Two of Rudbeck’s letters to Chancellor Bengt Oxenstierna reveal his own perspective on the catastrophe; both are often cited as valuable eyewitness reports (17 May 1702 and 26 May 1702, published in Annerstedt’s Bref IV, 387–90). The image of fire raining from the heavens comes from the first letter, as does Rudbeck’s other personal contributions, such as loaning his horses to neighbors.

Eenberg also notes how much Rudbeck suffered from the fire, including the loss of his house and the works he had kept in the cathedral (24, 31, 41). The legend of Rudbeck climbing atop a burning building is found in many of the older secondary accounts, including Atterbom (1851), 115–17. The literal accuracy is questioned by Annerstedt, Bref IV, cclxxviii–cclxxix, commenting on its absence from the oldest accounts, though he notes the well-known oral tradition of Rudbeck’s action and comments on how it is not contradicted by known facts. This uncertainty is why I have used the word legend.

Rudbeck’s words on so many “unbelievable” findings come from his letter to Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, 28 December 1674, Bref II, 98–99. The rapid pace of the discoveries was still surprising Rudbeck, with the words about uncovering “unbelievable things” found in a letter dated 3 December 1676 (RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:5). Deep into the project at this point, the discoveries were coming so quickly that he hoped to publish a “small addition” or “another book.” See Rudbeck’s own words, for instance, in Atl. I, 408, or Atl. I, 428, and the phrase itself, Atl. II, 15. At about this point in the printing of the first volume, the references to future continuations become more and more frequent (Atl. I, 458, 460, 476, 490).

The phrase “oracle of the north,” one of the many ways readers praised Rudbeck’s contributions, comes from Engelbrecht Kempfer’s letter to Rudbeck, 20 February 1683, printed in Auctarium testimoniorum de Cl. Rudbeckii Atlantica (1685), reprinted in Nelson’s edition of Atl. IV (1950), 48. Isaac Newton’s letter requesting Rudbeck’s Atlantica was published by A. R. Hall in “Further Newton Correspondence,” Notes and Queries 37 (1982).

The conflicts Rudbeck faced in the course of his search were enormous. Strindberg reads Rudbeck’s Atlantis theories as a “romantic compensation” for his struggles and misery, Bondenöd och stormaktsdröm (1937), 246ff. One reason for the lack of general knowledge about Rudbeck outside Sweden is the fact that Atlantica has never been translated into English, German, French, or any language besides Latin. Moreover, there are surprisingly few accounts about Olof Rudbeck in languages other than Scandinavian, and works in English are especially few. Apart from a couple of short studies in academic journals, Eriksson analyzes Rudbeck’s methods as an experimental natural philosopher in his scholarly Atlantic Vision (1994), and John Greenway treats him in the context of the various images of the Nordic past in his Golden Horns (1977), 77–82.

Sten Lindroth notes that few printers dared to publish a work of over six or seven printer sheets in length (Stormaktstiden, 73–74), Atlantica, by contrast, with almost 900 pages on some 225 printer sheets, was a massive undertaking.

CHAPTER 1: PROMISES

Information about the intellectual and social environment of Uppsala University in the middle of the seventeenth century is found in Rudbeck’s letters about Uppsala University, printed in Annerstedt, Bref I, xxvii ff. and Annerstedt’s UUH I, 378–80; II, 101ff; III, 335; in Lindroth’s Uppsala universitet 1477–1977 (1976), 41–44; and in Lindroth’s sweep of Swedish history of science, Stormaktstiden, especially volume III, 19–21, 38ff. The selected pages discuss Gustavus Adolphus’s contributions to the university, as well as document the riotous student life that flourished at the time.

When Rudbeck arrived at Uppsala in February 1648, rumors of the peace ending the Thirty Years’ War had been circulating for some time. They were soon confirmed when the first of many treaties, collectively known as the Peace of Westphalia, was signed in the fall of that year. The phrase “drunk with victory and bloated with booty” comes from Michael Roberts, Essays in Swedish History (1966), 233. Rudbeck’s youth, including his attempts to follow his older brothers to Uppsala, is described in many sources, though see especially Eriksson (2002), 17–32. Another valuable discussion is K. W. Herdin’s “Olof Rudbeck d.ä:s födelse och tidigare ungdom,” in the collection of scholarly articles published on the three hundredth anniversary of Rudbeck’s birth, Rudbecksstudier: Festskrift vid Uppsala universitets minnesfest till högtidlighållande av 300-Årsminnet av Olof Rudbeck d.ä:s födelse (1930).

Even though disciplines were not rigidly fixed, and polymaths moved relatively freely among them, few would argue that Uppsala’s medical school in the 1650s was the best place for Rudbeck’s work. His first teacher, Professor Johannes Franckenius, was busy in the alchemy lab (Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 176–77). Rudbeck’s work under him is discussed in Eriksson (2002), 46–47, and Lindroth, 416. Another one of Rudbeck’s medical teachers at Uppsala, Olaus Stenius, was famous in his day, though trained originally as an astronomer. Rudbeck would make his discovery of the lymphatic glands with “almost no instruction” from the medical faculty, according to Eriksson (1994), 1.

One main challenge to anatomists in Rudbeck’s day was how to find bodies for dissection. Cases of grave robbing, body snatching, and other macabre means to obtain specimens were well known in early modern Europe. After Rudbeck was named professor of medicine, he would write several letters to his patron, De la Gardie, trying to receive help in gaining access to bodies. See, for instance, his undated letter in 1682, Bref III, 187.

The discovery of the lymphatic glands was described by Rudbeck himself in an often cited letter, for instance Eriksson (2002), 58–59. The discovery is discussed in there, 59–65, as well as in Robin Fåhræus, “Rudbecks upptäckt av lymfkärlssystemet,” UUÅ (1930), 3–9; Lindroth’s Stormaktstiden, 416–17; and Lindroth’s “Harvey, Descartes and Young Olaus Rudbeck,” in the Journal of the History of Medicine (1957). Rudbeck’s discovery of the lymphatic glands was “the first and for a long time the only significant Swedish contribution to European medical research” (Stormaktstiden, 414).

My discussion of Queen Christina’s court is based on a number of works, particularly Susana Åkerman’s Queen Christina and Her Circle (1991), Sven Stolpe’s Christina of Sweden (1966), Ernst Cassirer’s, Drottning Christina och Descartes (1940), and Lindroth’s Stormaktstiden, 197–204, 121ff. Descriptions of Queen Christina’s voice and face are from the French diplomat Pierre Chanut, and the opening of her grave is reported in von Platen’s Queen Christina of Sweden: Documents and Studies (1966). For more on Descartes’ life, see Jack Rochford Vrooman’s René Descartes: A Biography (1970) and Richard Watson’s Cogito, ergo sum (2002). The story of Descartes’ skull remaining in Sweden after his death comes from Jerker Rosén’s “Kristina’s hovliv,” in Drottning Kristina: Vetenskap och kultur blomstrar, in Den svenska historien VI (1979), 144.

Uppsala castle and Christina’s mannerisms were described by English diplomat Bulstrode Whitelocke, who got to know the queen and the court rather well on his stay in the country 1653–54. Queen Christina’s “chair of state of crimson velvet” is noted in Bulstrode Whitelocke’s A Journal of the Swedish Embassy 1653 and 1654 (1855), 23 December 1653, 231. The queen’s reaction to the demonstration was, in Rudbeck’s words, “fire and flames” (eld och lågor). The young Uppsala student described another visit to Queen Christina’s court, when he sang the part of a shepherd boy and the queen a kammarpiga (Atl. I, 437; II, 442).

There is some uncertainty, actually, about which “beautiful day” in the spring of 1652 Rudbeck performed his public demonstration. He always said April, though there has been speculation that it was actually May. This is because Rudbeck could have been translating the Swedish Julian calendar into the Gregorian; the latter was the calendar then in use in the Netherlands, where he happened to be at the time (and this would also mean a change of ten days, no small advantage in a debate over awarding priority for the discovery of the lymphatic glands). The dispute with Bartholin would rage fiercely, with one of the Danish physician’s students, Martin Bogdan, being particularly aggressive. For more on this conflict, see Eriksson (2002), 51, and Lindroth’s Stormaktstiden, 419–21. See also Johannes Rudbeck’s “Bibliografiska anteckningar om Olof Rudbeck den äldres anatomiska skrifter och striden med Thomas Bartholin” Samlaren (1904).

For more on the Swedish Age of Greatness, see David Kirby’s Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period: The Baltic World 1492–1772 (1990), and just about anything by Michael Roberts. The size of the Swedish empire is discussed by Roberts in The Swedish Imperial Experience 1560–1718 (1979), 7–9, 83, 97. Sven Lundkvist’s essay “The Experience of Empire: Sweden as a Great Power,” in Michael Roberts, ed., Sweden’s Age of Greatness 1632–1718 (1973), 20–57, is also valuable. Roberts calls the administration “one of the best developed, most efficient and most modern administrations in Europe” in Gustavus Adolphus: A History of Sweden 1611–1632 (1953–58), vol. I, 278.

Strindberg discusses the poverty, the beggars, and the bands of outlaws roaming the country (1937), 102–5, with the image of them filling the roads on page 112. On page 25, Strindberg paints a vivid picture of war consuming national resources, and worsening the country’s social problems. The book, still controversial in some academic circles, is an opinionated and lively read. Descriptions of Stockholm in the narrative are taken from Whitelocke’s Journal (1855): the accounts of the roads and the inns, 30 November 1653, 175ff. The forests are described in many places, including 9 December 1653, 195–96.

The Västerås wizard was Matthias Andreas Biörk (or, in his Latinized name, Biörkstadius), also known in Sweden for his mathematical work. Thanks to Gunnar Eriksson (2002), 27, for information about Biörk. Rudbeck’s relationship with his father is discussed by Eriksson (2002), 17–23, and with his mother, 23–24, as well as by K. W. Herdin, “Olof Rudbeck d.ä.s födelse och tidigare ungdom,” in Rudbecksstudier (1930). See also, among others, Hans Cnattingius, Johannes Rudbeckius och hans europeiska bakgrund. En kyrkorätts-historisk studie in Uppsala universitets årsskrift (1946), and H. Scheffer, Johannes Rudbeckius: En kämpagestalt från Sveriges storhetstid (1914). The stories of Rudbeck playing on a hobbyhorse and the clothes are from a letter written in 1696 and printed in several accounts. “To sit on his bottom” were Rudbeck’s own words on the occasion. Rudbeck’s mother as “glittering sunshine” comes from Isak Fehr’s article in Ord och Bild (1897).

CHAPTER 2: ORACLE OF THE NORTH

Benjamin Franklin’s words are cited in Edmund S. Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (2002), 33. Rudbeck’s stay in Holland was, by all accounts, significant. Fries noted how few places would be better suited for his development than seventeenth-century Netherlands (Den svenska odlingens stormän 1: Olof Rudbeck den äldre, Urban Hiärne och Jesper Svedberg [1896], 7). For more on the achievements of the Dutch at this time, see, among others, Jonathon Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall 1477–1806 (1995); Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (1987); Paul Zumthor, Daily Life in Rembrandt’s Holland (1963); and Mike Dash, Tulipmania: The Story of the World’s Most Coveted Flower and the Extraordinary Passions It Aroused (1999).

One contact Rudbeck made in the Netherlands, his former teacher the Leiden University professor of anatomy Johannes van Horne, would later encourage him to pursue his goal of writing a Nova animalium Fabrica, and, in effect, accomplish for animal physiology what the anatomist Vesalius had achieved for human anatomy, 12 July 1657, printed in Auctarium Testimoniorum (1685) in Atl. IV, 65, 234. He wrote again on 15 February 1666, Atl. IV, 240. Rudbeck’s offers of employment were noted in a letter describing his early years, 9 February 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 208–9.

The early history of Uppsala’s botanical garden was described in his letters, Rudbeck calling it his “firstborn son,” 1 March 1685 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 218). For scholarly accounts, see, among others, Eriksson (2002), 198–207; Rutger Sernander, “Olof Rudbeck d.ä. i den svenska botanikens historia,” UUÅ (1930), 10–22; and M. B. Swederus, “Olof Rudbeck den äldre: Huvudsakligen betraktad i sin verksamhet som naturforskare. En skildring,” in Nordisk Tidskrift (1878). Rudbeck’s botanical garden can be seen today most commonly in the background of the 100 Swedish kronor note. This garden is now the Linneträdgård, named after his successor Carl Linnaeus. Olof Rudbeck’s son, Olof junior, played an important role in Linnaeus’s early botanical career, even hiring him as a tutor for the Rudbeck children.

The reputation of a happy marriage for the Rudbecks was also confirmed by Eriksson (2002), 88 and 159, and the description of the various items in their house is from a contemporary description cited on page 170. A discussion of the alleged Caesarean section is found in O. T. Hult’s “Några ord om det Rudbeckska ’kejsarsnittet,” in Rudbecksstudier (1930), 116–20. For a sample of the reception in learned circles, see the letter to Rudbeck by Oldenburg at the Royal Society, 23 July 1670 (RS, LBC.4.49).

“When France catches cold” were the words of Klemens von Metternich, describing the revolution of 1830, and are cited in Raymond F. Betts, Europe in Retrospect (1979), 34. My description of Olof Rudbeck is based on many surviving portraits, including van Mijten’s oil painting (1696). The single best source for seeing the various images over the years is Rudbeckius’s analysis of Rudbeck portraits in Rudbecksstudier (1930), 35–62. The mustache is Rudbeck’s own description, Atl. III, 517, and the fashion reference comes from Rudbeckius, Bibliotheca Rudbeckiana (1918), 36. Johan Esberg’s speech (1703) noted the cheeks, eyes, shoulders, and clothes as well.

The contents of the Uppsala anatomy theater come from Esberg’s description in his memorial speech: “Laudatio funebris qua polyhistori magno medico longe celeberrimo, dn Olao Rudebeckio patri in regia universitate Upsaliensi . . .” (1703). Rudbeck described one interesting skeleton with the arteries and veins colored in, kept in the theater, already made by the end of Queen Christina’s reign (1654), in a letter of 9 February 1685 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 207). Håkan Håkansson’s Anatomens öga: Bildvärld och världsbild på kunskapens näthinna (1995) has a valuable discussion of early modern anatomy and anatomy theaters. One important primary source is a letter Rudbeck wrote on 7 March 1685 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 219–23). Opinion differs on the capacity of the theater; Rudbeck said it could hold as many as five hundred, and Eriksson agrees (194), though other observers have pointed to two hundred, which some have even doubted as too high.

Rudbeck’s architectural work can be seen in the Atlas volume to Atlantica, though it must be remembered that the reproduced images do not always show the buildings as they actually appeared in Rudbeck’s day. Some of the drawings were plans, never fulfilled, and others purely dream projects. See, for instance, Josephson, Det hyperboreiska Uppsala (1945), 11.

Rudbeck’s inventions, such as a technique for improving Archimedean hydraulics, his means of recycling old screws, and a device for hoisting boats into the air in order to repair all the sides at will, are found in many of his letters, including Rudbeck to Bengt Oxenstierna, 23 April 1695 (KB, Autograf samling); Rudbeck to Bengt Oxenstierna, 2 December 1700 (Annerstedt, Bref IV, 381); Rudbeck to Baron Johan Hoghusen, 3 December 1699 (ULA, Länsstyrelsen i Uppsala län: Landskansliet biographica I. D.IV.A 64). The claim that Rudbeck was born under a lucky star is from Esberg’s “Laudatio funebris” (1703).

CHAPTER 3: REMARKABLE CORRESPONDENCES

The opening quotation is taken from Fyodor Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment, translated by David Magarshack (1987), 20. The reference to Tyrfing as the “keenest of all blades” comes from Christopher Tolkien’s translation, The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise (1960), 2. Tolkien’s edition also prints the opening of Verelius’s Uppsala manuscript in appendix A. For more on how the Hervararsaga was read in the late seventeenth century, see Schück’s KVHAA and Vilhelm Gödel’s Fornnorsk-isländsk litteratur i Sverige (till antikvitetskollegiets inrättande) (1897).

Rudbeck’s mapmaking skills were well known among his contemporaries. His work for Carl Gustav Wrangel comes from his letters of 16 May 1674 and 21 May 1674 (RA, Skokloster samlingen N:O 75–E 8202). In another example of how Rudbeck’s expertise was valued among the Swedish elite, King Charles XI requested his help in the selection of land surveyors, mining officials, and other experts for work in the Baltic. Rudbeck’s response is preserved in a letter to the king, 3 June 1688, RA, Skrivelser till konungen Karl XI, vol. 32.

“It was like a dream” was how Rudbeck described the sensation in a letter, 12 November 1677, KB, Engestr.b.iv.1.30 (N:o2), printed in Klemming, Anteckningar om Rudbecks Atland (1863), Supplement A. Another valuable source is his dedication of Atl. I, 3–5. On tracing the origins of the project, Johan Nordström’s De yverbornes ö (1930), most notably, argues in favor of a connection through the legendary Hyperboreans. The narrative builds upon Nordström’s thesis and a comparison with Verelius’s Hervararsaga (1672), which Rudbeck used in making his map.

Homer’s description of life in the Elysian Fields as “the dream of ease” is in the Odyssey IV, line 601, and the description of its games, dances, and “brilliant light” in Virgil, Aeneid VI, line 637, with the meadows and riverbanks, VI, lines 674–75. Rudbeck discusses the idyllic Elysian Fields most fully in Atl. I, 341–45, 352. Later treatments follow, developed and enlarged, including an examination of the Odödsåkern, a polar paradise in the Hervararsaga and broadly reminiscent of the classical Elysian Fields. The lack of snowfall, storms, or powerful rains common in classical accounts are, for Rudbeck, descriptions of the land during the summertime.

Rudbeck’s words on “peace of mind” and “pen to paper” are found in his letter of 12 November 1677 in Klemming (1863), A. The time of Rudbeck’s insight is not known for certain. Many older accounts simply assert, without much support, the early 1670s, but the late 1660s seems more likely. Verelius was working on the Norse Hervararsaga by at least 1663, lecturing regularly in the late 1660s. The work was already well enough advanced by August 1669 to have a test printing ready, and to be sent off to De la Gardie. Rudbeck’s letters in the late 1660s also show a heightened interest in antiquities, and his references to the ancients become more frequent. Gunnar Eriksson is another person who believes the origins lie in the late 1660s (Atlanticans naturalhistoria: En antologi, 7).

The study of Norse sagas in Sweden essentially opened with Verelius, according to Gödel (1897), 216, and more in depth, 241–55. Verelius used Rugman’s manuscript for Götrek and Rolf’s Saga (251) and Herraud and Bose’s Saga (254). Verelius’s title, position, and background are summarized by Lindroth, 275–82, and more fully in KVHAA. Gödel also printed the official list of Verelius’s duties as Professor of the Antiquities of the Fatherland (1897), 245–46. Verelius’s lectures were assessed by Schück as among the “very best held at Uppsala University in the seventeenth century,” KVHAA I, 231–32. Beginning at 8:00 A.M. and the few students in attendance come from Gödel (1897), 246. Rudbeck’s appreciation of Verelius’s insights can be found in many places in Atlantica, particularly his dedication, unpaginated in the original, page 3 in the modern 1937 edition. It is no coincidence that the first volume of Atlantica would be dedicated to Verelius, “its first cause” and “its beginning.”

Excerpts of Verelius’s letter to the chancellor on behalf of Rudbeck’s project, written 20 December 1673, are cited in Atl. I, 3–4. Another, though smudged, copy is found at UUB, Palmsk. samlingen (344). Loccenius’s letter in support of Rudbeck’s project, 22 December 1673, can be found in the same two places. Loccenius’s reaction was noted in Rudbeck’s letter of 12 November 1677, in Klemming (1863), A, and Loccenius’s words on Atlantica’s potential in his letter of 22 December 1673. As for the Saxo and Shakespeare stories, compare Amleth, Gurutha, Feng, and an unnamed “fair woman” with Hamlet, Gertrude, King Claudius, and Ophelia in The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

My discussion of the Norse Renaissance is based on the work of Gödel, Schück, and many others, including Thor Beck’s Northern Antiquities in French Learning and Literature 1755–1855 (1934), Anton Blanck’s Den nordiska renässansen i sjuttonhundratalets litteratur (1911), and Frank Edgar Farley’s Scandinavian Influences in the English Romantic Movement (1903). Jørgensen has discussed the Danish context in Historieforskning og historieskrivning i Danmark indtil aar 1800 (1931). Gifts, exchanges, and piracy, among other things, caused the sagas to circulate in early modern Scandinavia. The phrase “dragon brooding” comes from Lee M. Hollander’s commentary (citing a contemporary) in Poetic Edda, xi.

The great infusion of sagas and eddas in the seventeenth century, including the seizure of Jörgen Seefeldt’s library at Ringsted, and De la Gardie’s purchase of Stefanus Johannes Stephanius’s large collection of books and manuscripts, is discussed in many sources, e.g., Gödel (1897), 104–6, 90–95. Rugman’s manuscripts are analyzed here, too, 95ff., 113–22, and 122ff. On Rugman selling many manuscripts to Verelius, see Gödel, 158. Rugman’s arrival in Uppsala as a “gift of heaven” comes from Schück, KVHAA I, 203–4.

My account of the relationship between the Greeks and the barbarians is based on many works, including Momigliano’s Alien Wisdom: The Limits of Hellenization (1975), Paul Cartledge’s The Greeks: A Portrait of Self and Others (1993), and E. J. Bickerman’s “Origines Gentium,” in Classical Philology 47 (1952). Edith Hall’s Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition Through Tragedy (1989) shows the richness of the material by focusing on the stage of Attic tragedy. Rudbeck’s analysis of the ancient term barbarian is elaborated more fully in Atl. I, 433–34. Of the many works providing an understanding of early modern Gothic romanticism, Svennung’s Zur Geschichte des Goticismus (1967) overviews both the European phenomenon and its impact in Sweden (68–96). Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 249–74, was also very helpful, as well as his Medeltiden: Reformationstiden, 166–72, 288–309. Strindberg recounts the history of the phenomenon against a background of poverty and want (1937), 40–77. See also Nordström (1930); Greenway (1977), 73–82; and Kurt Johannesson, The Renaissance of the Goths in Sixteenth-Century Sweden: Johannes and Olaus Magnus as Politicians and Historians, translated by James Larson (1991), as well as Holmquist, “Till Sveriges ära. Det götiska arvet,” Stormaktstid. Erik Dahlbergh och bilden av Sverige (1992).

Anatomical dissections are discussed many times in Rudbeck’s letters. The comment about carrots and turnips comes from one of his letters to De la Gardie, July 1658, printed by Anders Grape, Bref af Olof Rudbeck d.ä. rörande Uppsala universitet efterskörd in Uppsala universitets årskrift (1930), 5–8. One of Rudbeck’s lessons in architecture survives and was printed by Josephson, Det Hyperboreiska Uppsala, 85–89. Given his discussions here as well as in Atlantica, Josephson calls Rudbeck Sweden’s “first architecture theorist,” 12.

Rudbeck’s love of fireworks and his collection of small cannon are related by many sources. Complaints were made about the noise coming from Rudbeck’s workshops, which often disturbed the sleep of the neighbors (Fries, [1896], 11–12). Of the various descriptions of the waterworks, see Rudbeck’s letter of 7 March 1685 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 223–26). For Rudbeck’s many other activities, see Eriksson (2002). For his engineering and technical work, see Per Dahl’s dissertation (1995).

CHAPTER 4: A CARTESIAN WITCH HUNT

Charlie Chaplin’s words were taken from My Autobiography (1964), 320. The debate surrounding the introduction of Cartesian thought was one of the most passionate in Swedish history (“starkaste strid” in Annerstedt’s words, UUH II, 91). “Suspect philosophy” is taken from the letter of protest written by a committee of bishops and theologians to De la Gardie, 19 July 1665.

The Cartesian struggles in Sweden are discussed in Rolf Lindborg’s Descartes i Uppsala: Striderna om “nya filosofien” 1663–1689 (1965). Lindborg gives another account in his essay “De cartesianska striderna,” 17 Uppsatser i svensk idé- och lärdomshistoria (1980). Other valuable treatments are found in Annerstedt, UUH II 91–101; Annerstedt, Bref I, xxxvi–xlii; Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 447–58; and Lindroth’s on the later controversies, 458–65. Richard Watson discusses the European controversies, too, in Cogito, ergo sum (2002), 221ff. Descartes’ words “vain and useless” come from his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking Truth in the Sciences, translated by John Veitch (1974), 40, and “sweep them wholly away,” 48.

Uppsala University, like many universities in the seventeenth century, was in service of the Church. See Eriksson (1994), 10, and Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 16, 79. Rudbeck’s defense in the Cartesian dispute is taken from his letter to Magnus de la Gardie, 7 September 1668, Annerstedt, Bref I, 48–49.

The story of the disgruntled professor of law Håkan Fegraeus comes from Annerstedt’s UUH II, 107–8. The student rampage of destruction is related in II, 103, and the storming of the royal palace in Annerstedt, Bref I, xxviii–xxix. Rudbeck described the violence at the palace in a letter to De la Gardie at the end of February 1667 (Annerstedt, Bref I, 45–46). The sentencing of the students comes from UUH II, 104.

As another sign of the deteriorating economy, salaries were reduced in 1668 to about 590 a year. Uppsala University’s financial problems were based in part on the sharp decline in price for grain, plummeting nearly 50 percent in 1666. This caused the university serious concern because those sales represented a large portion of its income. The economic situation was well covered by Annerstedt’s UUH I, 330–41; II, 63; and especially II, 109–22, which chronicles the transition from a budgetary surplus to a deficit. Annerstedt also overviews the problems in Bref I, xliii–liv. In addition to Rudbeck’s letters during the period, particularly one in 1670 (Annerstedt, Bref II, 78–90), additional information on the Community House is found in Annerstedt, UUH II, 126–34, and Bref II, lx–lxviii.

Arrhenius-Örnhielm’s background is discussed in Lindroth’s Stormaktstiden, 327–28. Rudbeck’s lengthy defense, 1 July 1670, was printed by Annerstedt in Bref I, 52–73. His resignation, however, was refused, and a later direct appeal to the king was also turned down, 20 October 1670 (Annerstedt, Bref II, 75–76). Years later, Rudbeck was still trying to get out of his position as curator.

CHAPTER 5: FOLLOW THE FISH!

The words of the biochemist Albert Szent-Györgyi come from Royston M. Roberts’s discussion of “how accidents become discoveries” in Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science (1989), 245. Rudbeck was working with the “greatest enthusiasm” in his letter to Count de la Gardie, 23 March 1674, Annerstedt, Bref II, 95. “Beautiful things” was one way Rudbeck often referred to his discoveries. “One thousand curses” comes from Rudbeck’s defense, 1 July 1670, Annerstedt, Bref I, 57. The comparison to Achilles appears in Annerstedt, Bref II, lv.

Rudbeck’s method of investigation is elaborated in Atl. I, 81–92. He describes the soil used in the method—the matjord or svartmylla—in Atl. I, 81, and its origins on page 82. The discussion is based on my translation of Rudbeck’s own words: “All thenna Swartmylla samlar sig Årligen meer och meer, men hafwer på åtskilliga orter någon åtskilnad til sin fetma och färg,” Atl. I, 83.

Information about Rudbeck’s trial with the container in his garden, his efforts to seek out difficult places, the interview with Swensson, and the tips to the reader is found in Atl. I, 82–85. The image of the staff and the humus comes from the Atlas volume (table 31, fig. 102). Eriksson discusses the significance of this method (1994), 15–16, 110–11. It is also treated by Eriksson (1984); Swederus, “Olof Rudbeck den äldre: Huvudsakligen betraktad i sin verksamhet som naturforskare. En skildring,” in Nordisk Tidskrift (1878); and Sune Lindqvist’s article “Olof Rudbeck d.ä. som fältarkeolog,” in Rudbecksstudier (1930), 249–58. Translation of Rudbeck’s words on pollution and reference to this early awareness come from Eriksson (1994), 110. Bruce Trigger provides a brief discussion of Rudbeck in his History of Archaeological Thought (1989), 49; and Ole Klindt-Jensen in A History of Scandinavian Archaeology, translated by G. Russell Poole (1975), 30–31.

The effects of the burial-mound investigations on his contemporaries have never been fully examined. There are many cases, though, of people who were reading closely, and taking note. The superintendent general of Pomerania, C. T. Rango, praised the “incomparable” Atlantica, and tried Rudbeck’s methods many times at Greifswald, reporting that it led to accurate results, 8 May 1690, and printed by Nelson (1950), 101. Years before, the Kiel polyhistor D. G. Morhof also admired the “ingenious reasonings” Rudbeck drew by investigating the surface of the earth, 23 June 1681, Nelson (1950), 28. There were of course critiques as well, including a rather lengthy one in the journal Monatliche Unterredungen einiger Guten Freunde von Allerhand Büchern . . . appearing in the months February through July 1690.

Homer’s words about the Achaean heroes at Troy were taken from the Iliad II, lines 472–73. Rudbeck’s discussion of the golden age comes from Atl. I, 39. As a later addition to this theory, explaining why the Swedes were so silent about their great deeds, Rudbeck pointed to an old piece of parchment that referred to a great burning of old books and manuscripts, ordered in 1001 by King Olof Skotking (Atl. III, 12).

The references to the Flood are from Genesis 7:11–12, and Atl. I, 81 and 91. The chronology was discussed in many places in the work, for instance I, 546ff., and the calculations based on population, Atl. I, 34–38. Eriksson treats Rudbeck’s work as an early statistician (1994), 113–17. For more on seventeenth-century views of the Flood, see D. C. Allen’s The Legend of Noah: Renaissance Rationalism in Art, Science, and Letters (1949), though there is unfortunately nothing here on Rudbeck’s theory.

Rudbeck’s discussion on the importance of rivers in the development of civilization is found in Atl. I, 40–41. Newton’s Chronology of the Ancient Kingdoms Amended and his “Short Chronicle from the First Memory of Things in Europe, to the Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great” were published posthumously (1728) and discussed by Frank Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (1963). Despite many eccentricities in the natural philosopher’s published and unpublished work, Manuel argues (page 9) that “the new scientific method pervaded Newton’s most recondite antiquarian investigations.”

No one could rival the north in fish, Atl. I, 56. “Sweden is the inexhaustible cradle of civilization” comes from Professor Musaeus’s Latin oration on 26 April 1688 at Kiel University; the text is reprinted in Nelson (1950), 100. The description of Sweden as rich in forests, flocks, and fish also comes from this speech, as did the magnet comparison.

“Clearer than the sun” and more certain than Greek, Latin, and other literary sources references are found in Atl. I, 91. Rudbeck explains his certainty about why Sweden must have been one of the first lands inhabited after the Flood, Atl. I, 41, as well as 34–41. “The Book of Nature,” a very traditional seventeenth-century metaphor, is found in many places of Rudbeck’s work, calling it for instance “the greatest, the wisest and the most certain book,” Atl. II, 49.

Verelius’s letter to Count de la Gardie, 20 December 1673, is cited in Atl. I, 3–4, and another copy at Uppsala University, Palmsk. samlingen (344). Loccenius’s letter was written two days later, and can be found in the same two places.

CHAPTER 6: GAZING AT THE FACE OF THOR

The opening words are from Lucius Apuleius, The Golden Ass (1951), translated by Robert Graves, 267. My discussion of Count de la Gardie is based on many sources, particularly Fåhraeus’s Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (1936), Magnusson’s Magnus Gabriel (1993), Åslund’s De la Gardie och vältaligheten (1992), and Rystad’s “Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie,” in Michael Roberts, ed., Sweden’s Age of Greatness 1632–1718 (1973), 203–36.

The description of De la Gardie’s physical appearance and restless building projects is from Lorenzo Magalotti’s eyewitness account, Sverige under år 1674 (1996), 101. See also Magalotti’s discussion, 24–31 and 89ff. The number of rooms and the staff in Läckö castle is in Magnusson (1993), 63 and 73–74. De la Gardie is discussed as a patron in Lindahl, Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, hans gods och hans folk (1968); and Hahr, “Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie som konstmecenat,” in Svensk Tidskrift (1925). These works cover some of the many churches, hospitals, universities, and other institutions the count supported, as well as his fine collection of art including Titian, Tintoretto, Cranach, and Holbein the Younger. The Swedish National Museum’s Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (1980) also provides an overview of the Baroque atmosphere.

Queen Christina’s words were translated by Bulstrode Whitelocke, Journal of the Swedish Embassy (1855), 344–45. When I was in Stockholm, I was able to see the actual letter Christina wrote to the count, 5 December 1653, RA, De la Gardiska samlingen. Skrivelser till Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie E 1371. There is another one dated 11 December 1653, RA, De la Gardiska samlingen. Skrivelser till Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie E 1371.

Cutting through the “tall, terrifyingly impenetrable overgrowth” is taken from Atl. I, 6, and Rudbeck’s arguments about the lack of historical writing in a golden age are from Atl. I, 39–40. As he noted, historians must have something to write about, and conflict is one of history’s earliest subjects. Nordström (1930) discusses the uses of the Hyperborean legend in Sweden, and other works, cited in the notes for chapter 2, outline the background to Swedish Gothicism. Rudbeck’s discussion of the Hyperboreans is found mainly in Atl. I, 228–65. Karl Marx’s words are from The Manifesto of the Communist Party, in The Revolutions of 1848 Political Writings I, edited by David Fernbach (1981), 67.

“Wondrous way” comes from Pindar’s Pythian X, 30, which presents a vivid image of the lyres, flutes, and laurels in a Hyperborean celebration. Herodotus’s words on the Hyperboreans are in his Histories IV, 13, and also IV, 33ff. Pliny’s description of this “happy race” enjoying longevity and bliss in their “woods and groves” (as well as a little skepticism “if we can believe it”) is found in Natural History IV, 89–91. Pliny discusses them in many other places as well, noting for instance that the “majority of authorities” situated them in Europe (VI, 34). Diodorus Siculus treats the “legendary accounts of the Hyperboreans” in his Library of History II, 47.

Rudbeck’s mapmaking exercise to demonstrate Ptolemy’s errors is recounted in Atl. I, 251–52. The skeletons unearthed are noted in Atl. I, 400, and the legends of the giants were all over the Norse manuscripts. The story of Thor’s journey comes from Gylf. 46. The measuring of students occurs in Atl. I, 400. Drawing upon his experiences as a physician, Rudbeck confirms that the Swedes rarely succumbed to the plague, typhus, leprosy, or the worst contagious diseases, which everywhere seemed to claim many victims (Atl. I, 58). Swedish longevity and health are also discussed in Atl. I, 212–13, 263–65; diet, exercise, and climate were other factors that contributed to the phenomenal health of the Hyperboreans (I, 58). Foreigners unaccustomed to this quality were, according to Rudbeck, quite impressed (Atl. I, 263). Evidence sent by his brother Nicholas Rudbeckius about the ages of people in Swedish villages is cited in Atl. I, 263. Some notes about various ages in the kingdom also survive at the National Library, Olof Rudbeck den äldre collectanea F.e.16.

Discussion of the difficulties of understanding the word Hyperborean comes from Atl. I, 229–33. Rudbeck’s Bore or Bori is most often spelled today Buri, though the spelling of his son’s name, Bor, is often still used. Buri is described as “beautiful in appearance, big and powerful” in Snorri Sturluson’s Gylf. 6. Rudbeck’s discussion of the rune outside Ekholm, the tavern song, and his comment on “strange animals,” Atl. I, 231–33. Odin as “the greatest and most glorious that we know,” Gylf. 7, with Bor’s sons making the world, 8–9, and Voluspá 4. Bore place-names being found in Sweden, Atl. I, 231–32, with an additional comment on Bor’s sons, 246. Bor, the Bor-barn, and the golden age are elaborated on 432–42.

Rudbeck’s meeting with a “very wise peasant in Röklunda named Anders” is related in Atl. I, 68, and his lesson in the use of runic staffs, Atl. II, 650. True to form, Rudbeck inserts a formula for any curious reader who wants to make predictions on his own, Atl. II, 649–62 (and another one to be clipped out, 552). The survival of the wisdom in the countryside is discussed in Atl. I, 212.

Rudbeck was very much interested in folk customs and peasant culture, venturing into villages away from seacoasts, royal courts, markets, universities, and other cosmopolitan entrepôts where customs and languages often mix, Atl. III, 171–72. Oral traditions, folk customs, and popular culture help Rudbeck, again and again, interpret classical culture. No nation, Rudbeck believed, could boast of such a profound understanding of the course of the heavenly bodies as could Swedish peasants with runic staffs.

In a similar way, Rudbeck also sought out information from the Saami of the north. Rudbeck gets much of his knowledge about the indigenous peoples from Schefferus’s Lapponia and Olaus Magnus’s Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus. He also investigated matters for himself, including consulting Swedish officials who had personal acquaintance with the Saami. Rudbeck’s discourse on beards appears in Atl. III, 516ff., and the peasant mentioned, III, 522.

CHAPTER 7: THE QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN FLEECE

John Adams’s words come from Malcolm Forbes’s What Happened to Their Kids? (1990), 13. Lorenzo Magalotti’s descriptions are in his own account, Sverige under År 1674 (1986): the purpose of his visit is on page 1; his opinions of Uppsala are on 65–68, and Rudbeck 67–68.

Information about the College of Antiquities comes from a number of sources, especially Schück’s KVHAA; Schück’s Johan Hadorph (1933), 64–81; and Lindroth’s Stormaktstiden, 321–27. Runes, burial mounds, old Icelandic sagas, coins, seals, and many other antiquarian matters were part of their domain. Stiernhielm’s only known meeting was the first, 25 January 1668, though the first real meeting was arguably 28 May that year (Schück, Hadorph, 74–75). The college’s rooms are described in Magalotti, Sverige, 66, though they were not as appealing to members of the college. Virtually from the beginning, the institution was hoping to move into its own building. Rudbeck had been selected by De la Gardie to be its architect.

The college was called Sweden’s first scientific academy, Schück, KVHAA II, 30, and it had the most active writers in Sweden, that is, outside of Olof Rudbeck and the legal scholar Stiernhöök, Schück, KVHAA III, 44. Hadorph was seen as the youngest, though already a dominant member, Schück, KVHAA I, 277.

Hadorph was indeed a significant figure in late-seventeenth-century Swedish cultural and intellectual life. With an assistant and two draftsmen, Hadorph rode throughout the country investigating its antiquities. Coins, medals, and gold rings were found, as well as a great collection of church silver buried in the Linköping area. His collections would eventually form the basis for Stockholm’s Historical Museum (Schück, Hadorph, 194). Like Rudbeck, too, Hadorph wrote down old songs, including some gathered from the mother of one of his colleagues. Hadorph’s many achievements are summarized in Schück, Hadorph, 193–265. His family is discussed in Schück, Hadorph, 4–7, and his educational training is noted on 7–17, as well as in Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 321–27.

The law protecting Swedish antiquities is discussed by Schück in Hadorph, 60–64, and more elaborately in many places in his KVHAA. Lindroth calls the law simply the first of any country, Stormaktstiden, 249. Rudbeck was probably not then captivated by antiquities, Atterbom suggests (1850), 450. Arrhenius’s words on the “cloud castle of hypotheses” come from KB, Örnhielmiana (O.20), and Annerstedt discusses the college well in many places, for instance, UUH I, 271–76, and II, 66. Magalotti’s judgment of Atlantica is found in Sverige, 68.

My discussion of Rudbeck’s theory of Jason and the Argonauts is based primarily on his account in Atl. I, 418–27. Helping me to understand this episode were some influential classical sources describing the quest: Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Pindar’s Pythian IV, as well as shorter accounts in Apollodorus’s Library I, 16–28; Diodorus Siculus’s Library of History IV, 40–56; Herodotus’s Histories IV, 179; and references in Euripides’ Medea. That the Argonauts were the only ones known to have passed the dangerous crashing rocks is mentioned in the Odyssey XII, lines 85–90. Summary reviews of the Argonauts’ adventure were also consulted, including Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, 117–30; Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths II, 215–56; W. H. D. Rouse’s Gods, Heroes and Men of Ancient Greece, 89–108; and Lempière’s Classical Dictionary, 70–80, 334–35. See also Mauricio Obregón’s Beyond the Edge of the Sea (2002), as well as his earlier From Argonauts to Astronauts: An Unconventional History of Discovery (1977).

Rudbeck’s quest was “the second Argonautick expedition” referred to by Thomas Haak, 29 March 1682, printed in Auctarium Testimoniorum de Cl Rudbeckii Atlantica 1685, Nelson (1950), 36.

“Terror seized him …” appears in Pindar’s Pythian IV, 95, and the centaur galloping down to wave them off is in Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica I, 551–55, with baby Achilles in the arms of Chiron’s wife, Argonautica I, 556–58. The Argo as the “first ship ever built” is in Ovid, Metamorphoses VI, 721; and its an-tiquity in classical mythology is mentioned in Homer, Odyssey XII, lines 85–90. The following lines are in Pindar’s Pythian IV: “locks of glorious hair fell rippling down,” 83; fleece of “gleaming gold,” 231; and “flower of sailing men,” 189. Accounts of the crew often varied. The oldest sources are silent on Atalanta’s participation, and many reviewers, including Lemprière, do not bother to mention her in the context of the Argonauts. But classical mythology seldom has only one version of a story, and it was difficult for later chroniclers to resist including this brave maiden hunter in the expedition. So, while Pindar and Ovid make no mention, she appears in later accounts from Apollodorus (I.ix.16) to Diodorus Siculus (IV.41.2).

Rudbeck’s map of Atlantica is found in KB, Atland tabulae med anteckningar av O Rudbecks hand (F.m.73). This manner of sailing as “coastal navigation and island-hopping” comes from Obregón, Beyond the Edge of the Sea, 42. “Hugging the right side of the coast” are Rudbeck’s words, Atl. I, 419. The various conflicting theories on the return voyage are discussed by Robert Graves in The Greek Myths II, 241–44, and by Timothy Gantz in Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993), 362. Rudbeck’s treatment comes especially from Atl. I, 418–27. The oldest texts as more authoritative is discussed in many places of Atlantica, for instance, I, 8.

The text of the Argonautica Orphica is reproduced with a French translation in Francis Vian’s Les Argonautiques orphiques (1987), and John Warden has edited a collection of essays titled Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth (1982). The Viking paths to the east using the Russian rivers are indeed seen on Swedish runes, Sven B. F. Jansson, The Runes of Sweden, translated by Peter G. Foote (1962), 25ff. Rudbeck’s Argonaut experiment with his yachts is related in Atl. I, 420ff. Hornius’s account and the Russian rivers are in Eriksson (1994), 30, 111–12. Additional information comes from Rudbeck’s letters, which describe Rudbeck borrowing maps of Russian rivers from the Swedish state, and even writing to ask the count about knowledge of its river systems, 20 February 1674, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet Arkiv E.11:5.

Rudbeck’s yacht service was sometimes discussed in his letters, including his complaint that independent “rowing wenches” were eating into his market, 4 October 1697, ULA, Länsstyrelsen i Uppsala län. Landskansliet biographica I. D.IV.A, vol. 64. Rudbeck’s first proposal for the postal service was published in Historisk Tidskrift (1899), vol. 19, 164–66. His critique of contemporary boatmen is from Atl. III, 341.

Thor Heyerdahl’s experimental archaeology can be seen and appreciated in many of his works, and the example in the narrative is found in his Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft, translated by F. H. Lyon (1964). Place-names in Sweden cited in the search for the Golden Fleece are in Atl. I, 424. The fact that Achilles was still a baby at the time of the Argonauts’ quest is evident in Apollonius, Argonautica I, 556–58, and Rudbeck’s words about choosing the true dreamer are found in Atl. I, 427.

Verelius’s help to Rudbeck is described in many places, particularly the dedication to Atl. I, 3–5. The sources for the dispute with the eminent Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin are cited in the notes to chapter 1. Rudbeck the Uppsala student also lost out on the discovery of the thoracic duct, just barely behind the French anatomist Jean Pecquet (Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 420–21). The press is described by Annerstedt in UUH I, 357–60; II, 140–53, and the lawsuit continued, II, 199–202. The trial is also discussed in Annerstedt, Bref II, lxxii–xc. Rudbeck described the trial in his letters, for instance, relating some background to the problems from his perspective, 6 June 1681 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 72–73).

Odysseus’s description of the approaching Underworld comes from the Odyssey XI, lines 14–21, and another valuable account later, when Hermes escorts the shades of the suitors there, appears at the opening of Book XXIV. Circe’s “flawless bed of love” is found in the Odyssey X, line 390, and her advice on how Odysseus must sail to the “cold homes of Death” and hear “prophecy from the rapt shade of blind Teiresias,” X, lines 540–50. The English astronomer Norman Lockyer used the Greek word in naming the element helium, “the element of the sun,” first seen on the new spectroscope during the solar eclipse of 1868.

Rudbeck’s discovery of the Underworld was first discussed in some detail in Atl. I, 332–50. The “sunless Underworld” comes from Homer, Odyssey IV, lines 886–88. Rudbeck overlooks Homer’s words that no one had ever sailed there before, Odyssey X, lines 556–57 and line 597. Rudbeck believed this was contradicted by the many accounts of heroes who did in fact sail there, Atl. I, 332–34. Yet, as usual, Rudbeck must be watched. Perseus’s trip, which he discusses, was not to the Underworld, but, as Pindar made clear, to the land of the Hyperboreans, though by now Rudbeck was convinced that this was essentially another name for the Underworld.

Explaining why Homer calls the inhabitants dead, Rudbeck offers another reason: the Swedes were called “the dead” because they tended to be fair, whiter and paler than the ancients in the Mediterranean, Atl. II, 388–89. Possibly, too, the idea arose from their complacency, or from the lack of action among the peaceful, prosperous civilization. Circe’s instructions to Odysseus to sail north are in Homer’s Odyssey X, 562–63. Rudbeck’s discussion of the Cimmerii, or Cimmerians, is found in Atl. I, 326–32, with discussions in other places as well, including on Cimmerian darkness, I, 359, and the Cimmerian place-names, 426. Magic was discussed near his proposed Underworld in many places of the Atlantica—the claim of not having enough ink to record all the stories of soothsayers comes from Atl. I, 213. Rudbeck’s treatment of the various visits to the Underworld, Atl. I, 213, and the Underworld as cultural center, Atl. I, 347. His sources agreed, with the phrase about Zoroaster found in Olaus Magnus, Description of the Northern Peoples, edited by Peter Fisher, Humphrey Higgens, and Peter Foote, I–III (1996–99), I, 172. Reference to the spectacular ice formations, as well as the mists around the caves, come from this source, 50–51, and Magalotti’s comments on witchcraft are in Sverige, 68.

Tiresias was the famous seer of the Underworld, who gave Odysseus advice on how to reach home, Odyssey XI, line 100ff. He was so wise that even the gods asked his advice, Ovid, Metamorphoses III, 300. Tiresias was spelled, according to Rudbeck, in a variety of ways: Tyrisas, Turrisas, Tyreas, Atl. I, 357. The ancient seer was originally the Swedish Tyr, who, in the words of the Edda, “was so clever that a man who is clever is said to be ty-wise,” Gylf. 25, and Rudbeck’s discussion, Atl. I, 311–12. Rudbeck’s expedition, led by Samuel Otto, is described in Atl. I, 227, 415, and images are printed in the Atlas volume (table 30, figs. 101–3).

Rudbeck’s etymology of the Underworld’s Charon the boatman was derived from the Swedish bårin or barin, meaning “boat” (Atl. I, 350). Rudbeck was possibly influenced by Diodorus Siculus, who derived the name from the Egyptian word for boat, Library of History I. 92. 3–4, I. 96. 8–9.

CHAPTER 8: MOUNTAINS DON’T DANCE

My discussion of Atlantis is based primarily on the oldest known accounts, Plato’s Timaeus and Critias dialogues, translated by R. G. Bury for the Loeb Classical Library (1999). A century before these dialogues, the historian Herodotus wrote about a people called the Atlantes who lived in Africa and were said “to eat no living creature and never to dream,” Histories IV, 184. Another fifth-century-B.C. historian, Thucydides, wrote about the island Atalanta, which also, incidentally, was said to have suffered an earthquake and a flood, The Peloponnesian War III, 89. But neither these people nor the place is demonstrably connected to Plato’s more famous Atlanteans.

The Atlantis controversy is surveyed in a number of works, including Richard Ellis’s Imagining Atlantis (1998), Paul Jordan’s Atlantis Syndrome (2001), and L. Sprague de Camp’s Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature (1970). Among many other interesting assessments are Edwin Ramage, ed., Atlantis, Fact or Fiction? (1978), James Bramwell’s Lost Atlantis (1937), and Phyllis Young Forsyth’s Atlantis: The Making of Myth (1980). Accounts of other searches for Atlantis and theories trying to solve the riddle also helped me understand Rudbeck’s early venture: Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1881, reprinted 1971); Otto Muck, The Secret of Atlantis, translated by Fred Bradley (1981); Charles Berlitz, The Mystery of Atlantis (1969); and others. Charles R. Pellegrino has written an absorbing account of the Thera-Crete theory in Unearthing Atlantis: An Archaeological Odyssey (1991), as has J. V. Luce in The End of Atlantis (1969). Retired Royal Air Force cartographer J. M. Allen’s Atlantis, the Andes Solution: The Discovery of South America as the Legendary Continent (1997) is also provocative.

The discussions about the nature of justice, referred to in the text, are from Plato’s Republic, a series of conversations that were supposed to have occurred immediately before the opening of the dialogue Timaeus, 17C–19A. The Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates, which exists today only in fragments, were intended to form a trilogy, according to Bury (1999), 3. That Critias’s great-grandfather was Dropides is in Timaeus 20E, and the Egyptian priest’s words on the Greeks as always children are from Timaeus 22B. The alleged old tradition is noted in Timaeus 20D, and the impact on Critias as a boy in Timaeus 26C.

In dealing with the chronology of Atlantis, there is some discrepancy in Plato’s own account. In the Timaeus it is claimed that the history of the Egyptians stretched back eight thousand years from the time of the priests’ discussion with Solon (Timaeus 23E), meaning that the war with Atlantis occurred sometime after 8600 B.C. But in the Critias it was noted that “9000 is the sum of years since the war occurred, as is recorded …” (108E), reckoning from the time of Socrates, Critias, Hermocrates, and Timaeus’s discussions. The war with Atlantis, in other words, occurred, according to Plato, either sometime after 8600 B.C. or about 9400 B.C. (Jordan [2001], 17–20). This is why the narrative opts for a rounded 9000 B.C.

Plato’s words on the truth of the story are found in Timaeus 20D, and Aristotle’s skepticism comes indirectly, namely in a source, no longer in existence, cited by Strabo in Geography 2.3.6. One list of believers and critics, though incomplete, can be found in de Camp (1970), Appendix C, 314–18. The comments from Plutarch about Plato derive from his biographical portrait of Solon, printed in many available formats, for instance the compilation The Rise and Fall of Athens (1984), 43–76; the references to Solon, Plato, and their intentions were taken from 75–76. A “fine but undeveloped site” is a paraphrase of Plutarch’s words. Herodotus’s visit to Egypt is recounted in the Histories II. Pliny’s words on Aristotle’s breath are in Natural History VIII, 44.

“By God’s Grace” comes from Rudbeck’s letter to the chancellor, December 1674, Annerstedt, Bref II, 98. Rudbeck’s discussion of Atlantis is from Atl. I, 92–190. Plato’s “the fairest of all plains” is in Critias 113C, and the discussion on the fertility of Old Uppsala is from Atl. I, 106–7, 122, 167. Rudbeck’s sources included among others Snorri’s Heimskringla (225 and 68). The size of Atlantis is discussed in Plato’s Critias 118A, and Rudbeck’s Atl. I, 94ff.

The account of Rudbeck’s first investigation at Old Uppsala is found in his letter of 12 November 1677, printed in Klemming (1863), A. His citing of the old hill was based on Plato’s words about the mountain in the distance of the great plain, Critias 113C. The six mathematical students are noted in Atl. I, 109. Plato’s description of these features comes from Critias: the water 113E, 117A–117C, and the racetrack 117C, with Rudbeck’s discussion, including his conversations with the older gentlemen, Atl. I, 113ff. “Not a single point” claim comes from the letter of 12 November 1677. The map of Atlantis, with the rivers and all the sites, is reproduced in the Atlas volume (table 9, fig. 27). Rudbeck on the higher water levels and the annual recession, Atl. I, 116. Uppland underwater is found in Franklin D. Scott’s Sweden: The Nation’s History (1988), 4.

Plato’s description of the Poseidon temple at the center of Atlantis comes from Critias 116C–117A, with the reference to the “encircling wall of gold” in Critias 116C. The “precepts of Poseidon” are in Critias 119C, and the rituals associated with preserving justice, including the bull hunt, the drinking of the blood-wine mixture, and the offering of the golden cup to the temple, are at 119D–120C. The sacred grove is in Critias 117B. Rudbeck discusses his findings, Atl. I, 152–65. His textual source on the Old Uppsala temple was primarily Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, particularly Book IV, 26–27. He discusses the temple, the golden chain, the spring, the statues of the gods, and the ceremony with the sacrifices. The temple is also discussed by later humanists, Olaus Magnus’s account, Description of the Northern Peoples, 156–58, being especially influential. Magnus’s reconstruction, though, certainly looked very much like a late medieval or early Renaissance building: Josephson, Det hyperboreiska Uppsala (1945), 40.

Rudbeck’s principles of source criticism, his discussion of the trip, and the unlikelihood of agreement on the details are found in Atl. I, 9. The example of the four apostles also comes from this passage. Had they agreed in all respects, then Rudbeck would have argued that they came from the same source, Atl. I, 12. Rudbeck is here using an established philological principle of source criticism. L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson discuss this principle in Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (1991), 208–10, as does Anthony Grafton’s Defenders of the Text: Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science 1450–1800 (1991), particularly in his discussion of the Renaissance humanist Poliziano.

Analysis of the Atlantis temple and the search in Old Uppsala is recounted in Atl. I, 152ff. and 164–165. “Every nook and cranny” comes from this last passage. Rudbeck’s various outings, for instance accompanied by Professor Celsius, is told in Atl. I, 300. Human sacrifice and sacred groves were also noted by the Roman Tacitus observing the customs of the Germanic tribes, including the Suebi, in his Germania, 39.

Törnewall’s figures for Atlantica are noted in Klemming (1863), 6, and Josephson, Det hyperboreiska Uppsala (1945), 9–10. Another helpful artist was one of Rudbeck’s students, Samuel Otto. Rudbeck’s technological students are discussed particularly by Per Dahl, Svensk ingenjörskonst under stormaktstiden: Olof Rudbecks tekniska undervisning och praktiskaverksamhet (1995).

Rudbeck hoped to begin printing his book, 28 December 1674, Annerstedt, Bref II, 98–99. The firing of Curio and the legal process are discussed in Annerstedt’s Bref II, lxxii–lxxix, and UUH II, 140–44. References to the problems with the previous bookseller and Hadorph’s cattle come from Eriksson (2002), 103. Among other places, the prosecution’s complaints can be seen in surviving letters in the Örnhielm papers, KB, Örnhielmiana (O.20). Rudbeck’s letter to De la Gardie, 31 March 1675, is printed in Annerstedt, Bref II, 107–10. The tendency to hypochondria was noted, for instance, by Strindberg, Bondenöd och stormaktsdröm, 248ff.

CHAPTER 9: TWELVE TRUMPETS, FOUR KETTLEDRUMS, AND A BAG OF GOLD

The epigraph is taken from The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, translated by J. M. Cohen (1954), 52. De la Gardie’s collection of antiquities is discussed in many works cited above, particularly Fåhraeus (1936), Gödel (1897), Schück (1932– 35), and Hahr (1925). Peter Englund discusses the client-patron relationship in Stellan Dahlgren, ed., Makt och vardag: Hur man styrde, levde och tänkte under svensk stormaktstid (1993). Rudbeck repeatedly thanked the count for his help. His phrase on the “greatest supporter” is often repeated, for instance, 3 September 1678, Annerstedt, Bref II, 162.

The descriptions of King Charles XI are derived from Magalotti’s observations, Sverige, 80ff. My discussion was also based on the studies by Göran Rystad, Karl XI: En biografi (2001); Anthony Upton, Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism (1998), and Michael Roberts, “Charles XI,” in his Essays in Swedish History (1967). Another good description of the king comes from Robinson’s Account of Sweden 1688, recently published and edited with an introduction by John B. Hattendorf (1998), particularly pages 30–31. Many of Rudbeck’s surviving letters to the king are housed in the Swedish National Archives, for instance, Skrivelser till konungen Karl XI (6459.52, vol. 14, and 1133.10, vol. 32).

De la Gardie performed many valuable services for Rudbeck, and the Uppsala professor was deeply grateful, as can be seen again and again in their correspondence. Rudbeck’s appreciation is obvious, for instance, in an early letter after the count was won over to the search, 17 February 1674, Annerstedt, Bref II, 92. De la Gardie would prove to be Rudbeck’s “greatest supporter,” the words coming from Rudbeck, in a letter to the count, 3 April 1677, Annerstedt, Bref II, 156–57, and G. Klemming (1863), Supplement E. See also Rudbeck’s letter, 13 June 1681, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E. 11:7.

The count’s financial gift and promise to seek support from the king are noted in Rudbeck’s letter of 12 November 1677, in Klemming (1863), A. The relationship between Rudbeck and Charles XI is overviewed in Eriksson (2002), 184–85; Annerstedt’s Bref III, clxxxii–clxxxiii; and Atterbom (1851), 98–99. The account of the university’s preparations for the coronation is based upon Annerstedt’s UUH II, 153–54. “The house of nobility” is a translation of the Swedish riddarhus. David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl’s painting of the coronation is housed today in the Drottningholm collection. Rudbeck’s part in the festivities, particularly singing over the trumpets and drums, is in Carl-Allen Moberg’s “Olof Rudbeck d.ä. och musiken,” in Rudbecksstudier (1930), 179.

Unfortunately, Rudbeck’s composition for the coronation has apparently not survived, lost like his other works for weddings, funerals, and other state occasions, including Charles XII’s coronation. Only one known composition exists, a funeral dirge (1654) for the chancellor Axel Oxenstierna at Stockholm’s Storkyrka. It was recorded for the Royal Academy of Music’s Musica Sueciae series, Dygd och Ära: Adeln och Musiken i Stormaktstidens Sverige (1992). The text of Rudbeck’s music took the form of a dialogue, with the lyrics largely inspired by the Book of Revelation, and performed by two sopranos or tenors. Some of Rudbeck’s other compositions can only be partly imagined—for instance, Rudbeck’s use of Psalms 25 for the music he wrote for De la Gardie’s funeral. Carl-Allen Moberg’s article (1930) is valuable for understanding Rudbeck’s work as a musician and composer.

Animosity between Sweden and Denmark is well known, and Strindberg discusses danskhat, or hatred of the Danes (1937), 46–48, 164–168, 194ff. Kurt Johannesson recounts its flourishing in the sixteenth century (1991), 106ff. Charles X Gustav’s invasion of Denmark is recounted in Alf Ålberg, “Tåget över Bält,” in Karolinska Tiden 1654–1718 Den Svenska Historien V (1967), 30–33. The number of troops crossing the frozen Great and Little Belts in early 1658 comes from T. K. Derry, A History of Scandinavia (1979), 133. The charges against De la Gardie, this time, are highly unlikely. That De la Gardie would confide such treacherous comments to known enemies strains belief.

Jerker Rosén discusses the Battle of Fehrbellin in Karolinska Tiden 1654–1718 (1967), 94–95. John Robinson called this battle “a disaster so little foreseen, or provided for, that it made a more easy way for all the miseries that ensued upon it,” in his Account of Sweden, 1688 (1998), 35, though historians tend to see its influence as more psychological than strategic. The description of the Kronan’s sinking is in Rystad (2001). The flagship is described by many sources, including Magalotti, Sverige, 22–23, and Lindquist, Historien om Sverige: Storhet och fall (1995), 135–47. The Kronan probably had 126 bronze guns on board, though most estimates put the figure between 124 and 128. Besides the cannon, a talented team of underwater archaeologists have uncovered no fewer than twenty thousand objects on the site, many now on display at the Kalmar läns museum. Anders Franzén’s discovery is remarkable for understanding the Swedish Age of Greatness, though often overshadowed by his earlier and more famous discovery of the Vasa ship.

Embarrassments in the Danish war unleashed a “storm of ill will” against the chancellor (Strindberg [1937], 228–33, 240). The French would not have liked to hear that some of their subsidies to the Swedish army were being funneled by De la Gardie to the College of Antiquities.

CHAPTER 10: ALL OARS TO ATLANTIS

Rudbeck’s treatment of the rivers and forests is found in Atl. I, 121–22. On the history of the search for Atlantis, see the notes to chapter 7. The resilience of classical texts to withstand the force of new facts is discussed by Anthony Grafton in New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (1992). Grafton shows how reluctant many Renaissance humanists and explorers were to shift out of the older classical perspective, and how easily new, apparently contradictory facts were incorporated. Ptolemy’s maps underestimating the voyage are from J. H. Parry, ed., The European Reconnaissance (1968), 152.

Plato’s words on the size of Atlantis are found in Timaeus 24E, and those on its wealth in Critias 114. The description of the Aztec gold comes from Miguel Leon-Portilla, ed., The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (1962), 51. The wealth is also discussed by Parry (1968), 171–231, and in Prescott’s Histories: The Rise and Decline of the Spanish Empire, edited by Irwin R. Blacker (1963), 94–103; Cortés, 153ff.; and the capital, 184–258. The figures on the gold and silver are cited by J. H. Elliot, The Old World and the New 1492–1650 (1992), 60–61. Montaigne’s words come from his Essays (1580, reprinted 1958), translated by J. M. Cohen, “On Cannibals,” 106. Words on Atlantis as not “fable, but veritable history” are found in Donnelly’s Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1881), 1–4, 217ff., and 283–86, with the pyramids, 335–42, and the obelisks, 367. The reference to museums in the future comes from Donnelly’s Atlantis, 480, and the Jules Verne passage is from his Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, translated by Mendor T. Brunetti (1969), 265. The Mardi Gras celebration of 1883 and the correspondence with W. E. Gladstone are in Martin Ridge, Ignatius Donnelly: The Portrait of a Politician (1962), 202.

Rudbeck’s discussion of the lost civilization comes earliest in Atl. I, 92–190. The size of Atlantis as “larger than Libya and Asia” appears in Plato’s Timaeus 24E, and Critias 108E–109A, and Rudbeck, Atl. I, 93–94. The reference to the opinion of the common boatman is in Atl. I, 94, and the comparison with the war between Sweden and Denmark, Atl. I, 12. Rudbeck’s discussion of is found in Atl. I, 95–96.

Atlas, king of Atlantis, is described in Plato’s Critias 114A. Rudbeck’s comments on this ruler and the place-names around Sweden with the Atlas root are in Atl. I, 135–44. Atle is discussed in Norse poems, particularly the Skaldskaparmal in the Edda, and the and Atla-mál in the Poetic Edda. The “high-builded towers” of Atle’s halls is in 14, with the “far-famed temples” and “roaring flames” in 45. The destruction is elaborated in Atla-mál, 79ff. Theories still differ on this Atle figure, often spelled Atli, though many view him as a memory of Attila, king of the Huns, well known among the Goths, Fragment of a Sigurth Lay, in Lee M. Hollander’s translation of The Poetic Edda (2001), 244, n. 6. The explanation of the name of King Atlas and its change from the Atlantean language to Greek is found in Plato’s Critias 113A–113B, with Rudbeck’s discussion in Atl. I, 123–45. The Atlas Mountains, also found in Sweden, are discussed in Atl. I, 215–18, 226–28, and other places.

Rudbeck’s theory about the Pillars of Hercules comes from Atl. I, 145–50. Strabo’s helpful passage is in Geography 3.5.5–6, and the rumor of the pillars lying in the north is in Tacitus, Germania 34; the Roman historian was citing the opinion of Drusus Germanicus, Nero Drusus, brother of Emperor Tiberius. Rudbeck also tells of a curious dinner party at De la Gardie’s Venngarn Castle. When the French ambassador to Stockholm, Monsieur le Marquis de Feuquière, inquired about the progress of Rudbeck’s work on Atlantica, Count de la Gardie told of the latest finding that the Pillars of Hercules were not in the Mediterranean, but in Öresund. At that point another Frenchman at the dinner, Monsieur le Picquiettiere, spoke up, noting that he, too, had reached this conclusion on their northern location (Atl. I, 149–50).

Rudbeck traced the Roman form of the ancient hero’s name (Hercules) back to the Swedish her and kulle or kolle, meaning either the head or leader of an army, and the Greek Heracles to the Swedish Herkulle (also spelled as Hereker, Herakled, or other variants), meaning one dressed or armed as a warrior (Atl. I, 473–74). Rudbeck presented a list of verbs, nouns, and adjectives with variant spellings found in Norse sagas to support his theory (Atl. I, 471–73). Had he looked into Pindar’s Olympian III, he would have been delighted to read about Hercules’ visit to the Hyperboreans, bringing the olive tree back for the Olympian Games. The story was seconded by Pausanias, who called the Hyperborean origins a local tradition in Description of Greece 5.7.7.

But, despite Rudbeck’s use of Germania, Tacitus would probably not have agreed with his interpretation of the Pillars of Hercules. The Roman historian continued: “It may be that Hercules did go there [the rumored northern pillars]; or perhaps it is only that we by common consent ascribe any remarkable achievement in any place to his famous name” (Germania 34). Rudbeck’s discussion also overlooks many alternative explanations, including the views of writers he held in high esteem, like Diodorus Siculus’s Library of History IV.18.4–5 or Pliny’s Natural History III, 3–4, both of which support the more traditional location of Gibraltar.

“Not a single one” and Rudbeck’s commentary on Plato’s Atlantis as “looking into a mirror” are in Atl. I, 181. Given how well he understood Sweden, Plato was the “wisest” of the Greeks, clearly capturing the northern landscape (Atl. I, 335 and 485); his golden words (336). Rudbeck’s words on the “102 Platonic oars” comes from Atl. I, 190, translated by Eriksson (1994), 23.

The war with Denmark was starting to affect Rudbeck and the town of Uppsala (21 May 1676, Annerstedt, Bref II, 132–33). The war was also threatening the university’s income (3 September 1678, Annerstedt, Bref II, 161–62), not to mention the lives of many professors. Hadorph, for instance, feared that the Danes would learn from Gotland fishermen how easy it would be to move inland. Swedes were starting to hide valuables in the forests, a fact Hadorph mentioned in a letter published by Schück in Hadorph, 217–20.

Rudbeck had printed an invitation to a dissection in his anatomy theater in Swedish, 1 May 1677 (Annerstedt, Bref II, 148–49). Annerstedt also published Rudbeck’s program intending to bury a dissected body, 28 May 1677 (Bref II, 155). On Rudbeck’s building projects, see Ragnar Josephson, Det hyperboreiska Uppsala (1945), particularly 61–84. That the survival of Atlantis was dependent on its virtues is stated in Plato’s Critias 120D–121C and in Atl. I, 187–88.

CHAPTER 11: OLYMPUS STORMED

The epigraph is from Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, translated by Francis Golffing (1956), 29. The dimensions of the Atlantis plain, 3,000 stadia long and 2,000 wide, are found in Plato’s Critias, 118A. One scholar who has worked meticulously to find such a large plain is J. M. Allen, though he had to cut the measurement of the stadium in half; see Atlantis, the Andes Solution: The Discovery of South America as the Legendary Continent (1997). The royal palace of Atlantis is discussed by Plato in Critias 115C–115D, and Rudbeck’s connection with Kungsgård in Atl. I, 115ff., with a discussion of the use of the “Atlantis” stones to build the Uppsala castle in Atl. I, 180–81. On the lack of walls surfacing in his site, Rudbeck found assistance from another member of the Riksråd, Gabriel Oxenstierna, who informed him that the surrounding forests and hills were sometimes called “walls” in the past (Atl. I, 120).

Rudbeck’s arguments on why Plato’s story about the destruction of the island was not literally correct is found in Atl. I, 183–88. Information on the “barrier of mud” is found in Critias 109A. The reference to the Great Flood comes from Genesis 9:11. Two other points about Plato’s account that Rudbeck said were incorrect were Atlantis’s elephants and wine. The wine was actually Swedish mead, and the elephants were wolves (and later, at the suggestion of De la Gardie’s son, moose) (Atl. I, 183–85). Rudbeck’s argument based on the lunar calendar appears in Atl. I, 187, 485. In his interpretation of Critias 108E, Rudbeck counts the nine thousand years from the time of Solon’s visit to Egypt, and not from the time of Socrates’ Hermocrates, Timaeus, and Critias discussion about Atlantis. See notes on the chronology of Atlantis in the notes for chapter 7. Allen, who discussed how the Incans had long used the lunar calendar, is one prominent exception to the tendency noted in the text.

Everything fit so well for Rudbeck’s theory, he thought that Plato’s words on the “hot baths” of Atlantis were ancient references to the Swedish love of saunas (Critias 117B and Atl. I, 166, 409). As Rudbeck would later put it, “To say that Atlantis is sunk is a greater vanity than all vanity” (Atl. II, 28).

Complaints about Rudbeck’s neglect of his teaching in these years are treated in Annerstedt, Bref II, cxix–cxx, and the waterworks system’s not working by 1676 is noted in Annerstedt, Bref I, ix. For more background on the waterworks system, see Rudbeck’s letter to the Inquisition, 7 March 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 219–26, especially 223–26. The need for a new roof on the anatomy theater was noted by Rudbeck in a letter to De la Gardie, 24 February 1675, printed in Annerstedt, Bref II, 100, and the collapsed bridge in a letter of 1 May 1677, Annerstedt, Bref II, 147.

Diodorus Siculus’s comments on Atlantis come from his Library of History III, 56–61. With his discussion of King Atlas, the empire, and the many achievements, Diodorus almost offers a blueprint for Rudbeck and many other Atlantis enthusiasts: “The great majority of the most ancient heroes trace their descent back to the Atlantides” (III.60.5). Hera’s words in the narrative come originally from Homer’s Iliad XIV, lines 200–205. Hesiod describes the mythic home of the Titans “hidden under a misty gloom, in a dank place where are the ends of the huge earth” in Theogony 729–31, and the words “ends of gloomy earth” and “home of murky night” appear at 736–46. “The glowing Sun never looks upon them,” Theogony 758–60.

The Norse sagas at Rudbeck’s disposal included original manuscripts of the Poetic Edda, Snorri’s Edda, his Heimskringla, and many others. Most of the Norse sagas were written during the Middle Ages, especially in the thirteenth century. Some, however, were only copies from even later times. At least a few were written down in the seventeenth century, probably before being carried over by an Icelandic student.

Hephaestus fell a few times from the sky, according to the Iliad, Books I and XVIII. That the ancient Greek gods came from abroad was a belief that could be read in Herodotus’s Histories, which specifically traced them back to Egypt. The only exceptions, the historian claimed, were Hera, Hestia, Themis, the Dioscuri, the Graces, the Nereids, and Poseidon, who, he said, came from the Pelasgians or, in the case of Poseidon, Libya (II, 50). Cronos, Rhea, and the devouring of their “splendid children” is in Theogony 453ff. It is well known that the Titans, in ancient myth, were imprisoned after their loss in the war, but there was also a tradition of Zeus releasing them, or at least Cronos, Rhea, and Prometheus, as reported in Pindar, Pythian IV, 291, and Pindar, Fragment 35, not to mention Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, which uses a chorus of Titans. Hesiod’s Works and Days mentions it, too (173b, and Theogony 525ff.), though this passage seems to have been added later. (Richard Stoneman’s notes to Pindar’s Odes and Selected Fragments [1997], 143.) Setting sail with Homer was Rudbeck’s phrase, Atl. I, 191.

Rudbeck was worrying about being only one-fourth of the way through his planned work, Atl. I, on page 428 of which was really page 682 in the 1679 edition. At about this point in the search (Atl. I, 408, or 649 in the original), the references to future continuations become more and more frequent.

Verelius’s advice about the necessity of printing the work immediately and equipping it with a Latin translation is found in Rudbeck’s dedication to Atl. I, 4–5. Scholars are virtually unanimous that the translator, an unnamed “good friend” (page 5), was Anders Norcopensis. He would later be ennobled as Nordenhielm, and appointed tutor of the future king Charles XII, according to Nelson’s commentary on Atl. I, 567; II, 696; see also Strindberg (1937), 317; as well as R. M. Hatton’s Charles XII of Sweden (1968), 44–45.

Rudbeck’s discussion of the classical gods begins in earnest in Atl. I, 427–95. Worship of Apollo was exported from the Hyperboreans into Greece, or, more specifically, the Balder religion was carried over by Swedish maidens into Delphi, Delos, and Athens (Atl. I, 382, 477, 536–37). Apollo was pronounced Swedish (475–82). Reference to Apollo as the “most Greek” in the classical pantheon comes from Burkert, Greek Religion, Archaic and Classical, translated by John Raffan (1985), 143; and Cicero’s words are from The Nature of the Gods III, 57. Balder’s description and wisdom, “wisest of the Aesir and most beautifully spoken,” is in Gylf. 21. That Balder “dreamed great dreams” is in Gylf. 49, and the “blessed god” is described in Voluspá 31–34.

Apollo was the son of Zeus and Leto (Iliad I, lines 8–10; and Theogony 917–20). According to Rudbeck, the Roman god Jupiter was originally the Greek Zeus, who in turn was first the Swedish Thor (Atl. I, 442–50). Like Zeus’s mother Rhea, Thor’s mother was Freyia (actually Frigg, but the two have long been confused). Rudbeck’s derivation of Zeus from the old Swedish language is on pages 444–46, and his attempt to trace the legacy of Thor on Crete, which was often cited as the legendary birthplace of Zeus, is on pages 446–48.

The Olympians admitted that Zeus, in terms of brute strength, far surpassed the other gods (Iliad XV, line 101ff.). Hesiod’s Theogony tells the story of Zeus defeating the Titans and punishing leaders such as Atlas and Prometheus (520ff.). Odin was called “All-Father” in Gylf. 10, and Odin’s special watch over, among other things, prisoners, the slain, and the hanged is in Gylf. 20. Odin trading his eye for a drink at Mimir’s well of wisdom is recounted in Gylf. 15. His drinking and eating habits, with the two ravens on his shoulder, are in Gylf. 38 and in Snorri’s Heimskringla Ynglingasagan 7. Thor and the adventures in the land of the giants are in Gylf. 45–47. Thor was the “strongest of all the gods and men” in Gylf. 21. Odin and Thor’s differences were revealed in many Norse works, for instance the Poetic Edda’s Lay of Hárbarth. Rudbeck discusses Odin and Hades in Atl. I, 455–57.

Rudbeck’s use of the Swedish language, as opposed to Latin, is related in Annerstedt, Bref II, xciii–xcv; and Rudbeck’s words in the text, 1 May 1677, are printed in Annerstedt, Bref II, 148. The translation of Rudbeck’s words about Cicero and Aristotle comes from G. Castrén, in Kirby (1990), 286. A stimulating treatment of Rudbeck’s work as an architect is found in Hahr, “Olof Rudbeck d.ä. som arkitekt,” in Rudbecksstudier (1930); and in Ragnar Josephson’s Det hyperboreiska Uppsala (1945). Rudbeck had a preference for long rows of columns and round open spaces long before his interest in the Poseidon palace. Yet in many projects, the Atlantis nuances are hard to miss. Josephson compares Rudbeck’s blueprints for the university building and Plato’s description of the Poseidon palace on Atlantis on pages 66–72. Beyond this, Rudbeck’s suspension bridge over the River Fyris was compared to a Roman aqueduct (35–36), and his work on the royal gardens near the palace was compared to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (76–82).

The delay in the funds and the reminders of the king’s money are mentioned in Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 20 March 1677, Annerstedt, Bref II, 142–43. Another inquiry about the status of the funds is in Rudbeck’s letter of 22 April 1677, 146. The costs of the printing can be reconstructed from a number of letters. By April 1677, Rudbeck was printing two sheets a week at a cost of fifty-four daler: ten to the printer, eight for the paper, eighteen to the artist, and another eighteen to the engraver. By November 1677 the costs were at 2,000 daler silvermynt for the printer; 1,000 for paper; and 250 for the special, larger paper to be used for printing the figures (7 November 1677, Annerstedt, Bref II, 158–59). The total was 5,930 daler silvermynt, with a breakdown added as a supplement to this letter. The costs shouldered by Olof Rudbeck, not counting the research expenses, would rise to some 9,700 daler kopparmynt, Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 2 March 1682, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:7.

Efforts to raise money are related in Rudbeck’s letters as well, including selling paper damaged in the spring flood of 1677, according to his letter to De la Gardie, 22 April 1677, Annerstedt, Bref II, 146. He tried to divert customs duties, as seen already in Rudbeck’s letter to De la Gardie, 17 February 1674, Annerstedt, Bref II, 92. Securing of loans from “good friends” was admitted and described years later, Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 31 March 1685; LUB, De la Gardie släktarkiven. Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie 93:1. On pawning the family silver, see Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 7 November 1677, Annerstedt, Bref II, 58–59.

CHAPTER 12: HANGING BY A THREAD

Besides Rudbeck’s letters, among the more lively sources for the dispute about Old Uppsala, my account is based primarily on Schück, KVHAA III, 322–66; Eriksson (2002), 271–76; Lindroth (1975), 311–15; Annerstedt, Bref II, xcv–xcvi; and Gödel (1897), 170–72. Schefferus’s background and career are summarized in Lindroth, 206–14, and his cape was noted, 212. Schück discusses Schefferus’s Upsalia in KVHAA III, 322–25, and Epistola Defensoria III, 340–44. As an effect of the problems with Schefferus, Atterbom reported a saying popular in Rudbeck’s house: “It is as true as if it were written in Schefferus’s Lapponia” ([1851], 36–37).

Rudbeck’s use of the prisoners of war is related, among other places, in Atl. I, 100, 109. The stakes in the dispute are described by Rudbeck in a letter to De la Gardie, 24 May 1677 (Annerstedt, Bref II, 153–54). The count’s letter of 17 May 1677 announcing the prohibition was printed by Schück in KVHAA III, 345–46. Schück outlines the problems with Bishop Karl’s Annotations (357–60), and he, like Annerstedt, believed the controversial letter was a forgery. No one, though, as Schück notes, had accused Rudbeck of this forgery (355).

Reference to Lundius as a “worse Rudbeckian than Rudbeck himself” is found in Annerstedt, Bref II, cxvii. Schück’s words on Lundius are in KVHAA III, 355–56. The anecdote of Lundius meeting the devil in his bedroom is found in many sources, for instance, Strindberg, Bondenöd, 224–25. The story of Zalmoxis comes first from Herodotus’s Histories IV, 94. Lindroth’s summary, (1975), 315, and the reference to Schefferus’s mistake, Schück, KVHAA III, 329. Archaeological opinion comes from Sune Lindqvist, “Olof Rudbeck d.ä. som fältarkeolog,” in Rudbecksstudier (1930), 249–58.

Verelius’s problems with the college are discussed by Schück in KVHAA, as well as in his biography of Johan Hadorph (1933). His being paid only once for his many years of service as Professor of Antiquities of the Fatherland is noted, for instance, in Hadorph, 45.

CHAPTER 13: ET VOS HOMINES

The significance of De la Gardie’s donations can still be seen today. Besides the Uppsala Edda, there were also the Heimskringla, Olafssaga, early editions of Saxo Grammaticus, and a codex containing a fragment of Olof Tryggvason’s Saga. Some, however, were lost in the fire of 1702, including Snorri’s Heimskringla, on loan at that time to Olof Rudbeck. De la Gardie’s donation is discussed by Gödel (1897), 84–85; and Fåhraeus (1936), 220–23.

The Silver Bible is discussed by Lars Munkhammer, Silverbibeln: Theodoriks bok (1998); and Tönnes Kleberg, Codex Argenteus: The Silver Bible at Uppsala (1984). The Dutchman who owned the Silver Bible was Franciscus Junius. Rudbeck’s reference to the Gothic Bible comes from Atl. I, 154–57, and a related derivation of the word Uppsala is found on page 261.

Some pages of the Silver Bible have continued to surface, including one that turned up, to considerable attention, in August 1970. Construction crews were restoring Speyer Cathedral, lowering the floor to add a more modern heating system. The page was found in a secret hiding place, in a potato sack, along with some other relics, including the bones, supposedly, of the Renaissance humanist Erasmus. As for the theft in April 1995, I was then living in Sweden and remember listening to the radio when a rather shocked disc jockey announced it. Munkhammer’s account (1998) explains many of the details that, at the time, were so strange.

Lundius’s specialties included, among other things, Swedish law, Roman law, and natural law theories of the influential thinker Samuel Pufendorf, who was then in Sweden as royal historiographer (Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 368–70). Lindroth also discusses Lundius as a Rudbeckian (300–301). Lundius’s Zamolxis, primus getarum legislator (1687) has been translated from Latin by Maria Crisan and into English by Honorius Crisan (available on the Web at www.dacia.org).

Outright forgeries and fabrications were circulating around Uppsala, according to Joseph Svennung in Zur Geschichte Gothicismus, 91–92. Svenbro discusses “veritable counterfeit workshops” in “L’idéologie ‘gothisante’ et l’Atlantica d’ Olof Rudbeck. Le mythe platonicien de l’Atlantide au service de l’Empire suédois du XVIIe siècle,” in Quaderni di storia 6, no. 11 (January–June 1980): 137. Gunnar Eriksson’s comments on the forgery are found in (2002), 307–9. The phrase “the conscious effort to deceive” comes from Nils Ahnlund’s definition of forger in his study Nils Rabenius (1648–1717): Studier i svensk historiografi (1927).

The runes were among the last findings to be incorporated into Atlantica, though Rudbeck had made the initial discovery at least as early as the end of 1675. The problem he faced, as usual, was how to find time for all the discoveries. His words about “how the Greeks have received their letters from us” is from chapter 38, Atl. I, 524. Loccenius, Verelius, and Norcopensis were reading Rudbeck’s theories “with admiration,” he noted in a letter to De la Gardie, 29 November 1675, Annerstedt, Bref II, 126.

Pliny discussed the transmission of the alphabet in Natural History VII, 192. Runes were “stones with old letters or unknown carved marks” overgrown with moss and not effaced by heat, cold, fire, or water (Atl. I, 14). The derivation of the word runes from “mystery” and “secret” appears in Ralph W. V. Elliot’s Runes: An Introduction (1989), 1.

According to the Edda, nothing of importance escaped Heimdall, a god who could hear the wool grow on the backs of sheep. No wonder he was chosen to guard the entrance to the world of the gods at the rainbow bridge Bifrost, and send divine messages with his massive, earth-shaking horn (Gylf. 27).

Pan, fire, and many of the words Rudbeck chose for showing the Swedish impact on ancient Greece can be found in Plato’s Cratylus dialogue (408C, 409D–410B). In this work, Socrates and his students discuss the roots of the Greek language, and openly admit the overwhelming barbarian, or non-Greek, influence—golden words for Olof Rudbeck, for he believed that each of Plato’s words could be found in Swedish, or at least he believed that he could show they could. In either case, the words were from the barbarians, or more accurately, in his view, bor-barn, “children of Bor.”

Discussion of world chronology, particularly the four or five hundred years after Noah, comes from Atl. I, 525–26. Rudbeck’s dating of Swedish civilization back to 2300–200 B.C., or Anno Mundi 1700–1800, is found in Atl. I, 77–78, and Atl. II, 199. Rudbeck’s investigations of the soil around the monuments are related in Atl. I, 66–79, 91, and applied to the runes on pages 525–26. The history of the ancient Greek alphabet, and its derivation from Scandinavian runes, is outlined in Atl. I, 527–39. The theory of Mercury’s Swedish origins is argued in Atl. I, 457–66, and continued on 539–42. The illustration of the staff appears on page 541, and its interpretation is on 539–42. Later, Mercury’s position in ancient Sweden was elaborated and, in some ways, altered (Atl. IV, esp. 104ff.). Hermes, Zeus’s favorite son, appears as the messenger of the gods more in the Odyssey than in the Iliad. “Hermes the Wayfinder” comes from Odyssey V, line 48ff., and his ambrosial golden sandals, wand, and other descriptions are found here, as well as at many other places in the epic, for instance Odyssey I, line 123ff. Hermes leads the suitors to the Underworld in Odyssey XXIV, line 409.

Rudbeck thought the runic staffs were as old as the runes themselves. In Rudbeck’s scheme, they were invented by Atle (Atlas) or Atin, and approved by Disa (Isis). The story of the peasant in the anatomy theater follows Rudbeck’s own account in Atl. I, 562–63; and the gardener, on page 563, is also discussed by Eriksson (2002), 340.

CHAPTER 14: ON NOTHING

The first volume of Atlantica, published in March 1679 at Curio’s press, appears in a number of different ways. Some have no title page, some a title page and no date, some the correct year of publication, some the year 1679 and the words “second edition,” and some the publication year 1675. This last instance has led some authorities to claim, incorrectly, that Atlantica was published in that year, and some even to accuse Rudbeck of backdating the publication year. This is possible, but a simpler explanation is that Rudbeck started printing the work in 1675, as he in fact intended at the end of 1674. The work was not finished at the press until March 1679, as seen in Rudbeck’s letter of 20 March 1679, printed in Annerstedt, Bref II, 164–65. One of Rudbeck’s descendants, Johannes Rudbeckius, investigated the surviving copies of his ancestor’s book (1918). He found a total of 111 copies of the first edition, dispersed around European libraries.

Inclement weather delayed the transport of De la Gardie’s copy, Rudbeck wrote to De la Gardie, 22 March 1679, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:6.

The priest in Stockholm, Olaus Bergius, vicar of St. Clara’s Church, noted Rudbeck’s strengths, “immeasurable labor” and “wonderful genius,” in an undated letter, probably from late 1682, inserted in the collection Auctarium Testimoniorum de Cl Rudbeckii Atlantica, reprinted in Nelson (1950), 43. D. G. Morhof describes his reading of Atlantica in a letter from Kiel, 23 June 1681 (Nelson [1950], 28). In his enthusiasm, Morhof claims that he, too, had once planned to write a book about the importance of the north in the ancient world. The title was to have been Mysterium Septentrionis (Secrets of the North). Pleased that his own work “lay dormant for many years,” Morhof now rejoiced that many of his suspicions had been confirmed. After reading Rudbeck’s Atlantica, he threw away his notes, remarking how “foolish and ill-considered” it was to dance after this master. (He must have retrieved them, however, since a few years later Morhof would publish his own theory about the ancient past, with the Germans very much playing the role of Rudbeck’s Swedes.)

The director of the Witchcraft Commission, Anders Stiernhöök, noted how Rudbeck had satisfied him astonishingly, 1 September 1679, Nelson (1950), 5. By November, Stiernhöök was continuing according to his plan of daily readings, and this had not changed his previously reported positive opinion of Atlantica (20 November 1679, Nelson [1950], 11). Information about the admiring Germans who visited Old Uppsala comes from Rudbeck’s letter to De la Gardie, 5 May 1679, Annerstedt, Bref II, 170–71. The reference to the envy of his contemporaries is found in Lund University professor of history and poetry Stobaeus (Nelson [1950], 103). The description of the Furies comes from Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers, 1048–49.

The Royal Society’s secretary Francis Aston wrote to Rudbeck to say that Atlantica was “very much desired in these regions,” 11 January 1682 (Nelson [1950], 34). Aston also wrote to thank Rudbeck for his copy of Atlantica, with his words on the “power of genius and the abundance of learning” found in the letter of 11 January 1682. This was evidently the letter President Christopher Wren asked him to write, 4 January 1681/82 (Birch, History of the Royal Society, 4 vols. [1756–57]).

The passage on “this deservedly famous Author” is taken from the anonymous review in Philosophical Transactions, 10 January 1681/2, reprinted in Nelson (1950), 33. The reviewer also praised Rudbeck’s conclusions on the location of the cradle of civilization in Sweden: “That Japhet and the first Race inhabited there, may be probable, in that it’s said he possest the Isles, under which title Sweonia has gone.” About the classical gods coming from Sweden, the reviewer commented on how well the Swedish language suited the names of the gods.

Rudbeck was proposed as a member of the Royal Society at the meeting on 14 December 1681. He had been mentioned as a possible candidate for membership for some time, at least since Oldenburg extended the offer as early as the late 1660s (RS, Letterbook III, Oldenburg to Rudbeck, 8 January 1668/69; RS, Letterbook III, Oldenburg to Rudbeck, 9 December 1669). But it was not until Atlantica was published and reviewed that the proposal of membership was official. There is some uncertainty on who reviewed Atlantica; Thomas Gale was asked, according to the minutes for 26 October 1681, and Cluverus on 7 December 1681.

Glad to hear the praise from London, Rudbeck informed the count of the Royal Society’s view of his work (24 May 1682), and forwarded a copy of their letter (4 June 1682, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:7). The student who brought Atlantica to the Royal Society, Johan Heysig, is treated by Carl Harald Eugène Lewenhaupt in “Johan Heysig-Ridderstjerna,” Samlaren, vol. 10 (1889) and vol. 14 (1893).

Atlantica was hailed as Rudbeck’s own Herculean labor by G. Cuperus, 20 June 1690 (Nelson [1950], 97). The claim about the many heroic and warlike nations pouring out of Sweden like a Trojan horse comes from a speech delivered in Kiel by S. H. Musaeus, 26 April 1688 (Nelson [1950], 100). The reference to the Swedish Heracles who restored light to an area where Cimbrian darkness prevailed is in O. Bergius, undated (Nelson [1950], 43).

It would be unreasonable to expect Rudbeck’s theory to sail through the learned world, especially in Uppsala, where he had so many enemies, without at least some opposition. One detailed critique of Atlantica appeared in W. E. Tentzel’s journal, Monatliche Unterredungen einiger Guten Freunde von Allerhand Büchern . . . , a 200-page review running through the February to July issues. (See Nelson IV [1950], 293, and Eriksson [2002], 425–27). Many other critiques are noted in the later volumes of Atlantica.

Notice of Rudbeck’s lecture series “On Nothing,” appearing in Uppsala University’s catalog in October 1679, was printed in Annerstedt’s Bref II, 177, and discussed in Eriksson’s article “Om Ingenting: Olof Rudbecks föreläsningsprogram 1679,” Lychnos (1979–80). Rudbeck’s explanation is found in a letter to De la Gardie, 3 November 1679 (Annerstedt, Bref II, 178–79). Annerstedt discusses this episode in Bref II, ci–ciii; and Eriksson (2002), 146, interprets De Nihilo as serious, joking, and having fun with the enemies all at the same time. The description of Schefferus’s reaction is in Rudbeck’s letter to Count de la Gardie, 5 April 1679, printed in Annerstedt, Bref II, 166. The rest of Schefferus’s words were taken from Elias Palmsköld, Palmsk. samlingen XV: T.15, 557; thanks to Annerstedt for this information, Bref II, cxxv, n. 2.

The slow sales were already noted in Rudbeck’s letter to De la Gardie, 5 April 1679, Annerstedt, Bref II, 165–69. The continued slow rate is seen in his letter of 14 September 1679, Annerstedt, Bref II, 173–75. Two hundred forty copies were sold by March 1682. This did not count the twenty that were lost at sea when the ship carrying them went down outside of Rostock. Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 2 March 1682, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:7.

Verelius was showing signs of ill health at least by the late 1670s, and Rudbeck described his friend standing at the doorway short of breath, exhausted by even a short walk, 5 April 1679, Annerstedt, Bref II, 168. Punishment of Norcopensis for allegedly neglecting university duties is in Arrhenius’s letter to De la Gardie, 2 January 1683, copied in UUB, U40:5. The last years of De la Gardie’s life were “full of misfortunes, sorrows, and humiliations” (“olyckor, sorger, och förödmjukelser”), Annerstedt, Bref III, clxxxvi. This episode is discussed in Fåhraeus (1936), 282–319; and Magnusson (1993), 132ff. Rudbeck’s loyalty to the count is well known and was praised by Atterbom, who saw this as one of the “more beautiful” sides of Rudbeck’s character ([1851], 82).

The reduction is defined by Anthony Upton in Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism (1998), ix, as “a legal process, based on the principle of the inalienability of the crown’s lands and revenues. The principle meant that even if a ruler made a grant to a subject in perpetuity from these lands and revenues, he, or his successors, could recall the grant at any time on grounds of public necessity.” Information about the political culture of this period also comes from Kurt Ågren’s “The reduktion,” in Roberts (1973). Strindberg (1937), 79–87, discusses the Crown properties sold, bestowed, and dispersed to meet the needs of Swedish warfare, and the background to the reduction, 110ff.

Many aristocratic families were ruined in the reduction, literally reduced to begging for clemency at the palace gates where they had formerly been welcomed as guests. Voltaire described this sight in his History of Charles XII, translated by Winifred Todhunter (1908), 13, and many others have noted it as well. Michael Roberts has printed many documents about this period in his Sweden as a Great Power 1611–1697: Government, Society, Foreign Policy (1968). Besides the effects of the war on morale, the council was losing influence through the deaths of its prominent members and the king’s slow replacement of them (and then with his own favorites). Surviving members were often sick and elderly, if not also away from the capital on various activities (Rystad, Karl XI: En biografi [2001], 147–48). The council’s demotion was already a fact before 1680 (179).

In addition to Makalös, De la Gardie owned the following castles and properties at one time or the other: “Drottningholm, Karlberg, Jakobsdal (Ulriksdal), Venngarn, Ekolsund, and Ekholmen in Uppland; Frövdi with Hinseberg in Västmanland, Kägleholm in Närke. Läckö, Traneberg, Mariedal, Katrineberg, Höjentorp, Synnerby hospital, Slädene, Magnusberg, Råda ladugård and Jönslunda in Västergötland. Along with these came large areas in Finland and Livonia, among others Pernau and Arensburg on the island of Ösel. He also had property in Pomerania and Mecklenburg” (Gunda Magnusson, Magnus Gabriel [1993], 62). See Fåhraeus (1936), 236–62; and Sten Karling’s “Slott och trädgårdar,” in Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie: Nationalmusei utställningskatalog nr.434 (1980), 29–40. De la Gardie’s words from the Swedish hymnal were translated by Göran Rystad in Roberts, ed., Sweden’s Age of Greatness 1632–1718 (1973), 236.

In contrast to Rudbeck, Hadorph and the College of Antiquities were quickly choosing other powerful men as patrons, including De la Gardie’s own rivals, Sten Bielke, Göran Gyllenstierna, and Claes Fleming (Schück, Hadorph, 160–62).

CHAPTER 15: AND THEN THE SNAKE THAWED

Olof Rudbeck’s words forming the epigraph to this chapter are found in his letter to Count de la Gardie, 29 November 1670, Annerstedt, Bref II, 77. Professor Henrik Schütz’s background comes from Annerstedt, UUH II, 207–8, as well as Annerstedt, Bref III, cxxxvi ff. The students’ dislike of Schütz is discussed by Annerstedt, including their chanting outside his window, Bref IV, ccviii, n. 1. Rudbeck’s appeal for the library position appears in his letter of 13 January 1682, Annerstedt, Bref III, 188–89. Jonas Rugman’s manuscript-hunting missions are analyzed in Schück, KVHAA I, 203ff., and in Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 280; Hadorph and the College of Antiquities are treated also by Schück KVHAA and also Hadorph. Annerstedt’s UUH II, 208–13, discusses the struggle for the library.

That Hadorph began to see Rudbeck as the main opponent for the college, and fear that he would put the college’s work “in the shadows,” is shown by Schück in Hadorph, 167–68. Hadorph’s vanity is also discussed, though Schück believed it was not as pronounced as in others of the day, such as Verelius, Hadorph, 87–89. The praise of Atlantica, however, “jarred the ears” of the College of Antiquities members Örnhielm and Hadorph, 170.

Schütz’s attempt to obtain Verelius’s position and Schütz’s trip to Stockholm while Verelius was on his deathbed are found in Annerstedt, Bref III, cxxxvii. The relative who probably helped him gain the position was Johan Bergenhielm, one of the royal secretaries in Stockholm. Rudbeck’s clashes in the consistory and his defeat are shown in Annerstedt, Bref III, cxxxvii–cxxxxv. Rudbeck’s hiding of the keys is in Annerstedt, Bref III, cxxxix, n. 1. According to Annerstedt, Uppsala was in a “true state of war” (cxxxviii).

Rudbeck’s words in the narrative come from his letter dated 13 January 1682, printed in Annerstedt, Bref III, 73–74. Rudbeck’s answer to Schütz’s demand that he return the manuscripts was printed by Gödel (1897), 168. Rudbeck’s arguments for a chance to defend himself against the charges of forged documents are found in, among other places, his letter of 26 February 1684. Some of Rudbeck’s responses to the Inquisition Commission were published in Annerstedt, Bref III, 206–26, 256–65. Another response to the chancellor, full of information about the university, is on 226–51. Rudbeck’s requests for access to university records appear as supplements to this letter. Annerstedt saw the creation of the Inquisition as a response of Rudbeck’s angered enemies (Bref III, cil). Strindberg basically agrees on this point, claiming that Schütz and Arrhenius intended to use the Inquisition to blame Rudbeck for the university’s problems (254).

All the Inquisition’s demands are outlined by Annerstedt, Bref III, cil–cl; UUH II, 223–35; and Rudbeck was treated as their main goal, II, 230. Annerstedt called Schütz the “grand inquisitor,” Bref III, cxxxxvii; and Atterbom ([1850], 423) made a comparison to the Spanish Inquisition, not least in turning on its own members. Rudbeck’s irony about their honor is found in Annerstedt, Bref III, cil ff.

Rudbeck describes Schütz storming the press in an undated letter of 1685, LUB, De la Gardie släktarkiven: Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie 93:1, reprinted in Annerstedt, Bref III, 266–69. Sithellius’s letter, 20 May 1684, was published in Nelson (1950), 51. Although originally written in Swedish, this letter had been translated into Latin and its claims intensified. The dispute with the College of Antiquities is found in Annerstedt’s UUH II, 235–40, and Bref III, clxii–clxvi, as well as in Schück, KVHAA III, 366–401; Atterbom, Minne II, 41ff.; Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 299–300; and Strindberg, Bondenöd och stormaktsdröm, 259.

Rudbeck paid the expenses for the publication of the Collections. The first one, De viri clarissimi Olavi Rudbeckii Atlantica Diversorum Testimonia, appeared in 1681; and the second, Auctarium Testimoniorum, in 1685 (Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 25 March 1685, Supplement, printed in Annerstedt, Bref III, 226–51, particularly 251). Another controversial letter in the collection was from Jena professor of law Schubartus, who claimed that Rudbeck’s theories would correct some of Schefferus’s errors about the Goths, 18 January 1683, printed in Nelson (1950), 46.

The right to censorship was found in the 1655 constitution (Schück, KVHAA III, 373). All of these challenges set Rudbeck back in his plans. Before the crisis erupted, for instance, Rudbeck believed that the second volume would be done by the summer of 1684 (letter of 26 February 1684, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:8).

Rudbeck’s economic sacrifices are clear from glancing at his letters at this time, including, for instance, 27 March 1683, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:8, and 23 March 1682, E.11:7. The expenses and Rudbeck’s own contributions are noted in his supplements to a letter dated 25 March 1685 (Annerstedt, Bref III, esp. 240–51). Rudbeck’s words on being too shy to beg and having no strength to quarrel come from a letter to De la Gardie, 31 March 1685, reprinted 254–56. This is also the source for not daring to string the bow any tighter. In 1685, when Rudbeck was in bad economic straits, a merchant refused to extend him any further credit. In outrage, Rudbeck immediately took off his coat in the market and used it as collateral (Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 16 July 1685, LUB, De la Gardie släktarkiven: Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie 93:1.

On threatening to sink a second time like Plato’s Atlantis, Rudbeck certainly feared the risks of De la Gardie’s planned retirement (Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 22 October 1684, reprinted in Annerstedt, Bref III, 204).

Jacob Arrhenius as a treasurer, Annerstedt’s UUH II, 204–7; his comments to the Bref III, cxxxv–cxxxvi. Rudbeck had moved more quickly in his career than Hadorph, and then helped him (Schück, Hadorph, 57–58, also 98). The relationship between Rudbeck and Hadorph, however, was under great strain even before the conflict over antiquities (Rudbeck’s letter of 14 December 1679, copy in KB, Örnhielmiana, and printed in Annerstedt, Bref II, 179–82). Part of the background, too, was the hostility between Verelius and Hadorph. Their relationship had moved from positive to disintegration: salary disputes, antiquarian rivalries, the Curio lawsuit, and the dispute over Verelius’s support of his nephew, Isthemius-Reenhielm, as a member of the college (as Hadorph wanted his son Johannes). Schück, Hadorph, 97–108, and the Isthemius dispute, 119–22.

Rudbeck described his carriage accident and vertigo in a letter to the chancellor, 24 May 1684, Annerstedt, Bref III, 199. As the crisis deepened, Rudbeck’s dizziness became worse (9 May 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 274). Rudbeck’s great disappointment and the image of the snake come from his letter to the chancellor dated 1 July 1684, Annerstedt, Bref III, 202. This story is also found in an Aesop fable, in Olivia and Robert Temple’s edition of Aesop, The Complete Fables (1998), fable 82, 65.

CHAPTER 16: THE ELYSIAN FIELDS

This struggle is outlined in Annerstedt’s UUH II, 235–43, and Bref III, clxii–clxvi; Atterbom (1850), 425ff.; Schück’s Hadorph, 174–82; and many places in Schück’s KVHAA. Hadorph’s intentions for printing Stiernhielm’s work, De Hyperboreis, come from Schück, KVHAA III, 320; and Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 269. Like Atterbom ([1851], 58–59), I think it would have been interesting to see what Hadorph and his friends, including the royal historiographer and natural law theorist Samuel Pufendorf, would have written.

Arrhenius’s comparison of Rudbeck to a crow is an old device, found in Aesop, The Complete Fables, translated by R. and O. Temple (1998), fable 162, 119. Credit for founding the College of Antiquities was disputed, and both Hadorph and Rudbeck claimed the distinction. One possible resolution, offered by Schück, is that Hadorph proposed the institution and Rudbeck secured De la Gardie’s support (KVHAA II, 2–3; and Hadorph, 65).

Rudbeck’s comparison of his response to the college’s letter and drinking the best liquor is found in his letter of 11 June 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 285. His response to the college attack came three days later (Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 14 June 1685, printed in Annerstedt, Bref III, 287–93). The words about the French ambassador and other praise also come from this letter (289). The king freeing Rudbeck from the censorship is noted by Annerstedt, Bref III, clxiv; and Atterbom (1851), 38–39. The college’s accusations are in a letter from the Collegium Antiquitatum Patriae to De la Gardie, 4 June 1685, copy, KB, Örnhielmiana O.20. Rudbeck’s defense was taken from his own letter to the count, 14 June 1685, in Annerstedt, Bref III, 287–93. Rudbeck’s words on the college, not wanting to obtain their subsidies, which Schück cited and believed, are on pages 173–74. De la Gardie’s response, dated 18 June 1685, was printed in C. C. Gjörwell, ed., Den svenske Mercurius, February 1760, 105–14.

The clash between Rudbeck and the College of Antiquities is treated in Schück, KVHAA III, 366–401; Schück, Hadorph, 174–82; and Annerstedt, Bref III, clxii–clxvi. The college’s move to Stockholm was perhaps not as radical as it might seem today. After the deaths of many older members and the move of others to the capital, few were still in Uppsala (Schück, Hadorph, 118). This was not the way it appeared to De la Gardie, however.

The tryckeritunna was a considerable fund for antiquities, the money based on 2,221 kyrkohärbärgen across the country contributing a bushel of grain (valued at three daler silvermynt) to equal some 6,000 a year. The problem, of course, was collecting the money in the large country, where many people resented the tax, if they did not outright resist it. Many disputed its legality, “revocerad” back in 1637 (Schück, Hadorph, 111–15, 122–26). Additional insight on the history of the tryckeritunna is found in Abel Ahlquist’s “The History of the Swedish Bible,” in Scandinavian Studies, vol. 9 (1926).

Hadorph was one of the best-paid officials in Sweden, earning theoretically over 2,200 daler silvermynt, compared with a professor at 700, an assessor in court at 900, and even a landshövding at 1,500 (Schück, Hadorph, 117 and 127). A landshövding was a local governor whose power in most parts of Sweden could be compared, in the words of one observer, with a combined lord lieutenant and sheriff (John Robinson, Account of Sweden, 1688 [1998], 13). Hadorph’s official salary, though, was in reality somewhat less. Teachers reduced to begging are described in Schück, Hadorph, 188.

The conclusion of the Curio lawsuit is described in Annerstedt, Bref III, clxvi–clxix, and the printer’s fate in Bref IV, ccx–ccxi. Valuable information on the press comes also from supplements AZ, AA, and AAA to Rudbeck’s letter of 25 March 1685 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 247–51). Rudbeck’s support of Curio is described in many places, particularly a letter of 3 August 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 295, and another letter with the same date, 296–97. Rudbeck’s pawning of copies of Atlantica comes from a letter dated 12 October 1685 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 305). The descriptions of Arrhenius and Schütz’s efforts to block Curio come from an undated letter in September 1685, probably written around the middle of the month. By 16 September, Rudbeck was writing to ask the chancellor to seek help from the king in the Curio conflict (Annerstedt, Bref III, 301).

Rudbeck’s letters shed some light on his work with the sagas, for instance, 2 June 1680, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:7. Rudbeck’s printing of the Norse sagas is listed in Rudbeckius’s Bibliotheca Rudbeckiana (1918). Before printing the sagas, Rudbeck was urging manual copying to protect the manuscripts from too much handling, according to Rudbeck’s letter to De la Gardie, 20 March 1682, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar för Uppsala universitet arkiv E.11:7.

The attempt to secure funds from the Stockholm city treasury is discussed in Rudbeck’s letter to De la Gardie, 9 May 1685, printed in Annerstedt, Bref III, 276. His hope of following the English example by publishing Atlantica in installments and the report on the state of his debts are from a letter to De la Gardie, 9 May 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 274–76. Other fund-raising attempts, including loans from students and readers, are found in a letter dated 12 October 1685 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 306). Rumors of possible royal support were noted by Rudbeck in a letter to De la Gardie, 11 June 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 284–86. Both the archbishop and the landshöfding were privately assuring Rudbeck of success. See also Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 13 September 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 298–99. The king’s letter of 6 October 1685 and his opinion of Rudbeck’s Atlantis project are cited in part in Atl. II, 4–5, 8. The second volume of the Atlantica was dedicated to Charles XI, just as the third would be to dedicated to his son and successor, Charles XII, with more words on Rudbeck’s appreciation (III, 4).

State funding put the search on a solid financial basis: a 200-riksdaler award, with “annually” scribbled in the margins, 13 July 1693 copy, KB, Autografsamling, printed in Annerstedt, Bref IV, 340–42; and Rasmus Nyerup, Olof Rudbeck den œldre. Et biographisk omrids. Sœrskilt aftrykt af det skandinaviske litteratur selskabs-skrifter for 1813 (1814), 59–63. The level of support is also seen in a supplement to Rudbeck’s letter to Bengt Oxenstierna, dated 13 January 1697, Annerstedt, Bref IV, 353–57. The reference to the clinking of coins was used first for De la Gardie’s subsidy, which galvanized Rudbeck back into action (Rudbeck to De la Gardie, 21 April 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 269).

The president of the Chancery, Bengt Oxenstierna, was, at this time, a great supporter. According to Oxenstierna’s secretary, Rudbeck’s theories were “frequently the running topic” of discussion and the president “repeatedly punctuated his solemn public charges” with the reading of Atlantica. In fact he claimed that Oxenstierna’s reading of Atlantica was so vigorous that he often did not heed pressing matters of state. C. Staude, 11 November 1689, Nelson (1950), 93. Rudbeck’s victory in the Inquisition is discussed in Annerstedt, Bref III, cli–clii.

Confucius was introduced into learned Europe with Philippe Couplet’s translation of the Analects, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (1687). The questions about China were from the German oriental scholar Professor Müller (Mullerus Greiffenhagius), November 1685 in Nelson (1950), 89. See also Rudbeck’s own investigations about Swedes in China, for instance, KB, Atland tabulae med anteckningar av O Rudbecks hand (F.m.73). Rudbeck acknowledges the comments of the royal geographer Sanson, citing the discussion between Silenus and King Midas on Atlantis, found in Aelianus’s Varia Historia (Atl. II, 138). Among the reasons for Swedes in India were the Swedish names for many places he saw (Atl. III, 471–86). Rudbeck’s discussion of the various representations of the sun is the longest chapter in the entire Atlantica (II, 148–449).

Rudbeck’s hopes for sending Peringer out on another, even more ambitious, journey around Europe were noted in a letter to Bengt Rosenhane, 20 November 1683, Annerstedt, Bref III, 194. Peringer would later succeed Örnhielm as a member of the College of Antiquities, in 1689, and publish his influential edition of Snorri’s Heimskringla. Many other trips were taken, or at least planned. The German traveler Engelbrecht Kempfer, for one, hoped to use the opportunity of accompanying the Swedish embassy to Japan to explore the Far East for more evidence of Rudbeck’s theories. His letter, dated 20 February 1683, asks Rudbeck for an itinerary (printed in Nelson [1950], 48). Visitors seeking out Rudbeck and a trip to Old Uppsala are noted by Annerstedt, Bref IV, cclxiii. The Polish resident was identified as possibly F. G. Galetzki, Annerstedt, Bref IV, cclxiv, n. 1. Rudbeck’s letter to Bengt Oxenstierna elaborates on the colorful occasion (372–74), which was discussed in Annerstedt, Bref IV, cclxiv–cclxvii; and Eriksson (2002), 614–17. The reference to the tourist industry is in Rudbeck’s letter to De la Gardie, 2 October 1685, Annerstedt, Bref III, 302.

Rudbeck’s Campus Elysii is treated in Eriksson (2002), 250–54, and Lindroth (1975), 429–32. The romantic poet in question was P. D. A. Atterbom, his words on the Atlantica coming from Atterbom (1850), 281. The great fire of 1702 is described in Eenberg’s En utförlig relation om den grufweliga eldzwåda och skada, som sig tildrog med Uppsala stad den 16 Maii, åhr 1702 (1703), as well as in two of Rudbeck’s letters to Oxenstierna: 17 May 1702 and 26 May 1702, printed in Annerstedt, Bref IV, 387–88 and 389–90. The fire is also described in Annerstedt, Bref IV, cclxxviii–cclxxi; and Annerstedt, UUH II, 350–52. Some manuscripts at Rudbeck’s house were lost, including an early Latin manuscript of Saxo Grammaticus, which Rudbeck refers to in various places in Atlantica, such as II, 83, and III, 675–76. Klemming (1863) has noted a list of manuscripts cited in Rudbeck’s work that are no longer in existence. Another manuscript lost in the fire was a codex of Heimskringla (Gödel [1897], 166).

Rudbeck’s part in rebuilding Uppsala is noted in Eriksson (2002), 620; Annerstedt, Bref IV, cclxxxi–cclxxxii; Annerstedt, UUH II, 353; Atterbom (1851), 117; and Fries (1896), 30.

EPILOGUE

Charles XII had grown up with Norse sagas and Rudbeck’s Atlantica (Atterbom [1851], 64; Strindberg [1937], 316ff.). Victories of this warrior king were sometimes celebrated in Rudbeckian terms, for instance making him Sweden’s Hyperborean king (Strindberg, 329–30); Charles XII’s officers searching for Rudbeck’s theories are noted (401). The Battle of Narva has received quite a bit of attention in Swedish and European sources, as noted, for instance, by Hatton (1968), especially 152–54, and Voltaire, 48–54. Rudbeck’s words on the hands black from chemistry and the back aching from stargazing come from a letter cited in Annerstedt, Bref IV, cxcv. Rudbeckia was named by Carl Linnaeus in honor of the Rudbecks, Olof and Olof junior.