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

by David King

  To find out more, Rudbeck would attempt to use every form of evidence that might conceivably shed light on this enigmatic people and their proposed home in Sweden. His search would, in the process, lead him to make a final break with traditional historians, whose work at that time consisted primarily in the interpreting and commenting on written accounts. In a sense, the deeper Rudbeck pressed into the old traditions, the more necessary it was to find new ways to understand what he saw as their true meaning. Sometimes the results were innovative; at other times they were odd at best.

  RUDBECK WAS DETERMINED to show what the lyric poet Pindar would call “the wondrous way” to the blessed Hyperboreans. What if, however, this legendary people had never really existed, other than as the inhabitants of an imagined utopia, a dreamland for classical Greece? After all, it is striking to see how many ancients had their doubts. The oldest historian, Herodotus, for example, expressed his skepticism about the existence of the Hyperboreans:

  I will not tell the tale of Abaris, who was supposed to have been a Hyperborean, and carried his arrow all round the world without eating a bite. Let me just add, however, that, if Hyperboreans exist “beyond the north-wind” there must also be Hypernotians “beyond the south.”

  Other authorities from the geographer Strabo to the natural historian Pliny joined him in their hesitancy, though Rudbeck remained unfazed.

  No wonder, he thought, that many intelligent people had questioned whether or not the Hyperboreans had existed. Knowledge of the north had somehow disappeared over time, leaving an unfortunate accumulation of errors that had confused the ancients. For example, many sources had stated that the Hyperborean isle was “not smaller than Sicily.” Yet, if you look at ancient maps, including those from the most famous and influential geographer, Ptolemy, Sweden would not even satisfy this minimal requirement. Antiquity’s greatest geographers had shrunk Sweden so much that it actually looked smaller than Sicily, mistaking the far southern tip of the peninsula, Skåne, for the entire country.

  Ptolemy’s original error, Rudbeck conceded, was made worse by a certain lazy ignorance on the part of his successors. Instead of investigating the matter for themselves, many scholars had simply copied Ptolemy’s view and, in the process, his mistakes. As this happened for centuries, error built upon error, leaving the mistake firmly ingrained, and the discovery of the true identity of the Hyperboreans indefinitely postponed.

  History was like mapmaking, Rudbeck suggested: a geographer could not make a map by uncritically following the statements of others, or by relying solely on the experiences of other people. Rudbeck showed the futility with a story:

  One time, I called over a number of students here at Uppsala from each province of Sweden, and asked them where such-and-such place lay in such-and-such province. When one said west, the other said southwest, one two miles, the other four miles.

  With this method, it would be difficult to find anything. Because the students sometimes took different paths to the destinations, and some were better than others at measuring distance, the result was chaos. Even when he took advantage of actual maps of the regions, Rudbeck still could not make any sense out of the conflicting reports about the distant provinces as long as he sat hundreds of miles away, in a comfortable study in Uppsala. “How would Ptolemy, who sat down in Egypt and drew his maps as best he could using many writings of ancients and others, do any better?” he asked.

  Once Rudbeck gained more confidence in peeling away the layers of errors, he would try to overcome the other objections by showing how much of the Hyperborean legacy still existed in Sweden. In this task, Rudbeck’s ingenuity and resourcefulness had few limits. When the ancients described the Hyperboreans as tall and healthy, Rudbeck knew how to find out. He wrote, “I have diligently examined all the large burial mounds, where skulls and whole skeletons have been found.” The size of the skeletons was sometimes enormous. “The largest ones have been five to six aln [ten to twelve feet!], although there were not many of them, but I have found countless skeletons four aln long [eight feet] or thereabouts.”

  Rudbeck used many original manuscripts of Norse sagas in his search for Atlantis. This image, for example, comes from Snorri Sturluson’s Edda.

  Too bad Rudbeck did not elaborate more on this rather odd passage. Hurrying to keep up with the rapid flow of his ideas, Rudbeck just noted how these skeletons showed the great height that the ancients attributed to the Hyperboreans, and then moved on to discuss other exciting finds. Legends of northern giants were well preserved in many places, not least in the Norse sagas.

  The opening of Snorri’s Edda, the Gylfaginning, “the tricking of Gylfi,” told the memorable story of Thor and his companions’ journey to the land of the giants. When they entered the region called Utgard, somewhere in the far northeast, they saw a castle so enormous that they had to “bend their heads back to touch their spines before they could see up over.” The door alone was too large for Thor to open, leaving the gods, ungracefully, to squeeze their way into the giant stronghold in “between the bars” and slip into the great hall.

  Besides fanciful and imaginative stories that held some kernels of truth, Rudbeck found evidence of the tall Hyperboreans in many other places. One time he assembled a number of Uppsala students and measured them. Dividing them into categories, according to their home provinces in the kingdom, Rudbeck dutifully measured and correlated his results. The tallest students indeed came from the north. He believed that height increased broadly the farther north one went, reaching a climax at about the 68th degree of latitude before dropping off significantly with the nomadic Saami in the farthest north.

  Another prominent characteristic that had almost invariably appeared in the ancient discussions was that the giant Hyperboreans enjoyed a reputation for great health. Drawing on his experiences as a physician, Rudbeck was convinced that these stories reflected a truth he had often observed in his medical practice: the Swedes rarely succumbed to typhus fever, leprosy, the plague, and other nightmare contagions that struck so frequently on the Continent. Swedish health, he added, was not due to any inborn racial advantage, but stemmed instead from fundamental differences in the environment.

  The legendary Hyperborean health was, in other words, explained by Sweden’s cold, brisk weather, which hardened the body’s resistance to disease, and a well-rounded diet also enhanced immunity. Apples, carrots, walnuts, and chestnuts formed a large part of the Swedish diet, Rudbeck noted, especially compared with other countries. Even more, his countrymen regularly consumed many kinds of meat like ox, pork, ham, and “countless fish and birds,” and this went, remarkably, also for the Swedish peasant. An entire day of food in Italy, he suspected, would equal only a hearty “Swedish breakfast.”

  Such a fortunate combination of climate and diet was one reason why so many had marveled at the northerners’ resiliency, from the geographer Strabo, writing at the height of the Roman Empire, to Adam of Bremen, writing one thousand years later in the Holy Roman Empire. The Norse texts were also full of references to immortal realms of the north—not of course literally immortal, Rudbeck added, but rather references to the fact that the people lived such happy and healthy lives, overcoming sickness. In Rudbeck’s mind, Hyperborean tendencies and traditions had lived on in the stories of the legendary lands of the Undying, like that of King Gudmund in the Hervararsaga.

  To show how this Hyperborean trait was a Swedish characteristic, Rudbeck asked his brother Nicholas for some help. As bishop of their hometown, Västerås, Nicholas Rudbeck granted access to the records of baptism for some twelve parishes between the years 1600 and 1673.

  No fewer than 230 people had lived past the age of ninety in these years. There were some rather memorable examples, which Rudbeck of course relished. One old man named Israel in a small village supposedly had lived to the age of 156, and another one, Tor Ulfsson, was said to have lived to 260! He would then have lived, Rudbeck noted, to see his great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren, some “six,
seven, or eight generations.”

  During the course of his investigations, Rudbeck met many villagers whose wisdom intrigued him, when others would have scoffed. In a village outside Uppsala, Rudbeck learned to read runic staffs from a “wise peasant named Anders.” A runic staff was a roughly three-foot-long wooden staff that bore intricately carved runes, the ancient written language of Scandinavia. It was essentially a calendar that could work for every single year. Once you had a code, a symbol for a particular year, you could use that symbol to read the “heavenly clock,” and date the seasonal events. Uppsala’s distinguished professor would sit down and take lessons from the humblest of peasants.

  One of Rudbeck’s most memorable experiences came years later, when one illiterate man taught him to use medieval runic staffs to predict celestial phenomena. Rudbeck the astronomer walked away amazed at how his colleagues of the scientific revolution were just learning to grasp the understanding of the stars shown by his special teacher, one “wise gray-haired peasant.”

  The runic staff helped the Swedish peasant in everything from setting the dates of movable feasts to predicting “the characteristics of the coming year.”

  Reflecting on these unexpected encounters ignited a chain of thoughts that would enable him to gain a deeper appreciation of ancient history. He had come to the stunning realization that the ancient wisdom of the Hyperboreans had indeed survived! It lived on in Sweden, though more in some places than in others.

  This wisdom was not to be sought near seacoasts or borders with other countries, which often undergo rapid change through trade, war, and a host of other interactions. Nor could it be found in royal and princely courts, so subject to changing fashions, which made language “taste like a well-flavored and cinnamon-sweetened porridge.” Nor, for that matter, should one seek out the oldest wisdom among the well-traveled and the learned, who have often drunk up traditions in their wide variety of experiences, with the many new, outside influences slipping in unsuspected, causing a historian to go astray. One should go instead far into the countryside, and deep into the distant parts of the kingdom, into the humblest villages. There the bearded peasant offered a mirror onto antiquity, where the past was most preserved and far from tapped out as a historical resource. Pondering the experience years later, Rudbeck described a sense of appreciation:

  When I see … Anders Tomeson, who is a man over 115 years old who is still able to go by foot to Uppsala, and has a rosy face, white hair, and a long beard which covers his chest, shining as the snow, I think that then I have seen the original image of our old gods and kings… .

  Then, after a digression on the history of beards, including a lament on how the long beards had unfortunately gone out of fashion in most places in Europe by about 1600, replaced instead by the thin, “catlike whiskers,” Rudbeck added his wish “that to the end of the world, our peasants would want to hold the image of the old gods in their body and their honorable beards.” For there was pleasure and knowledge in close contact with the peasant. Sometimes, indeed, it seemed like gazing at the face of Thor.

  A peasant with a long beard conjured up, in Rudbeck’s mind, an image of Old Norse gods.

  In this state of affairs, even common expressions, children’s games, and drinking songs were immensely valuable sources in the quest to reveal a world otherwise lost. Rudbeck was indeed to become one of the first modern collectors of folk customs. All the more remarkable, this was during a century dominated by an aristocratic elite that dismissed peasants as socially and intellectually inferior. It was also well over one hundred years before Romantic collectors such as the Grimm brothers would work to save classic tales from certain disappearance.

  There was, in short, not a single quality of the Hyperboreans that Rudbeck, with the talents of a Renaissance man and the exceptional ability to put his expertise to use in innovative ways, could not place in the far north. And the ease with which he made the discoveries only convinced him of their truth and whetted his appetite for more. From now on, the lure of the anatomy theater would pale beside the attraction of the past—for his knife would be more productive dissecting our misunderstandings about the ancient world.

  7

  THE QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN FLEECE

  He has a genius equal to anything; but like all other genius requires the most delicate management to keep it from running into eccentricities.

  —JOHN ADAMS, DESCRIBING HIS GRANDSON GEORGE WASHINGTON ADAMS

  DURING THE SUMMER of 1674, a sophisticated Italian diplomat named Lorenzo Magalotti came to visit Sweden. Well connected and observant, the thirty-six-year-old Florentine noted the smallest details, leaving a vivid portrait of his experiences. His aim was to describe the host country with such clarity and precision that it would be unnecessary to add the phrase “this is Sweden.”

  As part of his stay, Magalotti made a brief trip out to Rudbeck’s Uppsala. He saw the anatomy theater, visited the botanical garden, and heard about Professor Rudbeck, “a learned man in all areas.” Entering the main university building, Magalotti admired the council chamber with its benches “decorated in scarlet red cloth all around, and at the far end a canopy of red velvet.” He also glanced into the room of another important institution housed there: the College of Antiquities. This was a prestigious antiquarian society, founded by Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie to counter the “incuriosity” that plagued the past. Arguably Sweden’s first scientific academy, the College of Antiquities would loom large in Olof Rudbeck’s life.

  Established in 1667, the college’s mandate was to preserve and promote all manuscripts, documents, and other matters that shed light on the ancient Swedish heritage. Special emphasis was placed on the study of language, “the foundation and most lofty pillar to all sound knowledge of the ancient Swedish writings and laws in the kingdom.” Of central importance, too, were the Norse manuscripts. Collections purchased, bestowed, or captured over the years were turned over to the society, and annual expeditions to Norway and Iceland were planned to discover additional material. Membership in this elite society certainly brought many privileges, not least the promise of funding for all future scholarly work.

  With these aims, spirits had been high in late January 1668 as the College of Antiquities moved into its newly refurbished room in the Gustavianum for its historic first meeting. Seven full members had been selected, many of them leading scholars of Uppsala. The president was the poet and philosopher Georg Stiernhielm. The historian Johan Loccenius and the classical philologist Johan Schefferus were also selected as members, as was Olaus Verelius, professor of the antiquities of the fatherland. One person not invited to join, however, was Olof Rudbeck, who at this time had not yet been consumed by Swedish antiquities.

  Even though it was only a few months old, the hopeful academy was already beginning to struggle. Rhetoric proved easier than adequate funding, and soon there was a noticeable gulf between scholarly ambitions and true financial health. The choice of leadership did not help all that much, either. The president of the college, the seventy-year-old Georg Stiernhielm, much preferred to stay at home in Stockholm than journey to Uppsala for the meetings. Not counting the inaugural ceremonies, Stiernhielm was not present at more than one or two meetings over the entire course of his term before his death in 1672.

  Given the lackluster leadership threatening to paralyze the institution, a young scholar named Johan Hadorph was more than eager to fill the void. The same age as Rudbeck, Hadorph was a short, stocky, dark-haired man who was passionate about the past. He had begun his studies at Uppsala University at the age of eleven, and continued until he reached his thirtieth birthday—an unusually long time by any standards. Energetic and resourceful, Hadorph was the youngest member of the academy, and one of its most promising. His achievements were already considerable.

  In addition to being one of the leading experts on the study of runes (the symbols carved on stone and wood found across Scandinavia), Hadorph had managed to persuade De la Gardie to push through an u
nprecedented law that deserves to be better known in the annals of historic preservation. Under his proposal, castles, fortresses, abbeys, manor houses, indeed any significant ruin or relic, including heaps of stone, would be protected against potential looters. Enacted in December 1666, with governors, bishops, and local officers authorized to enforce its stipulations and some two thousand daler silvermynt granted in funding, this was nothing less than Sweden’s first state law passed to care for its monuments—and perhaps the first of its kind in the world.

  With his diligence and stamina, not to mention his endless stream of creative ideas, Hadorph was undeniably one of the most valuable members of the College of Antiquities. Yet he had his own ideas about how the fledgling society should develop, and he was not afraid to act on them, even if it meant bypassing the elderly absentee president. By simple force of will and the tacit acceptance of his colleagues, Hadorph had steadily gained in power and influence, until it seemed that he virtually controlled the college.

  Helping Hadorph obtain his prominence was a professor of history and one of Rudbeck’s old enemies, Claes Arrhenius. Elected in the second wave of nominations in 1670, Arrhenius had developed a close friendship and collaboration with Hadorph. One thing that bound the two antiquarians together was a vision of the college as the principal and most suitable interpreter of the Swedish past. Another thing they shared was a marked resistance to Olof Rudbeck’s rival antiquarian project. His conclusions were already being dismissed with easy and ruthless skepticism. All of it was pure nonsense, or, as Arrhenius once put it, “a cloud castle of hypotheses.”

  Even Magalotti, who knew several members of the College of Antiquities, seemed to share this initial reaction, though tempered with nonchalance and bemusement. The Florentine gave one of our earliest known international verdicts on Rudbeck’s quest, and it is not favorable: