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

by David King

  Yet Plato repeatedly assures us that, however strange it may sound, the story of Atlantis is absolutely true. None of his other portraits of idealized societies, including the utopian community outlined in The Republic, shares the same pretensions to factual accuracy.

  Plato’s plan, according to the first-century biographer Plutarch, was to create nothing less than a grand and stirring masterpiece. Solon had been unable to complete his epic poem, preoccupied perhaps by renewed tensions of Athenian political life, or, as Plutarch suggested, restrained by a fear of failure in the ambitious enterprise of trying to surpass Homer. As if claiming his family inheritance, Plato sought to build on this “fine but undeveloped site.” He marshaled his creative talents and then released them on lost Atlantis. It was to be constructed with a magnificence “such as no story or myth or poetic creation had ever received before.”

  Unfortunately, however, Plato died before he could fully realize these aims, or perhaps abandoned the project when he struggled to find the fitting climax—and this leaves the oldest known account of Atlantis to end literally in the middle of a sentence.

  Sure enough, over the last two thousand years, scientists, adventurers, visionaries, mystics, eccentrics, and lunatics have raced to fill in the missing details of this unfinished dialogue. Redrawn maps place the supposedly submerged civilization almost everywhere, and many come complete with elaborate theories painstakingly or at least passionately argued. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, few places have not been named as possible locations for the legendary island of Atlantis.

  But few, it seems, were as unlikely a candidate and few would inspire as much enthusiasm, for a time, as the theory put forward by Uppsala’s professor of medicine, Olof Rudbeck.

  “BY GOD’S GRACE, I have recently found such antiquities for our country and its great praise in the oldest Greek and Latin texts that it is unbelievable,” Rudbeck wrote to Chancellor de la Gardie at the end of December 1674, promising, though, to save the full details until he saw De la Gardie in person.

  It must have been quite a conversation when Rudbeck told the count about his latest discovery. For that matter, it must have been quite an experience when the idea first struck him. The lost world of Atlantis, Rudbeck was growing convinced, had actually been in Sweden! Its capital was in fact just outside the university, in a place called Old Uppsala.

  All learned Swedes knew this town as one of the earliest inhabited sites in the country. Popular belief, medieval sources, and Rudbeck’s own archaeological investigations had all confirmed its great age. Now, reading Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias closely, Rudbeck must have felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Here in the philosopher’s tale was a place beyond the Pillars of Hercules, that is, at the ends of the world, with a reputed center of culture, just as he had envisioned in the land of the Hyperboreans. And upon inspection it sounded increasingly like what he knew about Old Uppsala.

  Blessed with many attractions, this town would indeed have been a most appropriate place for the kingdom builders. Just as Plato regarded it as the “fairest of all plains,” Old Uppsala was well known as a fertile, rich region, and at one time it had been the most populated area in Sweden. Its pleasant meadows and adjacent farmlands also enhanced the appeal of this ancient center.

  According to Plato, this plain stretched some 3,000 stadia in length (about 550 kilometers) and 2,000 stadia in width (365 kilometers) reaching from the capital city to the “great sea.” Each of these points, Rudbeck ventured with typical boldness, could be found in Sweden. Although he concluded that Atlantis was in fact 5,000 stadia in length, the first measurement (3,000 stades) approximated the size of the kingdom, calculated from the capital at Old Uppsala to Torne in the Arctic north (the other 2,000 stadia ran south from Old Uppsala to Skåne). The width of 2,000 stadia estimated the distance across the center of the realm and did in fact end at a great sea, the North Sea in the west. The rocky, mountainous terrain encircling Atlantis also fit well, Rudbeck proposed, pointing to the Scanderna chain in the west and north, from which came the name Scandinavia. Enclosing the region of Old Uppsala, too, were many famous burial mounds—could these be the “sacred hills” of Atlantis?

  When Rudbeck went out to the proposed capital city for the first time to investigate, he was amazed to find more than coincidental correspondences. Accompanying him that initial day, most likely in the summer of 1674, were four sons of the powerful nobleman Gustaf Kurck, who also marked out and measured the dimensions of the old capital. Eight other Uppsala students, who came along on the expedition, confirmed the length, breadth, and width of the capital, the dimensions laid out almost precisely as Plato had written two thousand years before. They had measured, remeasured, and, to his astonishment, found that the dimensions corresponded “not only with stadia but also with feet and steps.” The team concluded with another round of measurements using Rudbeck’s “mathematical instruments.” “Because neither I nor they,” he added, “could ever before believe this to be true.”

  Leaving aside for the moment the many difficulties Rudbeck would face (and soon for the most part confront), there was actually good reason for his bursting enthusiasm. He had combed the pages of Plato’s dialogues, especially the more detailed Critias, looking for precise information about the physical location of the city: “At a distance of about fifty stades, there stood a mountain that was low on all sides.”

  In addition, the philosopher noted other distinguishing features at the heart of the capital: the royal palace, the great temple, and a cluster of amenities, including gardens and exercise grounds. Nearby were also the three main harbors, and two rivers for transporting timber to the capital.

  Beginning with the landmark least likely to change, Plato’s low mountain was immediately located. “This hill is none other than the one you see in Old Uppsala,” Rudbeck said, pointing out the distance, meticulously marked out and reproduced in a map of Atlantis he drew with the help of his students, who were somewhat overwhelmed at the easy genius of their unpredictable teacher. “Make a circle,” Rudbeck said, and trace its lines through the markers n and p; inside this circumference were to be found all the sites of the lost capital city.

  To the north, just as Plato said, were the two rivers for shipping timber and grain. Known to any local peasant were Junkils aan, which still carried wood and grain from outlying regions, and Tensta aan, now limited only to smaller craft. So, if this latter stream did at times widen and narrow, causing occasional divergences from Plato’s specified width, Rudbeck was not overly worried. This was because, since the time when Atlantis had flourished, other streams, the Ekeby and Edshammar, had encroached on its waterways, and made it less passable for ships (as did the construction of an old mill). Besides that, Rudbeck was sure that the water levels had once been much higher.

  They certainly had! As geologists later discovered, impenetrably thick glaciers had once covered the land around Old Uppsala and central Sweden, as they had most of northern Europe. When the glaciers began to thaw at the end of the last ice age, the water rose significantly, leaving the great plain still underwater as late as 4000 B.C. Rudbeck could not have known about this phenomenon, for glacial recession was as unfamiliar to scholars of his day as woolly mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, or heavy-jawed Neanderthals. But evidence of high water was spotted, Rudbeck was convinced, deep in the layers of the humus, and the story of a drowning Atlantis did seem consistent with observable facts. Figure B on his map shows where the level of water in 1670s Old Uppsala fitted Plato’s descriptions more closely. The gently flowing streams were, in his view, the last remnants of the commercial rivers that had been so important to the economy of Atlantis.

  Over the course of the 1670s, Rudbeck would make the four-kilometer carriage ride out to Old Uppsala many times to explore the terrain of Atlantis and search for any surviving remains. Sometimes he would bring along fellow professors of Uppsala, and at other times his gifted mathematical and enginee
ring students, who were assisting with the land surveying. Much to his surprise, he found that Plato had captured the Swedish landscape rather well. “Not a single point,” Rudbeck said, “seems to be missing.”

  Indeed, another readily identifiable landmark turned up, and this was certainly one of the rarest and most difficult finds for Atlantis hunters over the centuries: the track where the Atlanteans staged races and held equestrian contests.

  When Plato put it at the center of the capital, Rudbeck knew a likely spot to start looking. He had heard that there had once been a course at Old Uppsala that had in fact still been used as late as the sixteenth century. Races had stopped at this old track only when King Charles IX, the father of Gustavus Adolphus, built a new, more modern one near the royal palace in Uppsala.

  Although Rudbeck had looked over the proposed site on many occasions and his investigations had not yet unearthed any evidence, he knew some elderly gentlemen who did remember races being held there. One ninety-eight-year-old retired commander, who had served five Swedish kings at Uppsala Castle, confirmed the accuracy of the location, as did Gostaf Larsson, a grandfather of Rudbeck’s wife, Vendela. A closer look at the dimensions also showed a striking resemblance to the track of Atlantis, right down to the width, which ran to one stadium, or some six hundred feet, and into the edge of the swampy area that stabled the horses.

  Map of Old Uppsala, the ancient site that Rudbeck identified as the capital of Atlantis. Plato’s mountain, rivers, sacred grove, racetrack, and royal burial mounds were quickly found, as were many other things over the next thirty years of Rudbeck’s quest.

  This was indeed a stunning coincidence, and Rudbeck made plans to pursue this promising lead. But, even more fantastic, Rudbeck announced another discovery: he had found the old pagan temple of Atlantis.

  According to Plato’s fable, the temple was an imposing open structure dedicated to the god Poseidon and his Atlantean lover Cleito. Located near the sacred grove and the sacred springs, this temple was “encircled with a wall of gold.” Inside stood golden statues, including the sea god riding a chariot with six winged chargers, “his own figure so tall as to touch the ridge of the roof, and round about him a hundred Nereids [sea nymphs] on dolphins.” Outside were many gold images of Atlantis’s extensive royal family.

  Set against this lavish scenery, the kingdom of Atlantis hosted a monumental ceremony every five or six years. Each of the ten provinces that made up the federated power of Atlantis came together at this temple to evaluate their laws, “the precepts of Poseidon” that had long ago been inscribed upon a pillar of orchicalcum, a controversial mysterious metal that “sparkled like fire.” The festival began with a ritual bull hunt using only “staves and nooses”:

  And whatsoever bull they captured they led up to the pillar and cut its throat over the top of the pillar, raining down blood on the inscription. And inscribed upon the pillar, besides the laws, was an oath which invoked mighty curses upon them that disobeyed.

  After consecrating the limbs, the Atlanteans then took one gout of the blood and mixed it with wine. As the rest of the pure blood was poured over the sacrificial fire, the leaders “swore to give judgment according to the laws upon the pillar and to punish whosoever had committed any previous transgression,” adding the further promise not to “transgress any of the writings willingly, nor govern nor submit to any governor’s edict save in accordance with their father’s laws.” The wine-and-blood mixture was then drunk, with the cup offered as a gift to the temple.

  Such clues were critical, since there was clearly no pagan temple of Atlantis standing in the middle of Old Uppsala. So imagine Rudbeck’s pleasure to read a fascinating description of Old Uppsala during the late eleventh century. The observer was a medieval monk, Adam of Bremen, who had come to Sweden while preparing his church history of the north. In his chronicle was an account of a “well-known temple” at Old Uppsala that could only catch Rudbeck’s attention:

  It is situated on level ground, surrounded by mountains. A large tree with spreading branches stands near the temple. There is also a spring nearby where the heathens make human sacrifices. A golden chain completely surrounds the temple, and its roof, too, is covered with gold.

  Statues of three gods, Adam continued, stood inside the temple. On one side was Wotan, brandishing armor and weapons befitting this god of war; on the other side, Frey, a fertility god with a giant phallus. In between the two stood the god Thor, holding a scepter for his control over the primal elements, governing “the air with its thunder, lightning, wind, rain, and fair weather.” A glance at this temple and the many offerings, the monk also noted, showed how eagerly the Swedes tended to worship their ancient heroes.

  “Every nine years a great ceremony is held at Uppsala. People bring sacrifices from all the Swedish provinces.” “Animals and humans,” Adam of Bremen continued, “are sacrificed, and their bodies are hung in the trees of a sacred grove that is adjacent to the temple.” Held in the highest honor, this grove was made “sacred through the death and putrefaction of the many victims that have hung there.” The sacrifices, the monk said, had been personally witnessed by a seventy-two-year-old man he had met. “The heathens chant many different prayers and incantations during these rituals, but they are so vile that I will say nothing further about them.”

  There were others Rudbeck found, however, who would gladly expound on all the “impurities and abominations” that had once been practiced in Old Uppsala. One of the most vivid accounts came from the sixteenth-century Swedish humanist Olaus Magnus, who was Sweden’s last Catholic archbishop (though never consecrated). Looking back from the vantage point of the Swedish Reformation, Magnus used his historical background and his wonderful imagination to paint a gruesome portrait of the last days when the pagan religion flourished at Rudbeck’s selected site:

  Now the man whom chance had presented for immolation would be plunged alive into the spring of water which gushed out by the sacrificial precinct. If he quickly breathed his last, the priests proclaimed that the votive offering had been auspicious, soon carried him off from there into a nearby grove, which they believed sacred, and hung him up, asserting that he had been transported into the assembly of the gods… .

  For such an event, the “whole mass of the people would attend” and “wish [the victim] utmost joy.” This was after all “considered to be an offering most favorable for the kingdom,” taking place within the “rich magnificence” of the old temple, so sumptuously decorated that it was impossible to see any “inner walls, paneled ceilings, or pillars that did not glitter with gold.”

  For Rudbeck, the monk and the bishop had preserved descriptions of an age-old rite that had survived in Sweden since the early days of the Atlantean empire. Clearly, though, there were many differences between the accounts of the temple of Atlantis and the pagan temple of Old Uppsala: Plato had said that the Atlanteans met every five or six years, and Adam of Bremen said the worshipers met every nine years; Plato noted that the Atlanteans worshipped Poseidon, and Adam of Bremen said that Norse gods were the objects of veneration; Plato specified the sacrifice of bulls, and the others mentioned “humans and animals.” But none of these or other differences seriously troubled Olof Rudbeck.

  Such contradictions and disagreements were not so much obstacles to a hunter of the truth as they were guides of potentially great significance. He illustrated the point using a story from everyday experience.

  Suppose a group of people take a trip. Would each individual in the party, Rudbeck asked, describe the same circumstances with the same words? His answer was a confident “no way.” Yet instead of simply concluding that the journey had never taken place, the differences in the various accounts could, if properly used, point the way to a greater knowledge and understanding of the event. If the example of the travelers failed to make an impression, Rudbeck had a more memorable one: the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all wrote the truth, though they were nevertheless not always in agr
eement “in all words and all circumstances.”

  The same thing, he thought, was the case with Atlantis. Small differences in detail, such as Plato’s saying that the assembly was held every five or six years and Adam’s saying that it was held every nine years, did not irreparably harm the case. The fact that such differences existed, occurring over such a span of time, could potentially increase the value of the testimonies and add more credibility to the events they described. Taking the idea even further, Rudbeck believed such contradictions were preferable to the alternative. Had Plato and Adam of Bremen agreed in every single detail, then historians would have had to approach their accounts with more caution, for such an overwhelming agreement does not often occur naturally. Far more often, one account has been borrowed, copied, stolen, or just plain derived from—or influenced by—another.

  Navigating through the chaos and uncertainty, in other words, was the surest way to find certainty. The historian’s task was to follow the trail wherever it might lead, uncovering the underlying kernels of truth among the diversity of conflicting evidence.

  So, in the case of the temple, Rudbeck started trying to sort through the claims for the essential factual core. Plato had described the temple as lying near a mountain with an ornate wall of gold, and Adam of Bremen also mentioned the nearby mountain and the overlapping “golden chain.” Both noted the nearby springs, the sacred grove, and the rich offerings brought to the temple from the provinces. Sacrifices were performed in both accounts, and the victims were kept in the groves and springs. As for the particular differences, it was not inconceivable that those aspects could change over time, depending on the desires, needs, and priorities in each age.

  Examination of the manuscripts of the Norse sagas did in fact turn up a closer resemblance between the sacrifices held in Atlantis and at Old Uppsala than Adam of Bremen could have known. In addition to the gruesome human sacrifices, the practice of offering bulls to the gods had also been carried out on Rudbeck’s chosen site, with the tradition “surviving” well into the Middle Ages. Snorri Sturlusons’s Heimskringla, or History of the Northern Kings, put it very clearly: “There was a custom in Sweden to rear a bull which would be sacrificed to Odin.”