by David King
Taking the setbacks personally as usual, Rudbeck now had the added discomfort of feeling partly to blame for the ugly affair. It was mainly his enemies who were taking out their frustrations on his printer, just as they would soon be doing with his translator, Anders Norcopensis, who was also subjected to censorship. Rudbeck wanted desperately to find a way to help Curio and his family.
So one hundred copies of his Atlantica were pawned at twenty daler kopparmynt apiece, raising a total of two thousand daler kopparmynt (almost seven hundred daler silvermynt) for the cause. Curio followed suit, selling some of his stock of books to professors in town, netting an additional fifteen hundred daler kopparmynt (a fraction of their worth). Rudbeck also started selling his musical instruments. Even more generously, Rudbeck invited the printer and his family to move into the little stone house in his yard. There, Curio could hopefully open shop and work as Rudbeck’s personal printer.
To the shock of his enemies, Rudbeck’s grand scheme looked as if it might actually work. On October 6, 1685, King Charles XI did in fact grant Curio the right to publish, no mean feat in an age when royal sanction was a heavily guarded instrument in the Crown’s efforts to control the press. Curio was also granted the right to import any new equipment from the Continent, free of the hefty customs tolls. Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie had after all been able to help, playing a large role in securing Curio the same privileges enjoyed by other printers and booksellers in the kingdom.
And over the next few years, Henrik Curio would again work as a printer in Uppsala. For a time he even rivaled the university press, because finding a successor to him was proving more difficult than the council had originally thought. It took time and intricate negotiations, and in the end the university had to grant a higher salary and better conditions to lure a new printer to town. After ten years of bitter litigation, reaching the highest court of the land and resulting in a heartbreaking loss, Curio’s press had, in the end, only moved a few blocks away.
From this newly sanctioned press in the stone house in Rudbeck’s yard, the two friends would publish many Norse sagas, including Saint Olof’s Saga, Arrow-Odd, Kaetil Haeng, and Egil’s Saga. A very early lexicon of Old Norse, which Verelius was working on until his death, was also published in 1691. In his spare time Rudbeck would often stop by the press, checking on its progress and tinkering with its equipment. He would even devise special blocks for printing the runic script. Rudbeck was indeed enjoying his work, being, as he put it, a “midwife” for the Norse sagas.
Now, with a press in place, Rudbeck was again trying to find a way to raise money for the continuation of his adored Atlantica project. As obsessed as ever with perfecting his theory, Rudbeck had many more clues to chase down, and more evidence to accumulate, about the lost world of Atlantis. Indeed a plethora of discoveries was still to be made, but, as Rudbeck lamented, there was no money to sustain the search. He could not simply rely on De la Gardie’s generosity or his own resources, both of which were severely reduced, if not almost depleted. Frustrated yet not without hope, Rudbeck would be busy seeking alternative ways to pay for his book.
He tried securing loans from the Stockholm city treasury, hoping to repay the sum with copies of his book. When the city politely turned down the offer, claiming that it could not afford such a venture, Rudbeck toyed with publishing the work in the “English way,” by selling subscriptions to gentlemen before publication. Some money came, too, as loans from admiring readers, including four hundred daler kopparmynt from the witch hunter Anders Stiernhöök. De la Gardie somehow found some funds, and a student society contributed a five-hundred-daler-kopparmynt loan. There was even talk of trying to make money from a tobacco company, and Rudbeck, always optimistic, still hoped that his passenger boat service might turn enough of a profit to help defray the exorbitant costs of the project.
Then, after wild swings of fortune, Rudbeck received a letter in early October 1685 that would change the nature of his search. King Charles XI had been appalled to learn how relentlessly Rudbeck had been pursued and how ruthlessly he had been treated. Less than half a year after removing him from the authority of the censor, the king now released him from the hounds of the Inquisition. After all the efforts of Schütz, Arrhenius, and the commission, they had not found any misdeed. Rather, it seems that their investigations had backfired, giving Rudbeck the opportunity to show how much he had sacrificed for the university.
During the fall of 1685, King Charles XI also came through with some promised royal subsidies, awarding Rudbeck some eight hundred daler silvermynt. The royal funds would later even be extended to a regular payment to the scholar. No less than two hundred riksdaler (four hundred daler silvermynt) would be given every year to ensure the publication of Atlantica. Following many years of economic hardship and distress, Rudbeck felt that the clang of coins was preferable to the sound of beautiful music. The year that had begun with such frightening omens ended better than he could have possibly hoped.
THE BLOWS FROM his enemies had been parried, and Rudbeck’s hunt for Atlantis was, for the first time in his life, on solid financial footing. Such an unexpected turn of events enabled him to pursue his quest with all the enthusiasm of earlier times, although the recent trials had naturally drained some of his vigor. At least he was now free to investigate the mysteries of the ancient world as he saw fit, no longer forced to stay closely within the limits of monetary constraint. As he neared his fifty-fifth birthday, Rudbeck’s ambitions soared, and his work swelled, and, in the end, the sequel would be even larger than the first volume.
One of the main goals in publishing the second volume was of course informing the world of the latest news about Atlantis. Rudbeck had found the comments and criticisms from readers particularly useful, helping him further refine some of the rough edges of his theories. Louis XIV’s royal geographer offered some additional support for Rudbeck’s vision of Atlantis, pointing to a discussion in Aelianus’s Varia Historia between the satyr Silenus and King Midas that made Atlantis sound even more Swedish. Another scholar, Andreas Müller, a German orientalist in Berlin, had read Atlantica with amazement, and wondered if the Swedes had not in fact reached China.
China was in vogue in the 1680s, the decade that would see the ancient philosopher K’ung-fu Tzu first enter into Western consciousness, his name translated into the Latinate form Confucius. Müller was immersed in the discussions about China, stemming largely from his contacts with pioneering Jesuit missionaries in the forbidden land. When he read Atlantica, Müller was amazed at the many similarities between the Chinese and Swedish civilizations. He sent Rudbeck a list of ten comments and questions including “whether you think navigating through the north to China was an impossibility.”
Rudbeck would take up this question with great enthusiasm. The National Library in Stockholm has one of Rudbeck’s personal maps, full of measurements, calculations, and notes in the margins, showing how seriously he looked into this possibility. He was reading Marco Polo, following along in the medieval Venetian merchant’s travels in the East, and paying close attention to the descriptions of customs, perhaps signs of a surviving Swedish presence. In volumes III and IV of Atlantica, the horizons expanded further, with Rudbeck taking the Swedes all the way to the banks of the Indus River, where the Swedish Buda, a figure in medieval Norse manuscripts, supposedly gave rise to the Buddha. He was also examining travel reports of the New World in the West, convinced that the Swedes had crossed the Atlantic well before Christopher Columbus (and also well before Leif Ericsson and the Viking expeditions). Similarities between words guided him in these days, with etymology rising even higher in the hierarchy of evidence and in his undisciplined speculation based on words.
The highlight of the volume, though, was elaborating on the Swedish legacy still present in the ancient Mediterranean. Worship of Sun, Moon, and Earth were considered, with wild speculations on how Swedish classical mythology really was. In one remarkable chapter, running some three hundred pages,
Rudbeck discussed an array of classical myths that he believed could be explained only if they had originated in the far north. The phoenix, the elusive bird of red fire consuming itself only to be reborn of its own ashes, was a representation of the sun—its death in the wintertime, when it did in fact disappear for months, and then its return in the summer, constantly above the horizon.
Rising to a peak in popularity, Rudbeck was enjoying his own day in the sun. Adventurers, meanwhile, pledged to continue his chivalric quest. One Uppsala student, classicist Gustaf Peringer, for example, made an arduous ride of over one thousand kilometers to the far north and confirmed Rudbeck’s veritable bonanza of discoveries about Atlantis. He saw Tethis Fiord, the home of the Titan Tethys, as well as Atle’s Fiord, named after, he agreed, King Atle, or Atlas. The northern ports of Atlantis were also identified, as were Jupiter’s marsh, Torneå (Thor’s River), and other provocative place-names. Nearby, too, were the Atlas Mountains of mythology, the high plateaus where the famed Hyperborean stargazers first understood the riddles of the heavens and created the world’s oldest solar calendar. Here indeed in the cold, mountainous north was the “blazing fire” of Swedish ingenuity, where the pioneer Swedes had created classical Greek mythology.
From all around Europe, visitors flocked to see the sights of Atlantis, some hoping to receive a guided tour from the “oracle of the north” himself. This had not happened before, and Rudbeck noted in jest that there was something of a minor tourist industry. Visitors were shown what was effectively touted as one of the greatest sites in the world, older than the Pyramids, more significant than the Parthenon.
On one such occasion, in the spring of 1699, a Polish diplomat received the Rudbeckian welcome. The guest is not specifically named, though it was probably F. G. Galetzski, a representative of Augus-tus II, the king of Poland (and father of at least 354 acknowledged illegitimate children).
With the guests scheduled to arrive on a Saturday night in late April, Rudbeck and his fellow hosts waited eagerly to receive them. The tables were set, and all preparations made, but no one came. Then, late Sunday night, hardly a day or a time anyone expected a visitor, a student serving as a lookout rode back to Uppsala in a hurry. The Polish entourage was seen on the road from Stockholm and was very soon to arrive in town. The advance warning allowed enough time to notify the designated hosts and prepare at least some basic welcome. Rudbeck joked, “It fell upon old Rudbeck, that he would release his sweet lady from their midnight hug to cook and stew.”
But since the Polish ambassador went straight to bed, the real ceremonies did not begin until the next morning. After seeing Uppsala Cathedral and the relics of the country’s patron saint, Saint Erik, the guest officially met Rudbeck, who stood out among the brightly clad gentlemen in wigs with his black clothes and white collar, his long hair flowing naturally on his shoulders. When the Polish visitor learned that this old-fashioned man was the author of Atlantica, a book he owned and valued very much, the diplomat unleashed so many “titles of honors and held such a stately speech” that Rudbeck joked that he thought he had been mistaken for “a Roman cardinal.” Galetzski made such a big deal over him that Rudbeck laughed, saying, “No one will have to do it after my death.”
Escorting the guest through town, Rudbeck showed him the Gustavianum, the anatomy theater, and the library treasures with the Gothic Bible and manuscripts. They continued to the exercise house, built by Rudbeck, used for fencing, riding, and now also for the new comedy theater attached for student productions. Then they went up the hill to the palace because the diplomat wanted to see where Queen Christina had abdicated the throne. A grand feast followed that showed just how playfully and passionately Rudbeck continued to embrace life.
Guests were served by the twelve tallest Uppsala students Rudbeck could find—Hyperborean waiters with “beards down to the knees.” Each toast to the king, the country, and the future was accompanied by a round of fire from the massive cannons Rudbeck had, for the occasion, stationed in the chancellor’s yard. Festive as they were, the salvos did somewhat frighten the guests, and almost caused the diplomat’s wife to faint. The music was of course arranged by Rudbeck, who also served as conductor with an orchestra of lutes, oboes, and violins of all sorts. Later a small orchestra played in the botanical garden, accompanied at strategic intervals, once again, by Rudbeck’s favorite cannons. After the five-hour celebration, the party culminated with a trip to Atlantis.
At this point the almost seventy-year-old Rudbeck was tired, and so his son Olof junior and Professor Lundius gave the tour of the sites, presumably showing the sacred spring, the grove, the temple, the racetrack, the place of human sacrifice, and the other discoveries. This appears to have been the common itinerary, given what is known about Rudbeck’s tours with other visitors, including Sweden’s crown prince and future king Charles XII. The diplomat and his entourage were both impressed and grateful. “I do not know,” Rudbeck said, “if my wife has kissed me so much in a year.”
Diplomacy in Stockholm was, unfortunately, not as successful as the party in Uppsala. A few months after the lively occasion, Poland would join Russia; and the two powers, along with Denmark, would declare war on Sweden. The Great Northern War had begun.
NOW, WITH HIS enemies defeated and rendered powerless by the king’s direct intervention, the last years of Rudbeck’s life were among the most peaceful he had known. His faith in Atlantis remained undiminished, and he kept on looking for evidence, poring over ancient texts for any possible reference to ancient Sweden. By the third volume of Atlantica, published in 1699, Rudbeck had begun the chronology of Atlantis anew, striving in another nine hundred pages to build a stronger foundation.
Rudbeck was also still printing life-size images of the Atlantean knives and coins he had found. After publication of the third volume, he immediately started working on the fourth. He was joined by Olof junior, who had shown interest in the quest in the last few years. Like his father, Olof junior would study medicine, develop a great passion for botany, and then spend the last decades of his life attempting to extend the frontiers of his father’s lost Atlantis. Specifically, the younger Rudbeck was intrigued by the connections among Scandinavian, Asian, and Hebrew languages.
Rudbeck believed that these axes were once wielded by the Amazons, the famed women warriors of classical mythology who originally came from Scandinavia. The names of the most famous Amazon queens were found in Finland, where, incidentally, some Norse sagas had also placed fierce female warriors. Amazon hairstyles, Rudbeck added, lived on among Swedish women.
Olof junior and his sisters continued to work with their father on the botanical work Campus Elysii, which attempted to reproduce every plant in the world. The first volume, dealing with orchids, hyacinths, and tulips, among others, appeared in 1700, and the second, mostly on grasses, the following year. The elaborate illustrations showed the versatile talents of Olof junior, Johanna Kristina, and Vendela. Working so closely with his children, and enjoying the uncharacteristic calm at the university, Rudbeck really seems to have enjoyed the last years of his life, so full of happiness and, evidently, rich family gatherings.
One surviving portrait captures the warmth and peace of this family. It is an evening of music in the parlor. The fireplace crackles in the corner, and the elder Rudbeck sits with a pair of reading glasses on his nose. He sings in his commanding baritone, holding sheets of music in one hand and directing the family choir with the other. His wife, Vendela, sits close beside him, perhaps not very differently from the way she had when they were newlyweds, some forty years before. The sons and daughters crowd around the affectionate couple, each more or less engrossed in the fun. Johanna Kristina and Vendela sing along, while Olof junior plays the clavichord. Gustaf stands in the back with the stylish wig and scarf so playfully mocked by his father. Young Vendela would later marry a man named Petrus Nobelius, thereby making Rudbeck one ancestor of the great Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize.
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sp; Looking back on Rudbeck’s extraordinary life and search, it had all corresponded so marvelously. No setback or problem, however insurmountable, had disappointed him for long. His brilliant mind found a way to crack each enigma, and then reconcile it with the larger vision of the past. Rudbeck’s obsession had never lost its grip, making Atlantica, in the words of a nineteenth-century romantic poet, “one of the greatest insanities in the history of the world.” And yet Rudbeck’s madness, he continued, was “infinitely more interesting than all the wisdom of its many critics.”
IN THE EARLY hours of May 16, 1702, a small fire began to burn. The dry air, wooden buildings, and great winds created a deadly combination. Within a few hours the town of Uppsala would be in flames.
The fire destroyed Rudbeck’s house and almost all his possessions, including the inventions, instruments, and discoveries from his excavations. Also burned were his printing press, his curiosity cabinet, some seven thousand completed woodcuts for his Campus Elysii, and almost every single unsold copy of Atlantica. By midday, the Rudbecks were “as rich as they were when they lay in the cradle.”
As his life’s work turned to embers and ash, Rudbeck showed all the strength for which his long journey had prepared him. In some ways this was his finest moment. Far from complaining, losing hope, or succumbing to bitterness, Rudbeck showed the inner strength and wisdom that he always believed had existed long ago in a golden age under the North Star.
