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

by David King

  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 (Annerst
edt, 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.