of foreign policy, De la Gardie effectively stood at the summit of authority at a time when Sweden had reached the zenith of its power.
Behind all the thundering pomp lay a colossal fortune. The count owned about one thousand farms and a couple of hundred estates spread all over Sweden and the Baltic region. Some of these properties were sizable indeed. His castle straddling the beautiful Lake Vanern in west Sweden, Lacko, for instance, had 248 rooms, and 176 servants caring for his every whim. That is, when the he happened to be there, and not at one of his other castles. There were four others alone just in Stockholm and on its outskirts. Ranging from stony medieval fortresses to sprawling baroque spectacles, at least two dozen castles then belonged to Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie.
Both Verelius and Loccenius knew that the count could, if he wanted, be of great assistance to Olof Rudbeck. He had the power, the wealth, and the status that they lacked—and, more than that, he was known to spend lavishly on parties as well as projects. One observer, an Italian ambassador writing a few months after the Uppsala scholars, noted De la Gardie’s restless pursuits:
He is the worst economist, and greatest waster in the world, maintains numerous staff, runs a big table and pays out large sums for his furniture, his gardens, and his enterprises.
According to court rumors, the count had no fewer than forty or fifty different building projects all in progress at the same time on his estates. Whether he was constructing churches, adding wings to hospitals, or embellishing his favorite gardens with the latest fashions, whatever he touched tended to take on immense proportions. The count seemed to be building everywhere, almost all the time, and with very little sense of restraint. On the banks of the river at Lidkoping, he was even building his own city.
At that point in the early 1670s, De la Gardie clearly seemed at the top of the world, and it is easy to understand that he looked untouchable. But then again, it had seemed that way once before. In the middle of the 1640s, De la Gardie had returned to Sweden from his studies on the Continent speaking French like a “Frenchman” and a master of the latest Parisian fashions. Everyone admired his gift of sparkling conversation, and he lacked, as one Frenchman put it, “none of the qualities which should win him friends.”
Just back from his grand tour, De la Gardie caught the eye of young Queen Christina, and she took quite a liking to the dashing gentleman. In fact, he became her obvious favorite. Generously disposed to those she liked, and apparently seeing him as a kindred soul, the queen showered him with gifts, titles, and honors on an unprecedented scale. She paid his personal debts, which had already reached the enormous sum of twenty thousand
But then the count received some startling news. It came in a letter from Her Majesty at the end of 1653 informing him, “I am from henceforth incapable to have any other apprehension for you than that of pity, which nevertheless can nothing avail you, since yourself hath made useless the thoughts of bounty which I had for you.” She added her blunt determination to break all contact with such a worthless and weak soul.
Did the queen’s angry letter mask a deep affection, perhaps spurned love, or did it merely reflect more mundane power shifts at court? Christina was starting to favor a newly arrived French doctor, Pierre Bourdelot, who had cured her of an ailment and, she thought, saved her life. At this point, De la Gardie watched jealously as he lost ground to the upstart physician, and his own behavior precipitated the whole confusing affair. The last face-to-face encounter between the queen and her courtier, in late November 1653, had indeed been awkward.
Evidently feeling his influence slipping away at court, De la Gardie contrived a reason to address the matter with the queen. He claimed to have heard word of her disapproval of him, and when the queen asked about his sources, he stalled, very reluctantly mentioning names. When the queen checked out De la Gardie’s alleged sources, the whole thing backfired. There was nothing “grand, beautiful, or noble in his actions,” she fumed. In light of the embarrassing scene that followed, many trace the count’s fall not to some unreturned love, but rather to De la Gardie’s own insecurities about his position. At any rate, whatever the ultimate causes, the results were all too clear.
The letter was the first in a long line of losses. Titles, honors, and privileges started to disappear, generally announced at irregular, unpredictable intervals, with understandably a more crushing effect. Then the count saw his cool ostracization thaw into an icy official banishment that turned the former twentysomething superstar into a thirty-one-year-old apparent has-been. Nothing, the queen said, would change her mind. And she meant it, much to the displeasure of De la Gardie, his friends, and his mother, who came to plead with the queen. Even Christina’s future successor, Charles, could not convince her of De la Gardie’s merits.
Nothing worked, that is, until Queen Christina left the Swedish throne. Once she moved to Rome, and brought the famous Vasa dynasty to a close, the Pfaltz family captured the throne under Christina’s cousin, Charles X Gustav. Among other things, the new king had strong family ties to De la Gardie, not to mention having been swayed by his undeniable charm. Now, with De la Gardie’s cousin and brother-in-law Charles X Gustav in the saddle, Sweden was preparing for the count’s triumphant return. After the king’s coronation in 1654, offices slowly started to come his way again, and he enjoyed them with his usual flair, though his real break came six years later.
At the death by pneumonia of King Charles X in 1660, Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie experienced a quick, sudden elevation that once again landed him at the top. He was named Chancellor of the Realm, with the power to authorize everything that should be executed in the king’s name. The count was made responsible for all foreign policy and a considerable part of domestic policy; he would in fact lead the government until the future king—then only four years old—came of age.
Such experiences with the stresses of power, not to mention the wild uncertainties of fortune, had undoubtedly exaggerated the count’s already impulsive behavior. He could bounce unpredictably from one idea to another, one project to another, one favorite to another. He appeared whimsical and wavering. Even at the height of his authority, De la Gardie was racked by terrible self-doubt.
Additionally, as the threats of international war and economic stagnation loomed, De la Gardie would find himself increasingly and publicly challenged. He also found himself resorting to old tactics. When things did not go his way, he would often get up in the middle of a debate and go home. Advocates well versed in the principles of power politics strongly advised him against such rash actions, as did his own sister, Maria Sofia, who correctly saw the risks of fleeing to the countryside in the heat of a debate.
By the early 1670s, the vicissitudes of fortune and the volatilities of the passions reigning at the center of power had confirmed his worst fears. He felt vulnerable once again. Worries consumed him, and made him especially prone to fits of anxiety. As many of his allies learned, far too often it seemed that De la Gardie nervously yielded under challenge. He seemed too unreliable and much too mauled by second-guessing phantoms. Shunning confrontation and indulging a tendency to fret, this gentleman was hardly a modern paladin.
Such was the man that Uppsala’s scholars hoped to attract to Rudbeck’s search. And indeed De la Gardie seemed overjoyed with the news from the academy. He could not have been more enthusiastic about Rudbeck’s quest. The question, though, was how long the attraction would last.
ESTEEM FROM THIS powerful man and the learned historians must have been exhilarating, but it could hardly compare with the excitement sparked by the maps and the manuscripts. Armed, too, with his new archaeological dating method, Rudbeck made progress on his search with lightning speed. The secrets of the distant past could now be teased from the nearest burial mound, and faint signs of this forgotten world rendered more clearly than ever before. With an instinct as sharp and exact as any compass he had made, Rudbeck wondered if he stood on the verge of unlocking the secrets to some of the greatest mysteries of all time. And he was delirious with joy.
But what difficulties lay ahead—centuries of error and ignorance had covered the trail with “tall, terrifyingly impenetrable overgrowth.” To clear this path, he would need a combination of historical knowledge, language skills, and an uncanny ability for uncovering clues and deciphering them correctly. Distant, often obscure, and almost always ambiguous, the evidence would need the rigor of the scientific method. Yet it would also need a bold, almost reckless ability to see the world in a new way. Success in this quest, as he was just starting to see, would require a delicate balancing act indeed.
There were already nagging questions about the people buried in the giant mounds of Old Uppsala. If their civilization was really so old, and he had repeatedly confirmed this, why hadn’t the ancients written more about them? Why hadn’t they, for that matter, written more about themselves, leaving a large body of literature like the Greeks and the Romans? Surely such a sophisticated civilization could not have escaped the notice of every single ancient observer.
