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.”
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.
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
—JOHN ADAMS, DESCRIBING HIS GRANDSON GEORGE WASHINGTON ADAMS
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
