patiently dictated the dimensions of its countryside in exact detail. The philosopher had mentioned many specific characteristics about its location and the landscape. “Not a single one,” Rudbeck was glad to say, “conflicted with the land of Sweden as it can still be seen today.”
Swept away by elation, Rudbeck described the adventure:
This island of Atlantis, which no one for some thousands of years has dared to try and find, because of the heavy mud, numerous pirates, infinite islets and rocks, and moving drift-ice that have troubled its Atlantic sea, making for the voyager a dark way and difficult to find, I have now by God’s help dared to pass with a boat equipped with 102 Platonic oars, and found her.
AS RUDBECK CHASED Atlantis, Sweden was waiting nervously for the imminent foreign invasion. Recent Swedish losses on the battlefield had revived some bitter memories of past insults and humiliations. Just when the performances of Gustavus Adolphus, Queen Christina, and Charles X Gustav seemed to have relegated these painful experiences to the “dustbin of the past,” Danish advances were bringing them disgracefully back to mind.
In late June 1676, the Danes landed on Swedish soil. Three hundred ships dropped almost fifteen thousand well-armed enemy troops onto a highly exposed Swedish coast. Towns near the present-day Norwegian border, such as Vanersborg, were going up in flames, and stray forces were plundering unopposed in the countryside. Rushed out to the west coast, Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie was hastily assembling some means of defense.
Occasional victories came to the count, the very first for Sweden in this horrible war. For the most part, however, those successes were small and far too infrequent to have much effect. Most of the early engagements ended instead decidedly in the Danes’ favor, sometimes indeed in simply a rout. Compared with the invaders, the rounded-up makeshift Swedish forces were quite inexperienced. “Naked and barefoot” was how one observer described them.
In places with better defenses, such as Skane in the south, the truth was no less harsh. Not only were the people succumbing to the attacks, but a frightening number were even joining the Danish invaders. Many families in this region, which had long been a part of the Danish kingdom, resented the forced changes that came with the union with Sweden, the seemingly never-ending stream of orders from the distant capital. Within a few months it looked as if this rich province of fertile lands, deep forests, and enviable fishing grounds was well on its way to being restored to Denmark.
The people were, in the meantime, suffering as prices for basic necessities rose to exorbitant heights, and taxes remained at their crushing levels. As the Danes penetrated farther into the Swedish kingdom, confusion was everywhere, and so was the desperation of the people. At one point a band of peasants actually attacked the Swedish king’s personal supplies. Nine of the king’s guards were killed, and the peasants dragged away food, drink, trophies (including the royal tent), and money to the tune of fifty thousand
By the end of autumn 1676, the Danes had burned and pillaged widely in the west, and taken all but one of the strategic fortresses in the south, the fortress at Malmo. If things continued in this way, one historian noted, there was a fear that “the king would not only lose his mind, but also his crown.” The many setbacks severely strained the Swedes, and certainly must have increased Rudbeck’s own anxieties.
However bleak the prospects looked in the darkest days of the 1670s, Rudbeck could reassure himself and his fellow Swedes that a great, powerful civilization had once flourished in their beleaguered country. Ancient heroes and poets had made pilgrimages to this glorious civilization, and had sought its wisdom. Yet it was not just a matter of seeking solace in a distant, imagined past.
Rudbeck’s investigations also made him feel that he had found a recipe for surviving this time of crisis. As the country faced its worst emergency in modern history, the Swedes could look back for guidance to their ancestors, who had loved justice, given their sacred oaths of loyalty to the kingdom, and elevated a life of virtue to an art form. The Atlanteans cherished truth, dignity, and goodness, holding honor in the strictest regard.
This was a clarion call for his fellow Swedes to heed the lessons from their Atlantean ancestors. All the happiness and wisdom that flourished in their society had begun with the individual Atlanteans, who, in their prime, “thought scorn of everything save virtue.” Despite enjoying great riches, they were not so “drunk with pride … that they lost control of themselves and went to ruin.” The problems had only begun when they lost this enlightened perspective. As Plato put it, the old “divinity within them” was gradually extinguished, causing the once mighty civilization to succumb to its worst excesses.
The same malady was once again threatening the Atlanteans’ descendants. As Sweden was suffering a losing war, a struggling economy, popular unrest, treasonous support of the invaders, and a sense of hopelessness, Rudbeck believed that it was absolutely urgent to rekindle the wisdom of Atlantis. Nothing less would prevent Sweden from sinking for a second time into the decadence that came with too much lusting for power, wealth, and worldly ambition.
11
OLYMPUS STORMED
—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE,
No matter how hard Rudbeck and his land-surveying students tried, the exact size of the plain surrounding the legendary capital city could not be found. Very few Atlantis theories have satisfactorily resolved this dilemma— and with the vast dimensions, three thousand by two thousand stadia (approaching some 550 kilometers by 365 kilometers), it is not difficult to see why. The intricate web of canals that encircled the imposing city was also problematic, though Rudbeck’s answer was inventive.
As he saw it, Atlantis’s complex system of waterways was really the maze of channels formed within the thousands of islands and islets dotting the Stockholm archipelago. “The whole world together,” Rudbeck said, “probably did not have more islands than this peninsula [Sweden].” Later he would add a fascinating discussion of these narrow sea lanes and excellent rocky hideaways, showing how well they had served Swedish raiders and traders for centuries, from Atlantis to the Viking era to the present. Yet, however provocative a solution, these natural formations were still a far cry from Plato’s artificial, geometrically designed network of canals.
Studying the landscape also helped Rudbeck’s search for Atlantis’s grand royal palace. Although there was clearly no such building in sight, Rudbeck could trace out the bare outlines of its old foundation following Plato’s description of its location near the temple, the grove, and the springs, as well as the encouraging coincidence that the area was in fact known locally as
Looking in vain for any surviving physical traces of the magnificent edifice, Rudbeck ventured an explanation for the conspicuous absence. There were good reasons, he thought, why tangible remains were not readily at hand. When the palace was originally constructed, the Atlanteans would have used a combination of materials relying primarily on stone or wood. If they had preferred wood, then it was hardly surprising that the palace had not survived—the Norse sagas had made it perfectly clear that Atle’s great hall had burned. Even without a fire, though, few timber structures could have withstood so many centuries of exposure to the elements.
If the Atlanteans had opted for stone, as Plato indicated, then the gradually decaying building would have
