within the ancient Greek world. Tradition associated Zeus with Crete, Hera with Argos and Mycenae, and Aphrodite with Cyprus; Hephaestus “fell” on the island of Lemnos; and so on. The locations of their birth, the sites of many of their known deeds, and their main shrines all were placed mainly within the limits of the ancient Mediterranean.
Yet the idea of the Swedish origin of the classical gods had caught Rudbeck’s attention, and the flamboyant Renaissance man could not let go of this possibility. Faint signs of uncertainty and dissension about the gods, however subtle and hinted, would be chased down and pounced upon with an overwhelming fixation, as Rudbeck obsessively tried to root up Mount Olympus and situate it in his homeland, not far from where he had reconstructed ancient Atlantis. His imagination could, as one scholar put it, take on a frightening quality.
Years later, for instance, when Sweden was considering a comprehensive reform of its calendar, a committee of experts requested Rudbeck’s opinion. He agreed that the old Julian calendar needed to be abandoned, but unexpectedly he did not favor switching over to the Gregorian, as many European countries had already done. Instead Rudbeck proposed that Sweden adopt a calendar based on the runes of Atlantis! This rather unusual choice would mean losing a few minutes every year, but that did not really matter, Rudbeck said, because the end of the world was near anyway. The committee had difficulty determining whether he was serious, and his imaginative proposal was politely turned down.
Back in the search for the classical gods, two important traditions were probably guiding Rudbeck in his ever-growing ambition. The first was a nearly universal belief that traced the ancestry of the classical gods back to the Titans. Usually the parents were identified as Cronos and Rhea, though some preferred another minor and perhaps older tradition that suggested Oceanus and Tethys. At any rate, the oldest Olympians were in all accounts the children of the Titans.
The second tradition was a popular way of viewing mythology that had flourished for centuries, now called Euhemerism after the early-third-century-B.C. philosopher Euhemerus of Messene, who sought real historical figures behind the stories of the gods. They were, in other words, kings, queens, heroes, sages, or people who had performed such memorable deeds that they were, with the passage of time, remembered as gods. And for Rudbeck, looking at the ancient gods and working within this tradition, the temptations must have been irresistible.
For, according to standard accounts of classical mythology, especially Hesiod’s
After reaching maturity, Zeus rescued his siblings, who were magically disgorged unharmed, and rallied them to victory over Cronos and the whole Titan lot. That is, except his mother, Rhea, who would move into the new home of the gods on Mount Olympus. Oceanus and Tethys also escaped the harsh punishment. The ultimate reason is not specifically stated, though this was probably because of Olympian loyalty to their kind rearers, as hinted in the
Now Rudbeck put the fragmented pieces together into a stunning proposition. Could it be that, after winning this war of liberation, Zeus and the gods left their Titan overseers imprisoned in the dark abode at the ends of the earth, that is, around the arctic Tethis Fiord, and then made their way, for the first time, into Crete, Mycenae, Argos, and all the places that held their early sanctuaries and that were also undoubtedly some of the oldest known settlements of the ancient Greek world? Could memories of these events still be encoded in the oldest, most obscure stories of classical mythology?
To Rudbeck, who was willing to entertain any potential solution, even the most daring and revolutionary, this was certainly a possibility. Soon his enthusiasm would make it a probability, indeed almost a certainty, in the unfolding vision of the past that he was desperately trying to capture on paper. Yet before he could pursue this specific point further, there was another idea that must have struck his imagination and convinced him even more of the Atlantis-Titans-Sweden connection.
All the whimsical and wrathful Olympians who usually displayed the full gamut of human passions looked like another rowdy, boisterous gang Rudbeck had come across. Unlike the classical gods, however, this was a family that was known only to a select few who had access to their adventures, recorded in some of the world’s rarest books and still unpublished manuscripts housed in Scandinavia: the gods of Asgard.
How similar were the classical gods who feasted on nectar and ambrosia atop snowy Mount Olympus to the Norse gods who dined on mead and boar in Valhalla! How similar, too, were Zeus, Poseidon, and the classical gods who fought the Titans to Odin, Thor, and the Norse gods who waged war against their archenemies, the monstrous giants! Once again, Rudbeck’s head swirled as he contemplated the possible implications.
What were those “Atlantean traditions” that Diodorus Siculus had mentioned, anyway? Could they have been preserved in Sweden, where, after all, Rudbeck had found Atlantis and, it seemed, a possible home for the Titan Tethys? Could they have anything to do with those mysterious runes carved on stone, wood, and metal? Better yet, could they have something to do with the much more elaborate Norse sagas and eddas that Rudbeck was starting to appreciate with a new passion? Although most were obviously written down in the Middle Ages, could these brittle manuscripts contain memories of older, lost Atlantean stories, perhaps fragments of fragments? Even if Diodorus was not the most authoritative of sources, must he necessarily be wrong about every single point?
It was time to investigate the worlds of Olympus and Valhalla. Looking to learn everything he could, Rudbeck pored over the oldest and most authoritative accounts of ancient history and mythology. After rowing with 102 Platonic oars to Atlantis, Rudbeck would effectively “hoist sail with Homer” and embark on his own maverick odyssey into the dreamy world of his own creation.
EVEN BEFORE RUDBECK had stumbled upon the quest for Atlantis and attempted to storm Mount Olympus, there was an unmistakable sense of urgency about the venture. He was already six hundred pages deep in the writing of the work, and, as he started to worry, he had not even made it a quarter of the way through to the desired end. Rushing to cram all his new discoveries, which were expanding exponentially almost each way he turned, Rudbeck could not work fast enough to keep up the hectic pace. Seven hundred pages into the text, there was still no end in sight.
Raising the stakes in this race against time, Rudbeck had earlier taken the advice of his friend Olaus Verelius. He had decided to begin printing as early as February 1675, though the many new discoveries had delayed it further, not to mention the firing of Curio the printer and the uproar over the subsequent lawsuits. The legal manipulations and the suit, however, were not looking all that good. “Only the Lord knows what will happen to him,” Rudbeck said to his friend Count de la Gardie as the prospects in the case looked worse and worse.
Given the looming uncertainty, the prudent thing, Verelius and Rudbeck agreed, was to start printing at once. As soon as new pages were written, they were immediately rushed to Curio’s press.
Regardless of Curio’s fate, which Rudbeck’s clever maneuvering had at least for the moment managed to forestall, the costs of the search for the lost world were quickly adding up. He had taken Verelius’s advice about another matter as well. Originally Rudbeck had planned to publish the
Verelius, however, had insisted that Rudbeck adorn the work with a Latin translation, and other scholars at Uppsala who read the drafts agreed. “A good friend,” Rudbeck said, was recruited for the task. Rudbeck hardly had the time for this translation himself, not to mention the fact that he had “long since stopped worrying his head with such grammatical curiosities.”
The unnamed friend who would assume the task of translating this unwieldy volume was most likely the classical scholar and professor of eloquence Anders Norcopensis. A child prodigy with a wonderful grasp of Latin, he certainly added much with his translation of the work. By all accounts, it was a stellar performance. Few have failed to notice how Norcopensis sometimes “cleaned up” Rudbeck’s rather hurried and idiosyncratic text, written as it
