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

was in an almost stream-of-consciousness style under great pressure of time.

Within a few years this choice of translator would in another respect be of no small consequence. In the 1680s, Norcopensis would be appointed personal tutor to the Swedish crown prince, the future king Charles XII, the romantic and quite controversial ruler who would be the last of Sweden’s warrior kings.

In the meantime, however, if Verelius’s advice about fitting the text with a Latin translation helped ensure a much wider readership, it also significantly increased the strains in an already monumental undertaking.

LOOKING INTO THE intricate genealogies of ancient mythology, one of the most promising leads in the search for the Olympians was the god Apollo. Armed with golden lyre and silver bow, shining Apollo was the healing, music-loving god of reason and archery. To many scholars today, he seems the “most Greek” of the classical pantheon. To Rudbeck, on the other hand, Apollo looked as Swedish as Gustavus Adolphus.

Rudbeck already knew that this god was held in special reverence among the Hyperboreans. Virtually every ancient source touching on the legendary northerners agreed on this fact, and many told the story that Apollo’s mother, Leto, had actually been a Hyperborean. In his book The Nature of the Gods, the first-century Roman prince of orators, Cicero, was still aware of this tale, writing, “This is Apollo who tradition says came to Delphi from the land of the Hyperboreans.”

Whether he was born on the Greek isle of Delos or came into the Mediterranean from a distant land “beyond the north wind,” the conclusion was essentially the same. Would this not make Apollo seem, in Rudbeckian logic, at least partially Hyperborean, or Swedish, indeed Atlantean, since Diodorus’s tradition had said that the gods came from there anyway?

Yet, aside from this string of hypotheticals, were there any possible reasons to believe that Apollo had actually been Swedish? For Rudbeck, the answer was obvious, almost instantaneously showing itself in the old manuscripts through the Norse god Balder. The similarities, at least at first glance, were many.

Just as the ancients praised Apollo for his justice and beauty, a child “lovely above all the sons of heaven,” Balder was noticeably hailed in Norse accounts as the most just and the most beautiful of the gods. Both were known for their gift of prophecy. When Homer sang in the Iliad that “the past, the present, and the future held no secrets” for Apollo, Balder the Good “dreamed great dreams” about future dangers, terrible premonitions that prompted his mother Frigg to fear for his life and seek the oath of every living thing not to harm her child (again perhaps the basis for the fears that forced Apollo’s mom, Leto, to travel around seeking a safe haven to give birth to her children).

Additionally, both figures were related in other fundamental ways. While Apollo was the god of light, and some later traditions even associated him with the sun, Balder was “so fair in appearance and so bright that light shines from him.” Apollo’s justice, reasoning, and clear logical thought were echoed in Balder’s fame as “the wisest of the Aesir,” and Apollo’s eloquence likewise made its appearance when the Edda knew Balder as “the most beautifully spoken.” As for Apollo’s celebrated magnificence, attested to by the number of his shrines and sanctuaries, Balder was also “the most merciful,” and as the Edda put it, the “best and all praise him.” And so on.

Despite the obvious lack of correspondence in every possible tradition, Rudbeck saw enough key similarities between the classical and Norse figures to think that he was on the trail of the original Olympian that, as Diodorus’s lost sources allegedly claimed, came from Atlantis to the Mediterranean. Besides, the oldest and most complete genealogies available about the classical gods made the question even more provocative.

Apollo’s reputed Hyperborean heritage could be found to have deeper roots. His mother, Leto, it turned out, not only was regarded as a Hyperborean, but also was the daughter of a Titan—a Titan who lived in dark, “misty gloom … at the ends of the huge earth,” and actually a brother of Tethys, whose name Rudbeck thought had survived in the name of Tethis Fiord, which is located at the actual dark “ends of the huge earth.” With the testimony of the oldest known works in classical mythology, all these coincidences could only reinforce Rudbeck’s suspicion, indeed his conviction, that he was on the right track. The classical Apollo was merely a pale reflection of an original Balder cult that came from the far north.

“I could still put forth endless reasons,” Rudbeck said, “but I will save them for another place.” Given Rudbeck’s tremendous ability to make connections, no matter how far removed, this was no idle boast. Elaborations about the northern elements surviving in the classical myth of Apollo would indeed be plentiful, but they would have to wait. So much else was on the agenda in this bizarre hunt for the Swedish Olympians.

IF APOLLO WAS Swedish, and his mother Swedish, what about the father—could Zeus also be Swedish? Logically, building upon the Apollo-Balder identity, you might think that Rudbeck would look for Apollo’s dad in Balder’s dad, the Norse god Odin.

After all, both Zeus and Odin were regarded as the chiefs of their respective worlds, Olympus and Valhalla. With long white beards and unrivaled authority, Zeus and Odin alike sat on their thrones, beholding the vast panorama of divine and human events as they unfolded. They had also reached this lofty summit in a similar way, that is, with the violent overthrow of their rivals. Even the means of destruction were similar. Zeus had disposed of the Titan Cronos in a gruesome way, usually depicted as castration, and Odin had likewise, as the Edda tells us, “dismembered” the frost giant Ymir.

But Rudbeck did not make the Zeus-Odin connection, probably because the difficulties of trying to reconcile such formidable figures would soon have been overwhelming. For the more one looks into the stories about Zeus and Odin, the more different they seem. Zeus was insatiable in his lust, chasing goddesses, mortals, and indeed just about anything that moved. This sex-crazed god was almost literally the father of all things. Although Odin was also known to engage in a few affairs and was specifically called “All-Father,” this Norse god was admittedly something of a contrast.

Odin often seemed far away from the moment, brooding over the terrible things that awaited. He took less pleasure in his food, eating no meat and, unlike his fellow gods, drinking only wine. The stern figure just gave his portions to the two wolves at his side, and listened attentively to the two ravens perched on his shoulder who returned to the great hall each night at dinner with tidings from around the world. Odin’s great loves seemed to be knowledge and poetry, with no better illustration than the time he gave one of his eyes in exchange for a drink at the well of wit and wisdom. On inspection, the two chiefs of Olympus and Valhalla indeed marched in different directions: Zeus the protector of the laws, and Odin the patron god of thieves, outlaws, and the hanged. In so many important ways, one-eyed Odin, who spoke only in rhyme, seemed quite a bit different from the hardheaded Zeus.

So with Rudbeck’s dexterity very much at work, another possibility would not have been far away, and this one had unlimited potential. For in many ways, an intriguing counterpart to Zeus could be seen in the Norse god Thor.

Thor had the strength that was often attributed to the Olympian. “What lunatics, to quarrel with Zeus!” Hera said at one point in the Iliad. “For brute strength he is beyond question first among the gods.” Zeus was not above confirming his own prowess, bragging about how he could easily take on all the other gods put together. Thor worked better than Odin here, as a strong god, stronger than Odin, and, in the words of the Edda, quite simply the “strongest of all the gods.”

Also, Zeus and Thor were quite close in temper and disposition. Both had violent outbursts and warlike spirits, and when the situation became dire, they would be called upon by the other gods for rescue. Again and again, in the battles with enemies, in both cases giants, the gods were staying alive, sometimes barely so, only because Thor or Zeus tipped the balance with his robust deeds.

So when Zeus “the cloud gatherer” storms, Thor thunders—reveling in letting his own brand of “white-hot thunderbolts” fly, scorching his enemies to a crisp. He seems to enjoy nothing more than a good fight, bashing skulls and splitting heads. Thor was a wild force of nature, unpredictable in his explosions, and at times, like Zeus, with more than his share of the comical. Thor was more simpleminded than the subtle and crafty Odin; Thor’s immediate reaction was usually to swing his mighty hammer Miollnir, so “well-known to the frost-giants and the mountain-giants.” And for Zeus as well as Thor, this was the ultimate protector of order in the universe, and held in highest regard for preserving divine justice.

Given all this and more, Rudbeck believed that Zeus and Thor had originally been the same figure. Indeed, in Rudbeck’s opinion, Zeus was a Swedish word, deriving from an old-fashioned term that meant, appropriately enough, “god.” Scholars had speculated for centuries on the meaning of Zeus’s name, proposing everything from “living,” “fertile,” and, referring perhaps to the lightning bolts, “heat.” None of these