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

day. Previously he had shown his legal finesse as an energetic member of the Witchcraft Commission for the northern province of Halsingland. Historians are fond of telling the story of the time when Lundius came home after a long day at the witch trials and found, he claimed, an uninvited guest in his chamber: the Prince of Darkness himself.

Lundius was every bit as reckless as Rudbeck, often accompanying him on explorations of the supposed Atlantis. He was known in fact to have been present during one of those crucial visits to Old Uppsala during the tense period of May 1677 immediately after the chancellor’s prohibition. Looking at the works Lundius would publish over the next thirty years, one might conclude that he was even “more Rudbeckian” than the author of the Atlantica himself. Given his close relationship with the Rudbecks, he could also conceivably have smuggled this document into a place in the library where Rudbeck was bound to look.

Yet tracing this document back to Lundius is no simple matter. In fact, after a long time of assuming that this was an unabashed forgery, or some combination of fraud, faith, and a willingness to be deluded, some scholars have concluded that Bishop Karl’s Chronicle was probably, after all, a genuine document. According to the Swedish historian of science Sten Lindroth, the bulk of the evidence actually weighs in favor of its authenticity. Other solid, meticulous studies, though, have favored Schefferus’s conviction that it was a forgery.

At any rate, in this messy, complex scenario, with the question of forgery still very much in the air, the irony is that Rudbeck, Verelius, Lundius, and their supporters were actually correct about the main point in the debate. Old Uppsala was certainly situated where they thought, and where they also believed they had seen Atlantis. Given archaeological work done in the twentieth century, Rudbeck was probably also right about the site of the old pagan temple underneath the historic Christian church. The archaeologist Sune Lindqvist found traces of the foundation on the precise spot where Rudbeck envisioned it.

As for Schefferus, who was undoubtedly much more knowledgeable, experienced, and talented as a classical humanist scholar, he had relied too heavily on the authority of late sources, mostly fifteenth-century accounts that were written centuries after the flourishing of the pagan temple. It is quite odd to see this critical scholar misled by the sources. One historian put it more sharply: “That a man with Schefferus’s good head and historical education did not realize the weakness in such evidence, is undeniably peculiar.” Schefferus could hardly have avoided “realizing that this information about the pagan temple was completely worthless.” Such a strongly defensive posture was perhaps explained by a “not uncommon unwillingness to abandon an opinion.”

The same thing should also be said about Olof Rudbeck. Abrasive, relentless, and fanatical as he was in pursuing his quest, the strains of the crushing debts and the desperate attempts to pay them had made him even less willing to compromise.

Within a year after the publication of Bishop Karl Annotations, which were now, ironically, protected by the prohibition, some high-placed antiquarians were writing long letters attempting to persuade the count to overturn his decision. Schefferus’s close friend, the antiquarian scholar Johan Hadorph, wrote an impassioned appeal for loosing the ban. Arguing and pleading, they were desperate to slay the monster that they had gladly helped create.

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ET VOS HOMINES

But there’s nothing remarkable about it. All you have to do is to look around you.

—PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR, IN RESPONSE TO AN ADMIRER OF HIS PAINTING

BACK IN THE halcyon days of the late 1650s and the early 1660s, Count de la Gardie had amassed a splendid collection of medieval Icelandic manuscripts. With sixty-four sagas and eddas, many in their oldest known form, including Snorri’s Edda, this was undoubtedly one of the most valuable sets of documents illuminating the Viking heritage anywhere in the world. And in early 1669, on Rudbeck’s prompting, they were packed up and sent to Uppsala University as a gift.

Along with them came a bound set of purple-tinted pages of parchment inscribed with gold and silver letters. This was the legendary Codex argenteus, or “Silver Bible,” captured in 1648 when Swedish troops looted Prague in a last-minute dash before the ink could dry on the peace treaty ending the Thirty Years’ War.

An early-sixth-century translation of the Gospels of the New Testament into the Gothic language, the Silver Bible was the rarest of treasures. Probably kept in the royal chamber of the barbarian Gothic king Theodoric, this beautiful manuscript is still today considered the oldest surviving work in any Germanic language. De la Gardie had purchased it in 1662 from one of Queen Christina’s former librarians, who, in a financial crisis, had received the book instead of his perennially late salary.

Actually, when it went up for sale, it was no longer a book. Minds more enterprising than scholarly had long ago decided to break up the priceless manuscript and sell it page by page. De la Gardie bought all the sheets that were left, some 187 leaves of an estimated total of 336, for a sum of five hundred riksdaler, enjoying the pleasure of outbidding, ironically, Queen Christina, who had earlier humiliated him. On the voyage home after the auction, however, the new Swedish treasure narrowly missed being lost in a shipwreck amid the treacherous waters outside Amsterdam. It was saved only by its sturdy oak chest.

As with the Norse sagas, it was on Rudbeck’s inspired suggestion that the Gothic Bible made its way to a cozy home at Uppsala University. There it has remained to this day—for the most part, that is. One afternoon in the spring of 1995, two men entered the library with a large hammer. Taking advantage of the noise and chaos accompanying a student election that was being held in the lobby, they confidently walked over to a glass case protecting a few leaves from the priceless Bible. Eight or nine wallops later, they had managed to smash open the display and snatch its contents. A canister of tear gas added to the disorientation, as the thieves ran off with their prize, including the silver case that De la Gardie had added to his donation (the same beautiful case that gives the book the alternative name “Silver Bible”). One month later, after much anguish over the loss, an anonymous phone call led authorities to a coin-locker at the central Stockholm train station, where the stolen goods were found and then promptly returned to Uppsala.

With such original old manuscripts moving out from showcases in De la Gardie’s castle, there was now more material available for studying the Swedish past than ever before. Given their antiquity and rarity, these were fantastically valuable aids as Rudbeck started to immerse himself in the world of ancient languages. Soon he was keeping the sagas, eddas, and the other original manuscripts on extended, virtually permanent loan at his house. And in one of the manuscripts—the Gothic Bible, no less—there are unmistakable signs of tampering.

This time there can be no dispute about the attempted fabrications. Scrapings over letters and signs of a newer, lighter silver ink applied to the purplish red parchment make that all too clear. Most notoriously, in the Gospel of Saint John, someone had scribbled in changes to the passage “and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon’s Colonnade” (10:23). The Gothic word for the colonnade in the temple, Ubizvai, was rubbed over, and repainted in silver ink to read Ubizali, that is, a word pronounced, as it sounds, “Uppsala.”

Such a reading of Ubizali as a pillared hall or portico was of tremendous importance. It would confirm yet again Rudbeck’s theory about Atlantis lying in Old Uppsala. In the original dialogues, Plato spoke of the famous temple to Poseidon on Atlantis as an “open temple,” which Rudbeck eagerly derived from the name Uppsala, upp (or opp) meaning “open” and sal “space” or “hall.”

We know that Rudbeck used the Silver Bible in his research, and that he specifically cited this passage in his discussion about his discovery of Atlantis. But would his passion make him resort to forging sources—and would his growing obsession make him do so in the oldest survival of any Germanic language, and in Sweden’s most treasured manuscript?

OF COURSE, it is possible that the letters had already been doctored by the time Rudbeck stumbled across the passage, and he was so blinded by his obsession that he failed to detect the tampering. Out of all the people who would have had access to the Gothic Bible on its long wandering before it reached his study—in Queen Christina’s library, the Dutch scholar’s home, De la Gardie’s castle, and through the various loans to professors