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

Heimtaler, “a secret speaker” entrusted with sensitive information and then sent to carry out various special missions.

Rudbeck believed that Hermes’ Swedish origins were seen clearly in another unexpected place: the god’s famous staff, the caduceus. In classical mythology, Hermes, or Mercury as the Romans called him, carried a staff encircled by two intertwined snakes. According to Rudbeck, the image of the intertwined snakes was common in the north in the distant past, and a perfect microcosm of the runes. In fact, on examination, each letter of the runic alphabet could actually be seen encoded in the god’s emblem. If one relied on various angles formed by the snakes around the staff, every single rune could indeed be crafted.

Affixing numbers to various points on the staff and the snakes, Rudbeck provided directions for marking the runes by using Mercury’s caduceus. The basic rune, I, was drawn by moving the pen from position 1 to 2. Another rune, ^, was made by moving from 2 to 5, 9 to 10, and a more complicated one, *, was made using the formula 1 to 7, 11 to 6, 4 to 8. And so on.

Mercury’s staff, reproduced in the first volume of Rudbeck’s Atlantica.

What a device for encoding the letters, and for transmitting this knowledge! Rudbeck’s discovery looks even more exciting when it is remembered that Hermes was, according to traditional accounts of classical mythology, the god who brought the alphabet into many places in antiquity, from Egypt to Arcadia. So Rudbeck concluded that the god’s staff was the handy means of teaching the art of the runes. And along with these Hyperborean hieroglyphics, the magical, mystical, and secret learning of the north would also be transmitted to the wise men of the Mediterranean.

Developing this insight—how, when, where, why, and what it all meant—was to be one of the central functions of Rudbeck’s Atlantica. The first volume was nearly finished, but Rudbeck would try for the rest of his life to elaborate on the many achievements of ancient Sweden. As matters looked worse for his country, and as his own personal affairs continued to deteriorate, Rudbeck’s sense of mission only became stronger, and his fantasy ran amok. Concealed in old manuscripts and carved on standing stones, Rudbeck was everywhere seeing a dazzling image of the ancient north.

AS THE MONUMENTAL work came to a close, some nine hundred pages detailing his dramatic revision of the past, Rudbeck ended Atlantica with two rather surreal stories. The first was about a peasant with a big nose who went to see a doctor.

Afflicted by an imaginary disease, the peasant somehow came to fear that the unusually large size of his nose caused death to anyone who happened to touch it. After many unsuccessful attempts to find treatment, he was finally cured. Both impressed with and curious about the doctor’s success, the peasant asked for permission to attend one of the anatomical dissections that were then so much in vogue in the learned world. But when he went to the anatomy theater, the peasant watched with surprise and horror.

As one physician demonstrated beyond doubt the circulation of the blood, some of the older, more learned doctors refused to accept this controversial new claim. The blood does not circulate, they said, repeating the certainties they had known since the beginning of their medical studies. By the end of the demonstration, the peasant thanked God that he was not so learned as the distinguished physicians in the theater, and so sure of his learning that he could not understand what he saw with his own eyes.

Rudbeck told this story as part of his final appeal to the reader not to be misled by conventional thought, traditional authorities, and the many prejudices that cloud our judgment. All of these things can lead to maladies from which we do not even know we suffer. Instead, Rudbeck wanted his readers, like the simple peasant, to look at the facts with their own eyes and judge with an open mind. Doing so, he was sure, would enable the unbiased observer to see how everything did in fact fit together. Like the discovery that the blood circulated throughout the body, the unthinkable had once again occurred and shattered our old certainties. Atlantis had been found in Sweden.

Then, in his second story, Rudbeck told the reader about a gardener who had witnessed all kinds of sweet- smelling spices and exotic animals coming into Europe from the new worlds in the East and West Indies. Curious, the gardener wanted to see the lands that produced such remarkable things. As Rudbeck described it, “He went out. Came back. Wrote a book in his simplicity, according to what he had experienced himself.” Some learned men, however, were enraged that a common gardener would dare to publish his own account. They had already described these spices and animals, adorning them “wonderfully with their eloquent tongues” and scorning the rather plain attempts of this simple observer. So they took their discontent to the patron of the creative arts, identified in this story as Apollo, and asked him to forbid the gardener’s work.

After listening to their complaint, Apollo ordered the book brought to him and called an assembly of the gods to discuss the matter. As the deities were about to agree with the learned professionals, and planned to outlaw its dissemination, Apollo asked to look at the gardener’s work himself.

He opened the book, and saw the bold words on the first page: ET NOS HOMINES. Struck by the wisdom in these words—“we, too, are human”—the gods decided to journey to the land of the spices and investigate for themselves. As Rudbeck concluded the tale, “[They] found that the gardener with his own experience and simple writing better found the truth than those who just adorn the writings of another.”

It is appropriate that Rudbeck closed Atlantica with these stories, which fairly well capture his insistence on observation, experience, and firsthand engagement with the ancient world. Indeed, with one foot in the garden himself, Rudbeck was like the simple cultivator who always wanted to remember the words et vos homines. “You, too, are human”: the theories you craft, however learned and ingenious, can still be wrong. But Rudbeck was also like the peasant in the anatomy theater with the rich imagination. He knew what he saw, what he heard, and what he thought. And by now, no amount of learning would ever convince him otherwise.

14

ON NOTHING

How much more rabidly, too, will he believe in his cause when he sees you and people like you not only coming in crowds but with smiles of congratulation on your faces?

—CICERO, WRITING IN A LETTER TO HIS FRIEND ATTICUS ABOUT JULIUS CAESAR, 49 B.C.

ON A SNOWY DAY in late March 1679, the first bound copy of Rudbeck’s work rolled off Curio’s press. Emblazoned triumphantly on the title page was the word Atlantica, the Latin name for the central discovery of the text. The Swedish title elaborated somewhat, adding another twenty-seven of the most prominent findings Rudbeck had made in the course of his investigations. The full title filled almost the entire first page:

Olof Rudbeck’s Atland or Manheim, from which come the descendants of Japhet, the most prominent imperial and royal families governing the whole world, and from which also poured out the following peoples, namely the Scythians, Barbarians, Aesir, Giants, Goths, Phrygians, Trojans, Amazons, Thracians, Libyans Mauer, Tussar, Gauls, Cimbrians, Cimmerians, Saxons, Germans, Swedes, Longobards, Vandals, Heruli, Gepar, Angles, Picts, Danes, and Sea Peoples, and many others which shall be proven in the work.

As soon as the inclement weather lifted, Rudbeck sent over the almost nine-hundred-page volume to his patron, Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, in the count’s castle outside Stockholm. The young man chosen to transport this bulky package was Anders Goeding, a “diligent and learned student” who had spent the last seven years at university reading philosophy and theology. He was a close friend, a promising logician, and also the future husband of Rudbeck’s daughter Johanna Kristina.

In the eyes of Rudbeck, approaching his fiftieth birthday, the publication of Atlantica marked the highlight of his career. Not even his discovery of the lymphatic glands, the observation of comets, or the design of many buildings could compare with the fantastic succession of breakthroughs he had made about the ancient world.

To Rudbeck’s delight, many contemporaries agreed. Two German visitors, for example, came across