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

Rudbeck’s Atlantica in Stockholm that spring, and each bought a copy. Deciding to make a journey out to Old Uppsala to see the sights of Atlantis themselves, they were so impressed that, Rudbeck joked, he believed one of them was probably “still there and kissing the old walls and big mounds.”

This was a sign of things to come. After a slow beginning, with only a few letters of appreciation trickling in over the summer, the pace picked up in the autumn. Rudbeck would be celebrated as the “Atlas of the northern skies,” a pioneer who blazed a heroic trail into the past. According to one enthusiastic reader, Rudbeck was a “Swedish Heracles” who had accomplished his own personal Herculean labor, and restored light where dark Cimmerian mists had formerly prevailed. To another admirer, Rudbeck had solved one of the great riddles of the past, proving how so many peoples had come out of Sweden “as if from a Trojan horse.”

His adversaries, on the other hand, were appalled at such praise. They had hoped to see Rudbeck’s work flop. Some were even haunted by envy, as if, one contemporary said, pursued by the Furies, those dark mythic creatures with “heads wreathed in swarming serpents” that hounded their victims to madness. And to the horror of these scholars, words of praise, gratitude, and encouragement would continue to reach Uppsala from many different places.

Merchants discussed the work in the busy port of Gothenburg, and vicars in magnificent Stockholm churches testified to Rudbeck’s “immeasurable labor, wonderful genius and manner of expression.” One reader, the director of the Witchcraft Commission for three northern provinces, Anders Stiernhook, claimed that he simply could not put the book down. He was undertaking daily studies throughout the fall of 1679, and the joy of the readings, he said, scarcely left him in control of his senses.

Appreciation for the “oracle of the north” also raged outside Sweden. The famous polymath, Kiel’s own walking encyclopedia, D. G. Morhof, described his own experience with Rudbeck’s mammoth work: “I completely devoured the book in one unbroken reading.” He enclosed a poem on the merits of the “divine Atlantica,” admiring how Rudbeck made the dirt speak and the stones of the north proclaim their unrivaled antiquity. Rudbeck, he added, painted “his genius in most beautiful hues.”

Similarly, glowing testimony arrived from no less than London’s Royal Society, the famous gathering of natural philosophers and gentleman dilettantes that included Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and Samuel Pepys. With Christopher Wren in the presidential chair, the Royal Society sent Rudbeck the following words: “We are not able to admire enough the power of genius and the abundance of learning … by which you uncover the secrets of the past.”

At least three times during the fall and winter of 1681–82, Rudbeck’s theories were discussed in the chambers of the Royal Society. Atlantica was also chosen to be reviewed in the Royal Society’s journal, Philosophical Transactions. In the issue dated January 10, 1681/82 (the double year because Britain was still refusing to adopt the Gregorian calendar and, as a result, was ten days behind most of Europe), the reviewer proclaimed, “This deservedly famous Author has here undertaken a great Work, and much to the honor of his Country, to set forth the Rise and Progress of the kingdom of Sweeden, from Japhet the first king and Possessor thereof in the times nearest the Flood, to Charles now at present Reigning… .”

The reviewer went on, praising Rudbeck’s work on the earliest civilization as flourishing first in Sweden, referring afterwards to the “expedition of the gods” from Sweden, and the establishment of colonies all over the Mediterranean. All of this was mentioned without criticism, even the Swedish conquests over “most of Europe, Asia, the Indies to Aegypt and the parts thereabout.” Such a favorable review no doubt helped disseminate the news and excitement of Rudbeck’s bold theory throughout the international Republic of Letters.

Accolades for the Swedish physician went further still. At the Royal Society’s meeting held December 14, 1681, Rudbeck was proposed as a member. It was in fact an expert on the ancient world, former Cambridge University Regius Professor of Greek Thomas Gale, who officially proposed Rudbeck to the Royal Society. In his enthusiasm, seconded by the physicist Robert Hooke, he nominated Atlantica’s deliveryman for membership as well.

DESPITE THE HONOR, Rudbeck never showed any signs of interest in joining the distinguished society, or in engaging in regular correspondence with its members. He was far too preoccupied, busying himself with his own search, as the mysteries of the past had not ceased to unfold. Many new pieces of evidence were still turning up to support his claims, and in some cases, entirely new discoveries were being made along the way.

By now, too, Rudbeck had, incredibly, launched another massive project, a botanical work called Campus Elysii, which attempted to describe all the plants of the world, complete with life-size reproductions. This work received its name from the Elysian Fields, the ancient paradise lands that Rudbeck had earlier found in Sweden. Since his sons and daughters were now old enough to help, Rudbeck’s adventure was becoming a family enterprise. Olof junior, Johanna Kristina, and young Vendela in particular helped with the project, working on many of the woodcuts of the plants. This collaboration with his children, along with the recognition he had received for his Atlantica, must have provided a powerful boost.

But the last few years had not only seen glowing tributes to Atlantica, and poetic fanfares to its wonderful, bewildering genius. There were those who had been less than impressed. Schefferus, Rudbeck’s rival in the Old Uppsala dispute, had received a copy straight from the press while he lay on his deathbed in March 1679, and had said, “God knows where he got all this he has written! I did not think Rudbeck was capable of such a work.”

When Rudbeck heard this, he took it as a compliment, a sign that the former contender had finally been brought around by the sheer force of the argument. One of Schefferus’s friends at his bedside, however, knew otherwise, because the dying scholar had added, “For there is much craziness in it, too.”

Wisdom pours out of the ancient north, and Europeans catch the overflow. Some, however, try to devour more than they can stomach.

Indeed, from the very beginning, even before the long-awaited publication of the book, all sorts of rumors about Rudbeck and his integrity were circulated by his enemies at Uppsala University. One of the worst was a savage satire of Atlantica’s author as a buffoon who “knew nothing.” Written as a pamphlet, this “censura gravissima” pretended to be a proclamation issued by the classical god Apollo high atop Mount Parnassus. Transcribed from “the protocols” by his secretary Mercury, another god of Swedish descent in Atlantica, this anonymous pamphleteer launched into a tirade against “the very celebrated Herr Olof Rudbeck.” The jack of all trades was now pronounced, in the words of Apollo, incompetent in each of his areas: “In theology as well as jurisprudence, as well as medicine, chemistry, philosophy, Herr Rudbeck knows nothing.”

Undismayed on the surface, but not known for taking criticism well, Rudbeck responded by announcing his upcoming lecture series at the university; he would teach the greatest, most profound subject, and his self- proclaimed specialty: nothing.

So imagine the surprise of students, not to mention the officials, when they read the formal lecture catalog for Uppsala University for the fall term 1679. Next to botany, anatomy, theology, and the familiar academic subjects, there was the following offering:

Olof Rudbeck is going to treat his listeners to a very useful, very intricate, and very subtle subject that is never praised enough: Nothing.

Surprise, laughter, and probably some cheers for one of Uppsala’s perennially favorite teachers. Rudbeck was once again having fun at his enemies’ expense. As the university catalog went on to describe the course, Rudbeck kept playing with his rivals’ own Aristotelian terms in a mocking fashion. “He is going to show how Nothing arose and fell, and trace its unending affections, virtues, and deficiencies as well as its multifaceted uses in theology, law, medicine, philosophy, all mechanical arts, and daily life.”

Needless to say, few of his Uppsala colleagues were amused by this prank. University officials were upset at this “tasteless gesture,” with one professor saying, “Each and every person who tastelessly cracks jokes about a serious matter knows nothing about good manners and culture; but Olof Rudbeck does this in the Uppsala professors’ lecture catalog; therefore he knows nothing about education.”

Some professors evidently worried about the effects on young people. Would this not bring the educational mission into disrepute, or perhaps give the impression that there was no such thing as knowledge? Even the archbishop, Johannes Baazius the Younger, agreed that this prank was insulting and went a little too far.