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

the job, it is going to Rudbeck.” At this point, Schutz left the castle and reported the situation to the king. In late January 1682, Charles XI issued a strongly worded order that left no doubt that Schutz should be named director of the library immediately.

This news came as a shock and a disappointment to Rudbeck. There were also serious practical implications of his unsuccessful bid for the post. Once again Rudbeck’s own cavalier disregard of university rules had placed him in an uncomfortable position. Ever since he had started his work on Atlantica, he had treated the holdings of the library as if they were his own, borrowing with little concern for the official procedures and sometimes jotting his own commentaries to the texts in the margins. Many books were in fact held at his house on virtually indefinite loan. Evidently Rudbeck did not think this state of affairs was all that strange. The greatest treasures at the library, the Gothic Silver Bible and the early manuscripts of the Norse sagas, had, after all, come there on his suggestion.

Also, Rudbeck had been performing a range of services for the library, from drawing the designs for its new building free of charge to showing constant vigilance in expanding its collections. One of the most dramatic examples of this service was his proposal, back in 1665, to send Verelius’s student Jonas Rugman on a trip to Iceland to seek out additional manuscripts for the university. Such a voyage seemed an attractive alternative to buying the manuscripts already ferreted out and put up for sale in the book markets. The count had even agreed to fund the venture, back when he still had his wealth. Unfortunately, however, the somewhat unpredictable “Icelandic Jonas” ended up spending most of the funding on alcohol and women. He never made it any farther than Copenhagen’s rollicking taverns.

Despite that particular mishap, indicative of his ambitions as well as his willingness to take risks to achieve them, Rudbeck felt a strong sense of pride for and perhaps even entitlement to the ancient manuscripts housed in Uppsala’s library. They had played a pivotal role in his discovery of Atlantis, and they seemed to have an almost unlimited potential for leading this curious hunter to new findings in his remarkable search. But now, with Professor Schutz’s new authority over the ancient manuscripts and other library holdings, the atmosphere was about to change.

The first thing that Schutz would do was to order an immediate recall of library materials. All books and manuscripts were to be returned at once in his sweeping reform of the library procedures. There was to be a complete overhaul of the old, relaxed system, with its indulgence of professors like Rudbeck who ordered books by proxy, sent assistants to fetch them, and then carelessly lost the “tickets” or receipts documenting the transaction. But before Schutz could make his reforms, and indeed before he could do anything in his new job at all, he had to reckon with some unusual resistance. According to official complaints, Olof Rudbeck had hidden the keys to the library.

This childish prank hardly seemed becoming for a professor of Rudbeck’s stature, as his critics were quick to point out. On another occasion just a few years before, too, when his enemy Professor Arrhenius was selected as rector of Uppsala, Rudbeck had infuriated the authorities by hiding university keys. On the other side of that locked door were all the musical instruments, many of which Rudbeck had donated to the university and now refused to allow in the inauguration, normally the most stately event on the university calendar. Professor Arrhenius was installed with pomp, though little fanfare, in that conspicuously silent ceremony.

Why was Rudbeck going around hiding keys, this time to the university library? As his critics saw it, Rudbeck was showing his usual lack of good judgment and again behaving in an outrageously inappropriate manner. Rudbeck, of course, explained it otherwise: Verelius had turned the keys over to him on his deathbed, one of his last wishes, literally, being that Rudbeck should hang on to them until an official inventory could be taken of the library stock. So this act of desperation, an obvious attempt to release some bottled-up frustration, was, Rudbeck said, intended to preserve the integrity of the library and honor the wish of his dying friend.

At any rate, with Schutz finally secure in his post by the end of February, the recall of the library books began in the middle of March 1682. Rudbeck protested. There was no possible way to write the book he intended, the second volume of Atlantica, without significant access to these sources. He could not simply return them because that would destroy the delicate order arranged in his study, he said, in another attempt to stall for time. Now Rudbeck had come across a man just as stubborn as he was, and Schutz would not back down. Besides, he would never forget his frivolous hazing.

JOINING SCHUTZ’S TAUNTING circus was an influential member of the College of Antiquities, Johan Hadorph, who years before had caused so much trouble for Curio, when the printer was fired, fined, and sent for a brief stay in the local prison. Hadorph was a formidable opponent who made no secret of his disdain for Atlantica, with its wild conclusions and eccentric methods.

For Rudbeck’s Atlantica was causing concern at the college, and it was not simply because of some annoyingly outlandish claims. Rudbeck’s vision was drawing increasing praise among readers. In some circles the adoration was really over the top. Uppsala students returned with reports of unrestrained enthusiasm they had encountered on their travels on the Continent. One student told of meeting a gentleman in Germany with a magnificent library. After the student complimented him on his taste, the host asked if he would like to see something more impressive. He escorted the young man into a secret chamber that held only two books: the Holy Bible and Rudbeck’s Atlantica.

Rumors of such overwhelming praise were floating around in the courts and salons of the kingdom, and they began to rankle the members of the college. Hadorph and his colleagues had also worked very hard on their antiquarian works, though they seemed to draw only a fraction of this attention. Atlantica, however, threatened more than just a fragile self-esteem.

Whereas the antiquarian scholars tended to take a more sober approach, based on a more cautious methodology and a more restrained use of source material, Rudbeck was relying on his overwhelming confidence in his intuition to find astonishing solutions to some of the oldest and most intricate “riddles” of the ancient world. His powerful creative mind helped him make some dazzling combinations of history and myth, just as his stubborn determination made sure he pursued each lead to virtual exhaustion. Pieces of the great Swedish puzzle were being fitted together with frightening ease. Rudbeck’s towering “cloud castle” soared higher and higher. Worse still, as the antiquarians feared, his “fables and errors” were attracting increasing devotion in some circles.

As Rudbeck declared that the gods and goddesses of classical mythology were Swedish, his enemies grew impatient with the increasingly outrageous claims.

All of this had a direct impact on the College of Antiquities, which, in the early 1680s, stood in a precarious situation. The budget was insecure, the small salaries of its members were still for the most part unpaid, and rumor had it that some influential figures were heard speculating that the annual funds for the struggling research institution might be better served financing Olof Rudbeck’s detestable tragicomic search for Atlantis.

ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AFTER taking office, Schutz began looking through the accounts of the library, and stumbled across some serious problems. There were many contradictions, unexplained omissions, numbers refusing to add up. It was a total mess. Most of the problems had existed for a long time, dating back to sloppy accounting and embezzlement by librarians during the booming 1650s. Verelius had been shocked when he took over in 1679, and in his desperation he had recruited Olof Rudbeck to help sort out the chaos.

Reconciling confusing numbers was for Rudbeck much like reading the “riddles” of ancient mythology, and that was why Verelius had gladly handed him one set of the books. By the time of Verelius’s death, however, Rudbeck was still not done with the most complicated problems in his comprehensive audit. Fresh in his new office, Schutz was understandably eager to get to work. Predictably, given the tenor of their previous encounters, Schutz ordered all the account books returned at once. Rudbeck refused.

He was not done, he reminded Schutz, and he had no desire to stop in the middle of things, especially in view of how much time he had already invested. Worse than that, Schutz seemed, in Rudbeck’s mind, a little too keen to show off the failures of the previous librarians. The reputation of his friends Loccenius, Schefferus, and Verelius would suffer, though they had, Rudbeck was sure, been guilty of little more than inheriting a chaotic situation that they could not bring under control.

When Rudbeck finally finished his account of the library books in 1683, the council approved his reconciliation. All the university officials seemed satisfied, and even the Arrhenius brothers signed their names to the bottom of the audit. But Professor Schutz, who had abstained from the special sessions in the council, was far from pleased.