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

amazement, and wrote of his reaction, “I began, from the very first to the end, to smile, as if I had drunk the best liquor. I could never have imagined that such a letter would come from a College.”

The antiquarians, Rudbeck charged, had distorted the words of the priest’s letter beyond all recognition, and derived meanings that were in no way intended. He did not want the college’s money, nor did he wish to hinder their work in any way. In fact, Rudbeck recalled his many services on behalf of the college, promoting its members, supporting their research travels, drawing the designs for their planned building, and even being the one who suggested the very foundation of the institution. This assertion, though, Hadorph would vehemently dispute, claiming the honor for himself, which in turn ignited yet another source of tension between the two antiquarians.

Interestingly, when Rudbeck started to investigate matters for himself, he learned that some members of the college had no idea about the actions done in their name. Even its president, Professor Axelhielm, was surprised to hear of the attack. He claimed that he had been bypassed for years (and records show that his salary had actually been written out of the college’s budget). Given this scenario, hinting of underlying dissension and intrigue, Rudbeck asked the chancellor to request that the plaintiffs sign the accusation personally. In this way he hoped to lure the disgruntled out from hiding under the authority of the college, an institution that he felt had been hijacked by some of its most domineering personalities.

But Rudbeck had never wanted their money, he emphasized. He wanted to claim only funds made available by the tryckeritunna, a special tax that had a complicated history. Designed as a tax on priests and parishes to raise money to publish the Swedish Bible, the famous Gustav Vasa Bible that cemented the kingdom’s Reformation, the tryckeritunna (literally the “printing bushels”) had been renewed in 1612 in efforts to fund another edition of the Scripture. But this time, when the Bible appeared (1618), the tax was not abolished. The king, Gustavus Adolphus, decided to use the fund for other purposes, including the publication of historical and literary works. Naturally the people paying the tax resented financing expensive books about ancient history. By the 1640s, the tax was allowed to fade away.

As for the college, its claims on this fund were quite recent, gained just a few years before, in 1674, when the defunct tax had again been revived, thanks to the successful lobbying of Johan Hadorph. He wanted the tax to support the college, its research activities, and its library, as well as to fund a team of copyists, artists, engravers, and woodcutters. Unfortunately for the college, what looked like a new, steady source of income had quickly dried up, an early casualty of the war with Denmark. The first year of its awarding would indeed be the last, that is, until Hadorph once again succeeded in having the tenuous rights reasserted in January 1682.

So the college’s claim was effectively only three years old, and, even then, fiercely disputed. The archbishop had in fact protested the decision to award the tryckeritunna to the college, speaking on behalf of the parishes forced to pay the very unpopular tax. Those parishes resented taxation without representation. They had much preferred to use their own money for their own purposes, such as the schools, the poor, and the Church. A comparison of the salaries enjoyed by members of the College of Antiquities and the local vicars who were forced to pay the tax made the issue even more charged with emotion. Hadorph earned about 1,600 daler silvermynt a year (officially 2,200 daler) as an antiquarian, while many vicars made only about three hundred.

As for printing the praises of his Atlantica, Rudbeck stood by his action. He had never asked for any monetary gain, aristocratic titles, or membership in the prestigious College of Antiquities. The scholarly world’s appreciation for the discovered Atlantis was his real salary. In this light, Rudbeck also defended the monk’s outspoken comments about the relative merits of Sweden’s historical works, writing, “I can’t see that he [Sithellius] has sinned in that he desired something more to be completed of my work … and if he has sinned in this regard, then so have many others.”

Sithellius was far from the only one to think in these terms, preferring Atlantica to the more obscure and dense antiquarian tomes. Privately Rudbeck confided to Count de la Gardie that he had been rather cautious, choosing not to print the more uninhibited praise he had received. He had not, for instance, published the words of the French ambassador, who, next to the Bible, preferred reading no other book than Atlantica. Moreover, less flattering portraits of the College of Antiquities could easily have been included, if Rudbeck had wanted.

All the college’s critiques, Rudbeck concluded, essentially boiled down to an attempt to reassert its privileged position, and its desired control over the antiquarian arena. The college, on the other hand, saw Rudbeck as an author of fables unjustly maneuvering to gain its income. The judge in this dispute, it turns out, would be Count de la Gardie. Although stripped of his castles, his wealth, and most of his status, he had one position of authority left: chancellor of Uppsala University. De la Gardie would now have to decide between the competing parties: Atlantica, which he had patronized, and the college he had founded.

Given his response, appearing in the middle of June 1685, the choice was not that difficult to make. The tone was set from the very beginning of the letter. Addressing himself to the “College in Upsala,” De la Gardie was making explicit his hurt feelings about the college’s past behavior. Immediately after the count had fallen from power, losing the chancellorship of the realm and his vast wealth in the liquidation, the College of Antiquities had sought out new, more influential patrons. It had even—without De la Gardie’s approval or knowledge—moved its headquarters away from Uppsala.

De la Gardie proceeded to denounce how disgracefully the college had acted, “prostituting” its honor and selling itself so cheaply for the satisfaction of some private vendettas. Indeed it was not the entire college he now addressed, but rather only one or two offending scholars who had acted in its name, Hadorph and Arrhenius.

He was now really tired of all the scandalous insults he had heard about Olof Rudbeck, “impertinent and untrue judgments” enviously spread by members of the college. At the same time, De la Gardie did not approve of how the priest Sithellius had brushed aside the antiquarian’s efforts, or of Rudbeck’s indiscretion in printing the rebuff. Rudbeck had acted without caution or better judgment, something to which the count had never quite grown accustomed over the years in dealing with the flamboyant medical doctor.

Yet De la Gardie could not see how the printing of the letter had injured or reasonably upset the college. As a matter of fact, he hoped what the professors of the college said about themselves was true: namely that they wrote Swedish history with integrity, diligence, and industry. But despite their claims and their annual subsidies, the count added, “you cannot deny that for many years nothing has come to fruition.” The only praiseworthy antiquarian works, he added, had been written by Olof Rudbeck.

Count de la Gardie announced his plan to go straight to the king’s advisers and seek royal protection for Rudbeck, a man the college had long blamed and pursued without good reason. He would make sure that His Majesty was well informed of their “impertinent and indefensible behavior.”

THE COLLEGE, HOWEVER, could not take the count’s threats very seriously anymore. He was a fallen giant, humiliated and discredited. Far from distressed, Hadorph only increased his efforts to publish the catalog of errors, and wrote to his fellow antiquarian Claes Arrhenius advising him to stand firm, thereby robbing Rudbeck of the joy of feeling triumphant.

One month after the count uttered his threat to take the matters to a higher authority, Uppsala learned the fate of its printer Henrik Curio. After the case had spent ten years festering in law courts, Sweden’s highest court, the Svea Hofratt, rendered its judgment in the now notorious legal battle. Curio had lost his suit, and his post.

Effective immediately, Uppsala’s printer would be turned out of office, ordered to repay the three hundred riksdaler (six hundred daler silvermynt) in loans for purchasing equipment, and forced to return all the machines in the condition in which he had received them. Even though De la Gardie’s own son was serving as chief justice, the court had upheld the council’s position completely. Curio would never see the nine hundred daler silvermynt that Rudbeck had promised, insisting that he had the university’s permission to make the offer, though the council had always denied it.

In Rudbeck’s eyes, the university had acted shamelessly. All of Curio’s “troubles and pains” suffered on behalf of the academy were now harshly repaid. Tossed out of his position, with few prospects in a country that had only a few viable presses, Curio’s future was, to say the least, uncertain. There was little hope he could pay back the additional three hundred riksdaler that he owed the university.

Rudbeck looked around for ways to help, hoping to arrange some agreement whereby Curio could start rebuilding his future. Perhaps he could repay the large fines with printed books, because, as Rudbeck said, “he does not have any other property.” This request, though, was refused, with one of the strongest and most outspoken opponents being Rudbeck’s nemesis, Professor Henrik Schutz.