anteckningar av O Rudbecks hand (F.m.73). This manner of sailing as “coastal navigation and island- hopping” comes from Obregon, Beyond the Edge of the Sea, 42. “Hugging the right side of the coast” are Rudbeck’s words, Atl. I, 419. The various conflicting theories on the return voyage are discussed by Robert Graves in The Greek Myths II, 241–44, and by Timothy Gantz in Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (1993), 362. Rudbeck’s treatment comes especially from Atl. I, 418–27. The oldest texts as more authoritative is discussed in many places of Atlantica, for instance, I, 8.
The text of the Argonautica Orphica is reproduced with a French translation in Francis Vian’s Les Argonautiques orphiques (1987), and John Warden has edited a collection of essays titled Orpheus: The Metamorphoses of a Myth (1982). The Viking paths to the east using the Russian rivers are indeed seen on Swedish runes, Sven B. F. Jansson, The Runes of Sweden, translated by Peter G. Foote (1962), 25ff. Rudbeck’s Argonaut experiment with his yachts is related in Atl. I, 420ff. Hornius’s account and the Russian rivers are in Eriksson (1994), 30, 111–12. Additional information comes from Rudbeck’s letters, which describe Rudbeck borrowing maps of Russian rivers from the Swedish state, and even writing to ask the count about knowledge of its river systems, 20 February 1674, RA, Kanslers embetets handlingar for Uppsala universitet Arkiv E.11:5.
Rudbeck’s yacht service was sometimes discussed in his letters, including his complaint that independent “rowing wenches” were eating into his market, 4 October 1697, ULA, Lansstyrelsen i Uppsala lan. Landskansliet biographica I. D.IV.A, vol. 64. Rudbeck’s first proposal for the postal service was published in Historisk Tidskrift (1899), vol. 19, 164–66. His critique of contemporary boatmen is from Atl. III, 341.
Thor Heyerdahl’s experimental archaeology can be seen and appreciated in many of his works, and the example in the narrative is found in his Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft, translated by F. H. Lyon (1964). Place-names in Sweden cited in the search for the Golden Fleece are in Atl. I, 424. The fact that Achilles was still a baby at the time of the Argonauts’ quest is evident in Apollonius, Argonautica I, 556–58, and Rudbeck’s words about choosing the true dreamer are found in Atl. I, 427.
Verelius’s help to Rudbeck is described in many places, particularly the dedication to Atl. I, 3–5. The sources for the dispute with the eminent Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin are cited in the notes to chapter 1. Rudbeck the Uppsala student also lost out on the discovery of the thoracic duct, just barely behind the French anatomist Jean Pecquet (Lindroth, Stormaktstiden, 420–21). The press is described by Annerstedt in UUH I, 357–60; II, 140–53, and the lawsuit continued, II, 199–202. The trial is also discussed in Annerstedt, Bref II, lxxii–xc. Rudbeck described the trial in his letters, for instance, relating some background to the problems from his perspective, 6 June 1681 (Annerstedt, Bref III, 72–73).
Odysseus’s description of the approaching Underworld comes from the Odyssey XI, lines 14–21, and another valuable account later, when Hermes escorts the shades of the suitors there, appears at the opening of Book XXIV. Circe’s “flawless bed of love” is found in the Odyssey X, line 390, and her advice on how Odysseus must sail to the “cold homes of Death” and hear “prophecy from the rapt shade of blind Teiresias,” X, lines 540–50. The English astronomer Norman Lockyer used the Greek word in naming the element helium, “the element of the sun,” first seen on the new spectroscope during the solar eclipse of 1868.
Rudbeck’s discovery of the Underworld was first discussed in some detail in Atl. I, 332–50. The “sunless Underworld” comes from Homer, Odyssey IV, lines 886–88. Rudbeck overlooks Homer’s words that no one had ever sailed there before, Odyssey X, lines 556–57 and line 597. Rudbeck believed this was contradicted by the many accounts of heroes who did in fact sail there, Atl. I, 332–34. Yet, as usual, Rudbeck must be watched. Perseus’s trip, which he discusses, was not to the Underworld, but, as Pindar made clear, to the land of the Hyperboreans, though by now Rudbeck was convinced that this was essentially another name for the Underworld.
Explaining why Homer calls the inhabitants dead, Rudbeck offers another reason: the Swedes were called “the dead” because they tended to be fair, whiter and paler than the ancients in the Mediterranean, Atl. II, 388–89. Possibly, too, the idea arose from their complacency, or from the lack of action among the peaceful, prosperous civilization. Circe’s instructions to Odysseus to sail north are in Homer’s Odyssey X, 562–63. Rudbeck’s discussion of the Cimmerii, or Cimmerians, is found in Atl. I, 326–32, with discussions in other places as well, including on Cimmerian darkness, I, 359, and the Cimmerian place-names, 426. Magic was discussed near his proposed Underworld in many places of the Atlantica—the claim of not having enough ink to record all the stories of soothsayers comes from Atl. I, 213. Rudbeck’s treatment of the various visits to the Underworld, Atl. I, 213, and the Underworld as cultural center, Atl. I, 347. His sources agreed, with the phrase about Zoroaster found in Olaus Magnus, Description of the Northern Peoples, edited by Peter Fisher, Humphrey Higgens, and Peter Foote, I–III (1996–99), I, 172. Reference to the spectacular ice formations, as well as the mists around the caves, come from this source, 50–51, and Magalotti’s comments on witchcraft are in Sverige, 68.
Tiresias was the famous seer of the Underworld, who gave Odysseus advice on how to reach home, Odyssey XI, line 100ff. He was so wise that even the gods asked his advice, Ovid, Metamorphoses III, 300. Tiresias was spelled, according to Rudbeck, in a variety of ways: Tyrisas, Turrisas, Tyreas, Atl. I, 357. The ancient seer was originally the Swedish Tyr, who, in the words of the Edda, “was so clever that a man who is clever is said to be ty-wise,” Gylf. 25, and Rudbeck’s discussion, Atl. I, 311–12. Rudbeck’s expedition, led by Samuel Otto, is described in Atl. I, 227, 415, and images are printed in the Atlas volume (table 30, figs. 101–3).
Rudbeck’s etymology of the Underworld’s Charon the boatman was derived from the Swedish barin or barin, meaning “boat” (Atl. I, 350). Rudbeck was possibly influenced by Diodorus Siculus, who derived the name from the Egyptian word for boat, Library of History I. 92. 3–4, I. 96. 8–9.
CHAPTER 8: MOUNTAINS DON’T DANCE
My discussion of Atlantis is based primarily on the oldest known accounts, Plato’s Timaeus and Critias dialogues, translated by R. G. Bury for the Loeb Classical Library (1999). A century before these dialogues, the historian Herodotus wrote about a people called the Atlantes who lived in Africa and were said “to eat no living creature and never to dream,” Histories IV, 184. Another fifth-century-B.C. historian, Thucydides, wrote about the island Atalanta, which also, incidentally, was said to have suffered an earthquake and a flood, The Peloponnesian War III, 89. But neither these people nor the place is demonstrably connected to Plato’s more famous Atlanteans.
The Atlantis controversy is surveyed in a number of works, including Richard Ellis’s Imagining Atlantis (1998), Paul Jordan’s Atlantis Syndrome (2001), and L. Sprague de Camp’s Lost Continents: The Atlantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature (1970). Among many other interesting assessments are Edwin Ramage, ed., Atlantis, Fact or Fiction? (1978), James Bramwell’s Lost Atlantis (1937), and Phyllis Young Forsyth’s Atlantis: The Making of Myth (1980). Accounts of other searches for Atlantis and theories trying to solve the riddle also helped me understand Rudbeck’s early venture: Ignatius Donnelly, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World (1881, reprinted 1971); Otto Muck, The Secret of Atlantis, translated by Fred Bradley (1981); Charles Berlitz, The Mystery of Atlantis (1969); and others. Charles R. Pellegrino has written an absorbing account of the Thera-Crete theory in Unearthing Atlantis: An Archaeological Odyssey (1991), as has J. V. Luce in The End of Atlantis (1969). Retired Royal Air Force cartographer J. M. Allen’s
