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

Author:David King [King, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: General, United States, Biography, Social Science, History, Non-Fiction, 17th Century, Europe, Body; Mind & Spirit, Unexplained Phenomena, Archaeology, Ancient, Civilization; Ancient, Ancient Mysteries & Controversial Knowledge, Atlantis (Legendary Place), Atlantis, Nature, Regional, Rudbeck; Olof, Scandinavia, Sweden, Natural History - Sweden - 17th Century, Natural History
ISBN: 9781400047536
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2006-07-25T23:23:42+00:00

The Norse gods Odin, Thor, and Frigge, once rulers of Atlantis.

To the bitter end, Rudbeck would be convinced of this startling revision of world history, and see it as yet further evidence that Atlantis, despite some temporary missing links, had been found in Sweden.

SUCH SENSATIONAL DISCOVERIES were undoubtedly affecting Rudbeck’s behavior. He began to dress more simply than ever, much as he envisioned the ideals of the ancient Swedes before their fall. Quite radically, he decided to print university programs in Swedish, not Latin, as he believed that this Atlantic, or Swedish, language lay at the root of both Latin and Greek. Rudbeck was one of the first scholars ever to use Swedish so prominently at a university. He explained his reasoning thus: since he had not yet discovered “that Aristotle or Cicero ever honored the Gothic or Scythian tongue (which is the oldest),” Rudbeck planned to do the same. He would address the university “in good, pure Swedish, our mother tongue.”

Such maverick disregard for tradition outraged many of his enemies, who feared that foreign scholars would mock Uppsala for discarding the international language of the learned. As one member of the College of Antiquities grumbled, “They will think this is only a school for children.”

As was often the case with Rudbeck, his ambitions would grow with time, and one can only wonder at his plans for the future. For if he could not find the palace of Atlantis in Old Uppsala, then perhaps he felt he could at least build it in the heart of the university. His design for the new main university building, which he had been asked to draw up, shows more than a passing resemblance to the great royal palace of Atlantis. It was enormous like the palace Plato had described; and the decorations for the new university building were Atlantean right down to the Nereids, the sea nymphs riding dolphins that were to adorn the columns of the magnificent façade.

The project was, however, never fulfilled, given the great expenses involved and the sluggish economy of the 1670s. Unfortunately the same forces were straining Rudbeck’s search for Atlantis, and threatening to make it end up like his unrealized plans for the university building.

Almost immediately after his book went to press, in March 1677, enormous sums of money were being consumed by this antiquarian project. By April the investment was costing a staggering fifty-four daler a week just to keep the production running, and soon even this did not suffice. By November, eight months later, Rudbeck had already pledged two thousand daler silvermynt to cover the labor of the printer and another thousand for purchasing the huge stacks of paper required to print the bulging text—in both Swedish and Latin parallel texts—with an ambitious initial print run of five hundred copies.

Another couple of hundred daler silvermynt went for larger-sized paper to be used in the lavish volume of images and maps. After all, with the Argonauts’ reconstructed voyage, the finds at the capital city of Atlantis,

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