In 1679, Olof Rudbeck published the first volume of a work rewriting the history of the world around him. In his Atlantica, the professor of anatomy at Uppsala argued that Sweden had been the origin of all civilisation and culture in Europe. Up north lies the place where the oldest of our stories had originated; a place the ancient writers had promised under names such as Atlantis or Elysium.

Ljusnan – the river Rudbeck described as antiquity's Elysium. Photography by Darren Hamlin.

From 1679 to 1702, the Atlantica grew into four volumes. With thousand of pages and hundreds of illustrations they shaped a new vision of Scandinavia. A few decades before, Sweden had emerged as a military superpower around the Baltic Sea. Still, however, most of Europe looked north in scorn. On the margins of the world known to them, they pictured Sweden as a frozen desert, as a place neglected by nature and the Muses, as a nation with a shallow roots.

The opposite was true, so Rudbeck argued. No country was in fact more favoured by nature and history than his home; a place where cultural achievements such as astronomy or the alphabet had first originated – a place inspiring a sense of wonder so strong that it still shimmered from the most ancient of our stories. Under their surface lay a truth to be laid bare again, Rudbeck argued, as the famous frontispiece of his Atlantica illustrates (depicted in the banner at the top of this page).

Panorama of the Jämtland Mountains, produced by Rudbeck's 1675 expedition.

To prove his point, Rudbeck applied the scientific methods of his time. By leading excavations and launching expeditions, through his study of nature and ancient texts, the polymath expanded the knowledge about the north. The Atlantica creatively connected this material with physical and textual evidence of the past.

Its volumes thus reversed the narrative how European scholars had commonly explained the origin of culture and civilisation. But there was more – they charged the nature and places in Sweden with deeper meaning. With his (unfinished) work, Rudbeck communicated an awe-inspiring, all-connecting epiphany: That the world behind the wondrous accounts of Plato, Homer, and all the other writers had not only been real – but that it was still out there, a truth for every traveler to witness with his or her own eyes.

Selected reading:

For the most complete study of Rudbeck's Atlantica and its impact on intellectual history see:

• Bernd Roling, Odins Imperium: der Rudbeckianismus als Paradigma an den skandinavischen Universitäten (1680–1860). 2 vols, Leiden: Brill, 2020.

For introductions in English language see:

• David King, Finding Atlantis: a true story of genius, madness and an extraordinary quest for a lost world . New York: Harmony Books, 2005.

• Gunnar Eriksson, The Atlantic vision: Olaus Rudbeck and Baroque science. Canton, Mass: Science History Publishing, 1994.

For an introduction in Swedish see:

• Gunnar Eriksson, Rudbeck 1630–1702: liv, lärdom, dröm i barockens Sverige. Stockholm: Atlantis, 2002.

The original volumes of the Atlantica (text in Latin and Swedish) can be explored in digital scans:

• vol. 1 (text) at Gothenburg University Library

• vol. 1 (images) at National Library, Stockholm.

• vol. 2 at Gothenburg University Library

• vol. 3, facsimile published at litteraturbanken.se

• vol. 4 (incomplete), facsimile published at litteraturbanken.se
  

All images published with these historic volumes and their meaning in context can be explored through our visual database 'Reaching for Atlantis'.

Not at all.

We believe there are more inspiring approaches to the Atlantica than studying where or how far Rudbeck was off our understanding of 'historic truth'.

Already in his own time (and country), Rudbeck was criticised for his views on early Swedish history. A few decades after his death in 1702, there was a growing consensus that pillars in his lines of reasoning – e.g. his dating of rune stones, let alone his 'creative' etymologies – cannot be maintained.

To those who see history and science as narratives of progress towards a factual truth, the Atlantica easily appears as a dead-end, or as a strange curiosity at best; a work inspired by a manic – tragic? – misinterpretation of evidence (and yes, also its manipulation). Not few have identified the motive driving such a massive work as supplying Imperial Sweden with a nationalistic narrative, an ambitious story that filled the more obscure layers in its history –but eventually struggled to hold up under the scrutiny of proper research.

In conversations, a frequent question is therefore 'did Rudbeck himself believe all this?'

As polymath proficient in all fields of knowledge the university brought together, Rudbeck was operating within the parameters of what then counted as scientific practice. And he was by far not the first to float narratives of this kind. Yet that question leads deeper, to what we believe was driving a man to spend almost half of his life to elaborate his vision of the north.

At the bottom of the Atlantica, one can find an abounding creativity and enthusiasm to share an all-connecting vision he read from the intellectual and material world around him. The four volumes of the Atlantica speak of significant advances in contemporary science, e.g. archaeology, antiquarianism, comparative linguistics, geography. However, all these can be seen as driven and motivated by a larger goal – a goal that ultimately was spiritual: To re-establish a faded harmony between forms of human culture (e.g. myths, songs, art, sacred texts, religious practice), and the world to which they referred – a truth that thus could be experienced with all senses.

Detail from the Mensa Isiaca as reprinted in the Atlantica. Rudbeck explained the (Neo)-Egyptian artefact as a calendar of the Nordic year, e.g. with its breaking of the river ice (R), or the migrating birds returning (V).

Mending the links between nature and cultural traditions he saw disrupted by time, Rudbeck created a new story (or as he saw it: found back to the Pristine One) – a story that re-enchanted the world around him, connecting snow-capped mountains, the flight of birds in the northern sky, or the crystal structure of a snowflake in meaning.

In so doing, Rudbeck practiced an art of seeing that turned the world around him into a Wunderkammer (a cabinet of wonder), a cosmos deeply inscribed with patterns of meaning at which the ancient traditions still hinted, and which remained for the curious mind to be (re)discovered.

From this angle, the Atlantica appears as an ultimate archive of awe; as a jaw-dropping account of the wonders to be read from the north. It is this way of seeing the world in which still lies inspiration in times of global crisis.

The stories we tell about us and our relationship with the world inform how we treat it. By the 21st century, we have grown and passed on a story of nature as a sphere we can influence and control, from which we can extract, from which technology has made us an independent part. The crisis we face also is the crisis of this narrative that has shaped our world, in ways which have become visible on a geological scale. To move away from a trajectory leaving few alternatives imaginable than global collapse, we need awareness that such ways of seeing the world (and hence of treating it) have historically formed, and are culturally shaped.

Ljusnan River passing the Laforsen Dam. Until the 1950s, Laforsen was the largest waterfall in the south of Norrland. Photography by Darren Hamlin.

To what can we return to rewrite the story of who we are, of our relationship with all life on earth? The Atlantica illustrates how fluid the stories we write from this world have been and still are. In so doing, it invokes our human power to write new ones, originating from a place of wonder.

As an intellectual, Rudbeck leads back to a shifting point in the history of science. A generation after him, processes described as Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, or the systemic view of nature associated with Carl von Linné began to gradually strip the world of the rich tapestry of indigenous, mythical, magical, religious layers of meaning human beings created all across the globe – in short: of the ways by which we make the world around them meaningful, yet that then were considered non-scientific.

What remained from this process is world more mapped, classified, and measured than ever before, but lesser in meaning, lesser in resonance – a disenchanted world of matter, valued according to its use for human beings.

As leading naturalist of his country, Rudbeck was a foremost exponent of the Scientific Revolution, manifesting in his founding of the botanical garden or the anatomical theatre at Uppsala University. At the same time, in unbridled associations he linked language, ancient art, or myth to phenomena he scientifically observed and to evidence he produced by excavations and expeditions. With ecstatic creativity, he invested antiquities, archaeological remains, snow-capped mountains, Sweden's lakes and rivers, the flowers growing on their banks, trees and entire forests, the Midnight Sun, the dark of the Polar nights, the shimmer of the Northern lights, migratory birds, the crystal shapes of ice and snow, with deeper meaning and value beyond the material.

All the mentioned aspects of nature Rudbeck considered as stable and constant, as a sphere outside of human influence. It was this basis which he considered having inspired the oldest of our stories, and from which he drew the strongest foundation of his Atlantica. Nature had, in his view, remained the same since the biblical Deluge. It was still out there, for every critic of his ideas to experience, and would remain to do so until the end of the world:

The land of Sweden itself is the foundation of my work – all its lakes, mountains, rivers, and the other things which designate our home, and which have been brought together by the most ancient writers – a foundation which will remain unchangeable and fixed until that stone from the book of Daniel, by which everything has been created, shatters and destroys them. Olof Rudbeck, Atlantica, vol. 1 (1679), p. 887. Cf. Book of Daniel 2:34–35

The palpable collapse of this vision in our time also draws attention to fading layers of meaning in a world that has changed – that we have changed. Revisiting places and phenomena Rudbeck declared the irrefutable foundation of his work today paints a different picture: Dammed-up rivers, clear-cut forests, dwindling glaciers, lift-clad mountains, light-polluted skies, changing seasons and their dramatic effects on plants and animals.

If we dare to look, we become witness to an accelerating process in which we see the grounds of our own stories shaken, of the ones we too told of our relationship with the world and each other. How will we make sense out of what we leave behind?

This is the enormous cultural labour we face as humankind.

Selected reading

• William B. Ashworth, "Natural History and the Emblematic World View", in: Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, edd. David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman, Cambridge – New York: Cambridge UP, 1990, pp. 303–332.

• Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The mushroom at the end of the world: on the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.

• Sverker Sörlin, Framtidslandet. Lund: Teg Publishing, 2023 [re-edition of diss. 1988].

During its runtime, the research project underlying 'Frozen Atlantis' changed affiliation several times.

Originally, we set out in the field of Early Modern History. At the same time, the intellectual scope of Olof Rudbeck as a polymath made the project border on Early Archaeology, Classical Philology, Scandinavian Studies, Neo-Latin literature, Geography, History of Science, and many other disciplines.

In its final stage, 'Frozen Atlantis' chose to affiliate with the field of Public History. This reflects our journey towards formats that allow alternative, personal, and engaging ways of storytelling, capable of opening up a fascinating period in intellectual history to audiences beyond academia.

Reaching out in media beyond print is part of making our research matter in the 21st century, and so is the environmental angle which has come to define our perspective on Rudbeck's once-enchanted landscapes.

Producing in media other than the Big Book for other academics means co-creating. Over the past years, Frozen Atlantis has grown to a team of professionals who put their skills at the service of the project.

Beyond the core team, we can count on experts from various fields, e.g. involving dramatic advisors, theatre professionals, script consultants, or the help of assistants at shoots and in the outdoors.

In our work, we are also supported by public institutions from the cultural and educational sector. Without functioning public institutions such as libraries, museums, schools, and universities as well as their invaluably helpful staff, much of our work would be impossible.

Our research communication project 'Frozen Atlantis' and the underlying research project 'Reaching for Atlantis' were funded by the VolkswagenStiftung. The foundation is the largest private funder of academic research in Germany (not affiliated with the car manufacturer).

Through its Freigeist-profile (‘Free Spirit’), the VolkswagenStiftung created a funding initiative for young academics to explore unconventional approaches with utmost freedom and flexibility. The scheme encouraged applications for research projects located between established academic fields.

The goal was to fund initiatives with a potential of leaving a visible mark as for how we can alternatively do and communicate research. In these ambitions, we were supported with additional funding through a 'Research Communication Module' by the foundation.

Without the long-term trust and support we had the privilege to enjoy on behalf of the foundation, little of the initiatives we are proud to now unfold would have been possible.

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