::Olof Rudbeck:::FINDING ATLANTIS:: ::Who Were The Hyperboreans?::

The Edge of Empire:
Rudbeck and Lomonosov and the Historiography of the North
Kenneth J. Knoespel
Georgia Insititute of Technology

http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~knoespel/pdfsPublication/LomonosovLecture.pdf

Introduction

The north was associated from the Mediterranean south from the earliest ages with a darkness associated with strange languages, distance, alien cultural behavior, and just plain bad weather. This darkness – or the fog and mist if we use the early description of Marco Polo -- was not ignored but itself became a screen upon which the south could project an ever growing list of fantasies. iBy the early eighteenth-century, northern historiography – both Russian and Swedish – became increasingly self-conscious about they way they were portrayed and sought to develop histories that were more independent. iiFor Sweden, the writing of a northern history became a self-conscious effort to graft Sweden into the histories of Europe. For Russia, historical writing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became an effort to defend itself not only from European distortions but also from genealogies that would associate it too closely with Sweden. While I initially thought that a comparison of Olof Rudbeck and Mikael Lomonsov would be a useful way of approaching northern historiography during the early decades of the eighteenth century, I have become convinced that such a comparison is not only convenient but essential. Each offers not only a point of entry into the writing and use of history in Sweden and Russia but also provides illuminating vantage points on their different objectives. Several features must be identified from the outset. While the famous statues of Charles and Peter have come to symbolize the power of Sweden and Russia, they can also remind us of the conscious efforts on the part of Swedes and Russians to write ancient histories that would ground recent accomplishments. iiiThestatues might be compared to Voltaire’s own monumental volumes on Charles XII (1731) and Peter the Great (1759). ivBut for Sweden and Russia alike, Voltaire’s writing also carried an inevitable reminder that these histories, although spectacular, carried a glamour that we might compare to a Spielberg Hollywood
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production of great northern panoramas. If we wish, we might even detect in Voltaire’s ability to throw his voice into the north – his intellectual ventriloquism if you will – a reminder that for Swedes and Russians especially in the seventeenth-century there was a kind of historiographic crisis from the vantage point of ancient sources that could be shaped into histories shared with other European nations. Given Sweden's success in the Thirty Years War and given the monumental accomplishments of Peter, (the civil and human engineering required to construct St. Petersburg provides one example among many), the paucity of historical sources might even appear somewhat paradoxical. This, however, is the case. If we used a somewhat contemporary analogy, we may say that while there were a plethora of news stories, there was little historical understanding. It is at least in part the absence of a shared historical record that permitsVoltaire to shape the heroic stories of Charles and Peter. Using historical terminology closer to theseventeenth century, we might say that the tempus mythologicum, the time of the most ancient history,works as a blank page that must be filled. For Swedes, the absence of ancient written material might be attributed to the early destruction of northern books written in the Runic alphabet by Olof Skötkonung as early as 1001. vFor Russians, it is the problem first of knowing what sources there are and then of learning how to deal with the discovery of vast amounts of material. For Sweden this involves Icelandic sagas; for Russia it involves historical chronicles that include not only the canonical Nestor’s Chronicle but a rapidly accumulating mass of information from Siberia. viFor scholars in both countries, textual evidence is simply insufficient and they are required to turn to ethnographic and archeological evidence. More than anything else, the following pages show, albeit in an abbreviated manner, how in both Swedish and Russian settings,one finds an elaborate process of collecting voices and even Gogal-like ghosts that contribute to the creation of new national histories. As we will see, for each nation, the new material asks what it means to discover another "history" or other "histories" within yourself? In both cases the assimilation of the archival material provokes not only internal debates but influences the elaboration of a northern identity and finally are calibration of the idea of Europe itself. What is also interesting is that they are compared and provoke historical debates that have continued to our own day

Rudbeck (1630-1702)

For a generation of Swedes who had learned to maneuver in Latin and Greek commentaries in order to study at German or Dutch universities the Swedish poems of Georg Stiernhielm (1598-1672) marked not only the strength of the Swedish language but a growing nationalism that also sought recognition in a unique history of the north. viiiEven a glimpse at the extraordinary work being undertaken by seventeenth-centurySwedish scholars such as Johannes Scheffereus, Svecia literata [1698]) reminds us that by the 1670s and 1680s there was a Swedish industry not simply engaged in antiquarian studies but in a search for epic material. ixThese antiquarian pursuits were supported in substantial ways by noblemen such as Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie (1622-1686) who was astutely aware of the ways that publication of ancient documents
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could draw attention on a scale much larger than church reliquaries in the catholic past. The publication Hervarars Saga in 1672 [Figure 1] offers an example not only of antiquarian research and the definition of a Swedish epic but shows us the context in which Atlantica was born. xThe importance of the work appears not only in the copious commentary which includes notes by Stiernhielm and Rudbeck but in the allegorical dedication that draws an extended comparison between Sweden’s rich iron resources and the new resource that is now being provided through the publication of the saga. "Vi I wårt fosterland hafwa malmgrufwor/ såthe dyrbarare som sembre/ altijd warit reknade för en serdeles Rijksens Odall; och för then skull afLandsens herrar och konungar med synnerlig åthuga skötte och handhafde: att the ej annorlunda/ änn tillallmänne nytto och tarfwor häfdas måtte (folio 2 verso)." [In our fatherland we have iron mines of such richness that they have always been regarded as one of the nation's unique treasures. As a result, our land's nobles and kings must with particular care and supervision do nothing but see to their significance and valuef or everyone."] The mining metaphor used by Verelius works well for just as the country must look toward its hidden natural resources, it should also explore its hidden historical resources. In reading the saga, one has the impression that it functions as a Nordic Odyssey if not in a literal sense as poetic text that merits commentary worth of the Greek epic poem. As the portrayal of Homer in the frontis piece to Atlantica hints several years later, northern epics could also be thought of as school texts for Homer. Just as the Homeric scholia participated in the conceptual foundation of Greece, the extended commentary on the saga becomes involved in the definition of Sweden. While the actual text of first chapter of the saga is only three pages long and comprised of both the text in Old Norse and a Swedish translation, the commentary takes up thirty-three additional pages! When approached from the scholarly apparatus Verelius, Rudbeck’s Atlantica appears less strange. xiIf Hervarar Saga suggests a potential for a foundational epic, Rudbeck’s work mightbe thought of as a scholarly commentary on a lost civilization that might best be described as a cross between Servius and Schliemann. Rudbeck’s undertaking amounts to the imaginary recreation of a lost Swedish epic based on a massive collection of fragments. Although the undertaking has seemed farfetched and has often been ridiculed, Rudbeck's work may also be viewed as a new universal history that sought to integrate northern histories into an historiography that had been unquestioningly directed toward the southand the Mediterranean. In effect, Rudbeck seeks to show that what has been ignored may have undreamed of consequences not only for the Swedish nation but for the very understanding of world history. Atlantica, published in four volumes (vol. 1 and a folio of illustrations [1679], vol. 2 [1689]; vol. 3[1698], vol. 4 [1702]), might best be described as a continually evolving book that sought to establish support for the thesis that the postdiluvian source for humankind could be traced to Sweden and the burial mounds in Old Uppsala. xii[Figure 2] While Rudbeck's hermeneutical method at first appears disorganized, the disorientation that one experiences in looking at the work comes from our distance from seventeenth century scholarship which constructed arguments through the copious citation of textual sources. xiiiSuch practice was expected and is found commonly throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Rudbeck's arguments are informed by the seventeenth-century recognition that language could be studied as
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an abstract system that carried, through its words and structure, the history of people. With linguistic theory and the practice of seeking synchronisms in history, Rudbeck proceeded to amass what he viewed assignificant connections between ancient history associated with the Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans and the history of the north. One of the arguments implicit in Rudbeck's work is that universal history in the seventeenth century had become too ethnocentric or dominated by what we might think of as Mediterranean assumptions. While Rudbeck certainly can be accused of presumptuous ethnocentrism himself, his research also provides a rich laboratory for the study of history. Three related theses or assumptions emerge from Atlantica:
• That natural history (geography and especially a description of nature and natural resources) provides an alternative schema for reading political and cultural history
• That natural history provides a foundation for the growth of a nation
• That there is a Mediterranean thesis that may be challenged and augmented

My reference to a Mediterranean thesis should not be surprising. It can be discerned in Olaus Magnus (and even in the assimilation of Magnus's work in England in the seventeenth century) and in propaganda from the 30-years' war. I am not suggesting that antiquity is being called into question in itself but that its presence as an unquestioned assumption begins to be balanced by the possibility that European history might also be approached from a different and perhaps even complementary geographical perspective. In the simplest sense, a northern thesis emerges when the numerous unquestioned universal histories that give unquestioned priority to the Mediterranean become formulated in ways in which they are qualified or formulated through self-conscious reflection. Another way of saying this is to emphasize the ways in which universal histories become vehicles for viewing and even shaping broad historical narratives. Isaac Newton's own work on universal history certainly carries an interest in English and even personal history. xivEuropean intellectual traditions often assumed Mediterranean origins in the seventeenth century to the degree that they almost go unquestioned. While Gothicism may bring such Mediterranean history into relief, it does so by using the scholarly methods that were part of European academic traditions. The cornucopia of observations provided by Rudbeck’s Atlantica challenges the reader to expand the ways that he or she has thought about history. In contrast to universal histories that only seek to integrate multiple written records, Rudbeck's work gives repeated attention to natural history that may be used for information. Besides written records, the reader is shown how jewelry, coins, building techniques, clothing, dialectical variations in language, geographical detail, evidence of climactic change all may provide information useful in building up an interpretive stance. It is precisely this hotchpotch of information together with a continuous mixing of genres that has contributed to the eccentric reputation of Atlantica. Yet it may not at all be misleading to look again at the apparent eccentricity and see that it really uses the form of a scholarly genre to assemble a massive amount of ethnographic and anthropological detail in the form of
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collected anecdotes. Rudbeck's style is associated with his propensity to cluster anecdotal evidence on the same level of evidence drawn from written sources. For example, in chapter devoted to the idea that there were giant humans living in the north, Rudbeck includes his own experience with persons who were of unusual height. In regard to the relevance of upbringing, it is important that children to nurse for a sufficiently long period of time, sleep a great deal and that they don't receive a lot of air, live in the thick forest, and aren't put to work too soon. I'm going to give two examples. In the year 1658, I was responsible for a sick person, about 30 years old, who was bedridden because he appeared as if he were dead, but not quite as much as others, because he still could move both his hands and feet. Still, he didn't have enough strength to work. He had been in bed for 6 years, had a strong appetite and slept most of the time. He had grown three kvarter or 1 1/2 feet during his illness with the consequence that they needed to make him a longer bed. Such an example reminds me of the time I was in Leidens Nosocomio if I remember correctly. Rudbeck's repeated use of his own eye-witness accounts -- his field research -- amounts to an enlargement of historical research. Two entwined forces drive his work: the formulation of a mythos about the origins of Sweden and the collection of information about the north. What is infrequently noticed is that the exotic arguments regarding the antiquity of Sweden permit a great amount of northern daily-life to be registered as well. (It is quite likely that it is the wealth of Rudeck's observations that stand behind Leibniz's comment on Rudbeck’s extravagance: “I do not know what to think about those who urged on by the love of country mix fantasy with their solid work; it seems that they are productive since through their imagination they actually do good work.”xviLeibniz urges us to think of the work less as a moment to a great failure and more as a work that admonishes ongoing investigation of history as it is integrated into the daily life of the past.For Rudbeck as for many of his seventeenth-century contemporaries, ancient records provided aframework and even justification for collecting information. Here Rudbeck's practice may be compared to
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the expansive seventeenth-century commentaries on classical texts such as Ovid's Metamorphoses or the even more elaborate compendia that sought to accommodate seventeenth-century classical scholarship withs eventeenth-century Biblical research. Like an encyclopedic work such as De Theologia Gentili(Amsterdam, 1641) by Gerardus Vossius that might be viewed not only as an exercise in hermeneutics but infactoring, Rudbeck collects hundreds and hundreds of short narratives to show that they too may be controlled by a single narrative. This single meta-plot is not, however, the Greek Atlantis but a Swedish Atlantis used to knit together everything from Scythian mythology to medical cases such as the one described above. The practice of collecting and concatenating stories finally does more than simply complement or complete the story of Atlantis; it also signals an activity that may shared with other scholars and the nation. In effect, it is necessary to follow not only the scholarly criticism of Atlantica but to pursue what we might think of as the social-life of Rudbeck's work. Atlantica in a very real sense symbolizes an ongoing discussion that included not only academics or courtiers but local Parish priests and parishioners --in effect, a population learning to tell and assemble their own unique histories. xviiThe degree to which Rudbeck's text combines common and scholarly discourse (and as a consequence the spoken and written language) makes Atlantica not only resource for the study of the Swedish language but reminds us how Rudbeck's unvarnished Swedish would appeal to readers to understand what they see, hear, feel, and taste. Above I suggested that Rudbeck's work sought to complete or fill in blanks in northern history. This projective work is by no means isolated but carries a broader social and ideological component. If we think of Atlantica as a commentary on a missing epic or on a part of Swedish history that had been rendered invisible, we understand that it not only provoked ongoing research into Icelandic sagas but that it contributed to an ideological setting that urged the Swedish nation to recognize the antiquarian remains under their own feet and in the very language they spoke so that they could enact new epics that would match Sweden's imagined past. Gothicism may be read as a delusional chauvinism but it must also be approached as a sign of Sweden's growing self-awareness of her importance within Europe. Although it iscertainly possible to distinguish between Swedish antiquarianism and Gothicism in ultranationalistic settings, it is also appropriate to acknowledge how close they can sometimes be. Above all, it is necessary to view Gothicism as an ideological motif that can be manipulated to characterize Sweden's unique identity within Europe. There are complex shades of meaning which move between the Gothicism of Swedish romantic poetry on the one hand and its use within German propaganda of the Second World War. xviii Within the seventeenth-century, it contributes to process of realignment in which Sweden becomes assimilated into an established idea of European civilization and shows how the discoveries of northern antiquity also influence an evolving idea of Europe. Although I have no room here to review the assimilation of Gothicism in Sweden or in Europe in general,I would like to conclude my comments by looking briefly at two emblematic representations of Rudbeck's Atlantica published by his son in Nora Somolad sive Laponia illustrata (Upsala, 1701).xix Following the example of his father, Rudbeck the younger undertook an expedition to Lappland in 1696 in which he sought
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to gather material that would be useful in demonstrating the great antiquity of Sweden. The expedition which was the first ever sponsored by the royal crown marked an initiation of northern explorations in Sweden which would be followed by Linneus and others. The detailed frontispiece to the book [Figure 3] portrays a northern landscape with reindeer, a Lapp settlement, and burial mound suggestive of those foundin Gamla Uppsala.xx In the middle ground, we see a young nobleman who could either be Rudbeck the Younger or the patron of the expedition, Carl XI, in discussion with a Lapp guide. In the foreground we see Puti deciphering the arcane hieroglyph-like symbols from a lapp drum. The scene on the left side of the central landscape shows a speaker or prophet who points out the relation between the lamb he holds before a congregation in prayer and resurrected Christ in the heavens. The scene on the far right depicts a waterfall. Given Baroque practice, it is appropriate to consider the relationship between each of the three scenes. By moving from left to right, we notice that each portrays a truth that may be superimposed on the other: just as God revealed his convenant between the heaven and earth through Jesus, so God may be revealed in the study of the north. Futhermore, God may be revealed in natural wonders like waterfalls that may be used for the benefit of humankind. The four emblematic seals in the foreground each carry an inscription in Swedish and Hebrew which further indicates that deciphering or reading the northern landscape is part of a revelatory process that will take one closer to the origins of all wisdom. [Moving in clockwise direction beginning inthe bottom left-hand corner, the emblems read as follows: Folket som I mörkret wandrar for ett stort ljus Isa.9 [The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light]; The låta min Anda hvilas inNorlanderna Zach 6 [Let my soul rest in the Northern lands]; Och Herren luchtade en söt lucht Gen. 8 [Andthe Lord smelled a sweetness]; Thetta är teknet till mit Förbund Gen. 9 [This is the sign of my covenant]. The remarkable frontis-piece completed by Rudbeck himself and certainly through discussion with his father could well be regarded as an iconographic representation of a Swedish terrain that soon comes to be explored by others such as Linneus. Above all, the illustration is important because it shows his father's vision is to be realized not in arcane bibliographic research alone but in field research that involves the study of people and nature within the Kingdom of Sweden. Even more, it represents a vision of the social forces -- the church,the university, and the crown -- that must be combined to make such research possible. The religious convenant symbolized by the rainbow in the illustration becomes repeated visually in the arch that not only focuses our attention on the Lapp landscape but joins the religious and natural motif.The ideological sophistication of Rudbeck's frontis-piece is balanced in the book by a more playful illustration that depicts the Baltic sea as a human-figure. [Figure 4] While the figure may appear utterly bizarre, it actually made up a genre of idiosyncratic maps in the seventeenth century. It is also important not to lose the relation between the playful figure and the playful aspects of Atlantica. Within Lapponia illustrata, the figure should be viewed not only as a humorous grotesque but as an indication of Sweden's sphere of influence in the Baltic and a visual testimony to the antiquity of such authority. The most extraordinary feature of the map appears in the non-geographical feature. By drawing the figure grasping Öland as if it were the handle of a sword and having it embed the blade into the Baltic, Rudbeck creates at
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once a vision of Greater Sweden and alludes to the metaphoric dissection of the globe in Atlantica thatserves to reveal Atlantis beneath the surface of Sweden. In contrast to the frontis-piece which portrays thedomestic consequences of Atlantica, the illustration of the Baltic shows its implications for Europe. While the figure may be viewed as laying claim to the Baltic by literally embedding a sword in the water, the figuremay also be seen holding his manhood and showing that the north has provided the seed for the rest of the Europe. Just as the Baltic illustration suggests much about Sweden's relation to Europe, it also points towards Sweden's separation from Russia. With his back turned toward the east, the Baltic figure seems fixed inattention to the Swedish mainland with a mind occupied by access to the Baltic from the North Sea. Faraway, on the very opposite side of the illustration, exactly at the figure's Achilles heel if we are anatomically and historically precise, we notice Nöteborg, at the time a small Swedish fishing village located at the point the River Neva moves into the Finnish Gulf. Besides marking Sweden's own sense of its eastern frontier, Nöteborg very soon not only challenges our Baltic figure to reaffix his attention but becomes the site of an ongoing discussion of Atlantica and its meaning not for Sweden but for Russia. It is to this discussion,which accompanies the transformation of Nöteborg to St. Petersburg, one year after Rubeck's publication, that I turn to next.

(NOTE: I HAVE OMITTED THE SECTION ON LOMONOSOV)