Olof Rudbeck was not only the most learned and brilliantly gifted scholar of his day, but his genius also embodies the eccentricities of the period in gigantic outlines. He was born at Westeros, in 1630, his father being the learned bishop, Johannes Rudbeckius. As a boy, he gave evidence of rare artistic and mechanic talents. He made drawings of exquisite designs, constructed clock mechanisms of wood, and was a skilled musician. His character was proud and violent. At sixteen he was through with his college course and ready to enter the university. The youth could not stand the change from his coarse jacket and fur coat into a coat of broadcloth with buttons such as the students wore, and was for his overbearing manner punished by his severe father with an additional year of college work. At the University of Upsala he caused from the start great surprise by his knowledge in all subjects. He devoted his attention chiefly to natural science, which, in that day, was a neglected study, and soon excelled his professors.
At twenty, Rudbeck made a scientific discovery of great importance, which caused a stir in the whole learned world. By his discovery and theory of the lymphatic ducts, the blood circulation of the human body received a satisfactory explanation. Before the circle of scholars which surrounded Queen Christine, Rudbeck was allowed to demonstrate his anatomical discoveries, in 1652. Queen Christine, who earlier had been an admirer of his beautiful voice and musical abilities, loaded him with praise and gave him the means for a journey abroad. Rudbeck returned, in 1660, to Sweden, and was appointed professor of medicine at the University of Upsala. He planned the first botanic garden in the country, donating it to the university. He had illustrations made of the native plants and commenced a learned work on botany. The first hall of anatomy was erected according to his proposition. As rector of the university, he established several important reforms, in spite of opposition, but supported by the chancellor, Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, who was his friend and protector. To the stupendous mastery of all sciences, Rudbeck added a skill and cleverness in various branches of practical activity which made him carry, with honor, the nickname of “master at all trades.” He was an excellent financier, who succeeded in restoring the sound economy of the university. He built a fish pond, from which the tables of the learned professors were regularly supplied with fish. A book store and a book-printing establishment were erected by him, and for a time run at his expense. He repaired windmills, built houses, provided the university town with water works and street pavement, also arranging its postal service. Rudbeck was one of the finest composers and singers of his day, conducting the musical exercises at the university. He made fireworks and compasses for the Swedish navy, built fountains and organs, was a good poet and painter and an excellent etcher and drawer.
Rudbeck does not owe his great renown to his mastery of any of these trades, arts or sciences, nor to any discovery, reform or invention by his versatile genius. It was his monumental work, “Atland or Manheim,” generally called “The Atlantica,” which made him world-famous. For centuries one had believed in the statement made by Jordanes, and based upon traditions current among his people, that the Goths who conquered Rome had migrated from the North, and that their ancestors, from the remotest period, were inhabitants of Sweden. Johannes Magnus constructed a line of Swedish kings, beginning with Magog, the son of Japhet, on the basis of which the sons of Gustavus Vasa, Eric XIV., and Charles IX., had accepted their high ordinals. In the time of Rudbeck it was considered a supremely praiseworthy effort to glorify the fatherland by strengthening its claims to a high antiquity. Rudbeck, the remarkable savant and able poet, got his head turned by the political grandeur of his country. He had in his youth read the story of Atlantis, found in Plato. Rudbeck undertook to prove, in “The Atlantica,” that the lost island, with its ancient ideal state from which the gods of antiquity were supposed to hail, was identical with Sweden. The work, in four large volumes, was written in Swedish and Latin of parallel columns. The first volume was printed in 1675, Rudbeck having made the types himself. In Sweden the work was greeted with an enthusiasm which had no bounds. The second volume was published by funds which Charles XI. with great generosity placed at the author’s disposal. The third volume was dedicated to the youthful Charles XII., a true child of the chauvinistic epoch, who hailed the book with delight. The fourth volume was in press when Upsala was destroyed by fire, in 1702. The aged Rudbeck led the battle against the ravaging element, by supreme exertions saving the university halls, at the expense of his home, his press and manuscripts, and the rest of the town. Rudbeck died in the autumn of the same year.
The elaborate construction which Rudbeck had completed by means of ingenious deductions and learned guesswork succumbed with the political grandeur of Sweden. “The Atlantica,” which once had its place beside the Bible on the tables of the mighty ones, was ridiculed and forgotten. On the continent of Europe, where similar books had been written in Germany and Holland, making for these respective countries similar claims, “The Atlantica” was at first received with surprise and admiration, later with doubt and criticism. The work, in spite of its mistakes, proved a foundation for archæological research, which gradually was developed into a science. In order to support the boldest and most impossible theories, the almost unparalleled power of combination of an eminent genius has brought together material which for the first time gave the suggestion of relationship between the Teutonic and the classical languages of Greece and Rome. Rudbeck was also the first to point out the unmistakable resemblance of the Old Norse and classical mythologies, as to the origin of which modern scholars have reached no absolute certainty, but radically different conclusions. The importance which Rudbeck placed upon popular customs and traditions was too great, but it has favorably influenced later students of ethnography and folk lore.
If Rudbeck had limited himself to the demonstration that Sweden has been not the cradle of all races, but the original home of the Teutonic branch of the Aryan race, he might have been able to offer a theory, the truth of which modern science lacks, and forever may lack, the resources to disprove.
Rudbeck had not been entirely without opponents in Sweden. The most noted among them was John Peringskiold, who criticised the opinion expressed by Rudbeck that the Runes were the oldest alphabet of the world. Peringskiold was a fine Icelandic scholar, and the first editor of Snorre Sturleson’s “Heimskringla.”
A typical and highly valuable illustrated work from this period is the “Svecia Antiqua et Hodierna,” by Eric Dahlberg, the renowned quartermaster of Charles X. The text, written by Dahlberg and translated into Latin by several scholars, was never published, the magnificent engravings not before 1716. The latter give an impressive portrayal of architectural Sweden during the reigns of the three Charleses, but are not quite reliable, as some of the castles and palaces in this work are provided with additions and embellishments which were never more than projected.
There is no family who has wielded a greater influence over the Swedish church than that of Benzelius. The founder of the house, Eric Benzelius the Elder, and three of his sons were archbishops of Sweden, and two of his grandsons bishops of the state church. The first Archbishop Benzelius, born in 1632, was the son of a peasant, and took his name from the farm of Bentseby, of Lulea parish, in Norrland, where he was born; he and the three of his seven sons who were archbishops refused to be ennobled, the other members of the family adopting the name of Benzelstierna. The earlier generations of the family produced men of great talent and power, to whom the third one, although consisting of able men, could not be compared. The influence of this family in matters of religion, science and culture was strongly felt during the period of more than one century. The most remarkable member was Eric Benzelius the Younger, one of the most learned, active and patriotic men ever born in Sweden. Like the other members of the family, he perfected his education at foreign universities and made the personal acquaintance of Leibnitz, Thomasius, Malebranche, and other celebrated scholars. He was a historian, literary critic and philologist of merit, writing a history of Sweden and preparing an edition of Codex Argenteus, published in London after his death. He was highly appreciated by Charles XII., and was a friend of Polhem and Swedenborg, being married to a sister of the latter. Eric Benzelius was appointed archbishop, but died, in 1742, before he had entered office.