An intellectual great power

Sten Lindroth was a Swedish intellectual historian and historian of science. He was also a member of the Swedish Academy. Shortly before his death, Lindroth was working on some kind of magnum opus in which he tried to cover Swedish intellectual history from the Middle Ages to the mid-19th century. Of the projected five volumes, only three were published during Lindroth´s lifetime. A more slender fourth volume was published posthumously by one of Lindroth´s associates. This is a review of the second volume, published in 1975.

"Svensk Lärdomshistoria. Stormaktstiden" is an imposing volume, dealing with everything even remotely "intellectual" or "scientific" that transpired in Sweden during the so-called Great Power Period, roughly the 17th and early 18th centuries. I admit that I was impressed. It´s all there: Lutheran orthodoxy, Syncretism, Pietism, Ramism, Aristotelianism, humanism, Hebrew studies, "Gothicism" (göticism), Rudbeck´s Atlantica, Pufendorf, Cartesianism (including Descartes himself - he died in Sweden), Queen Christina´s academies, Urban Hiärne, and Swedenborg (in his earlier role as scientist). And many others!

It´s difficult to be objective towards the crazed flights of fancy of Olaus Rudbeck and the Gothicists, early Swedish nationalists who claimed that the Swedes were descended from the Goths of Antiquity. Indeed, Rudbeck went so far as to claim that Sweden was, ahem, Atlantis. That particular thesis was hard to believe already 400 years ago! But while Lindroth simply has to point out that Rudbeck´s Atlantid speculations were crackpot, the author is surprisingly objective when describing other thinkers often regarded as equally cranky by posterity. I´m refering to the occultists who gilded the Swedish intellectual landscape during the period in question: Sigfridus Aronus Forsius, Johannes Bureus, Georg Stiernhielm, Friedrich Menius and indeed the previously mentioned Urban Hiärne. The dividing line between science and the occult was by no means clear, and Lindroth therefore devotes some time to magic, astrology, alchemy, Paracelsus, Hermetism and even folk occultism most people would regard as rank superstition. There is also a section on the 17th century witch-burnings.

What struck me most when reading this volume of "Svensk Lärdomshistoria" was how diverse Swedish intellectual life was during the Great Power Period, despite constant attempts by the Lutheran Church to dominate the universities and stop all the "heresies". It seems the monarchs, despite being good Lutherans (except Christina, who converted to Catholicism), nevertheless understood that for pragmatic reasons, the budding great power simply must keep in touch with all the latest developments in Europe. Cartesianism seems to have been particularly contentious, with many churchmen insisting on the truths of Aristotelian cosmology. Cartesianism won the day anyway...

I haven´t read literally all of this huge door-stopper, but it was fascinating to dive into a period in intellectual history when things hadn´t been "finally" decided yet, with Christians, esotericists and de facto skeptics all taking their wares to the marketplace of ideas. A new period of this kind is very much wanted! OK, maybe without the Atlantica.