The Elysian Fields

Heaven is a Place on Earth

Text by Bernhard Schirg

HIER BAUEN WIR COOLES ZITAT AUS VERGIL EIN

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odin der als sonnen gott in den glysisvall-trädgårdar urlaub macht (OCR research)

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FAKING PARADISE

The notorious Hjalmars och Hramers saga constitutes a similar case. This fragmentary text in Runic scripture was first presented as an academic dissertation in 1690. In the preface, the respondent Lucas Halpap claims that he found the sheets in an old codex in the possession of some farmer (‘rusticus quidam’). Rudbeckian scholars quickly embraced the saga with good reasons. It provided early proof for the early use of what they considered the primordial alphabet that was used in Sweden. This provided a spearhead in the ancient debate with Denmark over the use of the runic alphabet. and Rudbeck referred to it in the subsequent volume of his Atlantica. Furthermore, the fragment introduced as sheets from a lost saga (Fig. 51) preceding that of Hjalmar and Hramer conveniently confirms that Zamolxis (‘Samolis’) came to Sweden and that his people ruled in the legendary Glæsisvellir (‘Glesißwall’). This joins nicely with Rudbeck’s previous identification of this site, who pinpoints this site that is also mentioned in the Herrauds saga on his map as the Elysian Fields.

Yet after the disputation, both the respondent and the document were not to be found. Only in 1694, after pressure by scholars had increased, Johan Peringskiöld finally managed to procure the ‘original’, which he then dated to 700 BC. He re-edited the piece in 1701, stirring opposition with Danish scholars such as Otto Sperling.

Further reading:

Philip Lavender has published a digital edition and translation of the nefarious Hjalmars and Hramers Saga as part of his EU-project „Forging Ahead: Faking Sagas and Developing Concepts of Cultural Authenticity and National Identity in 17th- and 18th-Century Scandinavia“. You can access it at the Digital Humanities Centre at Gothenburg.

Caption.

BENEATH THE Golden Hills

Caption.

Evening mood over the Sheepwash Channel.

The Elysian Project

old Book

We have become used to books digital versions of old prints and manuscript. But we researchers have a sensual relationship with the subject of our studies. The first thing I did when the four-century-old block of carved wood in my hands was sniffing the object.

Does it smell of smoke?

The woodcut in my hands showed a. It was an orphan. The woodcut once belonged to a family of more than seven thousands.

These were the woodcuts that Olof Rudbeck had created to illustrate a massive botanic project. An atlas covering all flowers, printed with their various designations next to woodcuts in life-size.

Rudbeck had been the person to start a botanic garden in Uppsala. This was inspired by models in the Netherlands, from where he returned in 1654. In 1658, the garden was flourishing and Rudbeck published a catalogue of its plants (1658).=Catalogus plantarum tax exoticarum 1052 species., Eriksson 1969 p. 135–

It contained1052 species.

second edition 1666 hatte 1701,

dritte 1685, Hortus botanicus, hatte 1873

zeigen mit Bild aus RfA Karte

no descriptions, no systematic order – apart from an alphabetic one. And no images (!)

Rudbeck’s ambitions grew much bigger. He envisioned a work comprising all plants, in life size. How could this be pulled off?

All this grew into a huge project that involved students and his entire family. Over years, his daughters Johanna Christina and Wendela and his son Rudbeck the Younger, as well as the Holtzbom students and the Thelott family, prepared twelve volumes containing more than 6000 watercolour paintings. They were modelled after live material, printed illustrations, or collections of dry plants as the thirty volumes of the Burser Herbarium kept at Uppsala. The manuscript was bought by Charles de Geer who kept in his library of his estate at Leufsta, north of Uppland. [pics, slider]

The exact relationship between this lavish manuscript and the print are somewhat unclear. What is certain is that the costs to carve the amount of woodcuts necessary were enormous. Thousands blocks had to be carved from pear wood, Johan Christoffer Höijer and Bengt Börjesson being the main craftsmen. The costs were carried by Count Bengt Oxenstierna, Rudbeck’s patron.

Planung Anfang 1680: 3.500 stück, 1690: 7000

1680: 700

März 1684: 1273 / Ende: 1600

Ende 1685: 1800

Anfang 1687: 200

1697, their number reached 3200.

1699 bekam Rudbeck ein jahr dienstfrei dafür

In 1701, the second part of the work appeared as the first volume. In its preface, Rudbeck the Elder pointed to the delight the plants designated for this volume – the narcisses, lillies, crocusses, tulips, or hyacinths that grow from bulb plants – hold for the eye in order to explain his inverting the order of appearance. A move that promised to secure further funding by pleasing the eye of prospect patrons and real estate owners.

In 1702, the first part on the less spectacular grasses followed. Monocotyledons // pt 1 und 2: zusammen 1181 plants.

It was planned to colour the plants later on demand.

it lists synonyms. alle bekannten plants in the world, some of them first described, from botanists and horticulturalists at home and abroad and expeditions he himself sent out.

Dozens of more volumes were in the pipeline. But it all came different.

On 15 May 1702, the Great Fire turned the City of Uppsala into ashes.

We know of roughly 130 woodcuts that were saved from the flames. 90 of these were found in a box …

They ended up at the Linnean Society. Its founder, James Edward Smith, printed them under the title Reliquiae Rudbeckianae.

In the history of early modern botany, the Campus Elysii is curious footnote. Would it have changed the course of early modern botany if it came to full bloom?

No ground-breaking systematic. But a useful, graphical inventory of nature, in times when all had relied on verbal descriptions.

It is tempting to think that. There is a direct line leading from the Rudbeck family to the great botanist Carl Linnaeus, who was taught by Olof Rudbeck the Younger.

The Campus Elysii would have stood out by its sheer amount of illustrations. In terms of plant systematics, however, it was less novel. The work still relied on the old way of ordering the realm of plants which the Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin (1560–1624) had proposed.

But at that time relying on long, descriptive names. The amount of plants would have helped.

The Elysian Promise of the work

The title ties in with the Elysian promise.

Campi Elysii liber secundus, opera Olai Rudbeckii, patris & filii, editus. Upsaliæ. Then andre delen af Glysis wald, igenom Olof Rvdbäck, fadren och sonen

Afterlife of the Elysium

Broman’s project

Point out enchanted plants

Idus Rubaeus

Golden Bough

Spruce

"It’s like the tides was pulling you along the highway. I’m like the Arctic Tern, guv’nor. That’s a bird. A beautiful white bird what flies from the North Pole to the South Pole and back again."

Bruce Chatwin, The Nomadic Alternative (p. 22)

Epilogue

Image of Cover

A week after the first video-call with David, my copy of Oiseaux Scandinaves et Lapons – „Birds from Scandinavia and Lapland“ – arrived. In the upper-right corner I spotted a bird tweeting into a grammophone horn – the logo of Jean Claude Rochés‘ label ‚The musician bird‘.

“Side 1 presents three different concerts,” the back of the album announced. “In the first, recorded in May, we are travelling in a boat among the innumerable islands near the Baltic coast: there are huge gatherings of Long-tailed Ducks ready to fly north, and their cries mingle with those of Skuas, Terns and Gulls.”

Some weeks later, a colleague at Oxford left her record player at my disposal. With a sense of excitement, I lowered the needle.

From the speakers, the calls of long-tailed ducks resounded in her living room, their cries mingling with those all the other birds that had gathered in the archipelago between Finland and Sweden.

I made a recording of their concert that day, playing it from my cell-phone when David and I met in Uppsala a few weeks later.

The track had almost reached its end when his eyes lighted up.

„There it is“, he said. „The typical chatter of terns.“ „That’s them,“ he asserted with a gentle smile, tipping his finger on the table.

„That’s them,“ he repeated one more time, calmer, as if recalling memories of a dear old friend.

Fußnoten - so gehts:

Fussnote definieren, wie bei Wikipedia. In diesem Fall führt der folgende Link zu meiner Fußnote (Fußnote 1).

Diese befindet sich unten auf dieser Seite – on click soll die Page dahin springen.

Das erreichen wir mit einem Anker. Ein Link zu einem Anker sieht so aus: #fussnote1

Text markieren und Linksymbol klicken.

Link eingeben: #fussnote1

Jetzt müssen wir nur noch an die richtige Stelle springen. Dafür müssen wir der Fußnote selbst die ID fussnote1 zuweisen.

Also: runterscrollen bis zum entsprechenden Textblock und dann unter den Einstellungen > Erweitert die ID angeben. Fertig!

Dies ist ein zweiter Test, er führt zur Fußnote Nr.17 unten auf der Seite [17] .

@KAYA/LUTZ: IN ELEKTRISCHER SCHREIBMASCHINEN SCHRIFT

Ingrained in the human consciousness is the association of the free flight of birds with the innocence and personal freedom of the first state. In our dreams we are airborne.

Materialhalde

Historic church and clock tower of Torneå.

part of the papers that Elizabeth Chatwin bequeathed to the Bodleian Libraries. In 1989, her husband had died of AIDS.

Chatwin had entered the trade without a formal academic education. Only his mid-twenties, he picked up studies of archaeology in 1966. The student entered the lecture halls at Edinburgh as a man who had travelled Afghanistan and the Sahara desert.

Much of academia proved a lifeless bore for Chatwin, dominated by the cerebral type of men that lacked earthiness so as he lacked <em>sitzfleisch</em>. After a few semesters, he quit.
The grey paperboard box at Oxford brought together what Chatwin called „cavalier raids on specialised disciplines I have not even begun to master“. In the years to come, he worked his piece for the catalogue to a book draft.

<h2>Materialhalde NOMADIC ALTERNATIVE</h2>

p: 23 „Ingrained in the human consciousness is the association of the free flight of birds with the innocence and personal freedom of the first state. In our dreams we are airborne.“ … The Voguls of Northern Siberia called the Milky Way the Tunk Pox (underlined) or „Path of the Ducks to the South“.“

p. 24 Q: organic basis of mobility?
„Furthermore the electric rhythms of the brain respond vibrantly to changes of surrounding, particularly when the subject is absorbed in the workings of natural phenomena. But the monotony of prolonged settlement weaves patterns in the brain that engender fatigue, boredom and a sense of impotent failure. In confinement we remain in a state of passive anxiety, afflicted by untimely charges of adrenalin, fighting off obesity by the will to eat less. But do we share with migrating animals an interior travel guide of instructions for the road?“

Beispiele dass fast alle Tiere „orient themselves and move of their own volition to predetermined appointments with life of death. Plants slumber in supine drowsiness.“
Beispiele aus dem Tierrreich [Wale, Lachse etc; Sprache: enorm plastisch]
manche Tiewre tun dies automatisch, andere nach Instruktion durch Eltern

25f „Visual memory enables migrant animals to read a landscape – its shape, texture and plant cover.“
+ internal chronometer
+ internal instruments for navigation
und Tiere müssen / wollen das alles nützen, sonst werden sie wahnsinnig; need to perform biological function => so question: „What effect does settlement have on us?“
was haben wir? Chronometer; biologische Uhr, orientiert sich am Himmel

And yet on reflection we discover in man a unique faculty of finding his place in the world – his language.“
Sprache: einzigartig
„No other animal can cross-reference the lessons of the past with the conditions of the present and the hopes of the future.“

29 The gift of tongues rests on a young exploring child. It demands to know the name of its discoveries and the reason for their existence. („What is it called? Why? Why? Why?“) The child devours information, but the brain patterns this information into an ordered logical sequence of associations.“ … grammar, Chomsky …“We merely clothe this inherited structure with the raw material of our experience. By naming all the objects we encounter, we take our bearings on the world and in doing so, solve the problem of our identiy – all at a very early age.“
vgl human mind with art of navigation at sea
Leuchtturm; Navigator kann auf Karte (Arbeit der anderen zurückgreifen)
lange Metapher zu MEssungen, Sterne, Karten, mit dem Punkt:
once he knows this fixed point, he can anticapte the future by referring to the past
„And whatsoever thing Adam named, that was the name thereof …“
Man as born classifier and lexicographer
frightening place because it is unknown

brain siphons off all it cannot assimilate and classify into ordered categories
„The human mind is a metaphor maker.“
nature as encyclopaedia to build up a wealth of associations; using the concrete example as a vehicle to express an abstract idea
objects of experience: nach binären Begriffen; Nahrung / Gift etc
dort wo sameness in disparate things liegt, we feel a momentary shock of recognition that may delight or appal, but cannot leave us unmoved [das kommt zu MANIFESTO: ART OF NOTICING]
32 Leonardo: verschwommene Formen für Metaphernschatz
„Man invents the Universe in his mind and then joyfully recognizes his own creation as a place for him to live. Such is the primal act of human creativity.“
wo Ordnung da ist, dort fühlt er Ruhe; contentment; „if the universe does not change, he does not have to change with it“
„But if he suffers derangement or exp[ul]sion, if the ‚ideal‘ universe in the mind is marred, he is forced to extend his spectrum of knowledge in ever-widening circles, recreating his shattered world to avert mental disintigration. Each of his creations, inventions or advances in knowledge is an anchor dropped in a wild sea to prevent a further dirft onto the rocks of insanity.“

metaphor-making-mechanism

32 primitiveness mistaken as lack of abstract terms to express ideas

33 vitalisierende Kraft des Bildens von „unstereotyped metaphor“; alles andere stirbt ab

coherent sequential messages which surface in the human consciousness as myths. „Myths are human instincts verbalized“
answers to child’s question: where am I; daher creation myths

35 Creation and allied myths relieved men of their obvious anxieties of orientation

For the avid traveller that the author was, <fn label=“the draft was a vessel receiving fragments and observations“>It was in his <em>Songlines</em> that Chatwin much later found a form to use the material he had collected decades earlier in his unpublished <em>The Nomadic Alternative</em>.</fn> for his theory of everything. Much of it were the ravings and idealisations of a young writer unspoilt by arid learning.

Acknowlegments

For reading, feedback, support, and being a part of this story I have to thank Alex Franklin, David Wiggins, Carolina Reis, Kristine Homoki.

All translations and photographs are my own unless noticed otherwise.

You can find identification aids, audio tracks, and further information on the Arctic and the Common Tern on the homepage of the <a href=“https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/wildlife-guides/bird-a-z/arctic-tern/“>Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB)</a>.

On the sound library of <a href=“https://www.xeno-canto.org/species/Sterna-paradisaea“>Xeno-Canto</a>, bird watchers from all across the globe upload their recordings of bird calls. HOCHHOLEN

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Heaven is a Place on Earth