Linnaeus - Genius of Uppsala - Hallgren & Fallgren

Linnaeus
Genius of Uppsala
Helena Harnesk
Hallgren & Fallgren

Hallgren & Fallgren Studieförlag AB
– a company within Lantz International
Box 2159, 750 02 Uppsala, Sweden
Phone: 46(0)18–507100, Fax: 46(0)18–127270
E-mail: info@hallgren-fallgren.se
www.hallgren-fallgren.se
For more information on the Linnaeus celebration,
see www.linnaeus2007.se

Helena Harnesk
Linnaeus
Genius of Uppsala
Hallgren & Fallgren

Foreword
Many books have been written about Carl Linnaeus, his genius and
luminary qualities, but the environment in which his great works
were created has never really been described. Apart from Linnaeus,
my intention in this book, therefore, is to describe the Uppsala of his
time, the appearance of the town and its public buildings, what the
craftsmen’s and merchants’ houses were like; and also the people with
whom Linnaeus came into contact, his family, the students in their
rooms, the professors holding forth, and the townsfolk in their
workshops and shops.
The subject matter includes a globemaker, early university printing
families, wild strawberries as a cure for gout, and the yellow Corydalis
nobilis, sent from Siberia to Linnaeus by mistake, which can still be seen
peering out of hedges and crevices in the town of today. If you are lucky
enough to visit Uppsala, do go to Linnaeus’ beloved country estate of
Hammarby nearby, his house and grounds and “my castle which I have
built in the air”– it is unbeatable in Swedish spring and summer!
I should like to express my warmest and most grateful thanks to the
many people who have so generously offered their specialised
knowledge, particularly Eva Björn, curator of the Linnaeus Museum in
Uppsala, Lena Hansson, head gardener of the university herb garden in
Linnaeus’ Garden and the botanist and Linnaeus researcher Mariette
Manktelow. I have also had much help in different fields from Carolina
Brown, Gunilla Cedrenius, Gina Douglas of the Linnean Society of
London, Rolf E. Du Rietz, Stig Ekström, Iréne Flygare, Gunilla Hellberg,
Åsa Henningsson, Elisabet Stavenow-Hidemark, Ann-Mari
Jönsson, Monica Knutson, Lars Lambert, Arne Lundberg, Agneta
Malmsten, Karin Martinsson, Torgny Nevéus, Eva Nyström, Marta
Ronne, Sven Gunnar Ryman, Olle Sinnerholm, Marie-Christine
Skuncke, Bo W. Svensson and Kersti Wikström.
Helena Harnesk

Contents
1. Linnaeus arrives in Uppsala 9
2. Uppsala’s Latin Quarter 11
3. Of Nations and Student Disturbances 14
4. Lectures at the University 16
5. Linnaeus’ Student Days 19
6. The Years Abroad 30
7. Doctor in Stockholm and Bridegroom in Sveden 34
8. Linnaeus becomes a Professor in Uppsala
and recreates the University’s Botanical Garden 36
9. Linnaeus – the Scientist 44
10. Linnaeus – the Lecturer 55
11. At Home in Botanical House 61
12. A Great Scientific Period at Uppsala 73
13. Two Towns in One 78
14. Livestock and Farming 84
15. A Walk through Uppsala 87
16. In the Shops and at the Fair 92
17. Books, Globes and Silver Forks 97
18. Useful Things like Tobacco, Pearls and Tea 103
19. Linnaeus’ Farms – Hammarby and Sävja 107
20. Linnaeus’ Death and the Legacy of his Collections 114
Some Dates in Carl Linnaeus’ Life 117
Illustration Credits 118
Bibliography and Sources 119
Index 121
Maps 123–125

6.
The Years Abroad
Linnaeus and Claes Sohlberg journeyed to the Continent, their first
objective being Harderwijk in Holland. Here, like many Swedes
before him, Linnaeus planned swiftly to take his doctor’s degree at the
university. He arrived in June, 1735. After a thorough oral cross examination
in general medicine he became a Bachelor of Medicine. The
treatise Linnaeus had with him on malaria or “the ague” was printed
within the space of a week. The defence of his thesis went well, and
now Linnaeus achieved his aim of becoming a doctor of medicine.
Holland was at this time a European scientific centre, especially in
relation to medicine and botany, and for Linnaeus, who was eager to
meet the great names on the Continent within these disciplines, Holland
was the right place. He had with him a whole series of manuscripts which
he hoped to get printed there, and succeeded beyond all expectations,
more than two thousand pages altogether being printed during the twoand-a-half
years he was in that country. He had good and devoted friends
who helped him. They gave him contacts, contributed financially and
even helped with proof reading. The manuscript, Systema naturae,
which was published as early on as 1735, aroused admiration and opened
the way for him. Here he arranges the three kingdoms of nature, animal,
vegetable and mineral, into a large, clear system. With the publication of
more than ten books he became internationally known.
Linnaeus spent the major part of his time in Holland with the
enormously wealthy, hypochondriac East India Company director

Linnaeus wearing his Lappish costume and with a twinflower in his hand.
On the strip of paper is the name Frederik Gronovius – he who called this
flower linnea borealis, after Linnaeus. Oil painting by M. Hoffman, 1737.

Frontispiece at the beginning of Hortus Cliffortianus, Linnaeus’ detailed catalogue
of the plants in the wealthy George Clifford’s sumptuous garden, 1738.

and amateur botanist, the Anglo-Dutch George Clifford, on his estate
at Hartecamp. Linnaeus became superintendent of the large and
famous garden, classified the plants and treated Clifford. Here came
an opportunity to study both exotic plants and modern methods of
gardening. In his magnificent volume, Hortus Cliffortianus, Linnaeus
described the remarkable grounds at Hartecamp.
Even his good friend, Peter Artedi, lived at this time in Holland
and had a post with the famous apothecary, Albert Seba in Amsterdam
– a job which Linnaeus had organised. One evening Artedi was
at dinner with Seba and it became late. At one o’clock in the morning,
on his way home along the dark streets of Amsterdam, he fell into a
canal and was drowned. The news reached Linnaeus, who hurried to
Amsterdam in distress. When he saw “the lifeless, rigid body and
froth on the pale blue lips” he wept and recalled the promise the two
friends had made each other in Uppsala, namely that the survivor of
the two would publish the other’s manuscript. This Linnaeus did, and
brought out Ichthyologia, on fish. The system and the methods Artedi
describes therein have been of great importance to ichthyology.
Linnaeus was offered posts in both Holland and Paris, but wished to
return home to Sweden. He was back in the summer of 1738 and
became betrothed to Sara Elisabeth Moraea.

Linnaeus aged 25, pencil drawing ascribed to his professor, Lars Roberg.

18.
Useful Things like Tobacco,
Pearls and Tea
The Hat party in the Parliament wished to initiate “manufactures” in
Sweden, where people were to work on a large scale though still by
hand, cultivating and processing tobacco, weaving fabrics and so on.
The member of the Parliament for the Uppsala administrative
province, mayor Nils Stoltz, encouraged the inhabitants of the town
to start manufactures. Tobacco growing, especially, was regarded as
interesting and Sweden would certainly be independent of imports
with its own production. The townspeople were reluctant, but dared
not oppose too much, so a tobacco plantation was finally established,
the site being the Gamla kyrkogården (Old Churchyard) of today, see
map, p. 104. The tobacco was then spun in two spinning mills, i.e. the
leaves were shredded and placed inside whole leaves which were then
twisted together, roughly like a rope. These mills produced 212-318
kg per annum, which was judged then, in the mid-eighteenth
century, as sufficient for the whole administrative province.
Apart from the tobacco plantation and the tobacco spinning mills
there was also, for instance, a textile manufactory, a cotton- and linen
weaving mill and a wallpaper manufactory in Uppsala at this time. In
mid century Pouseth’s stocking manufactory produced stockings, caps
and jackets on stocking frames, i.e. wooden knitting machines which
were treadled. The stockings, for ladies and gentlemen, were of knee

Where the Old Churchyard lies in present-day Kyrkogårdsgatan was a tobacco
plantation with the burial place for the Asylum next to it.
length. Probably the most important thing was that the gentlemen’s
stockings were beautiful. A well-dressed man had close-fitting breeches
with silver buckles at the knees, white stockings, preferably of silk, and
low-heeled shoes with large silver buckles. He really coquetted with his
legs. Women, of course, had long skirts, so nothing showed except their
ankles. Pouseth’s production, as in the other factories, was at a small scale.
Linnaeus, who embraced the ideas of the Hat party, was obviously
keen to try to develop botanical and zoological projects profitable for
Sweden. Even on the Lapland expedition he had studied pearl fishing
in Purkijaur, in far distant Norrland. But this had yielded little: it would
be better to cultivate freshwater pearls. On his appointment as professor
he began experimenting in the River Fyrisån. Whereabouts in the river
he cultivated them we do not know, though a possible spot is by Ulva

Pearls cultivated by Linnaeus. Through a hole bored in the mussel shell he inserted a
piece of wire with a grain of sand, round which the pearl developed. In the shell,
which through the efforts of a conservator has regained its original appearance, two
pearls have grown to the desired size. The Linnean Society of London.
mill a couple of kilometres north of Uppsala. The attempt was
successful! It was not until 1761, however, that he showed off his pearls
to the Finance Committee in Stockholm. These prestigious gentlemen
became interested, and after sawing Linnaeus’ pearls in two a jeweller
compared them with real ones and they proved to be of absolutely the
same quality. It ought to have been possible for a pearl the size of a pea
to be ready in six years. The pearl story ended in the State wanting to buy
the patent for 6,000 riksdaler. This expenditure was avoided, however,
since a merchant, Peter Bagge in the city of Gothenburg, purchased the
patent from Linnaeus. Bagge, though, went blind and never used it, but

One of Linnaeus’ students defended a thesis on tea.
This copperplate engraving by Anders Åkerman of
the leaves, flowers and fruits of the tea bush
illustrated the treatise.
a grandchild gave the pearl material to the Linnean Society in London,
where it is today in its different stages.
Drinking tea had become fashionable, and Councillor Gottfrid
Kähler, for example, had a coffee- and tea house in Uppsala. Linnaeus
thought that tea might grow in Sweden just as well as lilac. After
several unsuccessful attempts to transport plants originating from tea
bushes in China, sea captain C.G. Ekeberg’s wife finally came to Uppsala
with two plants. Out of solicitude for their welfare she had nursed
them on her knee throughout the journey in the closed carriage from
Gothenburg. The small bushes blossomed and Linnaeus was happy,
but finally they succumbed to the Swedish climate.

Linnaeus had an intensive correspondence with the imperial physician, David de
Gorter in St. Petersburg. From him he obtained Paeonia tenuifolia from the Ukraine.
This peony has since been disseminated to many other Swedish gardens.

20.
Linnaeus’ Death and the Legacy
of his Collections
Linnaeus’ good health during his student days and the first decades of
his professorship probably played an important part in his enormous
capacity for work. He was certainly ill now and then, but not seriously.
In the summer of 1750, however, he had recurrent gout. This was cured,
or at least so he thought, by quantities of wild strawberries in the summer.
In 1759 his son, Carl, had of course been employed by the university
for demonstrations and other work in the Garden. When Linnaeus’
strength began to fail in 1763 he managed to arrange that his son should
deputise as professor, so that he himself should have less teaching. From
1770 onwards he had repeated bouts of serious illness and became
weaker and more sickly as the months went by. In 1772 he suffers a
stroke. In May 1776 he writes his last letter to Bäck, and it is illegible.
Linnaeus’ condition varied between further weakness and periods
of being quite well, but he went downhill steadily. When in the
autumn of 1777 he returned to Uppsala from Hammarby his doctor
allowed him outings in fine weather, but not so far that he left the town
boundaries. One December day he sat himself in the sleigh and told
the coachman to drive to Sävja some kilometres from Uppsala. The
man knew this was forbidden but dared not disobey. When Linnaeus
did not come home as intended they began searching and finally
found the thin old professor lying on his warm sleigh fell smoking his

The “Linnaeus House” at Sävja, which in those days was painted red and probably
had a turf roof. It was in the kitchen of this house that Linnaeus was finally found
when he made his excursion “without leave” out of the town at Christmas, 1777.
pipe by the kitchen fire at Sävja. Despite protests he was taken home,
and became increasingly worse. After New Year, at eight in the morning
on 10 th January, he breathed his last.
The funeral took place at six in the evening on 22 nd January. Adam
Afzelius, who was present, writes: “It was a gloomy, silent evening
whose darkness was only dispersed there and then by the torches,
flares and lanterns of the slowly moving procession through the town,
and whose calm was only disturbed by the muffled murmur of the
assembled crowd in the streets and the heavy sound of the majestic
great bell ...” Peasants in mourning with torches in their hands walked
just behind the funeral coach, followed by the cortège of twenty-one
closed carriages with their lamps. Students from the Småland Nation
bore the coffin, and Linnaeus was buried in the grave he had
purchased, the slab of which can still be seen just inside the north door
leading into the nave of Uppsala Cathedral.
When her son died. Sara Lisa Linnaeus and her daughters now

wished, in accordance with her husband’s will, to sell his herbarium, but
in addition the rest of his natural history collections, letters, manuscripts
and books. His friend, medical assistant Johan Gustaf Acrel, undertook
to take charge of their sale. Nobody in Sweden was able to bid higher
than the very good offer from James Edward Smith, an amateur botanist
in England. Acrel attempted to approach others, amongst them
Uppsala University, but the university chancellor, Gustaf Philip
Creutz, thought it inappropriate to bid over Smith, saying that the
collections would be “both too dear and too expendable for the Academy”.
At this time Gustavus III, a sovereign with known cultural interests,
was staying in Italy, but does not appear to have been reached with
any question as to the purchase of Linnaeus’ scientific legacy.
On 17 th September, 1784, the good ship Appearance sailed off to
England with twenty-six large boxes. The eager Smith was then able
to unpack 19,000 sheets of pressed flowers, 3,200 insects, 1,500 shells,
between 700 and 800 pieces of coral and 2,500 mineral samples, as well
as 3,000 books, the then collected correspondence encompassing 3,000
letters, and a large quantity of handwritten manuscripts. The collections
are now owned by the august Linnean Society of London
founded by Smith, which supports botanical and zoological research,
and are kept in the bomb-proof Linnean Collection Store at Burlington
House in Piccadilly. It is here, in the heart of London, that the
captivating great researcher and systematist, Carl Linnaeus, may
nowadays be encountered.
The grave slab over Linnaeus’
burial place in the cathedral. The
inscription in Latin is, in
translation, as follows: “The bones
of Carl Linnaeus, knight. To a
most noble husband, and to his
only son Carl Linnaeus, successor
to his father, and to herself (by)
Sara Elisabeth Moraea.”

Linnaeus - Genius of Uppsala
– review by Skans Victoria Airey
Skans Victoria Airey holds a B.A. Hons. Degree in English Language & Literature and
Medieval Archaeology from the University of Exeter and a Cert.Ed.from the University of
Cambridge as well as a Fil.kand. in Ethnology and Scandinavian Archaeology from the
University of Stockholm. She is a Fellow of the Museums Association. Before relocating to
Stockholm, Mrs. Airey was Head of Education at Bristol City Museum and served as Chair
and Secretary of the Group for Education in Museums. She now works as a freelance translator
specialising in Cultural History.
When it was suggested last summer that I might translate Linné i Uppsala (Linnaeus
– Genius of Uppsala), I had little idea of what awaited me, even if during a short trial
run I discovered Linnaeus’ lecturing technique - his thumb moving steadily down a
small strip of paper as he worked off each point – and the delight of his students in
their mid-eighteenth century field excursions! I knew, though, that in the author,
Helena Harnesk, I would have a fellow museum colleague and cultural historian.
She has already written much about Uppsala’s history, is a popular lecturer, and often
leads guided walks through the eighteenth century town.
In my English mind Uppsala has always had a special aura. As early as 1291 the
cathedral dean had provided lodgings in Paris for Swedish students, while Uppsala
University itself dates from 1477 and is the oldest in Sweden. Although not as
early as that at Leiden, the anatomical theatre of Olof Rudbeck the Elder, high up
inside the green copper dome of the Gustavianum opposite the cathedral, indicates
the growth of medical and natural science teaching in the eighteenth century. Olof
Rudbeck the Younger, after whom Linnaeus named the Rudbeckia, became professor
of medicine in 1691 and the “father of Swedish ornithology”. Helena
Harnesk’s book enables us to immerse ourselves in the botanical garden established
and developed by father and son, and shows how Linnaeus in his turn transformed
it to reflect the new sexual system. As Rudbeck’s successor to the chair of

theoretical medicine, Linnaeus also lived in the official professor’s residence
adjacent to the garden, and a whole fascinating chapter is devoted to the food and
entertaining, clothes, furnishings and running of the family household. There too
he wrote, researched and lectured to his students.
The general environment in which Linnaeus produced his great works has
seldom been described in reality. Helena Harnesk’s intention, therefore, has been
to allow the Uppsala of his time to emerge: the appearance of the town and its
public buildings, what the craftsmen’s and merchants’ houses were like; and also
the people and surroundings familiar to Linnaeus – contemporaneous scientists
such as Anders Celsius, of thermometer fame, students in their rooms, townsfolk
in their workshops and shops, and a number of close friends.
Touch down on any chapter of Helena Harnesk’s informative and simply
written book, and it will send you scuttling to find out more! Small anecdotes
illuminate the charm and wit of Linnaeus. We discover his sharp faculties of observation,
talent for system and order, and unlimited capacity for work. We learn,
too, of the university institutions, conflicts between town and gown, and the
farming activities of professor’s households in eighteenth century Uppsala and its
surroundings – which all raise the question of how far academic life here might be
compared with that of, say, Leiden or Cambridge at the same period.
Other delights include a globemaker, early university printing families, wild
strawberries as a cure for gout, and the yellow Corydalis nobilis, sent from Siberia
to Linnaeus by mistake, which can still be seen peering out of hedges and crevices
in the town of today. There is a wealth of material to guide those who are lucky
enough to visit Uppsala and see for themselves, but also much for armchair readers
wherever they may be, and for those who simply want to learn more about the man
and the world of his time.
One’s curiosity well and truly stirred, it is an adventure in itself to follow up a
few threads inspired by the book. The herbarium of George Clifford, in whose
garden at Hartecamp in Holland Linnaeus worked after being at the universities
of Harderwijk and Leiden, is now housed in the Natural History Museum in London.
Linnaeus himself went to England in 1736 and visited the Chelsea Physic
Garden - then belonging to Hans Sloane, founder of the British Museum - as well
as Britain’s oldest botanic garden at the University of Oxford. And Englishman
Joseph Banks, who with Linnaeus’ apostle, Daniel Solander, accompanied
Captain Cook to the southern hemisphere and contributed many specimens to the
Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, was one of the many with whom Linnaeus was
in correspondence.

Helena Harnesk
Linnaeus
Genius of Uppsala
Carl Linnaeus lived and worked in Uppsala for the greater
part of his life. He arrived in 1728 to register at the university
and here he died fifty years later, a world-famous professor.
The environment in which Linnaeus produced his great
works has seldom been described in reality. This informative
and simply written book, however, allows eighteenth century
Uppsala to emerge, and will delight enquiring minds of all
ages. Small anecdotes illuminate the charm and wit of
Linnaeus. We discover his sharp faculties of observation, talent
for system and order, and unlimited capacity for work.
We learn, too, of the university institutions, conflicts between
town and gown, and the farming activities of professor’s
households in eighteenth century Uppsala and its surroundings
– which all raise the question of how far academic life
here might be compared with that of, say, Leiden or Cambridge
at the same period.
There is a wealth of material to guide those who are lucky
enough to visit Uppsala and see for themselves, but also much
for armchair readers wherever they may be, and for those who
want to learn more about the man and the world of his time.
Helena Harnesk worked for many years as a cultural historian at the regional
museum in Uppsala and has described the town’s history in a number
of books and exhibitions. She is a popular lecturer, and often leads guided
walks on eighteenth century Uppsala.
Hallgren & Fallgren
Coming in May 2007
isbn 978-91-7382-825-3