The Man Who Organized Nature: The Life of Linnaeus

Who Was He?

A PROFESSOR OF LITERATURE wrote this appreciation: Carl von Linné was a great man, and a remarkably happy man. For his happiness he could thank his harmonious nature, and an optimism drawing on his Lutheran piety, learned in the rectory that was his paternal home. His mind was not prey to intellectual anxieties; he did his work, and gathered in its fruits, with humble, grateful joy.… Von Linné strongly held the opinion that the grand style was not for him. Instead, only half aware of doing this, he created his own style, straightforward but occasionally with poetic overtones, sometimes striking notes of biblical conviction and, at other times, of Rococo idyll.¹

It is worth pointing out that practically every element in this oration could be turned into its opposite. Who, then, was the man whose earthly remains lie under the tombstone just inside the entrance to the cathedral in Uppsala?

We know more about him than almost anyone else alive in Sweden at the time. A quick overview serves as an introduction to his appearance and personality, as for instance in this verbal self-portrait: "Linnaeus was not tall, nor was he small. He was thin, brown-eyed. Light of foot, walked quickly, did everything promptly. Had no patience with tardy folk; he was easily moved, sensitive, working continually as he was incapable of husbanding his strength. Ate good things with pleasure, drank good drinks; but was never excessive in such things. He cared but little for the exterieure, believed that the man should make his clothes suit him, not vice versa."² To make his point come across, he described himself once more. This passage has been translated from Latin: "short of stature, rather tall than low; neither thin nor fat, with some musculeuse artus and large veins, ever since childhood. Furthermore: His head strongly curved inward at the back of his neck. Hair a snowy white in childhood, later dark, then graying in old age. His eyes are brown, lively, very sharp, excellent power of sight. Old age has left his forehead deeply furrowed. On his right cheek, a feebly growing wart, another on the right side of his nose. Teeth poor, caries having developed from inherited toothaches in his youth—another study of himself, covering just over a page and obviously composed with the previous self-portrait in mind.³ This intrusively physical description might surprise some readers, but similar passages are found elsewhere in Linnaeus’s writings. Here, for instance, he describes his father-in-law: Of middling height, he had grown tall, evenly set and straight. His bones and joints were strong, surrounded by firm, solid flesh, tendons, and blood vessels. His face was manly, his eyes quick, with a frank expression, his beard grew black and his skin tended to a dark shade; in a few words, he looked a fine figure of a man." Naturalism makes him mention his own slight warts, one on his right cheek and another on the right side of his nose—features that can be seen in the painting of Linnaeus used as the cover image of this book.

Johann Beckmann, a German historian sometimes spoken of as the father of technical history, has described Linnaeus several times. Beckmann wrote: The nobleman von Linné was of short stature and, as he walked with a slight stoop, appeared smaller than he actually was. His was a liberal heart, and his passions were lively and strong.… He loved joking, happiness, and, in every way, good living. His urge for glory was boundless. He cared nothing for his neighbors’ opinions, only for the judgments of learned men.⁴

The editors of Vita, his autobiography, observe that Linnaeus is one of those writers who never discovered the danger of superlatives.⁵ At times, he seems unaware that self-praise is no recommendation. Writing to his old friend Carl Fredrik Mennander in 1762, he mentions that he has been writing his own eulogy: "finding that propria laus sordet, yes, indeed, I would say it stinks. I would never show this to anyone in this world unless were it to one man only, my benefactor ever since my years of struggle. If, my Dear Friend, you would consider taking words out, they would be those which attracted attention as they came from such a source."⁶ We know nothing of Bishop Mennander’s reaction, nor what Linnaeus actually sent him—yet another autobiographical outline? He would probably have had the relevant curriculum vitae notes at hand when the matter of a national reward was decided. As late as in 1770, it was still in the cards that Mennander would write, or at least edit, Linnaeus’s autobiography. A farmer had been dispatched to hand the text to Abraham Bäck, an old friend, who was in turn to pass it on. It was the second version of Linnaeus’s Life—Vita number two—and penned at diverse times, it will also be diverse in thoughtfulness. Mennander was urged to freely change the order of things. (An earlier, overruled note however instructs that, after the author’s death, the Vita should be made available to professor Magnus Beronius to use for the encomium and afterward to Linnaeus’s widow, insofar as she will be well, for her to have it printed.) Mennander was to submit the manuscript to the Academy of Sciences, of whom my wife will demand that the institution fulfill its promise to have it printed. Does all this mean that Vita II is the most authoritative? Was it really sent on to Mennander and then back to Bäck? While Vita II stops at 1750, the following autobiographical text, Vita III, goes as far as 1776. Bäck’s tribute to his friend seems based on Vita III:

His stature somewhat below middling height, neither fat nor thin, of a solid and full build with, since childhood, prominent veins, a large head protruding at the back with a deeper furrow separating the frontal and posterior parts of the head; brown, fiery eyes, sharp vision, good hearing but not for music, quick and easy on his feet, an excellent memory well into his sixth decade by which time first names began to escape him; ability to learn languages was however not one of his gifts, so that he was less than content to be with foreigners who did not know Latin. In Latin, he expressed himself swiftly, easily, precisely, and more briefly than anyone else, when it concerned descriptions of natural phenomena, but for other matters he did not trouble himself much as long as what was said fitted with what was observed. When writing to his patrons, he instilled in his language uncommon and captivating turns that cannot be mimicked. His few speeches displayed the author’s wit, daring, and great learning, and could not, one would fancy, have been delivered by any man other than Linné.

With little more than a year of his life left, but still keen to control his posthumous accolades, the old Linnaeus labored over his autobiography. Yet another one; depending on how one cares to count them, it is the fifth or the fourth or possibly the sixth. True, these texts are probably better seen as lists of his qualifications, set out to suit this or that academy preparing to salute its great former member. He was making bids for himself. Attempts to outrank all other claimants make some of his self-assessments read like job applications with the applicant’s perfect suitability described in such terms as to make rejection impossible. Below, he outlines his personal qualities for a presentation by the Patriotic Society, which had not approached Linné until as late as 1775—a noteworthy fact. The final words are familiar: He [Linné] was of somewhat less than ordinary height, his build solid and full, and his eyes brown and fiery.

Of these fiery eyes, the notorious gossip J. G. Rothman Jr. observed: When Linnaeus intends to utter a malice, he narrows one eye markedly more than other. He added: His stature is rather less than ordinary, he was neither fat nor thin, had a large head expanded backward, brown eyes full of fire, sharp vision, and good hearing although not for music.… Always wore boots and, when at home, dressed mostly in a short nightshirt and a velvet cap. Used to excess both Coffee and Tobacco. With foreigners he spoke only Latin, in which he was not well versed. Cared only a little for medicine.

Berge Frondin, who at the time was an admirer of Linnaeus’s wife, characterized her husband thus: He was easy and light on his feet. His temper could flare—he was jovial, witty, and spoke well—always wore boots and walked about in his own house in a nightshirt and a velvet cap—with tobacco and coffee abundant. He was much amused by card games. Staying with his physical status and its problems, he was plagued by toothaches ever since in my mother’s belly and smoked tobacco, probably to excess, to deal with them. In 1772 he wrote: "I hold back on him [tobacco] as far as I dare, not to break utterly with antiquam consuetudinem, quae in naturam transit"—an old habit that has become part of one’s nature.⁷

More fiery brown eyes: J. G. Acrel recalls the man, as seen in 1796: In his not unpleasant face, one noticed his quick and fiery brown eyes, a little short of sight and narrowed, not so much by nature as by habit and work on the investigation of matters in hand, practices that also caused him over the years strong wrinkles around his eyes due to the pulling of the muscles. He continues:

Walked somewhat stooped but had otherwise in his earlier years a light step which more and more changed so that in his fifth decade he had begun to shuffle his feet forward instead of lifting them.… His disposition was quick and easily moved to grief, joy, and wrath but also quick to regain calm. In his youth, he was full of joy, in his middle age always cheerful, witty, and easy with words, and when in cheerful company liked to share laughter with others, an inclination that followed him into his last year. He did not speak much but liked to listen to others and interjected at times his own brief but always interesting anecdotes, with especial preference for events that belonged to his own lifetime, or to his disciples or friends. When in his professorial chair, he showed a singular and distinguished eloquence, which, although not supported by a notably strong and pleasing voice nor by an elevated way of speaking (as he still had a county dialect), never failed to beguile his audience to the greatest degree.

There are many who have attempted to diagnose his condition, or pronounce him a genius—or both. However, the diagnoses vary. Nils von Hofsten has spoken about Linnaeus’s mind and how it was possible to trace signs of incipient physiological decay. Depressed moods and happier states of mind came and went at lightning speed, sometimes seeming to coexist: He was definitely showing signs of cyclothymia and, at all times, his emotions were labile—in other words, he had a bipolar disorder. Von Hofsten wasn’t a nobody, but the long-standing chairman of the Swedish Linnaeus Society and, furthermore, the expert advisor to the National Board of Health in cases of sterilization.⁸ No one among Linnaeus’s contemporaries seems to have made the usually close-at-hand connection between genius and melancholia—for instance, as written up by Samuel-Auguste Tissot in De la santé des gens de lettres (1768). Linnaeus never refers to his own state of health other than in the context of physical illnesses.

He could fit into a modern diagnostic category such as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), which includes people who can also be characterized as quick to take initiatives, energetic, creative, curious, stubborn, impatient, and ceaselessly active. Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the Scottish doctor Alexander Crichton grouped such symptoms into the syndrome mental restlessness, which could well be compared to Linnaeus’s description of himself in Vita, quoted above. A list of other creative geniuses with this diagnosis is supposed, rightly or wrongly, to include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, George Bernard Shaw, Edgar Allan Poe, Salvador Dalí, and Thomas Alva Edison. If medicated in some way—would their special brilliance have disappeared? There are other sources for the biographer to try: in 2013 the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) included compulsive hoarding. Linnaeus was in his early twenties when he mentioned in a letter (dated 1730) that his insect collection had reached four thousand specimens. His collections would continue to grow steadily, and he later claimed that his herbarium was the world’s largest. His library was also very extensive. His contemporaries were all much given to manic collecting, and there might have been an epidemic of compulsive hoarding. It wouldn’t be totally unlikely since it is a not uncommon pathology which allegedly afflicts about 2–6 percent of the present-day population.⁹

Today’s visitors to the Linné Museum in Uppsala often stop to contemplate the bed where Linnaeus died. Was he really that small? the child asks the adult, who, of course, knows the answer: No, you see, they slept sitting upright in the eighteenth century. Besides, look, you can pull the bed out. But Linnaeus was short, so one might surmise a certain sense of inferiority—a Napoleon complex? He and H. C. Andersen were alike: both men had lowly origins, became internationally famous early in life, had huge imaginations, and were famously prickly as well as showing evidence of paranoid traits and fears of death.

Linnaeus quoted God’s promise to David: I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all thine enemies out of thy sight, and have made thee a great name, like unto the name of the great men that are in the earth. He continued in his own words: "No one at our academy has with greater diligence practiced his profession and had more auditores. No one versed in the ways of nature has made more observations about natural matters. No one has had more robust insights into the three realms of nature. No one has been a greater Botanicus or Zoologus. No one has with greater skill worked on the understanding of the natural history of our Great Country, its Flora, Fauna or done as many travels in it. No one has written more numerous works from his own experiences, nor as neat or orderly. No one has reformed an entire science and created a new epoque. And so on, through a further ten No one" assertions.¹⁰ Linnaeus was somebody—not least in his own view. His constant flow of self-praise sounds almost incantatory. He doesn’t trust Fortuna and her unpredictable handouts, from the Creator’s happy rewards to Nemesis’s dark retributions.

Using the words of William Blake, Linnaeus could see a World in a Grain of Sand / and a Heaven in a Wild Flower. As he writes himself: "My greatest labor has consisted in being an attentive observator." By now, another question should be considered: Was he a scientist—and, if so, what kind of scientist? A bright spirit, of course, but not to be compared with the brightest lights of the Enlightenment. At times, and notably in the work of his old age Nemesis divina, his mind moved in the deep shadows where ghosts are lurking. He disparaged folk beliefs but was never quite free of them. His was a genius of the eye, but it is perfectly reasonable to portray him as a scholastic list maker and a traditionalist who never got around to using the microscope.

Often, he acted like a pragmatic utilitarian, but at other times he seemed to see himself as one of God’s elect. His intellectual awareness begins in the late Baroque period and ends in the early Romantic period—but was he ever a man of the Enlightenment? It is, alas, only too easy to equate the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, but Linnaeus seems not to have read any of the contemporary French philosophers. To him, Science was the prime source of Enlightenment; it was a favorite theme of his. In 1759 he said, in a lecture held in front of the royal couple: "Without Science, we would place our trust in priests from Rome and medical men from the French town of Monspelier. Without Science, huldras could still be concealed behind every bush; ghosts, and apparitions emerge from every dark corner; gnomes, trolls, river spirits, and all others in Lucifer’s battalions share our lives, like gray cats."

In Linnaeus’s New Year’s greeting for 1749 to the architect Carl Hårleman, he refers to two kinds of admirable men—those who, like Hårleman, have made great discoveries and carry tall, heavy torches and, on the other hand, "the Imitators who have small candles, quite ordinaire—like, perhaps, the writer of the letter? Next, a surprise: In that very moment, I caught sight of myself in the Mirror, walking with a quite small torch in my hand but, looming over me, stood a large and strong hero"; the protective figure was Hårleman.¹¹ It could be that Linnaeus was not all that surprised because he normally didn’t conceal that he saw himself as an inventor and auctor—an originator—rather than a compilator. He wrote frankly about flattery to the journalist Carl Christoffer Gjörwell: For your generous praise I thank you most humbly; … should I pretend to detest praise, I would lie as would all who said likewise, for whoever hates their own flesh? Love of yourself is the foundation for all that is good. My Dear Sir, you inundate me with eulogies such that, did I not know myself too well, I might have become proud.¹²

He had a stock expression when disapproving of a state of affairs, which was dense and barbarous. More than 70 years have passed since Swammerdam, Lister, Blankard et al. opened the eyes of the peasants, hitherto blinded by the monks. To him, monks, the Middle Ages, and darkness added up to a set of linked concepts: Indulgences could be bought if they frequented church diligently to hear some absurd Mass being said [or] if they visited a miracle-making cross, or images to do with Mary so that their world filled with poems, dreams, and monkish fairy tales. No one had any learning except for the priest, who was actually uneducated but for clichéd book learning. His outburst probably didn’t exclude the Lutheran Church of his own country.

One might compare his stance to that of the poet and wit Johan Henric Kjellgren in The Enemies of Light, writing in defense of the Enlightenment. Unlike Kjellgren, Linnaeus didn’t attack esoteric teachings, and sects such as Hermeticism and Freemasonry, but directed his ire at the erroneous or plain superstitious beliefs of simple people he had encountered and noted down in the travelogues. As he speculated in Miracula insectorum (1752), lacking knowledge about nature is the most prominent reason why many imbecile superstitions are held to be true and become the cause of such vain terrors.¹³ Still, Linnaeus didn’t always believe himself to be superior to the common man. Although his life and his time on the international academic stage coincided with the period called the Enlightenment, offstage he personally followed different lines of thought. Was he a Renaissance magus? Such labeling attempts always bring complications in their wake. It is true that, for all his belief in the scientific method, he was intrigued by the occult. Marie-Christine Skuncke, author of a Carl Peter Thunberg biography, provides wall-to-wall coverage by one of Linnaeus’s most adventurous pupils—but also sighs that her hero still remains to me an enigmatic figure.

Linnaeus’s scientific work can be summarized under several headings:

1. Creation of the first complete, systematic schema for classifying, in principle, all living organisms;

2. Standardization of the descriptive methodology and terminology for living organisms;

3. Classification of thousands of animals and plants according to his system;

4. Establishment of the principle of binominal nomenclature by naming an organism by just two attributes: its genus and species;

5. Demonstration that human beings should be classified as an animal species;

6. Creating, through the travels of his pupils, a basis for a global natural history;

7. Teaching his own, as well as later generations, the value of knowing how nature works.

Linnaeus was a physical, sensuous man, who responded with all his senses to the signals from his surroundings: shapes and colors, sounds, tastes. He saw everything. His acute sensory responses were essential to his approach to science and seem to have formed his experiences of man and nature. Instead of being discrete about sexuality, he recognized it in himself and lectured about it to others. Censorious voices have loudly claimed that Linnaeus never made a single discovery! Of course, the man himself saw it differently. In his curriculum vitae, the twenty-seven listed entries under the heading merita et inventa included his classification system based on sex organs, the binominal nomenclature, and his invention of the flower clock.¹⁴ He might well have added a few more: the 100-degree temperature scale, dendrochronology, and perhaps his version of evolution. His insistence on standardization as an important feature in many different contexts is rightly influential. How discovery is defined matters: surely methodology counts, as well as perspectives, ways of thinking, and recognition of contexts. One might well add his influence on his contemporaries—his impact—though some could view this as a demerit.

Another line of criticism takes its cue from the darker aspects of his persona. Not just the shadowy night of Nemesis divina, but what was said about him, for instance that he was one of the least generous of men; what he could reach, he wanted for himself and, in his naive vanity, he hoarded his worldwide reputation like a dragon its gold treasure.¹⁵ It is easy to portray Linnaeus as a careerist, a man with an outsize ego who enjoyed power and liked being the head boy in the class, but easier still to describe his charm, capacity for hard work, inspirational teaching, and lasting influence. The charismatic young scientist, the aging authoritarian, the writer, and the patriot—the man with a genius of the eye and an acute ability to perceive larger meanings in small observations, who had a global outlook and a drive to make natural history available to everyone—women, too. All these characteristics and traits must, of course, also be seen in the context of his life, which was from time to time difficult, plagued by poverty, poor health, and a heavy workload. Linnaeus was naive, yes, and had a monumental sense of his own worth, but he was also an outstanding observer and a vivid writer.

To get a grip on who Linnaeus was, it is not enough to contemplate one image—neither of the old man with his gentle gaze, nor the young one with his alert eyes. That simple truth should have become clear even in this lightning-quick introduction, and will be a theme throughout the biography. For instance, we must not allow ourselves to be taken in by the bent old man in the portraits by Per Krafft or Alexander Roslin. Linnaeus had a merry, charming side to his personality but could descend into brooding melancholia. He worked hard but sometimes lost touch with his surroundings. He had a remarkable capacity for grand overviews of systems but would spend days and nights pondering details. His curiosity hardly ever faltered even though the tables he compiled to show the diversity of Creation can be wearisome reading.

As he paced around in the natural world, Linnaeus inspected it with a field marshal’s eagle eye; one might argue that he superimposed a soldierly hierarchy on natural history. The kingdom of plants became structured in an orderly manner from the top down to the single soldier—or plant. This was one of Linnaeus’s pedagogical principles and, speaking abroad, he even used analogies such as infantry men, centurions, and decurions.¹⁶ In a famous review of contemporary botanists, he classified them by imaginary military ranks. In some respects, he might easily have joined Sweden’s legions of conscientious civil servants; he actually went on to become one of their models.

FIGURE 1. Bust of Linnaeus, hailed by Greco-Roman gods and goddesses. On the left: Asclepius with his serpent-entwined staff. Then, the winged Cupid, Flora, goddess of flowers, and Ceres, goddess of harvest. From Robert John Thornton, The Temple of Flora, 1806. Uppsala University Library.

His perception of the role of numerical order in nature, as Bach’s in music, made him believe that God used mathematics to construct his palaces. Linnaeus had probably never heard of Bach and wouldn’t have cared for his compositions (he always said I have no ear for music) but, like Bach, he was attracted to the mystery of numbers and completions of series. The Well-Tempered Clavier and Systema Naturae both contain twenty-four variations on a theme: preludes and fugues in all 24 major and minor keys, and plants sorted into classis 1 to 24. Keyboard instruments as well as the medical practices needed tuning to be fit for the great harmony of the world. Bach’s Art of Fugue and Linnaeus’s corresponding synthesis Clavis Medicinae Duplex were separated by little more than a decade.

Both men directed their polyphonic creations to their Lord in ecstatic gratitude. Linnaeus loved sequencing—trying out runs over the keys of nature—and excelled in variations based on themes and schemata discovered in nature. Both were systematizers, but they also shared a taste for the esoteric. They wove their signatures into their compositions: one used the notes B-A-C-H, the other his personal logo, the twinflower or Linnaea borealis, to show off to the watching audience—and ultimately, to God.

PART I

A Great Man Can Come from a Small House

1707–1741

FIGURE 2. Linnaea borealis, introductory illustration in Johan Palmstruch’s (1770–1811) Svensk botanik (A Swedish Botany), 1810. Uppsala University Library.

The Modest Twinflower (Linnaea borealis)

The wild flower the Swedes call linnea—the twinflower—was known before Carl Linnaeus adopted it. Before his time, Swedish natural historians had recorded its existence, as seen for instance in an illustration in Acta literaria upsaliensis (1720) by Olof Rudbeck the Younger, where the linnea is named Campanula serpyllifolia or small bell(flower) with leaves like wild thyme. Linnaeus took note of it, wanted it formally to bear his name, and wrote: This Lapland plant … is of low stature, despised, flowers only for a short time and so is like Linnaeus.¹ His Dutch friend Jan Frederik Gronovius acted on this wish in his work Genera Plantarum (1737).

Linnea borealis became emblematic of the man Linné, of Swedish science, and, indeed, of Swedish culture. In Linnaeus’s Flora Svecica (1745), the twinflower is the only plant to be portrayed and, among his thirteen known personal seals, ten are engraved with an image of his flower. His eminent contemporary A. F. Skjöldebrandt commented: The very sight of this plant makes you remember the man after whom she was named.

The identification of the man with the flower is almost complete, and explains why an image of Linnea borealis introduces the first part of this biography. It stands for Linnaeus’s modest origins and his expedition to Lapland, which was to become the takeoff point for his career.

In 1908 the twinflower was adopted by County Småland as its signature flower.

The story of Linnaeus begins in Småland.

CHAPTER ONE

The Guardian Tree

A BIOGRAPHY BEGINS long before the subject’s birth and does not end with his or her death: the lifespan it charts is inextricably linked to time and natural surroundings. A human life depends on weather and wind as well as guardianship. The personal narrative is given shape by parents and by those others who remember or care enough to investigate, to follow the tracks in the grass and in the archives.

We live in the shade of trees. In ancient times, Nordic people believed that the World Tree was an ash and the protective guardian tree a linden—a Tilia. The biography of Linnaeus should surely begin with a linden. In the late sixteenth century, a huge, split specimen with three trunks grew in Jonsboda in the Småland parish Vittaryd. Three local families were said to stem from the tree and to have taken their names from it: the Lindelius, Linnaeus, and Tiliander families. The great linden had once been declared dead but is still alive. This is Linnaeus identifying himself: God let him spring forth from a stubborn root, replanted him into a distant place and, praise be, allowed him to soar and grow into a worthy tree.¹

On the 23rd day of the lovely month of May, the newborn boy, who would be called Carl, opened his eyes to see the world around him: "The most beauteous spring, when the cuccu hailed the summer between frondescentiae [coming into leaf] and florescentiae [flowering]. His place of birth was the rectory in Råshult, County Småland and near the border with County Skåne, which within living memory had belonged to Denmark. Carl was born in 1707, during the night: Between the 12th and 13th day by the Gregorian style of reckoning, at one in the morning, in the realm of Sweden, the parish of Stenbrohult, the village of Råshult."² As this quote shows, the old-style calendar was still in use. Sweden had not yet adopted the new order, so was behind the times and would, from then on, try in all things to catch up with the international lead.

The year of his birth fell during the somber final stages of the Great Northern War. Just two years later, the Swedish army would lose the battle against the Russians at Poltava and, by then, the country was exhausted from never-ending warfare. In 1709 the Danish government set out to reoccupy the Swedish territory lost after the peace of Roskilde. The Danish army landed near the coastal city of Helsingborg in November that year. The governor general of Skåne, Magnus Stenbock, retreated to Växjö in central Småland but ultimately led the defensive forces to victory.

The witch-hunting hysteria, particularly feverish in the north, had reached Småland by then. A few generations earlier, Johanne Pedersdatter, a distant Norwegian relation on Linnaeus’s mother’s side, had been convicted of witchcraft and burned at the stake in Stavanger.³ Linnaeus seems never to have referred to this relative and may not have known about her. He also makes no reference to the plague that followed in the wake of the war and caused at least a hundred thousand deaths, nor to other forms of contagion made worse by poverty and starvation, nor to the King’s taste for war games. A freer, more sensible world was on its way, though. Little Carl’s arrival might have been seen to counterbalance the unrest of the time, or as heralding better days to come.

Carl was the firstborn child of his parents, Nils Linnaeus and Christina Brodersonia, but several siblings were to follow. Nils was a minister in the Lutheran Church and, as the son of a clergyman, Carl was to follow in his footsteps and, ideally, succeed him. It was not to be; the baton—or, rather, the hymnbook—went to his brother Samuel.

Both Linnaeus’s early homes, first in Råshult and later in Stenbrohult, burned down, but a look-alike house and garden have been created in Råshult, lovingly cared for and popular with tourists.

In his several autobiographical works, Linnaeus writes of his parents with warm affection. His father was a farmer’s son, born Nils Ingemarsson and a man who walked slowly throughout his world, finding his pleasure in the ordering and care of his garden with its several and sundry plants as, in such matters, he found all his peace. A few years after Carl’s birth, Nils was promoted from curate to rector in Stenbrohult parish. He now had a home near the parish church as well as his house and grounds in Råshult. The document confirming his position as rector was properly signed by the king on 12 August 1708, though Charles XII was at the time somewhere near Mogilev in White Russia (Belarus). His wife Christina, Linnaeus’s mother, was the daughter of the former rector of Stenbrohult. She was heedful and indeed so industrious as to never give herself time to rest. She feared God greatly and was the mother of 5 children.… She was a beautiful young girl.… The boy was nursed, suckling his own mother’s breasts. This last remark reflects a significant element in Linnaeus’s later instructions about natural nutrition. Christina’s stepmother was a harsh, difficult woman, which might be why the younger woman accepted Nils’s proposal—although otherwise, she had not been thus inclined.

Carl’s parents are both described as of middling height—that is, short by present-day standards—but the differences between them are more striking. Nils was heavily built and she was slender; furthermore, his spirit slow to anger, even-tempered, and good, hers sharp-tongued, quick, and workaday.⁴ Linnaeus is mostly rather silent about his mother, which might suggest secret reservations.

For her, the day of 13 May 1707 was a day of mourning, as she gave birth, with the greatest difficulty and danger to her life, to a well-formed son: this despite her wish that the child would have been of the gentler sex.… The man was however made happy indeed and his gladness atoned for her grief. Thus, they joyfully christened this child, their firstborn, on the 19th day of that same month. Here, the writer is Samuel, Carl’s younger brother by eleven years; he is addressing the Småland nation at Uppsala University after his eminent brother’s death in the New Year 1778.⁵ How is it that Samuel knows about his mother’s regrets? Why mention it in this context? We don’t know. One explanation might be found in the tradition of conservation—a form of social support based on the rule that the young clergyman should marry the dead pastor’s widow and support any children. The pastor’s grown daughter would be free to marry out.

Linnaeus speaks of his mother only once more: At 6 o’clock [6 June 1733] after midday, my most dear and pious mother departed, causing me in my absence an ineffable anxiety, grief, and harm. There is nothing more. Nils wrote about his wife in her book of remembrance: She always feared God and ordered her home well, always diligent and cautious, generous and heedful, and gifted with fine understanding.

A great man can come from a small house, Linnaeus remarked, referring to himself. Physically, he was a small man, even for his time (estimated height about 153 cm), and seems fascinated by the tall and strongly built: Those living here [in Stenbrohult], as well as in most Småland parishes, incline to be larger than elsewhere, as is true for both sexes, for the probable reason of belonging to the old tribe of Göthaland, as strangers are seldom seen here and a farmer rarely has his daughter marry anyone not born in the parish.⁶ Linnaeus’s notes contain occasional references to a tall Finn called Daniel Cajanus, and one note mentions that the Sami are shorter than himself. Johan Lång (Tall) was a member of Linnaeus’s student nation—the Småland nation at Uppsala University—and his height caught the attention of its recordkeeper: Master Tall from Tall Lycke village is tall—a tall man’s tall son.

FIGURE 3. A great man can come from a small house. Råshult, Linnaeus’s place of birth. The original house has burned down. Uppland Museum.

In 1703 Stenbrohult parish had 206 inhabitants but, by 1729, the local population had increased to 578. Local authority was embodied in the rector, who kept the parish records of births and deaths, went to people’s homes to make sure that they knew their catechism, and would advise in day-to-day matters. People understood their country in the terms of the Protestant exposition of the relationship between the state, the working people, and the church; this text was printed and distributed with hymnbooks and catechisms. Its fundamental thesis was Luther’s teaching about the three hierarchies or estates: church, political establishment, and household. These three entities were also defined respectively as the learned, exploitative, and nourishing estates, and their roles illustrated by a dozen short passages from the Bible.

Nils was a practical man, well able to restore the decaying parish church and keep the rectory in good repair. He was a man of learning but also a farmer who knew how to speak to other farmers. The parish supported their rector generously and helped him to construct a morgue and an ossuary near the church, and also to restore the rectory after a fire. The rector paid for guest rooms, farm laborers’ quarters, and a bathhouse. Everyone was forthright and trusting, the old soldiers as well as other villagers. What was said of the farmer Åke Kvick in Råshult was more or less generally true: Well versed in the Bible, a patient man who never let the world weigh on his spirit.

Linnaeus writes in Spolia Botanica: Stenbrohult is a parish found some 30 miles from Wexiö, toward the border with Skåne in the municipality of Allbo, and which, compared with all other places, in appearance is like a queen among sisters; preferred to others even in the location of rare and wondrous herbs not often to be seen elsewhere in the country. Indeed, the very rectory here is as if adorned by Flora herself; I would doubt if any space in the whole world could present itself more pleasantly. Surely it is not strange that I have reason to lament along with the poet: ‘Nescio qua natale solum dulcedine cunctos / ducit et immemores non sinit esse sui’ (Our native land charms us with inexpressible sweetness and never allows us to forget that we belong to it).⁷

Much later, when Linnaeus reluctantly agrees to describe landscapes, he declares that he is like a lynx abroad but a mole at home, and knows more about what is produced by Virginia in America, Cap de Bonne Sperence in Africa, and Zeylon in the East Indies, than in my own native land which I left before I had properly woken and rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

He had hardly seen more than Stenbrohult, the village where he was born, and Växjö, the city where he went to school. He had left these places before reaching adulthood and had, ever since, hardly seen more of any one place than a wandering goose in its flight—a migratory bird. What I saw in my youth, or through the eyes of old Cubae or of Arfvid Månsson Rydaholm, I still recall as if it were a dream and, now, it is all I can speak about.⁸ He goes on, however, to describe uplands and high hills, forests, meadows, fields, marshes, and lakeshores before getting around to the plants, the animals, and the minerals—in fact, he turns out to be a man with an excellent memory. Far from being a blind mole, he was a lynx also in the forests of his childhood.

Göran Wahlenberg, a colleague of a later generation, provides an explanation of Linnaeus’s scientific approach in the 1822 issue of the yearbook Svea, based on what he believes was a natural kind of cultural simplicity. A beautiful and solitary situation, in a setting of low hills pierced by many streams and cloaked in vigorous birch woods. The scarcity that affected Linné in his first youth here appears in its way to have made him stay close to his natural surroundings, indeed to unite his lively spirit with them and thus develop in him that natural sensibility, which to such a great extent nourishes the imagination and so becomes a source of the finest qualities.

In other words, Råshult and Stenbrohult were the right places to foster qualities such as characterized Linnaeus the man. Wahlenberg develops his theme and argues that the long, low ridge that runs through Uppsala has helped to change the university town into a source of creativity—of the imaginative power so cherished by the Romantics. Linnaeus would later admit that his home appeared as if adorned by Flora herself. Here I have with my mother’s milk been infused by the shapes of a multitude of plants.⁹ When he grew up, the enclosures were still in the future, and the village was surrounded by woodland meadows, a form of cultivation typical of southern Sweden. Species diversity is an outstanding characteristic of these hay meadows, and in Stenbrohult they were richer in tree canopies and fuller of flowers than in any other province.… When you sit there in summertime, hearing the song of the cuccu and also songs of many other birds as well as the piping and humming of insects, and you see the bright and splendidly colored flowers, you cannot but be astounded at so excellent a creation.¹⁰ Where the Taxås ridge enters Lake Möckeln, the views from the top of the steep rock face leave you with a sense of a great and spacious world.

Impressions of the landscape’s striking natural beauty were instilled in Linnaeus from childhood. He had learned to recognize all the flowering plants around Stenbrohult: viper’s grass, common milkwort, quaking grass, yellow rattle, heath spotted orchid, wolf’s bane—the poetry of the names alone was wonderful. The church and the rectory stood in the middle of the village. The rectory had a garden and an avenue ending at a circular drive in front of the main house. The guardian tree grew next to the house, and behind it stretched a kitchen garden and a somewhat wild pleasure park. These were quite large cultivated areas looked after by hired workers rather than the pastor himself. The practices and layout followed ancient patterns, perhaps going back to monastery gardens. Most of the inspection records reflect such traditions, including cabbage patches, hops cages, and ponds stocked with Crucian carp. At Råshult, they had an unusually well laid-out cabbage plot as well as an herb garden and several hop cages—hops for brewing the dark local beer. In his Travels on Öland, Linnaeus describes the garden of his childhood home: It had many more species of plants that any other garden in Småland had and did with my mother’s milk inflame my spirit with an unquenchable love of plants.

The rectories around the lake formed part of a distinctive culture. The inhabitants were related, and shared interests and tasks. The care taken of gardens and plants is documented; one of the clerics actually owned De plantis (1583) by Andrea Cesalpino, the great Italian botanist.¹¹ Families, neighbors, and at least some members of the local gentry bonded with each other by being godparents when children were christened—as was carefully noted down.

Rectory kitchen gardens were sermons made real. Clergy who traveled abroad brought back ideas and plants—lilacs, for example, and herb gardens and arbors. We know about the gardens at Råshult from Samuel’s letters and later from Linnaeus’s Adonis stenbrohultensis (1732), in which the plants were already ordered by their sex.

His father, Nils, was impressively knowledgeable about plants. Carl was barely four years old when, one afternoon when house guests were resting on the grass, Nils held forth about Latin plant names: The little one found listening to this a heart’s delight. Ever since, the lad would give the Father no peace. Once, he had forgotten a name and was scolded by his father, but since that moment, the boy’s entire will and thought was to remember the names and never cause his father displeasure.¹²

Nils had an interest in botany that went well beyond even what might be expected. Linnaeus writes: How come the boy fell in love with Flora I do not know. What I do know is that his Father had always loved the company of plants. As a student in Lund, Nils had learned the Latin nomenclature of plants, and collected and pressed some fifty specimens. Linnaeus continues: It was known that when the boy was troubled and could be soothed in no other way, he would soon fall quiet the moment he was given a flower to hold. This, what I believe to be his innate delight, was heightened when the boy listened to his Father speaking of some characteristic of a plant that seemed noteworthy. Young Carl was given "a garden en migneateur, where in a small space he grew samples of all that was found in the garden."¹³

Samuel Linnaeus comments in his letters on his father’s keenness for gardening and how it captivated his older brother. He also describes how Nils went about planting: "In this garden, my dear departed father had with his own hands created a round, elevated area like a table around which plots with herbs and shrubs represented the guests, and groups of flowers, the dishes served on the table. Our mother often went to see it: this was at the time when my brother was conceived. The layout was recreated in 1982, the round table set" with wild thyme, sweet William, lavender, feverfew, and musk mallow

Samuel tells another story about Carl at play with his siblings during school holidays: At the slightest suggestion of someone’s ailment he would palpate the sufferer’s pulse, make as if to use a thumb lancet of wood (for bloodletting), and search for herbs with which to cure his sisters.¹⁴ As a boy, Linnaeus played at medicine and, by his own system, he was then at the third age of life when, by running hither and thither in constant preoccupation, the child practices his body incessantly, day after day—as he would later describe it.¹⁵

FIGURE 4. The young Linnaeus? Unknown artist, oil painting in the art collection of the Småland Museum, Växjö.

How does an interest start? How does it become an obsession? Linnaeus speaks of a vision: I was ill in 1718 from winter until Whitsun, then came out into the greenery which appeared to be not of this world but of Paradise.¹⁶ Then:

I believe there are persons who, when stepping outside, see the ground in front of them as green with some other colors, the cloud he sees like shadows and the sun like a bright disc, so enthralled is he by economic, political, fanatical, arrogant, lustful, mercenary, vengeful, etc. concerns and impulses that he cannot see further into what comforts our Creator has provided and placed us in the midst of.… I admit in my own case, one summer in my youth when ill with a strong fever, I did not look at nature from medium Martii until Juli and then, when I was allowed outside, I saw the world in a very much changed manner, different from before and all spread out in front of me, being so high, so beautiful.… Then consider Adam and Eve: perfectly made, in their finest, most healthful flourishing, free of prejudices, and so shown hills and green valleys with rivers running wherever the most temperate weather might be (in Mesopotamiae terras or alibi), everywhere clad in grass, plants, trees, all green and also with every kind of flower of great loveliness, divers form and coleur, animals who run about, birds on the wing flit through the air, singing and calling, fishes silently wander in the pellucid river gently flowing forth, insects seated on flowers and trees like small jewels, wings shimmering like a pocader, everything together in migniatyr, then would it not be the proper moment to admire the Creator as if only then had they been given eyes to see with and in their joy could not decide where to turn to see more, to observe sun and moon, stars, sky, and wander in the night. As their ears hear the murmuring of the weather, the sounds of animals and songs of the birds, would they not easily mingle with many.¹⁷

The Fall from Grace awaits …

Linnaeus came home to Stenbrohult to visit in the summer of 1728 and at Christmas in 1731 and 1732. In spring 1735, he stops by on his way to Holland and stays from 19 March to 15 April. All his siblings are there, and his old father: Mother missing as she had died since one was last at home. House in confusion.¹⁸ On 15 April: "Finally, after a month of staying at home, one must valedict one’s sweet natale Stenbrohult with one’s Patre in his sixties and 4 siblings.… My elderly father commended his Biblioteque and also my youngest sister to my protection should a fatality come to afflict him."¹⁹ Linnaeus returned for a few weeks in the summer of 1738, again in 1741 on his journey to Öland, and in May 1749 on his way to Skåne. It adds up to about eight visits, surely evidence of what he calls his nostalgia.

When he visited in 1749, his father had died and the rectory had burned down. He wrote: "Here, I found the birds dead, the nest burned, and the young ones dispersed. I could hardly recognize the room where I had myself been hatched and felt as if present at campum, ubi olim Troja [the field where once stood Troy], the place where my dear departed father the rector Nils Linnaeus planted his garden that formerly glowed with the finest plants in Sweden but was utterly destroyed by fast flames before time took him away on 12 May of the past year. The pleasures of my youth, the rarest plants once growing wild in this location had not yet emerged. I, who 20 years ago knew every person in the parish, could hardly find 20 of them now; those who were stout lads in my youth had gray hair and white beards, their lives were done and a new world had taken the place of the old."

This passage bears witness to his sense of alienation. Linnaeus had been born in an impoverished country where little was thrown away. Hordes of starving, homeless people drifted along the roads in the years when the harvest failed. Nowadays, visualizing such scenes makes us uneasy; they are very different from the glamour we believe characterized the last half of the eighteenth century.

Linnaeus tells us of his own poverty: He could lie awake all night as he lacked the money for evening meals when he was a student. He had to incur debt to afford food, had no coins to have mended the soles on his shoes but must walk with his bare foot on some paper that he put inside the shoe.²⁰ Later, he would try the natural foods eaten by the Sami as well as share sumptuous meals in the homes of the wealthy but still find his years of hardship difficult to forget. In Nemesis divina, his book of exemplars, Linnaeus shows compassion for the poor, as in this example: "The poor farmer labors all year, has barely the straw to rest on, and is paid but little; sic vos, non vobis [thus you work but not for yourselves]. Consider the poor slave, at work while you sleep. You would say of him, he ploughs my field, it is my farm and I decide. I tell you: nothing is yours. God has lent you all."

In such times, a healthy child might well be the best insurance and old age pension. The injunction to be fruitful and multiply was taken seriously not least by the reverend clergy. It went without saying that Linnaeus had siblings. In 1730 his eldest sister, Anna Maria, married magister Gabriel Höök, appointed rector in Virestad in 1742. Her son Sven Niklas painted a group portrait of Linnaeus’s only son Carl and his sisters. In 1749 the next eldest sister, Sophia Juliana, married magister Johannes Collin, pastor in Ryssby. Both women gave birth to a dozen children. Once widowed, Sophia was destined to live in poverty, and Linnaeus pleaded with the diocese on her behalf. Her daughter Anna Sophia married magister David Widegren, also rector in Ryssby. Carl’s younger brother Samuel (born 1718) studied in Lund, where his doctoral thesis was supervised by Sven Lagerbring, professor of history. He fathered twelve children, of whom only three reached adulthood: two daughters who married into the clergy and a son, Carl Samuel, born 1778. The boy had made Stenbrohult the subject of his doctoral thesis in Lund but died at the age of twenty-two. Carl’s youngest sister, Emerentia (born 1723), married in 1749 to the clerk to the local authority, a Mr. Branting from Virestad. This overview indicates the social circles of country clergy.

In deepest Småland, spirits roam and can be glimpsed in the moonlight: In Stenbrohult, when the moon shone at night, everyone could see three dancing white-clad ghosts, around three musket shots away. I denied their existence and laughed at those who believed therein but they promised to show me. One evening, when Dr. Rothman, the local judge, was present, a farmhand came with the message: ‘Now they are dancing.’ We went outside and saw them with our very own eyes. Then Rothman took me and my father to the place where a boulder striped with white moss seemed to shift in the moonlight. Later, he wrote self-confidently that Spectra are seen in Smoland every night.… I believe there are as many in the world as there are in just Smoland. Rothman and Nils and Carl Linnaeus undeniably come across as a trio of enlightened men in a dark place.²¹ Even so, Linnaeus was always uncertain about the validity of many popular beliefs.

Linnaeus insists on the importance of birthplace. Rather than an astrologist, he is a topologist. He would instruct his students under the subject line Solum natale that your health is always at its best in the place of your birth and where you were brought up because you are used to the air. Migratory birds, returning in spring to their native homes, are examples of this principle. "In this context, an illness called nostalgia [homesickness] is found, which principally causes the sufferer to be weak, anxious, cacheticus [cachexia, a wasting syndrome] and look as though having contracted pneumonia. Swedes have found that traveling to Holland can bring on this condition: The symptoms afflicted also regius medicus [royal physician] Linnaeus when he was in Holland and contracted the ague before he left the place where he stayed and arrived at the sandy heathlands of Brabant where the air was clean and, on that day, he was well again." Linnaeus has another example at hand: an Inuit girl from Greenland who lived briefly with the late queen of Sweden [Ulrika Eleonora the Younger]. He observes that no Lapp living high on a hill is a melancholicus, but the opposite is the case with those who live in forests. The place where you live and the air you breathe are critically important, and it follows that homesickness is very strongly felt by people born at high altitudes who have ended up living in lowland areas, for instance Swiss people in Holland.

Linnaeus also stressed that inheritance matters, for instance to be conceived by healthy parents, and points to himself as living evidence. True, his temperament at least was very different from that of his placid father, who was content to live quietly in his own small world. Linnaeus was perhaps more like his mother, with her quick mind.

When he died at the age of seventy-four, Nils Linnaeus was celebrated in learned journals for his beautiful garden but above all for instilling a ceaselessly active mind in his eldest son. Fredrik Hasselquist, a naturalist who had traveled widely, writes in praise of the son as much as of the father: His son sprung from his root / and brought his country honor; as Nature’s spokesman he stood out / peerless in the Nordic lands.²²

What were Linnaeus’s thoughts about