The Power of Antiquity: The Hyperborean Research Tradition in Early Modern Swedish Research on National Antiquity

Academic dissertation to be presented with the assent of the Doctoral Training Committee of Human Sciences of the University of Oulu for public defence in Kuusamonsali (YB210), Linnanmaa, on 14 February 2015 at 12 noon. My thesis focuses on the incorporation of Hyperboreans, a mythical classical race, into the prevailing Gothic or Geatic narrative of national history in seventeenth and eighteenth century Swedish historiography. The beatific Hyperboreans were identified with ancient Swedes to emphasise that the Gothic ancestors of Sweden’s rulers had not been mere mediaeval barbarians. The most extreme proponents of this Hyperborean research tradition claimed that a high culture had thrived in Sweden before classical antiquity. They asserted that traces of this highly-developed northern civilisation could be found in the Bible, classical writings and mediaeval historiography, as well as the domestic antiquities such as runestones and Old Norse writings. ("Abstract").