Tag: Carolus Linnaeus

Uppsala: The Linnaeus Museum

The latest in my series of posts about my Swedish holiday – today featuring the Linnaeus museum.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest installment in my series of posts about my holiday in Sweden. This post is the last to focus purely on Uppsala, although there is still the account of the journey from Uppsala to Malmo to cover.

FROM LIBRARY TO MUSEUM

Those who read my previous post will recall that while there was plenty to see in the exhibition of treasures at Carolina Rediviva I was prevented from photographing most of it, so I was quite glad once I had finished there to get back into action, starting with these pictures…

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Shortly after I had taken the above pictures I came to…

THE BERLIN MURAL

This mural, which as the information board reproduced below shows is named because of its origins, is actually four walls, the front and two side walls of which are also reproduced below (I could not get a sufficient distance behind the back wall to be able to photograph it).

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We now get to the main meat of this post, starting with…

A ROUGH GUIDE TO CAROLUS LINNAEUS

Carolus Linnaeus lived in the 18th century (he was roughly contemporary with Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of the creator of the theory of evolution by natural selection), and the house in which he lived is in central Uppsala. He was a botanist by training but is best know these days for being the creator of the system by which all living organisms are still categorized. Discoveries made since he was around have changed some categorizations and created some new ones, but the framework and methodology used are still his.

Such names as Homo sapiens (note that with these type of names the first word is always capitalized and the second word never so, even if it derives from a proper name) come from Linnaeus’ magnum opus.

He is also significant in the history of science for reversing a previous trend – whereas previous eminent scientists had taken Latin names to sound more impressive he went the other way, changing his Latin birth name (his father, a clergyman whose birth name had been Nils Ingemarsson had taken a Latin name to emphasize his education), used so far in this post, to a vernacular one, Carl Von Linne. His reasons for making this change were it must be said just as rooted in snobbery as those of folk who  Latinized – he had been given a patent of nobility and considered his new aristocratic designation  more important than his old Latin name.

Many books on the history of science cover his career in detail, my own personal recommendation being John Gribbin’s magisterial Science: A History 1543-2001.

THE LINNAEUS MUSEUM

As you approach the museum it is made suitably obvious that you are doing so…

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Here is the approach to the house…

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The rest of this post will be devoted the photographs I took of the objects in this remarkable museum.

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Linnaeus’ most famous work.
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Linnaeus on plants

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Uppsala University Museum

Continuing my account of my holiday in Sweden with a virtual tour of the Uppsala University Museum.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the next installment of posts about my recent holiday in Sweden. This post picks up where my previous one left off, heading into this building:

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The outside of the University Museum

INSIDE THE MUSEUM

The Uppsala University Museum (students get in free), also known as the Gustavianum is housed in the oldest university building in Sweden. If you approach the museum as I did and start at the bottom and work your way up, the first exhibits you encounter are from the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans:

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This object sits in the entrance hall.

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It is a very minor quibble, but the red background is too strong a colour and therefore detracts somewhat from the coins themselves. Having produced images of a very large number of coins I have arrived at the conclusion that a white background, so that all the eye sees in the picture is the coin or set of coins is best.

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The next two floors are taken up with items of various kinds from the more recent past…

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The world’s first commercially successful portable computer – our ideas of portability have changed somewhat since then, as has the storage capacity of such machines!

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This picture and the next combined to form

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This picture

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After these treasures it was time to see the inside of the dome – a perfectly preserved anatomy theatre…

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Students would have stood in rows around the room, while the corpse that was being anatomised would be spread out on the table.

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The last exhibits that I saw were those relating to the Vikings…

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Arriving in Uppsala

The latest in my series of posts about my holiday in Sweden, introducing Uppsala.

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the latest installment in my series of posts about my recent holiday in Sweden. This post sets the scene for my two night stay in Uppsala.

ARRIVAL

Those following this series will be aware that I travelled to Uppsala on an overnight train from Lulea. Apart from one moment about half an hour before Uppsala when I managed to shut myself out of my compartment and had to knock on the door to regain admission (I was only just stirring, and simply forgot to  pick my key card up) the journey was largely uneventful. By good fortune I had been assigned the bottom of three beds (the top bed hangs from the ceiling as a permanent fixture, the middle bed folds out from the wall when everybody is ready for bed and the bottom bed is created by rotating the row of seats over by means of an ingenious mechanism).

On arrival at Uppsala Central Station I noted that the was a line of hotels on one side of the tracks, so I went to investigate whether Vandrarhem Uppsala Centralstation was among them and found that it was not. Deciding that other than this little clump of hotels the other side of the tracks looked more promising I headed along the generously spaced walking and cycleway that passes under the station and after passing the bus station found myself on Kungsgatan, where I spied a Tourist Information Office. As it turned out the entrance to the building in which I was staying was just off the main road on the same side street that this office sat at the corner of.

The building in which I was staying had a hotel at the front, and the hostel type rooms in which I was staying at the back. Although it was too early to check in they did have a bag room, so I offloaded some luggage there and set off to commence my exploration of the city. I already had a few photos…

As well as being the birthplace of the great Carolus Linnaeus, Uppsala is home to a sculptor named Bror Hjorth, and two pieces of his work are on display very close to the station.
The station plan of Uppsala Central.

COMMENCING SERIOUS EXPLORATIONS

Consultation of the map with which I had been equipped at the Tourist Information Office revealed that everything of interest to me was to be found by starting in from my hotel in the opposite direction to Kungsgatan, which would serve as a very handy outer boundary marker. My initial target was the cathedral since I reckoned that a very large and prominent landmark that must be pretty much plumb in the centre of the interesting part of the city would serve as a further useful point of orientation, and I could then pick out other places. This part of Uppsala proved to be very attractive and as a bonus was pretty much pedestrianised. Almost directly underneath the cathedral I found the University Museum, and deeming the admission price acceptable decided to go in, with results that will form my next post…

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The frontage of the cathedral
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Immediately above the main door
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A close up of that very elaborate circular window.
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The outside of the University Museum
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A close up of the curious onion shaped dome – as you will see in my next post what lies inside that dome is almost as curious.