new church life: jan uary/february 2015
birthday banquets and other occasions1; and even
though the original source of these rules can be read
in Tafel’s Documents, vol. 1, pp. 12-29, namely where
the Eulogy on Swedenborg’s death is printed;2 there
remains not one shred of evidence in Swedenborg’s
own papers or manuscripts.
Instead, these rules were gathered by a colleague
of Swedenborg’s from his Board of Mines days,
where he had served for 30 years or so (ca. 1717 to
1747). Swedenborg, just a 29-year-old in 1717 and
still called Emanuel Svedberg, was chummy with
King Charles XII at Lund, in south central Sweden.
This was due to the influence of Christopher
Polhammar, some 27 years Svedberg’s senior, whose prominence earned him
access to the king. Polhammar became Polhem3 after his ennoblement in 1716.
King Charles XII had returned from the disastrous war against Peter the
Great. He had brilliantly beaten Peter at the Battle of Narva (1700) but then
lost badly to him at Pultava (1709). He had then escaped to Turkey, hoping to
raise another army. He was interned, ransomed, and finally snuck home, but
was too unpopular to return to his Stockholm palace.
So he stuck it out at a palace in Lund in the western province of Värmland,
where he engaged Polhammar, the “Archimedes of the North,” and his assistant
Emanuel Svedberg, to drag war ships overland to attack the Norwegians at Idde
Fjord. “But with the help of Polhem and Svedberg they were moved overland
on brush bundles and causeways and small adjacent lakes; by July nearly all the
ships had been hauled to Iddefjorden.”4
Polhammar and Svedberg were also printing the Daedalus Borealis,5 which
pleased the king no end. Young Svedberg was the editor, and inserted the first
1
See at: http://www.heavenlydoctrines.org/dtSearch.html
2 The rules occur just one third through the Eulogy, on p. 18, Tafel Vol. i: You can also search for
it in The Academy Documents Concerning Swedenborg, compiled by Bishop Alfred Acton and
Beryl Briscoe, now fully searchable, http://digitalcollections.swede nborglibrary.org/awweb/main.
jsp?smd=2&nid=155/156/161. This is accessed also by searching the web: Swedenborg Library, click
Digital Collections (left column, same again center, then, Swedenborgiana, then Academy Documents.
3
Portrait of Christopher Polhem, 1741, by Scheffer.
4 Quote from Otto Sjögren, Svensk Historia, Swedish History, Stockholm 1911, p. 159; translation by
EES
5 The Northern Daedalus, Daedalus was the Greek fellow who escaped by not flying too close to the
sun, as his son Icarus did. The magazine, 1714 to 1717, was one of the first scientific journals in history,
still continued to this day. Issues from the 20th century make numerous references and quotes from
Swedenborg’s originals.
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