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Linnés Hammarby is the small country estate near Uppsala which Linnaeus came to treasure and which he was finally, at the age of 51, able to buy. Four years later he erected a new main building on the estate (seen in the middle of the picture). The two wings were already in place when Linnaeus acquired the property. To begin with, this was the place where Linnaeus spent his summers, moving out with his family as soon as the roads had dried out after the winter. He preferred to live in the countryside, because he was convinced that the filth and noise in town were bad for people’s health. A disease known as “Uppsala fever”, which was in fact malaria, often affected people in Uppsala in the 18th century.

At Linnés Hammarby, Linnaeus received students from Finland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Russia, Great Britain, Switzerland, Algeria, North America, Holland, France and Italy, for private study under his supervision. He found rooms for them in nearby villages where they could stay during their time at Hammarby. Linnaeus and his family often spent the evenings with them. He sometimes brought in a local keyed-fiddle player for a barn dance. The keyed fiddle, or nyckelharpa, is a Swedish string instrument, played with a bow, but with keys instead of direct fingering to change the pitch. Carl himself did not usually dance, although he is said to have been a better dancer than his young friends. He preferred to smoke his pipe while watching the youngsters having fun. One of his students wrote that Linnaeus liked to see them enjoying themselves, and that he wanted them to be “happy and even noisy”, otherwise he would worry that they were not enjoying themselves properly. Linnaeus was a good host.

 

Linnaeus received many visitors at his country retreat, including the Swedish Crown Prince, the future Gustav III. Many foreigners who visited Stockholm also made the journey to Linnés Hammarby to meet the world-famous naturalist. One of his visitors was the wealthy Lord Baltimore. He came in a huge carriage, which he brought with him from England. He only wished to meet Linnaeus, and was not interested in visiting Stockholm. Because of the size of his carriage, all the gateposts along the roads to Linnés Hammarby had to be dismantled. Linnaeus was generously rewarded for his lectures to Lord Baltimore in the natural sciences, and he of course felt greatly honoured to be acknowledged by a member of the English aristocracy.

After a fire in Uppsala in 1766, which destroyed a third of the town, Linnaeus took precautions to keep his collections safe. Wise from the great losses suffered by his professor, Olof Rudbeck the Elder, who had seen much of his life’s work go up in smoke in the great Uppsala fire of 1702, Linnaeus built a small museum on top of a rocky hill at Linnés Hammarby to keep his valuable collections out of the reach of fire. Today his collections are in the keeping of the Linnean Society of London, where they are available for study by researchers and are stored in the best possible environment to preserve the material intact. Linnaeus had instructed his wife to sell his scientific material and books, to raise money to support herself and the couple’s unmarried daughters. After the death of their son Carl, all of Linnaeus’ collections were sold to the Englishman Sir James Edward Smith, the first President of the Linnean Society of London.

Text: Elisabeth Långström