Excerpt

“Settled so early it is mentioned in Norse mythology, the Uppsala region is the oldest part of Sweden, long the seat of the pagan Svea kings, whose deities were Thor, Freyr, and Odin, and whose burial mounds still rise in nearby Gamla (Old) Uppsala. The city today stretches out along the flatlands by the Fyris River, then ripples up a tall glacial ridge, culminating at its highest elevation in a massive 17th century castle whose great bulk is considerably leavened by having been painted pink — the color of a poached salmon.”

"The epic advances that occurred in this garden suggest large and interesting questions, including, What do we really mean by order? Anyone who has ever tried to organize an ordinary clothes closet has glimpsed the abyss that lurks in taxonomy. Massive uncertainties arise because, as Stephen Jay Gould once memorably put it, classifying is not a 'glorified form of filing,' but a proposal about the nature of reality itself. The handsome house where Linnaeus lived and tackled these questions is tucked into the southwestern corner of the garden, its rooms chock-full of aura."

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