by Ib Svane
On the Swedish west coast, where the Skagerrak meets the Kattegat, is a fjord called Gullmarsfjorden, or Gullmarn. At the mouth of the fjord is the island of Skaftö with a marine laboratory called Kristineberg. It has been there for a long time, but a few years after the discovery of the so-called reverse Flynn effect in the mid-1990s, it changed. The laboratory was expanded to a larger and more modern research facility, built to accommodate a new breed of scientists following the political agenda of the day with the view that scientists are not individuals but only expendable pieces of a larger structure.
Across the fjord is the town of Lysekil. It was once a bathing resort favoured by Stockholm socialites where rich people could enjoy warm spas or a swim in the sea within the bathhouse’s protective walls. Even King Oscar II chose Lysekil as his summer residence, living in the typical Swedish coastal houses and enjoying the company of beautiful young ladies. However, the lower classes in Lysekil were poor, living on a subsistence level by fishing or as low-paid workers in the granite quarry, providing cobblestones to the cities of Europe and elsewhere. But after the Second World War, life changed for the better and people prospered because of advances in education and science.
Before the change, science thrived at Kristineberg, supported by the mighty Swedish Academy of Sciences. The Old Norse name, Gullmarn, means “God’s Sea.” Lysekil and Kristineberg are at the mouth of Gullmarn, rising from the granite rocks as gates to the ocean and the wider world. The founders of Lysekil and Kristineberg envisaged just that — a harbour and a marine science laboratory open to the entire world.
After Kristineberg was founded, houses sprung up next to the laboratory, allowing scientists to visit and stay with their families. Scientist came from most of the world to spend the summer there while working in the laboratory, sharing their knowledge through cooperation, workshops, lectures, and teaching. Kristineberg became an international “hotspot” for marine science and biology. The scientists made many discoveries, proliferating into medical research of outstanding importance. Despite its relative isolation, Kristineberg became the place to be for young, aspiring marine scientists.
Then, the reverse Flynn effect took its hold on Kristineberg and many other similar places around the world. During the 20th century, a substantial and long-sustained increase in intelligence test scores, measured in many parts of the world, ended. The scores fell — an ongoing reverse Flynn effect, the decline in IQ scores.
Initially, nobody noticed, but soon it was discovered that primary school students failed to meet the educational standard required. The political answer was to invest more in education — but to no avail. Stubbornly, the IQ scores continued to fall. Scientists responded by demanding more money for research facilities, and, as in Kristineberg, the facilities were expanded, accommodating more students, scientists, and staff, turning laboratories into expensive bureaucratic organisations. Politicians demanded higher levels of efficiency and, most of all, a reorganisation. They dumped studies in the humanities, including history and philosophy, comparative biology, evolutionary biology, taxonomy, and many more disciplines in the gutter to the benefit of research supporting the political, industrial, and military complexes. The politicians wanted returns on their investments, and fast. Scientists were organised in centres called Centre of Innovation, Centre of Excellence, or the like, but there was neither innovation nor excellence. Human intelligence declined towards a new period of the Dark Ages, fulfilling earlier scientists’ prophesies postulating that the rise and decline in human endeavour follows a 500 to 1000-year cyclic pattern.
Wars and falling food production made people refugees, seeking migration to other countries, like what happened in the aftermath of the Roman Empire’s fall. Despair made men angry and women weak, affecting hormonal patterns, leading to male aggression, and allowing new policies to emerge. So-called “strong men” appeared, arguing for democracy to be abandoned and replaced with totalitarianism, larger armies, and stronger borders. Wars and infectious diseases rampaged through populations with declining birth rates and increasing mortality rates beyond anything seen before. Over a short time, populations declined, isolating humans in small pockets, or tribes, afraid that even a slight contact with others would lead to certain death.
After years of tribal isolation, the struggle for survival was devastating, and many humans did not survive.
Then, the cyclic evolution of human endeavour took another turn — genetic drift. Increasingly, as the human population declined and became more fragmented, propagation became a regulated tribal affair. Parents were responsible for their children, but cultural and tribal affairs regulated children’s education and marriages. Gender separation in life, work and warfare ensured tribal survival; men were warriors while women took care of food production, feeding and the household. The panmictic lifestyle of random mating, characterising the years leading up to the top of the evolutionary cycle, was over. But genetic drift ensured some mutations to be fixed, allowing the difference in mental and physical capacity, although slight, to distinguish between the successes of tribes. A new era had begun.
In early spring, a fisher paddled his dugout canoe from the inner part of Gullmarn towards the archipelago. He was on his way to collect the first eggs laid by nesting seabirds; eiders and seagulls. His father had taught him that if he in spring collects one egg from each nest, the birds will compensate for the loss by laying another one. It was not allowed at other times because the tribal elders, supported by their high priest, had deemed the area prohibited because of ruins on both sides of the fjord. They didn’t know the origins of the ruins and thought they had been the houses of evil giants guarding the fjord. The high priest had selected the fisher for the task because of his egg-collecting skills, personal integrity, and courage. He had been in the archipelago before, but he still had to obey the tribe and was instructed to keep well clear of land when he passed through the mouth of the fjord because evil spirits were waiting, and if not careful, he would be taken, as had so many before him.
The fisher was not afraid but paddled on, looking straight forward and firmly avoiding the inner urge to look to the sides. He kept his course.
Before long, he was among the many rocky islands that make up the archipelago. The fisher went ashore, enjoying the spring warmth and the shining sun. He collected eggs from the nests among the Rosa Sea Thrifts’ flowering patches but did not think of much more than the expected welcoming smiles he would see when returning to his tribe. It had been a long, cold winter. The game was scarce, and there was not much else to eat, but mosses and the few fishes caught when fishing through holes made in the ice. The prospect of providing food made the fisher happy, and he focused on his egg collecting. Rarely did he look up, but if he had, he would have seen threatening, dark clouds rolling in from the West. A wind gust blew in his face, and he finally saw the dark clouds. The fisher had packed the eggs into the bark baskets he had brought along. Now, he quickly carried and loaded all the bark baskets into the dugout canoe, jumped in and hastily paddled towards the mouth of Gullmarn.
At first, it was an easy paddle. The westerly wind pushed the canoe ahead in bursts, but soon the waves spilt over and into the canoe. The fisher bailed and paddled in concert, bringing him close to the mouth of the fjord. Then the rain came. Gusts of wind and heavy rain whipped his back. He bailed quickly and used his paddle to steer the canoe, barely maintaining control and avoiding capsize. It was a struggle to stay afloat. Out of the rain, he saw land close on his right side. It was an outcrop from an island, he thought.
A thought flew through his mind, lee, lee, and with a few powerful strokes of his paddle, he got around the outcrop. The rain from the West was heavy, and now it was straight in his face. He could hardly see, and it was painful. He paddled hard, following the opposite side of the outcrop. ‘Where is the bay?’ He thought, but he could only see rocks. Every time he bailed, the wind forced the canoe backwards, threatening to drag him back into the waves. He took his chance and lowered his torso to avoid the wind, and with forceful strokes of the paddle, pulled the canoe forward and in between two large rocks. He had seen bladder wrack fronds on the surface and thought that it might be shallow. The fisher quickly jumped into the water, and to his relief, he stood on a gravel bottom. He bailed the canoe and pulled it further along the rocks. The rocks were slippery from the rain, but as he pulled forward, the boulders became flat, and eventually, he stood on a narrow sandy beach holding on to a rope attached to the canoe.
The fisher sat exhausted in the sand, but soon, he raised and pulled the canoe further up and into the grass, securing the rope to a small rock. He had to get the eggs out of the rain and into shelter. In the heavy rain and wind, he walked further away from the shore. The fisher reached what he thought to be a cliff face sheltering him from the rain, but he saw a large flat block of grey rock protruding in a massive overhang as he looked up. The earth underneath was full of rubble with no grass or plant growth; it was not dry. Further in, the grey slab disappeared into the ground, and he found a dry spot. He ran out into the rain and came back with his bark baskets, one by one.
The bark baskets took up all the dry space, so the fisher tried to dig further in using his hands, but it was too hard. He looked around for something to use for digging, but the gravel stones were polished round, and he wanted something flat. The fisher crawled around on his knees, searching among the larger rubble of unusual stones. He spotted an edge of something flat sticking up from the ground. He pulled it out. It was a piece of metal of a kind he had not seen before, but that didn’t bother him. He had a shovel, and that’s what mattered to the fisher. Back among his bark baskets, he dug the gravel out, making a dry place for his eggs and a sleeping area for himself. He lay down and listened to the relentless wind and rain. The fisher fell asleep.
The sun rose, and the light woke up the fisher. He crawled out on all fours, happy to see that all the eggs and the bark baskets were still there. The fisher grabbed the metal piece and ran down to his dugout — it was still on the sand. He looked at the metal piece and realised that it had an inscription. He felt it was the metal piece which had brought him good luck and dropped it into the dugout. The fisher loaded his bark baskets into the dugout, pushed it out on the water, jumped on board, and paddled away. The wind had dropped, and the sun was shining. Not looking to either side but only forward, he paddled into the fjord relieved and happy for his good luck. Hours later, he arrived safely at his tribal village.
Many people had gathered at the shore when the fisher arrived. They had been looking anxiously for him, particularly his family and children. The high priest came out of the crowd, greeting him with open arms, and many hands brought the bark baskets with the eggs to the centre of the village. The fisher was a hero.
After the eggs were distributed among the members of the tribe, the fisher and the high priest sat down at the fire enjoying a long-awaited meal. The high priest asked where he had spent the night. The fisher told his story about the strong wind and the relentless rain, and that he barely got to safety. He told the high priest about the big grey rock overhang and how he dug out a shelter with a piece of strange metal. The fisher got up, walked down to his dugout canoe, and fetched the metal piece. He handed it to the high priest.
The high priest was the only one in the tribe who could read; he had two old books given to him by his father when he died. His father had taught him to read the books, and his father before him. The knowledge was passed from father to son through many generations. It was the books and the skills to read them that made his family high priests as long as he could remember. At tribal celebrations, baptising, weddings and burials, the high priest had for generations read the stories in the books to the amusement and fear of the listeners. One book was called The Bible, and the other was Pippi Longstocking. Often, the high priest could not read the text, so he invented the story or part of it himself. When he read to a listening crowd that the full name of Pippi was Pippilotta Viktualia Rullgardina Krusmynta Efraimsdotter Långstrump, they all laughed. The children quickly forgot the story, but not the high priest. Every time he read a story from Pippi Longstocking, the children could not remember that they had heard it before. It made the high priest feel important.
The Bible caused the high priest a lot of trouble because it had large sections in an old language he did not master. His father called it Latin, but the high priest did not know what it meant. Over time pages were lost, although his father, grandfather, and many generations before kept the books as safe as possible. The books were carried along as sacred relics kept in an ancient box.
The high priest looked at the piece of metal the fisher had brought back. He turned it around until he could recognise the inscription as a text he knew. He read the word “science.” There were other words, but they were barely visible. The high priest told the fisher that he thought it was old, even perhaps ancient. The high priest got up with the metal piece in his hand and walked into the tribal sanctuary where he kept the books. After a while, he came back without the metal piece and sat down next to the fisher.
Thoughtfully, he turned towards the fisher and said, ‘You brought not only eggs, but you have also found a sacred relic and brought it back to the tribe. We are all grateful. It will bring us good luck. I think the word inscribed on the metal piece is the name of a man called Science — the one who looks forward. From now on we will call the place where you slept in safety, The Ruins of Science.’