Ole Worm (May 13, 1588 – August 31, 1655), (pronounced "Olə Vorm") who often went by the Latinized form of his name
Olaus Wormius, was a
DanishDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
physicianA physician — also known as medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, medical doctor, or simply doctor — practices the ancient profession of medicine, which is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease or injury...
and antiquary.
Worm was the son of Willum Worm who served as the mayor of
AarhusAarhus, or Århus , is the second largest city and the principal port of Denmark, situated on the peninsula of Jutland. Aarhus is the seat of the council of Aarhus municipality with 303,318 inhabitants and claims the unofficial title "Capital of Jutland"...
, and was made a rich man by the inheritance from his father. Ole Worm's grandfather Johan Worm, a magistrate in Aarhus, was a Lutheran who had fled from
ArnhemArnhem is a city and municipality, situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland and located near the river Nederrijn as well as near the St. Jansbeek, which was the source of the city's development. Arnhem has 146,095 residents as one of the...
in
GelderlandGelderland is a province of the Netherlands, located in the central eastern part of the country. The capital city is Arnhem. The two other major cities, Nijmegen and Apeldoorn have more inhabitants. Other major regional centers in Gelderland are Wageningen, Ede, Zutphen, Doetinchem, Harderwijk,...
while it was under
CatholicThe word Catholic is derived from the Greek adjective , meaning "universal". In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages. For some, the term "Catholic Church" refers to the church in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, made up of the Latin Rite and the 22...
rule.
Ole Worm (May 13, 1588 – August 31, 1655), (pronounced "Olə Vorm") who often went by the Latinized form of his name
Olaus Wormius, was a
DanishDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
physicianA physician — also known as medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, medical doctor, or simply doctor — practices the ancient profession of medicine, which is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease or injury...
and antiquary.
Life
Worm was the son of Willum Worm who served as the mayor of
AarhusAarhus, or Århus , is the second largest city and the principal port of Denmark, situated on the peninsula of Jutland. Aarhus is the seat of the council of Aarhus municipality with 303,318 inhabitants and claims the unofficial title "Capital of Jutland"...
, and was made a rich man by the inheritance from his father. Ole Worm's grandfather Johan Worm, a magistrate in Aarhus, was a Lutheran who had fled from
ArnhemArnhem is a city and municipality, situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland and located near the river Nederrijn as well as near the St. Jansbeek, which was the source of the city's development. Arnhem has 146,095 residents as one of the...
in
GelderlandGelderland is a province of the Netherlands, located in the central eastern part of the country. The capital city is Arnhem. The two other major cities, Nijmegen and Apeldoorn have more inhabitants. Other major regional centers in Gelderland are Wageningen, Ede, Zutphen, Doetinchem, Harderwijk,...
while it was under
CatholicThe word Catholic is derived from the Greek adjective , meaning "universal". In the context of Christian ecclesiology, it has a rich history and several usages. For some, the term "Catholic Church" refers to the church in full communion with the Bishop of Rome, made up of the Latin Rite and the 22...
rule. He married Dorothea Fincke, the daughter of a friend and colleague,
Thomas FinckeThomas Fincke was a Danish mathematician and physicist, and a professor at the University of Copenhagen for more than 60 years.Fincke was born in Flensburg, Schleswig and died in Copenhagen...
, a mathematician who invented the terms '
tangentIn geometry, the tangent line to a curve at a given point is the straight line that "just touches" the curve at that point...
' and '
secantSecant is a term in mathematics. It comes from the Latin secare . It can refer to:* a secant line, in geometry* the secant method, a root-finding algorithm in numerical analysis, based on secant lines to graphs of functions...
'.
Ole Worm was something of a
perpetual studentA perpetual student, also known as a professional student , is a college or university attendee who re-enrolls for several years, typically more than what is necessary to obtain a given degree....
: after attending the
grammar schoolA grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally schools teaching classical languages but more recently academically-oriented types of secondary school.The original purpose of...
of Aarhus, he continued his education at the University of Marburg in 1605, received his Doctor of Medicine degree from the
University of BaselThe University of Basel is located at Basel, Switzerland.-History:Founded in 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university....
in 1611, and received a Master of Arts degree from the
University of CopenhagenThe University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
in 1617. The rest of his academic career was spent in Copenhagen, where he taught
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
,
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
,
physicsPhysics is a natural science; it is the study of matter and its motion through spacetime and all that derives from these, such as energy and force...
, and
medicineMedicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
. He was personal physician to
King Christian IV of DenmarkChristian IV was the king of Denmark and Norway from 1588 until his death. He is sometimes referred to as Christian Firtal in Denmark and Christian Kvart or Quart in Norway.-Biography:...
. Somewhat remarkable for a physician of the time, he remained in the city of Copenhagen to minister to the sick during an
epidemicDefining an epidemic can be subjective, depending in part on what is "expected". An epidemic may be restricted to one locale , more general or even global...
of the
Black DeathPlague is a deadly infectious disease caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis . Plague is a zoonotic, primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas. Plague is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death and devastation it brought...
.
Scientific and cultural significance
In medicine, Worm's chief contributions were in
embryologyEmbryology is the study of the development of an embryo. An embryo is defined as any organism in an early stage well before birth or hatching, or in plants, before germination occurs....
. The Wormian bones (small bones that fill gaps in the
cranialThe skull is a bony structure found in the head of many animals. The skull supports the structures of the face and protects the head against injury....
sutureIn anatomy, a suture is a fairly rigid join between two or more hard elements of an animal, with or without significant overlap of the elements....
s) are named after him.
Worm is also known to have been a collector of early
literatureLiterature is the art of written works. Literally translated, the word means "acquaintance with letters" , and therefore the academic study of literature is known as Letters...
in the Scandinavian languages. He also wrote a number of treatises on runestones and collected texts that were written in
runicThe runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages prior to the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
. Worm received letters of introduction to the
bishopA bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
s of
DenmarkDenmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe and the senior member of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries; southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and it is bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark borders both the Baltic and the North Sea...
and
NorwayNorway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a country in Northern Europe occupying the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as Jan Mayen and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard under the Spitsbergen Treaty...
from the King of Denmark due to the King's interest and approval. In 1626 Worm published his
Fasti Danici, or "Danish Chronology," containing the results of his researches into runic lore; and in 1636
Runir seu Danica literatura antiquissima, "Runes: the oldest Danish literature," a compilation of transcribed runic texts. In 1643 his
Danicorum Monumentorum "Danish Monuments" was published. The first written study of runestones, it is also one of the only surviving sources for depictions of numerous runestones and inscriptions from Denmark, some of which are now lost.
As a natural philosopher, Worm assembled a great collection of
curiositiesFor the 2002 novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, see The Cabinet of Curiosities. For the 2009 Jane's Addiction box set, see A Cabinet of Curiosities...
, which ranged from native artifacts collected from the New World, to
taxidermedTaxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display or for other sources of study. Taxidermy can be done on all species of animals including mammals, birds, nematodes, reptiles and amphibians...
animals, to
fossilFossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers is known as the fossil record...
s, on which he speculated greatly. Worm compiled engravings of his collection, along with his speculations about their meaning, into a catalog of his
Museum Wormianum, published after his death, in 1655. As a scientist, Worm straddled the line between modern and pre-modern. As an example, in a very modern,
empiricalIn philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from sense experience. Empiricism is one of several competing views about how we know "things," part of the branch of philosophy called epistemology, or "the Theory of Knowledge"...
mode, Worm determined that the
unicornA unicorn is a mythological creature. Though the modern popular image of the unicorn is sometimes that of a horse differing only in the horn on its forehead, the traditional unicorn also has a billy-goat beard, a lion's tail, and cloven hooves—these distinguish it from a horse...
did not exist and that purported unicorn horns were really simply from the
narwhalThe narwhal is a medium-sized toothed whale that lives year-round in the Arctic. One of two species of whale in the Monodontidae family, along with the Beluga whale, the narwhal males are distinguished by a characteristic long, straight, helical tusk extending from their upper left jaw...
. At the same time, however, he then wondered if the anti-poison properties associated with a unicorn's horn still held true, and undertook experiments in poisoning pets and then serving them ground up narwhal horn (his poisoning must have been relatively mild because he reported that they did recover).
His other empirical investigations included providing convincing evidence that
lemmingLemmings are small rodents, usually found in or near the Arctic, in tundra biomes. They are subniveal animals and together with the voles and muskrats, they make up the subfamily Arvicolinae , which forms part of the largest mammal radiation by far, the superfamily Muroidea, which also includes the...
s were rodents and not, as some thought,
spontaneously generatedIn the natural sciences, abiogenesis, or "chemical evolution", is the study of how life on Earth could have arisen from inanimate matter. It should not be confused with evolution, which is the study of how groups of living things change over time...
by the air (Worm 1655, p. 327), and also by providing the first detailed drawing of a bird of paradise proving that they did, despite much popular speculation to the opposite, indeed have feet like regular birds. Worm's primary use of his natural history collection was for the purpose of
pedagogyPedagogy is the study of being a teacher. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction.Pedagogy is also sometimes referred to as the correct use of teaching strategies . For example, Paulo Freire referred to his method of teaching adults as "critical pedagogy"...
.
Worm in popular literature
In more recent years, the real Worm (and his various accomplishments) have been supplanted to many by a
fictional characterA character is the representation of a person in a narrative or dramatic work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr through its Latin transcription character, the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its...
with his name.
H. P. LovecraftHoward Phillips Lovecraft was an American author of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, known then simply as weird fiction....
created the character
Olaus Wormius as a translator from
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
into
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Roman conquest, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe...
of his notorious fictional
grimoireA grimoire is a textbook of magic. Books of this genre, typically giving instructions for invoking angels or demons, performing divination and gaining magical powers, have circulated throughout Europe since the Middle Ages....
, the
NecronomiconThe Necronomicon is a fictional book appearing in the stories by horror novelist H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...
. Lovecraft also writes him as a
DominicanThe Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic in the early 13th century in France...
priestA priest or priestess is a person having the authority or power to administer religious rites; in particular, rites of sacrifice to, and propitiation of, a deity or deities. Their office or position is the priesthood, a term which may also apply to such persons collectively.Priests and priestesses...
, and misplaces him in the thirteenth century.
External links
- Works of Ole Worm, dgitalised par by the Université de Strasbourg
- Computus Runicus. a Runic calendar
A calendar is a system of organizing days for social, religious, commercial, or administrative purposes. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months, and years. The name given to each day is known as a date. Periods in a calendar are usually, though not...
collected by Wormius in Gotland' is a county, province, municipality and diocese of Sweden and the largest island in the Baltic Sea. At 3,140 square kilometers in area, it makes up less than one percent of Sweden's total land area. The region also includes the small islands of Fårö and Gotska Sandön to the north, and the tiny...
.
- "Runologia" of Grunnavikur-Jon