LIFE AT HAMMARBY 
327 
received from the King formal permission to discharge 
the office to which he had been appointed fourteen 
years before, and it was two years before he received 
the appropriate salary. 
Of the various estates he possessed, Hammarby 
pleased Linne the most, and it was there that he 
preferred to live. The former possessor inhabited a 
little wooden house of one story, and here Linne lived 
with his family until, in 1762, he built the larger 
central dwelling, simply but comfortably furnished. 
The best rooms being on the first floor, he used them, 
for there was the drawing-room, with paintings of 
plants from the tropics on the walls, his bedroom being 
adorned in the same fashion. Above the door of his 
bedroom was inscribed “ Innocue vivito, Numen 
adest! ” On a big boulder behind the house, he had 
engraved in runic letters, “ Riddar Karl Linn6 kopte 
Hammarby-Safja 1758 55 [The Knight Carl Linne 
bought Hammarby and Safja in 1758]. 
Thus Linne obtained a convenient and quiet 
home in the country to which he could go during the 
holidays, away from the unhealthy part of Uppsala 
where his official house was situated, and where 
epidemics, such as the so-called Uppsala fever, often 
raged. No further building was intended, before an 
extensive fire in 1766 in Uppsala threatened to des¬ 
troy his house. In haste his collections and books 
were taken out and stored in a barn outside the town. 
Writing to Back, he said, “ Our Lord was gracious 
and preserved me this time. Actually one-third of 
the town was burnt down. I removed all my pos¬ 
sessions to a barn outside the town and then to the 
country, where they now lie in the utmost confusion/' 
Fear for a similar fate caused him in 1768 to build a 
museum on an eminence on his property, having the 
most splendid view. Here he had his herbarium, 
zoophytes, shells, insects and minerals, and thither all 
curious people came to see them. This “ little back¬ 
room/’ “ pleasure house on my hill,” “ my castle 
