Adventures in a Strange Paradise ‐ Utopia in “Nicolai Klimii Iter subterraneum”*

Ludvig Holberg's Niels Klim provides an example of a text in which a therne common to eighteenth‐century Europe ‐ the utopian vision ‐ intersects with a literary convention common to Western letters ‐ the descent to the world below through a cave. Originally written in Latin in order that it be read throughout Europe, the book contains several aspects characteristic of the Zeitgeist of eighteenth‐century philosophical and literary thought while, at the same time, its treatment of the utopian theme may well point to a possible standard by which the synoptic depictions of utopia may be distinguished from those belonging to the much larger number of more traditional utopian texts written in a century that was to a great degree obsessed with the notion of creating a perfect society.