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What if the world beneath your feet makes your own society look stranger than anything underground?
In Ludvig Holberg’s A Journey to the World Under-Ground, Niels Klim enters a cave and discovers an entire world below. A young Norwegian scholar, he returns from studies in Copenhagen eager to prove his learning. But the countries he encounters offer more than curiosities: their habits, laws and beliefs turn his gaze back toward Europe.
Nazar holds many countries, and its inhabitants are often not even human in shape. Klim brings his vanity along for the journey. Quick to boast and sure of his own cleverness, he is a flawed guide through Holberg’s comic sketches of society. Courts, schools and churches all come under scrutiny as strange customs become a mirror for familiar ones.
What you’ll discover
- A world below Follow a curious scholar into a hidden world where European habits offer no reliable guide.
- The peoples of Nazar Encounter varied societies whose unfamiliar shapes and customs invite a fresh look at human life.
- A delightfully flawed traveller Watch Klim’s eagerness to prove himself rub against his certainty that he knows best.
- Power under scrutiny Explore comic portraits that question the ways courts, schools and churches shape a society.
- Strange lands, familiar questions Let an imaginary voyage sharpen your curiosity about learning, manners and the beliefs people defend.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you like travellers' tales with a satirical edge, if Gulliver and Candide are favourites, or if you love clever societies built on one odd rule.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A fall puts pride on trial
- Strange customs expose a visitor's certainty
- Useful ability matters more than learning
- Public honor follows service and fairness
- Other societies reveal the cost of extremes
- Wounded ambition becomes a dangerous proposal
- The right work needs the right person
- The narrator misses his own reflection
- A strange world questions familiar values
Who’s who
- Nicolas KlimiusA proud, poor Bergen graduate who falls into a hollow Earth and wants to win honor and rank that his own country denied him.
- PalmkaThe slow-thinking palm tree who judges Klimius at Keba and proves that a deliberate mind can be the wisest in the land.
- The Prince of PotuA calm, gentle ruler who prizes obedience, tolerance, and fitness for office, and who pardons Klimius yet will not change the law.
- The KadokiThe High Chancellor of Potu, who needs fourteen days to grasp a simple matter and wins unanimous agreement in the Senate for twenty years.
- The SyndicA quick-witted monkey senator in Martinia who laughs at Klimius, hires him as a chair-bearer, and makes laws between courses at dinner.
- AbelineKlimius's old friend in Bergen, who must be convinced that the strange traveler is truly the man who vanished into the cave.
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A Journey to the World Under-Ground
by Ludvig Holberg · 1741
A student falls down a Norwegian cave and lands among walking trees that judge him a fool.
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“Folly is to society what fermentation is to the stomach: too much or none at all is equally harmful.”
In short
What would you do if you fell through a cave in a Norwegian mountain and woke on a small planet where the trees walk, talk, and run the courts? That is the fate of Nicolas Klimius, a poor graduate of the University of Copenhagen, in 1665.
A Journey to the World Under-Ground at a glance
- Reading time
- About 4 h 50 min3 h 50 min fast, 5 h 45 min slow
- Length
- 69,500 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1741by Ludvig Holberg
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A hungry student falls into a hollow Earth
Klimius comes home to Bergen with honors and no money. Every road to advancement in Norway seems blocked. The cave on Fløyen draws him because it seems to breathe, with a murmur that the old scholars of the town cannot explain.
He lowers himself into the cave carrying a harpoon, but the rope breaks and he plunges through darkness for about a quarter-hour. Then a dim light grows, and he sees a small sun and unfamiliar stars. He reasons like a good graduate. This cannot be heaven, since nobody needs a rope and a harpoon there. So the Earth must be hollow.
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Details
- First published
- 1741
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 5 h 45 min
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Holberg, Ludvig. A Journey to the World Under-Ground. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-journey-to-the-world-under-ground.
Holberg, L. (2026). A journey to the world under-ground. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-journey-to-the-world-under-ground (Original work published 1741)
Holberg, Ludvig. A Journey to the World Under-Ground. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-journey-to-the-world-under-ground.
@book{holberg2026journey,
author = {Holberg, Ludvig},
title = {A Journey to the World Under-Ground},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/a-journey-to-the-world-under-ground},
note = {First published 1741}
}
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What is A Journey to the World Under-Ground about?
It follows Nicolas Klimius, a Norwegian graduate who falls through a cave into a hollow Earth. There he meets walking trees, monkeys, and talking animals, and each society mocks a habit of Europe.
Who wrote A Journey to the World Under-Ground and when?
Ludvig Holberg wrote it in Latin, and he died in 1754. It was first published in the 1740s. Its narrator is Nicholas Klimius, whose expedition begins in 1665 and whose life, according to Abeline's appendix, ends in 1695.
What does the planet Nazar stand for in the book?
Potu is a society of deliberate, honest trees that judge people by usefulness. Holberg uses it as a mirror to show how Europe's courts, titles, schools, and churches could look to an outsider.
The author
Ludvig Holberg
1684–1754 · Danish Norwegian playwright and historian
Ludvig Holberg (1684–1754) was a Danish-Norwegian writer, historian and philosopher. He was born in Bergen, Norway, and spent much of his life in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he taught at the university. He wrote plays, histories and essays. His novel A Journey to the World Under-Ground appeared in Latin in 1741.
“Folly is to society what fermentation is to the stomach: too much or none at all is equally harmful.”
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