Axel, the enthusiastic and excitable nephew of the illustrious professor and

mineralogist Otto Lidenbrock, narrates the tale of the journey to the center of the
Earth.
On May 24, 1863, Lidenbrock consults a recently-acquired runic manuscript of the 12th
century and discovers an encrypted message from 16th-century Icelandic
alchemist Arne Saknussemm. Lidenbrock is excited, and believes that Saknussemm
wants to share a scientific discovery. The professor wants to decipher the message but
has trouble doing so.
Luckily, Axel manages to decrypt the document. Arne Saknussemm reports that the
traveler who climbs up on the crater of Snæfells volcano can get into the center of the
Earth; he apparently undertook this journey himself. Axel knows that his uncle will
want to make a similar attempt and decides not to tell him of the find, but eventually
gives in. Lidenbrock immediately starts planning the journey and tells his nephew to
come along as well. Axel is reluctant until his fiancée Grauben, his uncle’s ward, tells
him that he ought to make the excursion.
Lidenbrock and Axel leave Hamburg and travel to Iceland. In Reykjavik they hire a guide
named Hans, a placid and stoic man of large size. The three of them climb the volcano
crater and find a slope downward. They manage to penetrate the depths of the Earth.
When they reach a crossroads, Lidenbrock first chooses the wrong route; this initial
path is a dead end and they are forced to turn back. Meanwhile, their supply of water
runs out and it seems that the expedition is doomed to fail. Throughout this stage, Axel
is exceedingly anxious and pessimistic. He is intrigued, though, that he and his fellow
adventurers seem to be venturing back into the prehistoric past in terms of geology.
Hans leaves his companions to go in search of water. He finds a source that flows
through the wall of a cliff and leads the others there. After Hans drills a hole in the wall,
a small brook flows forth: this body of water is named after Hans.

At one point in the journey, Axel is separated from his uncle and guide; he despairs that
he will die of hunger and thirst in the dark cavern. Thankfully, an auditory trick (much
like the use of sound in cathedrals and caverns) allows them to reconnect.

The travelers soon come to the shore of a vast underground sea. There they see huge
mushrooms, which are identified as the giant champignons. In addition, there are more
forms of fungi and bizarre plants. The explorers know that they have to cross a sea and
do so, but this sea is much larger than they expect. On their watery route, they see a
battle between massive, ancient creatures—the ichthyosaur and plesiosaur.

As the journey continues, the weather shifts and a massive storm begins. The
adventurers are tossed about on the waves; thunder and lightning sound and spark all
around. An electric ball alights on the explorers' raft and flames burst out. They only
survive by lashing themselves down. Finally the storm quiets and deposits Axel and the
others on the other side of the sea. It is not long, though, before the compass reveals that
they actually ended up on the same side from whence they began. Lidenbrock is at first
enraged, but then cheerfully decides to plow onward. Axel is consistently amazed at his
uncle’s stubbornness and pluck, and wishes that they could just go home.
Before leaving, though, the adventurers explore this other part of the shore and
discover incredible fossilized specimens from the earliest days of planetary life. They
even find entire preserved human bodies. When they wander into a Tertiary-period
forest of incredible foliage, they catch sight of mastodons and a twelve-foot man. Not
wanting to be detected, Axel and his companions flee quickly. They also discover a
rusted knife and markings on a rock; Saknussemm was there and had found the route to
the center. It is a twist of fate that the storm actually brought the expedition back to
where it needed to be.

Axel and his companions continue along Saknussemm’s path, but are stopped by a huge
boulder that must have lodged in the passageway sometime between his journey and
their own. Now flush with zeal for the journey, Axel suggests using firepower to blow an
opening. The explorers set this plan in motion and wait on their raft.

After the explosion occurs, Axel, his uncle, and Hans realize that they've created a
disruption. The entire sea goes rushing through the aperture and the three men are
carried wildly along on the waves. This experience is terrifying; they almost perish.
After a time, they realize that they are moving vertically up the shaft of the mountain.
The heat grows and the walls crumble around them. Lidenbrock is not frightened and
knows that this eruption is what will take them up to the surface of the Earth.

The raft tumbles out of the volcano of Etna in Stromboli, a site in the middle of the
Mediterranean. Mercifully, all three men survive and find themselves in a lush, green
environment. They eat fruit and drink from a stream. Stromboli fisherman assume that
the subterranean explorers have survived a shipwreck and help them get home.

After his safe return, Lidenbrock becomes famous and renowned for his narrative and
for lectures on his journeys.

The story begins in May 1863, in the Lidenbrock house in Hamburg, Germany, with Professor Lidenbrock
rushing home to peruse his latest purchase, an original runic manuscript of an Icelandic saga written
by Snorri Sturluson (Snorre Tarleson in some versions of the story), "Heimskringla"; the chronicle of the
Norwegian kings who ruled over Iceland. While looking through the book, Lidenbrock and his nephew
Axel find a coded note written in runic script along with the name of a 16th-century Icelandic alchemist,
Arne Saknussemm. (This was a first indication of Verne's love for cryptography. Coded, cryptic, or
incomplete messages as a plot device would continue to appear in many of his works and in each case
Verne would go a long way to explain not only the code used but also the mechanisms used to retrieve
the original text.) Lidenbrock and Axel transliterate the runic characters into Latin letters, revealing a
message written in a seemingly bizarre code. Lidenbrock attempts a decipherment, deducing the message
to be a kind of transposition cipher; but his results are as meaningless as the original.
Professor Lidenbrock decides to lock everyone in the house and force himself and the others (Axel, and
the maid, Martha) to go without food until he cracks the code. Axel discovers the answer when fanning
himself with the deciphered text: Lidenbrock's decipherment was correct, and only needs to be read
backwards to reveal sentences written in rough Latin.[a] Axel decides to keep the secret hidden from
Professor Lidenbrock, afraid of what the Professor might do with the knowledge, but after two days
without food he cannot stand the hunger and reveals the secret to his uncle. Lidenbrock translates the
note, which is revealed to be a medieval note written by Saknussemm, who claims to have discovered a
passage to the centre of the Earth via Snæfell in Iceland. In what Axel calls bad Latin, the deciphered
message reads:

The Runic cryptogram

In Snefflls [sic] Iokulis kraterem kem delibat umbra Skartaris Iulii intra kalendas deskende,
audas uiator, te [sic] terrestre kentrum attinges. Kod feki. Arne Saknussemm.
In slightly better Latin, with errors amended:
In Sneffels Jokulis craterem, quem delibat umbra Scartaris, Julii intra kalendas descende,
audax viator, et terrestre centrum attinges; quod feci. Arne Saknussemm
which, when translated into English, reads:
Descend, bold traveller, into the crater of the jökull of Snæfell, which the shadow of
Scartaris touches (lit: tastes) before the Kalends of July, and you will attain the centre of
the earth. I did it. Arne Saknussemm

Snæfellsjökull.

Professor Lidenbrock is a man of astonishing impatience, and departs for Iceland immediately, taking his
reluctant nephew with him. Axel, who, in comparison, is anti-adventurous, repeatedly tries to reason
with him, explaining his fears of descending into a volcano and putting forward various scientific theories
as to why the journey is impossible, but Professor Lidenbrock repeatedly keeps himself blinded against
Axel's point of view. After a rapid journey via Kiel and Copenhagen, they arrive in Reykjavík, where the
two procure the services of Hans Bjelke (a Danish-speaking Icelander eiderdown hunter) as their guide,
and travel overland to the base of the volcano.
In late June, they reach the volcano, which has three craters. According to Saknussemm's message, the
passage to the center of the Earth is through the one crater that is touched by the shadow of a nearby
mountain peak at noon. However, the text also states that this is only true during the last days of June.
During the next few days, with July rapidly approaching, the weather is too cloudy for any shadows. Axel
silently rejoices, hoping this will force his uncle – who has repeatedly tried to impart courage to him only
to succeed in making him even more cowardly still – to give up the project and return home. Alas for
Axel, however, on the second to last day, the sun comes out and the mountain peak shows the correct
crater to take.
After descending into the crater, the three travellers set off into the bowels of the Earth, encountering
many strange phenomena and great dangers, including a chamber filled with firedamp, and steep-sided
wells around the "path". After taking a wrong turn, they run out of water and Axel almost dies, but Hans
taps into a neighbouring subterranean river. Lidenbrock and Axel name the resulting stream the
"Hansbach" in his honour and the three are saved. At another point, Axel becomes separated from the
others and is lost several miles from them. Luckily, a strange acoustic phenomenon allows him to
communicate with them from some miles away, and they are soon reunited.
After descending many miles, following the course of the Hansbach, they reach an unimaginably vast
cavern. This underground world is lit by electrically charged gas at the ceiling, and is filled with a very
deep subterranean ocean, surrounded by a rocky coastline covered in petrified trees and
giant mushrooms. The travelers build a raft out of trees and set sail. The Professor names this sea the
"Lidenbrock Sea" and the port as "Port Gräuben", after the name of his goddaughter. While on the water,
they see several prehistoric creatures such as a giant Ichthyosaurus, which fights with a Plesiosaurus and
wins. After the battle between the monsters, the party comes across an island with a huge geyser, which
Lidenbrock names "Axel Island".
A lightning storm again threatens to destroy the raft and its passengers, but instead throws them onto
the coastline. This part of the coast, Axel discovers, is alive with prehistoric plant and animal life forms,
including giant insects and a herd of mastodons. On a beach covered with bones, Axel discovers
an oversized human skull. Axel and Lidenbrock venture some way into the prehistoric forest, where
Professor Lidenbrock points out, in a shaky voice, a prehistoric human, more than twelve feet in height,
leaning against a tree and watching a herd of mastodons. Axel cannot be sure if he has really seen the
man or not, and he and Professor Lidenbrock debate whether or not a proto-human civilization actually
exists so far underground. The three wonder if the creature is a man-like ape, or an ape-like man. The
sighting of the creature is considered the most alarming part of the story, and the explorers decide that it
is better not to alert it to their presence as they fear it may be hostile.
The travellers continue to explore the coastline, and find a passageway marked by Saknussemm as the
way ahead. However, it is blocked by what appears to be a recent cave-in and two of the three, Hans and
the Professor, despair at being unable to hack their way through the granite wall. The adventurers plan to
blast the rock with gun cotton and paddle out to sea to escape the blast. Upon executing the plan,
however, they discover that behind the rockfall was a seemingly bottomless pit, not a passage to the
center of the Earth. The travellers are swept away as the sea rushes into the large open gap in the
ground. After spending hours being swept along at lightning speeds by the water, the raft ends up inside a
large volcanic chimney filling with water and magma. Terrified, the three are rushed upwards, through
stifling heat, and are ejected onto the surface from a side-vent of a stratovolcano. When they regain
consciousness, they discover that they have been ejected from Stromboli, a volcanic island located in
southern Italy. They return to Hamburg to great acclaim – Professor Lidenbrock is hailed as one of the
great scientists of history, Axel marries his sweetheart Gräuben, and Hans eventually returns to his
peaceful life in Iceland. The Professor has some regret that their journey was cut short.
At the very end of the book, Axel and Lidenbrock realize why their compass was behaving strangely after
their journey on the raft. They realize that the needle was pointing the wrong way after being struck by
an electric fireball which nearly destroyed the wooden raft.

Inspiration[edit]
The book was inspired by Charles Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man of 1863 (and probably
also influenced by Lyell's earlier ground-breaking work Principles of Geology, published 1830–33). By that
time geologists had abandoned a literal biblical account of Earth's development and it was generally
thought that the end of the last glacial period marked the first appearance of humanity, but Lyell drew on
new findings to put the origin of human beings much further back in the deep geological past. Lyell's book
also influenced Louis Figuier's 1867 second edition of La Terre avant le déluge ("The Earth before the
flood") which included dramatic illustrations of savage men and women wearing animal skins and wielding
stone axes, in place of the Garden of Eden shown in the 1863 edition.[1]
It is noteworthy that at the time of writing Verne had no hesitation with having sympathetic German
protagonists with whom the reader could identify. Verne's attitude to Germans would drastically change
in the aftermath of the 1871 Franco-Prussian War. After 1871, the sympathetic if eccentric Professor
Otto Lidenbrock would be replaced in Verne's fiction by the utterly evil and demonic Professor Schultze
of The Begum's Fortune.

Main characters[edit]
 Professor Otto Lidenbrock: a professor of geology.
 Axel: the nephew of Professor Lidenbrock, overcautious and unadventurous student.
 Hans Bjelke: a Danish-speaking Icelandic eiderduck hunter who becomes their guide; dependable,
resourceful and imperturbable.
 Gräuben: the goddaughter of Professor Lidenbrock with whom Axel is in love, from the Vierlande
area of Hamburg.
 Martha: the maid at the house of Professor Lidenbrock.

Prehistoric animals featured[edit]

 Deinotherium (teeth only)
 Pterichthys
 Dipterides – a two-finned fish
 Leptotherium – a gazelle-like creature
 Merycotherium – a cattle-like creature
 Lophiodon
 Anoplotherium
 Mastodon
 Megatherium
 Unidentified pterosaur, probably Pterodactylus
 Unknown species of giant bird, probably a teratorn
 Ichthyosaurus
 Plesiosaurus
 Glyptodon (shell only)