The Oera Linda Book

The Oera Linda Book has a long and controversial history. Most people believe it is a hoax. Very few people believe it is a genuine manuscript handed down from Heathen times generation to generation until today. In his introduction, Mr. Wyatt Kaldenberg gives his theory that The Oera Linda Book is a fantasy novel, mistaken for an authentic Heathen text.Mr. Kaldenberg tells us, "When Bram Stoker's Dracula, Orson Wells' The War of the Worlds, and the Blair Witch Project all first came out many people believed they were true because they were epistolary fiction. Were they hoaxes just because some people mistook them for being true? I think not. I believe The Oera Linda Book is fiction people misconstrued as non-fiction." Kaldenberg goes on, "In 1978, I was first sent a copy of The Oera Linda Book by N.J. Teraplin who was, at the time, the former leader of the recently disbanded Runic Society out of Milwaukee. Teraplin believed the book to be genuine. I had a number of problems with it. However, N.J. Teraplin was a true believer in the book, and he saw it as a sort of Heathen Bible. The leader of the Odinist Fellowship, Else Christensen, published The Oera Linda Book in about 1979 and sold it through The Odinist newsletter. It was the topic of some debate among American Heathens during the 1970s and early '80s, then it faded out of fashion in the mid-1980s. No one really talks about it any more."Kaldenberg continues, "The Oera Linda Book has a remarkable history. It was very popular for a few years after it was first published, then it was discredited and fell from the limelight. The Oera Linda Book has greatly influenced the liberal New Age movement and is the source of many of Wicca's basic ideas. The Wiccan myth that secret pagan knowledge was passed down from generation to generation to today comes largely from the Oera Linda Book. The idea that Europe was dominated by Goddess worship, until a male sky God cult invaded our homeland and suppressed the original feminist society comes from the Oera Linda Book. Much of the New Age recreation of the old lost continent of Atlantis myth into a modern day myth came from the Oera Linda Book and other sources. The Oera Linda Book ties all these New Age occult ideas together with liberalism and egalitarianism." The Oera Linda Book, begins, "You must preserve these books with body and soul. They contain the history of all our people, as well as of our forefathers. Last year I saved them in the flood, as well as you and your mother; but they got wet, and therefore began to perish. In order not to lose them, I copied them on foreign paper. In case you inherit them, you must copy them likewise, and your children must do so too, so that they may never be lost. Written at Liuwert, in the three thousand four hundred and forty-ninth year after Atland was submerged-that is, according to the Christian reckoning, the year 1256."The Oera Linda Book ends with, "Thereupon all was confusion. Askar, who thought that all was going on well, landed with his ships on the other side of the Scheldt; but there they were already aware of his coming, and were on their guard. He had to flee as quickly as he had come, and was himself taken prisoner. The Gauls did not know whom they had taken, so he was afterwards exchanged for a noble Gaul whom Askar's people had taken with them. While all this was going on, the Magyars went about audaciously over the lands of our neighbours. Near Egmuda, where formerly the citadel Forana had stood, they built a church larger and richer than that which Askar had built at Staveren. They said afterwards that Askar had lost the battle against the Gauls, because the people did not believe that Wodin could help them, and therefore they would not pray to him. They went about stealing young children, whom they kept and brought up in the mysteries of their abominable doctrines. Were there people who..."