The Oera Linda Book, from a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century
The Oera Linda Book presents itself as a translation of an extremely ancient Frisian manuscript, handed down for generations in the over de Linden family and copied, according to letters bound into it, by Hiddo oera Linda in 1256 and Liko oera Linda in 803. Written in a strange thirty-four-letter script resembling archaic Greek lapidary lettering, it claims to preserve the chronicles, laws, and religion of a forgotten North Sea people. The volume gathers their traditions—of the goddess-mother Frya, of folk-mothers and lawgivers, of voyages, floods, and migrations across the ancient world.
Whether genuine relic or ingenious romance, the work fascinated Dutch and German scholars, who argued fiercely over its authenticity without settling the question. Its themes—liberty, matriarchal wisdom, moral law, and the dignity of a seafaring race—give it lasting interest. It matters as a curious mirror of how nations imagine their own deepest origins.
How it begins
The work of which I here offer an English translation has excited, among the Dutch and German literary societies, a keen controversy in regard to its authenticity—a controversy not yet brought to a conclusion, some affirming that it contains internal evidence of truth, while others declare it to be a forgery. But even the latter do not insist on its being the work of a modern fabricator. They allow it to be one hundred, or perhaps one hundred and fifty, years old. If they admit that, I do not see why they refuse it a greater antiquity; and as to the improbability of the stories related in it, I refer the reader to the exhaustive inquiry in Dr Ottema’s Preface. Is it more difficult to believe that the early Frisians, being hardy and intrepid marine adventurers, sailed to the Mediterranean, and even proceeded farther, than that the Phœnicians sailed to England for tin, and to the Baltic for amber? or that a clever woman became a lawgiver at Athens, than that a goddess sprang, full grown and armed, from the cleft skull of Jupiter?
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain.