1876 The Academy
original source and cropped articles only
JJK 83 The Oera Linda Book / 29-4-1876, pp. 405-406.
The Oera Linda Book (Trübner) professes to be an ancient Friesian manuscript of the thirteenth century, which has been preserved from time immemorial in the Friesian family Over de Linden of Enkhuizen. The present proprietor received it from his grandfather, who died in 1820. The existing MS. professes to be a copy of much older MSS., the oldest of which was written 558 B.C. Together they give a connected history of the Friesian race, extending as far back as the year 2193 B.C. All this is rather calculated to throw doubts on the genuineness of the MS., of which both Dr. Ottema, who verified the original MS. text and translated it into Dutch, and Mr. Sandbach, who has made the English version of Dr. Ottema’s translation, appear to be fully convinced. However, even Dr. Ottema himself is a little staggered at some of the statements of the MS. It appears, for instance, that the god Neptune was, when living, a Friesian sea-king, Teunis by name, familiarly called “Neef-Teunis,” or Cousin Teunis: that Minos, the lawgiver of Crete, was also a Friesian sea-king, Minno; that the goddess Minerva came from Walcheren, in Holland, &c., &c. But he comes to the conclusion that the book cannot possibly be a forgery, basing his conclusion on arcuments which are about as wild and fantastic as the contents of the Ms. itself. He seems to lay special stress on the visit of Apollonia and her followers to the pile-dwellings of Switzerland about 540 B.C., which were not discovered before 1253. He argues that her account of them could only have been written at a time when they still existed and were lived in. Such arguments are not enough to overturn the overwhelming evidence the other way. No knowledge of the genuine Old Friesian is required; the mere presence of such words as prebende (benefice), slâvona (slave), mêtal (metal), sinnebild (symbol, Dutch zinnebeeld, syrhêd (jewel, Dutch sieraad, from the High German zieren), is enough to show the absurdity of imagining that such a book could have been written in the thirteenth century A.D., let alone the earlier dates. Indeed, the mere perusal of the English translation will convince any unprejudiced judge that the whole thing is a clumsy forgery, which cannot well be older than the eighteenth century. If the argument of the pile-dwellings is so irrefragable as the editors assume, then the MS. must have been written some time between 1853 and 1876 A.D. We will only add that if the MS. should, after all, turn out to be genuine, we would strongly advise the Palaeographical Society to procure for their members copies of the facsimile given in the present edition. They will be much interested to find a MS. of the thirteenth century written in capitals, with the i’s dotted.
JJK 103 - Jules Andrieu / 17-6-1876, pp. 586-587.
The origin of the “Oera Linda Book.”
34 Richmond Gardens, W.: June 15.
A careful perusal of the Oera Linda Book (reviewed in the Academy of April 29, p.405) has convinced me that its anonymous author wrote it with a high and definite purpose, so definite as to supply internal evidence of the date.
The matter of the MS., indeed, was not new to me. I have long possessed a book, remarkable alike for traits of genius and for a medley of errors, which, in its general plan, presents a striking resemblance to the Oera Linda Book. It is the République des Champs Elysées, ou Monde Ancien, a posthumous work of Charles Joseph de Grave, late Member of the Council in Flanders, &c., published at Ghent in 1806.
At first sight nothing can be more absurd than the design of this good Fleming. He undertakes to prove that the Elysian Fields and Infernal Regions of the ancients were the name of an old republic of just and holy men, situated in the islands of the Lower Rhine; and that Ulysses whose name may be recognised in Flissingue (Flushing) and in the villages of Ulisseghem and Lisseweghe, as readily as in Lisbon, Ulissea Lusitaniae, or Olisipo — was initiated in the mysteries of this republic, the double road to happiness trodden by the citizens of Walcheren and Schouwen. Circe, instead of being a sorceress, plays in M. de Grave’s imagination the same divine presiding part as Frya in the Oera Linda Book. Again, the Belgian author writes Min-erva, as does the anonymous Dutchman. Belgian, says the former, is the primitive language; the latter thinks, and sings in prose, of Frisian as the matrix lingua.
But with all this resemblance of the two works, the one Belgian, the other Frisian, I should have had no more than probabilities to note as regards the date and origin of the idea of this MS. and of its design, had not a passage in Regnard’s Travels to Lapland led me to the source from which, as will be seen, both the author of the Oera Linda Book and the Conseiller de Grave have drawn. In the old town of Upsala are many antiquities, such as the tombs of the Kings of Sweden, and the Temple of Janus Quadrifrons, which inspired the book thus described by Regnard:—
“Rudbekius, a Doctor of Medicine here, has written a very curious book, which he showed us himself. He proves by all the ancient authors, Herodotus, Plato, Diodorus Siculus, and others, that the gods come from his country. He has strong reasons for this belief. He assured us that, according to relations which exist in his language with all the names of the gods, Hercules comes from Her and Coule (in reality Kull), meaning captain; Diana, from Dia, meaning nurse. ... He was at much pains to persuade us that the Pillars of Hercules were in his country, and a great deal more, which, if you like, you may believe” (p.228, complete works in 8vo, Paris, 1810).
Regnard quizzes the old Upsalan wittily and not unkindly. But those who know the history of philology, its gropings in the dark, its leaps, and its recoils, may easily convince themselves of the greatness of Olof Rudbeck the elder by a sufficient study of his huge folio, entitled Atland eller Manheim, of which the first volume, the work of the father, was published at Upsala in 1679, the second, continued by Olof Rudbeck the younger, in the same town in 1689.
At that time religious zeal still implied belief in Hebrew as the primitive language. It needed the enthusiasm for Runic monuments, then newly brought to light by Verelius (author of the Scytho-Scandinavian [Icelandic] Dictionary, of which Rudbeck the father published a second edition); it needed that stubborn Scandinavian temper, which, after a hard struggle to prevent by deeds the establishment of Christianity, sought some centuries later a kind of scientific revenge in the study of the Scandinavian language and of the Scandinavian Trinity, Thor, Odin, and Frygga; it needed a certain spirit of independence in presence of Greek and Roman antiquity, a feeling born from the knowledge and love of another antiquity, nearer to the heart and more venerable still in the eyes of an Upsalan-Scandinavian antiquity; it needed all this, and it needed the indispensable audacity of genius, to overthrow the double despotism of Hebrew, then believed to be the primitive language, and of Latin mythology, in those days so meagrely explained.
However, the great book published at Upsala made its way in the world, exciting much surprise. The number for January, 1685, of the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres pointed out to all Europe the importance of the work. After according just praise to the canons of sound philology laid down by Rudbeck to distinguish primitive from derived nations, and after noting by the way that as an anatomist and botanist the Swedish author had the scientific habit of mind, (nor was it surprising to see him found what has since been called geological chronology — that is, a theory of chronology as revealed by the thickness of sedimentary strata), Bayle refers to a book of the Jesuit Lacarri (Clermont, 1677), entitled Historia coloniarum a Gallis in caeteras nationes missarum tum exterarum nationum quarum coloniae in Gallias deductae sunt. Bayle, whose one delight was in slashing argument and internecine conflict, exclaims, “We shall have fine sport, nation against nation. And let no one think the Swede will be easily disarmed.”
It is then that I conceive the glove thrown down by Rudbeck, with Bayle for herald-at-arms, to have been taken up by a Dutch reader of this number of the Nouvelles de la République des Lettres, January, 1685 — a Dutchman sighing for the liberty enjoyed by a Marnix Sieur de Ste. Aldegonde in the previous century, but no longer existing since the expulsion of the Spaniard.
What confirms this belief is that the only substantially original feature in the Oera Linda Book, as compared with Rudbeck’s book, or with that of the Councillor de Grave (who has drawn heavily on Rudbeck), is the conception of Frya, arising from the philological play on words, Vrije, Frya, Frise — the quality of Freedom, its impersonation, and the country created by that impersonation. The customs of Friesland visited with the most cruel punishments any violation of modesty. The Frieslander meditating the Oera Linda Book said to himself, “No duties without rights.” Thus he gave the highest place to the pure maidens of his Frisian city. Lighthouse fires being more useful than the fire of Vesta at Rome, he made his Frisian Vestals guardians of these beacons, significant of moral no less than of material dangers.
To convert presumptions into certainties the evidence is ample. Even the writing of the MS. is a curious application of a passage in Rudbeck explaining the astronomical staves (Runestafwar, Runici scipiones). It is fair to say that our Frisian seems to have had no other motive than to excite the imagination of his readers and yet to be easy to decipher. The idea of the Wheel (Jul, Hwil) is Rudbeck’s.
The anonymous author also knew and used the Origo rerum Celticarum et Belgicarum of Adrian Schrieck of Ypres, and the Becceselana of Goropius Becanus of Antwerp, who conducts his Belgian heroes to Egypt. And he was doubtless well acquainted with the delightful, thoughtful, patriotic letter which Justus Lipsius (Epist. lib. iii.44, Lugduni, 1616) addressed to Henry Schott on this very book of Becanus. The letter, which should be read entire, does the kindliest justice to Becanus:—
“Many have laughed at his attempt. And what is my opinion? I confess I love the man. His quick, amiable, happy intelligence has always won my admiration. But he would have been happier had he turned his mind to other things. What can a man hope for who tries to prove the antiquity, the mysteries, the wisdom of our Belgian language? Whom can he convince? As regards antiquity I fear the Holy Scriptures are against him, and the ancient fathers, who assert precedence for the Hebrew” (De antiquitate vereor ut sacrae ipsae literae et prisci patres annuant, qui Hebraeam proponunt).
And yet we find Justus Lipsius himself, after breaking a lance in honour of the philological orthodoxy of the day, at work hunting out curious words in the old Teutonic tongue, “quae abire ab hodierna lingua videbantur.” Among these we find “Eldi, senecta, et Vreldi, senium, nam Vr auget.” Have we not here a clue to the Wr-Alda of the manuscript? The mistake of Lipsius, who did not know the true etymology — Icelandic Ver (vir) + öld (old) = veröld, Swedish Wärld, Anglo-Saxon Weorold, English World, and the corrupt German form Welt — is exactly what has led the Frisian to make his Wr-Alda (“nam Vr auget”) the Ancient of Ancients, the Ancient of days, Time immutable, the progenitor of changing Time.
It will have been observed that I say nothing of forgery. I avoid the word, because, as I conceive, we have not the thing. There is no more forgery here than there would have been had Telemachus appeared anonymously in Greek. In my opinion, where the Dutch editor and the English editor of the Oera Linda Book are most to blame is in not having recognised from the first, and called attention to the full import of the work that they were giving to the public; in not having made a serious study of its antecedents; in not having associated with a text at once so destructive and so constructive the history of Holland between 1685 and 1700. What made the author go so far about to his end? It was that the Protestants and politicians of Amsterdam were not used to play with questions of religion or of radical opinions. The brothers De Witt had died — and what a death — in 1672. The free-thinker, who in his Oera Linda Book dreams of a Republic based on justice, truth, and purity of morals, and having for its religion an impersonal Deism without forms of worship, would not have found friends even among the Herrenhüters then beginning to thrive under Count Zinzendorf’s protection.
How came the book to lie for two centuries concealed? Did the author’s enthusiasm cool, and his Dutch impassiveness abandon the MS. to its fate? Or did his measures for its timely disinterment fail? We cannot tell. Be this as it may, MM. J.G. Ottema and William R. Sandbach have done a good and useful deed in having brought to light this work of a new [François] Hotman, a second Marnix de Ste. Aldegonde.
Jules Andrieu.