Some personal notes

(This post is not finished yet.)

Looking back, I see how my attraction to hidden history started, when, as a teenager, I got into tracing my Westfrisian family roots and collecting old pictures. The thrill of discovery, the "aha!"-experience, learning things about my older ancestors, that could have been passed on through the generations and thus, helped me understand myself and my direct family.

Most striking is it, to learn how oral tradition does not always match up with recorded information. Even families have their versions of censorship and propaganda, often about little details, but sometimes concerning something more significant. It may have been silenced or changed on purpose, or subconsciously. The mind plays tricks on us and this can be helpful. Some things are better forgotten or made nicer, so we can move on.

But when a lie or suppressed rage keeps causing trouble, like a deep stuck splinter, it is better to face it and deal with it after all. What may have been a near fatal trauma several generations back, can now be something that we would frown about. But as long as it is not known and understood, it can keep nagging, cause nightmares, lead to distractive habits, or worse.

This principle is not only applicable to the individual and its family, but also to a whole tribe, a folk, a nation.

~

For a few years, I had been interested in Nordic mythology, when in 2005 I first heard about the Oera Linda-book (OLB). Someone had written a dissertation about it, having something to do with the Frisians and their supposed primordial mother Frya.

I bought "De Gemaskerde God" (the masked god) by Goffe Jensma, but when I read the summary, suggesting this OLB to be a 19th century joke, I put it on the shelf, where it would remain untouched for another four years. I wanted to read this OLB myself first anyway, before reading someone's opinion about it.

The subject had lost my attention, until in 2009 in a small bookshop in Amsterdam, I found Sura de Heer's translation that included the original text in a specially designed font.

(to be continued)