Translations of correspondence (letters and -fragments) between Dr. J.G. Ottema and the Over de Lindens (between 1871-1877), in chronological order.
1) Cornelis Over de Linden to Dr. Ottema, 08-11-1871:
Den Helder, 8 November 1871
Dear and erudite sir,
I am pleased that we have come to an agreement.
When nothing is in the way, one can think more clearly. Therefore I will once more point at my earlier comments.
You would prefer to translate 'poppenkoningen' into 'papenkings' ['paap' is an invection for catholics]. Here in Westfriesland strangers are called 'pop', terms like 'poppe-horses' and '-pigs' are known too.
Thus you would not risk a mistake if you would use 'strange kings' for 'poppa koningen'. You say: "In Apolonnia's book, the 'Formleer' is the purest representation of Godness, that most agrees with the Christian view. More sublime than Jehova from the old Testament, who goes for a walk in the garden of Eden in the morning, to have a chat with Adam.
If you want to prevent that many people will put the book aside, prejudiced at first sight, you should - according to my modest mind - avoid things that can upset people. One catches more flies with syrup than with vinegar.
[...]
When children need to swallow a bitter medicine, to free them of worms that hinder their growth, we don't say: "swallow this, stupid, because it's for your own good"; but we comfort them with sweet words and candy.
That's how scholars who want to elevate the people should act, rather than inveigh them with terms like grey, donkeys, etc.
You want to replace the word 'od' with 'animosity'. On page 128 I find FIAND for enemy. I would rather see you use 'fertilising force' - or a more appropriate term. The word animosity will cause animosity. [Ottema would later change 'animosity' in 'hatred'.] When one speaks to youths about love, they will fall in love. But when one speaks to them of war, they will separate in groups and play soldier, to the great pleasure of despotism.
[...]
Having nothing else bothering me, I greet you friendly, and am respectfully at your service,
C. Over de Linden.
======
2) Cornelis Over de Linden to Dr. Ottema, 16-11-1871:
I don't have the slightest doubts that one day the truth will come float to the surface, but now that I have studied your translation, I figure that the laws described in it are very radical, and that when the theology it teaches would become that of the people again, all sorts of clergymen would have to find a new job. That is why I think they will oppose it as much as is in their power.
======
3) Cornelis Over de Linden to Dr. Ottema, dated Den Helder 11-06-1872 (Dutch original here):
Honorable and very learned Sir!
A request for revision, says W. de L. in Spectator magazine of 21 October 1871 # 42, the same I ask you, and all who reject the so-called 'RUN-SKRIFT' as of younger date.
In your translation I read:
"Oh dear, never let the eyes of a monk gaze upon this script, they speak sweet words, but... etc."
From this fear of monks I dare conclude, that they had already captured many of our old manuscripts. I also dare believe that the Over de Lindens have not been the only ones, who possessed the book of
Adela Follistar. When I follow the history of the manuscript, I dare assume that the Romans, the Phoenicians, the Greeks and all Mediterranean peoples learned the letterscript from us.
Not copied from the geometric lines of the Jol, but from less neatly produced Frisian manuscripts.
In the times when I tortured myself trying to read the handwriting, someone said to me that they might be Phoenician letters. So I looked for a book about the Phoenician language and found one with the title:
"Paläographische Studien über phönizische und punische Schrift - Herausgegeben von D. Wilhelm Gesenius. Mit 6 lithographirten tafelen. Leipzig 1835."
The letters in that book are very different, but many of them are similar to the STAND and the RUN-SKRIFT as presented in the manuscript. Many or most of the prints of tokens with letters, depict women's heads, that reminded me of the Frisian honorary Mothers. The author says that every Phoenician colony had its own letterscript. But I could not follow him, because he compared the letters with Hebrew ones, which I don't know.
If my notion is right, we have been the lettergivers of all Mediterranean peoples. As the Nordic peoples always have been - and still are - the real sea dogs, the French with all their elevated theories not excluded, they were also most in need of letters and ciphars.
That the monks, who have invented their own letterscript, stifled ours to make it unreadable, lies in their nature. But who knows how many
Copies of the book of Adela's Folstar remain here and elsewhere with kings or in Rome. Now that more than a thousand years have passed, they may have introduced the
walking script as capitals, because they are similar to our capitals.
If you are so weak as to reject the
walking script, out of fear for some barkers, than it is as if you want to duel with the sheath, while passing the sword to them.
For in the manuscript it says:
"When Fàsta was Mother of honor, she made the running or walking script out of it. The Witking, that is sea king Godfried... etc." So, if the runscript was added more recently, then the above fragment was also added, and then anything can have been added. So I keep protesting against the mutilation.
[...]
After affable greetings, also to your Niece,
Yours,
C. Over de Linden
======
4) Cornelis Over de Linden to Dr. Ottema, 26-10-1873:
I gave a copy of The Oera Linda Bok [Ottema's translation] to a cousin of mine who works in the town hall of Enkhuizen. He borrowed it to the gentlemen of the town hall. One of those gentlemen made the remark, that the ALDEGAMUEDE must be the 'Oudergouw' near Enkhuizen, NOT 'Ouddorp' near Alkmaar. This 'Oudergouw' is a brook right behind the city that is being dried these days. It is three poles, that is half a tide or three hours from Medeasblik.
======
5) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 04-03-1875:
For our ciphars we are not indebted to the Arabs, for the simple reason, that they never used such figures as ciphars, and we therefore could not have gotten ours from them.
======
6) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 26-01-1876:
Od (anger, rage, hate, animosity)
trad to-ra binna, means that hate entered the hearts of the three daughters of Irtha; this hate was obviously inherited by all of their descendants, and this is cause of the inborn, innate animosity specially in Finda's and Lyda's posterity against Frya's children. An animosity that will not end until the people of Finda and Lyda will be exterminated, and the people of Frya at the final victory will remain and inherit and possess the whole earth.
This animosity dominates all of history in the OLB and still goes on in our days. Frya's people pervade in all continents and establish European supremacy all over the earth. Everywhere the peoples of Finda and Lyda will have to submit or disappear.
======
7) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 17-3-1876:
Dear Sir!
I will answer both your questions shortly.
First, where does the story (or statement) come from, that we (the Western peoples) would have borrowed our ciphers from the Arabs?
It is not a story, and not based on any historical fact, but a wild guess, that has been parroted by the gullible crowds for three centuries now. Much was written about that. When scholars asked the question, where our ciphers had originated, they tacitly assumed, that they had to come from abroad; because it was out of the question that the peoples of Middle and Western Europe had invented anything by themselves. Therefore one of them guessed that the Hebrews, another that the Phoenicians, and yet another that the Egyptians would be the inventors of our ciphers. Each argued his opinion with erudition. The ones who claimed it had been the Arabs were most successful, because the latter were known to use a decimal system. But one forgot, that if we had learned our ciphers from the Arabs, we would also have adopted the shape of those Arabic ciphers. And that's how this guess was accepted as a prevailing truth.
Concerning your other question, what proof there is for my statement, that the figures in the Alhambra decorations were derived from the Fryan script, I can only say this. There is no positive evidence, only a negative one. Namely, they could not have been derived from anything else. Apparently they are not random fantasy shapes, but deliberate imitations of figures that one has seen somewhere. And where else can they have seen them than in the shapes of the western ciphars?
Who finds this statement somewhat bold, may answer the question differently, and show where else these figures were found.
It would please me to learn from you what rev. Grottendiek will reveal of his research. But always remember, that no-one can measure the spirit of the book, who does not completely understand the language, and can observe and consider all nuances in variety of language form, spelling, and style in all parts that are collected in the book.
With kind greetings
======
8) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 13-06-1876:
On a memorial stone of Domburg Neef Teunis is standing next to Nehalennia.
You can also see him on the tower of Zierikzee, where he has the job of weather vane,
and all his life was known to the people of Zierikzee as nothing other than Neef Teunis.
======
9) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 24-06-1876:
I wish someone would act who is courageous enough to defend the OLB in public, without fear for the
systematic intimidation.
Because all the howling is intimidation, started by Spectator magazine and systematically sustained.
There are enough proponents, but they dare not speak, out of
fear of being declared fool or villain.
======
10) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, dated june or july 1876:
Concerning the waterlines, the making of paper on wire frames was invented by the Goths in Spain
between the years 1035 when Toledo was conquered,
and 1238 when Valencia was conquered. They already used watermills and stamping techniques to process cotton tatters. See:
Meyers Conversations Lexicon; art. Paper.
[...] Remember this: no chlorine and no amylose, therefore no machine-made paper. I would be surprised if the ink is anything else than pure lamp-soot, that remains black and does not corrode the paper.
======
11) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 03-03-1877:
(About a letter he had received from E. Leyte, editor of the German Correspondent in Baltimore, dated 6-2-1877.)
The author informed me that in the wide mouth of the Amazon River, a group of islands is located, known as 'Inkas Islands', and inhabited to date by a human race with blue eyes and blond hair.
This information was of great value to me, because until now I had found nothing, that I could use to determine with some probability, a spot where Inka might have landed. I always expected that he would have ended up somewhere at the north-coast of Brasil, but now it has become clear to me, that the name of these islands keep a memory to Inka, and prove that he sailed and settled there with his fleet. The descendants of this colony of Frisians and Fins (specially the latter) will have moved land-inwards along the coasts of the Amazon River during many centuries, until they arrived at the west coast of America, where they were found back in Chile and Peru, 3500 years later.
Isn't it remarkable that someone in Baltimore is motivated to send me a message that unexpectedly explains such a great mystery?
And isn't it remarkable as well that on those Inka Islands the Frisian type was preserved, and in Peru and Chile the Finnish type is found?
======
12) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 16-03-1877:
But now for something of great importance. The
black lions of Apollonia with the Marsaten have been found in Switzerland! They had always bothered me, although I for myself was confident, that they someday would show up;
because the OLB does not lie!
Mr. J. Dirks namely informed the meeting that he had received a letter from Switzerland, from one of his prehistoric congress friends, about archaeological finds there. In a collection of bones of various species (including humans), the remains had been found of lions of a special species, that is now extinct. For us this is a colossal discovery!
======
13) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 04-05-1877:
These days I realised something concerning Beckering Vinckers' accusation
of a cunningly devised plan.
Your father did not have a plan to have the manuscript printed or made public. Under pressure of Verwijs, and when the content was still unknown to him, he had initially agreed, but when he got disappointed that Verwijs did not keep his promise [to translate the manuscript], your father believed he was no longer bound to the permission he had given. Please read our letters from early 1871 (I think), and you will see how he resisted with tooth and nail against my plan for publication. Someone who wants to mislead the world would not do that, he would have grabbed the opportunity to carry out his deception with both hands. Kuipers [the printer] and I almost had to force him, and harsh words were exchanged.
======
14) Dr. Ottema to L.F. Over de Linden, 19-05-1877:
Dear Sir!
The publication of your defence was well received. Whoever I asked thought the booklet was well written and had read it with pleasure. I sent a copy to Dr. Vitringa, trusting that he will mention it in the Deventer Newspaper, just like he discussed Beckering Vinckers' brochure.
As always busy researching, rethinking and collecting, I have elaborated a comment these days, that I will explain to you. Concerning the manuscript it is important, specially because Suffridus Petrus, de Scriptoribus Frisiae mentions in his introduction, that Friso left several writings, one of them a
travel diary and biography; that he had written them in the Frisian language and with Greek characters, and that his successors wrote just like that, until the times that the Roman script became current in Germania.
He did not mention how or where he had learned about that (as was not his habit), but he can not have sucked that out of his thumb.
Something must have come to his knowledge of Frisian notes, from the times in which the Ovira Lindas wrote, and that travel diary (about the journey from India to Friesland) may be related to
Ljudgert's diary.
Informations like this from Suffridus used to be considered as fabulations, but among those fabulations there may turn out to be more truth than was presumed. It is also acknowledged that Suffridus Petrus never lied, but that he would have copied from earlier sources.
Receive this letter in good health and be friendly greeted.
P.S. I may have an immodest request: can I keep the copy of Volney, as a souvenir to your father?
