Oera Linda Book

The Oera Linda Book is a manuscript written in imitated Old Frisian, purporting to cover historical, mythological, and religious themes of remote antiquity, from 2194 BCE to 803 CE.

Jensma concludes that it was probably intended as a "hoax to fool some nationalist Frisians and orthodox Christians," as well as an "experiential exemplary exercise" by Dutch theologian and poet François Haverschmidt.

Verwijs rejected the manuscript, but in 1872 Jan Gerhardus Ottema (1804–1879), a prominent member of the Frisian Society for History and Culture, published a Dutch translation.

Within the first few years after the appearance of the Oera Linda Book, its recent origin was established not only based on the exceptional claims being made, but also because of a number of anachronisms it contained.

Wirth's book was by no means universally acclaimed among the Nazi-era Nordicist academics, and the 1934 panel discussion was steeped in heated controversy.

The public defeat of Himmler's scholarly brand of "esoteric Nordicism" resulted in the foundation of Ahnenerbe, which attracted occultists such as Karl Maria Wiligut and was viewed with suspicion by the mainstream National Socialist ideologues of Amt Rosenberg.

[7] Following Scrutton's example, English language accounts of the Oera Linda Book tend to place it within the New Age or alternate history genres, and do not associate it with National Socialism, as is the case in Germany.

In his influential 1999 anthology Absoliutnaia rodina, he views the book of Oera Linda as a textbook example of a deeply rooted myth of the Aryan race that can easily be transformed into political ideologies.

According to Jensma, who would later become professor of Frisian language and literature at the University of Groningen, Haverschmidt intended the Oera Linda Book as a parody of the Christian Bible.

An article in late 2007 by Jensma says that the three authors of the translation intended it "to be a temporary hoax to fool some nationalist Frisians and orthodox Christians and as an experiential exemplary exercise in reading the Holy Bible in a non-fundamentalist, symbolical way.

The text alleges that Europe and other lands were, for a large part of their history, ruled by a succession of folk-mothers presiding over a hierarchical order of celibate priestesses dedicated to the goddess Frya, daughter of the creator god Wr-alda and Jrtha, the earth mother.

It also describes a lost land called 'Atland' (the name given to Atlantis by the 17th-century scholar Olof Rudbeck), which was supposedly submerged in 2194 BC – the same year as 19th-century Dutch and Frisian almanacs, following traditional Biblical chronology, gave for Noah's flood.