The new generation is excited by the mystic Ior Bock’s stories, according to which an ancient temple was hidden under the Sipoa rock. Now the temple is being searched for with the help of foreign crowdfunding.
– I see this as a work in progress. You just have to finish it. If something is found, we will bring out Finland’s national treasure, says Rikberg.
Bock began telling the saga on the day of the escape, February 24, 1984, in the village of Chapora in Goa, India.
The saga includes, among other things, a creation story about the birth of the world and man, as well as descriptions of life during and before the Ice Age.
According to the saga, Lemminkäinen’s temple is hidden inside a rock called \”Kyypelivuori\” in Sipoon Gumbostrand. The place is located near Ior Bock’s former home.
Historians and archaeologists have branded Bock’s saga as a figment of the imagination. Bock, on the other hand, has been called a fairy godmother. However, this has not cooled the mystic’s followers’ enthusiasm for the stories.
Bock’s international Followers started the excavations of the Lemminkäinen temple on Kyypelivuori in the summer of 1987. Many of them were hippies who had met Ior Bock in Goa. Over the years, the diggers were able to excavate a cave about 50 meters long in the rock.
After eventful stages, the large excavations were put on hold in 1999 due to, among other things, a lack of money. Small-scale digging has also taken place later.
The younger generation continues to work
The aim of the diggers this year is to clean the rock face and build a gathering area and infrastructure that will allow access to the cave with a drilling machine.
– If everything works well, then by the end of the year there is a theoretical possibility that we could get 25-30 meters ahead, Rikberg estimated in June.
According to Bock’s saga, there should be a water lock and a door inside the rock that leads to the gold-domed Lemminkäinen temple. There should be a long spiral corridor that leads to a huge treasury consisting of numerous halls.
Today, Kyypelivuori is owned by Helsinki’s Astanga Yoga School, which bought the plot from a forced auction in 2000.
The controversial story of the ancient Finnish temple of Lemminkäinen fascinated Javanai and her companions, so they wanted to join the searchers and potential restorers of the temple.
The Javanese woman says that she has no personal belief in the existence of the temple. Still, the results provided by the technical equipment have maintained the enthusiasm to continue researching the site for decades.
According to him, a structural deviation has been found under the rock in the ground radar surveys. The experts who participated in the research have interpreted the ground radar results in such a way that there might be some kind of roof-floor structure under the rocky area, Javanainen says.
In 2001, Javanainen and his partners organized test drilling at the back of the cave, in which several 20-30 meter long research holes were drilled into the rock. They were used to try to find observations referring to the corridor. However, the drilling did not produce the desired results.
– In recent years, we have been interested in whether there are places inside the rock that might indicate cavities or chambers. We have found a piece of a possible corridor there, Javanainen says.
The Finnish Museum Agency, which is responsible for antiquities, estimates that there is hardly any ancient man-made structure in the rock.
If something happens to be found at the site, the excavations should be stopped and the Museum Agency should be notified.
The story spreads to new listeners on digital platforms
Ior Bock died violently in 2010 in Helsinki. Despite the mystic’s passing, international interest in his stories has increased in recent years.
Johan Rikberg estimates that the background of the new enthusiasm is the attention Bock’s saga has received on social media. Bock’s Followers have continued the saga’s oral tradition via digital platforms.
Rikberg himself did not have time to meet the famous mystic. He became interested in Bock’s saga while watching a video about megaliths, which showed a picture of Kyypelivuuori.
Marcus Lundqvist, on the other hand, got to know Bock’s stories through an English-language podcast. He says that he joined the excavation project in 2019. Before that, he had studied Bock’s saga for three years.
The diggers believe that the discovery of the Lemminkäinen temple would prove that the saga of the Bock family is at least partly true. They think that the discovery would be of great importance to humanity.
\”Aristocrat hippie\” raises the hype
An association called Tempelberg has been established to finance the excavations. It has received donations from, for example, Germany and other parts of Central Europe.
Johan Rikberg was appointed chairman of the association in the summer. He says that they have collected several thousand euros through crowdfunding.
He has written the books about Bock’s saga and the search for the Lemminkäinen temple with the help of two close followers of Ior Bock. Borgen also makes a podcast about the saga.
In June, Borgen tells Yle via video call from the outskirts of Amsterdam that he heard about Ior Bock and his saga for the first time in the mid-1980s in Goa, India.
Borgen says he comes from an old aristocratic family that lost its status during World War II. According to him, the parents expected him to restore the glory of the family.
Instead of great deeds, Borgen was interested in the hippie life. At the age of 22, he started traveling and ended up in Goa, which in the 1970s had established itself as a wintering place for hippies.
According to the saga, man’s original home was in the north
Ior Bock’s narratives were completely different from the official historiography.
According to the saga, humanity originally came from Odenmaa, which was located in the region of present-day Helsinki. There was one unified culture in the world that lived in balance with nature, and the Bock family was an ancient Finnish ruling family.
According to Borgen, Kevin Woods and Michele Merle were engrossed in Ior Bock’s saga and were included in the mystic’s inner circle.
The author says that he thinks some parts of the saga may be true.
– I personally don’t believe in the timeline of the story, which talks about millions of years. But the idea that there was once a global culture and a single root language may be true.
Warren wrote in his book *Paradise Found*, *The Cradle of the Human Race at the North Pole*, published in 1885, that man originated from the North Pole.
Borgen digs Warren’s work out of his bookshelf and shows it to the computer camera. He considers it possible that Bock’s saga was influenced by Warren.
– Maybe Iori’s family, his mother or grandmother, read this book sometime and then developed Bock’s saga. Maybe God knows, but I don’t.
In the early days, the excavations of the Lemminkäinen temple were financed by the construction company Lemminkäinen and Sipoon Säästöpankki.
According to Carl Borgen, the initial stages of the excavations looked crazy to an outsider. He says that excavations, for example, were partially financed with cannabis money in the early stages, and people ended up in prison.
The drug cart of Bock’s party once received extensive media attention in Finland. The events led, among other things, to Lemminkäinen and Sipoon Säästöpankki withdrawing from the project.
Excavation may be postponed until next season
During the summer, the work related to the search for the Lemminkäinen temple has progressed.
In mid-July, an excavator arrived at Kyypelivuori, which removed soil, stumps and large loose stones from in front of the cave entrance.
At the end of August, the rock is more bare than before. The earth moved by the excavator is piled up in a mound further away from the cave. On top of the mound, large stones have been placed in a circle as seats. The water level in the cave has risen due to the rains.
Tempelberg’s chairman Johan Rikberg, master digger Marcus Lundqvist and writer Carl Borgen are there at the shovel work. They’re cool rock faces.
Johan Rikberg says that they plan to pump the water out of the cave and remove the loose soil from there so that the drilling machines can fit inside. Then the purpose is to continue mining the rock to find the temple.
If it is not possible to mine this year, then the work will continue next summer, says Rikberg.
Borgen states that he personally cannot say that he believes in the temple being found.
But he thinks it’s worth looking for, because the attention the excavations get will help spread information about Bock’s saga and its lessons on how to live in balance with nature.
– Now that it is not yet known whether the temple exists or not, the most important thing is to continue digging. That’s what I believe, says Borgen.
*Drone videos: Jaani Lampinen/Yle*
*You can discuss the topic on 5.9. until 11 p.m.*