Mortens Story

Part 4

Morten Alexander Joramo

Morten Alexander Joramo

Morten had gotten interested in a study and a book written by an Italian Neuqular Engineer: Felici Vinci. His study was not about Neuqular Engineering but Homer’s old writings about the Iliad and the Odyssey. The war of Troy was described very realistically, so it was considered amongst most scholars to be a description of an actual event happening somewhere. The Odyssey, on the other hand, was more tricky, full of fairytale figures, and strange places. But inside this strange fairytale, there is described natural phenomenon's that exists but are very rare. There are landscape descriptions. And there is also described very precisely how long time it took to sail from one destination to another. This gives us a quite precise description of distance. Then you have small riddles and clues baked into the fairytale that is connected to astrology. Like a Davinci Code going through the story. All this make some believe that the Odyssey is more than just a fairytale that someone has invented just to entertain kids with. They believe that their´s a actual voyage in the bottom of this story.

Most people that thinks they know something about the Odyssey nowadays, believes that Troy was situated in Turkey and that the Odyssey took place in a Mediterranean setting. The same did Felici Vinci at first. So he decided that he wanted to document Odyssevs travelling route. The best way to do this was to actually reconstruct the journey with a ship. So he rented a sailboat and sat of round the Mediterranean to the known places from the Odyssey following the route described by Homer. He soon discovered that this sailing route was totally hopeless. You had to sail past the same places two or three times, recognizing the same landscape time after time when passing. So for a normal sailor navigating like this would be totally illogical even if the sailors were not totally sober.

There was something missing to the picture.

Then Vinci came across a small piece of writing by Plutarch that's approximately 2000 years old. Plutarch writes “an isle Ogygien lies far out at sea, distant five days` sail from Britain, going westwards, and three others equally distant from it, and from each other”. But that is far from where most people would believe it should be. Then thinking a little bit more, he found out that a boat out there would be taken by the Gulf Stream and drift North and might end up on the Faroe Islands. There he found a constellation of islands fitting the description of Ogygia. He also found an island there with the name Mykines. The name he found very similar to Mykonos. And the island itself fitted better to the description in the Odyssey than the Island Mykonos in Greece. Then Felici Vinci calculated the distance from Mykonos to where they should have met the Cyclops. The distance crossed the Norwegian coast around North Trøndelag. So Vinci went to Norway and booked a ticket with the Hurtigruten.

Hurtigruten is a combination cargo ship, cruise ship, and ferry that's traffic the Norwegian coast. Onboard The Hurtigruten you find local people going from one port to the next. Then you also find couples going on a cruise along the Norwegian coast. You can go ashore in one place, stay there some hours and take the next boat further. The people onboard makes their own Odyssey in a way. And they have no idea that they actually are re-experiencing the Odyssey. When the ship with Felice Vinci onboard came closer to the area where the ship described in the Odyssey should reach land, he started to read the story, and read about the Cyclops, when they a little bit later announced that the boat was passing the island Torghatten. Torghatten looks like a big hat or a head, with a big hole going straight through it. The Hurtigruten continued North and Felice continued to read. The ship in the Odyssey came to the clashing rocks that were reluctant to let them get through. The Hurtigruten was getting closer to the Lofoten islands.

This day was a very clear day so the first thing you could see of Lofoten was the mountain tops on the horizon. Getting closer the mountains was raising end the gaps got smaller and smaller until there was a continuous wall of mountains in front. Then moving further North along the coast before crossing the West Fjord a couple of places would split apart the line once more, because of the shape of the islands, before the mountains would lock in front for the last time. Then they had to get in between the islands before they could see that the horizon opened up on the other side and the mountains would let them through. This way the mountains could lock two times in front of the boat before the mountain would let them get through.

Then, well through to the other side you will naturally sail round Andenes to get further North. Outside Andenes, the depth of the ocean drops down to more than 1000 meters (3200 ft) only ten kilometers (6 miles) from land. This steep underwater formation is a natural gathering point for whales. This is actually one of the best or the best location in the world for whale safaris. So what would then happen if you took a sailing ship full of superstitious sailors out there? Normally in the summer, in the late evening, the wind disappears, and the sea can become totally flat. Then the sounds from the rig and sails get quiet and the splashing of the sea against the hull disappears and it gets totally quiet. The boats not moving and the lack of sounds make you focus. Then you might start hearing strange sounds that you can’t say where they are coming from. What you hear is the whale song being resonated through the boat hull. This was probably what made the sailors believe they heard sirens.

The reason Odysseus and his crew went out on this journey in the first place was that during the war in Troy they had destroyed the Sun God Helios temple in Troy and they believed that they needed to find a way to please the Sun God again. The answers they were looking for could be provided to them by a specific priest or shaman and the place they could find this priest was according to Vinci at the Kola Peninsula outside the town of Kandalaksha. On this site, you find the most famous stone labyrinths on the Kola Peninsula. The highest concentration of this labyrinths you finds on Kola but you also finds them in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Scotland and Ireland. This shows that there were similarities in culture and exchange of knowledge and ideas in this area at this time.

What Odysseus and his crew were told there was that their only chance for forgiveness by the Sun God was to go to the Sungods island Trinacria. To get there they had to cross a sea current so strong that it would be dangerous for both the crew and the ship. There should also be sea monsters on both sides of this sea current that they had to look out for. I know of four places on the globe that has sea currents this strong. One in Australia and I don't think Odysseus went there. One in Scotland that almost got the better of me. Then there are two in my neighbourhood, but there are none in the Mediterranean. One of those is the Saltstraumen in a fjord lying inland East or Røst. The other one is Moskenesstraumen between the Southern tip of Lofoten and The island Mosken that lies between Værøy and Moskenesøy. Then Morten explained that in ancient times people believed that sea monsters and sea creatures lived in caves along the sea. On both sides of Moskenesstraumen there are caves.

Here is a link to a book writen about the Moskenesstraumen. Unfortunatly its only in Norwegian: Havsvelget i Nord

On Moskenesøy at the very tip of the Lofoten Mountain range, you have the Revsvikhula with the cave paintings. On the smaller island Mosken there's also a cave with paintings. Felici Vinci who had been on board the Hurtigruten had seen the place from distance and saw that the island Mosken had three edges on the top. Then reading that this island also had a cave helped convince him that this was the island Trinacria. Morten on the other hand that had obtained a little bit more local knowledge and had a different candidate than Vinci. By now you might be able to guess what this candidate would be? The very only island Trenyken. It had a more distinct three shape. It had the cave too, which left the caves at Moskenesstraumen for the sea monsters and it then completed a logical travelling route.

The Story Of The Stars

Photo by Robert Lukeman

But there were details that still were troubling Morten. There were written that The Sun God Helios had cattle on his island. Herds of sheep numbering a total of approximately 450. Odysseus crew was allowed to take as many of his sheep that they wanted. The Sun God had not any problem with this, But Morten had. There might be grass enough on the island to feed about 45 sheep. The rest, 305 sheep would have to eat soil. There is no fresh water for that many animals either. What wasn’t ok for the Sun God was Odysseus crew touching any of his cows. He also had approx-imately 450 cows there. This cows then probably had to eat stone. So that might explain why the island isn’t bigger. Stone-eating cows. Jokes aside. Morten where tweaking his head for a couple of days when one evening sitting outside the cave on Trenyken when he found out that this might be something connected to his field of expertise, astrology. In the astrological calendar, you have the time of the Aries that is approximately 450 years, followed by the time of the Taurus, that's also approximately 450 years. Then re-reading the story with this knowledge, the message from Odysseus was that they were allowed to come to his island in the time of the Aries but not in the time of the Taurus. Odysseus crew took some cows, in other words, they were late and Helios punished them with a storm on their departure. The boat where lost and only Odysseus survived so he could retell the story. My experience in this waters tells me that you have to be very careful not to end up on the bottom like Odysseus ship did.

Then this gives us a date for when this should have happened. Morten says that since this was written by Homer approx. 2800 years ago, you must go more than 4500 years back but not as far as 5000 years to find the shift between the time of the Aries and the time of the Taurus. Where have I heard thus dates before? The carbon datings on Vedøya. Unfortunately are the cave paintings and the seal bones younger but it shows what cultural significance this place has had in the culture and religion in this period.

Then there were more clues to solve. The SunGod had 362 sons. Felice Vinci found the almanack for the area and found out that Mosken, his Trinacria candidate had a navigational altitude that gave it 362 days in the year when the sun was above the horizon. Mortens Trinacria, Trenyken was further south so it didn’t match its location. When Morten came back to Røst he still could not figure this out. So after a couple of days, he came down to the harbour before I should go out for my daily boat trip, to ask if I could figure this out. I could tell him that sailors almost 5000 years ago did not have the almanack. They had to look at the phenomena, in nature, where they were. The almanack said when the sun would be over the horizon. Neither on Trenyken or Mosken you can see the horizon in the east where you have the sun. You have a stripe of mountains on the mainland shadowing the sun. This would result in Mosken having around 358 days with the possibility of direct sunlight and Trenyken with about 362 days. Then the Odyssey both contained the time of the event and the position in how far North/South you should look to this position, and it points at Trenyken.

Here is Morten's own video explaining The Odyssey and beond.

Next up, we will look at the location of the City of Troy