Иор Бок: Финн саяхатшысы, мифтер мен дастанның күйреуі

Finnish tour guide

Ior Bock (; originally Bror Holger Svedlin; 17 January 1942 – 23 October 2010) was a Swedish speaking Finnish tour guide, actor, mythologist and eccentric. Bock was a colourful media personality and became a very popular tour guide at the island fortress of Suomenlinna, where he worked from 1973 to 1998. In 1984, Bock raised public interest and discussion when he claimed that his family line (Boxström) had been keepers of an ancient folklore tradition that provides insight into the pagan culture of Finland, including hitherto unknown autofellatio exercises connected to old fertility rites. These stories are often known as the Bock saga. His eccentric philosophical and mythological theories gained an outstandingly large international following.

According to Bock's autobiographical The Bock Saga, he was born as the result of an incestuous relationship between sea captain Knut Victor Boxström (1860–1942), who would have been 81 years old at the time, and his daughter Rhea, 42. where he claimed that Ior Bock was actually an adopted son of Rhea Boxström Svedlin and Bror Svedlin. In 2003, Bock had answered Londen's queries by explaining that the adoption theme was a necessary precaution from his mother to hide the incestuous act that led to his birth.

According to Magnus Londen's article, young Holger Svedlin was sent off to an orphanage for one year at age nine. Londen, citing unnamed acquaintances of the Svedlin family, states that Holger (who had adopted the name Ior, meaning Eeyore in Swedish) had displayed irrational behaviour and that his mother had been unable to cope with him since his adopted father had died the previous year. Due to the enigmatic statements of the family saga, The National Board of Antiquities in Finland retracted from involving themselves with the project. The participation of professional archaeologists was restricted to limited official visits, during which nothing archaeologically significant was observed. In one archaeological survey, the Gumbo cave was defined as a natural formation of geological interest. According to the surveying archaeologist, the only man made feature there was a recent rock carving. In 1990, police arrested Bock and 33 other participants in the dig on suspicion of the use and distribution of Indian hemp. When the court sentenced three of Bock's foreign companions the results were a public scandal and the withdrawal of the sponsor of the excavation, the major construction company Lemminkäinen Group. Since then, smaller digs have been made. In 1999, a stabbing left Bock quadriplegic. When Bock was still in hospital, his debts to the Lemminkäinen Group and a geotechnical contractor (from 1992) were used to instigate a process against him for debts and credits. During Bock's stay in Goa the following winter, his assets were confiscated and his properties sold. During an archaeological excavation made later in 2006, it was noticed that an electric ground cable had been dug in the courtyard at 40 cm depth. According to the project manager Selja Flink of the National Board of Antiquities, it was most probably the object noticed in the ground penetrating radar investigations. According to Flink, there is no archaeological or documentary evidence of the well mentioned by Bock.

On 23 October 2010, Bock was stabbed to death in his apartment in Helsinki. Police arrested two men, Indian nationals aged 19 and 28, who had shared his apartment and had worked as his personal assistants. The younger suspect was subsequently set free and cleared of all charges. The 28 year old was found not culpable by reason of insanity and in 2011 he was deported to India.

At her funeral on 23 June 1984, Ior claimed that his mother Rhea (Boxström Svedlin) had left him a very specific duty, confirmed in her will; to bring their ancient and unknown family saga to the attention of professional historians as well as the public. The first recordings were done in Swedish in 1984 and 1985 at The Archive of Folklore in Helsinki. Later he gave further outlines and specifics in numerous tapes and in 1996 the Finnish writer Juha Javanainen collected some basic extracts in the book Bockin Perheen Saga (Helsinki, 1996). In his saga, Bock employs a distinct etymology, based on the letters of the Scandinavian alphabets (Swedish and Finnish language). To support his (allegedly) historical saga he related it to old Scandinavian folklore, describing a nucleus that is supposed to be the origin of both the Scandinavian and the Finnish cultures. The saga describes a detailed sound system, built on the sounds of the Scandinavian alphabet. Based on this phonology the saga explains an extensive mythology and a chronological, stringent history. The "historical outline" covers a number of topics; from the origin of man before Ice Age and a global caste system, to the breakup of this global population due to the appearance of the Ice Age, climatic fluctuations and continental drift. The saga explains how this first, tropical culture was divided into ten different kingdoms as life on each continents developed into parallel but different biotops. During the eons of time when ice time proceeded a small group of people, the Aser, who were caught inside the ice of northern Europe – inside the Baltic Ocean. The end of Ice Age broke this isolation and became a "new start" of humanity since all the various populations could now be reached – and reach each other. Regaining contact with the various tropical kingdoms the Aser were instrumental in spreading a "root system" of words, to develop a common ground for communication and exchange between the various cultures. Since the legendary "deluge" (Younger Dryas) 10,000 years ago, the connections rapidly established and similar cultures started on all the different continents, leading to parallel cultures on the respective continents, leading to the ethnicities, constitutions and civilizations we know as Stone Age and Classical Antiquity. During these millennia, the Asers were drafting and cultivating their intercontinental connections, enhancing the exchange of knowledge, skills and produce worldwide. The purpose was to produce common features and grounds for language and culture, through the exchange of procreators, skills, crafts, arts and architecture. Their method was co operation between parallel constitutions of royals, nobilities and laymen. According to the saga the Eurasian monarchies were established shortly after the Ice Age. From the one arctic group of people that survived Ice Age, called "Aser", only three families were first made to explore the Eurasian north – and leave offspring in their respective regions; east, west and south of the Baltic Ocean. These offspring became the core families of three major kingdoms, who managed to grow into the societies that managed to populate western, central and eastern Europe. Within the open lands of northern Eurasia, the royals were producing 'houses' of nobility to inhabit and populate the various regions and there found a third cast of offspring, called Earls, to produce structured societies within their respective shires and villages. The Bock saga explains that the historical kingdoms of Eurasia descended from the three kingdoms found by the Aser already during early Stone Age. Similar constitutions are claimed to have existed already in the southern hemisphere, on all other continents. Since the ancestry of all these tropical and arctic royals would lead back to a common source, the word "All father" was recognized by them all as a common origin of all human beings. Thus the renewed contact and resurrection of common roots and goals resulted in a positive contact and exchange, producing a worldwide net of genetic and academic exchange – leading to the innovations, produce and trade of agriculture, metals and alloys that led to advanced arts, tools, craft and technology. A major theme in the poetry and prose of the Bock saga is the exposure of the ancient fertility cultures of antiquity, whose legal traditions – based on inheritance – where contradictory to the interest of foreign invaders and illegal regimes. Consequently, to handle an occupied population, the religions of the Middle Ages exercised an absolute repression of all the old fertility rituals, since they required and recreated the memory of the old codexes. Consequently, the heathen traditions of sexual visibility and identification was massively condemned and sanctioned with the most severe of punishments. One such heathen tradition was that of drinking the "divine vine" or the "water of wisdom", which literally refers to the female sap (ejaculate) and the male sperm. According to the saga the pagan traditions were based on a naturalistic philosophy, where it was regarded a virtue to "save and not spill ones semen or female ejaculate". This could be done by sharing the liquids in a "69" or by practicing autofellatio – which the family saga names sauna solmu. The Finnish expression for this "sacred vines" would be Viisauden Vesi—the water of wisdom, which in other traditions are known under cryptic terms such as "The Water of Life", "The Seeds of Life", "The Nectar of The Gods" or "The Elixir of the Blessed". In the early Christian context these classical issues were mistranslated, to "blood" and "flesh", to stigmatize the pagan peoples as wild beasts, vampires and cannibals. Paradoxically, the liturgy is still defining "the flesh and blood of Jesus" as our most sacred rite, the communion. Even if the tools of the communion today are explained to be "purely allegorical" their origin are still to be explained.

In 1994, Kingston Wall, a Finnish psychedelic rock group included the core of Bock's mythic symbolism on their last album, Tri Logy. The saga was described in the CD booklet, and some of the song lyrics featured themes from it.