Tom Foran Clark

The next thing Emery knew, he and Nora were on a train to Copenhagen -- where, as Nora put it, "the money grows on trees."

For almost the entire duration of the Athens-Copenhagen train journey -- a total of fifty-one hours, with changes at Hamburg, Munich, Beograd, and Thessaloniki -- Nora would not stop talking. She told Emery all about her having been, as a teenager in Aarhus, a member of the Theosophical Association Aarhus (TAA), a part of the Theosophical Movement: Theosophy taught the gradual unfoldment of consciousness through various cultures and races, and pointed at the inherent oneness of Humanity; Theosophy regarded planets and stars as living beings in their own right with their own auric influences, just like human beings and other living creatures; the age of Pisces was ending and the age of Aquarius was beginning -- faith was to be supplemented with knowledge and authority.

Nora told Emery how she and Frederik, early on in their relationship, had jumped into bed together and, afterwards, she'd been "absolutely convinced" she'd been "Mightily impregnated." Her abdomen had grown large, her menstruation had ceased, her breasts had swelled up, and her stomach had regular convulsions, always in the morning. But she never did give birth. She'd had this condition three or four years. Though those signs and symptoms had all long since passed, this haunted her still, she said.

Nora now changed the subject, lightly chatting on, telling Emery all about the Norse myths, starting with Odin, who, to attain wisdom, had hanged himself from the world-tree, Yggdrasil, for nine nights. Symbolically, the Vikings had generally sacrificed their prisoners by hanging them from trees. As for their own dead, Viking warriors buried their comrades with slave girls, believing the women would become the dead men's wives in Valhalla. "Imagine," Nora said, "these girls volunteering to die with these thugs," Nora said. "After ten days of festivities, the slave would be stabbed to death by an old woman, a priestess they called an Angel of Death, and then burned with the dead man in a boat which was then launched onto the ocean waters.

Now Nora told Emery of "Jord," one of the wives of Odin, and mother of Thor. As a personification of the primitive, unpopulated, uncultivated earth, Jord overlapped with Nerthus (like Gaia, meaning "Earth"). It was said that Nerthus had come to Denmark from a "secret island" -- of course Nora proposed that Crete had been that island. Nerthus was a Teutonic goddess of fecundity, peace and wealth who was said to have enjoyed having intercourse with humans. The center of her worship was in Denmark. With the arrival of spring her image was carried about on a sacred, covered wagon drawn by oxen among the neighboring tribes. The name Nerthus was related to the Greek "nerteroi" ("gods of the underworld"), and with Njord, the Norse god of the sea.

Nerthus had resided on an island where a statue of her rested in a cart. Each year, Nerthus, embodied in the statue, was drawn in an ox-cart in a sacred procession among the tribes. The cart was pulled by two white bulls. No one was allowed to take up war or bear arms during the festivities. Even iron tools were locked up during the goddess' journey. Her visit was a time of festivity as the goddess brought prosperity and abundance to the earth. At the end of the festival, her statue was returned to her island sanctuary, to a sacred lake where Nerthus would bathe. The statue was ritually cleansed by celebrants -- selected slaves. The slaves were then drowned, as sacrifices to Nerthus (and, as they were believed to be unable to live a normal life after contact with her sacred image).

Freya (Freja), the most beautiful of the Norse goddesses, the daughter of Njord (Nerthus), was the Norse Goddess of sex, love, beauty, fertility, spring, childbirth, war, death, and wealth. She was a goddess of the Vanir. The Vanir, who lived in Vanaheim, were a group of wild nature and fertility gods and goddesses. The Vanir were the sworn enemies of the warrior gods of the Aesir. The Aesir and the Vanir had been at war for a long time when they decided to make peace. To ensure this peace they traded hostages and the Vanir sent their most renowned gods, the wealthy Njord and his children: Freya and her sister Freyr. Thus Freya went to live with the Aesir in Asgard, and the Vanir were 'assimilated' into the Aesir. Freya ended up married to the mysterious god Od (also called Odr). He disappeared and when Freya mourned for Her lost husband, she wept tears of gold which turned into amber when they fell into the sea.

Her daughters, by Od, are named Hnoss, who is so beautiful that whatever is valuable and lovely is named "treasure" after her, and Gersemi. Freya resides in the celestial and beautiful palace Folkvang ("field of folk"), where it is Her privilege to receive half of all the warriors slain in battle and take their souls to Her hall, 'Sessrumnir'; the god Odin receives the other half at Valhalla. Women who die also go to Freya's hall.

In the Edda, Freja is also called Syr, the sow. Living with Freyja at Sessrumnir is Hildesvini (or Hildeswin -- "battle boar") who is actually her human lover Ottar in disguise -- an image suggesting sacred sexual union. The boar as totem personified prosperity, vitality and ceremonial feasting for both the Norse and Celts. Freya was often credited with the origin of runic divination. The runes of Her sword signify power, fertility, and birth. Freya's colors were green, red, and black. All animals were sacred to Freyja, but the horse, falcon and cat held special affinity for her. She was often known as Mistress of Cats. Her number was 13 and Her day of the week was Friday. She was associated most often with the full moons of September (The Harvest Moon and October (the Blood Moon). Ruler of death, Freya chose from the dead spread across battlefields, taking them to Her palace Sessrumnir.

In Copenhagen, Emery and Nora stayed overnight at the Copenhagen Hotel, situated in the heart of the city opposite the railway station and overlooking the Tivoli gardens. In the morning, Emery and Nora boarded a direct Inter-City train and, within three hours, they were in Denmark's second-largest city, with the country's second-largest harbor, Aarhus.

Aarhus in the early morning -- mists, spires, clocks, square windows, shingled roofs, roof weathervanes -- a cozy city that felt protected, felt well taken care of. Walk across the Main Square and the Small Square, where the gallows stood for many years, and then go on along Vestergade to the Church of Our Lady. They went along Vestergade to Grønnegade and Møllestien, an idyllic old street with cozy, well-preserved old houses.

The original city had grown up around the mouth of the Aarhus river. Here the Vikings had decided to settle (around 800 A.D.) because of the location's excellent potential as a harbor and trading post. The Danish word for "river mouth" was "aros," and this is the word from which "Aarhus" of today originates. During the Viking Age a cluster of houses along the river up to Immervad and down to the Mejlgade street constituted a small urban community encircled by an earthen rampart and a moat. The foundation stone for the Cathedral was laid in 1201. It was completed in its present form during the first half of the 16th century.

They walked from the Cathedral and cross the Clemens Bro bridge to go up the pedestrian high street Strøget/Søndergade, entering a more recently developed part of the city. Aarhus expanded and developed significantly during the latter half of the 19th century, and many of the imposing townhouses along Søndergade were built during this period. This high street was pedestrianised, and led all the way to the central station. The present Central Station and the buildings around the square dated back to the 1920s and the 1930s, as did the buildings in Park Allé. Park Allé was also the address of the City Hall, on the city's main square, the Store Torv, in front of the Cathedral. From 1941 to 1983, the building held the police station. The building now housed the Women's Museum and the Occupation Museum.

At the shop of a jeweler on the street Kannikegade, Nora introduced Emery to the Albert-Schweizer-look-alike shopkeeper, one Van Krokker. "A friend of Frederick Bergoo's is a friend of me," he said, showing Emery around the store. Krokker designed and cast, via the lost-wax method, contemporary jewelry -- also iron, bronze, and gold miniature replicas of ancient Viking artifacts and Minoan goddess figurines. His inspiration of late, he shared with Emery and Nora, derived from a pair of small Cretan statuettes on loan to him (he said) from a humble Viking Museum in the basement of a local bank. The Adrasteia and Ide figurines were made of wood, ivory, and gold. One of the two was a narrow-waisted woman in a patterned apron and long skirt with flounces, her breasts completely bared. She was holding up two snakes, shaking them like maracas. There were also snakes on the body of the other goddess, but only one was held in her clutches. In her right hand, she held the head of a snake. The rest of the snake was entwined around her right arm, slung over her shoulder, dropping down a side of her back, across her butt, and up the other side of her back, then over her left shoulder, then around her left arm. The goddess held the snake's tail in her left hand. On top of her head was the head of the second snake. The body of that snake passed by the goddess's left ear, curved around the outside of her left breast, continued to below her waist, slithered across her belly, then extended back up the right side of her body, where it's tail was looped around her right ear.

The next day, the three visited the bank Van Krokker frequented -- the one that housed the Viking Museum in its basement. Customers took numbers and waited for tellers to become available. Downstairs, visitors went into an entirely different era. Artifacts on display at the bank had been found during the construction of the bank. Excavating the foundations, diggers had unearthed artifacts leading back to the Viking Age -- also mummified human remains. At first it had been assumed the bodies were recent murder victims. The police had invited officials from museums all over Scandinavia to have a look. Experts noted the corpses held revelations. Some had been given a last meal of cereal gruel, ritually strangled with rope, and then savagely bludgeoned. Throats had been slashed, suggesting blood sacrifices to the Mother Goddess on Winter Solstice. Or perhaps they had been punished for crimes.

Peat bogs were areas of waterlogged land rich with organic acids and aldehydes held in layers of Sphagnum and peat. Bodies found in the bogs has been dated from the Mesolithic through to modern times. The most celebrated came from the Iron Age and Roman periods. Some of the bog people were said have been shamans or priests/priestesses who'd been ritually sacrificed and placed in the bogs for being different and special -- touched by the gods.

In May, 1962 peat-cutter Knut Kekkner, in the Horning peat bogs southwest of Aarhuus, had dsicovered a pair of naturally mummified bodies, one in the embrace of the other. One was obviously male. It was long believed the second body was that of a woman. The bodies were roughly from 150 BC to 150 AD. The corpses had been arranged in the peat bog about 2,000 years before. The preservative qualities of the bog water -- inhibiting the growth of bacteria, and containing large amounts of organic acids and aldehydes -- had acted to preserve the soft tissues of the cadaver -- skin, facial features, stubble, toenails, fingernails. The smaller person -- whose arms and legs showed signs of repeated hacking, her right arm detached from the rest of her body, evidently cut off before she was deposited in the peat -- lay in the right arm of the larger person with Body One's left hand clasping the left arm of Body Two. Body One's stomach was sliced open at the time of his death, his entrails piled on top of his abdominal cavity. If he was sacrificed, he may have been disemboweled so that the presiding priest/ess could read his entrails as a form of divination. The heads of both were mostly missing, although Body One's hair was partially intact. Body One's penis was intact. Unfortunately, the pelvic area of Body Two was poorly preserved. In 1990, the interpretation of the 2,000 year old bodies changed. A scientist suddenly noticed that the smaller of the two bodies had beard stubble on what was left of his chin. An examination of the two bodies by a professor of forensic medicine at Aarhus University now concluded, "Body Two is, like Body One, a male." The newspapers headlines dubbed the two the "Gay Peat Twins" -- "heartlessly murdered by primitive tribes for their alternative lifestyle."

In 2001, a special exhibit was being prepared for the "Gay Peat Twins" at the museum in the basement of the bank that Van Krokker frequented. The museum was at that time preparing for the exhibit, scheduled to open in the spring, of the "Gay Peat Twins" on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the find in May, 1962. Visitors would encounter the peat-bog corpses in a separate, quiet, richly atmospheric room under optimum preservation conditions. They would learn that the "Gay Peat Twins" stomach contents had showed a wide variety of different grains, suggesting a ritual last meal. In their bellies had been found traces of ergot, a highly toxic mould found on rye. If they had been the victim of ergot poisoning ('ergotism') they would have suffered convulsions and hallucinations (the ergot-induced trance state part of the ritual sacrifice).

"It was the ultimate initiation rite," Nora said of the ritual. She being in the know, of course. "They wanted the ego’s rigid control over life to be released, so the person could have an experience of dissolution -- being dissolved into the waters of emotion -- tears, crying, sobbing, feeling totally lost and fearful of the unknown. That came from the ego’s deflation in the Calcination stage."

"I see," Emery pondered.

"Sometimes you just have to let go of the fear of the unknown -- the fear of feeling, fear of emotion, fear of revealing who we truly are, fear of being who we truly are. The ego leads us to believe that if we reveal who we really are we will be somehow harmed, rejected, denied, criticized, or even annihilated."

"I know what you mean," Emery said -- thinking actually of what Arthur Schopenhauer said of human nature, "Man is at bottom a savage beast. In his unrelenting cruelty man is in no way inferior to the tiger and the hyena."

The faces of the "Gay Peat Twins" were contorted in looks of horror and pain, stemming from legs broken, skulls crushed, and throats cut ear to ear.

The Minoans, too, had practiced it -- human sacrifice.The proof came at Anemospilia (the "windy caves") south of Knossos. In 1979, Minoa's Bronze-Age history had to be re-written when, during excavations at the archaeological site, Anemospilia, the team of Yannis and Efi Sakellarakis discovered a collapsed building within which lay evidence of human sacrifice. Within a collapsed protopalatial (circa17th century B.C.) building lay unequivocal evidence of the sacrifice. On on a platform -- bound/tied to it (an altar?) -- lay the skeleton of a young man with a bronze blade resting on his chest. His throat had been cut -- the way a bull would have been sacrificed. The knife, which was found upon his skeleton (currently in the museum in Archanes) had a picture of a fantastic, hybrid, boar-like animal elegantly engraved its blade. Three other skeletons lay in or around the scene. Within the "west room", were a "priest", a "priestess" and, in the antechamber, as if attempting to escape, lay the remains of a fourth body. This fourth person, had been carrying a vase, similar to those depicted on sarcophagi, ordinarily used to collect blood from bull sacrifices. If the executors had believed that this sacrifice would appease the Gods, they were mistaken. An earthquake (probably the reason for the sacrifice in the first place) caused the building to collapse, destroyed afterwards by fires that, due to the quake knocking over oil lamps, ravished the building, trapping the victim and the killers -- all.

A later find at Knossos proved that child-sacrifice -- and perhaps even cannibalism -- was practised. A silver and iron ring was found on the skeletal fingers of a "priest" who stood 5 foot, 10 inches tall -- a giant of a man for a Minoan, in a time when the average height of a male was a little under 5'6". Iron was a very valuable commodity then. This was the earliest example of it being found in the Aegean. It was also the only Mycenaean or Minoan ring found in position on an owner's finger. The building itself was unique on Crete.

Emery and Nora walked through the forest, following a marked trail of big white rocks with red dots painted on them. We passed by several ancient burial sites with assorted kinds of tombs, then hiked over a small waterfall and along a wood sidewalk leading over marshes, and found Frederik's parent's house. Frederik's once poor parents (now "his money tree," as Nora referred to them) were away -- vacatining in Spain. Her own parents were at home, but they refused to see her.

Nora now had another of her brilliant ideas -- to kidnap the "Gay Peat Twins" from the museum in the basement of the downtown bank, and to hold them ransom. The museum had prepared a special exhibition chamber, a room having optimum preservation conditions. The "Gay Peat Twins" had just been moved into the room and, though extensive scientific examinations of the peat-bog corpse were being conducted, the chamber was kept under only minimum security. The "Gay Peat Twins" would actually be quite easy to get to.

Nora's jeweler friend, Van Krokker, agreed with Nora that kidnapping the the "Gay Peat Twins" would be a breeze -- and would be great fun -- and would be lucrative. For giving him this lead on such a provocative heist, Van Krokker advanced Nora the equavalent of some twenty thousand dollars, swearing she would get the rest -- twenty thousand more-- on their completing the job.

In broad daylight, Van Krokker, Nora, and Emery did, then, steal the "Gay Peat Twins."

No alarms sounded. Armed and masked -- Nora and Van Krokker both filled to the gills with stimulants, tranquilizers, anesthetics, anti-psychotics, and hallucinogens -- the three entered the lightly guarded museum examination room, put the bodies on a wheeled stretcher, loaded them onto an elevator, and departed the bank by the front doors, loading the corpses into a borrowed ambulance as stunned scientists, museum visitors, bankers, and bank customers all stood by, apparently in shock. Seeing the faces of the kidnapped persons contorted in horror and pain, many people would later say they'd assumed the two, abducted by terrorists, were trying without success to let out screams.

It was when Van Krokker paid Nora and Emery their share of the proceeds that it hit Emery where he'd already heard the name before. It was at the Bookshop in France -- it was from Walter Lowen -- it was when Lowen had first talked of Dennis McLaren in Copenhagen. McLaren had phoned him, shouting, "Fire cracker. Indiscreet kamikaze. Fevery bare goo!".

"Fevery bare goo!" was, of course, Fredrick Bergoo. And "Fire cracker. Indiscreet kamikaze"? -- Van Krokker, of course! -- in the street of Kannikegade. The wooden, ivory, and golden Minoan goddess figurines Van Krokker had showed Emery in his shop were certainly the missing twins McLaren had sold online to Walter Lowen!

There was no way now that he was going to report this to the authorities; and there was no time now for Emery to go and steal them back from Krokker. Nora and Emery were out of the country only moments before puzzled museum officials comprehended that the "Gay Peat Twins" really were not just misplaced, but indeed stolen.

A manhunt ensued, but this did not make the headlines -- nor even make the news at all. Because the Danish Cultural Artifacts Protection Act ensured that any objects of cultural value within the borders of Denmark remained within the borders of Denmark, the "Gay Peat Twins" could not be smuggled out of the country. Privately, auction house experts estimated the value of the "Gay Peat Twins" at between $59.6 million to $74.5 million dollars, but all agreed it would be impossible to sell the the "Gay Peat Twins" within or outside Europe, due to the watchdogs of the Danish Commission on the Export of Cultural Assets and the enormous celebrity-level notoriety of the pair. Their ultimate return would be very secretly negotiated, the bodies returned to the museum for a generous, still undisclosed sum.

Now, at the end of August. 2001, Emery returned with Nora to Crete with abundant refreshed communal funding -- more than enough money to get Frederik and Frida out of jail in Chania.

The first thing Frida asked Emery when she got out of jail was, "Can you keep a secret?"