Background

The background and origin of this reseach is a Finnish oral tradition or narration passed along specific families, which have lived in Southern Finland, Uudenmaa. This Saga is called as Bock (Family) Saga, and it has created the interest to study the reality and historical aspects of its stories and places.

The Bock Saga tells about a place called Gumbo(strand), where has been hold a death ceremony, when the grandmother of the Bock family (Gumman Ella) had decided to leave the Earth.

In Gumbo there is a rocky hill or mountain which has actually two tops and which are called respectively Sibo Mountain (or Bock Mountain) and Gumbo Mountain.
Between these two tops is a ravine. Above the ravine is a a rock boulder called "Ättestupa" (Death Rock) from where Gumman Ella in her death ceremony has made herself to fall down into the ravine to die away.
Next to the Stupa is another rock boulder called Sundial Rock.
(The photo above shows the formation of this place - the Ättestupa is the tall upright boulder in the middle with round top and the Sundial Rock is partly visible on the right hand side with flat top).

When Gumman Ella had fallen down and died, her body was burned at the stake, which was built on the highest point of the Sibo Mountain.

The Saga tells about underground temple called Lemminkäinen Temple, or Balders Temple, which was a temple of Life, where has been hold fertility ceremonies for men.
This temple is a kind of cupola inside the Sibo Mountain, just under the burning place of Gumman Ella.

The Saga tells also about underground world of death called "Manala" (maan alla), where the grandfather Gubbe of the Bock family did his death ceremony.
When one family generation died, the history of that time (in a form of beautiful esthetic gifts and a life size statue of Gubbe as an young man, everything made of gold and precious stones to last forever) was stored into underground storage rooms of Manala.
The entrance to this storage has been told to be just under Lemminkäinen temple.
This underground storage has also been referred as "Undervärk" meaning "wonderwork".

The Saga has told about the entrance to Lemminkäinen temple:

"Where Gumman Ella has fallen down is the entrance blocked with plates of stones. From there one can enter the "Waterlock" or Round Room, which naturally fills up with water and thus closes the entrance. When emptied of water one may enter into Corridor, which leads up to the cupola of the Lemminkäinen Temple. With this Corridor there is also two other tunnels starting from the Round Room, and these two are for ventilation."

"The Temple has a cupola form which has been inlayed with gold. Under the Temple is the Ättestupa of Gubbe and the entrance to the underground storage"

The Saga itself has too many stories and details to be referred here, but to understand better the nature of the place couple of details should be mentioned.

The place was in use already long time ago, during an era called Paradise Time. The place has a natural underground formation, which has been refined by the humans of that time.
The Paradise had its' end and then started a new era, the Ice Time which is called in the Saga as Altlandis or Atlantis Time.

In the period of Atlantis Time the Uudenmaa area was isolated (ice-olated) from the rest of the world, as it was surrounded by kilometers high ice wall. Uudenmaa remained as an ice free oasis with the help of an hot sea current entering the Gulf of Finland from the Atlantic Sea. Thus the shores or Gulf of Finland could be inhabited the whole period of the Ice Time.

The Saga tells that the Ice Time came to its end 10 thousand years ago when ice masses glided over Uudenmaa and deserted the area completely. People could escape this destruction into an island called Bock Land (Goat-land, Gotland), where they survived by hiding inside the caves of Lummelunda.

People who had survived the destruction caused by ice, stayed in Gotland with their descendants a thousand year period called as Vendel Period. After this people returned to Uudenmaa (9000 years ago) and started to build up life and culture in Southern Finland, Uudenmaa and to inhabit again the Northern hemisphere.

The ancient ceremonial places were taken into use again, but also some new arrangements took place. For example the Bock family grandfather Gubbe did not do his death ceremony inside Manala any more but did it outside.
(Next to these gubbes' stupas we can find today stone constructions called Kummeli or Stove, which had originally pyramid form and marked the place of Gubbe's burial, the burning place of the stake).
Gumman Ella continued her death ceremony in Gumbo at the ancient site.

The Finnish heathen (Hiiden) culture came closer to its end, when the mighty Eastern neighbour Rosland with its emperor, the grandduke Vladimir quitted pagan customs and turned into Christianity in 987 ad.
The same year the Uudenmaa people closed the entrance of the Lemminkäinen Temple, as they understood that there could happen an hostile invasion or conquest, which they could not resist.
The final destruction of the "Hiiden" culture started in 1050 ad, when the Mid-European papal mercenary army joined with Svea King Anund Jacod invaded and destroyed Uudenmaa. However, the conquerors could not find the entrance into underground Temple and Manala.
The Bock family succeeded to survive also this destruction by escaping into Northern Finland, where their descendants lived 200 years.

Birger Jarl, the Swedish general and the ambassador of the king of Sweden, made a peace with Russian Emperor Aleksander Nevski the year 1248, and defined the new Eastern border of Sweden to be the Neva River between old Finland and Rosland.
After this Birger Jarl visited the Northmost Finnish Castle of Carljarleborg (Corelenborg) and made also a peace contract with the Bock family.
Thus the Bock family became unarmed and the kingdom of Finland fell under the rule of Swedish King.

In the year 1250 the Bock family members returned to Uudenmaa seashore and started to live as peasants, but preserved their oral family narration up today.

Excavations and research history

The last descendant of the Bock family (Boxström) who has learned the family Saga is a man called Ior Bock. He started to tell about their family Saga in February 1984.

In 1987 Ior Bock told about the Lemminkäinen Temple and the underground storage system. As he was the owner of the site (his father and mother had bought the land in 1937/38 and given to him as a gift in 1941) his friends and followers could start to search for the entrance.

The Saga gave good definition where to start the excavations, but the actual work has been from the beginning very difficult.
The stone plates covering the entrance in the bottom of the ravine in front of the Stupa were huge in size and had to be blasted by dynamite.
Just under the Stupa itself was again stone plate (1,5 meter thick), and after another blocking the entrance.
When these stones were removed, there was found an empty space where was something the excavators called as "gray mass" (see the figure above).
When excavators brought this gray mass out of the tunnel to sunshine it became very hard, stony, and difficult to brake.

In 1988 and 89 the excavations were supported with sponsorship, and afterwords in 1990 an 1991 the work continued without financial support but with great enthusiasm and hope for hitting soon into the hollow space, the Round Room, which unfortunately has not been found yet.

The entrance tunnel is now 31 meters long from the Stupa, and the floor of the tunnel at its end is 21,5 meters below the ground level above, and the altitude of the tunnel floor is 4 meters below the floor level at the entrance.

During the underground excavations has been used subsurface radar scans to detect fragmentary walls and the most propable direction the entrance would follow.

Excavations themselves followed in the beginning both the ceiling and the floor, but finally the ceiling alone. This has caused, that the floor of the tunnel is at the end horizontal and may be some distance above the real floor level.

Radar scans had been made on the hill top to detect the Temple Cupola (1990) and the Round Room (1991). Results were encouraging showing, that there exists underground structures from 15 to 25 meters below the ground.

In 1992 was done extensive radar scans at the site by German mining company DMT.

In 1995 has been made a new radar scannig , and the scanner material is here available to look at as colour scanner images.

The site topography and the scanning lines are available.

Note: In the Topography the X-axis leads approximately Eastwards and the Y-axix Northwards.

Problems and Ideas

It looks like the whole "Entrance area" Northwards and Eastwards from the Stupa gives strong reflection of an underground layer. This might be the same layer as the "tunnel floor" which could actually be the bottom of the ravine between two hilltops (Sibo and Gumbo Mountains), but which is now covered with enourmous rock boulders.

The ravine area scanning shows, that there is many layers in different altitudes under the ground, which supports the theory, that this area is not covered by whole bedrock but could have a construction or coverage of rock boulders, which bottom lies on the floor of the ravine.

This boulder formation might originate from very ancient times, from before the Ice Time.

Because the Saga tells about enormous underground tunnels and spaces called as Manala, the natural ventilation system must require much bigger tunneling diameters that the 6m2 entrance under the Stupa could provide.
Thus the original entrance and the Round Room waterlock should be very big in size to match the story about the Paradise Time.
Thus the present entrance must be just a sideway, an imitation but smaller in size compared to those older and larger structures.

The problem is now, that as the entrance has been opened 31 meters Eastwards, the final destination area, Sibo Mountain and the Cupola formed layer is still quite far away, at the other side of the ravine in the North-West direction, 40 meters away.

In June 2001 a drilling machine was driven down the tunnel and there was drilled three sample holes, each 20-25 meters long with slightly different angle and direction. The drilling was started at the end wall of the tunnel.

The result of these drillings were, that the stony tunnel wall continues quite uniformly (see the photo above) but not as hard as bedrock usually.
Also there was found a reddish approximately 2 meters thick and very soft layer formation 12-18 meters away from the end of the tunnel. This red layer is closer to the tunnel end at slightly downwards and North-East direction, further at horizontal and Eastward direction.

One idea is, that the present entrance under the Stupa is closed up to the "waterlock". We could thus try to detect the Round Room: to try to find with radar scanning a hollow space, which might be close to the spot, where the ravine floor is at the deepest point, and could be full of water.

Still another idea is, that in the Northern stone wall of the tunnel starting from the very entrance under the Stupa, is a curve shaped crack starting from the floor and merging with the ceiling, which could mark one possible direction of the entrance to continue: from under the Stupa straight to the right and Northwards.

Radar scans has been made also inside the tunnel in 1997. Those scans showed quite uniformal continuation of the wall structure Northwards and Eastwards at least 20 meters forward.

However, the mountain top radar scans nr. 30, 31 and 15, of which end points are close to the Stupa, are showing, that the ravine bottom leads most strongly downwards at the North-East direction. There is the deepest ravine floor point where the scan line15 meets lines 16-17. There the ravine floor rises again upwards towards the West, the Burning place. The floor level altitude is also rising Eastwards in line 16.

Important detail of the Northern Sibo Mountain area is, that the radar scanning shows quite large and roundish layer from 12 to 20 meters underground (the diameter is approxiamtely 50 meters). The layer level altitudes might indicate kind of cupola formation (note also the overlapping of two layers clearly visible in lines 26 and 27).
In this area the bedrock above the underground structures or layers seems to be whole and unbroken according to the radar scans.

Great breakthrough of the research with radar scanning would be detecting undergroung hollow space or tunnels most likely filled with water.