The “exotic” queen Eveliina of Finland (Eksoottinen Suomen kuningatar Eveliina as she was known) lived from 909AD – 985AD. She famously introduced a law to the tribes of the day decreeing that the wearing of flowers in their hair was compulsory in public – she may have been the first hippie. After the Battle of Malagar in 944, legend tells of her walking the battlefield with her handmaidens distributing flowers over the bodies of the slain soldiers. Although these were primitive times she was known to have an interest in astronomy and her palace had a section of the roof made removable so in the summer months she could lie in her bed and gaze at the stars. It was said that she was protected by an invisible force and that any assassins that penetrated her camp would be repelled by “a small bright shock of lightning” which had some historians conclude that she had understood something about the concept of electricity.

An ancient text discovered in 1876 by Dr J Greil Faustus, a respected German professor who specialised in the traditions of Northern Scandinavia, showed a simple drawing of what looked like a many-limbed beast playing a flute. Legend had it that a thousand years ago “beasts from the sky” descended upon the land in the realm of Queen Eveliina and in exchange for the gift of “earthly music” gave her the understanding of the phenomenon of electricity many years before humankind’s own discovery. To her own people, she was their wise ruler but with this show of magical powers she was considered a goddess and with this power she was able to maintain rule and keep the more brutal element of her era in check with her control of “small lightning” (pieni salama). It’s even possible that she was able to incorporate this magic power into some kind of weaponry which would explain the length of her reign.

The idea that aliens have visited Earth in the distant past isn’t new. The question is when and how many times and then what did they do here? Landing on a primitive world when you have the technology to get there makes you wonder about the idea of explorers from other galaxies and whether their visit aided our civilisation’s progress. If that is so it seems like they may have visited relatively recently considering the age of the Earth. But the thought that they helped a queen from a remote part of Europe tap into the energy of electricity is an intriguing one. What’s even more fascinating is that she might have protected the knowledge and taken the secret with her to her grave. The level of advancement she had reached only occurring hundreds of years later. But interestingly it seems they didn’t share their own technology, just aided the earthlings in discovering something that was already here.

As far as who discovered electricity, the ancient Greeks discovered static electricity by rubbing fur on amber. The Romans and the Persians may have had crude batteries but the idea that an obscure queen was generating electricity in a cold climate might explain how she lived to a ripe old age, uncommon in this period. It’s thought that for her, life wasn’t so harsh as she may not only have had electrical protection but eternal light and warmth. She was said to yearn for return for the beasts from the sky but they never came back. One wonders whether they took their discovery of music across the stars and if we did ever find a way to transport ourselves across the milky way that we might find not just life but music. That music might be the way to communicate as we will all remember from the scene in Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.

Who Discovered Electricity?

Music today had to be mellow and when I feel like this I listen to Doris Day’s You’re My Thrill (released in 1949) to soothe my soul. You can’t imagine what an amazing singer she was. You’re My Thrill was originally a 10 inch EP and added to later and released as an LP. She’s better known as a film star that sang rather than a singer that became a film star. She was born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff and she made at least 30 albums, some of them soundtracks due to her films. Hearing her sing on these early recordings is something else. In 1965 her son Terry Melcher produced the first two Byrds albums, Mr Tambourine Man and Turn! Turn! Turn! and worked with The Beach Boys – he died in 2004 aged 62. Kappelhoff died in 2019 of Pneumonia at the age of 97.

Like Kappelhoff, Julie London (Julie Peck) was seen in America as an actor and is best known from the seventies hospital series Emergency. Although she did begin her career in films, she made 30 albums from 1955 to 1969. She was the subject of a 1957 Life cover article in which she was quoted as saying, “It’s only a thimbleful of a voice, and I have to use it close to the microphone. But it is a kind of over-smoked voice, and it automatically sounds intimate.” Wonderful! A confirmed chain smoker since she was 16, she died in 2000 aged 74.

Songs Of The Daze