About The Author
Carl Borgen is a historian and the world’s leading authority on the Bock saga and the Lemminkäinen Hoard. He is the author of the acclaimed The Bock Saga: An Introduction, the memoir Temporarily Insane and the soon-to-be-released novels, The End of Paradise and The Squatters Gang. As featured in the Daily Mail, Daily Star, Female First, The London Economic, The Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post, Daily Mirror, The Sun, LADbible, Outsider, Science Times, News.com.au, Irish Mirror, India Times, 9 News, New Zealand Herald, HNGN, Daily Motion, Texas News Today, Soul and Spirit, Reader’s Digest, and many more.
The saga of
Carl Borgen
Born to Dutch parents in Canada, in 1960, Carl Borgen heralded from an old and influential aristocratic family that had once ruled for the Dutch government and trading houses including the East India Company. The family fortune was, however, lost after the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the Second World War, and by the time of Carl’s birth was just a distant memory.
From his earliest years, Carl’s parents told him that it was his duty to restore the family’s financial empire. In response to this impossible pressure, Carl rebelled and deliberately did poorly at school. He left home at the age of 17 to squat with friends, getting into the punk music scene and working as a roadie, stacking loudspeakers for famous rock bands of the time. When not working or partying, he read widely, from classic literature, philosophy and science to sci-fi fiction.
He spent time hitchhiking through Europe then on to Asia, through Pakistan and India. The most important thing spurring him on was to escape the boring and depressed suburbs where he had grown up and the life mission that his family had planned for him. He recognised that his decisions were being made based on negative feelings and he had no idea what he truly wanted from life—until he arrived in a hippie hangout in Goa and was spellbound by its unspoilt beaches and majestic sunsets.
Carl Borgen
The Saga Continues
In the years to follow, Carl continued to roam across Asia, making new friends and enjoying nature and parties in equal measure.
Like his family had done during the centuries before, he bought and sold goods that he found on his way. With careful selection of items, an increasing network of local artists throughout Asia, and outlets of hippie markets and rich Westerners, he kept himself alive. It was during the early ‘80s, during one of those hippie parties by the Indian ocean, that he first heard about the Bock Saga. It was a creation story that explained the world and life. While Carl chose to remain detached, his friends became obsessed with the Saga, and the treasures of epic proportions that it promised were still waiting to be discovered, along with proof of an undiscovered ancient civilisation of remarkable age. One year later, in 1987, the friends decided to go to Finland, to the supposed entrance to the Bock treasures – the Temple of Lemminkäinen – to uncover the truth and transform the world.
Thirty years later, his friends are still attempting to excavate the temple site. Now in his 60s, Carl has decided to record the story of the Bock Saga, of the man who first revealed it, Ior Bock, and the many adventures and mishaps of those who have dedicated their lives to proving it. More than half a decade in the making, Temporarily Insane is part memoir and part adventure story that recounts the Bock Saga so that this incredible story is not lost to history.
Carl has also launched a podcast, Bock Saga, where he and Tor Webster, an expert on megalithic history, discuss the Saga and Ior Bock in detail. You can listen and subscribe to it on Spotify.
